My first publication of the year has arrived in the form of Past Tense, the the latest annual not-Not One of Us publication. It contains my poem "Capta," which is a sufficiently personal piece that I find it easier to have written it than to talk about it. Some elements of it are as old as a trip I took to Italy as a college student, when I visited Rome and Baiae and wanted one of Vespasian's Judaea Capta sestertii for reasons I could not articulate at the time; some as recent as the D.C. Dyke March and the Chicago Dyke March before that and the blood-tide feeling that my social justice value as a Jew would be rated rather higher if I were dead. I would call it a ghost poem except that it is about living—as
selkie continues to have said it best, MIR ZAYNEN FUCKING DO. The rest of the issue trends appropriately toward stress and slipping history, with contributors including Rob Francis, Alexandra Seidel, and Wendy A. Howe. You can pick up a copy to see for yourself and you can also submit work to the magazine. Print 'zines are thin on the ground these days, but Not One of Us would be dear to me no matter what.
I can also be found, albeit in photographic form, in the pages of the latest Annals of Improbable Research, the special 29th First Annual Ig Nobel issue (25.6). I am giving a hellacious side-eye to Lizhou Sha for reasons that make perfect sense in context. Given the density of weirdness during the actual ceremony, I really appreciate the inclusion not just of the winners and their abstracts, but the full texts of keynote and acceptance speeches, very short lectures, and the libretto of the mini-opera "Creatures of Habit." Of the improbable research reviewed in this issue, my favorite is Kenneth Nemire's "Walking Backwards Without Looking: An Observational Study."
Like everyone else who looks at the news these days, I am finding it terrifyingly rage-making. I think it upsets me less that the man in the White House wants to declare war by fiat on Twitter than that the rest of his administration seems fine with it: the destruction of law, the destruction of the world, roll on Armageddon; they are a death-cult and should self-immolate please without taking any more lives with them. I do not consent to the sacrifice. It was not even obvious to me when I first saw it quoted that the rebuttal tweet from the House Foreign Affairs Committee was real, because is that how our government works these days? At least someone is pushing back. May enough of the levers still work. May the walls not fall. Alexander burnt Persepolis; the man in the White House is no Alexander. It was barbarism then. [edit] It seems that someone at the Pentagon still has some functioning sense of ethics, or at least optics. That's something. Still too much future tense.
Since I mentioned it in context of Repeat Performance (1947): the Library of America is kindly hosting Fritz Leiber's "Try and Change the Past" (1958).
spatch thought I would enjoy this Wallace the Brave. He was right.
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I can also be found, albeit in photographic form, in the pages of the latest Annals of Improbable Research, the special 29th First Annual Ig Nobel issue (25.6). I am giving a hellacious side-eye to Lizhou Sha for reasons that make perfect sense in context. Given the density of weirdness during the actual ceremony, I really appreciate the inclusion not just of the winners and their abstracts, but the full texts of keynote and acceptance speeches, very short lectures, and the libretto of the mini-opera "Creatures of Habit." Of the improbable research reviewed in this issue, my favorite is Kenneth Nemire's "Walking Backwards Without Looking: An Observational Study."
Like everyone else who looks at the news these days, I am finding it terrifyingly rage-making. I think it upsets me less that the man in the White House wants to declare war by fiat on Twitter than that the rest of his administration seems fine with it: the destruction of law, the destruction of the world, roll on Armageddon; they are a death-cult and should self-immolate please without taking any more lives with them. I do not consent to the sacrifice. It was not even obvious to me when I first saw it quoted that the rebuttal tweet from the House Foreign Affairs Committee was real, because is that how our government works these days? At least someone is pushing back. May enough of the levers still work. May the walls not fall. Alexander burnt Persepolis; the man in the White House is no Alexander. It was barbarism then. [edit] It seems that someone at the Pentagon still has some functioning sense of ethics, or at least optics. That's something. Still too much future tense.
Since I mentioned it in context of Repeat Performance (1947): the Library of America is kindly hosting Fritz Leiber's "Try and Change the Past" (1958).
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