Glenn Beck’s Headshots

Jesus, he’s certainly mastered the short sentences, repetition, and cadence of your typical cult leader, hasn’t he. I’m reminded of those chilling recordings of Jim Jones encouraging everyone to hurry up and get in line for some delicious kool aid.

@flippin eck: Yes. And yes, I’ll never forget those recordings either.

This man is filth.

@flippin eck: Jesus, he’s certainly mastered the short sentences, repetition, and cadence of your…

…professional broadcaster. You learn those tricks early on the air.

Back when I did raddio, a sixty-second news piece consisted of seven or eight sentences. And unlike print, listeners don’t have the option of starting again from the top. So you have to lead them by the nose, sentence by sentence.

Watch Rachel. She does it too. Especially, recently, the repetition.

I barely understand this. Is it written in English, or did I just have a stroke?

And, there’s the Keef “Who’s to Blame” ad again! Anybody care to click through and tell me the URL where it lands so I can zap it?

@homofascist: I don’t understand it either. I chalk it up to code and psychotic ramblings best understood through tinfoil. I’m glad I don’t get it. I did click through to The Progressive article, and that was fucking disturbing.

@nojo: http://cnsnewssurvey.com/?cdtrack_creative=bd16c0a1-5941-40f4-aeda-8e9b972374d1&cdtrack_source=6766ecf9-5d7e-4988-ba24-e120e6fe0873

@nojo: http://cnsnewssurvey.com.

@JNOV: Ah. The Media Research Center. It be zapped.

@nojo: Best writing class I ever took: Broadcast Newswriting. In/out. Bam Bam Bam! Espresso journalism.

@nojo: Huzzah!

TJ/ I’m bored, let’s have a poetry jam.

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: There once was a boy from Nantucket…

Always

I am not jealous
of what came before me.

Come with a man
on your shoulders,
come with a hundred men in your hair,
come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,
come like a river
full of drowned men
which flows down to the wild sea,
to the eternal surf, to Time!

Bring them all
to where I am waiting for you;
we shall always be alone,
we shall always be you and I
alone on earth,
to start our life!

Pablo Neruda

@redmanlaw: Espresso journalism.

Love it.

Radio was fun. It’s such a wonderful intimate medium — you fill the room with your voice, instead of attention being directed to a screen or page. You’ll never be closer to your audience.

However…

Seven or eight sentences in sixty seconds (back when you had a whole minute for a story) makes you a very lazy journalist — you just don’t need to know that much to get the story across. As much as I loved radio news, I made a point of looking for a print gig out of college, just so I would have a solid grounding in the craft. I figured I could always move to radio or TV later — once I learned discipline.

Not sure who wrote this…Emily?

After great pain, a formal feeling comes
The nerves sit ceremoniously like tombs

Yes, Emily:

After Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes

After great pain, a formal feeling comes–
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs–
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

The Feet, mechanical, go round–
Of Ground, or Air, or Ought–
A Wooden way
Regardless grown,
A Quartz contentment, like a stone–

This is the Hour of Lead–
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons recollect the Snow–
First–Chill–then Stupor–then the letting go–

Emily Dickinson

@JNOV: Oooh, Neruda. Lovely.

I see your Neruda and raise you a WCW:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-William Carlos Williams

Song In Spite Of Myself

Never love with all your heart,
It only ends in aching;
And bit by bit to the smallest part
That organ will be breaking.

Never love with all your mind,
It only ends in fretting;
In musing on sweet joys behind,
too poignant for forgetting.

Never love with all your soul,
for such there is no ending;
though a mind that frets may find control,
and a shattered heart find mending.

Give but a grain of the heart’s rich seed,
Confine some undercover,
And when love goes, bid him God-speed,
and find another lover.

Countée Cullen

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: +1!!

I forced my kid to hear Buk read this one. Kid didn’t get it. Maybe he won’t need to… (Cassandra Said turned me on to him.)

The Genius Of The Crowd

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

How about….

It fell about the Martinmas time
And a gay time it was then o
That our good wife had puddings to make
And she boiled them in the pan o.

The wind blew cold from east and north
And blew into the floor o,
Quoth our good man to our good wife,
“Get up and bar the door o.”

“My hand is in my hussyfskap,
Good man, as you may see o.
If it should be barred this hundred years
It’ll not be barred by me o.”

They made the pact between the two
They made it firm and sure o:
Whoever should speak the very first word
Should rise and bar the door o.

Then by and came two gentlemen
At twelve o’clock at night o,
And they could see that in the house
There was coal nor candle light o.

“Oh, have we here a rich man’s house
Or have we here a poor o?”
But never a word would the old couple speak
For the barring of the door o.

So first they ate the white puddings
And then they ate the black o;
And muckle thought the good wife herself
But ne’er a word she spoke o.

Then one unto the other did say,
“Here man, take ye my knife o.
Do you take off the old man’s beard
And I’ll kiss the good wife o.”

“But there’s no water in the house
And what shall we do then o?
What ails ye at the pudding broth
That boils in yonder pan o.”

Oh, up then started our good man
And an angry man was he o,
“Well ye kissed my wife before my eyes
And scald me with pudding broth o.”

Oh up then started our good wife,
Gave three skips on the floor o,
“Good man ye have spake the very first word:
Get up and bar the door o.”
-The Silly Sisters, The Barring of the Door

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: I’m coming down with something. Too much work, not enough rest, system crashing. Gonna finish the task at hand, hit the movie store and pile on a bunch on blankets as I vedge by the fire.

I should write up my outline for a statute intended to prevent acquisition and possession of firearms by bad guys and [insert euphamism for crazy people] that I plan to slip to a few legislators I know. I’ll post it in the sandbox for comment.

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: My favorite WCW work!! Are you also a fan of Gary Snyder?

@JNOV: Wonderful.

BTW, I am in D.C. where it is 18 degrees, accounting for wind chill. As a guy born and raised in Southern California, I find this unacceptable.

I have been recently seeing this hot young buck, and he has been making me feel like this:

i like my body when it is with your – e.e. cummings

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: Haha! LOVE IT! But I refuse to be lifted out of my dark mood. My computer is crawling for some reason, so I’m going to see what the issue is. I’ll be back with more depressing stuff once my hamsters have been beaten into submission. I’ll send you one I registered with the Library of Congress that is being set to music, such as, if I can get on FB.

@Dodgerblue: You’re still there? If you’re going to be there a while longer, maybe you, Mellbell and I should get together. Let’s meet in the sandbox — again, if I can get on FB.

@homofascist: LOVE!

It was your birthday, we had drunk and dined
Half of the night with our old friend
Who’d showed us in the end
To a bed I reached in one drunk stride.
Already I lay snug,
And drowsy with the wine dozed on one side.

I dozed, I slept. My sleep broke on a hug,
Suddenly, from behind,
In which the full lengths of our bodies pressed:
Your instep to my heel,
My shoulder-blades against your chest.
It was not sex, but I could feel
The whole strength of your body set,
Or braced, to mine,
And locking me to you
As if we were still twenty-two
When our grand passion had not yet
Become familial.
My quick sleep had deleted all
Of intervening time and place.
I only knew
The stay of your secure firm dry embrace.

Thom Gunn

@JNOV: Yep, in DC for another week.

@Benedick: I like it. I don’t know of the author.

@Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One: I love that one. And Red Wheelbarrow.

Here’s one by Billy Collins (who often writes about writing):

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

@mellbell: I love Billy Collins. He’s funny and trenchant.

@Dodgerblue: San Francisco poet 60s thru 80s (?). I didn’t know him either till I came across that at Woolfe&Wilde.

@Dodgerblue: No, do you have any handy?

@Benedick: I’m sending that to the Mr.

@homofascist: The young ones are always so…toothsome….

The Emperor Jianwen thought so too…

Charming boy – You look so handsome!
You surpass Dong Xian and Mizi Xia.

Our feather curtains are filled with morning fragrance,
Within pearl blinds I hear the distant drips of an evening water clock.
Kingfisher quilts bear the hues of mandarin ducks,
Our curtained bed is inlaid with ivory.

You are as youthful as Zhou Xiaoshi,
Your face is more beautiful than rosy red dawn clouds.
Sleeves made of regal jade brocade,
Tunic of delicate flowery cloth.

When you touch your pants, I lightly blush.
As you tilt your head, two curls fall out of place.
Your coy glances now and then cause me to smile.
Jade-like hands grasp flowers.

Deep in your heart you probably suspect you’re not my latest catch,
But your intimate love for me is still like that of the “former carriage”.
You’re enough to make the girls of Yan envious,
And cause even Zheng women to sigh.

@Benedick: I heard him read at UCLA after his book “The Trouble With Poetry” came out. He filled up Royce Hall. I didn’t know that so many people in LA read books.

@Dodgerblue: Okay — I sent you and Mel an email through FB.

@mellbell: Ohhhhh. Very nice.

@Dodgerblue: @Tommmcatt is with Karin Marie on This One:

December At Yase

You said, that October,
In the tall dry grass by the orchard
When you chose to be free,
“Again someday, maybe ten years.”

After college I saw you
One time. You were strange,
And I was obsessed with a plan.

Now ten years and more have
Gone by: I’ve always known
where you were—
I might have gone to you
Hoping to win your love back.
You still are single.

I didn’t.
I thought I must make it alone. I
Have done that.

Only in dream, like this dawn,
Does the grave, awed intensity
Of our young love
Return to my mind, to my flesh.

We had what the others
All crave and seek for;
We left it behind at nineteen.

I feel ancient, as though I had
Lived many lives.

And may never now know
If I am a fool
Or have done what my
karma demands.

Gary Snyder

@JNOV: Who wrote that? It’s awesome.
@homofascist: Bow chica-bow-bow.

/will post my favorite poems shortly.

@SanFranLefty: Charles Bukowski :-)

There’s a great documentary streaming on Netflix that shows him in all his psychotic glory: Bukowski: Born into This.

@Benedick: Lovely.

@JNOV: Have you ever read Gabriela Mistral’s poems? Good stuff.

@SanFranLefty: No, but I will! Thank you! <3

Damn! I missed the poetry jam. Thank you all for a lovely time this morning reading your chosen treasures.