WhimsyLand

I am eating organic bananas.  At only 20 cents a pound more than normal bananas, they seem like an inexpensive expression of virtuous behavior.  Sweet Junie read somewhere that monkeys prefer organic bananas, so much that they even eat the peel.  They don't taste any different to me.

The Bush Administration, most Republicans and some Democrats continue to remind us that "it's a dangerous world".  This supposition has provided the excuse for dilution of our Constitutional rights and compromising of our civil liberties.  Why is it suddenly such a dangerous world?  Wasn't it a dangerous world when Hitler ran Germany?  Wasn't it a dangerous world during the Cold War when thousands of nuclear missiles were targeted at American cities?  Wasn't it a dangerous world during the Korean and Vietnam Wars?  I wish our two presidential candidates and the press would make it clear that it's far less dangerous now than for most of American history. 

The latest thuggery by Russia has brought responses from the Bush Administration, such as this quote by Defense Secretary Gates:  "I think there needs to be a strong, unified response to Russia to send the message that this kind of behavior, characteristic of the Soviet period, has no place in the 21st century".  He apparently said this with a straight face.  This comes from a nation whose CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Chilean president, invaded Grenada, sent troops into Panama to arrest Manual Noriega, and of course, are currently occupying two sovereign nations.

Joyelle interviews Gabe, who tells us exactly how he wrote his 436-page Rhode Island Notebook while driving.

The latest APR arrived with a cover picture of a smiling Bruce Weigl who has 11 short poems in the issue ("When I'm gone, I won't be here anymore, if you can imagine that.  I can,".  Mary Kinze won the O.B. Hardison, Jr. Poetry Prize ($10,000 and an honorary reception).  There's Bob Hicok again, rambling on in his usual engaging and competent style ("Ugly men on TV were talking about global warming.  One in particular looked like the spawn of rocks.")  Columbia College, where Der is studying music, has a new ad for their "poetry-only" MFA, with Arielle Greenberg, Tony Trigilio, Lisa Fishman, David Trinidad, John Murillo and Jenny Boully as faculty.  Reginald Shepherd contributes two poems, this from "To Summon Up a Son": "Molded him out of shit and spit and love, mud / and a box of matchstick bones".  Shepherd also interviews Chad Parmenter, asking him from the get-go if he's tired of being seen as a "black poet".  Anne Marie Macari provides 11 (!) poems, each numbered in Roman numerals followed by a parenthesized first line, this from "XXIV (Who Comes to Me?)":  "Who comes to me?  Who enters the room where / I have been praying, longing for a visitor?"  Gregory Orr has 19 poems in the issue, but they are very short and actually constitute a long poem separated by fanciful tildes.  Other poets making an appearance include Valerie Martinez, Paul Celan (translated by Jack Hirschman), David Huerta, Richard Cecil, Kirk Nesset, Vern Rutsala, Carlos Marzal (translated by Nathaniel Perry), Bruce Snider, and Glenna Luschei.  Kristin Kelly provides the diverting "Sea to Sea, Shining": "They are giving birth control to squirrels in Santa Monica, the homeless capital of the world."  Anna Journey contributes the praiseworthy "The Nurse's Diagram of the Tracheotomy":  "It was the way Sweet Pea sipped cognac / through his throat's clear tube – its thin amber".  I also liked Rae Gouirand's "January":  "The last persimmon:  a moon / a clear interference.  A thing pressing // presses:  the idea of a door / before the one who notices:  moon,".   Hey, look.  Eduardo Corral is the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell, where G.C. directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. 

Abraham Lincoln #3 is out.

I'm building Dima a big bad machine to wean him off XP and onto Vista.  He can still keep his old machine and Remote Desktop to it when he wants.  I do that too, since there are some drivers and applications that just don't work on Vista.  Anyway, as I was saying, I'm building this monster that has a ThermalTake chassis with this ridiculous 10" fan on the chassis side and a black classy power supply.  It's an Asus motherboard with an AMD Quad Phemon processor, a fast video card, and 8 GB of high-speed DDR.  When it's on, it looks like something the Empire would strike back with, all black with blue lights peeking out from the various fans.  The chassis side door is transparent, so you can see the ludicrously massive Zalman CPU fan in all its coppery glory.  I'm starting Dima off with two 500 GB drives, which leaves only 10 more drive slots for additional terabytes of storage.  I even threw in a floppy drive for good measure, something that's getting harder and harder to find in commercial machines. 

'Becca rants on originality in poetry and its undervalued stature.

Speaking of rants, Roseanne Barr gave it to Jon Voight, who characterized Obama as someone who grew up "with the teaching of very angry, militant white and black people".  Of course, the opinion piece appeared in the Washington Times, the right-wing rag owned by delusional nutcase Sun Myung Moon.  Roseanne responded, calling Voight a "frightened little girl in a pink ballet tutu, who acts like Obama just wandered in from the rain forest with a bone thru his nose and a communist pamphlet in his loincloth.”  You go, girl.

On Junie's last visit, we managed to paint the kitchen, put on more baseboards and touch up the various rooms already getting new color.  Der has been a big help the past couple of weeks, and with the extra pair of hands, we were able to get new blinds up, a new light fixture installed, and two rooms filled with furniture and paintings.  We also tiled the master bathroom and bought enough essentials to tile the guest bathroom similarly.  I haven't tiled around a toilet before, so that should be interesting.  Maybe I'll save myself the headaches and just get rid of the toilet and tell guests to pee into the bathtub.

Last week was Real Man Week.  I bought this 4-pack of New York strip steaks and a small barrel of potato salad.  I've been grilling those babies and dropping a huge dollop of potato salad on these clear square-ish plates I have and slathering A-1 over everything and with what little room is left, artfully placing tomato slices drizzled with that pesto in a tube stuff and olive oil.  Accompanying this Real Man meal is some Real Man wine, a big bruiser of a Shiraz called Chris Ringland Ebenezer for some reason.  It is delicious and the closest thing you're going to come to Grange Hermitage for under $20.  It actually costs me $18 a bottle, including shipping, and you can get your own at www.pjwine.com, unless you're Cath or Dima, who got some cause I like them.  What to watch while eating a Real Man Meal?  Why, Steven Seagal movies, of course.  I found a bunch of them on eBay, new and shrink-wrapped, in a good deal that beat Amazon by a lot of moolah.  At the same time, I ordered Vern's classic "study of the ass-kicking films of Steven Seagal", in which I found that, even with a dozen Seagal movies, I'm still short about 15 more.  Most of these were made "direct to video", and are awful, but I'm going to watch them anyway.  The early films have real actors in them, like Tommy Lee Jones and Kris Kristofferson and Michael Cain.  The "silver era" films seem to be filled with hip-hop artists.  Besides the joy of watching Seagal kick ass with abandon, there's all the anti-establishment undercurrents and conspiracy theories.  As my frequent readers know, I once wrote a poem in front of a Steven Seagal movie, after reading some Lucie Brock-Broido in APR.

Speaking of speaking of.  Speaking of Real Men, Jonathan is up to 53 pushups.  I should probably try that along with my soon-to-be-started pre-ski regimen to get my legs in shape in order to keep up with my 83-year old parents who are coming in January to ski and expect me to keep up.  I probably could do a zillion pushups back in the day.  Have you noticed how recently everybody now says "back in the day"?  As if the phrase popped out of nowhere, like "speak to the hand".  But, I digress.  I know I used to do 30 pull-ups and I broke the high school record with 400 sit-ups, but they had to tell the math teacher I'd be late because it took longer than one gym period.  I don't know.  53 push-ups sounds likes a lot in my current shape.  Of course, I've got 10 years on Jonathan and he started with something like 40.  Maybe I can start with something like 15 and extend the regimen period.  Guys are so competitive, you know?

In 8 days, Whimsy Speaks will be 4 years old.

If you don't know who Usain Bolt is you probably should because he's quite possibly the fastest human being who ever lived.  In the finals of the 100 meter dash at the Olympics, he won easily even though he jogged the last 15 meters while he was waving to his friends and fans.  Oh, and even that was a world record.  If he had kept up his pace, he would have demolished his own current record of 9.69 seconds, perhaps even as fast as 9.55, which would probably have remained the record for years, perhaps decades.  The only track and field performance I've ever seen as unbelievable was Bob Beamon shattering the long jump record by almost two feet.  That record lasted 23 years.

Very interesting post by Johannes on the Iowa Writers' Workshop, including equally interesting and intelligent comments (Kasey, Glenn, Mark, et al.).

Half the mainstream media and all of the right-wing AM radio nutcases have expressed their amazement (and/or delight) that Obama isn't crushing McCain in the poll numbers.  As someone somewhere pointed out, presidential candidates seldom enjoy large poll advantages this early.  That includes Reagan vs. Carter and Clinton vs. GHWB.  Depending upon whom you believe, Obama may have a sizable electoral college lead (280 to 238).  I would be supremely confident of an Obama win were it not for the Bradley Effect.

I have been getting mail regarding Many Mountains Moving (the literary journal), even though their mailing address has changed and is posted on their website.  I am no longer associated with MMM.

More as I think of it.