Editor’s Note: This post first appeared October 27, 2010.
Displaced Aggression League Report — Week 7
This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Take off the turban, remove the crown. It will not be as it was: The lowly will be exalted and the exalted will be brought low. A ruin! A ruin! I will make it a ruin! — Ezekiel 21:26
Like a slow-orbiting comet or the McRib sandwich, truly epic upsets don’t come around very often; and when they do, it’s an occasion worth noting with appropriate solemnity.
People eating, people washing, people sleeping. People visiting, arguing, and screaming. People thrusting their hands through the taxi window, begging. People defecating and urinating. People clinging to buses. People herding animals. People, people, people, people. As we moved slowly through the mob, hand horn squawking, the dust, noise, heat, and cooking fires gave the scene a hellish aspect. Would we ever get to our hotel? All three of us were, frankly, frightened.
Editor’s Note: This novel excerpt first appeared here March 11, 2012.
Picture this: A pair of jump-boots, spray-painted silver, tied together by the laces and tossed up to a power-line umbilicaled to my barracks. Short-timer!
After my honorable discharge, my DD-214 in hand, I walked outside the out-processing barracks and whooped and spun my class A jacket round my head.
Shit, yeah.
I wasn’t really happy. But sometimes you have to celebrate no matter how you feel.
An old-man colonel noticed me and tsked.
In the out-processing barracks, I was issued a new military ID, one identifying me as TDRL, so I wasn’t out of the Army. Not completely.
They wouldn’t bring me back. I would disappear, I’d decided–naively as it turned out. I threw away the plane ticket that would have jetted me back to my home of record, Sarasota, Florida, put on my civvies and walked off post, heading away from official Washington, and Fort Myer and the big depressing cemetery, down Columbia Pike, just another suburban street in suburban Virginia, my duffel bag slung over my shoulder.
Somewhere near Bailey’s Crossroads, a van honked at me and pulled over. I hopped in.
Democracy, Davis concluded, was at odds with effective population control and stability in Asia; the only political system for the continent’s mushrooming megacities was a “strong government that stands in contrast to the populace in skill as well as power…
After a week of being missing in action in Mexico, Gabacho returns with his final installment of…
Editor’s Note: This review first appeared November 18, 2010.
For the last week, I have been thinking of what to write about for my first post on an internet blog. Since the practice of blogging usually seems personal, I decided to write on experiences that contribute to the thinking process that promotes the art-creation process. I’m intrigued by creativity: where do ideas come from? I thought that by blogging on readings, exhibitions, and other input that spark thinking, we might shed a bit of light on the output.
For my 30th birthday I booked a ticket to Berlin to visit two concurrent exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum in Wolfsburg: Rudolf Steiner’s first retrospective (originally organized by the Vitra Museum in Basel): “Alchemy of the Everyday” and an exhibition on his influence on contemporary artists: “Rudolf Steiner and Contemporary Art.” In due time, Steiner got the institutional recognition he deserves.
The school did not have the facilities, teachers or technology to accommodate the 315 students the state approved them to accept. New Living Word was accepted in compliance with the state’s approval, which did not include site visits. Questions to the department and an email obtained by The News-Star support the department’s initial statements that it “left it up to the parents” to determine if a site met their needs.
Editor’s Note: This post first appeared September 19, 2010.
CHICAGO – One of the funniest things I’ve heard in many years was said to me by a co-worker, a lifelong Chicagoan.
“There’s no such thing as a Chicago accent,” he said.
I laugh every time I think of it.
Of course, like everyone else who grew up here, he pronounced “Chicago” as “Shuh-CAW-go,” and, as well-educated as he is, I bet that after a beer or two, he would have said “dere” and “t’ing.”
He said it with a straight face, and he meant it. (Not like the Facebook group, “There is no such thing as a Chicago accent!,” which appears to have been started by individuals who, in fact, believe the opposite.)
“Dis’s hayer sapose ta tawk. Dis’s narmal. Ever’wun eltz tawks funny.”
All right, now I’m exaggerating. And I’d agree that there is no such thing as the Chicago accent. There are, of course, several. It’s a very diverse city. Ukrainians and African-Americans and Vietnamese and Assyrians and Bosnians all have their own accents. As do Uptown Kentuckians and the few remaining Andersonville Swedes. The most prominently parodied Chicago accent is a dialect that is mainly found among the white working class – specifically, white working class individuals who were born and raised here. Due to demographic changes, that accent is quite noticeably on the decline.
