Latest Twitterings

As some of these postings are sequential and the most recent postings are at the top it might make sense to read these from the bottom up:

Latest Sharkie Mae Update: Allan Greenspan coming out of retirement to became Chairman of the Board of Directors.
1 day ago from web

Stop the Presses: Former Senator Alphonse D'Amato has been appointed CEO of Sharkie Mae. 3 days ago from web

New motto for Vikram Bandit's Citicorpse: "The Citi Never Wakes". 4 days ago from web

Securitized loan shark loans are known on the Street as "Goombah Bonds". 5 days ago from web

Did Hank Paulson really set up Sharkie Mae to buy deadbeat loan shark loans from the Mafia and offload them to Citicorpse to securitize? 7 days ago from web

How about a site for twitterers on coke -- to be called (of course) "tooter". But keeping under 140 characters would be a severe challenge. 9 days ago from web

"Biteniks" -- A derisive term used to describe young, culturally rebellious vampires in the 1950s. 10 days ago from web
What exactly is Rosa Sub Rosa (an entertainer with a shady past) doing with Sammy Data Jr. (her cyborg servant)? 12 days ago from web

The corporate bond market is priced with the expectation that 9/10ths of the shoes in Imelda Marcos's collection are going to drop. 13 days ago

I'm Back -- Best of Twitter

Lately I've been writing small -- 140 characters or less -- on Twitter. Here are my most recent Twitter postings:

"We need a whole lot more Bo Diddley/And a lot less Ho Chi Minh" -- oops, that was 1968s What's Hot & What's Not
about 1 hour ago from web

Marketing campaign -- STARBUCKS: We've got free bathrooms - albeit not too clean - and bottled water that doesn't totally suck. about 23 hours ago from web

I think it's more the mass psychosis that has consumers deluded into thinking that the vile liquid on sale at Starbucks is actually coffee. about 23 hours ago from web

Or is sociopathology in a society correlated with the number of extant Starbucks locations. As for me, I prefer the coffee at Queequegs. 1 day ago from web

Hillary is now Barack's bitch, not Bill's any longer. 3 days ago from web

Perhaps a felon more audacious than Vikram Bandit can revive Citicorpse? Is it time for W. to pardon Bernie Ebbers or Ken Lay? 4 days ago from web

I've incorporated as the First National Piggy Bank of Clinton Street, and am applying for a TARP bailout. 8 days ago from web

Did Vikram Bandit of Citicorpse lay himself off today? 9 days ago from web

Mike Hookahbee? Mike Hunkabee? Mike Honkiebee? 17 days ago from web

Waiting for the wack-jobs to start coming out of the woodwork.... 18 days ago from web

To try to curry favor with Barack Obama, quisling Senator Joe Lieberman forces his wife to change her first name from Hadassah to Madrassa. 18 days ago from web

Phil G., ya just didn't go far enough -- Earthlings live on a "Planet of Whiners" -- Imagine an annoying sci-fi classic with that title. 18 days ago from web

Memo to Turd Blossom (aka Karl Rove): Sorry, pal. Y'all lost the culture wars for at least the next generation. 20 days ago from web

The Daley brothers, with the Kennedy clan as junior partners, pulled off their coup fair and square. Kudos all around, guys (and gals)!!! 20 days ago from web

If we bracket in parens the two major Chicago park events of 1968 and 2008, what might this tell us about what cultural trends to expect? 20 days ago from web

One of the hidden subtexts of this election is that many people -- and not only young ones -- believe the premise of "Better Os with O". 21 days ago from web

Writing "Frankly, Barney" -- a heartwarming tale about a powerful Congressperson who just happens to be a corrupt gay purple dinosaur. 24 days ago from web

"I was born in Silicon Valley/Went L5 at the age of three/That was when my darling companion/Said that she'd move in with me...." 27 days ago from web

In a movie about Christian vampires, when the vampire slayer holds up a cross the vampire laughs and says: "Was that ever a wrong move." about 1 month ago from web

"Bebe Rebozo was a friend to the rich/He traveled with a bag in every hand/All across the Watergate his name it did resound...."

Barack W. Bush: The Prisoner of Kennebunkport

Here is the final version of this story:

BARACK W. BUSH: THE PRISONER OF KENNEBUNKPORT


I was introduced to T-Ice (and that was the only name by which I knew him at that time) by Bronc White during a long night at Puffy’s Tavern sometime in the early June of 1999. When I arrived at Puffy’s that evening, Bronc, Sonny Warhol and T-Ice were in the throes of celebrating what T-Ice described as “The Emancipation Proclamation,” a speech in which he quoted Robert Beck (‘How about it, an “Iceberg” with a warm heart?’), and paraphrased Douglas MacArthur (‘Old pimps never die. They just change the games they play.’) He had just given his stable of whores their freedom, peeling approximately two hundred thousand dollars off of what had to have been the biggest pimp roll in history in order to give each of them a start in their new lives. The next day T-Ice went to work as a commodities trader, and more than tripled his previous income. I never really knew much about T-Ice’s family background. On one occasion Sonny told me that T-Ice’s father was the descendent of Arab-African slave traders from Kenya and his mother was from a well-connected American family that boasted several prominent political figures. I invariably saw T-Ice over the next two years during the course of my very occasional visits to Puffy’s, but one evening it occurred to me that he was no longer to be found there. Bronc later told me T-Ice mysteriously disappeared shortly after 9/11 and has not been heard from since. After drifting out of that orbit, I was shocked to read about the lurid and sensational murder of Bronc White at Bowery Poetry Club in 2002, and I totally lost touch with Sonny Warhol, until I received the following email from him this afternoon. For what it’s worth I’m passing it along….


The file containing these diary entries was sent to me by the daughter of an ex-president who happens to be an old late-night partying buddy of both Barack W. Bush (who was known as T-Ice) and myself. His friends were distraught when T-Ice, which is short for Titanic Iceberg, disappeared. And we have become increasingly furious over time in the wake of the all-encompassing media blackout designed to turn him into a non-person. Given the penultimate entry in his diary, like T-Ice himself, I fear for the worst. Now I am making this file public in the hope that it will spark a sustained protest movement that will result in a full Congressional investigation into the disappearance of T-Ice. It is obviously too late to impeach George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, but we intend to blow the lid off the cover-up being perpetrated by that wanker who was elected president in November.

Note that I am not at all offended by T-Ice’s reference to my father. Some of you will no doubt be familiar with my autobiographical song: “Daddy Was a Poofter, Mama Was a Stone Bull Dyke”. Daddy wasn’t much of a father and Mama wasn’t much of a mother. T-Ice said the same things about his biological parents (although he was quite fond of his stepfather). Maybe that’s why we bonded so strongly.

Solanas (“Sonny”) Warhol
March 15, 2009


Selected Excerpts from the Diaries of Barack W. Bush

January 18, 2008

Cocaine is the drug of choice of bores of all ages. And that applies in spades (sorry Barry) to my two presidential half-sibs. Mama Babs was beside herself with anger when I screened footage of George W. and Barry engaging in a snortathon in the CEO box during a Texas Rangers game. It was real cinema verité, with shaky camera work and all, which was perhaps the result of all of the 'shrooms I had ingested before the game. And while we're on the topic of 'shrooms, I might add that 41's giggling fit while watching the snortathon footage gave me a pretty good idea of who raided my 'shroom stash last week.


February 3, 2008

You might be wondering just how I came to exist. The explanation may sound improbable, but it’s really very simple and indisputably true. Mama Babs was totally blotto during her one-nighter with Barack Obama Senior, and so the fact that it actually happened had slipped her mind entirely. Consequently, when she found herself in the family way she naturally assumed it was the handiwork of the future 41, only to be disabused of this notion when a maternity ward nurse placed me in her arms. I am told the first words Mama Babs uttered in my presence were: “Oh, FUCK!”


February 12, 2008

It's soooo quiet in K-port during the winter. Most of the time it's just me and the Secret Service detail, so I have plenty of time to write songs, not that anyone else is likely to hear them anytime soon, least of all darling Condi. Appointing her as Secretary of State was my half-bro's one smart move as President. And don't you believe that Sweet Jesus demeanor of his. He's been pronging Condi all but senseless for years. Am I jealous? Does the Pope smoke dope? Not this one, he's an old style Teutonic Knight, but maybe the last one? Or perhaps, more likely, the one before the guy who died after a month, you know, the one who had a boyfriend in the Milan Opera? But I digress. As you can see, Condi has the last word in the song I wrote this morning while I was way under the influence of the favorite herb of one or another Pope:

Al Qaeda says
Al Qaeda says
Al Qaeda says
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas

Israeli army says
Israeli army says
Israeli army says
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas

Jimmy Carter says
Jimmy Carter says
Jimmy Carter says
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas
More hummus for Hamas

Condi Rice says
Condi Rice says
Condi Rice says
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas
No hummus for Hamas

I wonder what old Jiminy is going to do as an encore after his latest visit to the Middle East. Maybe he’ll go to Iran and be personally kidnapped by President A-Man-in-Dinner-Jacket, who was, after all, one of the kidnappers at the American embassy during Jiminy’s administration. Would George W. offer a ransom to get him back? If so, what would it consist of? A bag of peanuts?


March 17, 2008

Don't you wonder what kind of a world this is going to be to raise children in now if there is any truth in the rumor that Oprah Winfrey has bought the Church of Scientology and renamed it the Church of Oprahtology? And it’s also rumored that she has even changed the name of the E-Meter to the O-Meter, which children will soon be forced to use once they enter second grade, according to new Department of Education regulations that are currently being drafted under the No Child Left Behind Act. Even more frightening, assuming 41’s sources are accurate, is that Oprah has had herself artificially inseminated with L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm and is about to give birth to the Antichrist, which will go by the name of T. Cruise Winfrey.


April 8, 2008

This morning’s mail brought a new batch of waq from Gatherer. Waq is an (as yet) entirely legal hallucinogen with a pronounced comedic edge. Gatherer is Gatherer S. Thompson, one of the most brilliant biochemists on the planet, and the twin sister of Hunter S. Thompson, one of my all-time favorite writers. Gatherer and I met during the period of time in which I was trading light sweet crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange and living in Battery Park City (from where I was kidnapped by Secret Service agents acting on orders from Dick Cheney, and brought back to Kennebunkport where I remain in comfortable yet irksome confinement).


July 4, 2008

Warholalia: A noun, defined as “speaking in trendy banalities.”

What gave rise to the first usage of the word “warholalia” was reportedly, at least according to what were described to me as unpublished notes left by Walter Lippman, the content of conversations during state dinners in the White House during the era that some uninformed individuals still refer to as Camelot. Those in the know will swear on a stack of Bibles that the Hellmouth opened when Nazi Joe bought the presidency for his dimwitted and dissolute son Jack. If this is true, does that mean Lee Harvey Oswald was a pre-Buffy Slayer? Can “The Slayer” even be a male? And that usage of “warholalia” is surely an anachronism. The “speaking in trendy banalities” definition wouldn’t have come into use until at least a decade later, during the heyday of Studio 54.


July 24, 2008

Given that the crook who owns the Ground Zero building site and the sleazeballs in the Port Authority and the government of the State of New York just aren't getting the job done, I feel obliged to present two alternative visions for the space that is now a gaping hole in the ground:



The World Trick Center



Taking a cue from how the descendants of the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam have organized commerce in their capital city, the new towers will become the center of the sex trade in Manhattan. Historically, this is appropriate, given that in the 18th century the prostitution trade in the city was centered in a park known as "Holy Ground", which was several blocks north of the WTC site. The name "Holy Ground" is a satirical reference to the fact that the parkland was owned by the parish of St. Paul's Chapel. 

The centerpiece of The World Trick Center will be Spitzer Plaza, a site for alfresco orgies, presided over by a statue in the style of Augustus St. Gaudens, in which the ex-governor is presented with a leering sneer on his face, left arm upraised holding a subpoena, trousers dropped to his ankles, one knee length sock raised to its full length, the other sock drooping down just above the ankle, penis hard and straight at a perpendicular to his torso, and a discarded unopened condom on the ground at his feet. To promote safe sex, the discarded unopened condom will actually serve as a condom dispenser. 


The World Trump Center



While it's true the buildings will be cheap, shoddy, glitzy, and as ugly as sin, at least they will be tall and they'll go up virtually overnight. Just don't walk anywhere near the cranes at the construction site...


July 26, 2008

I am the true literary heir of Ralph Ellison. If you can tell me the name of one person of color in these United States in the Year of Our Lord 2008 who is more invisible than I am, please do so. My ideas, which in all modesty I feel constrained to suggest are not unamusing, have not of late reached an audience much wider than Mama Babs, 41, and occasional dinner guests, many of whom are admittedly heavy hitters in their own right. I enjoy 42’s visits the most. He always brings along an extra chippie for me, although on those rare occasions when Mama Babs is away I have to settle for 41’s sloppy seconds. Happily, they are not all that sloppy.


September 12, 2008

Here is my entry for the “South Park Contest for Transgression of Political Correctness”:
The time: 1955. The place: Cornhole, Georgia, a 100% white rural hamlet inhabited by shotgun shack dwelling, inbred, feeble minded white trash of the hillbilly variety. The only public eatery in town is The Pig-Lick Restaurant, owned by one Lester Maddogs, future governor of the great state of Georgia. On a hot summer day, into town rides Rosa Perks, a Negro -- as she would have been referred to at the time by the polite elements of Cornhole society, had there been any such – and a transsexual, accompanied by her business manager, the Reverend Jackie Jefferson. Capitalizing on the nascent Civil Rights movement, in front of the former gas station that serves as the Cornhole, Georgia City Hall, Rosa Perks, announces her plan to hold a Shit-In to integrate the white Ladies Room in The Pig-Lick Restaurant. (The Ladies Room for colored patrons is a ditch in the woods behind the restaurant.) The Reverend Jackie Jefferson approaches Mr. Maddogs, who at the time is pissing by the side of the road, and suggests that if he makes a generous contribution to P.U.L.L. (People United to Leverage Loot), Rosa Perks will consent to hold her Shit-In elsewhere...


October 23, 2008

During our brief conversation this afternoon, 41 looked stricken. He told me I’m going deep-sea fishing alone with Dick Cheney tomorrow morning. I fear the worst….


October 24, 2008

When I say I think of my life as one of Y-1 variant traversals of N+/-X dimensional space, with differential probabilities for four values of Y, what exactly am I saying? That if this world doesn’t exist, if we are all merely something approximating characters in the bad dream of a demiurge such as might be hypothesized by a second century Gnostic, then we set Y to equal one with a five percent probability. That if this world is an Existentialist wasteland in which the current life being lived is all that will ever exist, then we set Y to equal two with a ten percent probability. That if this world is part of a JudeoChristoIslamic universe consisting of this life followed by an afterlife spent in some kind of Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, then we set Y to equal three with a one-thousandth of one percent probability. And that if the current lifetime on this world is one of many lifetimes on many worlds that some version of the core “I” will experience over many millennia, then we set Y to equal an integer between 4 and Y-1 with an 84 and 999/1000th percent probability. The assigned probabilities are my best guesses. Yours no doubt would likely be at least somewhat different. For the moment we will ignore more complex solutions in which the value of Y is either less than one or fractional.

A Guest Blog Post (by Terry Downs)

This piece was written by Terry Downs, a former Washington Post magazine writer, who currently lives in Champrobert, France.


OPINION PIECE ABOUT FRANCE

by Terry Downs



French-bashers might consider this : France is smaller than Texas, has just 62 million inhabitants, and French is spoken by at most 100 million people world-wide, which is considerably less than the population of, say, Indonesia. But, apart from the French themselves and the Francophones of their ex-colonies, who speaks French ?
« Only » the richest, best-educated, most cultured people in the world, including in countries like England, Germany, Spain and Austria, which are France’ s traditional rivals or enemies, not to mention everywhere else, wherever there is an educated, sophisticated thin upper stratum, beyond those who, for practical purposes, speak English. Whereas it’ s undeniably useful to speak English world-wide, it’ s also undeniably « cool » to speak at least a little French, and always has been.
I contend that France today, given its size and actual power, is as influential as it has ever been , including under Louis XIV or Napoleon. Perhaps more so. The fact that French-bashers spend so much energy and time deriding France and denying its influence seems to me a clue as to just how important and pervasive that influence really is.
Here is a very small, seemingly trivial example.
Last night I spent about ten minutes watching the beginning of « Emmanuelle » on late-night TV ( I’ d already seen it when it first came out in Washington ).
« Emmanuelle », as almost everyone knows by now, was a low-budget, soft-porn French movie made back in 1974. This movie has by now been seen by over half-a-billion people in the world, and is surely the most viewed film of its kind ever, beating its 100 closest rivals put together in terms of box-office.
Why is that ?
Because « Emmanuelle » is a celebration, albeit a cheap one, of the legendary « French eroticism », or the French view of love, if you prefer, and I prefer to put it that way.
What’ s so special about the French view of love ?
Simply this : French women are the freest in the world, and have been since the days of the Roman Empire, and perhaps even before that. By « free » I’ m not speaking in so-called economic or political terms, since I don’ t believe that feminine freedom can be adequately measured by how many women hold cabinet posts in today’ s French government , nor how many self-made female millionaires exist in France today ( quite a few, usually in very feminine professions, too, like acting, fashion, etc. ) but how free women are in their relationships with men, on a day-to-day basis, in and out of bed, kitchen , dining room, office, boardroom, « salon »,playing field, etc.
Octavio Paz once remarked that the measure of any civilization is the freedom of its women, in a very deep sense. In this regard France wins.
As to the menfolk, need I remind the French-bashers that some of the hottest « American » financiers and supergeeks today are in fact Frenchmen working in America ? That the Rockefeller family name was originally Roquefeuille, that the Duponts de Nemours virtually own the State of Delaware, and much of the rest of the United States as well ? That these French Huguenot families, and others like them, helped build the United States, almost from the start ? That Henry David Thoreau, Crevecoeur and other early American writers were all of French descent ?
Julius Caesar said that it is the winners who write history. Sometimes that takes a very long time. Look at Rome and Greece : Rome conquered the then-known world, invested it with stable, relatively tolerant government, aqueducts, arenas, roads, gave Europe Latin as its linguistic base, and was the first example of a functioning pluricultural society. But who is really revered today ? It is the Greeks, the Athenians to be precise, that tiny club of aristocrats who literally « invented » us all, intellectually and culturally speaking.
It’ s not the creators of a better mousetrap, or even those who have played golf on the moon who will be exalted in a thousand years’ time. It will be those who wrote The Rights Of Man, and those who, over two thousand years ago, intuitively recognized women to be their equals : not their superiors, nor their inferiors, not therir sparring partners in the so-called Battle of the Sexes, but their fraternal equals.
Is it any wonder, then , that Paris is Mecca to the women of the world, who all make, or try to make, their pilgrimage to it ?
And need I point out that France is by far the most visited country on earth, hosting, on its relatively tiny territory, nearly twice as many tourists as go to the States each year ? Last year, over 75 million people visited France, that is to say over 13 million more than France’ s entire metropolitan population.
If America were such a stunning example of civilization, you’ d think that every tourist in the world who could afford the ticket—and most tourists now can—would flock to see the wonders of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Coca-Cola Headquarters in Atlanta, Disneyland or the take-offs at Cape Kennedy.
What do most do instead ? They come to France, where they can drink a nice glass of wine, enjoy an exquisite meal, take in beautiful art, architecture and some of the most pleasant countryside in the world.
But they really come to France, and have forever, even as conquerors sometimes, to bask in its perennial gentle aura, so that they may feel better with each other and about themselves, feel more loving, more lucid, more cultured ; more tender and kind : more human, in a word.

Where Talent Runs in the Family

Renowned Brooklyn novelist, Drexel Backwind, has lately been regaling friends with what he heard on the audio track of the sonogram of his pre-infant son (DB Jr.). It seems Junior, who has already started his musical career while still in the womb, was heard singing:

I need a Park Slope mommy to keep me satisfied
I need a Park Slope mommy to keep me satisfied
She gonna push my stroller in the daytime
Nurse me all through the night....

Illustration for "Danube Blues"

John Stanford and I recorded my song "Danube Blues" several weeks ago. I wrote the lyrics in 1972 but my written copy got lost over the years and I forgot one stanza. So on the morning of the day we recorded it I wrote a new stanza, using as a model one stanza of Lowell George's song "Willing" and transposing the locus of activity to Central Europe and points south: "I've been from Dubovnik to Djibouti/Darmstadt to the Dardenelles/I've ridden every kind of horse that's every been bred/I fought twenty-three duels/And left twenty-three dead." Yesterday John and I were working on drawing for the band's (Jersey Petroleum) website. I had no idea where I was going with this drawing until it was nearly finished, at which point I realized it was an illustration of the last two lines of this stanza.

Working Title: Happy Hour At The Wobblie Wonk

Here's how it starts:

Fabio is a sixty year old visual artist who lives and works in a loft on Forsyth Street. He was born in San Francisco, came to Manhattan in 1966 to attend Columbia, and has been living in downtown Manhattan since the mid-70s, first in Soho and later on the Lower East Side.

Gerard is thirty eight year old musician and composer who lives in a one bedroom apartment on Suffolk Street. He was born in London, moved to Manhattan at eighteen to attend Julliard, and moved downtown to the East Village, originally to a squatter building, in the early 90s, right after graduation.

It’s Happy Hour at The Wobblie Wonk on Rivington Street. As “I Wanna Hold Your Hand at the Hotel California” begins to ooze from a satellite radio station, Gerard and Fabio, who had been sitting silently next to each other, begin talking.

G: “Fucking Beagles really suck… Fucking boomers really suck… Why has this bar started pandering to empty nesters from the ‘burbs who have just bought brand new pied-a-terres in our once dangerous neighborhood?”

F: “I actually don’t share your disdain for the new arrivals. They can be amusing to talk to, if somewhat limited, although you’re right, their music does totally suck. But junkies are way overrated as neighbors. I’m rather happy they’ve gone somewhere else to nod off and overdose.”

G: “But don’t you object on a cultural level? Isn’t this music extremely painful to listen to?”

F: That’s a different matter. Boobus boomerus, whose geographical range extends from North America to Europe and Japan, is closely related to boobus americanus, the species of human being first identified by H. L. Mencken in the 1920s, and only found in the United States.”

G: “’Cuz who needs a CD by Billy Joel/Is dat all yuh get faw yaw munnnney…’”

F: “Isn’t it curious that the Greatest Generation spawned the Lousiest Generation?”

G: “But you’re a boomer aren’t you?”

F: “No. I am in the same age cohort as the boomers, that’s undeniable, but by all standards of taste, civility and intellectual orientation, I am most decidedly not a boomer, as the term is popularly understood.”

G: “The most typical examples of your boobus boomerus I ever observed were a mom and dad in their late forties or early fifties out to dinner with their ten year old son at a now defunct barbecue restaurant on Varick Street. This was about ten years ago. Dad had a receding hairline and a greasy ponytail. Mom was soft and flabby and wearing clothes that, given her body type, showed way too much flesh. Both of them were wearing sandals over their dirty feet. Mom and dad were on one side of the booth swaying back and forth Kumbaya style as they serenaded their embarrassed offspring with an off key rendition of Sweet Baby James’s “You’ve Got a Friend.”

F: “Who along with his ex-spouse won a Crummy Award for Most Appalling Honky Cover Of An R&B Classic for their emetic version of “Mockingbird.”"

G: “I want to blow up the fucking Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That little cunt Rhymin’ Paul “Fifty Ways to Leave Mama Pyjama Or Still Boring After All These Years” Simon was “elected” to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That’s like George W. Bush’s “election” in the 2000 presidential race. All communiqués to the media about the bombing will be from The G. G. Allin Liberation Front. He should be in the fucking Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, not wankers like the aforementioned or fucking Elton John and the cocksucking Bee Gees.”

F: “Or is it “the fucking Bee Gees and cocksucking Elton John?” But in any event I would advise you to save your Semtex for a less risible target.”

G: “Darts?”

Two Alternatives for Ground Zero

Since the wanker who owns the building site and the sleazeballs in the Port Authority and the government of the State of New York just aren't getting the job done, I feel obliged to present two alternative visions for the space that is now a gaping hole in the ground:

1) The World Trick Center

Taking a cue from how the descendants of the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam have organized commerce in their capital city, the new towers will become the center of the sex trade in Manhattan. Historically, this is appropriate, given that in the 18th century the prostitution trade in the city was centered in a park known as "Holy Ground", which was several blocks north of the WTC site. The name "Holy Ground" is a satirical reference to the fact that the park land was owned by the parish of St. Paul's Chapel.

The centerpiece of The World Trick Center will be Spitzer Plaza, a site for alfresco orgies, presided over by a statue in the style of Augustus St. Gaudens, in which the ex-governor is presented with a leering sneer on his face, left arm upraised holding a subpoena, trousers dropped to his ankles, one knee length sock raised to its full length, the other sock drooping down just above the ankle, penis hard and straight at a perpendicular to his torso, and a discarded unopened condom on the ground at his feet.

2) The World Trump Center

While it's true the buildings will be cheap, shoddy, glitzy, and as ugly as sin, at least they will be tall and they'll go up virtually overnight. Just don't walk anywhere near the cranes at the construction site...

Who is in Control?

This piece of graffiti was on the side of a building on the north side of East Fifth Street just east of Avenue A for a brief period of time in the mid-90s.

Barack W. Bush and Gatherer S. Thompson

Here is another small excerpt from "Barack W. Bush: The Prisoner of Kennebunkport":

This morning’s mail brought a new batch of waq from Gatherer. Waq is an (as yet) entirely legal hallucinogen with a pronounced comedic edge. Gatherer is Gatherer S. Thompson, one of the most brilliant biochemists on the planet, and the twin sister of Hunter S. Thompson, one of my all-time favorite writers. Gatherer and I met during the period of time in which I was trading light sweet crude oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange and living in Battery Park City (from where I was kidnapped by Secret Service agents acting on orders from Dick Cheney, and brought back to Kennebunkport where I remain in comfortable yet irksome confinement).

Another Recorded Song: "Villanelle for a Cocksucker"

Unlike the other two songs John Stanford and I have recorded over the past month, this one was written fairly recently (2005). It appeared in the short story "Nowhere to Hide: A Comedy of Manners or Lack Thereof", which was in The Velveeta Underground, my collection of short stories and one act plays published in 2006 as part of the EAA Signature Series, and now, alas, out of print. This was originally only envisioned as a poem to be read. The fictional "author" was Angie Wu, who scribbled it at the last minute, right before she was going to have to read a poem in Kenneth Koch's poetry class. The time is October, 1968. The place is The Lions Den, a somewhat seedy on-campus cafeteria that served as a hangout for the culturally radical fringe at Columbia. What follows is the lead-in to the poem and the poem (now song) itself:

After agreeing to take photographs of Will’s provocation, George headed to a table at the far back corner of the room where he saw Angie Wu leaning delicately over a notebook, writing rapidly. Angie was the most collegiate looking heroin abuser on the Columbia campus. George surmised that her genetic inheritance included dozens of generations of opium smokers. Angie's parents owned House of Wu, a restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland, but there was a strong military tradition in the family. Her father had been a general who backed Chiang Kai-Shek in the civil war against Mao and the Communists, and later emigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan after a falling out with Chiang. Angie was cute as a button, with a stratospheric IQ and the constitution of Keith Richards. She had two sets of friends. One was a circle of very prim and conservative Chinese-American girls. The other, of which she was the queen bee, was a group of rock and roller heroin boys. You didn't get into Angie's bed unless you shared a needle with her. At exam time there would always be one person designated to refrain from getting high. His job was to get Angie up at 6am, throw her into a cold shower and make sure she was out the door in time to get to her exams, which she always aced, seemingly without doing any studying. George had never gotten into Angie's bed. His fear of needles had won out over his desire for Angie. But he had, on more than one occasion, been the person who woke her up and threw her in the shower. Just as he reached the table, Angie stopped writing, looked up, smiled with the corners of her broad mouth turned up slightly, and remarked cheerfully:

"Georgie Kazoo. What synchronicity! I was just thinking about you. Or more precisely, I was thinking about how I'd love to hear you read out loud the poem I just finished writing for Kenneth Koch's class. Will you do me the honor?"

Taking the notebook from Angie, George read:

Villanelle For A Cocksucker

When I look at you down there on your knees
And see your mouth all filled up with my cock
I hear the jangling of a set of keys.

Should service rendered perchance fail to please
One can stand up and rapidly take stock
Of what is real and what is just a tease.

This bed of yours is all filled up with fleas
They've made a new home inside of my jock
And robbed me of my mirth and of my ease.

I'm leaving you and heading for the trees
Where I can watch the fattened seagulls flock
Like Nazis whom the Frogs and Brits appease.

My new home is a skyscraper by Mies
With penthouse door on which you shall not knock
And kitchen where you shall not eat my cheese.

I plan to spend the winters in Belize
Where I shall never glance up at a clock
Or fill my engine up with anti-freeze
Or once again look at you on your knees.

"Wow, that was great Georgie. You should be doing voiceovers. After
listening to you I think I'll have the confidence to read it in class.
Will you walk me over to Hamilton Hall?"

A Short Query (and Response)

"Sixteen sigma, what do you find?"

"Another day, deeper and lighter, in mind...."

The Latest Excerpt from "Barack W. Bush: The Prisoner of Kennebunkport"

"It's soooo quiet in K-port during the winter. Most of the time it's just me and the Secret Service detail, so I have plenty of time to write songs, not that anyone else is likely to hear them anytime soon, least of all darling Condi. Appointing her as Secretary of State was my half-bro's one smart move as President. And don't you believe that Sweet Jesus demeanor of his. He's been pronging Condi all but senseless for years. Am I jealous? Does the Pope smoke dope? Not this one, he's a Nazi, but maybe the last one? Or perhaps the one before that, you know, the one who had a boyfriend in the Milan Opera? But I digress. As you can see, Condi has the last word in the song I wrote this morning, while I was way under the influence of the favorite herb of one or another Pope:

Al Qaeda says
Al Qaeda says
Al Qaeda says
More hummos for Hamas
More hummos for Hamas
More hummos for Hamas
More hummos for Hamas

Israeli army says
Israeli army says
Israeli army says
No hummos for Hamas
No hummos for Hamas
No hummos for Hamas
No hummos for Hamas

Jimmy Carter says
Jimmy Carter says
Jimmy Carter says
More hummos for Hamas
More hummos for Hamas
More hummos for Hamas
More hummos for Hamas

Condi Rice says
Condi Rice says
Condi Rice says
No hummos for Hamas
No hummos for Hamas
No hummos for Hamas
No hummos for Hamas"

Song: "Love's Deep Mineshaft"

Over the past several weeks John Stanford and I have recorded two songs. The first recording is a garage rock arrangement of "Let's Eat Some Time, Baby" (see the April 1st posting for lyrics). The second recording is a country arrangement of "Love's Deep Mineshift" (which I wrote in 1977). On both songs John created the drum and bass tracks in Cubase. "Let's Eat Some Time, Baby" also has a Farfisa organ track created in Cubase. On top of this we overdubbed John's guitar and tambourine tracks and my vocal and (on "Love's Deep Mineshaft") harmonica tracks.

Love’s Deep Mineshaft

When I grow up I’m gonna be a conjure man
And I’m gonna roam around with a big old rattlesnake in my hand
When I was a boy I used to sing this flippant tune
Now my dream has come true and I can work that hoodoo
And honey I’m coming after you

All the world’s a stage you’ve been through too many times before
Look up at the sky and it will soon be time to open the floor
Open the floor

And when you fall down love’s deep mineshaft
You will sit and watch the orb explode
Yes when you fall down love’s deep mineshaft
You just might find yourself a heart of gold
A heart of gold

When I grow up I’m gonna be a conjure man
And I’m gonna roam around with a big old rattlesnake in my hand

More from "Barack W. Bush: The Prisoner of Kennebunkport"

If this is your first encounter with Barack W. Bush, you may want to first look at the April 11th posting on this blog and then come back here to read the following tiny excerpt:

"Don't you wonder what kind of a world this is going to be to raise children in now that Oprah Winfrey has bought the Church of Scientology and renamed it the Church of Oprahtology? And she has even changed the name of the E-Meter to the O-Meter. But what isn't yet public knowledge is that she has had herself artificially inseminated with L. Ron Hubbard's frozen sperm and is about to give birth to the Antichrist, which will go by the name of T. Cruise Winfrey."

An Imaginary Headline

This has been such a strange presidential primary campaign. One might almost expect something along the lines of:

OBAMA THROWS LIKE A GIRL

Hillary Clinton was quoted today as saying: "When I was ten years old, every night after dinner my father took me out into the backyard, and he taught me how to throw a curveball, a cut slider, and a change up. But now I've got to tell you one thing: Barack Obama throws like a girl."

Cherry Blossoms and Tolstoy

While out running in Tompkins Square Park this morning I noticed the first of the cherry blossoms tentatively bursting out. This is about a week to ten day earlier than normal, attributable no doubt to our warm and rainy winter. And having just finished reading two thick biographies -- of Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow and of Iris Murdoch by Peter Conradi -- followed by a quick palate cleanser -- Dark Voyage, the only Alan Furst novel I hadn't read -- the arrival of the cherry blossoms struck me as the perfect time of year to begin reading War and Peace.

A Conditional Enterprise

I have decided to write "Barack W. Bush: The Prisoner of Kennebunkport" only if Barack Obama wins the presidential election. For background on Barack W. Bush, see my blog postings of February 29 and March 26, 2008.

If Barack Obama does win the election the book may begin something like this:

"Cocaine is the drug of choice of bores of all ages, and that applies in spades (sorry Barry) to my two presidential half-sibs. Mama Babs was beside herself with anger when I screened footage of George W. and Barry engaging in a snortathon in George W.'s box during a Texas Rangers game. It was real cinema verite, with shaky camera work, which was perhaps the result of all of the 'shrooms I had ingested before the game. And while we're on the topic of 'shrooms, I might add that 41's giggling fit while watching the snortathon footage gave me a pretty good idea of who raided my 'shroom stash last week."

"Yo": My Contribution to the Hip Hop Genre

I'm very fond of hip hop, especially the gangsta variety. In listening to hip hop recordings I can't but notice the similarity in cadence to nursery rhymes, although hip hop is usually a touch more staccato than your average nursery rhyme. I've blended the two forms in my short composition "Yo":

hippity hop
to the chop shop
to grandma's house
we go

YO!!!

gonna waste that ho
gonna steal her crack
gonna stuff her corpse
in a gunny sack...

"Variant Traversals": A New Fictional Character

I don't yet know anything about this new character except for the following speech out of his or her mouth:

“When I say I think of my life as one of Y-1 variant traversals of N+/-X dimensional space, with differential probabilities for four values of Y, what exactly am I saying? That if this world doesn’t exist, if we are all merely something approximating characters in the bad dream of a demiurge such as might be hypothesized by a second century Gnostic, then we set Y to equal one with a five percent probability. That if this world is an Existentialist wasteland in which the current life being lived is all that will ever exist, then we set Y to equal two with a ten percent probability. That if this world is part of a JudeoChristoIslamic universe consisting of this life followed by an afterlife spent in some kind of Heaven or Hell or Purgatory, then we set Y to equal three with a one-thousandth of one percent probability. And that if the current lifetime on this world is one of many lifetimes on many worlds that some version of the core “I” will experience over many millennia, then we set Y to equal an integer between 4 and Y-1 with an 84 and 999/1000th percent probability. The assigned probabilities are my best guesses. Yours no doubt would likely be at least somewhat different. For the moment we will ignore more complex solutions in which the value of Y is either less than one or fractional.”

Two Versions of an Epitaph

The U.S. has been inundated with a huge amount of extremely bad poetry for a very long time. In 1975, four years after I wrote "Let's Eat Some Time, Baby" (see yesterday's posting), I wrote an epitaph in the form of an epigram for the delusional would-be poets of the hippie generation who thought ingesting chemicals would help them to write great poetry. "Young Dylan" is, of course, Bob Dylan (whose songs I greatly admire), and "Prelude" refers to the William Wordsworth poem of that title:

Epitaph for a Generation of Counterculture Poetasters

While zonked on cocaine, acid, meth and quaalude,
Young Dylan’s heirs sat down to write their Prelude.

Recently I revised this poem to extend the epitaph backwards in time in order to bring under its umbrella the lousy poets of the Beat Generation, who in a very real sense jump-started this deluge of crummy poetry. However, I want to point out that a number of excellent poets are sometimes or often classified as "Beat Poets" (Diane DiPrima, Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, among others). This epitaph is not intended to include them. Also note that, if you haven't already guessed, "Old Dylan" is Dylan Thomas, whose poetry I adore.

Epitaph For Two Generations Of Counterculture Poetasters

While zonked on cocaine, acid, meth and quaalude,
Old Dylan’s heirs sat down to write their Prelude.

Let's Eat Some Time, Baby

April Fools Day is perhaps the most appropriate time to post my oldest extant piece of writing. I composed the song "Let's Eat Some Time, Baby" in July 1971 while I was living on SE Stark St. in Portland, Oregon. The song satirizes the "we'll all find Enlightenment via chemicals" mindset that was so prevalent in America in the late 60s and early 70s. It was to be part of the repertoire of an early 70s band called Random Variables that was to have made its mark in the wake of the great LSD resurgence I predicted would take place in the summer of 1973. But alas the suits in the music business gave us disco instead. So much for my predictive powers as a futurist! But I still think it's a kick-ass song:

Let’s Eat Some Time, Baby

Let’s eat some time baby
Eat out your conscious mind
Let’s eat some time now now now honeychild
You’ll never know just what you might find
Don’t be afraid that you can’t do it
There is really nothing to it
Just eat some time girl and bend your mind
Turn it right into the loving kind

Well they’re tripping in Austin, in Denver and on the Bayou
In Tucson and Ann Arbor and in New York City too
Oh yeah from Boston to L.A.
Everybody’s tripping a-U.S.A.

As I was motorvating into my brain
I dropped mescaleen and I smoked ibogaine
My head spun round
My body slumped down
And that’s when I heard that buzzing sound
Mescaleen, why can’t you be true
Oh Mescaleen, why can’t you be true
You done started back doing those things you used to do

So let’s trip again like we did last summer
Let’s trip again like we did last year
Do you remember when we really blew our brains out?
Let’s trip again, tripping time is here

Let’s eat some time baby
Come with me and melt away
Let’s eat some time baby
Hurry, hurry, let’s do it today
Don’t be afraid that you can’t do it
There is really nothing to it
Just eat some time girl and bend your mind
Twist it right into the loving kind

After Franz Hals

I first encountered an image of a Franz Hals painting in a book my parents had that was titled (I think): Art Treasures of the Louvre. I didn't actually see a canvas of his until I was seventeen and wandering around the European painting rooms of the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my mouth hanging open, at least metaphorically. My appreciation was heightened by taking the Northern European Painting course taught by Howard McP. Davis at Columbia during the Autumn 1968 semester. The drawing "After Franz Hals" is an attempt at an iconic, if somewhat romanticized, portrait of myself in my early twenties that I did in my late thirties while sitting through some horrendously boring meeting at Louis Harris & Associates.

Sleeping in Houses of Great Writers of the Past

Not many writers have the opportunity to sleep in a house that belonged to a great writer of the past, so I count myself extremely privileged to have spent a night in Sarceau, the chateau that belonged to the French poet Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). This photograph is of the library in the room I slept in. The exterior can be seen on the home page of the Sarceau website:

http://le-manoir-de-sarceau.tripod.com/

In November 2003 I was a guest of Francois Fouquet Dubois, whose mother's family purchased Sarceau in the 1830s. Francois is an excellent painter. Images of some of his works are displayed on his website:

http://www.ffdubois.com/gb/index.html

Here is an English translation (not done by me) of one of Pierre de Ronsard's poems:

ROSES
PIERRE DE RONSARD, 1550.

I send you here a wreath of blossoms blown,
And woven flowers at sunset gathered,
Another dawn had seen them ruined, and shed
Loose leaves upon the grass at random strown.
By this, their sure example, be it known,
That all your beauties, now in perfect flower,
Shall fade as these, and wither in an hour,
Flowerlike, and brief of days, as the flower sown.

Ah, time is flying, lady--time is flying;
Nay, 'tis not time that flies but we that go,
Who in short space shall be in churchyard lying,
And of our loving parley none shall know,
Nor any man consider what we were;
Be therefore kind, my love, whiles thou art fair.

Approximate Lovers

This is a sonnet I wrote while out taking a walk one lunchtime during December 2006. When I got back to the office all I had to think about while transcribing it was the punctuation:

Approximate Lovers

In our past lives we'd known each other well,
A fate we both recalled when first we met
this time around. You rang a little bell
behind your back, and voiced a small regret
about the flight you had to catch at noon.
We quickly found a luxury hotel,
and set our trusty calendars to June:
Remembrance of things past, or show and tell?
Since we might never once more chance to while
away some lazy hours, and then flee --
How can I be the one to dare defile
Pandora's Box, when you still have the key?
We'll keep our crowns and shields beneath the covers,
And remain, in the end, approximate lovers.

Ms. President's Mercenary

Raise your hand if you think the following epigram was written during the current presidential campaign. Well, if you raised your hand you are wrong. I wrote it nearly three decades ago, in 1979 (if memory serves me well):

Ms. President’s Mercenary

Demosthenes of the Elegiac Bomb-Scare will accrue
His missiles to the ablest Lysistrata, could it be you?

My model was an epigram by Alexander Pope (1688-1744):

His Majesty's Dog

I am His Majesty's dog at Kew.
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?

John the Comm

John the Comm, where are you now? This pay phone was right outside of Blackout Books, a short-lived anarchist book store in the early 90s, that was on Avenue B between 3rd & 4th Streets, two doors down from my apartment.

The Prisoner of Kennebunkport

Here is a very brief introduction to "The Prisoner of Kennebunkport," a prospective new work in the form of a first person narrative by Barack W. Bush. If you haven't done so already, you can see a sketch of BWB, along with a short description of how he came to exist in this world, in the February 29th posting of this blog. The premise of the story is that BWB is physically prevented from leaving the Bush family compound by Secret Service agents who, in addition, deny him the ability to communicate via the Internet, although he does have Web access for research and entertainment purposes. His relationships with his mother and stepfather -- Barbara and George H. W. -- are, respectively, loving and cordial. It's his two "presidential" half-sibs who are responsible for his house arrest, knowing, as they do, all of the oh-so-true scurrilous tales he can and will relay about both of them if he's given half a chance. Fortunately, one summer evening BWB manages to surreptitiously sneak an illicit thumb drive he purloined from his stepfather into the pocket of a dinner guest. Rumor has it that this dinner guest was 42, who was up for the weekend visiting his friend 41.

A New Formulation from the Propaganda Machine

The Chinese Communist government's propaganda machine never ceases to amaze: "Dalai splittist clique" (2008) is right up there with "running dogs of U.S. imperialism" (1946) and "let a hundred flowers bloom" (1956). I took this photo fifteen years ago. The genocidal activities against the Tibetan people initiated by Chairman Mao and his henchmen more than fifty years ago continue to this day. The U.S. should have boycotted the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, but did not. No Olympic contests were held in 1940 or 1944...

Mysterium Coniunctionis

This drawing, which I did on New Years Day of 2007, was influenced by my reading of the Bollingen edition of the Collected Works of Carl Jung. The following brief description is taken from the Carl Jung Exegesis Wiki:

"The Mysterium Coniunctionis, or Mystery of the Conjunction, is considered by many to be Jung's master work.

In this book Jung reviews the vast literature of Medieval, Renaissance, and post-Renaissance alchemy from a psychological perspective. Jung contends, and convincingly demonstrates, that alchemy at this time was not, as many mistakenly believe, mainly concerned with the transmutation of lead into gold. Rather, the aim was more spiritual and mental transformation of the alchemist him/her-self. In this sense, alchemy was a kind of precursor to modern depth psychology.

Particularly because it developed prior to the excessive rationalization of culture which has occurred in recent centuries, the ideas and, in Jung's view, especially the symbology, of alchemy has much to offer modern psychology.

The "conjunction" referred to in the title refers to an alignment, joining, or resolution of conflict between poles dualities that define human beings. The poles of one duality of special importance can be variously interpreted as Solar/Lunar, Male/Female, Spirit/Matter, Yang/Yin or various other antinomies."

Talking Baccarat Blues

Here is another blues lyric I wrote in the late 1970s. I believe I wrote this about a year before "Left Lobe Blues", which was the subject of yesterday's posting. Last week I watched R.W. Fassbinder's delightful 1979 film "Die Dritte Generation" ("The Third Generation") for the first time. The narrator of "Talking Baccarat Blues" evolved from a mind set similar to that which Fassbinder portrays. If you haven't yet seen The Third Generation you should put it onto your Netflix queue. With that preamble, here is the text of:

Talking Baccarat Blues

Now what’s the use of me working all day
When I’ve got me a lady in the Red Brigades,
She hits rich folks, she sends me the jewels,
She thinks I’m hunting ducks, I’m gambling with fools...
But I tripled our money,
Spent it all on Rembrandts, Caravaggios, Vermeers, Titians, Courbets,
You see it was time to redecorate our townhouse.

Left Lobe Blues

Early in the week a friend sent me the link to a fascinating 18 minute video of a neuroscientist talking about the stroke she suffered. In it she talks about the differing capabilities of the left and right lobes of the brain. Yesterday, while having lunch with another friend at Mamoun's Falafel on St. Marks Place, we discussed this video, and I recited a brief blues lyric I wrote in, to the best of my recollection, 1978 or 1979:

Left Lobe Blues

I’ve got the left lobe blues,
Why is my right lobe feeling all the joy?
I’ve got the left lobe blues,
Why is my right lobe feeling all the joy?
I sure do like this mistycism
But right reason is a smarter toy.

If you haven't seen this video, I highly recommend it: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/when-a-brain-scientist-suffers-a-stroke/

Sell It To Oprah

I have Arlene Pack to thank for this one. During a phone conversation we were talking about our shared inability to understand the attractions of cocaine, and I recited to her the first sentence of a story I want to write: "Cocaine is the drug of choice of bores of all ages." This led to a broader discussion of the inherent tediousness of all narratives about substance abuse and recovery. Arlene thought I should expand on something I said during this conversation. And overnight the following country song was born. You will only need to imagine the twang in my singing voice:

Sell It to Oprah

You were addicted
You were a fool
You're in recovery
You're such a tool
Don't tell it to me
Don't tell it to me
Just tell it to Oprah

You're on the tube
You're quite a star
Who would have thought
You'd get this far
Don't sell it to me
Don't sell it to me
Just sell it to Oprah...

Discunt Rice - A Drug Storefront Circa 1992

This awning was on the south side of East 4th Street a little bit west of Avenue of B. At the time I took the photo the storefront next door was occupied by a motorcycle repair shop called Cyclopedia. Discunt Rice morphed into another drug storefront awning: Joe's Records Shop. After that the location became a Hari Krishna food preparation and distribution space. Now it's a hair salon. A sign of the times, perhaps?

A Portrait of Barack W. Bush

What, you might wonder, might the result look like if, after a brief dalliance with Obama pere, old Babs Bush, while married to the future 41, had found herself in the family way. Well, wonder no more...

No Saints No Sinners

This portrait was painted on an exterior wall of an apartment building on the northwest corner of Houston Street and Avenue B. The same wall also featured commemorative portraits of Celia Cruz and Pope John Paul II. Unlike the other portraits, this one attracted a fair amount of negative commentary from graffiti artists. The graffiti in small print reads: "we spent years of toil to break from the tyranny of british rule"

X and Y, A and B

If X and Y
Swim through the sky,
Should A and B
Merge with a tree?

An Essay on the Mediocre Novelists of Brooklyn

An essay by Melvin Jules Bukiet in the Autumn 2007 issue of The American Scholar anatomizes the works of some of the mediocre novelists of Brooklyn. It's a very enjoyable read, to which I would only add the following: 

-- There is one great and underappreciated (because his books are difficult unless one is attentive) American novelist who writes stories that take place in Brooklyn: Joseph McElroy.

-- If Finnegans Wake had been set in Brooklyn in 2008 the opening would be "strollerrage" rather than "riverrun".

A Word of Explanation

Bronc White is the protagonist of a novel-in-progress about a controversial Pulitzer Prize winning poet. The title of this blog is the title of the novel as well as the title of Bronc's calling card epigram:

Your worldly-wise scribbler idylls, then slips away

To Post-Futurist forms of a pleasure lit day.

This blog is going to careen between many versions of what are intended to be pleasure-lit days.

Those who wish to do so may now fasten their seat belts.