WhimsyLand

Here's a great opportunity to buy two books by terrific poets for under $25.  Just preorder Mary Jo Bang's Elegy (Graywolf) and G. C. Waldrep's Disclamor (BOA) from Amazon.  Here are the current blurbs:

Disclamor:  "Here is a gorgeous book of the most subtle and vivid mysteries, weighted with earth and time."-Li-Young Lee

Elegy:  “This is our beautiful glimpse of forever. Mary Jo Bang’s Elegy is a harrowing, necessary work.” —C. D. Wright

~~~

I've been waiting for a Certain Big Project to solidify for a month now.  One thing about working in my business (engineering consulting) is that your planning horizon is 3 or 4 months.  Also your revenue and cash flow planning.  It makes for an exciting life.  This project is not only large, it could possibly stretch for a year or more.  Life was much easier when I was involved in product companies, which are slow to start up, but slow to die also.

~~~

I was making a mental list of how many billionaires I've ever talked to.  The rules of my game are that they didn't have to be billionaires when I chatted with them.  So far, I've come up with four:  Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, and Denis Feron.  I don't know why, but I keep thinking I've missed one.

I think it's safe to say the the first 3 on my list are driven, unpleasant, and some cases, ruthless.  Still, they've created businesses that employ hundreds of thousand of highly-paid staff.  They also didn't get where they are by schmoozing their way to the top, and then wire their Board to get 8-figure salaries/options or organize big-ticket birthday parties for their wives on company money.  For examples of the latter, see Lord Black, Dennis Kowalski, or Chainsaw Al Dunlap.  Nor did they get there on their daddy's influence and money (e.g., Howard Hughes or George Bush).

I actually worked for the last one (Denis) when he was a billionaire, so I get an extra point for that.  Jobs I interviewed at the first West Coast Computer Faire in 1977 (I think), which was about the same time I argued with Gates about software pricing.  Ellison I negotiated with (badly) for an Oracle license for an IBM 360 compatible computer that my buddies Dave and Glenn were designing for a large Silicon Valley firm.  Of course, thousand of people have had conversations with Jobs, Gates and Ellison, but I like to think that when I was exchanging view with them, they were still relative virgins.  I mean, Jobs was in a booth half the size of Smoke Signal's or Sol's.

My work with Mr. Feron was much more mundane:  as Director of Technology for the copper conglomerate, I also had the job of scheduling staff to fly weekly down on the company LearJets to Bilbao.  The point was to keep the planes active and filled to justify their expense to Denis' brother, the firm's co-owner. 

~~~

Derek flew back to Chicago today, which necessitated that we solve the Missionaries and Cannibals Problem.  He had the Subaru (now bumperless, but that's another story) and was at Cath's.  The Missionaries and Cannibals Problem is often used in AI (Artificial Intelligence) classes as an exercise to solve via learning algorithms. 

~~~

Zelda Update:  I've obtained again the power of the Dominion Rod and I'm on a quest for Owls.  Not long now.

~~~

Der's back in Chicago and it's Kyle's birthday.  Kyle walked when he was 9 months and talked like an attorney at 18 months.  At some point between his first and second year, he started stalking around the living room with his small paws out in front of him whenever we said, "Do the T. Rex thing, Ky".  I used to read dinosaur books to him and it reached the point where he could "read" them himself, speaking all the lines and turning the pages, not actually being able to read, but using the cues of the pictures and page numbers to segment his dialogue.  It always impressed the grandparents.  Happy birthday, Ky.  I love you.

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Morning Treadmill:  I couldn't help but notice how in the ubiquitous hit, Umbrella, Rihanna's warbling sounds like she's channeling The Cranberries' Dolores O'Riordan.  Add a new workout show to match Hip Hop Abs and Yoga Booty Ballet:  I didn't catch the name but it has something to do with wiggling around a dance pole. JAG is on for the 124th year in a row.  ESPN appears to have as many channels as all the TV stations we had as a kid.  Every morning this bouncy buxom redhead and her partner show us how to make "gumball slippers" and foil-wrapped pencil holders and butterfly appliqués and other stuff I used to dread getting from the kids when they came home from school projects.  Reverend Creflo A. Dollar spent 25 minutes preaching on 20 words in Genesis, I kid you not (doesn't "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. / And God saw the light, that it was good" make God sound like a nursery school teacher?). 

Dana Gioia describes himself as "perhaps the only person ever to get an MBA to become a poet".  Surely, that can't be so.  I, for example, was two courses away but as I was getting a doctorate in business anyway, and declined to take the extra classes (though I did run over to the other side of campus and get an M.S. in Computer Science).  Are there any other practicing poets out there with MBAs?

Whoda thunk?  Dick Cheney is his own branch of government or his own rogue nation or something.

Eileen has renamed her blog Poker Poetics, which is almost an infringement of my Whimsical empire.  Also, congrats, Eileen, for getting a panel approved by AWP.  I've heard it's easier to get an audience with the Pope nowadays.  I wouldn't mind attending the prose poem panel that Ms. Nezhukumatathil is on with Hicok, Addonizio, et al.  Josh enjoys Venice with the same wonderment that I always have.  Like Henry, I feel crushed by indifference this week.  I like these lines from Catherine Wagner's Macular Hole:  "Well who then is saying it.  Trucks in the offing / finch on the phonewire, movement of tree".  Kristy has Dusie chaps to trade.  Knocked Up joins Joshua's film list.  Stephen is giving away poetry books.  Jessie contributes a recipe for my culinary section:  Green, Eggs, and Ham.   Among many other interesting notions, Kasey posits that a poem is competent if it tends to play well with other poems in the journal it appears (yes, that's a simplification, read the article).  Simon continues to amuse: "the quack medicine of Marxism is a tool just as much as the insane, egotistical or megalomaniac, manifestos and poems that are produced by much of the avant garde." What's interesting is that Simon's response was motivated by Kasey's comment thread, which wandered all over the place in interesting ways, pulling in links to other blogger's thought, and sparking a discussion between Kent and Joshua ("Does [Flarf] believe, with Badiou, that we shouldn't cringe at the idea of massive State Terror after the Revolution and that certain School of Quietude Poets might well best be sent to the guillotine?")  One interesting link (cited by Jordan) was Jonathan's hypothesis regarding literary context.

In any event, I probably lean more toward Simon and Kent's view of Marxist theory as anachronistic.  In the two largest enterprises in which I had up-close-and-personal views into the machinations of the owner-manager class, the constant goal was to get rid of people altogether.  In the best of worlds, according to this über-class, the company would be run by computers and machinery, all of which was built by yet more computers and machinery.  No pesky unions, no expensive pensions.  

I got Scientific American for 20 years and then stopped because I thought it had gotten dumbed down, then started again because I figured I had, too.  Some interesting bits from this month's issue:

• The 1.4 billion cattle in the world contribute significantly to methane production (a putative contributor to global warming), perhaps 115 million metric tons per year.  There were far fewer ruminants in pre-industrial days (which included 60 million American bisons) that contributed an estimated 10 million metric tons of methane.
• The oily seeds of the jatropha plant, native to Mali and Tanzania, may be the ideal source of biofuel.  The plant favors hot, dry climates, and could benefit developing countries with large areas of semi-arid land.
• The Memjet, a radically advanced ink-jet printer, is tiny and prints color photographs up to 30 times faster than conventional printers.  Developed by Silverbrook Research in Australia, the Memjet heats ink to a boil and fires it through nozzles.
• Ray guns may be real soon.  The Defense Department's High-Energy Laser Joint Technology Office is testing a laser gun whose high energy could knock down incoming "mortars, artillery shells, rockets and missiles".
• A species of fish in a Turkish hot spring have adapted to feed off the skin of the tourists who use the spring for therapy. 
• Go is one of the few games that have eluded mastery by computers (IBM's Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov at chess in 1997).  A new algorithm by a pair of Hungarian researchers may change all that.
• The Skeptic debunks The Secret, a book on positive thinking lauded by Oprah.
• Human-induced climate and hydrological change is likely to compel hundreds of millions of people to relocate in the next few decades.
• Creationist argue that DNA is so complicated and so dependent upon (the very differently constructed) proteins that the whole system could not have evolved without divine intervention.  Robert Shapiro believes that a simpler self-replicating chemical precursor is the answer.
• Modern anesthetics work by not quite killing you.  New anesthetic regimes will attempt to target individual human systems.
• Conservation biologists have proposed a "bold plan" to repopulate America (specifically the Dakotas) with the animals similar to those that humans wiped out in the Pleistocene:  lions, elephants, horses, and camels.
  

Zelda Update:  I'm stuck trying to beat Morpheel in the Lakebed Temple.  I'm bringing the Wii over to Cath's tomorrow, though, so Ky and Der can use their long experience and amazing reaction times to get me through a couple of Bosses.

Here's the only poem I every wrote that mentions Scientific American, called Western Devolution:


Your phone call caught me reading Scientific American. They say
each star attracts a twin, too dim to see. Ours moves an arc-second
every other generation -- out beyond the Oort Cloud, rustling among
the comets-to-be, no tidal pull, no evidence beyond the second
order effects, dark and faithful to ellipsis.

~~~

There are only the geese
in the air and those beneath
the sugar mill, arranged like an army
of the mute: frozen mud, stubbled
wheat. Above, a lancehead caroms
off the horizon, returning with the same
aimless determination. They say
it’s a thing in their head and the iron
hidden in Long’s Peak.

~~~

Two men meet
in a cowboy bar,
one bleeding from
a razor cut, the other
with his hat on backwards.

~~~

The moon is hubris.
No sea to sway, a eunuch
singing to the stone.

~~~

In an uncharacteristic paroxysm of self-promotion, I have added the Court Green poems to my web page.  See you tomorrow.  Sweet Junie is back in Wisconsin and I have time on my hands.

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From Wonkette:  "Once again drafting hotshots from the private sector to apply their skills for making huge amounts of money at a public institution worked wonderfully. For the guy who made a couple million, anyway. And why begrudge him that? Go cry to the Spirit of St Louis if it bugs you so much."  Details here.  Wonkette also skewers Supreme Court Justice Scalia for defending 24's Jack Bauer and chuckles at Tommy Thomson's cabinet roundup, which includes Colin Powell.  Some days, you just couldn't do better making this stuff up.

Arizona State University has handed out some more Bunkum Awards in Education for "nonsensical, confusing, and disingenuous education reports produced by think tanks".  Recipients included the Fordham Institute (Bradley), The Manhattan Institute (Koch, Olin, Bradley, Scaife, Smith Richardson), The Cato Institution (Koch Family), and The Reason Foundation (Kock, Olin, Bradley, Scaife, Smith Richardson).   The parentheticals are the funding sources for these right-wing enterprises, and include the five active far-right foundations that have created and/or funded the American Enterprise Institute, The Federalist Society, The Media Research Center and the Heritage Foundation – all of which are broadly cited by conservatives as authoritative sources of research and often supply speakers and misinformation for mainstream news shows.  Other foundations funded by the group include a host of right-wing organizations with deceptive names:  Judicial Watch (right-leaning advocacy group that tends to litigate a lot) , Consumer Alert (industry-friendly lobbying group which has fought, among other things, mandatory airbags in autos),  American Council on Science and Health (a source of propaganda for the chemical industry), Institute on Religion and Democracy (targeting mainstream Protestantism).   I love these names, it's like "Fair and Balanced".  Sure, there's no vast right-wing conspiracy.

Deborah! Darling!  What are you doing going to non-simultaneous submissions?  I thought we were through with that foolishness.  Oh, well, at least John is back.  I've been in there a couple of times and I'd submit more but I know John is a hard-ass and I can't send second-rate material (OK, CDY says he's a hardass, too).  32 Poems is perfect for me because I almost never write poems longer than 32 lines anyway.  Jeez, you can can write a double sonnet in less space.  Of the 60-ish poems in my manuscript, only two are longer than that.  Truth be told, I seldom read poems longer than that, either.  It's my own person form of ADHD, perhaps.  I have made exceptions, including Guest, Ashbery, Goldbarth and Hicok, I suppose.  It had better be good though, and not a bunch of filler.

Dean & Deluca is back with more goodies.  32 ounces of fresh hamachi  (yellowtail tuna) will set you back $90.  It's originates in Tokyo, which is funny, as it could easily have been caught somewhere off the South American Atlantic coast (which was where The Atlantic reporter was reporting from as local fishermen fed fresh sardines to tuna schools).  A selection of oysters (Totten Inlet Virginica, Chapman Kumamato, et al.) are only $95 for 36 live oysters (I wonder if they ship the seafood on dry ice or something).  Three pounds of mussels set you back $45, but you can get pretty much the same thing at Safeway nowadays for half that.  The item that always cracks me up is the package of 6 ears of corn for $32.  They're wrapped up in aluminum foil and covered with chile lime butter, but you'd think at that price they'd be covered in gold foil.  It's summertime, so order up some hamburgers:  four 8-ounce patties are $30, but that includes hand-made buns.  For something special, get the Foie Gras Burger made from ground beef and duck livers, $50 for four.  What's a BBQ without potato salad?  Two and a quarter pounds of Roasted Potato Salad with Nueske's Bacon is $32 a tub.  Steaks?  Ribeyes, Strips, Porterhouse and Filet Mignon run $50 to $100 a pound.  Pages of caviar, smoked salmon, comfort food, buck-a-byte hors d'oerves, cheese plates, . . . Top it all off with Jeni's ice cream, only $10 a pint:  Goat Cheese with Balsamic vinegar, Butterscotch and Cocoa Nibs, Coriander and Raspberry, Salty Caramel and Dark Cocoa Gelato, or Bourbon Buttered Pecan.  Charge it all on your dad's AMEX, it's probably buried at the bottom of your desk drawer for emergencies.

Hey, that Carol Muske-Dukes is cute, and all the more amazing as she has a few years on me.   Her smiling face is on the recent Poets & Writers, along with a story about her life and career (seven poetry books, four novels).  Not a Bird, nor a Plane talks about the recent trend of including superheroes in contemporary literature, somehow without mentioning Jeannine.  H. Perry Horton discusses his long struggle to fund and maintain a literary journal, which includes some great advice (Don't go commercial, Don't pay anyone, Remember your pants size).  Small Press Points mentions that Rebecca Wolff has sold a piece of her publishing mini-empire (Fence Books) to the New York State Writers Institute at SUNY, Albany (where she now resides).  Literary MagNet has plugs for Ninth Letter, Persimmon Tree, Passager, Anderbo, storySouth, and Five Chapters.  P&W interviews Herbert Leibowitz, founder of the departing Parnassus.  Novelist Tova Mirvis does a lot of her writing in bed, just like Mark Twain and Marcel Proust.  Interesting article on MacArthur Fellowship winner Lydia Davis and her experimental fiction.  Fiction and creative non-fiction articles, blah, blah, blah.  Steve Almond tells us we should stop writing and giving readings for free.  The usual grants, awards, conferences and residencies.

Junie, Derek and I ended up walking up and down the Pearl Street mall.  No buskers in site, but the Boulder Bookstore was open.  Literary journals on hand included the eclectic mix of Many Mountains Moving, Copper Nickel, Harvard Review,Cranky, Field, Golden Handcuffs Review, Fence, Gettysburg Review, and Kenyon Review.

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Junie and I watched "A Beautiful Mind" last night.  After reading a bit about him, I found that Dr. Nash still works at Princeton and has a web page.  I was interested in his story because I had a few courses in Game Theory with Melvin Dresher.  Dr. Dresher would tell us stories about working with the brilliant John Von Neumann, inventor of Game Theory, designer of the modern-day computer, and founding faculty at the Institute for Advanced Study along with Albert Einstein and Kurt Gödel.  He also told me once that when he needed a reference citation for his research papers, but couldn't find any backup for his topic, he would make up some obscure Asian or Central European journal.  He was a fun old guy.

There are only 12 references to the moon in my manuscript, not counting the sections and titles.  I thought there were more.

Junie and I are accompanying Kyle and Derek (still home from college) tonight to Dazzle Jazz to see bluesman Christian McBride.  See you there, if you're in the area.  Update:  Oops, all sold out.  Looks like it's going to be Boulder's Redfish New Orleans Brewhouse instead.

This month's Atlantic is mainly about China.  James Fallows explains Why China's Rise Is Good For Us, which includes the opportunity for Americans to use China as a manufacturing base, leaving the higher-paid management and marketing jobs for us (I'm not sure I entirely buy the argument, though).  The proliferation of DNA testing by private individuals has led geneticist to believe that one in ten babies is fathered by someone other than the supposed father  – and that the percentages were probably much higher in the past.   As Europe is becoming somewhat more religious (as evidenced by a growing Islamic population and the Pope's new push), Americans have been slowly becoming more agnostic over the past few decades.  A new study suggests that today's young people are far more self-centered than preceding generations (though, I wonder if that hasn't been true for the last 3 or 4 generations).  Harlan Coben, a popular thriller writer, explains how he eventually succeeded in earling millions of dollars per book, even as (or perhaps because) the literary establishment ignored him.  Sardines are the new glamour food of trendy restaurants, Omega-3 rich and better for you than tuna and salmon which, higher on the food chain, collect more toxins and heavy metals in their flesh.  Regarding Ian McEwan's new novella, On Chesil Beach, (the ubiquitous) Christopher Hitchens offers "Only Philip Larkin has ever described sex more bleakly than McEwan does here.  No fumble, miscue, or calamity is omitted".

Time's cover has Ahnold and Bloomberg in the article "Who Needs Washington?", that focuses on the number of important state and local initiatives that have arisen in the absence of leadership from Washington.  10 Questions asks Al Pacino if he's happy (he isn't sure).  Cocoa has joined diamonds as a "conflict good" whose sales by African countries tends to finance weapons and fund militias.  The head of China's State Food and Drug Administration was sentenced to death for taking $850,000 in bribes to approve drugs (it's a pity we can't try our Administration there).  Michael Kinsley says there is a quiet gay revolution going on and it's not over yet.  Roadside bombs account for 80% of all US troop deaths this year, up from 50% last year, and the enemy changes its tactics so quickly it doesn't look like it's going to get any better.  The president of ING Direct rides a Harley and reinvented online banking (high interest rates paid on savings, no fees).  The newest restaurant craze is communal dining with strangers at large tables.  The Dutch have the best retirement system in world, with pensioners receiving 96% of their working income, AND the system is 120% funded.  The US Social Security system is also at the top, though it only pays out 52% of working income.  The national plans with the biggest problems are in France, Germany and Italy, where as little as 5% of the money is actually available to pay the huge pension payouts arriving Real Soon Now.

Findings from this month's Harper's:  Large-scale use of biofuels will lead to increased food prices and deforestation, and a study concluded that pollution from ethanol may end up killing more people than smog does now.  The head of a climate research group warned that there is so little we can do about impending global warming that talking about it is counterproductive, as it will "generate feelings of resignation and apathy in the face of a hopeless catastrophe".  Primates who engage in male-on-male competition devote more brain matter to aggression.  Men who practice S&M score higher on tests of psychological well-being.  Scientists are trying to figure out why Canada has less gravity than the U.S.  Shifting your eyes back and forth horizontally can improve your memory.

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Sweet Junie's in town, so I'm such a slacker this week (so far).  Mainly, I'm waiting for various projects to advance and lots of clients are out of town, on holiday, or just ignoring me. 

I note with some delight that the Raven Chronicles' Whimsies issue (Volume 13) is about to come out.  I'm in it, as are blogmates Kelli Agodon and Peter Pereira, among others.

Tomorrow I send off my manuscript to the Emily Dickinson First Book Award.  Since 95% of the poets I know are under 50, and virtually all my blogmates, I will be contending mostly with people I've never heard of.  Of course, they've probably never heard of me, either.  I found a narrative arc, first with the help of Suzanne Frischkorn, and then with some selection/ordering help from Junie.  That's only fitting, as Junie is in 15% of the poems in the manuscript.  This time, I've included Notes on the Poems and Mathematical and Scientific Notes.  My end notes are perhaps atypical, in that they don't mention Zukofsky, allude to Miles Davis, or make reference to Herbert.   Here's a sample:

At Which Point, We Lose Volume IX:  The subjects mentioned are all discussed in Volume IX of the Encyclopedia Britannica, 15th Edition.

A Leap Implies An Anchorage:  The title is taken from a line in G. C. Waldrep’s Wedge.

A Thin Grief Called Sincerity:  The title is taken from a line in Jorie Graham’s Untitled.

Confluence of Hungers:  Constantine spent much of his early years in Trier, then the Western capital of the Roman Empire.

Cantos:  The poem contains the names of seventeen literary journals.

Just Stay With Me:  The reference "It's not the years, it's the miles" was spoken by the fictional archeologist Indiana Jones, in the movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Sans Jeter Un Regard Rétrospectif:  It has long been the custom of Tour d'Argent, an exclusive Parisian restaurant, to pay for the illumination of the  Notre Dame cathedral for viewing by their dining patrons.

Catenary:  The poem is composed of bridge engineering terms:  cantilever, arc, truss, parabola, tension, dome, bending moment.

Spin:  Among the many other objects capable of spin, quarks are unique in that spin is one of their basic properties, along with mass, color, flavor, and charge.

Capitulation:  In 1997, "Judas goats", tagged with transmitters, were released in the Galapagos islands to lead hunters to the flock, in an attempt to return the islands to their former ecological state.

General News:

A 50-ton bowhead whale that was killed off the Alaskan coast was found to have a 100-year old harpoon lance fragment in its neck, proving that the whale was between 115 and 130 years old.  Also sentient, in a whale way.  Don't matter, though, because "Whaling has always been a prominent source of food for Alaskans, and is monitored by the International Whaling Commission. A hunting quota for the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission was recently renewed, allowing 255 whales to be harvested by 10 Alaskan villages over five years."  Most developed countries decry Japan's "traditional whaling", but not so for indigenous Alaskans.  There's also a lot of (mostly nostalgic, Native American-friendly) information available that is at odds with analysis, or for that matter, with itself.  One article says that the average Eskimo family requires 60 pounds of whale meat a year. Another says that 15 whales per year are sufficient for nine villages.  Roughly 250 whales at an average of 50 tons apiece is the take here (adults can grow to over 100 tons).  That's 25 million pounds of whale.  Admittedly, it's not all meat, though many articles point out the "the Eskimo uses every part of the whale, including blubber, baleen and tongue".  So maybe you get 6 million pounds of "whale meat"?  That would supply 100,000 native Eskimo families or over 250,000 individuals (BTW, Eskimo is apparently preferred to Inuit by natives of Alaska).  Wikipedia puts the entire Inuit population – including those from Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Russia  – at 150,000.  I'm not sure I can reconcile all these factoids, but I am sure that whales are getting killed.

Iran's parliament voted for a bill to execute porn stars.

Chinese paleontologists have unearthed a new bird-like dinosaur species that was 12 feet tall and 26 feet long.  It was feathered, had a beak, and delivered up to 1,200 pounds of white meat to co-habitating, grill-savvy early men, like the Creationist Museum says.

Poetry News:

Jonathan continues to crack me up:  "I agreed with Reginald in his general points until I noticed he could be talking about people like me. When I make a critical statement that seems irresponsible, it is usually something I can back up. My sometimes hyperbolic style shouldn't fool you: I actually do know what I'm talking about."  Another Mayhewesque reference by Ron, concerning the former's "Merwin or McKuen?"challenge.  Judging from Jonathan's responses in the comments, I didn't do very well guessing.  That's really interesting, as I've read a lot of Merwin.  I wonder who else would be a good match-up?  Vivian Shipley vs. Jewel?

Poem Fragment One:  "Sister cut in stone. What is done cannot be / undone except by my heart which has no teeth / to chew, will not swallow what I cannot digest".

Poem Fragment Two:  "Sometime I turn calico / trying to fathom /   your fall / you turn shades / to an indigo quiver".

Speaking of Ron, he says that Donald Allen's The New American Poetry is "unquestionably the most influential single anthology of the last century".  If I ever get my manuscript published, I'll be looking for blurbs roughly along those lines.

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It always amazes me to find out how inexpensive it is to buy a Congressman.  Some examples:  Jim Saxton (R-NJ) obtained $7,500 in campaign contributions from L-3 and they got an earmark in the defense budget for $3 million.  Lockheed Martin's PAC contributed $36K and got a contract worth $25 million.  All in all, Saxton obtained $91,000 from defense firms and earmarked $74 million in projects for them.  Brad Ellsworth (D-IN) obtained $15,000 in contributions from AmeriQual and earmarked almost $6 million for them.  Joe Courtney received $7,500 from the employees of Electric Boat and got them a $70 million submarine contract.  And so on, and so on.  In pure financial terms, contributions to the right legislators appear to offer returns of over 500 to 1, or 50,000% return on investment.  I really have to dream up some juicy defense-related project and go find a Congressman.  I figure I can scrape up $5K and get some software development deal worth at least $2 million. 

And you wonder why our defense budget exceeds the total of the rest of the world.  Somebody said it best:

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

That's from President Eisenhower's parting speech upon leaving office.

~~~

I'm catching up with things I didn't know, or did know and forgot.  For example, Simon's poem and poetry book reviews. 

I didn't realize that Kate had done these terrific first-book interviews.

Robert has been tagged as a "thinking blogger" by Steve Burt by way of Ron Silliman.  Quite an honor, I'd say.

~~~

I've just discovered the big red box in Safeway that rents movies for $1.00 or so.  I don't suppose NetFlix should be worried, but Blockbuster should.  It takes 30 seconds to get your movie and they have all the most recent films.  You can also rent online and go to a redbox and pick it up.  Junie and I rented Déjà Vu from one of the kiosks.  It was, by the way, a very good action film. Denzel Washington was terrific, Paula Patton was beautiful, Val Kilmer was decent, and the plot was good, even if a little much to swallow.

~~~

This month's Poetry is all poetry.  No reviews, no essays.  Here's some that I liked well enough:

Ange Mlinko, Gallimaufry:  "... Bridgitte Bardot lashing out at the leash law in Zurich; / on an uncle's fourth percussive sneeze the baby wakes / – interrobang –"

David Biespiel, Rag and Bone Man:  "When he is old and has removed the gothic armor, / Groomed his macho cogs into a moth's whisper, "

Heidy Steidlmayer, I Say So Long to the Hedge-Rider:  "Hey, edge-stepper carrying your bag / of quicklime and larks, I thought you'd be gone, / hitched your sad self to some old words"

Of the poets included, I really love the work of Mary Jo Bang and A. E. Stallings, but the particular poems weren't to my taste.  MJB's poem was from her upcoming work Elegy, which I think I know the motivation for.  I read her poem "You Were You Are Elegy" to Junie, who liked and appreciated it.  It is very different from her usual work and I was a little disoriented. 

Oh, well.  I'll go scour the house and find that pesky Colorado Review and report back tomorrow.  In case you were wondering, I'm still trying to subdue the Hogriders.

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The Senate Finance Committee has been investigating corporate tax havens recently.  Basically, these are countries with low or no taxes, and little transparency.  Corporations are increasingly establishing subsidiaries (or moving the entire company) offshore to these countries to avoid taxation.  In February, for example, the giant pharmaceutical company, Merck, announced it would pay $2.3 billion in taxes and penalties for evading taxes on royalties for drug patents.  Merck has established a shell company in Bermuda and transferred all rights to the patents to it.  It then paid billions in royalties to their own subsidiary, deducted it as an expense, and substantially lowered their corporate taxes.  Microsoft has set up an Irish subsidiary and transferred its copyrights, and shifted $9 billion in profits to it just last year (at much lower Irish tax rates).  IBM and even Google have made similar moves.  Anyway, back to the Finance Committee.  They found an address in the Cayman Islands that houses 12,748 companies in a single five-story building.  The supposition is that these are shell companies that don't really do anything but avoid taxes.   The Committee asked the GAO to go take a look at the building and rumor has it that the GAO staff are drawing straws to see who gets to go.  By the way, only corporations can pull these shenanigans, not citizens (natch).  You have to pay U.S. tax on any income you derive from anywhere (you get a credit if you have to pay local taxes). 

~~~

There's little I can imagine less likely than Jim Behrle's cartoons showing up on the Poetry Foundation site (you know, that bastion of the School of Quietude).  But , there they are.  Way to go, Jim.

Zelda Update:  I'm battling Hogriders on Hyrule Plain.

I took Jonathan's Merwin vs. McKuen test (resurrected, as he says, from 3 years ago).  The last time I did this, I think it was Tate vs. Young and I did well.  This time is a lot harder.  Merwin's poems often employ that strange diction and odd line breaks of his, so I should be able to suss him out.  Here goes:  6.07.2007 - a. McKuen, b. Merwin, c. McKuen, d. Merwin, e. McKuen, f. McKuen.  More-- Merwin or McKuen? 1) Merwin, 2) McKuen, 3) Merwin?, 4) McKuen, 5) Merwin.  Come to think of it, I have two poems where Merwin makes a showing.

Kasey and Anne have a new journal "printed on the cheapest paper and clumsily stapled for your reading pleasure".  I particularly liked the seventeen year subscription offer for $968.

I put up an audio of my recent radio reading with Dona.

I found that if you put an avocado seed in a pot with some potting soil and water it week after week and don't get annoyed and impatient and throw the damn thing out and start over and water and wait you get an avocado treelette.  My first approach was to do what my mom always did, which was to stick three toothpicks in the thing at an angle and drop it into a glass of water and watch it hover there.  The problem with that strategy was a) Colorado is so dry that you have to refill the water every day, b) even if you do refill it, Ms. Emily drinks it anyway, c) eventually Ms. Emily decides that it's a toy and you find it behind the couch.

Gabe cites the 13 mental qualities of a wholesome mind:  Confidence, Mindfulness, Conscience, Shame, Nonhate, Nongreed, Even-mindedness (equanimity), Tranquility, Lightness, Flexibility, Efficiency, Proficiency, and Straightforwardness.  I think Dick Cheney scores a 2.

Ahsahta Press's Finalist list looks like a Who's Who:  Baumblatt, Buchanan, Clay, Corey, Pafunda, Waldrep and others.

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The Academy of American Poets has a slick web area which permits you to locate poets, journals/presses, academic programs and poetry resources by state.  There is lots of interesting information – for example, I didn't know that Lee Ann grew up in Wyoming or that Cole Swensen is a native Coloradan (well, I think she is, she's listed on the page, even though she teaches at the U of Iowa).  There are a few odd poet-state linkages.  For example, Henri Cole is listed under Wisconsin, even though he was born in Japan, and currently lives in Boston.  California is chock-a-block with Names:  Addonizio, Bidart, Ferlinghetti, Hass, Hejinian, Hillman, B.P. Kelly, Olds, Rich, and many more (although they forgot CDY).  New York does pretty well, also (Ashbery, Brock-Broido, Collins, Glück Auden, Ammons, Eady, Equi, Hadas, Howe, Merwin, Wilbur, . . . and let's not forget Whitman).  Of course, New Jersey claims Walt, too.  I mentioned to the nice AAP lady via email that MMM has been a Colorado literary journal for more than a decade and I'm hoping we get listed.  I also mentioned that there weren't enough poems about Colorado, and I'd be happy to supply some.  I'm not usually that shameless, in fact I'm pretty non-promotional when it comes to poetry.

~~~

I'm trying to get my mind around this statistic:  the size of the average new home in Boulder County is now 6,300 square feet.  That must mean that the average house is selling for $600K to a million dollars or more.  Where are these people coming from?  My house is an absurdly large 3,000+ and has 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a large living room, great room, and built-out basement.  In any event, the Boulder County commissioners want to limit new homes to 2,600 square feet in unincorporated areas and 4,000 on "the plains".  Now that I'm getting the paper, I've just started to notice the amazing rise in Boulder home prices recently.  The classified section is filled with page after page of houses that run a million bucks or more.  Keep in mind that this isn't California – there are dozens of towns in Greater Denver with affordable housing and when you get away from the Front Range, prices start to drop to levels that Midwesterners are familiar with.  There are a reasonable number of high-paying jobs in Denver, but it's hard to imagine the same is true for Boulder.  There is a smattering of high-tech and a few big players, like Pfizer, but the majority of these "good jobs" are still paying wages below 6 figures.  So how do you afford an $8,000 mortgage?  Maybe these are all trust fund babies or Californians trading in their West Coast equity, but I doubt it.  Anyway, I don't get it.  But then, I don't understand how New Yorkers survive their real estate and rent market. 

~~~

I was going to tell you about Colorado Review, but I can't find it.  Like I said earlier, I have a big house and things get lost in it.  Take, for example, toilet paper.  I bought a 12-roll package and couldn't find 2 or 3 of the rolls that I lugged up to the upstairs bathroom.  Today, however, I found that Ms. Emily had hauled them down to the den and made them her own personal shredding posts.  I don't know how exactly, as her mouth couldn't possibly open wide enough to grab these "double-the-tissues" rolls.  Maybe she pushed them along with her nose.  Anyway, I will find the CR and report.  There was one poem by Kevin Prufer that I liked for a start.

~~~

I used the be the only one in my extended family with a digital camera.  I would take shots with my bigass Sony and email them to everyone and their email servers wouldn't accept them, or they couldn't open them, or they got shuffled off to a spam folder.  Then I tried Flickr, which was only partially successful.  Eventually, I just threw them up on my web server and gave everybody a URL.  Most of the time, nobody could figure that out either.  That was then.  Now, everybody with a genetic link seems to have discovered digital camera and I get attachment-laden emails all the time:  my niece Julie's party upon arriving back from Hawaii to join a commune (for which they threw a party when she left), and it's a long story; my other niece Laura's graduation party; landscaping shots from my nephew Matt; countless shots of grandnieces by way of my sister's progeny.  I'm tickled to get them, but it makes me wonder if there's a new onslaught of family pictures zooming across the Internet with increasing frequency, vying with spam for bandwidth. 

Note:  I'm surprised that the gerund for vie is vying.  There's probably other words like that that follow some arcane rule of English, but I can't think of one at the moment.  All I know is that MS Outlook flagged it and dictionary.com agrees with them.  The origin of the root, if you're interested, is the medieval French envier which means "to raise the stakes at cards", which mutated from the Latin invitare, which means to entertain.

~~~

I'm currently playing my 10th or 12th or I can't remember game of Zelda.  Junie's son, who waited in line for a Wii and got Zelda: The Twilight Princess in the bargain, was kind enough to ship it to me.  I first played Zelda I in Belgium on the first Nintendo.  You could barely make out what was what given the horrendous low-res pixelation of all the characters.  Kyle and Derek would sit on the couch and watch, and when I needed Really Seriously Responsive Motor Skills, I would pass the controller to Ky, like anytime a Boss needed to get killed.  The last 3 or 4 versions have graphics which rival big-screen animation.  I find myself overthinking a lot and spend hours trying to figure out how to boomerang the spider-bomb into the mouth of the overgrown carnivorous houseplant in some dungeon.  The only thing that saves me are the Zelda Walkthroughs that abound on the Internet.  Time was when I would pay 50 cents a minute to get the next hint.

OK, tomorrow, I'll track down the CR and tell you about the June Poetry, to boot.

 ~~~

Richard emailed to say:  lie, lying.  OK, how many more can you think of?

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Here's a very interesting article on globalization from some economic heavyweights at the World Economic Update:

"So if you look at earnings by educational attainment for example -- let me just give you number if I can -- look at 2000 through 2005, the most recent year we have data for, and look at mean total money earnings by educational cohort.  And of all the workers in the U.S. economy in that period, the only educational cohorts that had increases in mean real earnings over that period -- so adjust for inflation -- were PhDs and people with professional degrees -- the doctors, the lawyers and the MBAs.  And that was only 3.4 percent of payroll jobs in 2005.  So during that period, not even college graduates and not even nonprofessional masters degrees -- who together account for about 29 percent of payroll jobs today -- their mean real earnings were falling over that period as well.  And that's a real change -- and Alan, correct me if you think I'm wrong, but think we just (don't ?) know yet what set of forces are contributing to those changes. "

~~~

Funny stuff from the Sunday Boulder Camera: 

A new cookbook with the elegant and ingenious title of "I Like Food, Food Tastes Good" instructs you how to "cook like a rock star" and includes the favorite recipes of musicians from Decemberists, NOFX, They Might Be Giants, and Drive-By Truckers.

The U.S. has retaken the hot dog eating crown.  Joey Chestnut, 23, of San Jose, ate 59 hot dogs and buns to smash the former record of 54.75 "HDBs" set by Takeru Kobayashi.

Paul Newman donated $10 million to Kenyon College to help start a scholarship fund (apparently, none of it will go to the Kenyon Review).  Meanwhile, Governor Arnold supposedly bought a Cuban cigar while on a trip to Canada, which violates U.S. law, but his spokesman says you can't get the goods on him "now because he smoked it". 

~~~

From this week's Time, which boasts a chocolate sundae on its cover (no, really):  10 Questions for that loveable Colorado nutcase, Tom Tancredo included "what evidence would convince you that global warming is a serious threat" and "if you are successful in barring illegal immigrants, what will happen to the economy?"  Mexico has no minimum age limit for matadors, so "children as young as 10 are picking up the sword".  The word "quarantine" (as in what's happening to the TB-afflicted Georgia personal-injury attorney who coughed his way across Europe) comes from the Latin for 40, the number of days that Venice required ships to stay anchored before landing during the Black Death.  Poland's official children rights watchdog will begin investigating whether Teletubbies are homosexual propaganda.  Joe Klein calls Mitt Romney a man "without a shred of courage or conviction".  Congressman John Dingell, whose surname at birth was Dzieglewicz) has spent decades defending Big Auto and is now serious about "taking on Global Warming".The Israeli occupation of Palestine is now 40 years old.  The Science of Appetite explains why 200 million Americans are over the ideal weight:  for most of human history, we were starving, and now we eat as much as we can, as often as we can.  How the World Eats shows these yummy photos of weekly food bought by families of different nations.  The German family spends $500 a week on juice, water, beer, fruit, vegetables, pastries, and what-not.  The Sudanese family spends $1.23 a week on fruits, nuts and eggs – water and unmilled sorghum is provided by NGOs.  I think the Mexican family had the best-looking spread.  ExxonMobile is spending 40% less on oil exploration than they did in 1981 (in constant dollars), but have radically increased the amount returned to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks.  The cast chat about Ocean's Thirteen, this from Matt Damon to the interviewer:  " You have us confused with deep thinkers.  You've already put more thought into why we did the movie than we did". 

~~~

Der called from Amsterdam.  So far, he and Max have been to Paris, Nice, Trieste, Genoa, Rome, Florence, Venice, Strasburg, Munich and Antwerp.  His current "hostel" is a room on a houseboat.  He and Max made it to Venice and loved it, except for the prices.  They ambled into Harry's bar and Der was told he needed something more substantial than shorts to meet the dress code.  After window-shopping for a while and declining on $600 Armani slacks, Der found a store that sold "transparent white Disco pants", which barely passed muster at Harry's.  He and Max toasted Ernest with Bellinis that cost them 15 euros apiece.  I'm sure I will have more news about their adventure Wednesday, as they're flying home tomorrow.

~~~
Weird.  I submitted to Hotel Amerika and got an email saying that they'd relocated to Columbia College (where Der goes to school).  I think that makes three fine journals associated with Columbia, including Court Green and Columbia Poetry Review.

There's some interesting work in Colorado Review.  More on that tomorrow.

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Junie wandered back home, care of Northwest Airlines, and I'm back to being a bachelor.   Before she left, though, we spent a good part of a morning weeding the backyard flower bed, something that I'm quite certain builds character, as well as opening up lots of virgin soil in which Junie could plant flowers.  The flower bed actually has some small bushes and large perennials which were hidden by what looked like the world's largest wheat grass plot.  I watered the bed, waited an hour or two, put my Lamont White Mule pulling gloves on, and went at it with a vengeance. Junie took the northwest corner and was meticulous.  I took the rest and played the part of Marauding Hun.  By the time we were done, we had five or six 30 gallon bags of weeds and room for both flowers and tomato plants.  I haven't grown tomatoes for a couple of years and always regret it.  If you've ever grown vegetables, you know that most store vegetables are decent substitutes for garden fare (red peppers, spinach, most lettuces).  Not so for tomatoes, however.  Home-grown are so much better than store-bought that it's hard to believe they're the same fruit.  I suppose that might be true for bananas and kiwi, but I'm hardly in the right growing zone to find out.

Now, if you think that was an excessively bucolic description for an introductory piece, you should read Christopher Kimball's description of Life in Vermont in this month's Cook's Illustrated.  In that editorial, the picturesque cast of Real Vermonters include a man who still traps his own game, sisters who share dentures by swapping every other Saturday, and farmers who sit in the country store swapping tales and flapping "ears like elephants".  It's hard to believe that this is the same editor who runs world-class test kitchens and buys thousands of dollars worth of gourmet-class knives just to rate their ability to slice onions.  Luckily, the sticky-sweet editorial never get in the way of a good read in CI.  Notes from the Readers contained these gems:  skim milk foams up better than whole for those interested in low-cal cappuccinos;  recipes often call for "room temperature" eggs, but only the most finicky cake batter will be affected; to detoxify a cutting board that has been used to chop onions or garlic, a baking soda rub is far superior to any other method of cleansing;  don't soak dry beans more than overnight as they lose flavor and texture– if you can't use them immediately, just freeze them in an airtight plastic bag until you're ready.  From Quick Tips:  A good way to clean your grill is to drizzle a couple of paper towels with oil, then wrap aluminum foil around them.  Punch a few holes in the resulting ball and use long-handled tongs to scrub the grill bars.  If your recipe calls for lots of seedless tomato flesh, just chop the tomatoes and use a salad spinner to separate out the seeds.  Authentic Texas Brisket instructs you how to get "brisket with slow-cooked, pit barbecue flavor" from a charcoal grill.  The secret is score, brine, season, tent, slow-cook, flip, more-cook, temperature-taking, rest, and slice.  Another summertime favorite is Grilled Garlic-Rosemary Potatoes.  The standard is halved red potatoes, parboiled and coated with olive oil, skewered and placed on the grill for 15 minutes.  This recipe has you microwave the potatoes for a couple minutes before transferring to the grill, after coating them with a mixture of olive oil, minced garlic, fresh rosemary, and a little Kosher salt.  The secret to grilled chicken breasts is to use homemade marinate composed of Dijon mustard, lemon juice, olive oil, fresh parsley, sugar, and garlic and to cover the breasts with a disposable aluminum roasting pan for the first six to nine minutes on the grill.  Bringing Gyros Home is too complicated to tell you about.  Perfecting Pasta Caprese (a recipe with fresh tomatoes, basil and mozzarella) includes a useful tip on how to avoid the "bubblegum effect" on dishes with mozzarella – dice the cheese, then put in the freezer for 10 minutes before combining with the pasta.  There's an excellent article on freezing summer produce, but too detailed to go into.   Thinking about grilling Cornish game hens?  Remove the backbone, cut the breastbone, and butterfly.  Then use skewers to tuck the wings out of the way and flatten the thighs.  If you're using frozen hens (and who isn't), thaw in the fridge, then brine.  Coat with a rub of brown sugar, garlic powder, chili powder, coriander, black pepper, and little cayenne.  When they're done, brush on a glaze of ketchup, brown sugar, white vinegar, mustard, and garlic.  Good article on Better Shrimp Salad, but I don't eat it anymore because of the cholesterol.  Summer Fruit Salads are improved by crushing fresh mint leaves into lime juice, as bartenders do with mojitos.  The Best Blueberry Scones require a lot more work than I'm willing to sacrifice, and also means baking, at which I'm miserable.  Ditto, Rustic Plum Cakes.  If you have to buy your tea at the supermarket, check out Twinings English Breakfast Tea, PG Tips, Bigelow Novus Kenilworth Ceylon, Lipton Black Pearl or Stash English Breakfast Tea.  If you're In Search of the Perfect Garlic Press, you'll be happy to know that the $35 Kuhn Rikon 2315 Epicurean Garlic Press takes the prize.  The $9.95 Messermeister Pro-Touch did well too.  To be avoided?  Both Oxo garlic presses, which doesn't surprise me, considering how diluted the previously excellent Oxo brand name has become as they wander into product segments where they haven't done their homework.  The Equipment Corner includes Onion Goggles, which I actually saw an adolescent carry over to her mother's checkout basket at Safeway recently.  CI thinks they actually work.  If you're in the market for a good tabletop grill, check out the Sanyo Smokeless Electric Indoor Grill at $40, which CI thinks "closely mimics the heat of an outdoor grill".

Tomorrow is poetry day.

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