Callipygian Vestal

Posted on November 21, 2007 by ubu507

Callipygian vestal

Of the incandescent division

My little cooch dancer

In the middle of something

That hasn’t started yet

The reflection of the trees

On the windshield

A Pythia tripod prophesy

A gleaming sword

Half drawn

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Entropy

Posted on November 20, 2007 by ubu507

Entropy

 

Your information held

Just the right degree

Of strangeness

 

There was enough noise

Woven into the pattern

To startle imagination

 

But how quickly

Your sinuous line

Went dead

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Snappy

Posted on November 17, 2007 by ubu507

Woman: So all you do is sit here and read books all day?

Snappy Bookseller: Well, I answer stupid questions too…

Posted in jokes | Leave a comment

Bo: A Tribute for the Ages

Posted on November 16, 2007 by ubu507

Wow, time happens, doesn’t it? It’s really hard to believe that it was just about a year ago that my man Bo Schembechler passed, that the clock in the big house of that maize and blue heart of his finally reached double zero. No overtimes this season, Coach! I don’t think anyone anywhere has suffered such a loss as Michigan fans did that day, at least not since another big fella was nailed up to his own goal post a couple of thousands of years ago. I can practically hear Bo’s crazy gruff voice right now, and if we were in his office at this moment I just know what he would say, probably those wise last words he said to me the last time we were together – Hey, you get the hell out of here! Who the hell let you into this building, you freak! Lloyd, Lloyd, call security, there’s a trespasser in my office! Ha, ha! That Bo! Never one to beat about the bush. Good times. A tip of the winged helmet to you, my friend, because I know you’re wearing those wings on your back now.

Posted in Cosmic Verities | Leave a comment

Quote Bag: Two Things

Posted on November 15, 2007 by ubu507

This morning I was reading TechGnosis by Erik Davis, a very interesting book that I’ll probably write more about, when I came across a passage that seemed very pertinent to yesterday’s post about modern horror and Stefan Grabinski, who, it’s interesting to note, set many of his stories in trains:

Both religion and the occult derive much of their power from simultaneously stimulating and managing dread: the anxieties that dog the perpetually shifting boundaries of the self, and especially the ultimate borderland of death. As new technologies begin to remold these very same boundaries, the shadows, doubles, and dark reflections that haunt human identity begin to leak outside the self as well, many of them taking up residence in the virtual spaces opened up by the new technologies.

And now for something completely different –

Even though he was a pagan, in the Middle Ages the Roman poet Virgil was considered to be prophet and magus due to the misreading of an obscure passage in The Aeneid allegedly foretelling the birth of Jesus. The Aeneid was held to be an inspired, mystical text whose meaning went deep below the surface. Manuscripts of it were used for divinatory bibliomancy, where passages chosen at random were held to have a symbolic meaning germane to the question at hand. Well, ever since I heard that I picked up different translations whenever I could find them. I have more than enough now thank you, but when ever I come across one I open it at random to see what it has to say. Today when a copy fell off the top of a stack I jostled I opened it and found the delightful tale of Camilla, who as a baby was thrown across a river tied to the shaft of a spear by her father in order to escape his enemies and thereafter consecrated to the virgin huntress Diana and trained as a warrior (translation by C. Day Lewis):

Right in the thick of the slaughter, with one breast bared for the fray,

Like an Amazon was exulting the archeress, Camilla.

Now she delivers a quick fire of whippy javelins, now unwearied

She whirls a powerful battle axe with her right hand.

Tapping her shoulder, hung the gold bow, Diana’s weapon.

Even when she was driven back and in flight, she loosed her shafts

At the foe as she fled, turning the bow round to shoot them.

Her bodyguard kept close about her – the maiden Larina,

Tulla, Tarpeia, who brandished a battle-axe of bronze –

Italian girls, whom the godlike Camilla had chosen to grace

Her retinue: good supporters they were in peace and war.

They resembled the Amazon women of Thrace when they go to battle

In blazoned armor, their horse-hooves stamping the frozen river Thermodon,

Escorting queen Hippolyta, or the martial Penthesilea when she returns

From a war in her chariot, a woman-host with crescent shaped bucklers

Screaming around her in triumph. Ferocious Camilla,

Whom first did your hand lay low? Whom last?

How many men did you strike to the earth, dying?

Posted in FROM THE QUOTE BAG | Leave a comment

The Dark Domain by Stefan Grabinski

Posted on November 13, 2007 by ubu507

Wow. I’ve been reading books for over forty years, have been certified as a Master of Language and Literature by the State of Minnesota, toiled in the new and used book biz for twenty years and have therefore been exposed to a dizzying array of literary talent – but yet, despite all that, every so often I come across a writer I’d never heard of who absolutely blows me away. I don’t feel that abashed about STEFAN GRABINSKI (1887- 1936) however, as, unjust as it may be, he is a fairly obscure author in the States. Sure he has the obligatory devotional website and Wikipedia article but even these are rather meager compared to most every other author you could think of. I’ve read a lot of horror anthologies, but he’s not exactly well represented in those and has exactly one book in print at the moment.

But what a book. THE DARK DOMAIN is yet another of those fantastic European Classics from sainted DAEDALUS press. I read the first story in it Fumes and my jaw dropped at its mind blowing, brilliant brew of dread, sex, folklore and violence. Yowzah! Not every story is as good as that, but there are no clinkers in the collection, and one excellent, unsettling tale follows another in a awe inspiring lineup. Grabinski mines the unsettled, haunted quality of modern life to find a nightmare in consciousness itself. To say he writes about the supernatural is like saying Kafka wrote about bugs. He resembles Arthur Machen and Guy De Maupassant in his unearthing of the horror lurking in the details of everyday existence, and even brings to mind the uber-genius Edgar Poe in exploring the twilight ambiguity of the human mind, the nexus of the supernatural and the insane, where one’s own self is the ultimate bogeyman. He also understands the relationship between the horrific and the erotic in a way that anticipates the very best of Clive Barker and exposes Steven King as the pimply faced forever arrested adolescent he is. My favorite story, Szamota’s Mistress, is at once deeply symbolic, deeply sexy and scary as hell – you could write a thousand essays on it from every conceivable lit-crit angle (some savvy feminist should scarf this one up for a thesis) but you’re better off just reading the darn thing.

And why haven’t I heard of this dude before? Part of it is America’s skittishness to approach authors with funny names from smaller countries who write in not widely spoken languages. Thank heaven for publishers who occasionally make an effort to systematically present work from previously under represented parts of the world. There was a amazing series from Penguin a while back called "Writers from the Other Europe" edited by Philip Roth which, like Daedalus’s European Classics series, showed both what a fertile and productive place for literature countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia were and how many great books are marginalized by Eastern Europe’s unhappy history. This is a real shame, but, selfishly speaking, it always turns UBU on to find a rich, new, relatively undisturbed vein of fantastic writing.

I’m not kidding – Grabinski is the real deal. I keep buying copies of The Dark Domain to give away and stock, and if you like a mind blowing highbrow creep show I’d run out and get one too. Here’s a couple of passages that I particularly liked:

Rastawiecki divided his gaiety among them. Some peculiar blindness threw an even thicker curtain over the duplicitous behavior of his companion, some strange indulgence made him ignore his wife’s deportment. Maybe he never had a reason to be suspicious of Nuna’s flightiness and that’s why he acted thus. Maybe he didn’t yet know the sex demon, suppressed under superficial domesticity, and had never been aware of its corrupting influence and deceitfulness. A fatal spell unfolded these three people in its domain and drove them toward frenzy and abandonment – one saw it in the spasmodic movements of Nuna’s body, the blood-shot eyes of her admirer, the sardonic grimace of the husband’s lips.

And if, indeed, there is nothing beyond the corner? Who can affirm if beyond so-called "reality" anything exists at all? Beyond a reality that I have probably created? As long as I’m steeped in this reality up to my neck, as long as it is sufficient for me – everything is tolerable. But what would happen if I wanted one day to lean out of my safe environment and glance beyond its borders?

Posted in Books | Leave a comment

Crime Beat: The Decline of Western Civilization

Posted on November 10, 2007 by ubu507

2 parents arrested in separate DUIs

A Northville couple ended up in jail, both facing drunken driving charges, after Ypsilanti Police first pulled over the husband, who was driving with his young son in the car, and then arrested the mother when she showed up to pick up the boy.

Officers say they saw the man run a red light at Prospect Road at Clark Road at about 11:20 p.m. Saturday. When they stopped him, they said they gave him a preliminary breath test that registered 0.11. The legal standard for drunk driving is 0.08.

Police said they told the man’s 12-year-old son to call his mother to pick him up.

But when she arrived with her 9-year-old daughter in the car, police said, she also appeared to have been drinking, and registered 0.13 on a breath test.

Both children were turned over to a relative, and the parents held until they sobered up. They were later released pending formal charges.

 

Park bench stolen from outside store

Washtenaw County Sheriff’s deputies are investigating a report of a stolen park bench from an Ypsilanti Township grocery store Sunday evening, officials said.

Deputies responded to the Kroger store at 2010 Whittaker Road at 7:21 p.m. after employees reported a park bench was stolen from the front entrance, said Cmdr. Dave Egeler. Witnesses said a U-Haul-style truck filled with park benches was seen leaving the parking lot.

Posted in Crime Beat | Leave a comment

Celebrity

Posted on November 9, 2007 by ubu507

So finally, JENNIFER LOPEZ admits that’s she pregnant. Bully for her, but UBU has to cringe at the knowledge that reams of treacly publicity are sure to spew out of the baloney machine about the blessed event. Every time a celebrity manages to reproduce we’re treated to endless blathering about the wonderful uniqueness of life, how it’s changed the celebrity’s soul and tips for the hoi polloi on how to raise their own children. Even a guy like the Czar of the YPSIPANTY has a child and instantly feels the need to transform into a responsible person who now really cares about the future, someone who expresses their extreme love for their child by staying away from home at committee meetings for hours and cultivating an obsessive interest in the Ypsilanti income tax. So you have a kid, J-Lo and Czar. Big deal. I got a kid, you got a kid, we all got a kid – it’s not hard, and a matter of fact a lot of effort and money is spent in NOT having kids. To me making it into a unique life changing event of world import is a form of narcissism – it’s not about your child’s life, it’s about your life. I personally thought it would be a betrayal of my children if I talked about being a parent with every word or changed my personality just because they were born. If I was satisfied with my pre-natal personality, why wouldn’t I want to share it with my progeny?

And hasn’t everybody pretty much let Jenny skate for that awful movie she made with her zombie hubby? Why was there so much more ridicule of her other couple movie with BEN? Even the usually puffed up MADONNA got more grief for her flicks with SEAN and her LIMEY HUSBAND.

The other nauseating result of the blessed news is that now the child itself will no doubt become a celebrity itself – celebrityhood, like so much else in our ossified, nepotistic society is now inherited – and we’re doomed to suffer through the progeny’s teen party years and singing/acting career.

On a sort of other topic, everybody hates BRITNEY SPEARS. Or do they? I mean, certainly enough deluded souls have bought her CD. Explain to me why again. She has no identifiable talent, and is, by all accounts, an conceited, sluttish, common, stupid piece of trash. She too burbled prettily in countless media outlets about her extreme love for her children and the transformative wonder of motherhood, but has been pretty much been legally exposed as an incompetent and careless parent. She seems to spend most of her lyric "talent" complaining about the very media attention she so relentlessly cultivated and sold her soul to attain. I did listen to about a minute of her GIMME single and found it moronic, if slickly produced, which I guess is the recipe for musical success these days. It’s sad when those sleazeballs THE EAGLES can seem like models of artistic authenticity! Thank goodness for the Alison Krause/Robert Plant CD to prove that there’s still real music out there. It’s a sad commentary on our current culture that girls like BRITNEY and LOHAN lead the kind of lives that most of our youth aspire to, and yet it seems to lead them into a kind of hellish existence. And yet they are always photographed laughing and smiling in their intervals between jail and rehab.

Yeah, and I know what you’re thinking — why break a butterfly on the wheel of UBU’s brilliance. But it seems like celebrity is all there is these days– even the "serious" world is as addicted to baloney as the Pop one. The counterculture has been reduced to commercial poses and the highbrows are so concerned with demonstrating their status that they can’t see past their noses. How can anyone pretend that CHARLES BAXTER, for instance, is some kind of profound writer if they aren’t afraid of being called, in an emperor’s new clothes way, a philistine. But let me tell ya people, there’s no there there, anymore than there is on AMERICAN IDOL.

George Bush has been a an unprecedented disaster for our country, but at least he’s motivated some artists to examine and critique society with a sharpness that’s been lacking for decades. The movie MICHAEL CLAYTON is a brilliant dramatization of the whole materialist, predatory culture of which Bush is the sour fruit – and it has a kickin’ plot too. You could almost say it suggests that you have to be a nutsy obsessive to see through the baloney – UBU raise your hand!!!

Posted in Entertainment | Leave a comment

Dear Editor: Creche Keeping

Posted on November 7, 2007 by ubu507

Dear Editor:

The citizens of Parkway are again facing their annual debate as to whether a creche of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ and Master of All Nations should be allowed on municipal property or not.

For many generations our town lived in perfect peace and harmony (and I do NOT except those much overblown, propagandized and misunderstood incidents, the alleged "lynching" of 1952 and the so-called "race riot" of 1966) secure in the knowledge that the creche would stand on Chippewa Common next to the Old Hanging Tree in a blessed rectangle of holy space today bordered by City Hall, the Big-Kone Dairy Queen, Dewey’s Dry Cleaner and the Super-Kleen Laundromat. But one black day the forces of the ACLU came thundering into town in their Japanese cars and decided to crucify Our Lord and Savior once again, this time in the guise of an innocent plaster child sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. The secularist atheists who smash fragile innocents at this altar are not aware that the master they in fact serve is none other than the head of the ACLU and Iran, the prince of darkness himself, ignoble Satan.

The secularist delusion that church and state should be separated is now clearly obsolete in the face of the sustained terrorist attacks we have all endured since God’s servant the President and Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush ascended to the presidency bringing all the wrath of the dark one’s minions. Our blessed Founding Fathers, who resemble our President and Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush not a little, meant this country to have as many creches as it could hold, and in fact the recent discovery of a wooden baby head at Valley Forge has led many experts at the Heritage Foundation to conclude that a creche was set up during that, our nation’s bleakest Christmas.

The ACLU Blitzkrieg would no doubt then, had they existed, have ridden into town on their asses, torn apart this scene of our Savior and His Holy Blessed Family, and probably even ripped out the wooden teeth of George Washington which are known by the knowledgeable scholar to have been incised with the 10 Commandments and other inspirational Christian writings so that they might infuse his every word.

A country like ours, although there is no other country like ours because we are alone significantly chosen by God to obey His Rules and impose our way of life on His Universal Dominions, is under the onslaught of a diabolical enemy whose only desire is to destroy American culture and traditions. We don’t have time to quibble about the Constitution or "Civil Liberties" when we are in the middle of a desperate struggle for our very way of life by invaders who have already reached the shores of Iraq. If we must, in order to defend our freedom, suspend the Constitution and the rights of those anti-Christians who openly side with our enemy in this millennial conflict, then as our President and Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush says, "Mission Accomplished." Let the torture continue. This is about saving our country from the collectivists.

It is deeply ironic to me, and I would laugh if I could laugh from between the teeth which are still gritted in the face of the enemy, that I have just witnessed a parade of impressionable young children going to our schools and roaming our neighborhoods permitted, nay encouraged, to dress up as the most horrifying and sacrilegious specters of Satanhood on the pagan traditional day of human sacrifice of men and souls known as "Halloween." And then they are supposed to be given a "treat" of expensive and cavity inducing candy for traipsing about in the guise of the unholy! And I am called a "weird grouchy old man" for refusing to give these freeloaders a hand out and instead furnishing a piece of my mind! Where was the ACLU to defend my freedom of speech when their parents were calling me such vile names? And yet we God-fearing Christians who worship His Holy Name and are devoted sons of His Hand Picked Country created in His Own Image are not permitted to see the image of our blessed Savior’s Nativity represented by a delightful plaster simulacrum! No wonder the Satanic infidels are at our very door and their car bomb suicide hearses are being driven by the ACLU!

Walter C. Adhadeck

Franklinton

Posted in Cosmic Verities | Leave a comment

Scythians

Posted on November 6, 2007 by ubu507

Scythians

 

In a skin tent

Covered with furs

She’s been abducted by Scythians

To be their deity and

Is quite pleased with the situation

She says I can visit her but

When I return to my world

It will be a hundred years later

And everyone I know will be dead

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment