All those years of being an alley cat and he jumped through a window and killed himself
The Way I Am
Recorded a little acapella Merle Haggard for all y’all. Hope to add organ soon. Sorry Mary, it isn’t a political protest song or Wham!
[http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/wayiam.mp3]
Be careful, it’s loud.
clusterflock interviews clusterflock, #2 -UPDATED #2
Q: Andrew, I just finished watching Dogville, the second time. You spoke of “shaking for days,” after seeing it. If you can recall, what shook you?
(I ask because I’m shaking again, or at least, I’m haunted.)
A. [http://www.clusterflock.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/1004.MP3] Download*
*Pardon my p’s**, the pop filter is still in the mail, and the quiet hum of the enormous A/C unit outside my window.
**That is the proper way to punctuate the plural of the letter “p,” right?
Q. What have you carried with you, since viewing the film. Were you changed in some elemental way?
Prickles & Goo
A nifty video that emerged from a question of mine. (thanks, Mike)
Traditional Balinese massage
They’re spooning in the afterglow now.
Le voyage dans la lune | Georges Méliès | 1902
Buzz Aldrin was a Presbyterian
And it turns out that the first food consumed on the moon was bread and wine:
“In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup. Then I read the Scripture, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing.’ I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly. …I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility. It was interesting for me to think: the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.”
Y’all
Kelly Hildebrandt is in love with Kelly Hildebrandt, y’all.
Two drawings
Layers of Time | For Phil
The town of Bath, where Starbucks-sipping tourists swarm over ancient Roman ruins, is an especially advantageous place to consider time’s layeredness.
(From Ben Brantley’s piece in today’s NYT, “Time, and the Green and Pleasant Land”)
Barbara “Redneck Queen” Bailey
Summer Redneck Games, 2009.
Quote out of context
Oh right, those embarrassing accidental ass slaps. Do those all the time.
It’s A Secret To Everybody
Etymologies and explainations of words, phrase, and oddities in video games.
Never Gonna Give Your Teen Spirit Up
Y are men disappearing?
Genes on the Y chromosome are disappearing and in a few millennia may be gone entirely.
In a new study, researchers say there is a dramatic loss of genes from the human Y chromosome that eventually could lead to its complete disappearance — in the next few millennia. While the Y chromosome’s degeneration has been known to geneticists and evolutionary biologists for decades, the study sheds new light on some of the evolutionary processes that may have contributed to its demise and posits that, as the degeneration continues, the Y chromosome could disappear from our genetic repertoire entirely.
cartoons on the spot
The Treasury Department has scrapped plans to hire a cartoonist to lighten the mood.
In a federal solicitation issued earlier this month, the bureau said it was looking for a contractor to conduct two, three-hour presentations for its employees on the benefits of humor in the workplace and the connection between humor and stress relief.
The contractor would have to be able to “create cartoons on the spot” about jobs at the bureau, the solicitation stated.
love letter, love let her
Go getter, go get her.
A few years later, in a bid to rekindle their love, Smith sent a letter to her mother’s home in Spain. It was placed on the mantelpiece, but slipped down behind the fireplace and was lost for over a decade.
falling soldier
Frank Capa’s iconic war photograph “falling soldier” appears to have been staged.
“Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting,” wrote Barcelona-based newspaper El Periodico which carried out a study of the photograph taken in September 1936, the third month of the war.
Next Sleepingfish Exit
I’m reading now for the next issue of Sleepingfish, issue 8, co-edited with Gary Lutz. All clusterflockers welcome, especially if goats & vampires are involved.
Dear Clusterflock
I was going to ask a different question, but I decided I want to ask this one instead:
How do you feel about your genitals?
I’ll ask the other one another time. Remind me if I forget.
Weekly Picture 158
Two Floats, Krause Springs, Spicewood, TX, 7.17.2009
In other news, I have also recently revamped my blog, Come on by!
Maybe Isaac Hayes’s 11-minute
performance of “I Stand Accused” is one of the most over-the-top (and wonderful) cover versions ever done, but I’d like to recommend you take a listen to Lee Michaels’s stammering and unhinged assault on “Can I Get a Witness?” which I find immensely more satisfying than “Do You Know What I Mean?” He does a fine “Rock Me Baby” too.
And while you’re at it, how about Arthur Brown’s cover of “I Put a Spell on You,” a slow burn which ends up as purely insane as his own “Fire”?
On Frank
My classmate Daniel Radosh has posted a sweet remembrance of Frank McCourt. (With yearbook photo!)
Beyond the practical lessons I learned in Frank McCourt’s class, I’ll always remember him as a model for how to be cynical without being jaded and sarcastic without being inhumane. I’m pretty sure he did not believe in God or an afterlife, but he had to believe that there is an immortality in living so that your words and actions transform the world around you in ways that will continue to reverberate forever. No one with so much life in him can ever truly die. And if there were an afterlife, I can guarantee you that somewhere right now, Frank McCourt would be mightily pissed off that he’s not around for what’s sure to be a hell of a wake.
—Daniel Radosh, “Why not almost any other famous person?“
Meet the Flockers’ Pets: Kitten A & Kitten B
This morning I adopted two kittens, as yet unnamed.
My family had guinea pigs when I was a kid, and I’ve enjoyed living with several housemates’ cats, but these are my first pets as an adult. I’ve always felt that I was destined to become a crazy cat lady, but “I’m not responsible enough to have pets,” I’ve said. I don’t know what’s changed, but all of a sudden here we are.
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Non-consensual penetration
No word on the extent of damage to either the house or the giant hot dog.
