Shut Up and Sing

Trailer for the movie...

We Have Never Been "Stay the Course"

And we have always been at war with Eurasia.

This has been a Library of Babel public service announcement.

Misogyny and Fascism

...and gun shows, and the proto-fascism that is the subtext of Republican politics. Discussed at length (this is a long, meaty post) by Dave Neiwert who continues to do God's work.

Mark Foley Action Figure

On eBay here.

Buffy Wisdom Monday

GILES: So the entrance to the cave was above ground here?

BUFFY: Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was around here somewhere.

GILES: Well, we'll just keep?

BUFFY: Aah! (falls) Found it!

GILES: Good lord, are you all right?

BUFFY: Peachy, except my knees bend backwards now.

Season 7, Bring on the Night

Guitarists Gone Wild!

Well, they're classical guitarists, so "wild" is relative.

But, toward the end of this clip from a documentary about Manuel Barrueco, you can see David Russell play harmonics with his nose, and see the Assad brothers, David Tanenbaum, David Russell, and Barrueco all playing the same guitar at the same time.

Rachel Loden

Kate Greenstreet's "first book" interviews at Kicking Wind continue today with Rachel Loden and her Hotel Imperium.

Terry Eagleton

A slighter than one might hope but still interesting article about British literary theorist Terry Eagleton in the Chronicle Review.

The Lyric "I"

This "I" has lately been confused with the expression of unquestioned subjectivity and identity. But it simply indicates that language is taking place.
—Rosmarie Waldrop, Curves to the Apple

Buffy Wisdom Monday

GILES: But that's the thrill of living on the Hellmouth! There's a veritable cornucopia of, of fiends and devils and, and ghouls to engage. (everyone looks at him) Pardon me for finding the glass half full.

Season 1, The Witch

Keats and Fall

For a few years I made it a point to sit down and read Keats's "Ode to Autumn" sometime in the early fall. It's cool, overcast, and a bit foggy this morning. Perfect "Ode to Autumn" weather. Read it out loud and savor the harvest of sounds.

Ode to Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'erbrimmed their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing, and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Egghead Burlesque

Thoughtful review in the Globe and Mail that captures the pleasures of Lisa Robertson's Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture, now reprinted by Coach House Books.

You can hear Robertson reading from the book here.

Buffy Wisdom Monday

XANDER: Hey, we gotta be like Sergeant Rock. Cool and collected in the face of overwhelming odds.

ANYA: Overwhelming? How much more than whelming would that be exactly?

Season 5, Spiral.

Pandora

If you have broadband, you can create internet music channels for yourself via Pandora. You select one artist. You're then presented with a series of related music. You can pick and choose to refine the channel.

So far, I've created channels for Jane Siberry, Kate Bush, Cocteau Twins, and Airto Moreira with Flora Purim. The last has been hardest to tune. Pandora doesn't seem to distinguish well between electric Latin jazz, and anything sung in Portuguese.

Oh, Canada!

Sometimes it seems like there's more than a border between here (Seattle) and British Columbia. These days, the Canadians probably like it that way.

I just discovered today that there's an international writer's festival in Vancouver, B.C. this month. You can find out more at the festival site. Some events are already full. Didn't recognize any of the names, but that's not a surprise. And it's a bilingual event.

Buffy Wisdom Monday

BUFFY: We were close. We killed each other. It really promotes togetherness.

Season 2, When She Was Bad

L O C U S P O I N T

The premiere issue is up and running. The Radish King is the editor for the Seattle section and was kind enough to include work from this most sub of sublibrarians.

As a side note, "The Mark of the Beast" was written by using 666 to read through Left Behind—I collected the sixth word from the sixth sentence on every sixth page and wrote the piece using only those words.