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Why Paul Ryan Won’t Be President


Larry Sabato, the sage of Virginia, once headlined, not exactly a fundraiser, but more of a donor prospecting event, for a progressive political organization with which I had an affiliation (they occasionally, though not as frequently as I would liked, paid me).

When the subject of the 2008 elections (which hadn’t happened yet – this was still 2007) came up, he dispensed his careful, semi-non-partisan (it wasn’t a non-partisan that he was playing for) wisdom.

At one point, I noted that when I’d met John Edwards, he struck me as being a bit of an a–hole. Larry said, Edwards will never be president. As part of the Kerry-Edwards, not only did he lose his home state, he lost the town where he lived. Not only did he lost the town where he lived, he lost the precinct where Edwards himself voted. His own neighbors didn’t vote for him.

Well, I don’t know how Paul Ryan’s precinct voted, but Ryan not only lost Wisconsin, the Romney-Ryan ticked lost Ryan’s hometown of Janesville, where his family had been prominent, well-respected business people (the family money primarily came from government contracts, mostly building roads) for more than a generation.

Sounds to me like a violation of, let’s call it ‘the Sabato Rule.’

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Pacifica Radio Archives


I couldn’t help it. I donated $50 to the Pacifica Radio Archives.

They are trying to digitize all the old reel to reel and cassette tapes before the disintegrate.

They were playing clips of Ray Bradbury speeches and interviews. It was kind of a science fiction hour, and one of the hosts talked about the tape of an interview he did with A.E. Van Vogt (not so long ago, I tracked down a copy of his Weapon Shops of Isher, having read as a teenager a short story that was actually an excerpt from it).

So, I had to do my part to preserve those records.

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John Keats


I’ve been carrying around a little leather bound copy of the collected poetry of John Keats. It’s a little smaller than a trade paperback (though larger than a mass market paperback). It’s a beautiful piece of art and not the sort they make anymore. Leastways, I only ever see such things for sale in used bookstores.

My mother-in-law and father-in-law have been in town and the latter and I have been spending a lot of time together.

I don’t speak much Thai and he doesn’t speak a great amount of English (though vastly more than my Thai), but we both like to get out and about and do things. We went to see some museums over the weekend (the Library of Congress’ Jefferson Building and the National Gallery of Art) and I carried that copy of Keats with me, on account of it fitting so nicely into a coat pocket and on account of it always being a good time to read good poetry. When moments presented themselves, I pulled it out, opened it to the section marked by the satiny ribbon, and read snippets of Endymion.

I do wonder that, as the e-books over take books, will books like my Keats come back? As physical books become as much objets d’art as anything else, will little, beautiful things like this come back into fashion? But will that also presage the end of something else? After all, don’t I love my collection of pulpy books, the symbol of a great error of mass publishing and also of mass reading?

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Jack Gilbert Died


The poet, Jack Gilbert died. I picked up his Collected Poems after a local blogger recommended him.

Now, I feel kind of bad for not liking very much. Not disliking him nor feeling my time reading him wasted (or, at least, not too much). But just generally not ‘clicking.’ If it had been a first date, I wouldn’t have complained about her to my friends, but neither would I go out with her again.

So maybe I should give him another look, out of guilt. I think the book is still on the floor beside my bed.

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Mica & Transportation


Count me as one of those who believe that Florida’ own John Mica will be granted a waiver by Speaker Boehner to keep his chairmanship of the House Transportation Committee.

Mica is an old school, pork barrel patronage kind ‘o Congressman. The sort of establishment type who will stick with Boehner. And Boehner needs the support of as many of those as he can round up to stave off the nonetheless inevitable backstab by Cantor or whoever else the rebellious youth of the GOP round up to push him out.

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They’re All Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious


I’m talking about Seth Abramson’s reviews, of course! Nothing but awesome.

But I actually own one of them – Tao Lin’s Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy – and it blew me away (am I sounding like Seth here?).

If you want to know why conceptual and tricksy, flarf-sy poetry can be awesome, but don’t have the patience to read one of Kenneth Goldsmith’s patience testing tomes, check out Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. It has a weird emotional depth that’s hard to explain. And poems about hamsters.

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The Sunday Newspaper – Poetry In Jakarta


The Call to Poetry festival.

T.S. Eliot Prize nominees announced.

In Newark, poetry matters.

Do you young people still read and go to libraries? (hint: yes, they do)

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WTF?!


Really? My home state of Florida, under the guidance of Rick Scott and his Republican ouija board, is now dissing both my college major (history) and my minor (philosophy)?

Governor Rick Scott, you lack the basic self control God gave to an infant monkey suffering from projectile diarrhea, you ignorant c–p weasel.

You are an amazing combination of ignorant and embarrassing. Congressman David Rivera (R-soon to be indicted, just lost) is five seconds away from looking at you and saying, ‘Dude, you have lost the plot.’

Ugh.

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Which Iliad?


When I was either in junior high or high school, I spent a summer reading The Iliad and was very taken by it (though, as I think many modern readers feel when they read it, I was more sympathetic to the Trojan side and was disappointed at how easily poor Hektor was dispatched and how cowardly he was made in his next to last moments).

I read the Richard Lattimore translation. Not for any particular reason, it was what I found in, I think it was, A Blue Moon Bookstore in Clearwater.

This LA Review of Books piece looks at the various English translations out there.

After reading it, I’m glad I happened to read Lattimore. It seems like he’d most be my style. It also makes one want to go back, though to be entirely honest, I find it hard to imagine going back and reading The Iliad again, which does not, I admit, reflect so well on me. And if I did, I don’t know. I might read Chapman, just because he comes so high recommended by John Keats.

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The New 52 – Batman


I always get the urge to walk inside when I pass by a comic book store, but I’m frankly intimidated. I haven’t even remotely kept up in, quite literally, decades (not since I used to buy comics at the 7-11 style convenience store near our home in Norfolk, Virginia when I was a kid).

But I read about DC Comics relaunch, The New 52, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to start fresh and maybe keep up with a series.

There’s a comic store near my office, and I was in a frustrated kind of mood. It was actually about money troubles, which makes purchasing comic books sound counter-productive, but I needed the distraction and, oddly enough, doing this would, I felt, give me a certain feeling of accomplishment.

Because the various series have, nonetheless, been out for a while, I’m like 13 issues behind, so I went for one of the bound collections containing the first six to seven issues.

I told me story, in brief, to the owner and asked for his help and recommendation.

Firstly, he told me I’d be better off buying one of the bound collections, because he was unlikely to have the first thirteen issues of any of the series in stock.

He himself particularly enjoyed Batman, Batman & Robin (there are, something like three of four New 52 Batman series, including the original ‘DC’ of ‘DC Comics’ – Detective Comics), Wonder Woman, and Swamp Thing.

I’d rather had it in my head, as a sort of token nod to history, to get either Detective Comics or Action Comics (which is Superman), but I settled for the owner’s advice and got Batman.

Batman is still friends with Robin. And Actually, several former ‘Robins’ have advanced on (one becoming Darkwing and another becoming Red Robin; the current Robin in this series being uncomfortably young looking for a reader approaching early middle age who has concerns about child endangerment). This was a little worrying, not being a fan of the whole concept of the Robin, but it worked okay here, not in the least because none of the current or former Robins were major players (though the oldest former Robin and current Darkwing looks to maybe be a bigger player in future issues).

The artwork was generally very good, though Bruce Wayne and a mayoral candidate named Lincoln looked entirely too much alike (strong jawed, broad shouldered white men; the only way I could be sure is that Lincoln brill creams his locks while Bruce Wayne sports a disconcerting looking, mussy, curly, bedhead thing). The fight scenes were well done and walked carefully that fine line between the Batman who is just a really fit guy in a black and grey suit and Batman who something more, who is, well, a superhero. Good work on closeups of the face and using those to advance the emotional core of the story and to dramatize the inner life of the characters.

They build this new mythology about the ‘Council of Owls’ well (though the whole ‘owls eat bats’ thing is a bit of stretch for me) and I’m looking forward to reading further issues.

And I think I’m going to start reading one other – maybe Aquaman. Or Action Comics. I’ll see what happens when it happens.