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And then your wife turns to you and says "I'll do anything you want".

And it's the saddest moment of your life.

(from "Almost Over", 1983)

Hart Menichken

Menichken was born in Oregon in 1944. He worked as a taxidermist until 1978, when he won a substantial sum in an illegal poker tournament. His winnings enabled him to quit his job and dedicate himself to writing poetry and to paint (mostly small landscapes in watercolor).

His poetry is almost always narrative, and as time went on became ever more focused and condensed. His last published book, "Almost Over", consists of 100 short poems (none longer than 4 lines) centered on what seems to be a single day in a small mid-western community. Suffused in melancholy, only the occasional outburst of rage seems to break through the surface of quiet domestic failure.

Menichken died in 1986.

A.F. Bytt (red). Taxonomy of Forgotten Poets of the 20th Century. Buffalo; University of West Seneca. 1993. P. 113.

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“Is the conception of nature and of social relations which underlies Greek imagination and Greek [art] possible when there are self-acting mules, railways, locomotives and electric telegraphs? What is a Vulcan compared with Roberts and Co., Jupiter compared with the lightning conductor and Hermes compared with the Crédit mobilier? All mythology subdues, controls and fashions the forces of nature in the imagination and through imagination, it disappears therefore when real control over these forces is established”

 K. Marx. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.

JL, 2011.

[…] dancelike movements may occur […]
Allan Kaprow (1967)

JL, 2004-2011.

"The darkness of the absurd is the old darkness of the new. This darkness must be interpreted, not replaced by the clarity of meaning." T W Adorno.

"As an artist... I would like the double cheesburger value meal" forlackofabettercomic

Post # 600

forlackofabettercomic

A screaming comes across the sky...

"With fiction, its just like, like, you know - - like when you dress for cold, for, uh, cold weather. You need layers to keep warm. Layers upon layers."

- U.N. Houx
(Interview transcript, 1978)

18 Brahe, 36 Tranquility
I've recently noticed "as if for the first time" that when people pray they always look "upward" -- i.e. perpendicular to whatever place they're standing -- or kneeling or groveling. I deduce that they conceive of their "god" as topologically isomorphic to a huge donut, about a thousand miles wider than Earth.
[Of course, if people ever pray at the north or south poles, this would have to change; then "god" would become isomorphic to a hollow sphere.]
When I raised this issue in a blog recently, Paul Krasner asked "Does this mean that the pledge of allegiance should be changed to 'one nation inside god'?"
Not necessarily. Although the Bible and Koran always speak of their god as "above," Christians, Jews and Moslems can either accept what their rituals imply -- a donut god -- or return to a flat Earth....
Giambatista Vico, "the father of sociology", suggested in The New Science that Thunder historically underlies the "god" idea; the Noisy Thing roaring in the sky , seemingly in rage, had to be appeased. Sometimes lightning came from that roaring monster, and sometimes lightning killed somebody. Hence Zeus bronnton [Zeus the thunderer], Jupiter, another thunder god; Thor, Donner, whose very name means thunder; etc.... and Yahweh..... and Allah...... Joyce uses this god=thunder equation repeatedly in Finnegans Wake [which drove me to read Vico...]
I have also observed that thunder on the sound-track -- signaling oncoming tragedy or horror -- appears in films as diverse as those of Orson Welles, James Whale, Howard Hawks, Wes Craven, Monty Python etc etc.... Listen for it and note how bloody often it pops up...... especially in thrillers....
The monotheistic idea implies a cruel and grumpy old electric donut surrounding Earth and ever threatening it.
I think this explains the "structural unconscious" or inarticulate neurosemantics of Bozo, Ariel Sharon and Osama bin Laden equally. They're all heaping up human sacrifices, as at Stonehenge, to Him Who Thunders From On High.

Robert Anton Wilson

'The basic nova technique is very simple: Always create as many insoluble conflicts as possible and always aggravate existing conflicts-This is done by dumping on the same planet life forms with incompatible conditions of existence-There is of course nothing "wrong" about any given life form since "wrong" only has reference to conflicts with other life forms-The point is these life forms should not be on the same planet-Their conditions of life are basically incompatible in present time form and it is precisely the work of the nova mob to see that they remain in present time form, to create and aggravate the conflicts that lead to the explosion of a planet...'

JL, 2011.