Bernadette Mayer's potty mouth

On the Poetry Foundation "Poetry Off the Shelf" podcast, they talked about the poetry of Bernadette Mayer (b. 1945.) She's an avant-garde poet and artist. Apparently, she's been compared to 20th century titans from Gertrude Stein to James Joyce. She's well loved especially by younger poets for her experimentation.

I really liked this poem which was written in 1968 but you'd never know it:

[Sonnet] You jerk you didn't call me up

By Bernadette Mayer

You jerk you didn't call me up

I haven't seen you in so long

You probably have a fucking tan

& besides that instead of making love tonight

You're drinking your parents to the airport

I'm through with you bourgeois boys

All you ever do is go back to ancestral comforts

Only money can get—even Catullus was rich but

Nowadays you guys settle for a couch

By a soporific color cable t.v. set

Instead of any arc of love, no wonder

The G.I. Joe team blows it every other time

Wake up! It's the middle of the night

You can either make love or die at the hands of

                               the Cobra Commander

_________________

To make love, turn to page 121.

To die, turn to page 172.

More great lines from Downtown Owl

There's a certain enjoyable meandering quality to this book that reminds me of Cannery Row. It's not that book of course. Not even Steinbeck could re-write Cannery Row. (see: Sweet Thursday.) But the anecdotal decoupage is reminiscent and gives me the same feeling like I could read it forever although a small town in North Dakota is obviously not quite on the same level of fantasy destination.

Several interesting stories, like the one about Horace getting fleeced by a con man he met at his wife's funeral. He was fleeced 4 months after the funeral for all of his wife's insurance money on some crazy betting scheme that was predicated on NFL games being fixed.

Or the conversations between Julia and Vance Druid. I loved the one about his musical tastes (Bruce Springsteen "seems like an asshole." Cheap Trick "dressed like circus freaks." ELO are "like a combination of the dullest parts of the Beatles and the gayest parts of Led Zeppelin.") He only likes the Rolling Stones. And one song by Steely Dan ("Deacon Blues" excellent choice) but they seem boring.

That was a good chapter but here's an excerpt of one where Julia, Ted and Naomi are cruising through town. There's lots of drunk driving in this book. Ted tells a story about a girl he hung out with in college that kissed one of his friends at a party and killed their three-way friendship (the story is more complicated but that's the skeletal version.) Julia has done a face plant in the back seat and Ted and Naomi keep talking:

"Do you ever wish that Sarah Greenberg would have kissed you instead of Tiger Lyons?"

"Never. I used to, but I haven't for years."

They drove another hundred yards in silence.

"Ted?"

"Yes."

"Sometimes I would like to kiss you."

They drove another hundred feet.

"Naomi."

"Yes?"

"You need to pay closer attention to the stories people tell you about themselves."

They were almost back in Owl. Nothing was different.

Horace's wife Alma died in the early 70's. She developed a rare disorder (fatal familial insomnia which is apparently a real thing) and was unable to sleep. Like ever again. And she began to hallucinate after about 30 days. Here is Horace talking with Alma:

Alma paused. She looked at Horace's chest and squinted her eyes.

"Why is this happening?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said, unconsciously inferring that this had been an existential query about why his wife had contracted a hyper-rare sleep disorder that wasn't even supposed to exist. In truth, Alma was asking why both of their bodies were suddenly becoming translucent. But under these specific circumstances, that is probably the same question.

Mitch spends the first half of the book being tormented by his teacher and coach, Mr. Laidlaw. I like this exchange between Julie and Laidlaw that efficiently lays out the gap between what teachers think of students versus what students think teachers think of them:

Mitch Hrlicks walked by with Nineteen Eighty-Four in his left hand, trying to ignore both of the authority figures who were watching him. His hair was out of control. There were bags under both his eyes.

"Merry Christmas, Vanna," said Laidlaw. "Are you going to be an elf this year?"

"Probably not," said Mitch. "No." 

"You would make a fine elf, Vanna," said Laidlaw. "You could be Sleepy."

"Sleepy was a dwarf," said Mitch.

"So what? Don't you think elves have names?"

Mitch slouched toward Bethlehem.

"I don't understand that kid," said Julia. "He seems nice enough, but he always looks depressed."

"Mitch is a good kid," said Laidlaw. "He's a really good kid, relatively speaking. But he has no sense of humor. That's his problem."

Of course, perhaps it better illustrates how some old people fail to realize they are coming across as assholes to everyone under 20.

Mysteries of the galaxy

Continuing with the Astronomy Cast theme, here is their list of the top 10 mysteries of the Way, Milky.

The show notes are located here and here.

1.) Blue stragglers: are stars that appear to stay in their youth longer than expected, even regressing to their hotter youths. They're big and blue and given where they are located (in globular clusters), they should have burned more hydrogen than they seem to have. It seems they might be stealing mass from other stars although that's just speculation.

2.) Some of our supernovae are missing: The math says we should see 2-3 a century. The last one that occurred relatively close to us was in 1680.Chandra appears to have found remnants of supernova explosions in some dust clouds. What astronomers can say is there doesn't seem to be anything unique to our galaxy to explain why they can't see them. It may just be a question of not seeing them in the visible spectrum due to obstruction.

3.) The Small and Large Magellanic Clouds: these are the satellite galaxies that are...orbiting the Milky Way? Apparently, we don't quite know. They might be just be dwarf galaxies nonchalantly traveling past us. The explanation for why we can't tell is, once again, mathy but it has to do with factors like our inability to precisely estimate the Milky Way's mass. If they are orbiting us, it's possible the Milky Way will rip them up one day and gobble their stars. Andromeda is going to do the same thing to us, but it's billions of years away so I'll focus on worrying about Michelle Bachman actually winning the Republican nomination for now.

4.) Proxima Centauri's intimacy issues: Proxima is a red dwarf in the Alpha Centauri system, around 4 light years away. The problem is, it's awfully close to Alpha Centauri A&B. Some say it's a captured object that is orbiting this system. They all appear to be moving through the sky close together at around the same velocity.

5.) When is Eta Carinae going to blow already: this is one of the brightest stars in the sky, around 100 times the mass of the sun. It's located in the Homunculus Nebula (it's a great name, it just means "little man.") Stars in constellations are named according to their brightness. Thus, Alpha Centauri is the brightest star in Centauri, this Beta and so forth. Eta took the giant leap forward in 1843 when it brightened and appeared to be supernova-ing. There's no way to predict when. If you happen to be watching with the right kind of equipment, you can see the xray burst minutes before the eruption.

6.) One of our spiral arms is missing-or not: apparently when you study galaxy arms (and of course, such a specialized field exists), you are supposed to look at them all in the same color. But when you look at galaxies through different lights (radio, ultraviolet) the morphology changes. And parts of the arms could be obscured from us. I admit, I don't totally see the big deal about this one since part of it seems to apply to all galaxies.

7.) Where are the Sun's nebula buddies: Around 4.6 billion years, our solar system formed out of a solar nebula. When we look at other stellar nebulae (e.g. Orion, Carinae, Pleiades), we see clusters of stars. It could be due to gravitational effects that the rest were flung out of the system. You can't tell from looking at a star or its motions where it started out so to find out if another star was birthed with our sun, you'll need detailed chemical analysis. I gather this is a somewhat moot point because the answer, by present means anyways, it never much more than maybe and siblings could be on the other side of the Galaxy just as easily by now.

8.) The 60 million year extinction cycle: Here's some cheery reading--10 potential causes of mass extinctions from gamma rays to magnetic field reversals. UC Berkeley contends that around every 60 million or so years, some mass extinction event occurs that wipes out up to 90% of life on this planet. How old is that KT Boundary again? Yup, we're about due. There are some interesting theories about what is protecting us, at least most of the time including the Milky Way's proposed magnetic field.

9.) The case of the missing G-Dwarfs: G-dwarf are also called yellow dwarfs although that can be misleading (they range in color from white to yellow.) They are a subset of the main sequence stars, like all dwarfs. Our own sun is a G-dwarf, but the ones we are looking for would be a little smaller than the sun. Here's how the reasoning goes: the smaller the star, the longer it burns so the longer it hangs around burning through its hydrogen. There are a (at this point theoretical) group of stars formed just after the Big Bang called Population III. They should have little to no metal in them, as they should have formed before being polluted by supernovae. There should also be red dwarfs composed of this primordial hydrogen. It's possible the big stars (that form faster) just didn't leave room or resources for the smaller stars to develop. Or maybe the lack of metals in the primordiverse just prevented smaller stars from forming.

10.) The intermediate black hole quandary: an intermediate black hole would be greater than a stellar black hole but obviously not a supermassive black hole. The moniker "supermassive" always seems to me to indicate its kind of rare but in fact, the intermediate ones are the hard ones to find. They've tried looking in dwarf galaxies and globular clusters but no dice. Chandra has identified some extra-luminous x-ray sources  that might turn out to be the culprits.

First and last for The Coroner's Lunch

First:

It was a depressing audience, and there were going to be a lot more like it. Now that Haeng, the spotty-faced magistrate was back, Siri would have to explain himself every damn Friday, and kowtow to a man young enough to be his grandson.

Last:

"Given the bad luck you've been having lately, I figured you could use a lucky charm. Like it?"

Great lines from Downtown Owl

The reviews seem to all be saying the ending is sketchy but I really like this book so far, partly because I know a little something something about growing up in a small town in the 80's. Although, I grew up in Kentucky and Paris, Ky (population: 8000. Salute!)  within 30 minutes of Lexington sounds like a veritable metropolis compared with Owl, ND, population 800 and change and falling.

So far, I'm liking Julia the best. Which figures.

Here the Principal explains to Julia, who is young and new in town for her first teaching job, what Owl has going for it:

"And you've probably heard that the movie theater is going to close, and I'm afraid that's true: It is closing. But the bowling alley is thriving. It's probably the best bowling alley in the region. I honestly believe that."

By chance, Julia did enjoy bowling. however, when the most positive detail about your new home is that the bowling alley is thriving, you have to like bowling a lot in order to stave off depression. And-right now, in the middle of this conversation-Julia was more depressed than she had ever been in her entire 23 year existence. As she sat in Walter Valentine's office, she felt herself wanting to take a nap on the floor. ..Julie could feel hydrochloric acid inside her tear ducts. There was an especially fuzzy tennis ball in her esophagus, and she wanted to be high.

...

She soon arrived in her apartment, where she had no furniture (and no idea how to acquire any, as there were apparently no furniture stores within a 30 mile radius.) ...Julie reached into the same cardboard box and found her copy of The Random House Thesaurus (College Edition), which contained drugs. The day before leaving Madison, Julia and her college roommates meticulously rolled four perfect joints and hid them in the thesaurus, operating under the assumption that buying pot would be impossible in small-town North Dakota (which was, in fact, the case.) The plan was that Julia could smoke one joint after the first day of class, one on Thanksgiving (which she would have to spend alone), and one after the last day of school in May.  The fourth was a spare....Julia sat in her sleeping bag and smoked three of them, all in a row. It was 2:45pm.

One of the other characters is Horace, an elderly farmer and lifelong Owl resident who hangs out with his peers in a local coffee shop. Here they are arguing about Columbus Day:

"They should recognize the man," said Bud.

"Why?" asked Edgar.

"The man deserves recognition."

"That's not an answer to the question. You're just repeating what you already said. That's not an argument."

"Why should I have to explain why Columbus is important? You're acting like a two-dollar jackass."

"I just think it's idiotic that we don't get mail today, simply because Columbus was a bad explorer. You do realize he discovered America by accident, right? He thought the Indians were pygmies."

"We all know that," said Bud. "That isn't the point. Have you not listened to anything we've been saying for the past twenty minutes? Do you have shit in your ears?"

"You know, they say Columbus was a rapist," said Edgar. "I don't know if that's fact or fiction, but it's certainly not impossible. And I'd hate to think we didn't get our mail this morning in tribute to an Italian rapist."

This sounds just like a bunch of old guys egging each other on.

The third narrator is Mitch Hrlicka, a high school junior and fair to poor football player. He hates his coach and English teacher, John Laidlaw. Here, Laidlaw asks the class a question about 1984, the book the entire school is reading in anticipation of it being, well, 1984 in a few months, and Klosterman narrates what all 22 students are thinking. Ahhh, youth. Here are just a few:

1) How awesome it would feel to be sleeping.

3) What it would feel like to be asleep.

6) An empty room, filled only with white light and silence (this was Rebecca Grooba.)

9) Theoretical ways to make a Pontiac Grand Prix more boss, such as painting a panther on the hood or moving the entire steering column and floor pedals to the passenger side, which would likely be impossible without a cherry picker and extremely expensive tools.

10) The meaning (and linguistic derivation) of the phrase "Gunter glieben glauchen globen," as heard during the preface to Def Leppard's "Rock of Ages."

12) Robot cows

22) Firing a crossbow into the neck of John Laidlaw while he received fellatio from Tina McAndrew (This was Mitch.)


Tina being the student that the married Laidlaw allegedly slept with and impregnated (actually, not even allegedly because he reminisces about it in an earlier chapter.) Her parents sent her out of town. I remember this kind of stuff did happen, including the sending the shamed girl away part.


I feel a certain kinship with Mitch because my English teachers all seemed to hate me too. Part of the reason Mitch (last name: Hrlicka) hates Laidlaw is because he calls Mitch "Vanna"-as in, his last name needs to buy vowels:

"How about you, Vanna?" said Laidlaw.

"What?"

"What do you think about this?"
"I didn't hear the question," said Mitch. "The radiator is too loud."
"The radiator is not working, Vanna," said Laidlaw. "However, I'm not surprised that you are hearing things. That is, after all, a sign of psychosis. As such, I will pose my question again, this time above the din of the imaginary radiator. WHO. ARE. THE THOUGHT POLICE?"

I swear I had this same teacher in high school except his name was Kokas and he was the history teacher/baseball coach.

What I looked up thus far for The Coroner's Lunch

The book takes place in October of 1976. This means the Pathet Lao takeover is about a year in. Although considered the equivalent of the Viet Minh or Khmer Rouge, they never seemed to be as bad or, at least, they never made the news if they were. They certainly were bad news for the Hmong, who had collaborated with us. The numbers aren't clear but thousands fled the country following Communist takeover by crossing the Mekong into Thailand-the town on the Thai side by the way is Sri Chaing Mai which is evidently the spring roll capital. There are refugees scattered all over-in the States, in Australia, in Thailand (where they've been having troubles recently.) There have been efforts to both improve US-Laos relations and repatriate the Hmong but the results are mixed. According to Wikipedia, the Hmong were called Montagnards by the French because they lived in highland areas but they shouldn't be confused the the Vietnamese Degar, who were also called Montagnards.

Pathet Lao just means "Lao Country."

The Laotian Civil War lasted from 1953-1975. This means it pretty much had been going on ever since the French officially withdrew after the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. The battle was actually very close to the Laos border:

After 1953, the history gets too complicated to summarize well but there's more here. There were various coups and corruption caused by an influx of US aid. We of course were freaked out by the creeping Communist umbrella. According to the article. Laos is the most bombed nation in the history of war.

The article says the LPRP (Lao People's Revolutionary Party) is still in control but they have been enacting economic reforms since 1986. They are a poor country with lots of debt. The Lonely Planet once again assures me this is an great, cheap and low crime place to travel.

Comrade Kahm tells Siri that he knows the cause of his wife's sudden death: her addiction to lahp, a raw meat dish. Apparently, it can also be served cooked. Which is good news for Laotians. Lahp seems to just mean "minced." You can even have tofu lahp. Here's the recipe.

She actually died from cyanide poisoning, the almond smell being the standard dead giveaway. I'd read various mystery novels for years where someone sniffed the cadaver's breath for an almond smell but it was only recently that I learned why that smell was connected to cyanide.

The almonds we eat are Prunus dulcis, the ones that produce cyanide in significant quantities are Prunus amara. Turning the original poisonous version into the key ingredient for Almond Joy is the result of a simple human-induced genetic mutation. Plants produce cyanide as a defense mechanism. Some other common foods that contain cyanide (reduced to safe amounts such as selective breeding) are lima beans, soy, spinach and cassava. There are people in Africa whose diets, principally due to war and famine, consist mainly of cassava who suffer from a low-grade form of cyanide poisoning called konzo. 

In passing, Siri mentions the Anusawari Arch. I wanted to go into a little more detail because it's quite striking and because the back story is funny.

First here it is:

It looks old but it was built between 1957-1968 and is a monument to those who died in the battle for independence from France. It's also known as Patuxai or "Victory Gate." Evidently, it was built with American money and cement that was intended for an airstrip. Oops. Well, at least it's pretty. It is sometimes known as "the vertical runway" for that reason.

It's mentioned a few times about people being sent to Vieng Xai (or Viengsai) for re-education. This was the stronghold of the Pathet Lao during the insurgency and where the took shelter in the cave system during the US bombing. It's supposed to be a very lovely place. Here and here is some more information about traveling there.

The absolute last time I'll talk about being on Public Radio

Unless, of course, I am again in which case trust that I'll blather on about it for a few weeks again.

I got a nice thank you letter from the producer of The Dinner Party Download, saying that the (edited) dinner party submissions were on their blog.

Here is the blog link.

And here is my submission which they actually printed in its entirety with some editor's asides and format tidying:

Vanessa McDaniel in Columbus, OH needs a bigger table for:
1.) John Steinbeck - My favorite author. I want to sit next to him and absorb some of his love for humankind.
2.) Liza Minnelli - An old school broad with a great sense of humor who could prevent any awkward silences.
3.) Paul McCartney - My chance to meet a Beatle, are you kidding? If I ever actually met him, I would probably cry and kill the party though.
4.) Caravaggio - He was a genius artist plus he had the balls to do a self portrait of himself as the severed head of Goliath. I just hope he doesn’t stab anyone.
5.) Idris Elba - He’s fascinating. Plus I just want to stare at him.
6.) Ed Ricketts - I can’t invite Steinbeck without his close friend and inspiration, Ed Ricketts. They’d be so happy to be reunited.
7.) Werner Herzog - I could listen to his Teutonic monologues forever.
8.) Stan Lee - My inner comic geek demands this.
9.) Brigitte Nielson - She just seems cool to me plus I’ve loved her since Red Sonja.
10.) Pepa - It’s Pepa.
Is this too many? [Answer: NEVER!] I have some more for dinner party #2: Ru Paul, Marc Chagall, Richard Dawkins, Jim Henson, Dolly Parton, Quentin Tarantino, Jack Kirby, Juliette Binoche, Alain Resnais, Joni Mitchell, Anatole France, Jill Clayburgh, Judy Blume, Gabriel Byrne, Lee Krasner.

Bryan thought it was funny I invited Ed Ricketts just to make John Steinbeck happy. Maybe I should have said instead that he was a pioneer of marine ecology, an outstanding drinking buddy and a muse to great writers.