WhimsyLand

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.