That's Just Insipid!

Pulls Us Near

In more R.E.M.-related happenings, Thom Yorke joined the band on-stage in London Thursday as a stand in for Patti Smith during the haunter "E-Bow the Letter," howling, I trust.

Yorke gets around, vocally. Ben Folds Five, P.J. Harvey, now R.E.M.

Explication of the Day

I'd like help from your brains to begin to explicate things that puzzle me. I'll start with the lyrics to R.E.M.'s "Sitting Still." All I know is that Stipe's sister used to teach American Sign Language to the deaf.


Sitting Still

This name I got we all agreed
See could stop stop it will rid
We could bind it in the cist
We could gather, throw a fit

Up to par and Katie bar the kitchen door, but not me in
Setting trap for love, making a waste of time, sitting still

I’m the sign and you can read.
I’m the sign and you’re not deaf.
We could bind it in the cist.
We could gather, throw a fit.

Up to par and Katie bar the kitchen door, but not me in
Setting trap for love, making a waste of time, sitting still
I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you.

This name I got we all agree
See could stop stop it will rid
We could bind it in the cist
We could gather, throw a fit.

Up to par and Katie bar the kitchen door, but not me in
Setting trap for love, making a waste of time, sitting still
I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you.

You can gather when I talk, talk until you’re blue
You could get away from me. Get away from me.

Up to par and Katie bar the kitchen door, but not me in
Setting trap for love, making a waste of time, sitting still
I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you.
I can hear you. I can hear you. I can hear you.
Can you hear me?

Shiny Happy Browsing

I finally succumbed to suggestions that I convert to Mozilla's Firefox web browser. It is a cleaner, friendly, more efficient, less intrusive alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and I recommend at least downloading it (if not erasing IE from your C drive completely).

PROs of Firefox: simpler, built-in pop-up filter, tabbed browsing, "trendy"

CONS: sometimes blocks needed pop-ups (this can be adjusted), is hastle to download while IE comes with computer, "trendy"

Decide for yourself.

It was harder, yesterday, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance than ever before. I reverted back to 3rd grade mode, when I didn't understand the words' (thought it was "for Richard stands") meaning. Could it be another year of current events and reading Howard Zinn has had that much of an influence?

Blocking the Scene

Can we weave, can we gesture
Will there be enough illustrious bandages
Won’t the weather be enough, you who
Would watch other people ignoring what others provide them:
a patience, a sandwich, a wholesome rhythm, some marbles,
a needed pen, a bunch of muscles in executive concert,
a scream in such rude silence,
a prerogative, a gerund, the definite article of sweating?
Here is a pair of humanities, where shall we place their tragedy?
The supermarket aisle, where spaghetti sauce jars
Have met the floor with a spank and then everything is out and wet
Against the linoleum. The pretty music sounds like paper towels look,
All pastel and mass-produced. But a young man,
He will soon be paged to fix everything.
I’m not trying to say that my resentments,
My irritations, are like chunks of garlic and tomato in a sauce,
But that’s how it spilled out across from the pickles
And the extra virgin olive oil, when all at once
An embezzlement scam went public, loud as reggae in the sun,
And we were embarrassed to be employed by each other.
What? You never realized how much work love is, how
So much life is taken from a file folder where I keep
Sheets of personality (so much of it counterfeit, like from
The flamboyant boys, the eyeball sassy girls, the roommates —
CHRIST — the roommates whose speech I’ve shared, as many people
I’ve rejected I’ve mimicked), how much work being is.
Or the rotten garden, where sugar flowers wilt:
What discussions could save us there? What words,
What glances, what touches on a shoulder? None of these gestures,
None of these bandages, all missed cues and fractures.