Sunday, December 25, 2005

off the rack

I felt bad. The likelihood of my seeing mom and of my being hungover were both markedly higher on Sundays--a meaningless statisical convergence that nonetheless could create a false impression. I said, "If I really drank too much I wouldn't be hungover now, mom. In fact I'm a lightweight. I should really drink more--or at least more steadily."
On the north side of Eleventh Alice and I kissed and hugged mom and said our see you soons. I looked for a moment into mom's splintered blue eyes and saw there that love was so strong in her that she feared the thing. I think she guessed accurately enough what it was like to be somebody else (such as her husband or one of her kids) that the guess freaked her out and so she kept from making it. In fact I could see how one might do just that, avoiding sympathy out of an excess of it. "Love you," we said to each other and let go.

--from indecision by benjamin kunkel

walking back from watching maddy the cat

the neighbor, the one who lost his two cats and his girlfriend in such a short time, I can’t think of his name and it bothers me, he leaves his door open when he shouldn’t, it’s an invitation, it’s a halfway point in the hallway, it’s a sky without choice, the sky says “when you need me I’ll be sitting on the ledge”, the sky is a song stealer, but it’s a perfect song tonight, two hours after rain and a stick at the edge of alamo square chewed on by one of those dogs I’m constantly afraid of. three drunks girls quiet their laughter when they see me, I pull out my phone and see it’s five minutes after midnight, there’s a hole in one of my pillowcases, I’m not sure why I think of that, registering at the same time that we’re five minutes in, “happy christmas” I say, it’s an irish wish and one of them comes back with an accent “happy christmas”. there’s a man wedged between the fence that holds the tennis court and a trash can, he looks like he sat through the rain from two hours before, and the trees in alamo square still raining the way they always do, he looks like he could be dead, he looks like a black shadow and I look closer wondering if he’s really there or if it's a trash bag that got caught on the fence, but it is a person, a man I assume although I’m not sure why, but he looks, he sits there a man and I think someone should speak for him, that’s the thought that goes through my head, then the accent again, “happy christmas”, he looks but I’m never going to hear his voice, he looks and we’ve all been out doing so much killing and how does that coincide with the christmas lights along the tall building that you face coming down the hill, with that view of the city that tourists come to see, with the scarfless weather, the voices underneath the things you think and see, that you’ll never be able to describe and yet you think that someone should speak and then someone does, one of two men saying “yo yo yo, ho ho ho” and he’s got a santa hat on and they’ve both got good laughs and well wishers full of coins that hit the bottom and there’s a line in this neighborhood between black and white that’s always moving, that drives slow so you can’t miss it, but still you’re never sure which side of it you’re on until you arrive, and you do, where your neighbor is at the front door fumbling with his keys but he’s blessing a drunk and you let him in and he gives a wide sweep of his arm and says “after you”, but you hear barry the orange tabby behind you so you walk across the courtyard to let him in the opposite door hearing “merry fucking christmas” behind you as the door closes. you check your mail for the first time in a couple days and it’s full of someone else’s mail so you set in on top of the mail boxes and you think someone should speak and you think it’s a bloody time of year and you decide to stop thinking because you’ve had a few days on your own and surprisingly that always calms everything. inside your place it’s a mess, it looks like the box of mix tapes that you kept in your dorm room years ago, and other games, and soon it’s 37 minutes or so, four days after the shortest day of the year. and the neighbor, I remember now, toby. I kind of wanted to walk in on toby and just say hello.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

OED Definitions

lurker--

1. One who lurks or lies concealed: freq. employed as a term of abuse in early quots. lit. and fig.
a1325 Names of Hare in Rel. Ant. I. 133 The wilde der, the lepere, The shorte der, the lerkere. 1399 LANGL. Rich. Redeles III. 57 But as sone as ey [the young birds]..steppe kunne, an cometh and crieth her owen kynde dame, and they ffolwith e vois,..and leueth e lurker at hem er ladde. a1400-50 Alexander 3543 ou litill thefe, ou losangere, ou lurkare in cities. c1470 HENRYSON Fables v. Parl. Beasts xl, ‘For goddis lufe, my lord, gif me the law Of this lurker’; with that lowrence let draw. 1519 W. HORMAN Vulg. viii. 89b, He is a starter a syde or a lurkar [L. emansor]. 1620 BP. HALL Hon. Mar. Clergy I. xxiv. 129 If this lawlesse Lurker had euer had any taste of the Ciuill or Canon Law, hee might haue beene able to construe that Maxime. 1641 MILTON Ch. Govt. I. vi. Wks. 1851 III. 121 It was well knowne what a bold lurker schisme was even in the houshold of Christ. 1702 C. MATHER Magn. Chr. VII. App. (1852) 631 Two men at Exeter were killed by some of the same dangerous lurkers. 1821 SCOTT Kenilw. xix, In hopes to find that the lurker had disappeared. 1870 MORRIS Earthly Par. II. III. 498 Then did the lurkers from the gully bound.
2. A begging impostor; a petty thief.
c1842 Exposure of Impositions practised by Vagrants 4 Lurkers are persons who go about with briefs, containing false statements of losses by fire, shipwrecks, accidents, &c. 1851 MAYHEW Lond. Labour I. 219 Armed with these [sham official documents], the patterer becomes a ‘lurker’,that is, an impostor. Ibid. 363 A lurker being strictly one who loiters about for some dishonest purpose. 1925 H. LEVERAGE in Flynn's IV. 869/2 Lurker, a swindler. 1973 G. BUTLER Coffin for Pandora i. 27, I knew the lingo. A macer was a cheat or a sharper and a lurker was a man with a story of hard luck to tell.


DRAFT ADDITIONS DECEMBER 2001

lurker, n.1
Chiefly Computing slang. A person who reads communications to an electronic network without actively contributing.
1984 Sci. Amer. Sept. 83/2 (advt.) That'll fool the ‘lurkers’, those CB ‘see it alls’ who get their kicks by watching. 1991 M. HEIM in M. Benedikt Cyberspace (1993) 76 People do not just observe one another, they become ‘lurkers’. 1992 N.Y. Times 1 Dec. C14/6 [He] estimates that there are five or six lurkers for each poster on a bulletin board. 1994 Guardian 7 July (Online Suppl.) 6/1 You can see everyone who's logged on and providing a TV signal. You don't need a TV card or camera, you'll just be a ‘lurker’. 1998 Courier-Jrnl. (Louisville, Kentucky) 21 Dec. D6/5 Long-time lurkers who decide to join the conversation are said to be ‘delurking’.


lurker--part two

1825 Encycl. Lond. XX. 435/1 [In pilchard fishing] the third boat is called the lurker, and carries three or four men. 1880 W. Cornwall Gloss., Lurker, a boat in which the master seiner sits to give instructions. 1902 Longm. Mag. Aug. 349 The lurkers were lifted over mud and shingle, the crews sprang, tumbled, or were pushed on board.

Thursday, December 22, 2005

edwards drive-in

"children of paradise" or if you prefer the french, "les enfants du paradis", was released in 1945. when it was being made the nazi's have created a ban on any film being over 90 minutes. so the writer and director got around this by making "two' films. the movie is still said to play somewhere in paris every day.

the backdrop of the making of the film only adds to what is one of the best movies I've ever seen. it's a movie that is in love with paris, this being the paris of 1828. it's so good I wonder how I missed it until now. there's a scene where two actors are sitting in a theater talking while a performance is happening. one of the characters looks up at the cheap seats and says "listen to the gods, how easily they laugh". it's a throwaway line, but like many of the lines in this movie it's a great throwaway line.

the movie is cynical and silly and poetic and sad and witty and several other adjectives that don't seem to go together. it's a french film in the best sense of the word. it lasts three hours which go by without notice. it's obviously an epic film and yet it never feels like one. it's impossible to actually describe this movie I think, just see it if you haven't.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

kid loco remix

by the bar you say “I’m a moralist, that’s my problem”
these things, most overarching canopies, go unnoticed
you’re just another self-justifying prick, saying as if it were really
you’ve hammered spikes in people’s arms from here to nebraska
laid them down as train tracks all the way to california

all these double-sided frames are my friends
with them I tire
opening to and having to guard against their identities

it’s a combination of words that forms our language

by the bar you keep talking
somehow not noticing that I’m already gone, watching her sleep
that I willed her softly so
that there is a drawer full of antagonistic utensils in the kitchen
that my parents exist
I call them sometimes and say—
“I know you are old, but we will still fly”

my wrecking ball has been a study in composition
during destroyer dances it stayed in check
now, I’m going to treat it like a tambourine
“here is me who you’ve seldom seen” it will say
there’s you, a preacher’s son, which seems fitting
silica is found in sand, in something like glass
all it needs is an enthusiast

OED Definitions

frisson--

An emotional thrill.

1777 H. WALPOLE Let. 8 Oct. (1904) X. 130, I tore open the sacred box with..little reverence... No holy frisson, no involuntary tear warned me. 1903 A. BENNETT Truth abt. Author xii. 156 The cult of the literary frisson. 1920 Public Opinion 24 Sept. 290/1 There had been a frisson of horror because the enemy was over the Marne. 1956 B. RUSSELL Portraits from Memory 203 They rather enjoyed the frisson that its horrors gave them. 1967 Times 24 May 8/4 She provides that indescribable frisson which is the prerogative of only a few singers in each generation. 1971 Observer 31 Oct. 11/4 The dramatist seemed to have projected him on stage first to grip the audience with a frisson of alarm and impending melodrama.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

OED Definitions

Nival--

Chiefly Ecol. and Physical Geogr.

1. Snowy, resembling snow; formed from or in snow. Cf. NIVEOUS a.
1656 T. BLOUNT Glossographia, Nival, pertaining to Snow, white or cold like Snow, snowy.
1881 Amer. Naturalist 15 519 This nival covering is not a shroud to conceal the dead, but a warm comforter spread over the earth's slumbering forces by that Great, Good Hand ‘which giveth snow like wool’. 1978 Arctic & Alpine Res. 10 117 Nival surface conditions differ widely. 1994 Jrnl. Mammalogy 75 420 Six of 20 nival shelters used by nonparturient females [sc. polar bears] were located on the sea ice.
2. Designating a region of perpetual snow; growing in or characteristic of such a region.
1884 Science 21 Nov. 475/2 Monte Rosa contains the richest nival flora. 1937 Jrnl. Ecol. 25 130 The Tongariro spectra compare with those of Raunkiaer..while those for Mount Cook are more like his for the nival region of the Alps in general. 1967 M. J. COE Ecol. Alpine Zone Mt. Kenya 18 The nival zone..is best restricted to that very narrow zone adjacent to the glaciers and recent moraines. 1994 Sci. News 18 June 399/2 Not only do former residents of the nival zone, the area above about 2,000 meters, move up, but former alpine plants ascend to the nival region.
3. Relating to, characterized by, or caused by nivation or (more generally) the falling, accumulation, or melting of snow.
1970 Proc. Helsinki Symp. Ecol. Subarctic Regions 1966 90/2 Changing nival conditions is just as reasonable an explanation for the extirpation of such groups as Rangifer t. dawsoni. 1983 Arctic & Alpine Res. 15 321 The laminae..probably represent discrete inflow events such as nival floods. 1996 Jrnl. Paleolimnol. 16 169 Suspension settling is the dominant process of deposition depending upon stream discharge which is controlled by nival melt and summer temperatures.


not to be confused with Nivel--

Now rare and Brit. regional.

intr. To look downcast; to grimace, or wrinkle one's nose; to snivel.
c1230 (?a1200) Ancrene Riwle (Corpus Cambr.) 110 Ha schulen ham seolf grennin & niuelin [a1300 Caius niwelen] & makien sur semblant for e muchele angoise i e pine of helle. c1230 (?a1200) Ancrene Riwle (Corpus Cambr.) 123 Ha drinke et drunch, ne beo hit ne se bitter..Hwen hit is al ouer, spit & schake et heaued, fe on forte niuelin & makien grim chere. ?a1325 in W. Heuser Kildare-Gedichte (1904) 171, I nese, i nappe, i nifle, i nuche, And al is wilne eld. c1400 (c1378) LANGLAND Piers Plowman (Laud) B. V. 135 Now awaketh wratthe with two whyte eyen And nyuelynge [v.rr. neuelynge, sneueling] with e nose [c1400 C text a nyuylynge nose] and his nekke hangynge.
1890 J. D. ROBERTSON Gloss. Words County of Gloucester 104 A boy asked the meaning of ‘disdain’, when Goliath disdained David, answered ‘He nivelled at un.’ 1996 D. Ó MUIRITHE Words we Use 15 Nivel means to turn up the nose in disdain.