Category Archives: Literary

poem o’ the day: They Feed They Lion

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from which my friend they lion takes the name of said blog.

They Feed They Lion
by Philip Levine

Out of burlap sacks, out of bearing butter,
Out of black bean and wet slate bread,
Out of the acids of rage, the candor of tar,
Out of creosote, gasoline, drive shafts, wooden dollies,
They Lion grow.

Out of the gray hills
Of industrial barns, out of rain, out of bus ride,
West Virginia to Kiss My Ass, out of buried aunties,
Mothers hardening like pounded stumps, out of stumps,
Out of the bones’ need to sharpen and the muscles’ to stretch,
They Lion grow.

Earth is eating trees, fence posts,
Gutted cars, earth is calling in her little ones,
“Come home, Come home!” From pig balls,
From the ferocity of pig driven to holiness,
From the furred ear and the full jowl come
The repose of the hung belly, from the purpose
They Lion grow.

From the sweet glues of the trotters
Come the sweet kinks of the fist, from the full flower
Of the hams the thorax of caves,
From “Bow Down” come “Rise Up,”
Come they Lion from the reeds of shovels,
The grained arm that pulls the hands,
They Lion grow.

From my five arms and all my hands,
From all my white sins forgiven, they feed,
From my car passing under the stars,
They Lion, from my children inherit,
From the oak turned to a wall, they Lion,
From they sack and they belly opened
And all that was hidden burning on the oil-stained earth
They feed they Lion and he comes.

the biggest, bestest Bond Girl of all

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kiss kiss bang bang 

And with the best chest, if you ask me.

In the realm of carnal beauty there is no shortage of icons. From Helen of Troy to Brigitte Bardot to Carmen Electra, the competition has always been brutal and the loser taken hindmost…or, wait…you know what I mean.

At the very pinnacle of sexual desirability are the Bond Girls. From the blonde, slinky Honey Ryder to the brunette, slinky Vesper Lynd, Bond Girls have always been seen as the very definition of female hotness, driving men cooler than Bond into raging hormone frenzies and irrationally long wait times at NetFlix. Their faces and bodies have launched a million suavetés, convincing Red State palookas and sub-Arctic lumberjacks alike that all they need to do is look good in the monkey suit and drink Martinis and the ladies will come swarming.

Bond and girlsAnd we will, you know.

I was at the Urban Mixer West End Martini Tour, along with a hundred perfect, and perfectly friendly, strangers, and quite a variety of garb was on display; we had some people in jeans, we had many in suits and cocktail dresses, and we had one man in a tuxedo.

And he was surrounded by women, all night. Are you taking notes, boys?

For the record, my Bond Girl name is Faith Mountain. Dayum, I could do better than that; lessee, um, uh, well, how about Jeanine Tonique? Butter Tartt? Pandora Box?

In any case, I ran across this on the Guardian site, and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in ages. As always with Jeanette Winterson, I’m not sure I agree but I do enjoy. It’s well-written, it’s witty, and it is very well-informed. The research must have been gruelling, poor thing.

And as anyone ’round these parts could tell you, if you want an honest evaluation of girls, ask a lesbian.

The Biggest Bond Girl of All:

My mission, and I chose to accept it, was to watch Bond movies and summon up some firepower on the Bond women. I could gun down the pathetic sexism of early Bond, or the patronising raised eyebrow of mid-Bond, and we could detonate the tortured hero of Brosnan Bond, and, guess what? I will. But first, let’s agree that Bond movies are fabulous fun.

I don’t know which I enjoy more – the cars or the girls. I didn’t buy my 3-litre BMW because I saw Goldeneye, but I was very upset when Bond got the Z8 in The World Is Not Enough. Why? I can’t afford to spend £80,000 on a car, even though I long for a champagne cooler under the handbrake. Driving round Cheltenham without one is a mini-roundabout too far. If I knew there was a Dom Perignon ’53 ready to drink on touchdown in the multistorey car park, I would feel less like machine-gunning Burger King, as I pass it for the 20th time in a traffic labyrinth that could have been devised by Dr No…

sign o’ the times; the time at the end of all things, when the Great Old Ones will return and clear off the Earth, to gibber in madness and ecstasy forever

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this doesn't look good. Click for more IF YOU DARE

There hath he lain for ages and will lie,

Battening on huge seaworms in his sleep;

Until the latter fire shall heat the deep;

Then once by man and angels to be seen,

In roaring he shall rise and on the surface die.

And here we at the ol’ raincoaster blog thought we were the only ones who were on this Cthulhu thing around WordPress. Live and learn, and point and gibber in helpless panic at the ultrasound from sobek’s Innocent Bystanders blog.

There are other signs.

This came via Fark, as we have always known news of the End Days would arrive. Pass the whiskey. I have no intention of dying sober.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

IT IS RISEN!

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — A new volcanic island has risen from the South Pacific near Tonga, according to reports from two vessels that passed the area.

The crew of the Maiken, a yacht that left the northern Tongan islands group of Vava’u in August, reported on their Web log on August 12 that they saw streaks of light, porous pumice stone floating in the water — then “sailed into a vast, many-miles-wide belt of densely packed pumice.”

They posted photos of huge “pumice rafts” that they encountered after passing Tonga’s Late island while sailing toward Fiji.

“We were so fascinated and busy taking pictures that we plowed a couple of hundred meters into this surreal floating stone field before we realized that we had to turn back,” wrote a crewman identified only as Haken.

The next day they spotted an active volcanic island, Haken wrote.

He said they could see the volcanic island clearly. “One mile in diameter and with four peaks and a central crater smoking with steam and once in a while an outburst high in the sky with lava and ashes. I think we’re the first ones out here,” he reported.

Oh no, far from it. But Johansen can no longer speak; he no longer has that which could serve as a tongue, nor that which could string together thoughts enough to guide it. God has been merciful to Johansen; may he be so to us as well.

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid isle of ignorance amidst black seas of chaos, and it is not meant that we should voyage far.

Quiz: the Interview interview

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Be a journalist; or smell just like one!

This is the pop culture quiz given to hopeful job applicants at Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Ah, remember the Eighties? Well it seems so does whoever wrote this quiz: I’m a little surprised it doesn’t have Peter Beard and Maud Adams on it, but maybe there’s a Page Two I haven’t located yet.

See how well you do, and yes, it appears that the last one is a typo. I thought it was that scam artist John Hawkins but no, they really meant Stephen Hawking, with whom we are, of course, intimately familiar, featuring as we do his Christmas album. Oh, and did you hear Romeo is divorcing his wife? No idea if it’s for another nurse or just for physical protection, but if there’s a god in heaven Elaine Hawking will end up with David Gest.

I have ticked off the ones I can identify; how’d you do, and if it’s “not well” can I have your job?

From The Smoking Gun:

Barry Diller Checked box symbol
Joel Schumacher Checked box symbol
Bridget Hall Checked box symbol
Ellen Von Unwerth Checked box symbol
Phillip Taaffe
Michael Roberts
Faith Popcorn Checked box symbol
Helmut Lang Checked box symbol
Karole Armitage Checked box symbol
Joe Dolce Checked box symbol
Kevin Aucoin Checked box symbol
Julian Schnabel Checked box symbol
Wayne Maser
Donna Tartt Checked box symbol
Hamish Bowles Checked box symbol
Francesco Clemente Checked box symbol
Harry Evans Checked box symbol
Miuccia Prada Checked box symbol
Michaelangelo Signorile
Bob Colacello Checked box symbol
Polly Melon (sic) Checked box symbol
Douglas Coupland Checked box symbol
Jack Pierson
Tibor Kalman
Juergen Teller Checked box symbol
Rei Kawakubo Checked box symbol
Tina Brown Checked box symbol
Gabriella Forte Checked box symbol
Liz Smith Checked box symbol
Billy Norwich Checked box symbol
Sophia Coppola Checked box symbol
Jason Weinberg
Lillian Hellman Checked box symbol
Terri Toye Checked box symbol
Steven Klein
Victoria Bartlett
Peter Lynch Checked box symbol
Steven Hawkin (sic) Checked box symbol ?

the way of Nigella

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Why hello there Nigella!Hello, boys!

There’s one celebrity cook the men will always tune in for, and it’s former It-Girl, now It-Woman Nigella Lawson. As famous for filling out her sweaters as she is for deep-frying Dove bars, she may be the Private Benjamin or Lisa Douglas of the kitchen, but she’s to be congratulated on bringing the sexy back to food. Martha Stewart, by comparison, is a prim Edna Mode prescribing sauteed zucchini blossoms not because they’re yummy, but because they’ll look good with the seared squab. Mario Batali is some kind of cross between Trimalchio and Mr. Creosote, swelling visibly on-camera till he threatens to burst his Crocs.

But Nigella, while she has an alarming tendency to take up with the wrong kind of fellow, does have an endearingly earthy style. In other words, she turns the men into testosterone-addled horndogs and reminds the women about all their appetites, which is a public service of a sort.

Here’s The Way of Nigella, a piece in The Morning News from a couple of years back, dropped in a comment on Gawker for which I will find the credit later (have I mentioned I’m lazy?). Nigella on raising your own shrimp, preparing soothing comfort food, and dining out at cheap Chinese counters:

I’ve found that it is hard to find good shrimp, and Nigella, the English Muffinso I’ve started farming them myself. To the inexperienced onlooker, two-phased intensive shrimp farming might seem like a daunting task. While it is hard work, I always feel rewarded. How I just love the marine smell of raw feed on my hands. From hatchery to grow-out pond, I am responsible for keeping out disease, looking after salinity conditions, and making sure that there is enough circulation in the water. When I look into my special concrete larval tanks, I am looking at thousands, if not millions, of potential shrimp-kabobs. It is the perfect blend of embracing nature – my private bountiful sea – and expectantly knowing that I’ll be feasting on lemon-buttered scampi over linguini that results ultimately in blissful domestic satisfaction.