onfocus

matt created this cool graphic:

I think it's great. If you like it too, throw it on your site (if you have one). You might also want to learn more about Ralph Nader and his platform. I registered with the green party this year. I did it in part to register my disgust with the two major parties.

remember that sunset I mentioned a while back? this was it.

Ayn Rand is like a grain of sand in my eye – a minor irritant that causes me to pause a moment to rub it out. For some reason, every once in a while, I have to remind myself how great it is to see without sand in my eyes. So I purposely grab a speck of Rand. I was browsing through the old TiVo listings, when I saw that The Fountainhead (a movie?) was going to be on Turner Classic Movies. I set it to record out of morbid curiosity. Well, it turns out the movie is so bad that it turned into an ok experience. I was mostly doubled over in hysterics at the stilted dialogue. I was my own MST3K episode. I looked high and low for the screenplay online so I could give some examples, but couldn't find it. Here's an approximation of what the screenplay looks like:

INT. HOWARD'S OFFICE

Howard looks emotionlessly at a model of a building he has designed. It is a beautiful building that no one could possibly understand.

HOWARD
(coldly)
I am pushing the boundry of architecture to its limit.

SOMEONE ELSE
(with passion)
You can't do it! Give in to the masses! Stop trying to create something new and vital!

HOWARD
(flatly)
But this is modern. Form must follow function.

SOMEONE ELSE
You're insane! They'll kill you because of your ideas! Compromise! Compromise!

HOWARD
People should not work for the common good but for themselves. I am the greatest architect who ever lived.

Try to catch it if you can. Oh yeah, and Rand herself wrote the screenplay. (Good thing she didn't compromise and let a pro screenwriter do it.)

today's song: visions of johanna by dylan. But there's nothing, really nothing to turn off.

The Charge by Ron Padgett

That poem is from a book I have called Surrealist Poetry in English. It has some poems by Ron Padgett in it. There has to be a good link to some Padgett Poems. I'll see if I can dig one up.

good morning poem:

Daybreak
by Bert Meyers

Birds drip from the trees.
The moon's a little goat
over there on the hill;
dawn, as blue as her milk,
fills the sky's tin pail.

The air's so cold as a gas station
glitters in an ice-cube.
The freeway hums like a pipe
when the water's on.
Streetlights turn off their dew.

The sun climbs down from a roof,
stops by a house and strikes
its long match on a wall,
takes out a ring of brass keys
and opens every door.

right on, right on.

Chicago Tribune: And The Winner Is...: "Do you for one moment think Al Gore would have sounded that militant tocsin, among other matters, such as better health care, the minimum wage, firm affirmative action and the phoniness of school vouchers? He, who hitherto had been an errand boy for the Big Boys almost as much as Dubya. Not on your tintype. It was the fear of Nader's possible 5 percent that impelled Gore's spin doctors to add blood to his pallid being: Adopt Nader's platform, even if mildly so." [via sfblogs]

The latest Adbusters was in my mail yesterday. The cover has some great art by Chris Woods. It would be funny if it wasn't disturbing. In his own words, "The north-american mass-media world we live in is unique in human history and I feel that it has a deep impact. Advertising has become our primary belief system and it dictates to us the way we should behave and function."

I was thinking about how I saw that poem I mentioned the other day at the perfect time. There should really be more poems on walls. I love the poems on the muni platforms in San Francisco. If you have control of a wall or mass transit platform, consider putting one up.

On the drive home from work last night I heard an interesting quote on Fresh Air. David Leavitt was quoting a psychologist friend of his: "Everything is about sex. Except sex, which is about aggression."