Every man a duck.

Time is the blood of action.

Today's gem.

"Procrastination is how I stick it to the man."

Letter to Lord Chandos

To me, then, it is as though my body consists of nought but ciphers which give me the key to everything; or as if we could enter into a new and hopeful relationship with the whole of existence if only we begin to think with the heart. As soon, however, as this strange enchantment falls from me, I find myself confused; wherein this harmony transcending me and the entire world consisted, and how it made itself known to me, I could present in sensible words as little as I could say anything precise about the inner movements of my intestines or a congestion of my blood.

Philip Larkin

Those long thin steeds
And natural downs
So near at hand,
We cannot see,
Nor that tiny
Excitement share
In the delicate stand:
We cannot be

Elsewhere than here -
And yet, just so
May others stare
On our casual scene,
And cry for pleasure
At the out-of-reach
Enchantment there
Where we have been.

Forgotten Gods

Angerona

Verethraghna

Tyche

Misoponia

Tryphe

Zalmoxis

Momus

Ssan-do

Darriah

Hubal

Ziqiqu

Soviet - Marbleyezed (1st version)

Soviet's electro classic Marbleyezed, a.k.a. Marbleyzed. The original version from C, not the remixed one from We Are Eyes. Stellar but rarely heard for some reason.

Punk

Almost twenty years ago, when I was in the navy, I came into the possession of a catalog from a company called Dr. Strange Records. The catalog advertised punk vinyl, including many rare and expensive items, but what interested me were four compilations on cassette tape of the company founder's favorite punk singles. They were much cheaper than the vinyl, and I needed something to play on my tape player - record players being unfeasible on a ship.

I sent off for them and duly received them FPO. They were fantastic. Four collections of crucial classic punk singles. They were like a crash course in punk roots. If someone wanted to know what punk was about, these tapes would be all they needed. I listened to them over and over again on the ship.

Time passed and the tapes went where the woodbine twineth, but the tunes from them stayed in my head and heart. The net came to be, and from time to time I searched around, hoping to find the cassettes again, maybe in digital. No luck. Dr Strange still exists, and still sells a lot of great vinyl, but the tapes have vanished - there's not a mention of them anywhere on the site. I wrote to the company asking for any information, even just a tracklisting, and the original owner wrote back saying they were long gone and forgotten.

So in this post I will try to reconstruct the tracklists of the tapes as best I can from memory. If you, dear reader, remember more, or have copies of the tapes, please pass on your information.

There were four tapes altogether: the first one contained only American bands, the second only U.K., while the third and fourth had Americans on side A and U.K. on side B. All bands were represented by two songs each.

My memory of the first tape is the clearest, but I am not completely certain which songs were on which tape or what order they were in.


DR STRANGE PUNK CLASSICS TAPES


Americans:

GERMS - Lexicon Devil/No God
BAGS - Survive/Babylonian Gorgon
BAD RELIGION - Bad Religion/Slaves
CH3 - Mannequin/Manzanar
CONTROLLERS - Jezebel/Another Day
AVENGERS - Car Crash/We Are The One
BAD BRAINS - Pay To Cum/???
FEAR - I Love Living in the City [single version, natch]/Now Your Dead
GANG GREEN - Sold Out/Terrorize
MIA - I Hate Hippies/Gas Crisis
MISFITS - Last Caress/Who Killed Marilyn
ADOLESCENTS - Welcome to Reality/Losing Battle
YOUTH BRIGADE - Fight to Unite/Violence
GG ALLIN - You Hate Me & I Hate You/Don't Talk to Me
AGENT ORANGE - Secret Agent Man/Shakin All Over
NECROS - Search For Fame/Police Brutality (? not sure)
TOXIC REASONS - War Hero/Somebody Help Me
WASTED YOUTH - Fuck Authority/You're a Jerk
X - Los Angeles/Adult Books
DOA - The Prisoner/Fuck You (DOA were actually Canadian)
CHEIFS - Riot Squad/No Justice
SOCIAL UNREST - Making Room for Youth/Rush Hour
RIK L. RIK - I Got Power/???
TSOL - Superficial Love/???
LOST CAUSE - Born Dead/Senior Citizen
ALLEY CATS - Nothing Means Nothing Anymore/Give Me A Little Pain
MAD PARADE - Hollywood Vampires/???
SOCIAL DISTORTION - Mainliner/Playpen
DILS - You're Not Blank/I Hate the Rich


British:

STIFF LITTLE FINGERS - Suspect Device [single version]
SHAM 69 - Borstal Breakout
COCK SPARRER - Running Riot
ABRASIVE WHEELS - Burn Em Down
BLITZ - Razors in the Night/Someone's Gonna Die
SPIZZENERGI - Where's Captain Kirk?
BUZZCOCKS - Whatever Happened To?
X-RAY SPEX - Identity/Oh Bondage Up Yours
UK SUBS - Stranglehold
VIOLATORS - Summer of 81/Government Stinks
999 - Hi-Energy Plan/Homicide
REZILLOS - Top of the Pops/(My Baby Does) Good Sculptures
PETER & THE TEST TUBE BABIES - Banned From the Pubs/Maniac
PARTISANS - Police Story
EXPLOITED - Crashed Out/Hitler's In The Charts Again
LAST RESORT - Violence In Our Minds/King of the Jungle/Working Class Kids
4-SKINS - Evil/One Law For Them
BUSINESS - Suburban Rebels/Harry May
INFA RIOT - Each Dawn I Die/Kids of the 80s
GONADS - Tuckers Ruckers Ain't No Suckers
RED ALERT - SPG
EJECTED - What Am I Gonna Do
MENACE - I'm Civilised
BLOOD - Megalomaniac
BOYS - I Don't Care

singularity

Am I the only man in the world who lives at a Chinese monastery and reads the internet all day?

yes it's me

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AujrSASLDgCh_myTQEOkNjXty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20100213062806AA0V8pl&show=7#profile-info-FvalV4qYaa

Two of each kind.

frog toad

turtle tortoise

alligator crocodile

buffalo bison

dolphin porpoise

oyster clam

seal sea lion

lion tiger

camel dromedary

mammoth mastodon

cricket locust

Real life.

What am I actually doing? Listening to Camera Obscura and playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

Two Jewels

welcoming party

Two deer from the entrance to my house. It is glumly raining.

yes!

"You're a six-note genius."

Also, there are bouncy castles in Babylon.

silver dust

degged on slate

Fresh ghosts on the lake.

Still rubbing the dry sticks love and fear

Together in your mind. May again,

Maybe this time I'll...

Above, the tipped gold cup floods across

Blue cloth. Navy swallows stitch the west

Of the bowl of the world. Weddings come.

2010

alexander you have failed me again.

damn you boy! again and again this failure, this crawling indifference.

with his arm he swept a jug off the table. it crashed to pieces in front of the children.

he drew his broad leather belt. how many times…?

sonia and anna wept. father, please, have mercy!

at that moment was heard a distant rumbling, as of storm or battle. sonia and anna pricked up their ears. the thunder grew.

outside on the main street of the village the imperial army was marching past, the guards cavalry, resplendent in silver. spurs. vermilion tunics, navy leggings. a thousand brilliant bayonets. iron cannons drawn on oaken wheels. tassels, shakoes, epaulets. stars and suns of steel and gold. the thunderous hooves.

Dio castiga quelli, chi non conoscono l'amore.

tuol sleng teng

Relating

from Joel Anselm Dietz

http://joeldietz.com/post/324863016/relating

Inertia is delightful, I have discovered, via “new experiences” including my first real attempt at dating, in which doing what one likes replaces duty, fidelity. All values are private. This was the major point of contention, as we attempted democratic means to “resolve” differences, that I somehow thought that my values (admittedly unactualized) might be “better” and thus require dissemination. Whereas, the value of honesty, which she also professes, can be held privately — while the public square is yielded to those of the lowest common denominator.

No surprise, as there is no challenge, and I woke up this morning to join a conversation on Sex and the City, the wonderful pleasures of guilt-free hookups and libations to the images of ourselves glorified, reflecting that in some part I have joined this dance via my lethargy forever increasing, or in the redirection of energies to “things I like.”

Relationships, like other objects in the neo-capitalist dispensation, are like collectibles, shiny objects to be accumulated and then dispensed with when no longer needed. There is attachment, but no love.

There is no fall for those who do not recognize heights, or who believe in the potential of heights but not the necessity of climbing, and yet I sense my twisted limbs at the bottom of some cliff, staring upwards at some peak from which I once chanced to see a great distance, and the many hands and moans which encourage me to stay forever at the bottom.

Freedom is slavery, intone the voices, and “free love” is the answer, just as capital should be freely distributed to all who cast the proper votes for this freedom, while those of us at the top continue forever, inert.