Tuesday, January 8, 2008

218. CONTINUITY AND THE DECIDER

Let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ’em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know—fiction!
—Stephen Colbert, keynote speech at White House Correspondents’ Dinner, 28 April 2006

From the Archives (Cinco de Mayo 2006) I’m on seemingly perpetual hold while trying to make an appointment to get my bashed-in car repaired and feel as if I’m standing at St. Burchardi Church in Halberstadt waiting for the next chord in John Cage’s “As Slow a Possible” organ recital to peal through the air.

(The next chord in the first movement of this recital won’t sound for another full month. Then either silence or another chord will follow and will perhaps offer some variation in musicology, if a pipe is added or deleted from the organ.)

Let’s mark our calendars in advance for 5 September 2070, when the second movement of this slow recital begins . . . and tell our grandkids to pass on the Prophecy of the Slow Recital, for it is foretold that, 639 years (after the second movement begins (or when the church gets sick of dealing with a deceased composer’s work), the composition will finally be completed.

Actually, hearing ANY new chord would be a vast improvement over the wretched musak version of “Afternoon Delight” that is currently playing on my speakerphone in between the sporadic Your call is very important to us and will be answered in the order in which it was received. Please stay on the line. message.

Meanwhile, I’m having a true lunch break for a change because I feel lousy and skipped my workout. Stayed up till 2:30 AM finishing an illustration project and slept very little in the city, so am probably just exhausted.

And I’m reading about teledildonics as I snarf down my salad.

Don’t know what teledildonics is? Well pull up a chair chere!

Author Liz Langley (of Alternet’s “Cybersex Grows Up”) describes teledildonics as “the ability of two people, in separate locations, to manipulate sex toys via the internet. You could finger your mouse in New York, and make someone in California sing the ten-second aria.”

Yep. Apparently, a few computer-savvy American soldiers are already using the Sinulator to keep their lovers happy from afar.

The possibilities are mind-boggling.



Meanwhile, student stores is closing for renovations, so I just purchased the following items for ~$2 each:

1. a CD of American lesbian composers
2. Physics Demystified: A Self-Teaching Guide (coz I have forgotten way too much)
3. House of Leaves
4. Susan Ludvigson’s Sweet Confluence: New and Selected Poems
5. Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World’s Best Poems
6. Carolyn Forché’s Blue Hour (poems)
7. Robert Creeley: Just in Time, Poems 1984–1994

Whee! Lots of reading to do after I finish this project.

I also have lots more to write about and am so so happy that I finally got to see my bestgrrl again. Haven’t had time to process the trip yet, so that'll have to come later.

LISTENING TO: John Cage and Lou Reed's Songs for Drella (of course).

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