Look deep into this nog. It will tell your future. 2009!

I have strongly encouraged some of my students to get guide horses. Guide horses wear shoes! But my students want guide dogs. You have to get a new guide dog about every seven years, but guide horses can live for forty years! They need fresh air. NY Times: Creature Comforts .

Bear Parade

A lot of good html books on that site by Tao Lin, Matt Rohrer, and more. You could probably read them on your phone.

SF Readings

Monday the 29th
Lily Brown & Joshua Marie Wilkinson
Gravel & Gold (store)
Wine
7pm at 18th and Treat Street
3150 18th St
San Francisco, CA 94110

Tuesday, December 30 promptly at 7:00 PM, $2.00
Hotel Utah
500 4th St
San Francisco, CA

Featuring: Melissa Benham, Alan Bernheimer, Brandon Brown, Xochi Candelaria, Norma Cole, Sarah Anne Cox, Del Ray Cross, Brent Cunningham, Donna de la Perriere, Steve Dickison, Stacy Doris, Steve Farmer, Gloria Frym, Susan Gevirtz, Rob Halpern, Javier Huerta, Scott Ignuito, Andrew Joron, David Lau, Joseph Lease, Dana Teen Lomax, Bill Luoma, Laura Moriarty, Stephen Ratcliffe, Barbara Jane Reyes, Cynthia Sailers, Leslie Scalapino, Lauren Shufran, giovanni singleton, Suzanne Stein, Chris Stroffolino, Elizabeth Treadwell, Stephen Vincent, Alli Warren, Chet Weiner, Rob Wilson & more!
hosted by David Buuck & Small Press Traffic.

“A paean of love” — he was writing to a girlfriend
American gangster movies and British war films
Noise within silence

“Words are weapons that the characters use to discomfort or destroy each other”
“Such as the man preferred coffee but the other person wished him to have tea"
Written out of “very cold anger"

The adjective Pinteresque
as a byword for strong and unspecified menace

Realist
Between “primitive rage” and “liberal generosity"
All studies of the unreliability of memory and the uncertainty of love

“I don’t go away and say: ‘I have illuminated myself. You see before you a changed person,'"

For inexplicable reasons, invite a homeless man named Davies
To share their quarters and to act as a kind of custodian
Political maneuvering, fraternal love, spiritual isolation, language as a negotiating Weapon or a form of cover-up

A stage version of his film script for “Remembrance of Things Past”

“The play is a comedy because the whole state of affairs is absurd and inglorious. It is, however, as you know, a very serious piece of work.”

Nor were the problems limited to the nation’s midsection.

This reading really scares me. I won't even show you the poster, which is even scarier. But you can see it for yourself here. However, I am glad I finally found it. Thanks Clay.

Small Press Distribution and the Poetry Foundation present
San Francisco Poetry Spectacular
an off-site event coinciding (but unaffiliated) with
the 2008 Modern Language Association convention

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 28th from 7-10:00pm
the Forum at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street, San Francisco
FREE and ADA accessible to the public
Co-sponsored by Small Press Distribution and the Poetry Foundation

Over 60 POETS reading (just) 2 minutes each: Aaron Kunin, Alan Bernheimer, Aldon Nielsen, Andrew Osborn, Barrett Watten, Bill Howe, Bill Luoma, Bill Mohr, Brian Kim Stefans, C.S. Giscombe, Carla Harryman, Christian Bok, Chris Stroffolino, Dale Smith, Craig Perez, Dan Featherston, David Buuck, Dennis Barone, Donna de la Pierre, Durriel Harris, Dodie Bellamy, Elizabeth Hatmaker, Etel Adnan, Jasper Bernes, Jeffrey Robinson, Javier Huerta, Jeanne Heuving, Jennifer Scappettone, Jerry Rothenberg, Joe Amato, John Emil Vincent, Joseph Lease, Joshua Clover, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Julian Brolaski, Kasey Mohammad, Kass Fleisher, Kazim Ali, Kevin Killian, Kit Robinson, Kristin Prevallet, Lisa Howe, Lisa Robertson, Lorraine Graham, Maxine Chernoff, Michael Davidson, Norma Cole, Paolo Xaiver, Patrick Durgin, Paul Hoover, Philip Metres, Rob Halpern, Sarah Schulman, Rusty Morrison, Standard Schaefer, Stephanie Young, Stephen Cope, Suzanne Stein, Timothy Yu, Tom Orange, Tyrone Williams, Walter Lew and more!

Poets in Masks! Refreshments! Books! Books! Books!

Books by the readers for sale from Small Press Distribution.

Man is totally blind, successfully navigates obstacles using vision (scientists think)— watch

apparent total absence of a striate cortex, the visual processing region

his brain was otherwise healthy, as were his eyes

no evidence that the patient was navigating by echolocation, the way that bats do

(so it wasn't auditory space perception)

the same African doctor had emotional blindsight

when presented with images of fearful faces,
he cringed subconsciously
even though he could not consciously see the faces

It may be hard to read, but this is a short article about my dad, a tour guide at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. That's him at the top of the page.

The Crashaw Prize for Poetry

Salt is delighted to announce that the 2008 winners of The Crashaw Prize are:

* Jared Stanley Book Made of Forest (USA)
* Tom Chivers How to Build a City (UK)
* Abi Curtis Unexpected Weather (UK)
* Ailbhe Darcy Gone Fishing (Ireland)
* Jamey Dunham The Bible of Lost Pets (USA)
* Ian Pindar Constellations (UK)

Congratulations Jared!

The Face Transplant

Arne Duncan, Schools Chief From Chicago Is Obama’s Choice for Education

Why is NPR supported by the Department of Homeland Security? In the past few weeks, I hear that every morning. Don't they both run on federal dollars? Some Minnesotans are wondering too.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/news_cut/archive/2008/12/why_is_the_department_of_homel.shtml

Get Local SF Mission Holiday Block Party Tonight

The really crazy thing is that a lot of places are giving discounts if you bring in your unemployment stub (see below). Wow! It's a new era (all the time). I will be looking to buy and resale your unemployment stubs, so please let me know if you have one to sell.

Do really long posts jam up your RSS feeds or whatever thing you use to follow blogs? I should start doing that, imposing order on my reading and ignoring habits.

-Claire

What: A celebratory evening of shopping, drinking and eating locally.
Where: From 14th to 24th streets between Mission and Dolores.
When: 6-10 p.m. Tonight

Gold

Somehow for the first time, the list of Golden Globe nominations, the winter movie awards season, reminds me of a program I found on the ground for a high school play. The names, the things they do only exist in my imagination. I don't have any sensory or emotional connection. And I haven't cared much, but I have sometimes, and I've thought I had to see movies, wanted to make movies. But this year the only movies I've seen that appear in these lists are Milk, Wall-E, and Pineapple Express (James Franco was pretty good in that one--good catch Golden Globe people). I even forgot to see Batman.

The television list bores me too. True Blood is pretty good, and I like a few of those TV shows when I am incapable of doing other things (see Lydia Davis's "Television" for great thinking about television), but "Gossip Girl" really is the best show on TV partially because of how low and high it is at once. They even made reference to Fassbinder's "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (which put me in the theatre for some wonderful hours and a couple of short naps this year). And they should be recognized in some kind of list.

I used to watch a few movies a week but not this year. And it feels different this year. I'm not a part of things Hollywood! Draw me back in. Make me a part of things. I don't really care about these crappy intellectual movies. I'm more interested in those 15-year old Disney star's Myspace pages.

Uhh. This is a dumb post but I'm just trying to write anything.

Lame Websites for You and something about chimpanzees

I was tiredly doing research the other night for a post about bad websites, lame things on the internet that you might not know about. The first one is the Your Scene, Strange but True, Weird Warnings page on the L.A. Times website. Readers/viewers can post their own photos of weird signs.

After viewing all 359 posted photos, I conclude that there are 3 categories of weird/humorous signs. 1) Signs displaying poor English translations; 2) Signs with graphics that surprise the viewer, often found on trips to foreign countries; 3) Odd combination of circumstances causes a sign to be funny (ie. a falling rocks sign has fallen down, rocks all around it).

The website it poorly organized. The photos are small and hard to see. There are obessive users who have commented throughout the 359 posted weird warnings. Some users have accused others of photoshopping their weird warning signs. YOU could LITERALLY spend hours on the site! And I do not recommend that.


I'm reading Jane Goodall's autobiography to my students. I like how hairy baby chimps are except for their ears and faces.