Including Thirty-Nine Feet of Catheter Tubing

 

Robert Smith is 56 today, he being one of few musicians younger than me (if barely) whose music I post on the birthday. Iggy Pop is 68 today. Sixty-freaking-eight. My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game: watching musicians and bands float between higher and lower layers of inner circles fascinates me. I have been thinking about The Cure of late: I found the CDs SeatSix burned me years ago and have been listening, so it's no surprise they rate a higher circle than James Osterberg today, though why I went looking for those CDs, why I thought about them, got off the sofa and went and found them and listened to them without catalyst or forethought fascinates me.

As for Yelgrun, when I cycled through Deep Space Nine front-to-back in the past year I finally saw Iggy as a Vorta. Since one of the two characters I think about when I think about Deep Space Nine is a Vorta (and a Ferengi) (the other being the tailor), it's nice to think the next Iggy clone is in production.

• Michael Eric Dyson's hatchet job on Cornel West.
• Which is not to say each and every one of us, including Cornel West with a far bigger portfolio, isn't a tool too. A disgruntled tool. Like me.
• Which is not to deny a gigantic FUCK YOU! to Michael Eric Dyson - the motherfucking toolish Triskelion symbiotic. I see him on campus all the time. WATCH ME NOT SAY ANYTHING TO HIM! 
• See? Aargh. 
• Here's more: The Clinton Coronation: as grimly fascinating as North Korean stadium card stunts.
• Here's more: this civilization is over.
• Disbelieve better.
• The Odyssey.
• Neil Young's secret concert from five nights ago. Packed, 400 people. How sweet would that be.
• Robert Creeley, for those of you who do.
• Gerald Murnane, for those of you who do.
• Frank Stanford.
• Yes, I chose that Stanford poem for the Iggy song below it. Cheap gag.
• Met a friend for a pint last night: Return to Dietles -

WANTED

Frank Stanford

A white bull, a cassock, an antique mirror
The famous ones have passed hours in front of,
A midnight blue tuxedo, a fainting couch, a key
To a box of lewd photographs, a swastika,
Twelve bales of hay, three grave plots, a statue
Of Christ holding a heart pierced by a dagger,
A black patch, all kinds of utensils for the sick—
Including thirty-nine feet of catheter tubing,
A houseboat, a dog, a baby grand, an oar
Said to have been carved from a lovely river
And a woman’s hat by Alfred Jarry, a mattress,
A shotgun, a diving helmet, an essay on The Art
Of Taxidermy and a clitoris mounted on a ring
Like quartz, a crescent wrench, a bulldozer.