things move around

He strongly preferred bathing to showering, which he decried as a crass extravagance and an “ablutory chimera”; in fact, he refused to recognise showering as a legitimate bathroom undertaking, on the grounds that it was “more air than water” and did not result in one’s becoming “proper wet”. To the growing popularity of the morning shower over the evening bath he ascribed all manner of ills, from inflation to inflamation of the earlobes. When his heart failed, aged 84, they found him reposing serenely in the bathtub, a still-smouldering cigar dangling from his claw-like right hand.

Bought up a big fuck-off TV and self-assembly stand today - and what they call a “dinette” - and WHO CAN BLAME ME? The dinette’s getting delivered next week but the fuck-off TV and stand are right across from me as I right this, and I can tell you, they’re a bastard, a bastard, a well, you know, A BIT OF A CUNT, yeah, big, bigger than, bigger than my old pal Paul Kerley who was, well, he was no, that was tall Jim, him and his no, no   her theey   wa runnin forr  us hart gggowown 1st psslace 1dt prieee

Visit hammond-organ.com for all things Hammond-related. An erudite and professional compendium of Hammond resources maintained by Darren T. Brown, a service manager for Hammond Organ UK Ltd.

I turn it over in my hands,
the inky A4 printout
of the ultrasound:

is that a leg or an arm?
I turn it upside down.
Is that a jawbone

or a jumping bean?
I look at the spine,
shaped like an interrobang,

and then, I grope for the whole:
a whorl of monochrome
denoting an incoming storm,

or a photo of Jupiter
taken by an early NASA probe.
Our own Enigma code.

I put it down and look
out at the late spring evening,
where the sky is wet and bulging

with thunderheads - ripe plums
on a perilously-laden bough -
overhanging hungering mountaintops.

Potbellied homunculus,
cupboard-Indian,
Echo’s bones,

juju, astronaut,
inscrutable old seer,
lodged in your far-off cave:

what does the future hold?
You ought to know -
you’re from there, after all.

How do Ebert and Roper expect me to rispect there opinion when their totally indiscriminate with there two thumbs up come rain or shine?Ebert and Roper just pimp they’re two thumbs up to the dumbest fuck Will Ferrell flick or J-Lo music video + Its not the way to forge a bond of trust so to Ebert & Roper I give TWO THUMBS DOWN their a discrace.

I can’t remember how we got talking about the Aga Khan; I suppose it must have been one of those conversations that just flops into being for no good reason and then hovers around your head for the rest of the day. I could picture the Aga Khan, youthful and serene. “Who, or what, is the Aga Khan?” I said.

KE: What do you mean, ‘or what?’
Me: Well, he’s a ‘the’. Or ‘it’’s a he. Or is it a ‘the’ as in ‘there’s only one Aga Khan’, perhaps? Like professional wrestlers - ‘The Undertaker’ - or super-villains - ‘The Green Goblin’.
KE: Ah. Isn’t he an Ismaili muslim?
Me: The Green Goblin is a muslim?
KE: No, the Aga Khan. He’s the spiritual leader of the Ismailis.
Me: I thought the Israelis were Jewish?
Me: Ow, that hurt.
[Pause]
Me: And he made his fortune by selling stoves to the readers of ‘Country Living’ magazine.
KE: If anyone can do it, Aga Khan.
Me: You mean, Immanuel Kant, but Aga Khan?
KE: Exactly.
[Pause]
KE: Good singer, too.
Me: Get away.
KE: Don’t tell me you’ve never heard it?
Me: Heard what? If it dates from before 1985, then the answer’s no.
KE: [sighs] [sings tremulously]:

Aga, Aga, Aga, Aga khan
Aga khan, Aga khan, Aga khan
Aga khan, let me rock you
Let me rock you, Aga khan
Let me rock you, that’s all I wanna do
Aga khan, let me rock you
Let me rock you, Aga khan
Let me rock you, let me feel for you
Aga khan let me tell you what I wanna do
Do you feel for me, the way I feel for you
Aga khan let me tell you what I wanna do
I wanna love you, wanna hug you, wanna squeeze you too
Let me take you in my arms
Let me fill you with my charms, Aga
’cause you know that I’m the one to keep you warm
Aga, I’ll make you more than just a physical dream
I wanna rock you, Aga
Baby, cause you make me wanna scream
Let me rock you, rock you

Both:

I feel for you
I think I love you
I feel for you
I think I love you

Me: Yeah, it’s a good tune. But you know that Prince wrote it for the Aga. I mean, the Aga was just the lungs and the looks, really.
KE: It’s a total con.

Days of Thunder is dismissed by most critics as an unscheduled pitstop on the flat-track thrill-ride of Cruise’s life and career: a simplistic reprise of the seminal Top Gun, or a comatose eye-twitch before the miraculous awakening of Far and Away. Not so. Days is Cruise in aspic - Cruise as was, Cruise as is, and Cruise immortal, Cruise as will be. In Cole Trickle, Cruise finds the dauntless vehicle for his own mercurial talent, by turns elemental, poetic and mundane. And Trickle, in turn, finds in Cruise his Prometheus - for it is Cruise’s fire which fires Trickle’s fickle fantasies.

methinks the mayday doth protest too much

There’s a certain segment of humanity
- there’s one in most offices, maybe 10% -
who wake up on a Monday morning
with a new, crisp, clean calamity
ready to go, like a folded shirt,
or polished shoes with new leather laces.

They put on their personal crises,
brush their teeth, and go to work,
where they strut around like hounds at Crufts,
presumably on the basis
that a tizz turns heads,
that people like me give a toss.

Now be honest: do I come across
as having a surplus of sympathy,
in spite of my morning ritual
of applying the scowl to my face,
detaching my heart from its strings,
and perfecting my unfriendliest glower

in the bathroom mirror?
Nope. But the panic faction don’t care,
secure in the knowledge that one day,
tomorrow or in the far future,
their attire of dud disaster
will stand for more than just vanity.