How The Grinch Stole the White House... Again--.by Alan Waldman-- from *Online Journal* {click here}

This is an detailed update on what's being done right now
....behind the media scenes...regarding
voter fraud. Bev Harris leading the charge on
Volusia County, Florida possible recount.

Sin (A Cardinal Deposed)

is the title of a play by our friend Michael Murphy
now in its last few days at Theatre Row
(410 West 42nd Street, bet 9th & 10th Ave.-
tel: 212- 244-3380).

This play, excellently directed by Carl Forsman,
was based on transcripts of the trial
of Cardinal Law of Boston, who was accused
of neglecting to confront priests who were
sexual child abusers in his diocese. We were
amazed at how compelling this production was,
considering the dialog is completely based on
transcripts a la court tv. Cardinal Law failed
to confront a single child abuser in his diocese
although there were many proven cases, including
one priest who was a leader in Nambla.

The play was presented in a very comfortable
small theatre, part of a kind of multiplex
off-Broadway group of theatres. The staging
was effective, utilizing vignettes from complainants
in screens off to stage right and left, while the
main part of the play takes place completely
in center stage at a conference table. Due to
the finely focussed acting and presentation, this
play, not overly long, remains
a gripping, provocative and
suspenseful experience.

Thinking and talking about this play brought to
mind the tendency on the part of bureacratic
institutions to shield themselves from public
scrutiny and outrage. This play also brought
home the tendency, a la Nazi Germany, for
this country to breed cults that are openly
abusive-certain groups within the
Catholic Church being among
the core constituency of the far right wing
political/religious movement in this country.
Another issue, among many this play evokes,
has to do with a contagious paralysis,
on the part of so many people working
within any kind of hierarchy,
in the ability to think for themselves, or to
stand up for any ideal unless it embraces the
stated and unstated aims of
the given power structure.
The cast in this play included John Cullum
who was chillingly convincing at Cardinal
Bernard F. Law.

We were also excited to learn about
The New Group, a repertory group
that makes inexpensive memberships
available at this theater. Upcoming
plays include *Hurlyburly* by David
Rabe, directed by Scott Elliott, with a
star studded cast featur�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ing Wallace
Shawn, Parker Posey, Ethan Hawke
and others.
****************************************
Gary Sullivan's *New Life* cartoon
today focuses on the ongoing tragedy in
Fallujah
Elsewhere {click here}
****************************************

"Behold the Machine:
how it rolls and wreaks vengeance
and drains and deforms us."

from : *Sonnets to Orpheus*
Rainer Maria Rilke
translated by Edward Snow
North Point Press, 2004

Before going into our usual diatribe (in this case a
quote from Anselm Jappe's absorbing *Guy
Debord* -University of California Press, 1999)
I can't resist telling you what a great and delicious
time we had last evening with Gary and Nada, their clever cats Nemo
and Dante, and the wonderful Marianne Shaneen.
I do not wish to provoke envy, yet I will mention that
the world at large should have so many more opportunities
to spend time with these immensely entertaining
poets; and, in particular, to experience directly their abundant
knowledge of certain hlarious, entrancing and stellar moments in Bollywood
film history. I will state unreservedly that such knowledge
should be made immediately available
to a broad, and hopelessly dismayed and bored
public, particularly in this bluest of blue states.

And Marianne's suggestion of Nada singing
flarf set to music- picture that! Is she not to
be enthuiastically encouraged in this most
hopefully entertaining of possiblities?
********
and, now, from Anselm Jappe:

"It will be evident by this time that the spectacle is the
heir of religion and it is significant that the first chapter
of *The Society of the Spectacle* has a quotation from
Feuerbach's *Essence of Christianity* as its epigraph.
The old religion projected man's own power into the heavens,
where it took on the appearance of a god oopposed to man,
a foreign entity. The spectacle performs the same operation
on earth. The greater the power that man attributed to gods
of his own creation, the more powerless he himself felt;
humanity behaves similarly with respect to powers that it
has created and allowed to escape and that now "reveal
themselves to us in their full force." (Society of the Spectacle).
The *contemplation* of these powers is in inverse propportion
to the individual's experience of real life, to the point where
his most ordinary gestures are lived by someone else
instead of by the subject himself. In this world, "the
spectabor feels at home nowhere" (Society of the Spectacle).
In the spectacle, as in religion, every moment of life,
every idea, and every gesture achieves meaning only from
without." (Debord and Conjuers, 1960 and *Situationist
International Anthology, 1983).

Oooooh eeeee oooooh aaaah aaaah ting tang walla walla bing bang

Toni and I are going to
Nada and Gary's
place for
Thanksgiving
Dinner

- Marianne
is coming too-

and, dear readers,
Happy Thanksgiving to you!

Some samples of music by Eric Satie {click here}

Thanks to Laura Carter at Blue Revisions
for her kind words about *fait accompli*
and for including us on her Blog Crush List.

Blue Revisions (click here}

"The rest is history
The rest is literature
The rest is silence
The rest is history
The rest is literature
The rest is silence
The rest is literature
The rest is history
The rest is silence"




Frank Kuenstler

*FUGITIVES. ROUNDS*
EVENTORUM PRESS, N.Y.
1966
********************************
Peter Manson's Freebase Accordion new links page {click here}

A Universal Manifesto for Contemporary American Poetics, Aesthetics, Politics and Business

Manifesto {click here}

"Freedom of speech! It hath not entered into your
hearts to conceive what those words mean. It is not
leave given me by your sect to say this or that; it
is when leave is given to your sect to withdraw. The church,
the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal
and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard. I ask only
that one fourth part of my honest thoughts be spoken
aloud. What is it you tolerate, you church to-day? Not
truth, but a lifelong hypocrisy. Let us have institutions
framed not out of our rottenness, but out of our soundness.
This factitious piety is like stale gingerbread. I would
like to suggest what a pack of fools and cowards we
mankind are.They want me to agree not to breathe too
hard in the neighborhood of their paper castles. If I should
draw a long breath in the neighborhood of these institutions,
their weak and flabby sides would fall out, for my own
inspiration would exhaust the air about them. The church!
it is eminently the timid institution, and the heads and
pillars of it are constitutionally and by principle the greatest
cowards in the community. The voice that goes up
from the monthly concerts is not so brave and so cheering
as that which rises from the frog-ponds of the land..."

Henry David Thoreau
Journals
November 16, 1858

You Can't Always Get What You Want

but you can dream about it by means of


Lucid Dreaming {click here}
*************************************

*fait accompli* called it *paranoia* (see the sidebar to your left)

-Counterpunch calls it *fear*- either way- a new approach is needed


the full essay available right now on
Counterpunch {click here}


put your fingers on the pulse of contemporary information-
via wood s lot {click here}
************************************************************

Truth In Blogging

Visiting in-laws today in Arlington, Mass, everyone out, so I had the time to
read through every blog listed on Brother Tom's finish your phrase {click here} linklist (my hypothesis is, that since the election was Bushwhacked,
most bloggers are going through a well-earned depression).
One, and only one, blogpost made me laugh out loud today. And the winner is...

Paula's House of Toast {click here}
***************************************************

Police, protesters clash in Chile {click here} via Transdada
****************************************************
Shanna Compton is working on Jerome Sala's new
book: *Look Slimmer Instantly*. This post includes
a photo of the cover plus a link to four of the poems
published on a webzine.
Brand New Insects-Jerome Sala's book {click here}
*************************************************

"in his work *The Information Age*, Castella has
demonstrated empirically how competition intensifies
in the global information economy (or *informational*
economy to be exact, because all economies are based
on information, but ours is based on the information-
technology paradigm...) Speedy technological changes
make it imperative to get new technology to consumers
quickly, before one's competitors do. The slow are left
holding obsolete products; even worse is a belated
response to fundamental shifts in technology."

*The Hacker Ethic* by Pekka Himanen
translated by Anselm Hollo and Pekka Himanen
Random House, 2001
*************************************************
Competition and Alienated Labor

Marx on Human Persons {click here}
Estranged Labor by Karl Marx {click here}

Thought as Constant Conjecture

The Rule of Conjecture by Laura Carter on Blue Revisions {click here}
*******************************************
From Bob Holman at Poetry About. Com

Special Holiday Sale at SPD Books on December 8th

SPD Holiday Book Sale {click here}
***********************************************
Drew Gardner from *The Membranous Labyrinth {click here}
published in
The Alterran Poetry Assemblage {click here}
***********************************************
from *Million Poems* to *Five Million Copies*
Do I hear Ten Million?

Blogged Vispo right now on

Five Million Copies Project {click here}

via

Tributary {click here}
**********************************************
Thanks to OKIR (Jean Vengua) {click here}
for posting to our poem *www* on as/is {click here} and to Chris Murray (TexfFiles {click here} for her comments.

What a poet must invent and reinvent is not
only poetry but a *raison d'etre* for poetry.


from*Theoretical Objects* (Green Integer, 1999)
******************************************************
from *Literature Nation* by
Maria Damon and Miekal And
Potes and Poets, 2003

"[angelic object]

There is a ghostly remembrance, or rather, the phosphene double-
image as one screen is replaced by the next. &,that [moment when
the page turning ] allows a nanosecond of expectation & guessing.
Even as you hesitate, wondering what link to click, Literature
Nation is writing itself in your head [This is your invitation] to
create your own language state."
*******************************************************



David Bromige and Richard Denner have
been doing a terrific ongoing collaboration
titled *Spade*. The latest parts are availabe
here on Poetic Inhalation {click here} as pdf's. Work also by
Vernon Frazer, Opal Nations, Stephen-Paul Martin,
Raymond Federman, Andrew Lundwall and many others.
**************************************************************
Two of My Favorite Writers Have New Betas from Faux Press
Mitch Highfill and Cori Copp. On line now at

Faux Press {click here}

The Lineup:

Carl Annarummo:
High Heaven Ugly Hat
Micah Ballard:
Unforeseen
Tina Celona:
When I Am Done with Cookies I Look for Pie
Corina Copp:
Carpeted
Joe Elliot:
101 Designs for The World Trade Center
Mitch Highfill:
A Dozen Sonnets
Tim Peterson:
Trinkets Mashed into a Blender
Christina Strong:
Utopian Politics
Alli Warren:
Yoke
*********************************************************************
Reward for Information of Serious Voting Fraud that Would Lead to
Change of Election Outcome Raised to $200. 000

Blue Lemur {click here}
*********************************************************************

Berkeley Study Finds Disparity in Vote Count {click here}
*********************************************************************
Holier Than Thou (This link requires video software)

Bush Uncensored {click here}

Since we have heard only lies all our lives
we must assume the truth is unintelligible
and start from there. It's like panning
for gold and not knowing what gold is.


pubished in *Theoretical Objects*
(Green Integer, 1999)


****************************************
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

229

"If a war has lasted twenty years it can well
go on to last a hundred. For war has
now become a *status*. People who have
enjoyed peace die out."

Notebook:J 1789-1793


(Penguin Classics
translated by RJ Hollingdale)


101

"I would give something to know for
precisely whom the deeds were really
done of which it is publicly stated it was
done *for the fatherland*.

Notebook K 1793-1796

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

"To be born to create, to love, to win at games
is to be born to live in time of peace. But war
teaches us to lose everything and become what
we were not. It all becomes a question of style."

Albert Camus
April 1939-February 1942 Notebook III


***************************************"


"The Americans are not realists. I discovered
this while watching an American film remade
from an old French film. What had been *real*
atmosphere, a geniune setting, was now a shabby
backcloth. Their vaunted realism 1920-1940
was a particular kind of romanticism about "living
reality." The fanciful idea that everything is realism
(Dos Passos). The point of view is not tragic,
but "voluntaristic." Tragedy is a clash with reality:
"voluntarism" is to make a comfort of it, a way
to escape from reality."

28th April, 1949
The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950
Cesare Pavese

Walker and Company, NY
1961

****************************************************
Chemotherapy is

Dying to
get well

10 12 83

Wystan Curnow
*Cancer Daybook*
Van Guard XPress
1989

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

The Letters of Sigmund Freud
1932-1939

295 to Max Eitington

Vienna IX.Berggasse 19
February 6, 1938

Dear Friend,

I have often asked myself in bewilderment if it is absolutely
necessary for newspapers to tell lies so regularly and without
restraint. In any case, it is good to hear you don't believe the
news this time, either. Our brave and in its way decent government
is now more energetic than ever in keeping the Nazis at bay.
although in view of the latest events in Germany no one can be
sure what is going to happen...."

cordially,
your
Freud
***********************************************************

Debussy Letters


to Robert Godet
31 October 1917

Tres cher,

...Don't be upset if I haven't mentioned my plans
for some time. . . Music's completely abandoned
me. Even if it's not a cause for tears, it's a trifle
ridiculous, at least. But there's nothing I can do about
it, and I've never forced anyone to like me. If music thinks
I'm treating her badly, then she can go elsewhere: if
necessary I can give her some useful addresses if not
particularly sympathetic ones. The hard part if all of
this is to have to go on writing about it: that's certainly
the worst thing! Why haven't I the energy to write on
military matters? That's a good life at the moment. Look
at Bidou in the*Debats* and Laloy in *Excelsior*- you'd
think they were born wearing zoave's trousers. Seriously,
I think Bidou is marvelously clear at explaining the most
complex military situations- perhaps his skill as a drama
critic's more help to himthan one can imagine!

yours, but a little exhaustedly,
CD
*********************************************************

from Dream Time
Chapters in the Sixties

Geoffrey O'Brien

"They could not help observing that the war was still
going on. Every night the footage of smoke and rubble
and the recitation of body counts continued, while they
sat watching it in a world invulnerable to mortar fire.
The spectable numbed them. They had to keep reminding
themselves that the flat pictures- wedged between Alpo
commercials and summer reruns of *Hogan's Heroes*-
pertained to irreversible deaths. "I can't believe it's
still happening. They *have* to stop it pretty soon." Something
would change. Johnson's advisors, after watching the
protests from a balcony would take him aside. "Sir,
they're just not buying it anymore, I'm afraid we have
no choice but to pull out."

But the change was not coming fast enough. It would take more
than peace buttons and chanted slogans. The powerful
vibrations that had been unleashed in the march on the Pentagon
- a mustering of all the energy the underground had to
offer- were lost on an enemy insensitive to anything but
the grossest applications of force. For the pigs to get
the message, it would be necessary to hit them where
they lived. Commando teams were better suited than crowds
for such tactics. One morning the newspaper announced
that the induction center had been reduced to ashes by'
unknown arsonists. The counterescalation had begun..."
****************************************************************

from: *An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry*
Edited by Nanos Vaalaoritis and
Thannasis Maskaleris
(Talisman House Publishers
Jersey City, NJ, 2003)

*TESTAMENT*

by Adriana Ierodiakonou

"Don't forget the small countries.

It's easy, they fit in places
so secret, so sharp.

In a drop of oil.
Or in the voice of a knife.
black as black after months.

Don't forget the small countries
at the hour when everything changes.
In my plate? Earth!
My bed? A boat!

Because everyone knows and doesn't know.
Don't forget the small countries."




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

Editors: Nanos Valaoritis and Thanasis Maskaleris

I did not restrain myself.
I let go entirely and went.
I went into the luminous night,
To those pleasures that were half real
And half reeling in my brain.
-- from “I Went” by Constantine Cavafy

Modern Greek Poetry brings together translations of works by some of the most eminent and accomplished writers of our time. The Greek poets have played a powerful role in the creation of modern and postmodern literature. Modern Greek Poetry is a landmark anthology, a major contribution to our understanding of world poetry. No anthology of Greek poetry is as encompassing and commanding.

Greece for the past century has given the world some of its finest poetry. The editors and their translators provide generous selections not only from internationally celebrated poets but also from younger writers who are beginning to play key roles in the literary world today.

There are new translations of works by Cavafy, perhaps the greatest of all the Greek modernists; Surrealist and Nobel Prize winner Odysseus Elytris; and Nobel Prize winner George Seferis as well as works by such celebrated writers as Yannis Ritsos, Angelos Sikelianos, and almost a hundred others.

NANOS VALAORITIS is among the most celebrated of the contemporary Greek poets. Born in Switzerland but of Greek descent, Valaoritis was prominent among Surrealist poets under André Breton before moving to the United States. He was a professor of literature at San Francisco State University.

THANASIS MASKALERIS, the former director of the Center for Modern Greek Studies at San Francisco State University, is a native of Greece and the author of numerous literary and critical works in Greek as well as English.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

from Daily Kos: Blogger Blackout over 2004 Election Issues {click here}

The fact that I keep finding things when
I am no longer searching for them might
be an indication that something is holding
me back.
************************************

The more I am heard, the more I
must resort to silence to be heard.
The quicker I go, the stealthier
I must move.

7/88
published in: *The Boundary of Blur*
(Roof, 1993)

Activists Question
Accuracy of Optical Vote Scan Machines {click here}
*******************************************
This Just In


BOX OF UNCOUNTED VOTES 'DISCOVERED' IN FLORIDA
-From Suny/Buffalo Poetics List {click here}

All human error is impatience, a premature
renunciation of method, the delusive
pinning down of a delusion.


Kafka
********
I posted a new poem titled
www {click here}
on as/is today...

Comic Relief From The Apocalypse


B is for Blogging, I must be balmy or bloody bonkers

No, B is for Bet Boynton {click here}
can still make you smile.


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

After the Shock, Denial, Rage and Grief
Time To Get Down To The Nitty-Gritty

Taylor Brady responds to Thomas Frank, Timothy Burke,
*minor american* and others on
his new blog

Inflection Point {click here}

This Just In: Green Party Announces Vote Recount in Ohio

Truthout.org {click here}
**

Green Party "Morning After" Press Release
Tired of Cleaning Up After Other People's Parties {click here}
********************************
Allegations of Election Fraud by Bush Are Mounting

Why We Hate Bush.com {click here}