Monday, April 30, 2012

Mayday


1.
At night, the manifestos are rained on – heavy, icy rain –
but since they are adhered to the bridge with wallpaper paste
(thick as a fingernail) or scratched whole (a key, a gun, slow)
they never quite disintigrate. The river freezes, first
from the banks, moving towards the center, until it is covered
with patches, their edges raised like scars from brushing up
against each other.

2.
Months later there are new manifestos and they point
towards spring: May Day, rite of workers, a day that calls
to mind a high school dance or college-student finals.
Running, the footpath becomes a mouth through which
I propel myself, from one island to the next, back again,
dodging strollers. Dodging birth, I guess.

3.
Manhattan’s buildings the teeth of a bottom jaw
and just as grey. Morse code of the Freedom Tower’s
lights, fireflies echo offshore, begging to mate,
flicking like cell phones: which one began the signal,
and of the three, which is repeating it? A chain of
unending commands, power switched off by the sunrise.

4.
A hurricane’s winds: the new fall.
Subway pumps pump out brackish water
as the Hudson moves in and out with the tide.
The moon pulls at the iron in my blood:
I grow heavy on the roof, watching the pink
bellies of airplanes streaking low into Laguardia.
It feels as though the world is a great dog
rolling under. How quickly the wounds heal!
Body of great craters, our Sisyphusan task
fills them with rubble, only for us to drown
in our complete sorrow.

- Robert Moses, Playboy

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Occupy LV-426


"Ain't no labor laws in space!" - Boss Cameron

"I hope you enjoy your bullshit yuppie life in Manhattan with Helen Hunt now that you've doomed the goddam mission!" - Roger Ebert accosting Paul Reiser at the Telluride Film Festival

"My name has become a killing word." - Willard "Maud'Dib" Romney

"Make love to my perfect robot body." - Callista GinGinch in Metropolis

"Some people cannot be tamed. They never fit in to civilization, but thrived at its margins, in war zones, prisons, corporate boardrooms, desert wastes. Now the world is theirs. The drone attacks, the night raids, the slave drivers, the hunger and the scarcity... these things one can bear. But what's really scary is, some people have been waiting their whole lives for this." - Ron Paul, Outer Heaven

Monday, April 23, 2012

Americana


"Morning Commute: Notes for a Symphony: the roar of passing trains, the metallic scream of their breaks, the terrified silence of my fellow drones, the blaring of alarms as we rush through the emergency doors to work. If this isn't hell, I don't know what is." - Michael Bloomberg, Ruled Notebooks

"Why don't we stuff avocado in everything!" - California while going 50mph on the highway

"I often sneak into the worst wards in the hospital, to the notable patients, and whisper in their ears: 'All glory is fleeting.'" - Dr. Bill Frist, Memphis M.D

"President Roosevelt isn't crippled, Jimmy. He's the New Man." - Lilian Gordy Carter

"Gentleman, the secessionist hick is the wrong kind of hick, and it is not the kind of hick we embrace in our state." - Parson Brownlow, East Tennessee Congress of 1861

"No use shitting on mud." - Sen. Jeff Sessions, privately, on whether to renew any Federal funding for the state of Alabama

"What if freedom means not merely economic freedom but also freedom from economic necessity?" - note from Ronald Reagan's secret diaries, burned by Milton Friedman

"Cory Booker is the new Ryan Gosling." - Anthony Weiner

"Whether to legalize ultimate fighting is, like whether to require transvaginal ultrasound before abortion, a technocratic question rather than a moral one."  - Gov. Robert McDonnell

"My ideal woman is a man." - a pro-life politician

"Well, if it's our police state, then I guess I'm for it." - a real American

"You can't speak truth to power because it is power that speaks." - Jumaane Williams

"We are all George Zimmerman." - Charles Murray

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Digital Book Fumes


"Books are filthy." - Jeff Bezos

"I think I want to spend my thirties in villainy." - Mark Zuckerberg rowing a gondola with Tim Cook

"First comes villainy, then, gangsterism." - Bob Hoskins at Wimbledon

"Shut up baby, leave it! We've got to escape the city, Robert Caro is in town!!!" - David McCullough and a showgirl flee Las Vegas Kindle Konference

"Fucking power!" - Robert Caro punching his editor over a semi-colon

"I just didn't find any of the characters likeable." - a 15-year-old girl, forced by Jonathan Franzen to criticize Proust in a room rapidly filling with water

"Nook, tablet, Kindle, I-anything; the only question I have is, where's the fucking sex?" - Norman Mailer in Hell

"Scan your mother. If the app says she's cheaper on Amazon we'll ship you a new one for free! Today! Send us any outmoded physical representation of your dreams, and get a free Amazon gift card." - Satyr Jeff Bezos upon a throne of jade

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Great Turtlenecks in Culture

Later that evening the top was discarded and never worn again.
But, Reader, that top
got closer to Xanadu than you ever will.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

The Long Goodbye


"Ever since I lost all hope for a meaningful or even pleasant life my time management skills have really gone down the tube." - Rick Savonarola

"Elections are like killing horses with your hands, Rick." - George W. Bush, Caudillo of Dallas

"Who am I going to spend it on now?" - Willard Romney, after the party is over

"Fucking death trip." - Dr. Ron Paul after his son, Rand, gets their bags

"Hot dog! Hey, Jay, put another apple on your head, I'm going to use the .45 this time." - Barack Obama and Jay Carney, Camp David

"You are a false Dawn, Ronnie was the Hidden Pope of Avignon." - Peggy Noonan in a cruel telegram to the Defeated

"At this point, I'll pretty much do what you want at $50 a pop." - Newt Gin Ginch, Salt Lake City

"Cold arms turn on a warm heart, and the goose gets your daughter." - Rick Santorum, walking into the surf

Monday, April 9, 2012

General Strike



"I've been waiting my whole life for this." - posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Bill O'Reilly before battling with anarchists

"I'll never shit again!" - Roger Ailes, Fox News Crater

"This isn't about making a better world. This is about revisiting on society the violence society has done to us." - George W. Bush storming his father's estate, Occupy Kennebunkport

"You can get anything you want in this city, but if you want to be Free, don't move to New York." - Michael Bloomberg

"Those who cannot be governed shall be ruled." - Ray Kelly

"Last month was the hottest March in U.S. history." - Gavrilo Princip at a forest fire

"What really matters is the intractable conflict in the Sudan." - George Clooney

"I didn't serve two tours in Afghanistan for this!"
"You didn't serve two tours in Afghanistan for anything."
- a veteran and Dick Cheney

"What we do know is that no order to fire was given. It seems that the drone acted independently." - Barack Obama, emergency broadcast

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Drain Broppings

-= A/V =-
_iycrt,yl_

Monday, April 2, 2012

The End of Culture


"Affluent people should have the decency not to tell their own stories. " - Lena Dunham to Woody Allen

"I have let my life slip through the cracks." - Billy Crystal

"If you can't be free, at least you can be idle." - Amy Chua on her daughter's wedding day

"I'm a living tigerskin rug." - Peter Dinklage

"The Baby Boomers will take us all down with them if they can." - a grave Justin Timberlake

"Come on, white people, we got to stick together!" - Charles Murray

"There's no call for such pessimism in this Age of Reform!" - Michelle Rhee addressing a Blackwater annual retreat

"Just because things are better than they used to be doesn't mean they aren't getting worse." - Jean Dujardin

"Don't look. Don't wait. I'll find you." - a disconcerting postcard from David Lynch

"If I don't die, I'll die!" - Lawrence Summers

"He thought to himself, 'This can't get any worse.' Alas, dear reader, not only could it—it necessarily had to." - Jeremy Lin

“No more irresponsible than a robot firing a missile at a funeral procession.” - Barack Obama on the practice of fake quotes

"Finally something for Evil People to read!" - Justice Antonin Scalia on the blog

More Praise for Teh Internets!


It's like fucking your ex. You don't feel good about it, but you can't stop doing it.
We're in another issue of The New Inquiry.
At least stay for breakfast, won't you?

***

"Hot fucking action!" - Bill Clinton

"I bring my own mouse to my baby's house." - a disturbed Paul Allen

"I'll take the internet seriously when it's clean." - Julian Assange

"My first roommate at Occidental was a computer."
"My mother was a computer, that's why she never loved me!"
- Barack Obama and Erik Schmidt

"People don't want infinite knowledge, they want infinite smooth. Stop crying and just give in to 'this week.'" - Tim Cook

"If I ever burst in on my teenage child while they were in the bathroom reading this, I'd have some serious questions." - Sen. Scott Brown

"It's important to be dismissible. You don't want the wrong people taking you seriously." - TNI Editor Malcolm Harris

"You know, you’re right, ever since AIDS got under control fucking just isn't as fun." - Greg Louganis

“Sure, it would be sort of convenient to read all magazines and everything on one goddam smooth-ass sex coaster, but I'd miss the books and their sturdy but erotic spines.” – Jeff Bezos