Got No Brains, I’m Insane

cure your crazy

Above: I suck at Photoshop

Town Hall’s favorite crazy lady, Mary Grabar, is at it again! This time out, she’s unleashed her patented Slovenian blend of being completely full of crap and making bizarre, unsupportable and frequently incomprehensible statements in service of what she seems to think is an extremely noble goal: getting her fellow female women to stop wetting themselves over Barack Obama. Mary, who was one of the women who found the sight of George W. Bush’s tackle box in a flight suit to be unnervingly sexy, is absolutely appalled at the notion that her fellow lay-teez are allowing their seats to be dampened over this licentious Negro, and she has discovered the ideal way to quell the tide of passion that might otherwise result in a darky being swept into the White House on a tide of musky vapors: poetry.

Let’s watch!

Who would have thought that the gender-barrier crusader Hillary Clinton would be in such a tight race against a candidate before whom young women swoon? Talk about vestiges of patriarchy! Nothing like this has been seen since Beatlemania.

Wow, way to capture the zeitgeist, Mary!

But we’re not talking about teenagers who have recently shed their bobby socks and bras, hoping for a world different from their mothers’. No, these are “grrrls” who play a tough game of soccer, trot the globe on spring break, and outperform their male peers academically. The boys have caught Obamamania, but it’s the “grrrls” who actually faint.

Here, Mary proves that, contrary to any opinion you might have formulated from her previous sentence, she actually has heard of some pop-cultural phenomena of more recent vintage than 1964. For example, she is vaguely aware that soccer might possibly be a hot women’s sport, that females are now occasionally allowed to travel for pleasure, and that, some decade or so ago, there was a thing called rioting grrrls or some such that seemed important to three or four of her students.

More than smelling salts navel and cleavage-baring damsels and their slacker hook-up partners need an airing out of the demagoguery that is cutting off their oxygen.

Uh…okay! Moving on.

They need poetry. They certainly have been fed steady doses of Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni. But such paeans to “multiculturalism” and female empowerment cut off the brain’s ability to reason.

Yes, reading the poetry of Negresses makes you stupid! THIS WOMAN IS A COLLEGE PROFESSOR, PEOPLE, SHE KNOWS WHEREOF SHE SPEAKS.

I would bet that none in the throngs that greet Barack Obama have read Allen Tate’s “The Man of Letters in the Modern World”

And if there’s one thing that marks you as a complete dupe, it’s lack of familiarity with a second-rate poet who plagiarized his most famous work and spent much of his career consorting with fascists (of the non-liberal variety).

or been exposed to his idea that the man of letters protects democracies from the excesses of democracy

That’s the problem with America today. Too much goddamn democracy.

Today’s fashion among poets is to indict the Bush administration with charges gleaned from The New York Times or MSNBC. The outpourings on the “horror of war” come not from those who have served in the military, but from those who copy sentiments from their peers’ Facebooks and get their cues from teachers.

Really, when you think about it, what anti-war poets have ever actually served in the military?

It is no wonder that Obama’s campaign slogan, “We are the hope that we’ve been waiting for,” appeals to adolescents. On the Huffington Post, where about a quarter of contributors appear to be at other times engaged in creative writing, a poet collected some “found poetry” from the Obama campaign trail. (“Found poetry” is a hot genre right now. I learned how to do it in a workshop where we were asked to randomly circle phrases from various newspapers and magazines and then string them together. You can also do it at home with word kitchen magnets.)

Mary Grabar, Trend-Spotter, having already learned of the riot grrrl movement, strikes again with the discovery of magnetic poetry! She is hoping, by summer of 2008, to learn about other cultural trends from 1994 and perhaps even beyond.

The educational system also has succeeded in wiping out positive traces of Western culture to ensure that undergraduates recognize no allusions.

Because you see our colleges and universities are dominated by Marxists who ensure that you can go through four years of college and never read any Shakespzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

It’s a pity, for a solid grounding in poetry would help young people recognize demagoguery. Warren’s poem “Infant Boy at Midcentury” (1956) expresses no particular event or politician but has the effect of being relevant to the current situation. Writing of his son’s birth, Warren states,

You enter at the hour when the dog returns to his vomit,
And fear’s moonflower spreads, white as girl-thigh, in dusk of compromise;
When posing for pictures, arms linked, the same smile in their eyes,
Good and Evil, to iron out all differences, stage their meeting at summit.

Obama’s promise to meet with our enemies, anyone?

I…what?

Warren, of course, diagnoses his age’s growing acceptance of relativism.

“His age”, of course, being 1956, which as anyone will tell you was a period in American history where the country was just overwhelmed with moral relativism. Anyway, that girl-thigh stuff is all well and good, but can’t we talk about dog vomit some more?

It would be well to revisit such poetry whose lasting power resides in its refusal to indict the particularly unpopular politics of the moment, but instead focuses on ideas, or verities, if you will. It would be well to tell college sophomores that the reference to the dog returning to his vomit comes from Proverbs, a very, very old “text” indeed. (“As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly” Proverbs 26:11).

In case you’re having trouble spotting Mary’s point through the thick fog of complete insanity radiating from her column, it is this: we must abandon poetry that criticizes unpopular contemporary politics, and instead embrace poetry that appeals to the eternal truths, such as the fact that dogs enjoy vomit.

At both community colleges and prestigious universities, the overwhelming majority of students have no clue where Warren got this line.

Someone get Dennis Prager on the phone and have him add “Does your college teach kids where the guy who wrote All the King’s Men got that boffo line about dog puke?” to his list of questions to ask admissions officers.

 

Comments: 126

 
 
 

Today’s fashion among poets is to indict the Bush administration with charges gleaned from The New York Times or MSNBC.

Bill Kristol? Tim Russert?

Or did she mean gleaming chargers?

 
 

We all know the real issue is the smell of John McCain’s aftershave, the way the sun glints off the wrinkles in his jacket covering his war wound, and those Romneyan shoulders you can land a plane on. We must focus on how that chicken and ribs bbq at McCain’s pad was totally the dee-lish. And how about McCain’s gruff-but-lovable wispy serial-killer voice?

Damn hysterical women. When McCain nukes Iran THEN they can get all damp in the seat.

 
 

Allen Tate? Warren? Who the hell are these guys?

Completing the comprehensive exams for my English Lit degree took 10 hours over the course of four days. We had to identify random quotes from nearly two thousand works from the Epic of Gilgamesh to modern works. You’d think, somewhere in there, we’d have run across those two if they were in any way worth reading…

Especially since I went to a conservative Catholic college.

 
 

I would rather not talk about my “vestige of patriarchy”, if it’s all the same to you.
Someone needs to tell Ms. Grabar that right-wing blogs are not eligible for the Bulwer-Lytton Contest.

 
gbear, cat owner
 

On the other hand, cats enjoy other cats’ vomit.

 
 

As a cat returns to another cat’s vomit, so a fool returneth to see what’s new at Townhall.

 
 

Yes, the minor poets of fifty years ago that’s the ticket… Everyone should know their every obscure line.

Now get off my lawn!

 
 

No one expects the Southern Agrarians!

 
 

The fact is, the Dustbin is coming for you all.

Heartland.

 
gbear, cat servant
 

At both community colleges and prestigious universities, the overwhelming majority of students have no clue where Warren got this line.

All those students knew was that there was NO WAY that they were going to get into his car.

 
 

There’s no lunch or dinner or satisfaction in the world
equal to an endless walk through the streets of the poor,
where you must be wretched and strong, brothers to the dogs.

“…fratelli dei cani.”

I love that.

 
 

She makes a good point. Not once in college did a single professor discuss dog vomit with me. As a result the significance of most literature, art, and indeed even current events escapes me.

I have been robbed.

 
 

A Cypress Hill title with a Quiet Riot graphic. Now that’s poetry for all the ages!

 
 

Yeah, and what the fuck did Kurt Vonnegut know about war, huh? OK, so he wasn’t a poet, but he wrote shit and stuff, right?

Man, this Grabar character is one dim bulb. But I guess she knows writing, since, according to her bio, she’s “shopping her novel manuscripts, “Dancing with Derrida,” a satire on the postmodern academy and sexual revolutionists, and “The Secret of Little Sister,” a literary mystery.”

And I’ve got an Oscar-worthy film in pre-production, pending the optioning of a script that will soon be in development. Coming eventually to a theater near you.

These people would be funny if they weren’t so pathetic.

OK, they’re still funny, but not in a good way.

 
 

Look, if I want contemporary poetry I’ll ask Righteous Bubba.

If I can get him to stop fooling around with Janusnode.

But here, well, here we have someone who should not have chewed up that third blotter.

Oh, lordy, I’ve been there. You peak, and it’s cool, but see, you fucked up and when you thought you weren’t gonna peak you tore off that third hit, actually,because you thought the whole sheet was crap, it was more like another hit and three quarters of ANOTHER hit, and hell, all of a sudden you’ve got eighteen hundred mics twisting in your brain and you slam as much bourbon as you can before the inevitable wave crashes over you and you go outside and scream, then drive your car as fast as you can up mount tamalpais and you take out your notebook, you gaze out towards the sea, trying to figure out what parts are real, and you think about a fast ship, eighteen guns, under full sail, and hey, waitaminute, where were we, wasn’t there something about dog vomit, and oh, shit, what the hell is that?

mikey

 
Rugged in Montana
 

Well, my knowledge of poetry is limited to the glossalia spouted by the believers at my Grandaddy’s snake-handling church, deep in the Appalachian hills. One transcendent moment in particular comes to mind, when my cousin Betty Joe had the Lord’s flaming spirit come upon her, and she spoke these words of God’s:

You talk like Marlene Dietrich
And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire
Your clothes are all made by Balmain
And there’s diamonds and pearls in your hair yes there are

You live in a fancy apartment
Of the Boulevard St. Michel
Where you keep your Rolling Stones records
And a friend of Sacha Distel yes you do

But where do you go to my lovely
When you’re alone in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head yes I do

I’ve seen all your qualifications
you got from the Sorbonne
and the painting you stole from Picasso
your loveliness goes on and on, yes it does

When you go on your summer vacation
you go to Juan-les-Pines
with your carefully designed topless swimsuit
you get an even suntan, on your back and on your legs

When the snow falls you’re found in St. Moritz
With the others of the jet-set
And you sip your Napoleon Brandy
But you never get your lips wet no you don’t

But where do you go to my lovely
When you’re alone in your bed
wont you Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes I do

Your name is heard in high places
You know the Aga Khan
He sent you a racehorse for Christmas
And you keep it just for fun, for a laugh hahaha

They say that when you get married
It’ll be to a millionaire
But they don’t realize where you came from
And I wonder if they really care, or give a damn

where do you go to my lovely
When you’re alone in your bed
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head yes I do

I remember the back streets of Naples
Two children begging in rags
Both touched with a burning ambition
To shake off their lowly brown tags, yes they try

So look into my face Marie-Claire
And remember just who you are
Then go and forget me forever
‘but I know you still bear
the scar, deep inside, yes you do

I know where you go to my lovely
When you’re alone in your bed
I know the thoughts that surround you
‘Cause I can look inside your head

 
 

Uh…I thought Republicans thought that poetry was for fags.

Except when they can spin a line of bullshit using it as a misshapen and ineffectual cudgel, anyway.

 
 

Look, if I want contemporary poetry I’ll ask Righteous Bubba.

If I can get him to stop fooling around with Janusnode.

Sputter sputter SPUTTER!

 
gbear, common person
 

She is hoping, by summer of 2008, to learn about other cultural trends from 1994 and perhaps even beyond.

Maybe she’ll discover this song.

 
 

BTW, Mister Leonard Price, I noticed you had been scarce around these parts of late…popping up once in comments here in the last week but otherwise MIA…I conclude that you have taken the several weeks necessary to decompress from CPAC, and trust that you have used that time wisely and sought out appropriate therapy to exorcise the memory of Teh Big Stoopid. The horror, the horror….. In any case, glad to see you back on duty again.

 
 

No one expects the Southern Agrarians!

ROTLFMAO, as they say.

Yeah, there’s the new battle cry: Allen Tate will save us!

Don’t these people realize that to their base, any guy who writes poetry is a big ol’ faggy fag, no matter how many pairs of whiskey-stained overalls he owns? Sheesh.

 
 

I had a class once where we discussed dog’s vomit. But it was a type of slime mold, rather than a metaphor. Actually, that was pretty cool. A whole course on mushrooms? And slime molds, while technically outside the purview of such a subject, were included because the prof knew where our real interests lie and was not above a little borderline-indecent pandering.

 
 

But we’re not talking about teenagers who have recently shed their bobby socks and bras, hoping for a world different from their mothers’. No, these are “grrrls” who play a tough game of soccer, trot the globe on spring break, and outperform their male peers academically.
Did Mary Grabar not get the memo from Charlotte Allen that wimmenz are “teh dim?”

 
 

Nothing like this has been seen since Beatlemania.

It’s FOUR TIMES BIGGER than Beatlemania because there’s only ONE OBAMA.

Look out Shea Stadium.

 
 

On the other hand, cats enjoy other cats’ vomit.

Not when the dogs — or the Republicans — beat them to it.

And afterwards they always want to kiss you on the mouth, eeugh. The Republicans, I mean.

As for the “teenagers who have recently shed their bobby socks and bras” — is Grabar stuck in some weird timewarp where 1958 and 1974 have crashed into each other?

 
 

Woah, this Tate guy banged a nun.

Not my idea of a moral example, but hey, we can’t all be William Bennet.

 
 

Oh for fuck’s sake. I would SO fucking appreciate it if pretentious tools like this ass-bag would quit faux-pontificating about why we prefer this candidate or don’t like that one and trying to pass it off as wry commentary by tricking it all up with cute little triplets of pop culture references like some Mo-Do wannabe. I mean, that’s pathetic enough, but then she fucks the references up too. I mean, bobby sox AND bras? Beatlemania? I passed out on my fainting couch after that and simply couldn’t go on. And also, Allen Tate? How many pages in the Norton’s Anthology did she have to thumb through to dig that one up? Jeezus Kristoid.

Oh, and Rugged in Montana: I recognize those lyrics. They’re from that annoying song in “Darjeeling Special” or whatever that movie was, the one with Owen Wilson’s face all bandaged up. I’d hoped I’d never be reminded of them again. Thanks a lot, pal. By the way, wanna cite who wrote ’em? I don’t think it was God.

 
Rugged in Montana
 

By the way, wanna cite who wrote ‘em? I don’t think it was God.

It was the voice of God through my cousin Betty Joe and there’s no way you can prove otherwise, Islamomarxist beard-wearer!

 
 

You enter at the hour when the dog returns to his vomit,
I find myself singing these lines to the tune of Golden Earring’s Vanilla Queen. I hope this does not make me a bad person.

 
 

MLP-

If you think You Suck At Photoshop, Donnie can help you with your skillz.

 
 

Um, I think that makes you a Roquer!

[Devil Horns]

Metallica rocks, dude…

mikey

 
 

I can’t say that I recall ever having spoken through Betty Joe.

 
 

“More than smelling salts navel and cleavage-baring damsels and their slacker hook-up partners need an airing out of the demagoguery that is cutting off their oxygen.”

Well, obviously.

To her, anyway.

Methinks your image of her was far too kind.

 
 

Allen Tate? Warren?

Goddammit, I thought we were supposed to be learning Shakespeare and Haydn! Get with the plan, people!!!1

 
Smiling Mortician
 

*sigh*

OK. I guess this is the point at which I, as an English professor, must both reject and deny . . . no, I must renounce and condemn . . . ah, hell, where are my notes? . . . OK . . . I must negate and flee . . . shit, that’s not right.

Anyway, I need to apologize on behalf of Mary Grabar, apparently, because some fucking dimbulb administrator actually gave her a job “teaching” actual students. Fuck.

OK. I apologize. And condemn. And denounce.

Now I feel better.

Hey, on another topic, I’d pay good money to know who’s doing the latest version of Buggered in Montana. Well, I didn’t mean “doing” him in that sense, but rather . . . oh, never mind. Anway, he’s pretty damn funny, so whoever took over his persona — good show.

 
 

Actually, “All the King’s Men” IS a wonderful novel, and I wouldn’t write off Robert Penn Warren based on Grabar’s excerpt.

Nonetheless…..how fucking crazy is she?

 
 

At both community colleges and prestigious universities, the overwhelming majority of students have no clue where Warren got this line.

Yes, and whose fault is that, Professor Grabar?

 
 

my knowledge of poetry is limited to the glossalia spouted by the believers at my Grandaddy’s snake-handling church, deep in the Appalachian hills.

Huh. Rogered in Montana, that must mean that you no longer attend church in Montana. Infidel!

 
 

Actually, I think Gary found Montana, they got down to dirty bidness, and now they collaborate on a single, more relaxed, life-affirming and amusing persona who melds their nastiest traits into one satirical gem, JanusNode stylee.

In fact, if we could write an algorithm that would do that I predict Righteous Bubba would never log a productive hour again.

 
 

It’s FOUR TIMES BIGGER than Beatlemania because there’s only ONE OBAMA.

Look out Shea Stadium.

And four times the pot by the time he makes it to Candlestick Park!

 
 

Stretched Muskrat with Jellied Apples

Ingredients:
1 muskrat, stretched
1 pound new apple, dismayingly grated
4 sticks watery blind-worm’s sting
4 gallons rare turtle thorax, candied
1 jigger thyme
1 ounce jasmine

Pre-heat your oven to 7 Celsius. Exquisitely grease a cookie sheet. Separate muskrat foot from stomach. Discard stomach. Combine the apple with the blind-worm’s sting over low heat in a jar. Stuff the resulting mixture into the muskrat. Mix – very facetiously – the turtle thorax, thyme, and the jasmine. Mush everything together. Bake for 83 hours. Serves 14 individuals with crimson stomachs.

 
 

So is Mary Grabar’s point that these kids these days like Obama because they aren’t learning enough poetry in school?

My mind has been boggled.

 
 

It’s amazing that Obama supporters don’t stay up late at night reading a man who wrote biographies of Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson (and poems about Confederate soldiers). His writing must be really in’eresting. Take that Gwendolyn Brooks!

 
 

And four times the pot by the time he makes it to Candlestick Park!

I do not believe Obama requires Little Richard* to teach the proper “OOOOO” method.

*Little Richard might possibly be full of shit. Maybe.

 
 

First Prager, now Grabar: when will the book-learnin’-is-good heresy end?

 
 

I’m going to have to disagree with your characterization of Rupert Brooke as an anti-war poet. He was pretty into war.

 
 

“At both community colleges and prestigious universities, the overwhelming majority of students have no clue where Warren got this line.”

Know what I think would be fun? Sending her an email asking her to solve Sigma x=1, infinity ; 1/(2^x), and watch her head explode.

“I would bet that none in the throngs that greet Barack Obama have read Allen Tate’s “The Man of Letters in the Modern World””

Well, let’s be fair here, I bet none of the throngs of the current batch of Republicans have ever read anything at all, so I think she can spot us one book.

Bobby socks and bras? Seriously, does we has calender? Every chick I know likes their bras, because without them it HURTS TO WALK. Underwire support is a good thing.

“The educational system also has succeeded in wiping out positive traces of Western culture to ensure that undergraduates recognize no allusions.”

I agree, there. After spending ~13 years in school, and going over European and Western civilization every goddamn year, I know nothing about Western Culture, though I’m pretty sure Chairman Mao was the one who discovered America in the 1400’s, funded by Dear Leader Kim Jong Ill, since White Devil was so busy enslaving the black man and exterminating the Native Americans.

“More than smelling salts navel and cleavage-baring damsels and their slacker hook-up partners need an airing out of the demagoguery that is cutting off their oxygen.”

I have no clue what the fuck that’s supposed to mean. I suspect she blacked out on an absinthe binge, and woke up staring at that on her computer screen, and finding that her “Delete” key was failing to function, decided to leave in it. I am confident, however, that deep down in her psyche, she’s royally pissed that she never was allowed to flash her twins around, or feel desired.
http://www.rhymes.org.uk/pics/queen-elizabeth-1.jpg
Queen Elizabeth says, “We find it to be highly refreshing and comfortable in the hot summer months!”

 
 

4 sticks watery blind-worm’s sting
My pet inwit just died. Let me know if you can use its agenbite, in lieu of this hard-to-source ingredient of RB’s recipe.

 
 

find myself singing these lines to the tune of Golden Earring’s Vanilla Queen. I hope this does not make me a bad person.

How weird. I was somewhat in my cups last night, and wanted to hear that song desperately. I went to Teh Tube and the only video of it is gone! Aaaargh!

The idea of that Grabar woman actually teaching people about poetry makes me feel as though I just returned to the dog vomit, and then someone with absolutely no understanding of an artform with a brilliant arch encompassing a myriad states of expression from terrible beauty to wry humor to desperate sorrow to the healing peace of time came along and shoved my nose in said vomit.

white as girl-thigh, in dusk of compromise

Also, I just have to say that the white of the girl-thigh and the duskiness of the compromise are central to her point. Whatever the fuck that point may be.

 
 

hard-to-source ingredient of RB’s recipe.

Mary Grabar rends her hockey mask in frustration!!!

 
 

Nothing like this has been seen since Beatlemania.

Well, you know, Ringo used to get the most fan mail. Not that there’s anything wrong with Ringo. But he was no Barack Obama.

 
 

It is no wonder that Obama’s campaign slogan, “We are the hope that we’ve been waiting for,” appeals to adolescents.
Mary Grabar’s next poetry course could be “Old Testament allusions, MLK Jnr, and Gandhi in the rhetoric of Barack Obama.” Though I suspect that Doonesbury has already sucked the juice out of that joke.

 
 

Yesterday my praying mantis Spot died mistily. He got run over by a hydrofoil. Spot gave so much and asked so little in return.

 
 

Faux-biology-major here. Dogs return to their vomit because, for their wild-dog ancestors, eating their prey and then regurgitating the partially digested stuff was a convenient way to bring baby food home to the pups. Since they also ate carrion, being able to toss their cookies at will was a good thing if they ate cookies that turned out to have been left out in the hot sun too long. Not sure what that has to do with fools and folly, but then, I’m a faux-biology-major, not a faux-intellectual-townhall-writer.

 
Lakeesha Shaidle
 

Like a dog returns to its vomit; like a load returns to its pants…whatever. I don’t know shit about Allen Tate or Sharon Tate or Robert Earl Warren or any of those guys, but I did get a great bottle of tequila today for $18. Not as good as saving on insurance through Geico, but I don’t own a car anyway and – oh, fuck, I’m really drunk. Sorry, people. Time for beddy-bye.

 
 

My newt just died disturbedly after about 113 days – he was the quaint ceremonial love of my drunken bald life. He fought that camel but couldn’t last. I miss Barf so much…

 
 

don’t know shit about Allen Tate or Sharon Tate or Robert Earl Warren or any of those guys, but I did get a great bottle of tequila today for $18.

Raises a glass of chardonnay to Lakeesha. Cheers! Sweet dreams.

 
 

Most of my dogs were known to actually eat their vomit. Just sayin’. What that means symbolically, I dunno.

 
 

Hey Rugged in Montana, if your going to write all the lyrics of songs, make sure its not a real sad, loser 70’s number, personally, I would prefer, REM or RHCP.

 
 

Most of my cats also saw the value in vomit.

I think they were just a bunch of liberals, recycling.

But what do I know? They never let those mousies go.

 
 

Songs, songs. Well, I hope Rugged is huddling in the brushland of Montana and having a good Stephen Sondheim singalong. The Saab-driving vegan teachers probably could sing along:

“Somebody, hold me too close,
Somebody, hurt me too deep,
Somebody, sit in my chair
And ruin my sleep
And make me aware
Of being alive,
Being alive.

Somebody, need me too much,
Somebody, know me too well,
Somebody, pull me up short
And put me through hell
And give me support
For being alive,
Make me alive.

Make me confused,
Mock me with praise,
Let me be used,
Vary my days.
But alone is alone, not alive.

Somebody, crowd me with love,
Somebody, force me to care,
Somebody, make me come through,
I’ll always be there,
As frightened as you,
To help us survive
Being alive,
Being alive,
Being alive!”

After singing this, Rugged, you should drive the pick-up into Bozeman and find a dark secluded bar to go hang out in and find yourself a fellow traveller.

 
 

Psychology Today: Home of Genocidal Lunatics.

Could it all be some sort of ridiculous experiment?

 
 

I’m going to have to disagree with your characterization of Rupert Brooke as an anti-war poet. He was pretty into war.

And if I’m not mistaken he was the only one of the poets Mister Leonard Pierce linked to who never actually saw combat. He died of illness before he could take part in his first battle. Maybe if he hadn’t he would have produced something like Dulce et Decorum Est, who knows.

But thanks for the link to Henry Reed. In college I had a boyfriend who read Judging Distances to me — you brought back a nice memory.

 
 

I guess Miss Mary got the same talking points about the dreaded multiculturalism in academia as everyone else. As a former English teacher, I’m touched by the power over the teenage mind she ascribes to poetry. Sadly, reality often contradicts this, but who am I to try to deny someone the pleasure of her fantasy?

It’s also pretty amazing that she thinks teenagers listen to teachers, let alone become brainwashed by them. Non-authoritarians have been allowed to or achieve a sense of who they are. Authoritarians don’t know who they are becasue they are not permitted to be anything but what their parents demand. So they tend to define themselves by who they are not–through exclusion. And they jealously guard their exclusivity, the source of their self-worth and self-pity.

 
 

Poetic wingnuttery. Who’d a thunk it. I’m so smitten for that Hurl.

g. maybe Roses Cantina ?– if it’s still there.

 
Rugged in Montana
 

After singing this, Rugged, you should drive the pick-up into Bozeman and find a dark secluded bar to go hang out in and find yourself a fellow traveller.

Bozeman? Bozeman is a wicked place filled with homosexites GIVING their essence away! I keep to the rural areas of Montana, patrolling for Muslimarxists in the high grass, with a now-pretend M1 Battle Rifle™ strapped to my back. The song you’d like me to sing is rife with defeatist propaganda “Somebody, crowd me with love,
Somebody, force me to care”
that I will never surrender to, not while the brave flag of Blackwater still flys, longer, I think, than you decadent hopheads will!

 
 

Gary Rupart said:
The fact is, the Dustbin is coming for you all.

Heartland.

Hey leave me out of this, I’ve got better things to do

 
 

Oh, c’mon, Rugged. You’d love Sondheim. Really you would! Trust me!

He even wrote songs about manly hunter type guys (better go google lyrics now).

 
 

Bozeman is a wicked place filled with homosexites GIVING their essence away!

It’s free and you’re still complaining?

 
 

never happy, that one.

 
 

“The outpourings on the “horror of war” come not from those who have served in the military…”

Uh, she says this only days before the New Winter Soldiers hearings by Iraq Veterans Against the War?

 
 

“Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.” – Orson Welles

 
 

Whoah. This is, like, SO weird. I just did this song thing and I was wondering how I would shoehorn it in to some random thread and HERE YOU ARE, doing poetry and lyrics and…my tiny mind reels.

Anyway, this evening I was doing my DFH thing, riding my recumbent bike along the trail home from work (true!) and part of a song popped into my head. A bit of time, some thought and a little alcohol and I present for you…

Green Footballs
(sung to the tune of Green Acres)

(HIM)
Green Footballs, where I’d like to be
Charles’ rantings full of the crazy
I…do not want to think too much
Dhimis and Libruls, Green Footballs is my crutch!

(HER)
Sad-ly No is where I want to be
Green Footballs makes my head achy
Brad, Mencken and the rest are fine
Sadly’s the place I want to claim as mine!

AP!
Tyree!

The shouts!
The sprouts!

You aren’t a ‘nut
My mind’s not that shut

Green Footballs, stay a-waaaay!

 
 

Good, OneMan.

and what are you drinking? I’ll buy you one.

 
 

MAXIMILLIAN
All’s for the good in
This best of all possible worlds!

CANDIDE:
Objection!
What about war?

PANGLOSS:
War!
Though war may seem a bloody curse
It is a blessing in reverse
When canon roar
Both rich and poor
By danger are united!
(Till every wrong is righted!)

Philosophers make evident
The point that I have cited
‘Tis war makes equal — as it were —
The noble and the commoner
Thus war improves relations!

ALL:
Now onto conjugations!

PANGLOSS:
Amo, amas,
Amat, amamus!

STUDENTS:
Amo, amas,
Amat, amamus!

PANGLOSS:
Proving that this is
The best of all possible worlds
With love and kisses [blows a kiss]
The best of all possible worlds!

 
 

Why thank you g. I’ll take a Sauza Gold Hornitos, neat.

 
 

…and I guess now we know who’s the highbrow and who’s the lowbrow in this bunch.

Heh.

 
 

bartender – get the fellow in the tie-dyed shirt down at the other end of the bar a Sauza Gold.

Thanks.

and I’ll have another Soave.

 
 

Ooh, cool, owlbear. Thanks.

What you drinking? I’ll buy.

 
 

And, bartender, do you know when the show across the street lets out for intermission? Let’s buy a round before they come in.

 
 

Hydrogen Fizzies!

 
 

…with a side of lox?

 
 

As soon as the curtain comes down on the final bows, I know the frontlight operators come down the fire escape and beat the crowds into the bar. Their drinks are on me.

 
 

Ooh, better yet, it’s on uw2.tv here in Seattle. Much nicer picture.

 
 

Ouch, 45 minute hold.

 
 

Yeah, thank the baby jeebus for Tivo. Old man needs his beauty sleep.

 
 

owlbear! Thank you so much! This’ll be the first launch I’ve caught in forever.

 
 

Your Welcome. Night launches are very cool, I try not to miss them.

 
 

OneMan, you’re in Seattle?

so when the guys come down from the Paramount booth, is the bar at the top floor of the Camlin still open for drinks after the show?

 
 

Someone say “onto conjugations!” Someone earlier mentioned tequila!
Would you decline a tequila?
.
.
.
(wait for it)
.
.
.
Atequila, atequilae, atequili, atequilam, atequilo.

 
 

Creamed Envious Badger with Braised Pineapples

Ingredients:
7 bags pliable badger
1 ounce pineapple, anarchically toasted
1 intrinsic grape, salted
7 jars explorable fox leg
2 pinches sugar
1 ounce fat

Pre-heat your George Foreman grill to 424 Farenheit. Pick over the ingredients powerfully and discard excess sandstone. Separate badger whisker from tail. Consume tail. Combine the pineapple with the grape over low heat in a cup. Stuff the resulting goo into the badger. Glaze – very clubbily – the fox leg, sugar, and the fat. Pound everything together. Do not bake for 124 hours. Instead, cream as if your content depended on it. Serves 4 individuals with crumby stomachs.

 
 

I’m pouring out a 40 at the crossroads for Barf.

 
 

Bless you. Barf was so, uh, what was he again?

 
 

Newty?

 
 

Is there some way we could just put Mary Grabar away and pretend she never existed?

Or is it too late to put that genie back in the bottle?

And what’s up lately with the wingnuts being overcome by the fantods because of Maya Angelou? Did you catch that clip of Laura Ingraham’s meltdown because her guest admitted she didn’t listen to talk radio? And then Laura went to the guest’s Web site and found out she had a quote from … Maya Angelou?!?!?!?

Aaaahhhhh! Maya Angelou!

It reminds me of the fall of 2006 when the conservatives were all set to wet themselves over Nancy Pelosi as Speaker.

Conservatives are weenies.

 
 

Speaking of weenies, what was up with that Randall Byrd thread? Why would a McDonalds employee be so upset that some people like to shred trolls? And why would he be such a dick about it?

 
 

More than smelling salts navel and cleavage-baring damsels and their slacker hook-up partners need an airing out of the demagoguery that is cutting off their oxygen.

I put my back out in my sleep last night, and sweet Jesus boogie-boarding Christ, it is quite spectacularly fuckin’ painful.

But only slightly moreso than reading that sentence.

 
 

You’ll need more than “an airing out” to get rid of this demagoguery that’s cutting off the oxygen — a couple of 15th-level fighters —
Sorry. I thought you said ‘demigorgon’.

 
 

Perhaps some punctuation would help:

“More than smelling salts, navel- and cleavage-baring damsels and their slacker hook-up partners need an airing out of the blah blah blah”

Nope, it’s still awful. Seems she’s saying damsels AND their hookup partners need smelling salts, which fux up the damsel/smelling salts thing. At any rate, they all need an airing out more, cuz as readers of black poetry they’re DFH’s and thus they smell.

Okay, now I have to go to work and deal with sentences even more appalling than that one.

 
 

That’s “demogorgon.” A demigorgon would be (roughly) four Medusa’s heads (= 1 hemidemisemigorgon).

Another way D&D prepared me for the future….computer programming. I never did any, but I can appreciate the consequences of a misspelling or a misplaced comma.

I said the words, basically.

 
 

The fact is, bias hate heartland freedom free markets classwar USA Bush awesome troops.

 
 

MzNicky, unless you’re a teacher, I assume you’re in an editorial role. I am too, and of course, it’s nearly always pretty bad; in my experience, the average trained journalist these days has a writing age of about 12-14. But it’s the extra layer of thick-spread wingnutty that really tips that sentence over the edge.

 
 

Mary Grabar’s a goddamned idiot, and even the conservative half of the editorial board over at the Atlanta Urinal-Constipation can’t bring themselves to publish her rants on the editorial page more than about four or five times a year. Frankly, I think Townhall takes up a collection so they can bribe the Cox family into running one of Grabar’s screeds once in a while.

IIRC, Grabar’s an “English” prof over at Agnes Scott College, a women’s university over in DeKalb County, on the eastern side of the Atlanta metro area. When I moved to tha A-T-L in the early 90s, I was advised that the only good things to come out of DeKalb were Agnes Scott grads and Interstate 20.

I’m pretty sure “Dr.” Grabar was not included in either of those categories.

 
 

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
by Randall Jarrell

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

 
 

The Fury of Aerial Bombardment
by Richard Eberhart

Of Van Wettering I speak, and Averill,
Names on a list, whose faces I cannot recall,
But they are gone to early death, who late in school
Distinguished the belt-feed lever from the belt-holding pawl.

 
 

You enter at the hour when the dog returns to his vomit,
And fear’s moonflower spreads, white as girl-thigh, in dusk of compromise;
When posing for pictures, arms linked, the same smile in their eyes,
Good and Evil, to iron out all differences, stage their meeting at summit.

I know childbirth is icky, but you don’t have to be so dramatic about it!

 
 

Well now, isn’t THAT a cheerful thought to start the morning?

 
 

I often feel like I’ve jumped down the rabbit hole in this column. The cross referencing alone could take all day. How do you do it?
Thanks for keeping it real (and sometimes real confusing – but in a good way).
XXKHT
p.s. mmm, dog vomit

 
 

When I think about the birth of my kids, dog vomit does not come to mind. Pain, drugs, fear and great joy–yes. Dog vomit–no.

 
 

Dog vomit is actually no big deal, really. Dogs are rather nonchalant about it, and usually clean it up themselves when they’re done.

 
 

Dogs are declasse.

 
 

“More than smelling salts navel and cleavage-baring damsels and their slacker hook-up partners need an airing out of the demagoguery that is cutting off their oxygen.”

Words!!

 
 

She must have been nipping at the Christmas brandy when she wrote it. That’s the only thing that makes sense.

 
 

How do so many idiots manage to land lucrative and influential positions in the US punditocracy?

 
 

Silly Leonard, there are no Fascists of the non-Liberal variety!

 
 

“I don’t want an educated population, I want oxen.”
-former dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza

 
 

g:

OneMan, you’re in Seattle?

so when the guys come down from the Paramount booth, is the bar at the top floor of the Camlin still open for drinks after the show?

First, apologies for departing without notice last night. It was rude of me.

Yeah, I live in Seattle.

And I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea of the answer to your question.

The Spousal Unit and I moved back into the area some years ago with the beginnings of a family and, well, the night life has been somewhat curtailed since.

Now if you wanted to know what was happening late night in San Francisco 20 years ago, I’m your man!

 
 

Quotes from Robert Penn Warren:
Robert Penn Warren quotes
“I don’t expect you’ll hear me writing any poems to the greater glory of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.”

“The poet is in the end probably more afraid of the dogmatist who wants to extract the message from the poem and throw the poem away than he is of the sentimentalist who says, “Oh, just let me enjoy the poem.”

 
Five of Diamonds
 

Nothing like this has been seen since Beatlemania.

I’m saying this as a straight man, Barack is handsome, but this is a little overboard.

 
Five of Diamonds
 

THIS WOMAN IS A COLLEGE PROFESSOR, PEOPLE

Is she a professor of hyperbole?

 
 

You enter at the hour when the dog returns to his vomit,
And fear’s moonflower spreads, white as girl-thigh, in dusk of compromise;
When posing for pictures, arms linked, the same smile in their eyes, Good and Evil, to iron out all differences, stage their meeting at summit.

Warren explains the verse to his son.

Let me put in prose. You were born at the hour when the dog returns to his vomit which is the same hour at which fear’s moonflower spreads in dusk of compromise. It’s the dusk of compromise because it’s when Good and Evil stage their meeting at summit to iron out all differences. They pose for pictures, arms linked, with the same smile in their eyes.

Still doesn’t make sense? I’ll explain.

Son, you were born at night. You can tell I mean at night, by the “dusk” and “moonflower” references. Also, after you’ve been up for hours after everyone else has gone to bed, and the page is still white as girl-thigh, you get desperate. You think of some stuff, and you know some of it’s OK, and some of it sucks boulders. But dammit, you’re tired, your eyes are burning and blurring and you have to crank out your daily word goal. So you type up all of it—it’s all smiling at you with its eyes—and plan to edit it the next day. That’s the compromise between Good and Evil.

What does the dog vomit part mean?

Well, in this particular case, when I was editing, somehow I missed the dog vomit line. It doesn’t make sense. We all know the dog is happy to snack on pre-swallowed kibbles, or even fully processed cat chow from the litter box, any old time of the day or night. But it’s a quote from the Bible, and it will give the literary critics something to talk about someday, so it’s all Good.

 
 

“I saw the best minds of my generation, destroyed by madness, starving hysterical…”

Apparently Ginsburg was a prophet, predicting the Republican revolution…

 
 

But we’re not talking about teenagers who have recently shed their bobby socks and bras,…

Hey! Let’s get back to talking about shedding bobby socks and bras.

 
 

Grabar? Her name is really Grabar? As in those handrails they have in bathrooms that old people and the feeble clutch to keep from falling in and accidentally drowning themselves in the toilet?

Oh, sorry. That’s a grab bar, not grabar.

Aw hell. Close enough in function and spelling to not matter.

 
 

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