"am i making you guys nervous?"

april come she will

April, come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;
May, she will stay,
Resting in my arms again.

June, she'll change her tune,
In restless walks she'll prowl the night;
July, she will fly
And give no warning to her flight.

August, die she must,
The autumn winds blow chilly and cold;
September I'll remember
A love once new has now grown old.

p. simon

marika

another amazing quote from prince of honesty, silver jew David Berman's new blog, mentholmountains.

"It was from two drunken Ukrainian peasants that I learned the true meaning of friendship," taught Rabbi Mendel of Rimanov. "I heard one say to another, "Ivan do you really love me?" "Yes," answered his friend. "But do you really love me?" Again came the positive response. Said the first one, "If you really love me, Ivan, why don't you know what really bothers me?" From then on, R'Mendel insisted that he was obligated to try and find out what troubled another, even if they insisted, as most people do, that everything is fine.

-from "Pirkei Avos"

byog

It makes you blind, it does you in
It makes you think you're pretty tough
It makes you prone to crime and sin
It makes you say things off the cuff
It's very small and made of glass
and grossly over-advertised
It turns a genius to an ass
and makes a fool think he is wise
It could make you regret your birth
or turn cartwheels in your best suit
It costs a lot more than it's worth
and yet there is no substitute
They keep it on a higher shelf
the older and more pure it grows
It has no color in itself
but it can make you see rainbows
You can find it on the Bowery
or you can find it at Elaine's
It makes your words more flowery
It makes the sun shine, makes it rain
You just get out what they put in
and they never put in enough
Love is like a bottle of gin
but a bottle of gin is not like love
--the magnetic fields

yuck

7.3 Million iPads


man, i still don't get it. i never want to have to design for the ipad, but it's looking like that's the future of design. no more books. no more records.

all i wanna do is feel





(but i'm feeling pretty numb)







De-evolution

more jooz

Up the hill past 694, at the stone wall make a left,
and I will see you soon my friend if these old directions still direct.
Is the problem that we can't see or is it that the problem is beautiful to me?
The birds of Virginia are flying within you
and like background singers they all come in threes.

Won't soul music change
now that our souls have turned strange.
Once a day, twice a day...
And when on and off collide
we'll set our souls aside and walk away.

We've been raised on replicas of fake and winding roads
and day after day up on this beautiful stage
we've been playing tambourine for minimum wage
but we are real, I know we are real.

Repair is the dream of the broken thing.
Like a message broadcast on an overpass
all my favorite singers couldn't sing.
My ski vest has buttons like convenience store mirrors
and they help me see, that everything in this room right now is a part of me.

Realizing is how it feels inside when it happens to you.
So I took a shot of sugar like snow dumped into the blood
and children wander off into the ultra-economic
but we are real I know we are real.



When God was young
He made the wind and the sun
And since then
It's been a slow education
And you got that one idea again
The one about dying

Oh, oh, oh I'm lightning
Oh, oh, oh I'm rain
Oh, oh, oh it's frightning
I'm not the same
I'm not the same
I'm not the same

There's a screen door banging in the wind
Remember you wanted to be like George Washington back then
Everybody going down on themselves
No pardon me's or fair thee wells in the end
And you got that one idea again
The one about dying

Oh, oh, oh I'm lightning
Oh, oh, oh I'm rain
Oh, oh, oh it's frightning
I'm not the same
I'm not the same
I'm not the same

smith & jones forever

" The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness. Whether or not we are aware of it, there is nothing of which we are more ashamed than of not being ourselves, and there is nothing that gives us greater pride and happiness than to think, to feel, and to say what is ours...If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole. "

- from "Escape from Freedom" by Erich Fromm


lifted from David Berman's new blog, MentholMountains. David is (in my opinion) of the highest order of American poets today, dropping out of the music scene two years ago to combat his evil corporate father's dirty work. (you can google "richard berman" for more info on that, though the open letter that David wrote explaining the Silver Jews retirement and explaining his relationship with his father is no longer online.) his contributions to american indie rock and to the collective literary imagination are sadly overshadowed by bandmate Stephen Malkmus' Pavement fame. Berman's poetry on the whole is much more comprehensible than S.M.'s slip sliding free verse, and on Silver Jews albums such as American Water, his wit and low-key delivery are just as cool and smarting as any Pavement track. i suppose it helps that Malkmus sings back up on the whole record, but shit i wish this guy would get his due credit more often. go buy a Silver Jews record at your local record store.



In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching perfection.
Slowly screwing my way across Europe, they had to make a correction.
Broken and smokin' where the infrared deer plunge in the digital snake.
I tell you, they make it so you can't shake hands when they make your hands shake.
I know you like to line dance, everything so democratic and cool,
But baby there's no guidance when random rules.

I know that a lot of what I say has been lifted off of men's room walls.
Maybe I've crossed the wrong rivers and walked down all the wrong halls.
But nothing can change the fact that we used to share a bed
and that's why it scared me so when you turned to me and said:

"Yeah, you look like someone
Yeah you look like someone who up and left me low.
Boy, you look like somene I used to know."

I asked the painter why the roads are colored black.
He said, "Steve, it's because people leave
and no highway will bring them back."
So if you don't want me I promise not to linger,
But before I go I've gotta ask you, dear, about the tan line on your ring finger.

No one should have two lives,
now you know my middle names are wrong and right.
Honey we've got two lives to give tonight.

january 1 to 14