what i wish were on my desk. instead this is just my desktop background.

photo by zach genin

What Goes On, by Stephen Dunn

After the affair and the moving out,
after the destructive revivifying passion,
we watched her life quiet

into a new one, her lover more and more
on its periphery. She spent many nights
alone, happy for the narcosis

of the television. When she got cancer
she kept it to herself until she couldn't
keep it from anyone. The chemo debilitated
and saved her, and one day

her husband asked her to come back —
his wife, who after all had only fallen
in love as anyone might
who hadn't been in love in a while —

and he held her, so different now,
so thin, her hair just partially
grown back. He held her like a new woman

and what she felt
felt almost as good as love had,
and each of them called it love
because precision didn't matter anymore.

And we who'd been part of it,
often rejoicing with one
and consoling the other,

we who had seen her truly alive
and then merely alive,
what could we do but revise
our phone book, our hearts,

offer a little toast to what goes on.

Bee Stuck Between Screen Door and Front Door- going F*ing Nuts

THIS ARTICLE in the Onion caused a bathroom-trip inducing side holding laughing fit during a really important meeting. i dont know why but it was litterally the funniest thing i'd read in like a year.
was i trolling the onion at work during a meeting you ask? no. my boss sent it to me. and then took great pleasure in the silent tears streaming down my face.

HUNTSVILE, AL—Users of the front door at 1418 Sycamore Avenue report the appearance of a common bumblebee ricocheting back and forth between the front and screen doors in a manner described as "pissed." According to witnesses, no one has been able to ascertain how the bee became trapped between the two portals, but it is totally losing it and will absolutely sting someone if it gets out, most likely in the eye. "Look at the size of that thing," homeowner Tony Paris said. "He's just going nuts. Just fly out of there, bee, come on." At press time, the bee was resting for a moment before resuming flipping the fuck out.

pshh and they say we do the devils PR...

Chase(3:52:49 PM): such a wide range of emotions this job brings
Chase (3:52:53 PM): sleep, suicide
Chase (3:52:58 PM): suffering
daisy (3:53:17 PM): serenity now, stupidity,
daisy (3:53:26 PM): survival, self-mutilation
daisy (3:54:20 PM): as we are writing this, ellen is currently tearing her hair out to my right and yelling into the phone. its like.. see exhibit A.
Chase (3:54:35 PM): hahhh
Chase (3:54:44 PM): every time you say Ellen I think of the one on TV
daisy(3:55:35 PM): sadly theyre about as far apart on the female spectrum as two ellens can be.

daisy(3:57:03 PM): who will this recap go to?
Chase (3:57:53 PM): we should double check with Thekla first, but my thoughts are Mary, Jos, Ian, Abby, Michelle, Peter, Shari, Senta, Sarah and God
daisy(3:58:32 PM): very good. do we have an email for Him? i'm sure, being B-M, that we do.
Chase(3:58:45 PM): God@bm.com
daisy(3:59:02 PM): oh he works here does he... take that, maddow.
Chase (3:59:07 PM): not to be confused with GoodGod@bm.com
daisy (3:59:17 PM): or sweetjesus@bm.com
Chase (4:00:04 PM): I would pay you in the e-mail line to address it to Mary, Jos, God
Chase (4:00:13 PM): Mary Joseph and God
Chase (4:00:24 PM): now that you're all together, I'd like to share our wonderful coverage
Chase (4:01:08 PM): in addition, if you think about it... Jesus only had three kings come to his birthday. Is one journalist for a non-news event really that bad?

a great post on madness. i'd say "anger" but that doesnt quite work in this context. its true though, people do get off on getting mad.

I'm Not Mad
by imperturb on dailykos

Mon Jun 08, 2009
When Diogenes was asked why he was walking around with a candle looking for an honest man, he is reported to have remarked that he thought it would be easier than his previous failed attempt to find a man who wasn't angry. Some accounts of his response, which I'm inclined to accredit, have it that he appended to the forgoeing, "not that it's any of your fucking business, dipshit".

Now, this is likely to get some people mad, but I'm not mad. No, I'm not mad, or fucking mad, or so fucking mad, or livid, or incensed, or apoplectic, or pissed, or furious, or enraged, or any of those things. I'd open up the window and scream, "I'm not mad as hell," but that would risk waking the baby downstairs, and, besides, people who are not mad do not scream out of windows. And I won't pretend rage just to try to fit in--to avoid being seen as heretical for cultivating an unseemly placidity.

Diogenes, my man, what with your special candle and all, you should have easily seen past my unconvincing feigned rage and realized I was always your guy-- the not-angry man. And, hey, if that candle of yours is so unhelpful in your cute little quests, maybe we can think of something else you can do with it...

Seems everyone is mad. Always. Brown, white, black, old, young, male, female, or whatever-- everybody is mad. Madness is not a state we enter into intermittently in response to a provocation but a permanent condition that varies only in its intensity (although it's usually maximal) and object. We "mad" in the same way we respirate, hydrate and sleep--it is basic to our existence. And, so, it is inarguably the case that the tent of mad is the biggest of all big tents; everybody is there, and even the most implacable foes stand shoulder to shoulder, allied in their commiment to the logic of anger.

In the tent, "doing mad" has become a kind of performance art. Tee up any object as the target of anger, say, fudge, for example, and the maddening crowd will so savagely and comprehensively attack and pummel it (the fudge) that it will come to bear almost no resemblance to the innocent little sweet we all took it to be. Now, I know fudge sucks, but I never imagined it was at the root of all civilization's ills. And, speaking of fudge, whose bright fucking idea was it that fudge was a good thing to sell at beach resorts?--it's 93 bleeding degrees and I'm supposed to want to bring some fudge down to the beach with me? Why?-- to watch it melt into a brown glop and intermingle with the sand like a fuckin chocolate oil spill?

And then it all just devolves into one of those execrable and unforgiveable TV talent contest things, America Does Mad--my mad is the maddest mad ever madded; my mad is the best a mad can get; my mad is asylum-ready-caliber mad; compared to my magisterial mad your weak-assed mad is really nothing more than a miffedness, a pique, or, on your best days, maybe an irkedness. And what a wonderful chance to parade our most withering profanity-laced putdowns. Oooh, did she just say "laminated, lip-synching ultramegadouchenozllete?" And during the ritual of maddening, the object of the madness quietly recedes into the wings, eclipsed by the ritual itself. Hey, who was it that we just flambeed so exquisitely? Was it McConell, a bankstah or just some media blowhard? Don't know, but does it matter?

I've put in my time in the big tent of madness, written my share of fulminous rants and lobbed my share of contemptuously derisive condemnations, many of them, I'll have you know, plucked from the rich Yiddish tradition of insult--shmuck, gonif, pisher, putz, etc-- but I'm moving on and pitching my one-man yurt outside the circle of anger and onto the arid and uninviting plain of flat affect and willed imperturbability. I'm giving up on madness because, frankly, I suck at it and always lose in the my madness is bigger than your madness contests I'm giving up madness in the way that Arianna Huffington gave up conservatism-- because it is too crowded. I'm giving up madness in the way that a NYC resident gives up smoking-- because it is too expensive(nearly ten bucks a pack). I'm giving up madness in the way I gave up sex--because it was unavailable to me. I'm giving up madness to spend more time with my family.

From this moment on, I vow not to call Phil Gramm a pustule, though he most assuredly is a pustule, as, by the way, is his wife. My only regret is that I never got to tell anyone "zol der vaksen tzibbeles fun pupik" --which translates as, "onions should grow from your naval." Perhaps a site member who has not forsworn anger as I have and has a taste for exravagant imprecation will do me the honor of laying the onion thing on a particularly vile winger scumbag.

asunder

On the fire escape of your rented room
we sat and felt the empty city
sweat and fret we passed a cigarette
back and forth as once we passed
words like these between us without
hope of keeping
Now I write
without hope of answer to say
that what we gave each other nakedly
was too much and not enough
to say that since we last touched
I am not empty but I hear you named
and my heart stalls the pieces of your voice
you left are interleaved with mine

with this quick spark in the emptiness

to say Yes i miss how love

may make us otherwise.






-craig arnold

The EMA Fund's response to Dr. Tiller's murder from the Boston Globe

read it here

now that i'm finally doing the work myself i'm so impressed with the women who run and work for the EMA fund, i cant even tell you. its emotionally gruelling but incredibly productive and critical to the community. They are under appreciated, under funded and under a ton of pressure.

if for whatever reason you have like ten extra bucks hanging around and feel like contributing to the fund- its all based on small private donations- it has never been more important than it is now with abortions becoming less and less accessible as hospitals, medical programs and even clinics become wary of getting dragged into the debate and potential danger.

here's more info on them and an easy way to donate online: The Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund

office aim snippet

(we're calling ellen "heals" now both because her last name is healy and because she is always teetering around in heels that she cant quite walk in. and, between you and me, she's the closest thing the human race has come to a pug. not that we dont love her, because we do, but i'm convinced she's at least 23 percent pug.)

daisy (5:49:03 PM): it seems we have some competition in the annoying laugh competition.
heals (5:49:10 PM): omg
heals (5:49:19 PM): freaking russian hat woman
heals (5:49:29 PM): have you seen her all-denim ensemble toda
daisy (5:49:39 PM): oh no.
heals (5:49:41 PM): oh yes.
daisy (5:49:42 PM): not all denim
daisy (5:49:43 PM): anything but that
heals (5:49:48 PM): denim hat
heals (5:49:50 PM): denim jacket
heals(5:49:52 PM): denim jeans
daisy (5:49:52 PM): no! head to toe!?
heals (5:49:56 PM): i am not even kidding you
heals (5:50:01 PM): HEAD to TOE.
daisy (5:50:05 PM): that is not just a no no, thats a no no no.
heals (5:50:15 PM): HA! precisely.
daisy (5:50:42 PM): is the denim all the same color?
heals(5:50:56 PM): YES
daisy (5:51:25 PM): apparently thats called a canadian tuxedo.
daisy (5:51:30 PM): vanessa just informed me. i learn something every day at this job.
heals (5:51:31 PM): good god. the horror.

This moat will be two hundred feet wide with red-hot magma and also contain anthrax and perhaps some lemon juice.

My favorite writer on the daily kos, known for sarcasm saturation, discusses how obama should be building a "Super Extreme Maximum Security Prison" for the Guantanamo detainees that no one trusts in american prisons. because after all they are terrorists. "The very word invokes visions of unknown superpowers; who is to say that these giants of worldwide terror do not have the ability to mind-meld with prison guards, disabling them, or the ability to walk through solid steeel, or do not have nuclear weapons stashed in their prison-supplied orange pants even as we speak?"

why he is excellent:
"...After this third moat, the terrorists will be met with a wide queue of normal, everyday American citizens. Half of these citizens will have been told they are in line for American Idol auditions; the other half will be told they are in line for the newest version of a Sony-produced game console. Upon any terrorist reaching this point, a designated lookout will point at the escapee, shouting "look, it's Paula Abdul, and she's got the only console!"
If the prisoner survives the resulting melee, they will find themselves within a normal, everyday elementary school. Being in solitary confinement for so long, the terrorists will have little immunity to the dozens of viruses floating around any typical elementary school environment; they will soon be rendered feverish, delusional, and blinded by the glitter of several hundred Hannah Montana-branded shirts.
The seventh circle of the prisoner's hell will contain more lava. Through loudspeakers, the songs from Mama Mia will play continuously. They will be accosted by an individual asking them to define ennui, and another who will draw a brutally sketched caricature of them, making them feel bad..."

pazienza

Today i was on the T for an hour and 13 minutes. thats 13 minutes longer than it would have taken me to walk to work. it was 15 minutes creeping along at the Green line's usual glacial speed and then ten minutes at a stand still with the conductor telling us there was "heavy traffic" ahead, then ten yards of movement, ten more minutes at stopped, ten yards, ten minutes etc. i got off at the next stop and walked the rest of the way making me a solid hour late to work.
there is only one reason i did not turn into a screetching monkey and swing up and down the stopped subway car on the hand rails:
Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters To A Young Poet
by a stroke of luck and genius at the last minute on my way out i shoved the book, recently gifted to me by my dads girlfriend, into my bag. its one of those books that i keep dancing around, kind of like pride & prejudice or one flew over the cuckoo's nest, that i really should have read by now and sort of feeeel like i've read just from having heard it quoted or references 2394738 times so i guiltily pass it over in bookstores, imagining there wouldnt be enough surprise in the experience of reading it and there are so many other new books i want to read and i'm almost too embarassed to pick it up and start it because it feels a little like being taught how to tie a shoe and yet this is no goodnight moon were talking about, this is ken kesey and jane austin and many others who i have skipped over due to a false sense of familiaity and in reality one doesnt know a book unless one's read it regardless of how many critical essays one has bashed one's head against and i ought to read them start to finish and fill in the gaping holes in my education so i can stop tripping on my literary shoe laces.
anyway, letters to a young poet has been personally recommended so many times in my life that i cant keep ignoring it so when teh T ground to a halt for the second time i wrenched the book out of my bag and began reading. and reading. and reading. and underlining and flagging and tagging and dogearing and my god how have i lived this long without these words?
i'm only on page 41 and rilke has allready discussed patience, poetry, irony, love, sex and career with words that connected the plug of my heart to the socket of my brain and made both light up.

Here is a passage in which rilke responds to his young correspondant's impatience with his life's direction, his impatience with his ability to do or even find, what he loves doing:

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and i want to beg you, as much as i can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything."

and a poem of his that i really enjoyed as a side order to the maincourse of the book

I Am Much Too Alone in This World, Yet Not Alone

I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
enough
to truly consecrate the hour.
I am much too small in this world, yet not small
enough
to be to you just object and thing,
dark and smart.
I want my free will and want it accompanying
the path which leads to action;
and want during times that beg questions,
where something is up,
to be among those in the know,
or else be alone.

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,
never be blind or too old
to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.
I want to unfold.
Nowhere I wish to stay crooked, bent;
for there I would be dishonest, untrue.
I want my conscience to be
true before you;
want to describe myself like a picture I observed
for a long time, one close up,
like a new word I learned and embraced,
like the everday jug,
like my mother's face,
like a ship that carried me along
through the deadliest storm.

by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Annemarie S. Kidder