lake natron tanthru

(fire temple in Baku, via Google Maps)

A Grub Street tale.

"Well, our sun's a great ball of fire, but it's practically a snowball compared to Sirius A, whose luminosity is twenty-three times brighter than El Sol, even though it's only half again as large. Any planet orbiting Sirius is going to be on the warm side. And probably cloud-covered at all times. Even through the vapor, it would be harmful to one's vision to look up at Sirius. Now, what sort of dominant, sentient life-form would evolve in that hot, brilliant, steamy world? Amphibious mammals, wouldn't you say?" --Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (1994) [The hypothetical planet has been named "Xylanthia". Alas, even a 475 K planet does not appear to be stable although an earlier study found a stable orbit around A at a period of 6.635 years.]

Perec's long palindrome machine-translated.

A twitter saga: Bollywood Movie by Coriander--

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

(via Todd Buckley on Facebook)

Panyee football club.

"We cannot write the order of the variable winds." --Emerson

Sci-fi lake.

"It is now more than sixty years ago since Mr Carlyle took occasion to observe, in his Life of Schiller, that, except the Newgate Calendar, there was no more sickening reading than the biographies of authors." --Augustine Birrell

View post on imgur.com

"The world loves to bad-mouthe a goat, but I'd rather spend time in the company of a goat than in the company of most people I know." --Harry Crews

rat tibia

(via mrtsk on tumblr)

Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters.

A language in which there is no word for "I"--this scifi-esque meme, which does actually correspond a little bit to English experience with the pronoun usages of Japanese, occurs in Robert Silverberg's A Time of Changes (1971); & he claims not to have read Ayn Rand's Anthem (1938) at the time (& why would he?); she, in turn, would very likely have been familiar with Zamyatin, in whose We (1924), something similar (but not exactly) obtains. We can also jet forward to the Sapir-Whorfly landscapes of Delany's Babel-17 (1966) & Mieville's Embassytown (2011)--with a side nod to Jack Vance's The Languages of Pao (1958)--to complete our survey of linguistic scifi, if we want (since the pickings are so few!)... But it is not, in fact, the word which creates egotism, nor enables self-consciousness, nor even places oneself at the head of a chain of causality; & though it may be true that we interpret our own actions no less than we interpret the actions of another, we could describe it as well another way, as we can recognize various images (good camera, bad camera, drawn sketch, oil painting) of the same place we know.

At a loss for other words. (Including the theological Rapture, Russian 'privacy', &...camel spit.)

"...his own alphabet, both word and sign (for a previous publications, Clattinger: an alphabet of signs from nature, 2008, but reproduced here) – a lexicon all of his own to articulate the particular (in words such as dootitsi, thinedata, uzactyl, and zipzygo)..."

"According to Everett in 1986, Pirahã has words for 'one' (hói) and 'two' (hoí), distinguished only by tone. In his 2005 analysis, however, Everett said that Pirahã has no words for numerals at all, and that hói and hoí actually mean 'small quantity' and 'larger quantity'." --Wikipedia

Chewbacca Mom action figure.

an old blank book
has come to me
across many dry decades
hitch existent toxin
lyke fyerd pitche skorching
magnolia corner always a car coming
W-shaped turn signal
gray inversion here on the blurred horizon
Klingon Lincoln kiln
still burning after all these years

" In the face of chaos, why not try to create some beautiful maps?"

acing jells us

(Dead Horse Point, via Google Maps)

11 famous illeists.

"Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line." --Patti Smith, M Train

30 minutes of The Day The Clown Cried (or so).

"How do you make a scientific argument for the conclusion that no scientific argument ever convinces anyone?" --Michael Lynch, in: Philosophy at 3 A. M.

5 strange books.

"Some of the other animals seem to have moments of pride, but they don't seem in general to think of themselves as worthy or unworthy beings. some of them certainly want to be loved, but I don't think they worry about being lovable." --Christine Korsgaard, op cit

Victorian Muslims of Britain.

"Hawks are not your friends and do not want to be." --Harry Crews

"I wonder if I would have been a good detective. It kills me to say it, but I don't think so. I'm not the observant type." --M Train

dozen. provider. brush.

Cherokee unicode.

"Oh, to be reborn within the pages of a book." --M Train

Why Korzybski waned.

"What modernity liberated was carbon." --Mckenzie Wark

New edition England's Hidden Reverse.

"The saying in La Xagvar goes, le zazyzi'e vacri cu xamgu ju danmykai ('The air of freedom is good, even if full of smoke'), and this is thought to be the origin of the City's name." --"La Xagvar" at the Lojban Wiki

Michael Swanwick at first Laffcon.

" I was looking for a better term that 'hexadecimal digit' because a hexadecimal symbol is not 'decimal' - is 'nibble' the only alternate? ...the SWAC computer, which used hexadecimal (with letters U-Z) in 1950. ...many Tibetans count on their fingers using base 16 notation..." --Wikipedia Talk: "hexadecimal" (Also, "0x1CEB00DA ('ice buddha') was used as the origin for the binary file parser IceBuddha" from the linked article "hexspeak")

(via Evan Mitchell on Fb)

What to call yourself in Japanese.

a nightmare khaki tan

"Moor, garb music sidereal--lived urban.
Nab rude villa ere disc is umbra, groom." --Howard Bergerson

The E at Delphi.

     "Sonnets to Chango: XIV. (& last)

Tangled in the heraldry of tungsten
Lies, but lies are spider's-nest to Scorpio
Nemesis, double-headed axe, vain cudgel
Squirrel didn't make it: unstatistical absence
As counted by the census wonks of Bedlam
Across the rockies cradled in a Valiant
Was never sure which one of us the scoundrel
In this malarkey uncanonical gospel
Spillway glimpse of the legendary sylph
Iron pleasures of the hunt yield irony
Dividenfluenza fastened with a padlock
Cannot keep the air from fleeing, foible
Such that nothing new can prosper
and Hesper fourfold. This is what it is.

a right kink anathema

(via @CaptKarnstein)

"Lyke fyend pitche skorching, or flash flame sulphurus heating:
Flownce to the stars towring thee fire, lyke a pellet,
Ragd rocks vp raking: and guts of mounten yrented
From roote vp hee iogeth: stoans hudge slag molten he rowseth:
With route snort grumbling, in bottom flash furye kendling."

--Stanyhurst, iii.

13th Root.

     "Sonnets to Chango: XIII."

Such that nothing new can prosper
save treason, call it the tug of Planet the Ninth,
the Man in the High Casserole. Painting with sulfur
the crescent that is more than what-might-happen,
what-must. Sorrow, now my only formula,
& buses come, eager to oblige
with night bus music. Five moons buzz the bishop
than mauling find less drastic cure for poverty
four hundred minus Fahrenheit skewwhiff sourpuss
begins with brush poised, not for images famished
but for truth, even if plangent figment
redolent of nothing more than the gulf
we stand before, persuaded less of the bargain
than our fast faith in ev'ry madder method.

in your drydens of old leaves

"with a lyre in his hand
he used to go each morning to watch Russia go up in flames" --Khlebnikov, Vol. V. iii.

"I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic."

     "Sonnets to Chango: XII."

Cannot keep the air from fleeing, foible
of winter, nitrogen snowfall, regroup whilst
all things dwine & darken & i am the walrus
no more. Against this, what of other mischief?
a film shown on the clouds by steampunk vodka,
a dance of death to beguile the abstract pilgrim
& only changeless Charon be our refuge.
All our arguments tend to end in massacre
whether vegan diet, whether sculsh
the future belongs to a nomad who is joyful
& Pyrrhonist, can retrofit a popsong anthem
or coax new plantings to stay. The subfusc accent
depends on you. The conygry is spoilt.
I write my next dire longpoem wholly in Pygmy.

bubidiikstofa

"Such things that disappear in time that we find ourselves longing to see again. We search for them in close-up, as we search for our hands in a dream." --M Train

A Moon for Makemake.

     "Sonnets to Chango: XI."

Dividenfluenza fastened with a padlock
yet plagues aplenty perne in specious ambush;
the only brain of ours in use, the reptile.
Chango, what do you add to our woes but mildew?
I toss soft grains on cubes of smouldering charcoal
the frankincense of kings. Beethoven's Fifth
heard as few a times. When drones grow anxious
they vex their own great shadows. Bloodbrain jointure
Rubicons the hexadecimal sultan,
Plutonian badlands stretch out crinkly jasmine
where ice is stone--in that light, almost lilac,
though even i can barely limn its sculptor
as huddled near the sun in fecund quagmire
drabal whose praise requires a Lojban bagpipe.

(via @darkvictorian)

fiats hush us

"An infant cries because it breathes and lives. Later it stops crying and starts to babble, but the inner cry does not subside, and a grown man cries with the same ancient cry of a newborn baby muffled within. Social decorum drowns out this cry--it is a pure abyss. The poetry of young people and adults is often this very cry, the atavistic, ceaseless cry of an infant." --Mandelshtam

The Philosopher and the Wolf.

     "Sonnets to Chango: X."

Iron pleasures of the hunt yield irony
of ev'ry sought thing grasped · as in the proverb
only the skies of past days tempt our envy
oxycontin haze till Never the Twelfth
this Jovian latitude yclept our Doldrum
air that like terroir a funny car sculpts
& never again the same as passed the jaguar
in the night. Graywyvern hoards these zimmes in aspic
drastic vowel ill-met by moonlight hoodlum
& scaly casino, shadow of a woman
mortals come to know Cynothoglys incest
which Chango smithereens--ancestral problem--
trapezohedral city of basalt ebon
one whisper escapes from an unocculted stulm

almost no one knows this

"American cities are like badger holes, ringed with trash..." --John Steinbeck

"...perhaps when all is said and done the plastic bag will stand as the most sweeping and poignant icon of human achievement."

     "Sonnets to Chango: IX."

Spillway glimpse of the legendary sylph
as rain gathers in clumps athwart the ivy
& this vast ruin, deliquescent emblem,
shimmers like firelight. Now reflection somber
eludes the earnest stitchery of the poem
though it go down into vats of pickled cabbage,
a skimmington for ice wastes to imagine.
Far, far from these trails. Amphibian sculpture...
one day the cracked cup will break. Thekk mulcts
these sheltering congeries, forever fractious,
gesso on linen, long-verboten aspirin,
the blackened snout of the dodgy-scamper aardwolf.
We rebuild. Fireflies weave. It's difficult
not to see these halcyon skies as swarthy.

a kerchief of pogroms yowls

"Did you not imagine that the thin earth on which you trod did not not have another earth under it?" --Fourth Mansions

When the twister hit.

     "Sonnets to Chango: VIII."

In this malarkey uncanonical gospel
only the signs & portents were deceitful.
Wrecked hulks on the way, pick sacred torment
out of the coruscating joker vampire
lineup. We had fasted for a month
in preparation for our solstice chutney
& found the disorder of our polity sacred
the air we had awaits Extinction the Eighth
i only hope our lives pace our last rouble
gray yielding to blue a frozen kumquat
hovers, mid-remembrance, no great salvage;
days as starkly patterned as a zebra
yield nothing on the radar, staticky topaz
& yet i know i still must run the gauntlet.

a coffee grimly hooks prows

"I actually believe that it's a healthy sign for a man to be clearly insane on one clear point; it gives him balance and otherwise keeps him sane." --Fourth Mansions

Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s.

     "Sonnets to Chango: VII."

Was never sure which one of us the scoundrel
betrayed most, the moon, the pyramid chamber
shark therapist climbing another octave
only to dive the harder, Chango: breadth
of vision is ev'rything. Hadito polka
meanwhile, so we prog recursive valve
this untimely ripped, three-sided album
with only a thorn to play it back, but nothing
will change & nothing can & that tang putrid
belongs to imagination's inkpen-hairpin
stink bomb. Here in Hiroshima kiln
our eyelids hold our eyes elective hostage.
Hubcap tumbling t'ward a further solstice
on this soft haierious road Palm Sunday zedonk.

a pica trail

"But for an inquiring mind there are interesting questions cropping up everywhere, even in the grave." --Fourth Mansions

If the Oceans were Ink.

     "Sonnets to Chango: VI."

Across the Rockies cradled in a valiant
superstition, life itself more luggage
the seiche of rising seas behemoths mouthe
while young people start afresh & their first plaintiff
still lies ahead. My muse, a fall that's constant,
eerily echoed · in the cry from the musjid
& laws govern the swirl of clouds. What brainwash
could deliver us? Far infinity roof, ghost scalprum
Coyote's cliffwalk holds out hope as punctual
& all we aim to be is fortunate soldier
a lottery ticket holder running gleeful
down the crumbling seafront. Chango, shorn of corsned
for these galvanic dreams, steampunk jodhpur,
one hundred thirty seventh part of structure.

"I saw that Sufism consists in experiences rather than in definitions, and that what I was lacking belonged to the domain, not of instruction, but of ecstasy and initiation." --al-Ghazali

an irenic outlook

"We cannot live without monstes' blood coursing through us." --Fourth Mansions

End of being.

     "Sonnets to Chango: V."

As counted by the census wonks of Bedlam
red sky at morn, evening sky of orchid
salesmen of roadblocks prosper, relish the challenge
unreal as most things here, but baldly unctuous
view from the fourth floor now, after a rugged
journey & heralds, salvo after salvo,
join on this haggard highway the merest chaos
ornaments. Blackened shell of a car, in fugue,
whose smoke we saw in advance. How chastely modern
to pass without knowing the outcome. Æpyornis
to stomach thus. Caligula the regent
wanders out in the rain & under less ozone
'than graced the blue of the sky of the youngling pedant.
If May can burn like this, what comes with August?

"A language isolate, beyond all affiliation with other languages... A system that will offer new meanings, entire new levels of perception. It will expand our reality, deepen the reach of our intellect. It will remake us... We will approximate the logic and beauty of pure mathematics in everyday speech. No similes, metaphors, analogies. A language that will not shrink from whatever vforms of objective truth we have never before experienced." --Zero K

Meet the Hitlers.

plappergate

"It was for making suggestions about supervised recreation that the devil was cast into hell; any other account you have heard is false." --Fourth Mansions

Masquerade.

     "Sonnets to Chango: IV."

Squirrel didn't make it. Unstatistical absence
does sparing him no glance make me a monster
No, but maybe a part of the feet of the peacock
far peripheral, cast in darkness safest,
on silence, battened; & by thunder, wounded;
Watching it happen afar should be some comfort
Chango, you ride forth clad white in your alb
of vapors: i gauge the sky, gassing at Chevron
a stranger to this stage, an innocent, almost,
we asked for you, the only perfect bodkin,
before we ever passed the stage of grilse.
Here, then, t'ward apotheosis of tumult
some of us hide, some of us mark the cadence
& see those doing so, & call them comrade.

"The language we've developed here will enable you to understand such concepts, those of you who will enter the capsules.... The name of the language will be accessible only to those who speak it." --Don DeLillo, Zero K (2016)

if i ran the rainforest

"Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect." --Eric Hoffer

Our nightmare.

"This is the world... Worry not that it is flawed: we ourselves are the flaws: and if we say that we are not flaws, then who is there to contradict us?" --Fourth Mansions

     "Sonnets to Chango: III."

Nemesis, double-headed axe, vain cudgel
in mists, in gray fog falling, wine on the tombstone
freshly poured. Sanguinary Sabbath
in red & white, the festival of the jugular...
an older underground than kindly werewolves,
i carry it across rough ground, nor seiche
awaken; Chango, Father of Twins, wind's width
measured. And meanwhile, jesters parry dogma;
& we have built our castle out of yogurt.
The years with years' malaises stun & deafen,
& it's so hard to remain unerringly open.
weather's but a nemesis more stalwart.
A royal palm tree never was the culprit.
I gather pale blue berries off the juniper.

"Perhaps I should be concerned as to why I have conversations with inanimate objects. But as it has been part of my waking life since I was a child I have no problem with that." --M Train

oranges and lemons

"Birds and baboons have pride, perhaps; men may not have." --Fourth Mansions

Pink Freud covers Autechre.

"The disappearance of silence must be counted among the harbingers of the end." --Cioran

      "Sonnets to Chango: II."

Lies, but lies are spider's-nest to scorpio
whether pent in citadel or cubicle,
Moon Mansion's windows blown: the usual airt
a drea m of many funnels, strange allegiance,
Chango, though you natheless will subject
all things go smash to, & high pale oval
alone remains unscathed, absolute cleavage
unless you count the days when it was molten.
Waterloo brought on ourselves, Oedipus-noxious
poppylove. Exterminating angel
we never needed, now to you our homage
withhold, as we learn new desires of depth
caught up in the welter & the torsion.
Our lies against your puissance smack of alum.

The story of NWW List.

the lark ascending

" 'You think people are silly to believe in ghosts?' an old man had asked Fred Foley a long time ago. 'Boy, you should hear some of the things that ghosts believe in!' " --Fourth Mansions

Sun Ra does Batman soundtrack.

"We must respect other's religion, but only to the extent we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." --H L Mencken

Asimov in '71

     "Sonnets to Chango: I."

Tangled in the heraldry of tungsten
impossible to construct some other valve
under the lash of storm-tormented April.
Plywood in the road my turn to gouge
or dodge, inshallah. Bitterly i object
to phantomnation, shadows that are lonesome,
& three legs walking t'ward liquescent evening.
Suddenly it's not evening. Paint by northern
pillagelight, or panoply of bebop:
fires so fierce steel melts, & steel is stubborn.
My poetry gig that started as a junior
has emptied into flatlands sere & ancient,
& i am as a twy-tentacular mollusk
lost amidst the aliens' faulty edict.