tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79883182011-04-21T16:17:48.278-07:00rhetoric, poetry, and the global reality showRCnoreply@blogger.comBlogger391100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-59178641106960740692007-03-29T23:40:00.000-07:002007-03-30T00:15:40.614-07:00

Doesn't Pelosi here look kind of like that Brain-sucking fungus thing on Aqua Teens -- and I mean that in the best way possible. The purple dude to the left here:I rule you! Me lawyer!The whole Bag News Notes post that I stole the Pelosi pic from is worth looking at. including his analysis of just how Nancy ruled him -- dba acting like a responsible, temperate adult.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-59982518228569935002007-03-04T03:12:00.000-08:002007-03-04T03:39:10.960-08:00

I've always liked the episode of Star Trek in which the alien woman surgically removes Spock's brain from his skull, and McCoy rigs up a remote control so he can walk Spock around, and eventually puts Spock's brain back into his head, partly pretty much winging it after the knowledge from the badass alien teaching machine wears off, and all this without shaving Leonard Nimoy's head.What I hadn't

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1170627475383675692007-02-04T14:17:00.000-08:002007-02-04T14:17:55.393-08:00

George Bush today noted that America has a “unique opportunity” because the Super Bowl competitors, the Indianapolis Colts and Chicago Bears, are located in states that share a common border.“Emotions are running high in both Indiana and Illinois. They have been enemies in the past and continue to be enemies,” Bush said at a meeting of GOP leaders. He continued, “I must protect America from

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1169598643168379002007-01-23T16:28:00.000-08:002007-01-23T16:30:43.180-08:00

$10 says that Bush starts trying to insinuate the idea of "What's so bad about going to war for oil?" in his speech tonight, not so much because he thinks it'll have any effect in whatever debate occurs over escalation in Iraq*, as because of the need by his corporate sponsors to move the discourse in this direction, in the same way that they've been trying to normalize policies that previous

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1168220750308493172007-01-07T17:40:00.000-08:002007-01-07T17:45:50.316-08:00

Yet another $1,000,000 idea:You take a group of 10 or 12 regular average folks and expose them to tuberculosis. Then you tape little "up close and personal" sessions with them, have them dance, sing (better to do this part early in the season before they all start coughing a lot), etc., and you give Cipro to the one who ends up most popular with the audience.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1165538691885855282006-12-07T16:43:00.000-08:002006-12-07T16:48:32.523-08:00

I talk to families who die.-- Press Conference w/ Blair, 12/7/06

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1164868895350072982006-11-29T22:37:00.000-08:002006-11-29T22:45:52.176-08:00

Please tell me that's not what Bush is thinking about in this pic:Sick little monkey.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1163184535252861102006-11-10T10:47:00.000-08:002006-11-10T10:48:55.263-08:00

With one unintended consequence: Now we got to watch the little fucker sulk for the next 2 years.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1162275244451951502006-10-30T22:10:00.000-08:002007-03-04T03:47:43.122-08:00

Via Pam, from Agape Press:The American Tract Society’s Donna Skell says Christians should give trick-or-treaters more than candy this Halloween. She suggests they wrap candy treats in gospel tracts that will grab children’s attention with fun cartoons and games. Some of the tracts offered by ATS this year even glow in the dark. Skell says Halloween offers Christians a great chance to share the

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1160038669163127752006-10-05T01:51:00.000-07:002006-10-05T02:00:49.020-07:00

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1154477995512864572006-08-01T17:13:00.000-07:002006-08-01T17:21:12.626-07:00

Idea for new Star Trek movie: William Shatner's hairpiece becomes separate, sentient being (maybe through radiation exposure). It flies, though you can see the wires sometimes, attaches self to women in inappropriate ways, becomes galactic menace. Some worship it as a God. Enterprise must pursue.

RCnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1154477378065433342006-08-01T16:59:00.000-07:002006-08-01T17:10:52.720-07:00

Photos from Roy Rogers's estate sale, posted by the dude next to Roy in the pic.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1154403245605843022006-07-31T20:28:00.000-07:002006-07-31T20:36:05.300-07:00

The United States landed on the moon, then within 50 years fragmented due to a series of wars abroad, political scandals (largely precipitated by either government secrecy or the exchange of money in the political process), and economic mismanagement. By 1992, the U.S. had successfully defeated the USSR (its rival in the so-called “Cold War,” a series of proxy wars, 1945-circa 1992, undergirded

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1142062319406659422006-03-10T23:27:00.000-08:002006-03-10T23:31:59.416-08:00

-- to make Bornagain "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade take a whiz on Winnie the Pooh.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1130909799276663082005-11-01T21:31:00.000-08:002005-11-01T21:36:39.306-08:00

It seems when Scooter’s not busy defrauding the country into a war, he’s writing the kind of hamhanded porn it would take a normal person nine bottles of robotussin to think up.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1130048863897527552005-10-22T23:20:00.000-07:002005-10-22T23:27:43.903-07:00

The more I think about the Nazi Olsen Twins story, the more disturbingly it seems to sum up the contemporary Zeitgeist.

RCnoreply@blogger.com42tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1129178995101631912005-10-12T21:38:00.000-07:002005-11-01T21:42:05.423-08:00

So I found this picture of a dog,and I looked at it for a while before I realize it looks a fuck of a lot like the old character actor Walter Brennan: did a lot of Westerns, played Stumpy in Rio Bravo. He was also Bogart’s drunken first mate in To Have and Have Not, but I’m thinking when he was older:

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1125031753361400362005-08-25T21:40:00.000-07:002005-08-25T21:49:13.366-07:00

Here's a couple woodcuts illustrating Lovecraft's poem, which I have not read, Fungi from Yuggoth:

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1101520378987056232004-11-26T17:41:00.000-08:002004-11-26T18:35:11.283-08:00

I may have mentioned my love for the pulps somewhere in here, especially old covers, and within that by the work of Valigursky (who's apparently still out there somewhere), including for instance this immense golden flying key ring attacking a couple people on the sidewalk of the future: And my particular favorite, our hero (I guess) in a spaceship cooridor, wearing his underwear on the outside

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1098839670916247862004-10-26T18:11:00.000-07:002005-11-01T21:43:00.080-08:00

The new Wisconsin quarter kicks ass.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1098668232864056582004-10-24T18:35:00.000-07:002004-10-24T18:37:12.863-07:00

Beginning when I was very young, my brother made a number of attempts to kill me.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1098581089837587032004-10-23T18:13:00.000-07:002004-10-24T07:48:15.316-07:00

About this time last year I was working on an article for an edited collection which was gonna be called Online Matchmaking: Rhetorical and Social Perspectives or something similar to that. The piece took the self-descriptions people wrote about themselves for their profiles and ran 'em through a little Bakhtinian stuff. Well, the book project never happened, and I recently gave some thought

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1097966037972293872004-10-16T13:35:00.000-07:002004-10-16T19:31:32.516-07:00

Went through Shickshinny this morning, which is conveniently located well within the Susquehanna Steam Electric Station (aka Susquehanna Nuke Plant) ten-mile emergency planning zone (in terms of this map, I live right about where the start button on your taskbar is), home of the Shickshinny Opera House and HQ of the Shickshinny Knights of Malta (aka The American Grand Priory of The Sovereign

RCnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1097842965009116282004-10-15T05:18:00.000-07:002004-10-15T05:22:45.010-07:00

Does the conjunction of this story and this one on Boing Boing bother anybody but me?

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1097625893164097842004-10-12T17:01:00.000-07:002004-10-13T07:43:14.066-07:00

Fox is using a very long, incredibly moronic extended reference to Star Wars to introduce the Red Sox-Yankees game. Also, they're not even trying to hide anymore the fact that Reality TV is all about humiliating your neighbors for your edification and delight. The ads for "My Big Fat Obnoxious Boss" refers directly to something like "Watch these Ivy League MBAs get humiliated!"

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1097274851970845422004-10-08T15:30:00.000-07:002004-10-08T15:42:34.463-07:00

As a member of about ten thousand niche markets and as a good Bakhtinian, I hope to hell this is true .... And this.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1096686330608962612004-10-01T19:57:00.000-07:002004-10-01T20:05:30.606-07:00

Somebody's got to've said this before, but ain't it cool to be a rhetorician in a time when Borges's story is coming true?

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1096341521816101202004-09-27T20:12:00.000-07:002004-09-27T20:18:41.816-07:00

A few weeks back I wrote about wanting to do the old historical/fictional pastiche thing, and now I'm ticked off that this guy beat me to teaming up Cthulhu and Kerouac.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1096253951165000392004-09-26T19:41:00.000-07:002004-09-26T19:59:11.166-07:00

You know, like "Dante and the Lobster." Except with Jesus. And a monkey.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1096082111820265042004-09-24T19:18:00.000-07:002005-11-01T21:52:45.340-08:00

I've been playing around with a persona who's a minor Greek poet of 550 BC plus or minus, who wanders off and winds up in Zhou Dynasty China, or maybe it should be a Zhou Dynasty minor poet who wanders into Athens. Either way, he's probably very slightly mad, just as vigerish, you know. Or maybe just really lonely.So I've been reading a lot of excellent very old things, Beowulf (the new Heaney

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1095860772577395762004-09-22T06:42:00.000-07:002004-09-22T06:46:12.576-07:00

The maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread is declaring bankrupcy.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1094006727304883022004-08-31T18:53:00.000-07:002004-08-31T20:08:16.983-07:00

So I've been reading a lot of Robert Creeley, who as a young man tended to look like a crow turned into a human, really great stuff I'd never delved into all at one time before, though I knew scattered poems. Anyway, Creeley has some great stuff to say in this interview: If one only wrote "good" poems, what a dreary world it would be. "Writing writing" is the point. It's a process, like they

RCnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1093315655313782792004-08-23T19:38:00.000-07:002004-08-23T20:31:09.746-07:00

I suppose everybody's heard about the theft of Munch's Scream. What many of you do not know (and now must be told) is: at that same exact time, armed bandits broke into my apartment and stole my Munchos and my copy of Scream 2.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1093213267789581722004-08-22T15:15:00.000-07:002004-08-22T15:21:07.790-07:00

I especially like the gray one, the sixth one down, doing his John Houseman in The Paper Chase imitation. But the one after him, caught in a state of hopeless existential longing, is very nice too.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1092892938405747342004-08-18T22:10:00.000-07:002004-08-18T22:48:00.456-07:00

Where I come from we know what to do when a UFO lands in your yard: you shoot the fucking thing. The same article refers to Bill Herrmann, who was abducted from a field near Dorchester Road in Charleston, which is a fine place to be abducted from. Hermann also took some highly-regarded UFO pix. Also, one of my favorite restaurants is haunted. Try the shrimp and hominy.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1092889540943635872004-08-18T21:20:00.000-07:002004-08-18T21:27:09.970-07:00

Write a letter to one of these Bosnian Child Artists, slagging the artist on his or her technique and/or choice of subject matter.

RCnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1092887889699118522004-08-18T20:05:00.000-07:002005-11-01T21:59:00.640-08:00

I'm interested in nervousness as a rhetorical category. In the past five years I've worked on two hiring committees at two (not at all distinguished) universities, and "nervousness" was an immediate disqualifier on both. When, on the more recent committee, I asked why nervousness or the lack thereof was a primary criterion, I got puzzled looks. Nervousness is interesting because there's no real

RCnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1092842978475484562004-08-18T08:25:00.000-07:002004-08-18T08:29:38.476-07:00

So I've been thinking about those historical pastiches lately -- you know, like Nicholas Meyer's The Seven Percent Solution, Jack the Ripper against Sherlock Holmes and Sigmund Freud -- and I thought, wouldn't it be cool to push this as far as it can go, and have JTR & Sherlock & Freud, and Dickinson, and Lee Harvey Oswald, Oedipa Maas, and Jesus and Emma Goldman and Frankenstein's monster and

RCnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7988318.post-1092793048861097892004-08-17T18:07:00.000-07:002004-08-18T22:28:54.660-07:00

I decided it'd be good to start a blog for all the weird shit that goes through my head about things other than politics, rock 'n' roll, and living inside the planetary reality TV show, which are the subjects of my other blog. Probable topics here: poetry, rhetoric, my inner demon, teaching, the Mets, Britney, miscellaneous spam. The title of this blog, BTW, is listed in The People's Almanac or

RCnoreply@blogger.com0