I’m concerned I’m working my fingers to the bone. I’m going to look down at my fingers and see bones. they already feel like bones sometimes, like I type and my bones are touching the keys. I do worry about becoming arthritic before I can live to be 70,000. something like that. that’s really just one worry. I also worry about ALL of the oil coming out of that hole. what if all the oil wells are connected down there, or the collapse of one caused another one nearby to collapse into it, and the oil just keeps coming until there is no oil left at all in the earth and it’s all in the ocean. I suppose that’s one way to avoid burning it and putting the CO2 in the air, tho they are burning what’s floating in the gulf. Of course the word hubris. For humans to think we could safely mine oil miles beneath the sea. And I wonder why it hasn’t crossed my mind at some random moment in the past… like, what if something popped off down there, would they be able to fit something on top down on the ocean floor, with all that pressure coming up. And it never crossed my mind. Many other calamities may have crossed my mind but not that scenario. When I’m pulling up knotweed I think this is impossible kind of like trying to keep oil from coming out of a hole in the bottom of the ocean. I always think of the gulf oil spout when I’m pulling up knotweed. Spill is not the right word. It’s more of a spout. I’m liking Derek Fenner’s love letters to katie couric. I’m impressed by the book. I have that thought: “I’m impressed by the book”. And in one of the letters he’s writing about biological terrorism and it’s really frightening, and I think of the disclaimer at the front of the book and how when I first read the disclaimer (“The accounts herein are fiction and resemblances coincidental” that sort of disclaimer) I thought it was a bit silly but then you get into the letters and it’s almost like yeah I can see why some people could start reading these and think this is a little too emphatic not to be sincere and I wonder if katie couric read it would she find it just a tiny bit disquieting probably not but I don’t know and perhaps she has read it, I mean how could she not know it exists. Is it possible to get so famous that someone could publish a book called “Love Letters to ” and you wouldn’t even know it existed. Maybe she’d just think it was a silly boring political book with an ironic title and not a book of actual love letters (and drawings). It’s an interesting book and I have to say it pretty much describes my own feelings about katie couric, which are more complex (and perhaps more positive) than my feelings about soledad o’brien, albeit maybe less acute in some ways. Here are some words I misstype I often type “actual” as “actually” and “and” when I mean “an”. Really revved up in recent weeks re: wo/rk and pro/gramming I prog/ram so much that’s why my fingers feel like bones I worry about my eyes but moreso my hands. I love this califone cd “all my friends are funeral singers.” I also like stereolab and yo la tengo. last night we talked about neil young and ice t. bobby brown and tony toni tone. they thanked me a lot they didn’t have to thank me so much. I like having people over because it’s a party and it animates the place. even after they’re gone the place is still more animated than it would be if they handn’t been here. mark’s milk is still here. when mel was moving things around in the fridge I said that’s mark wallace milk. I’ve become a much better progra/mmer and have written some cont/ent managemen/t modules that I’m unhealthily obsessed with. there’s a lot of beer in my fridge. I’ve had one. there are 14 left. I looked outside and for a second it was snowing. it’s hot and I don’t feel like cranking the A/C so it gets hot upstairs and I work in a backwards thong with the fan pointed at me. I wear the thong as a kind of gag, tho really it doesn’t prevent me from speaking but keeps my teeth from chattering as it gets quite chilly wearing only a thong in my mouth with the fan pointed at me. it’s suede. don’t put your armpit on your food in a restaurant. I can’t think of what else to do except pro/gram I suppose if not for physical limitations I would become immaterial I’ve had the song we are spirits in the material world in my head a lot lately. sometimes my fingers hitting the keyboard feel like little splashes like there are these splashes of cool energy or pain around my fingers after they hit the keys. maybe a gulp of air.

I’m going to sit and eat this sandwich.

Five-sevenths of Cleveland was here. Tom, Steve, Jose, Carmen, David. Weirdos all. This morning we watched CHI beat SUI. Last night we debauched. I’m starting to remember some things. We talked to my neighbors. The cab never came. We talked about Mysteries of Small Houses. Tom read from it. Lots of things happened. We bought beer. We dragged Mel here from Adams Morgan and she left a little while after she got here, tho the cab didn’t come. We ordered Chinese food. Lots of things like that happened. David rolled cigarettes out back and then some people went to smoke them. That’s when I went upstairs and went to bed. This morning David was asleep in the kitchen. Carmen slept in the Cyndi Lauper/Ian Keenan room. Steve and Jose slept in the living area. Most of them had air mattresses. Jose, the Clevorican, might not have had an air mattress. Steve slept parallel to the facade of the house, up near the front. David slept parallel to the rear of the house and was towards the rear of the kitchen. Tom slept in the office. I don’t sleep. I slept from the age of 9 to 21 and am still living off of that banked sleep. I’ll have to start sleeping again next year and will sleep until 2017.

They left around noon and planned to go to the Arboretum, though Tom didn’t want to. They also hoped to go to a Wendy’s on the way out of town. I advised them to take Bladensburg to New York to 295 to the beltway. They’ll probably get home around 7. David was able to arrange to get off of work. They had two cars and Steve wanted to take the one with satellite radio. Tom let him. Steve thought they were putting too much stuff in his trunk. Tom said there’s always something happening in Cleveland. Tom looked somewhat like he did when I met him 10 years ago. His hair is somewhat longer than it was toward the end of his residence in DC. Tho not as long as it was 10 years ago. It was very normal having them all here. I gave them books and was a little surprised when they immediately began reading them. That was fine of course but I got up and went to the porch, where Mel was still waiting for a cab and talking to Tom.

Overall, the whole event was very responsible. It was all above board, pragmatic, ethical. It was sensible. I don’t think anyone was offended and in the end, that’s all you can ask for.

cleveland has left the building. now it is a monday.

* * ****************************

wrrk

encountering my margin notes in gunslinger. I don’t identify with them. some I don’t understand. mostly they seem elementary or unnecessary. sometimes I wonder if they were things said in a class. gosh I don’t know. fortunately there aren’t too many of them. one things for sure, I’m a lot smarter than I was in the late 90s. imagine how smart I’ll be 10 years from now. try to imagine.

I think maybe the witch is coming over tonight. don’t think I mentioned she’s getting married? next year sometime. or maybe I did mention it. maybe I even said “don’t think I mentioned it.” that is perhaps a case for never saying “don’t think I mentioned it.” I think it was maybe two weeks ago, as the crow flies, that she told me. I was happy. that was odd observing the particular way in which I was happy about it. however explaining that would require resources that must be spent on living until I’m 70,000.
oh the witch just texted. I texted back that I was just writing about her. sarry dont mean to get so meta but I am reading the slinger. imagine if you wrote something that gave you a nickname. if people started calling you by the title of one of your books or poems, as people often (I was told) called ed dorn “slinger”. I think that would be flattering. I would like to inadvertently rename myself the title of something I wrote. call me ;jfaks

ultra nice out. returned from an exquisite lunch in the sid/amo garden. I had forgotten how good the coffee is there. it is an order of magnitude (yes, that’s right) better than what I can make at home.

I’ve been feeling somewhat literate lately. I can read poetry. it’s reasonably easy to do, as long as it’s very good. Rodefer and Dorn. Did you know Stephen Rodefer has a website. I like to see funny looking archaic websites like that.

I want to thank Ron Artest’s psychiatrist for an amaizing 4th quarter last night. For those who didn’t see game 7 of the NBA finals, one of the players thanked his psychiatrist in an interview seconds after the game end. In place of the usual thanks to Jesus.

it felt better than I remembered. it is, official, that I have a good-sized contr/act to keep me busy for a couple months. first time I can say that since maybe a year ago. PHEW.

and, PHEW

I grunted

Gunslinger is a lot goofier than I remember it being. it’s sublime. I of course knew & remembered that it was weird, but some of the sheer goofiness of it… makes me want to think of a way to say what goofiness is. what is it.

I thank you, kind people,
you have greeted us with a kiwanis enthusiasm
we have been welcomed by Lions
as the sign outside your town predicted.

not content to just reremember things

I had one of those experiences where you can witness yourself more decisively forgetting something quite suddenly that sense of grip when you just got hold of something but in reverse and then it’s gone, and you know it won’t be back. then I remembered. it was the phrase not content to just reremember things

this.

move to trash.

I ran around in a field yesterday. we won. my middle finger got bumped on the first point and I was pretty sure it got broken a little bit more or something. I barely kept playing. then a couple points later it was fine. it was swollen this morning.

sometimes on my bathroom floor I see a little thread or something. then almost immediately I wonder if it’s a small worm. I stare at it for a few long moments to see if it moves. then, often it will seem to move, not forward but just the curve or angle of its body. so then I know it’s a worm. I look a little closer and see that it’s not a worm but a piece of thread or something. I am that worm. I sell lemonade.

talk of making those affected by the spill “whole.” making them/us whole.

putting aside the fact that, strictly speaking, this is impossible, it is nonetheless striking how high the administration has set expectations re: its demands for compensation from a corporation, BP, on behalf of U.S. citizens. a rather comprehensive reckoning of the costs is implied and/or explicit in the administration’s statements.

this rhetoric represents a dramatic departure from the historic relationship between the U.S. government and fossil fuel companies. historically, the role of the federal government, effectively, has been to hide the costs of fossil fuel use. politicians have numerous incentives to do so.

for decades, NGOs have campaigned for a complete accounting of the costs — whether they be health-related, property damage, displacement of populations, opportunity cost, burdens on municipalities, etc. these campaigns and the NGOs who run them have never so much as sniffed any real success, at least not nationally, and are generally regarded as a kind of well-intentioned infotainment for assorted wonks, liberals, and maybe some libertarians. but the kind of accounting expressed or implied by the administration’s rhetoric is not much less comprehensive, at least in regards to this one particular event, than what you can read in the comprehensively ignored reports of think tanks going back decades.

not to suggest any expectation that this new (old) accounting will be applied generally to costs that don’t dominate the news as has this event… what we call a “disaster.” how a disaster qualifies as such is another question and is closely related to the question of how “news” qualifies as such. though it’s probably safe to say that a “disaster” must have a recent, sudden and identifiable onset, preferably one that involves immediate loss of life. it can’t be something that has crept up on us incrementally over the course of decades, and it can’t be something whose onset was not widely reported. moutaintop removal mining would be just one example of something that doesn’t meet the media’s definition nor many citizens’ definition of a disaster or even news. it’s a magazine story, but not a news story, because it’s not a development with a recent, sudden and identifiable onset.