I'd like to invite all of you to the first meeting of Ex Lab
this Friday (the 13th!) at 5pm in the Center for Race
Politics and Culture/Center Gender Studies Building on 5733
South University Avenue (Near the Seminary Coop.) A
description follows this letter, but basically Ex Lab is an
organization to bring people from radically dissimilar
positions in the University, community and city together to
create on interdisciplinary projects. This meeting, we will
brainstorm
the first round of projects, large and small. Students,
faculty, staff, alumni, and unaffiliated individuals are
invited. Bring a friend. Bring 2 friends. There will be
food.

Yours,
Ben Shepard

-----
Ex Lab is a collaborative laboratory designed to incubate,
foster, fund, and aid interdisciplinary projects. Projects
that cross the lines between campus and community, between
art and protest, between theater and everyday life, between
architecture and gastronomy, between politics and landscape
architecture, between sociology and performance art, between
elements so dissimilar their combination is unimaginable and
dangerous. Projects that get the artist working with the
activist, the light designer working with the economist, the
scholar working with the documentary film maker, the
sculptor working with the cook, the architect working with
the poet.

Speeding is expensive

A 27-year-old Finnish heir to a sausage business, Jussi Salonoja, was famously fined 170,000 euros (about $217,000 at the time) for going 80 kilometers per hour in a 40 kph zone. Speeding fines are based on the offender's income. Mr. Salonoja's reported earnings for 2002 were 7 million euros.

the fact that i am not anything like the next ben shepard has been established. finally. thank god.

( Read more... )

I am in Oaxaca where there is Klein blue or magenta on many walls and a canadian expat who has forgotten much of her english infors us that when you put a scorpion in Mezcal it stings itself for 4 hours and the venom leaks into the drink, a venom that is (according to this 56 year old canadian woman who is also a scorpion rancher) good for Arthritis, Rheumatism, and heart conditions. Unless you drink too much, in which case you will get a heart attack. Also: the worms they put in the Mezcal are so renowned as "being good for your sex life" that some chinese tourists will come and ask her to put 26 worms in a single bottle. She refuses to do this because it would ruin the mezcal. Sometimes she puts in 15 though.

Says distraction to entitled Ming-
(puddled friend, sometimes lost
to gibbous Tides, ethnic faux-passiere, and
other economics past control.
We might compare Ming
to a Foal
yanked from a dead Mare.)
Always always until the end
Would yoube my special friend?

There are places i'd rather be.
By the seaside in your arm
than in this sandy library.
Once or twice, twice again
Knocks distraction on Ming-
Always always until the end
Would yoube my special friend?

I'm there almost every weekend.

Date:	2005-01-01 01:30
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	burning
Music:	Spoony G

"It goes like this, the fourth the fifth - the minor fall, the major lift" --

A.
Music as the ligament, the voice in the ear, the reminder; "I believe that it is a C.

B.
A seance for Susan Sontag: "Dearest grey-stripe, we miss your interpretations, your camp, we miss the time you whispered in our ear "You know, I really like your outfit." To regard the pain of others, to stand under the sign of saturn, to photograph, to stand against interpretation / a rup/ture - breaking, remembering the -syntax- that was (incorrect), the syntax that struggled to "" define itself.

C.
An air quote, addiction to air quotes. One of my wives was an automatic gesture. She had skin and a mouth, when we argued she quoted Susan Sontag.

D.
Summer is a season, like salt or peppa, like saffron, like butterfly crumblings.

E.
CAROLINE: Where is my bookmark?
JEREMY: Where is my seruse/cerise
BEN: Huh, I know how to spell the word.

F.
We're playing Taboo now.

G.
Jeremy will win, Ben will conquer, Caroline will lesbian.

H.
A verb! Silence! Oh holy god, I'll drag you to Minsk!

4 years ago:
I was 15, weighed 100 more pounds than I do now, a libertarian, wore hula shirts every day, wrote abysmal free verse poetry. I couldn't drive. I couldn't ride a bike.

In 4 more years, what will I think about today? Will the years in between breed a new progressive movement?

In 8 more years,will I run down a winding eastern european street shouting "Barak Obama is the new president"

Hope, once again, is the thing with feathers.

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Can one be the gay Woody Allen?

"He stood with some great ones, but his moral stature rose at least a shoulder's height above all the others. He stood the steadiest of all." - Michael Novak on George Bush

Jonathan,
Stop scalping your brother.
He is almost dying, and just needs to
Find his own voice.

This is some wisdom:
Leaking areola’s should be clogged with
Chinese plum blossoms.

This is some more wisdom:
Transcribe the analects of motherhood on a dinner plate
And publish them with Puffin. And the advance will go to Cancer,
And the royalties will simmer until medium well done at which point
You will serve it, accompanied by memory, on a dinner plate.

Edward,
Your brother’s liver is not a doll-house.

A History of Motherness:
We learned Lamaze and then we divorced.

Steven,
Stop rehearsing the death of your 19 brothers.

I am your mother and everything I do is either correct or an accident.

I wonder when the time for writing self-referential semi-borgesian ditties ends and the time for linking to the Kerry-Edwards 2004 site begins.

Earlier today, I told my dad that George Bush was gay-bashing on the level of national policy. God, politics are so unfashionable.

The story I want to tell is very, very, very, very long. So if you want to hear the story, then hear the story. If you don't want to hear the story, I should warn you that Ponce De Leon never found the fountain of youth, but the story may have.

( The Story I Want To Tell )

The first thing you need to know about the office, kid, is that there are no friends. Alliances, yea. Back-alley deals, yea. Non-aggression pacts, you bet your little pink knickers. The office may look like its happy. Look, over there. See the two men standing by the water cooler. Sipping away. Looking so damn happy it makes you want to gargle your vomit.

That water could be poisoned. Happened once, you know. Someone snuck in at night and dumped arsenic in the cooler.

The shadows grow big round here

See the big man standing to the right?

His name is Hamburg. Don’t tease him about it, or he’ll rip out your eyes. Eyes look funny ripped out. Like bloody grapes. He once made wine from eyes and served it at a potluck. We’re bloodthirsty. See the little man- Stu. He looks a little lost. Pass his desk and you’ll see him poking his monitor. He does not understand computers. Does not understand the supple touch they need. Poking the monitor will only give your finger pads bruises.
Our monitors are made of steel.

Stu and Hamburg, they look like friends, right kid? They look like two fellers who can shoot the shit. The kind of guys who talk about football with each other at coffee breaks and lunch breaks, the kind of guys who ride home together and slip into a warm little bed and watch reruns of I Love Lucy.

It ain’t necessarily so. Stu’s trying to get Hamburg fired. He wants Hamburg’s job. Stu goes and talks to The Big Man every day. Says that Hamburg can’t do his job. Says that he is the embodiment of mediocrity. Says that he looks at Renaissance painting all day. Especially that Da Vinci. Hamburg loves Da Vinci.

Hamburg says
“Dat Da Vinci – he really captured da quintessence ah men. Really managed to putta human condition onda canvas”

Or at least that’s what Stu says Hamburg says. Stu’s trying to get Hamburg fired.

Hamburg’s trying to get Stu killed.

Hear that kid, that’s the big man coming. He can’t hear me talking to you or he’ll take me out back. Don’t ever let them take you out back.

And kid,
I ain’t your friend.

To all the courageous children stuck with their arms straight out in the air - waiting for Fall to return, bringing with it a sense of order to all things. If my newfound persona as a limp-wristed storefront minister should offend you, let it not. I too am aware of the irony behind any attempt to speak with panache, with fire, with holy belief. This summer, belief passes over me like waves over a penny in the great ocean that surround us and threaten to flood our little homes, apartments, doghouses.

To all of those children, stuck to their email boxes with their hearts like a feather in the wind know that fall will come again, and the hungry earth will stop his sweating and begin to sing. Know that your reunion will be met with a rain of gold leaves falling from above the trees. It will be met with the champagne of a south wind, with the rose-garland of dying grass. It will be met with a cool sip that turns the fire inside to a cool steam, and then the memory of a warmer time.

A friend of mine, a friend with kite-hands and a fluttery heart, told me that the earth is just like a woman with pms. He stood up on the volcano, that volcano that threatens each of us and he said – DRINK MY MIDOL, SISTER. He is an upright man, with a voice that the generations will hear. Sing it!

To the waiting missing dreaming masses – waiting for a better nation than that which you have been thrown into – missing the warmth of a body beside you – dreaming about tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow – I have no advice.
I’m getting off this little, pink pedestal now. I’m walking down and taking my rightful place – not above you, but beside you

I was always little confused by what livejournals did, he said to me. The old man always talked to me about livejournals. This didn't surprise me, everyone was talking about Livejournals. At every dinner-table, Mother asked me what I thought about live-journals. I always threw the plate at the wall and ran to my room.
The livejournals were on every feed. Even the flesh-feeds showed livejournals that showed a about a time when people could get each other pregnant with their eyes. My mother caught me watching a vintage Flesh-Feed.
( Find OUT the end of TODAY's COMPELLING Livejournal SAGA  )

The sort of thing you wouldn't expect was found right there, in the middle of the private street, in the middle of the afternoon rain, it was found right there by someone just like you. Or just like me, if you want to insist. It was pink. It had a care bears sticker on the front. Care Bears remind me forever of Proust. Proust, in turn, reminds me of the summer evenings me and mom and dad and brother spent outside. I would later label these evenings "Eternal evenings" not because they were, but because - well - I don't know why we name anything anything.

There's room for philosophy here, the public man wrote. He wrote that there is enough philosophy in the world to fill a submarine. A yellow submarine, the public man jokes. The nations laugh - as they are apt to do.

Yea, it's one of those songs - he says. And the song is one of those songs, those songs that he (or me, for that matter) can't listen to without the wind pouring from the hills, without the rain coming down just like it is before-sunset, without those little tears, those tearlets forming at the very margins of his eyes. The public man listens to these songs, to this song, because it makes him know that inside his public skin there is a private heart. He laughs at the implications of a private heart. He laughs a lot. He makes jokes on the platforms of the rail stations. Most of the jokes are about Anna Karenia. But this song - this song is like the feeling of waiting for a letter. The feeling of opening the mailbox right early in the morning - the mailbox that was right there on the side of that lonely smalltown kentucky road - the feeling of opening the mailbox and seeing nothing there. Why are all of our public men from the South?

It is one of those songs. Which make us remember, which make us rememeber the moment around us. For example, the moment that happened in 1999. The moment went like this. The moment was soundtracked by Prince. Guess which song? The moment had a bass line like an earthquake in Iran. The one that killed 10,000. The Public Man saw a picture in a newspaper he didn't buy of the earthquake. He wondered about the political ramifications. Natural disaster always has political ramifications. When his daughter's acne came right before the dance, the nation started to feel uneasy.

This is what the man found on the side of the private street: a little box filled with everything that made the last two years. Everything started 2 summers ago - when he was a boy in the city by the city by the city. Everything moved forward with what he now calls an impossible velocity. Everything moved to this moment, sitting at the computer 10:44, July 8th almost 9th, sitting here with the nation just outside the window and all the promise of a life a click, a heartbeat, a word away.