Carne Felize

Related Sciences

2011-10-05T18:49:00.001-05:00

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Unions are Power Positive

2011-09-29T03:56:00.001-05:00

Actoring

2011-09-24T13:55:00.001-05:00

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Can television make you more compassionate?

2011-09-18T22:29:00.001-05:00

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A) Both
B) Medium/Message Relationality
C) Cultural Cholesterol Increase Measures
D) Dismorphic Stamina Commitment

Cuter vs.

2011-09-17T14:55:00.001-05:00

The Rick Perry Show: Fiddling While Texas Burns

2011-09-08T13:08:00.001-05:00

At least he didn't slash the state's education budgets ... Oh, wait ... He did that too!

		Fiddling While Texas Burns
	WASHINGTON -- As wildfires engulfed her Bastrop County, Texas, neighborhood on Sunday, Betty Dunkerley was forced to evacuate her home for safer ground. There were...

...

Lowell Lipton

(512) 656-4099

The BLOG:

http://carnefelize.posterous.com

http://carnefelize.blogspot.com

The WEB Site:

http://2yxc.zapd.co/?device=browser

•^•

Meteorological Paralysis

2011-08-17T08:05:00.001-05:00

This summering broadly flays
All inspiration slain
and buried under HVAC humm
Inside, inside all energy drained
Cowered meek to hide from sun

Love is Rough

2011-07-28T22:15:00.001-05:00

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After finishing my workout on the treadmill in my brain, I showered, shaved and considered the full range of possibilities for what I could choose to defrost for dinner.

Homecoming

2011-07-26T23:38:00.001-05:00

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Something I've Learned

2011-07-24T16:44:00.001-05:00

Most people are less interesting to speak with (and seem less interested in others) when they are drunk.

Post-Vacation Traumatic Boredom Disorder

2011-07-18T15:54:00.001-05:00

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Look back on those last few years I spent in Congress, I am most drawn to the incapacity (or unwillingness) of my colleagues to hold hands. All the hours we'd spent in committee meetings, arguing on the floor and huddled in small groups after the illuminations of governing had dimmed, and none of it felt through the intimacy of cordial embrace or the comfort of fingers clasped together.

Wander Bound

2011-07-17T22:11:00.001-05:00

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It was terrible, being the king, the droning burden of rules and protocols. To shirk this loathsome weight in favor of a life broadly flung and freely swept up, up to the whims of chance from which to view the most meager of moments ... magnificently mundane

Religious for Patience

2011-07-16T04:50:00.001-05:00

My stop-and-pause
Is finely tuned
To fail
On occasion

I am afraid (yes ...
Recklessly and embarrassed)
When talking about talking
Or watching children argue

Measly precipice,
You're slipperier than I want --and
My wants are full of expectation
(Gloat broadly with feeling evident)

This memory of breathing
Slower and slower and slowly
With rehearsed confidence
Is a point for aiming

Rambling Around

2011-07-06T01:35:00.003-05:00

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Rambling Around

2011-07-06T01:35:00.001-05:00

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The Saddest Sound

2011-07-01T11:30:00.001-05:00

Anyone laughing at their own joke

The Saddest Sound

2011-07-01T11:29:00.001-05:00

Anyone laughing at their own joke

Generosity of Spirit

2011-06-28T11:57:00.001-05:00

Everybody
Is freaking out
All the time

Be more good
Than you want

Father's Day

2011-06-20T19:53:00.001-05:00

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They are kind and smart,
Often clever or funny,
When they smile at me
The whole world feels sunny.

I'm a lucky man
Cause there's still one thing,
Both of my kids
Are damn interesting.

New Pics

2011-06-14T18:40:00.001-05:00

I've got a new batch of photos up on the website, Picturing Gravity:

http://2yxc.zapd.co/?device=browser

Thanks
L

Republican Economic Policy: Unpatriotic or Treasonous?

2011-06-09T13:18:00.001-05:00

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* Analysis is from the non-partisan, Center on Budget Policy Priorities, based on data from the United States Congressional Budget Office.

Musing Ze Bemusement du Phantase

2011-06-08T11:25:00.001-05:00

This is the life. Air conditioning, machine made cubed ice and ozone-depravity induced 105 degree summer mornings. My word, I'm a lucky man. Woke to the therapeutic rhythm of my eleven year-old son's manicured hands massaging my edemic feet. His purposeful and strong hands kneaded my aches away before I was even cognizant of their presence. Glorious, good child. While my fingers worked to pry the eye-cake from my lashes, his eight year-old sister, humming perfect-pitched and angel stepping through the room so as not to disrupt her brother, brought my breakfast on an orderly serving tray up from the kitchen. Without speaking to each other (merely a glance to cue their attentive timing), they both then slipped silent out of the room, leaving me to dine languidly over my fluffed mushroom/brie omelet, twelve pieces of bacon, butter lathered rye toast and espresso. Some guys have all the luck -- but I'm not one of em. The thing of it is, is it's all in the parenting. My children's generosity of spirit is a direct reflection of the spectacularly well-placed lessons they've learned from my actions. No need in feigning humility here, as they themselves will be the first to offer praise and appreciation for the gifts of love and discipline that I heap on them daily. My remarkableness is astounding, even to me. Sometimes.

*~*
Lowell Lipton
(512) 656-4099

The BLOG:
http://carnefelize.posterous.com
http://carnefelize.blogspot.com

The WEB Site:
http://2yxc.zapd.co/?device=browser

•^•

Experiments in Jocular Bemusement

2011-06-07T18:51:00.001-05:00

This morning, after yelling at the children to close the blinds and watch more tv, my wife and went to the supermarket and stole stuff. Well, 'borrowed stuff' would be more accurate, but you understand complicitly all about that. We filled our matching sweat pants with canned goods -- raviolios, sliced peaches, brown gravy and the like.

Our couples therapist had encouraged us to actively listen to each other with more empathy, and it turned out we both yearned for more frequent acts of reckless vandalism. You think you know people. So, in loving tribute to our ongoing rejection of isolated solitude, we emptied the cans of their regulated contents, and replaced them with haggis, borscht, and cracker-jack prize tattoos. Then, we reentered the market and returned the cans to their original locations.

We celebrated our newfound togetherness with Starbucks and then went to a Tea Party rally where we renewed our vows and protested against the federal disbursement of funds to cripples and old people.

As Helen Keller reminded us all, "where are my keys?"

Expertiments In Jocular Bemusement

2011-06-06T09:45:00.001-05:00

Je nais se cae se ra se ra

Our couples therapist had encouraged us to actively listen to each other with more empathy, and it turned out we both yearned for more frequent acts of reckless vandalism. You think you know people.

So, in loving tribute to our ongoing rejection of isolated solitude, we emptied the cans of their regulated contents, and replaced them with haggis, borscht, and cracker-jack prize tattoos. Then, we reentered the market and returned the cans to their original locations.

We celebrated our newfound togetherness with Starbucks and then went to a Tea Party rally where we renewed our vows and protested against the federal disbursement of funds to cripples and old people.

As Helen Keller reminded us all, "where are my keys?"

*~*
Lowell Lipton
(512) 656-4099

The BLOG:
http://carnefelize.posterous.com
http://carnefelize.blogspot.com

The WEB Site:
http://2yxc.zapd.co/?device=browser

•^•

How I spent my day catching in the rye

2011-05-20T00:45:00.001-05:00

I'm a pragmatic-relativist (please don't stop reading). I accept that "the truth" is a construction composed of equal parts contextual perception, socio-historical framing, and the empirical evidence hewn from the describable consequences of lived experience. I'm far more concerned with how our "truths" serve us than any measurable veracity that can be gleaned from a forensic autopsy of it's claims. I admire the good and the useful more than the awkward push and pull bullying that's required to determine a winner in "right vs. wrong" distinctions. Nonetheless, I am also a dad who must sometimes confront the sloppy righteousness of his children's straight-faced lying.

That my kids lie on occasion, that they play with the communing of perceived and possible truths, is not what wrecks me. They lie (or stretch or play with the truth) because they are human, and that is a part of the human experience -- to shape the world into the vision we want it to be over and above how the world may actually be experienced by others. What wrecks me are those moments when their wide-eyed earnestness evidences a sincere belief that their lying is successful at remaking the truth and that it is even making a situation better or solving a problem.

This is hard. Writing about them in this way feels really vulnerable to me, like the scale of justice is gonna drop one arm on my neck, wrestle me to the ground and tattoo "hypocrite" across my forehead. I think we often presume that when we talk about our parenting, we're talking about something "finished," or already all mapped out, when really all were doing is saying, "here's how I responded (or hope to respond) to the kid when they did the same damn thing I've done or am capable of doing."

When my kid builds a lie that he forgot to do the school project he'd been assigned, when he adds an extension onto the lie by telling his teacher that he doesn't have the project because MY perfectly operational computer is not working because the battery has died (and the plug won't work either, he clarifies when prodded), and when all of this lie assembling takes place a mere two hours after being lovingly lectured on the disappointment his mother and I feel when he lies about playing the video game he's not supposed to be playing and turns off as we enter the room ... well, he screwed up. People make wrong or selfish choices sometimes.

We all stretch or bend or shape the facts to suit us on occasion. He's only eleven, but we both know that truth wrangling is tricky business. However, without the acumen derived from years of failed experiments, my son's lying spills and bounds all hopeful and confident that his efforts at revising the world to suit his own needs carries an inevitable triumph of success and a shinny hue of finality.

His head bows when we confront him. At first, he is truly surprised that the glue he'd used to erect his lie had failed to adhere. His eyes twitch underneath the small soft paws he tries to hide under. He is embarrassed, yes, but it is the shock of disappointment carved into his brow that wrecks me most severe. He's spent his youth listening to adults rail against the doublespeak that is a part of our political lexicon. He's participated in unpacking and admiring the persuasive powers of advertising, fiction, even our cultural history, and the myriad of other communicative situations in which "truth" is a flexible or liquid end whose means of arrival require choice, strategy and skill. And yet, he has fumbled in his own meaning making that fails to persuade his parents or his teachers. He is caught -- and (surprise, surprise) I am the catcher.

Discussing this with a friend, I realized that there is a part of me that simply wants him to be a better liar. Not "the dad" part, but the mopey, cynical part of me that recognizes the role that confident bravado and spin-doctoring play in out culture. In just about every aspect of our consumerist culture -- from stock markets to kids marketing to college entrance essays -- people are rewarded for how successful they are at getting other folks to buy into what they say. Sure the truth helps in these "sales," but so does playing with or bending the truth if it makes you a more persuasive seller of things or ideas. I want my kid to succeed. I want him to be confident and prove a worthy shaper and seller of ideas to the world. I even like the idea if him being rewarded for doing this well.

My contradictions are clear and I fully admit to them. I suppose my role as lie-catcher is pedagogical at it's heart. He (not to leave out his younger sister but) needs to know that I and others value not just "the truth," but the effort it takes to aim towards the truth. Further, he needs to know that there are consequences for avoiding truthfulness, such as punishment, shame and embarrassment. Most importantly, in "catching" his lie I am teaching him that being-caught is always a possible outcome and that he must recognize the power he wields in owning the choices he makes whenever he acts to tell "the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth," and all the variants of not-truths he'll find himself telling in his life. He is only human, and only humans are gifted with the burdens of being caught up in the telling of our lives.

On the Cartography of Impending Weather (or not)

2011-05-14T01:29:00.001-05:00

Sisyphus is calling.

He must leave seven or eight messages a day. I know it's him without even checking the caller-ID. When one of my kids starts to answer his ringing -- "Stop ... " I bark, overly frantic and so quick it must inspire them to be suspicious, of something.

But shit, what have I got to apologize for? I ain't the one pushing a boulder.

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Actuarial Schematics for the Promise of Progress

2011-05-04T15:32:00.001-05:00

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Our stories are often sadder than we admit to. Each example has a place, argues an understanding in relationship to its neighbors. A happy ending requires volition. Revision is a hoping process, procedures a willingness to stumble or fail. A thing revisited is never the same thing. Arranging the pieces is an adventure in the power of expectations. Guesswork and confidence are adorable. Drink plenty of water and make time for healthy snacks.

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Nostalgic for Towards

2011-04-24T13:41:00.001-05:00

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Sometimes, without provocation, I remember other versions of who I wanted to someday become. More frequently, I forget having made these aspirational identities all together.

On waking, the air is stiff, seemingly hewn of rough or resistant material. Breathe, deeply more.

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Imaginary Memory Mapping

2011-04-23T01:12:00.001-05:00

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mind reading
my own mostly

THIS is a rigorous occupation
terrible hours
no benefits
or vacations

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My visiting a Dr's office never satisfies my fantasies of safety and compassion

2011-04-23T00:07:00.001-05:00

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my task is in-process / pragmatic disambiguation / a prat-fall ballet bloomed / kindness(ing)

2011-04-12T00:57:00.001-05:00

Spending Money Makes Me Anxious

2011-04-02T17:33:00.001-05:00

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Diagnosis Haikuectomy

2011-04-01T22:09:00.001-05:00

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natural concrete, posed,
cloud cleaving boughs steelied;
all angle-wrecked
like cocktail weary;
composts afternoon hues varietal
towards spring's retreat.

Haikuist Leap of Faith: compare and contrast irrational objects

2011-03-31T17:46:00.001-05:00

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scrub oaks purchase new
leafing, stumps against winter's gloam:
impose significant cause.

Sincerely Haikued for Your Desire Specifically

2011-03-30T09:14:00.001-05:00

walk towards dusky,
shuffle as a mosey lopes --
neighborhood ables scening

Another Adorable Bruised Haiku

2011-03-29T19:32:00.001-05:00

lesson on waiting rain --
thrum burst of cloud nectar,
a wiry caw elopes tree

Haikuers Do-It Better With Less

2011-03-28T20:55:00.001-05:00

metal or plum skin
breath happens for next breath's joy awake is here more

Narrow Precipice Views

2011-03-27T09:48:00.001-05:00

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Interstitial about right sizing multi-nodal methods of seeing

2011-03-26T00:11:00.001-05:00

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The Politic of Our Culpability is Always Already Colored by the Artifice of Hoping More

2011-03-24T09:12:00.001-05:00

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Denial of responsibility:
This form of denial involves avoiding personal responsibility by: blaming - a direct statement shifting culpability and may overlap with denial of fact minimizing - an attempt to make the effects or results of an action appear to be less harmful than they may actually be, or justifying - when someone takes a choice and attempts to make that choice look okay due to their perception of what is "right" in a situation. Someone using denial of responsibility is usually attempting to avoid potential harm or pain by shifting attention away from themselves.
[Wikipedia, DENIAL (03/2011)]I

Mundane in the Neighborhood

2011-03-21T01:36:00.001-05:00

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Ordinarily
Is an awe machine:
God willing;
bounding;
fancier.

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To be present / completely in the moment shared / unwavering and undoubtably there / this is the only task / the only cause for effort / to be present in the collaboration of instant experience / into the awkward, raw, vascillating present of familying /

2011-03-17T00:50:00.001-05:00

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Reflections on The Future

2011-03-14T21:26:00.001-05:00

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Reflections on The Future

2011-03-14T20:48:00.001-05:00

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A Debrief On Unassemblage

2011-03-13T12:47:00.001-05:00

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Familying New York

2011-03-13T12:42:00.001-05:00

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Perspective is Opinionating about Listening Pedagogies

2011-03-05T00:31:00.000-06:00

See Saw Say

2011-03-04T00:00:00.000-06:00

Ambiguous Analogy #1: A strip-mall is to a city as one person disagreeing disagreeably to another person

2011-02-26T19:26:00.001-06:00

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introspecting // a meditation // on the utility of inquiry // on the range of perspectival conflict acceptance // on knowing when I know enough

2011-02-25T11:16:00.001-06:00

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The tremolo soundings of blue and metal in a ghosty place

2011-02-23T15:46:00.001-06:00

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Who do we see when we see ourselves through another's eyes?

2011-02-19T00:19:00.001-06:00

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Carne Amore

2011-02-14T21:27:00.001-06:00

Free Valentine's Day Naked Emotion

2011-02-14T11:51:00.001-06:00

Download now or watch on posterous

p228.mov (3689 KB)

Particular about specifics, his attention to the miasma of potential panaceas was easily distracted

2011-02-10T12:04:00.002-06:00

"Everybody in the whole damned world is so damned serious."
From, Haruki Marukami's
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles

The Vulnerability Artist

2011-02-07T21:16:00.001-06:00

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I am always already afraid
of failing them.

Guilt prone
for anticipating danger,
my parenting vacillates
unconvincingly strident
between faith and will.

Their disinterestedness
in this condition
is the grace
where I place
all of my gratitude.

Mostly, television sees sadder

2011-02-05T00:25:00.001-06:00

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A Snow's Moment is Fleeing Like

2011-02-04T04:25:00.001-06:00

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A Chanting Evening in Cairo

2011-02-03T07:11:00.001-06:00

On the Occasion of My Forty-Third Birthday

2011-02-01T15:16:00.001-06:00

A calendar Looks ferocious Increasingly

Nature Takes Shape (makes math more meaningfilled)

2011-01-28T17:38:00.001-06:00

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An object is abject for potential

Potent, the mechanics of a refugee spring
Loom and weave string theories
About big and smallest parts

Strange the cosmos brays

A Referendum on Spatial Theologies

2011-01-23T11:26:00.001-06:00

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Real Artificial Dream Maps

2011-01-18T01:42:00.002-06:00

Every night procedures optimistic,
I tell my children, "dream, dream sweet dreams."

Every morning, mourning Lethe lost,
They report their dreams forgottten

Each time I tear sleep to wake,
My dream narrative loosed to ether

Each dream felt, a memory seared,
Viscerally upon my bones to rewrestle

Every day, this percussive thrumm,
Sense echoing dream feeling flees>

Mind Bent for Finding

2011-01-11T23:00:00.001-06:00

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is a goodness --
to see thoughtfilled and serious
in others making sense

Testing Applications For and Against Gravity

2011-01-03T22:32:00.001-06:00

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Falling trends towards forwards,
Evidencing method,
Pins each action measurable

a roll
a curve
an arc of triumph:
Potential differentials in the landing

Poses brand a player's pedagogy
Striking confidence and fear
With guttural commentary

Strategy meets
Over gelatinous yellow-gooped nachos
Fried pickle slivers:
metes out calls for process revision
and accounting accusations

Historical-Fictioning the Future

2011-01-02T23:43:00.001-06:00

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They were just like real experiences, only louder and more confusingly hi-pitched.

a City bids adieu to the old year

2010-12-31T19:19:00.001-06:00

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I will wake up tomorrow and it will still be before Christmas

2010-12-22T08:36:00.001-06:00

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FREE Holiday E-Cards!!! Copy, paste & send them to friends and enemies

2010-12-09T15:23:00.001-06:00

Proceeduring Dental Meditations For Nous Abatement

2010-12-01T17:21:00.001-06:00

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Watching Carefully (our children grow)

2010-11-28T17:35:00.001-06:00

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Evidencing Gusty Burst

2010-11-24T16:46:00.001-06:00

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p37.mov (4375 KB)

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Consuming Seen Scenes

2010-11-21T13:56:00.001-06:00

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Everything looks more better
After a haircut
Or through a new pair of glasses.

Saturday vs. Sunday:
The battle for first place.

See Nature More Local (2 miles from a downtown)

2010-11-19T11:28:00.001-06:00

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Carne Felize Redux

2010-11-17T23:19:00.004-06:00

This Blog is now parallel posted:
http://carnefelize.posterous.com/
& @
http://carnefelize.blogspot.com/
Your viewing experience might be slightly different on each site, so please try them both out.

Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man

2010-11-15T10:51:00.000-06:00

Miraculous?

2010-11-12T21:46:00.000-06:00

President Grover Cleveland Crepe

Hobbying in the Age of Ironic Exploration, our intrepid crippled bumbler rambles through the shiny detritus of season's future

2010-11-09T20:20:00.000-06:00

Happy Meat is a Stumbler

2010-11-06T13:04:00.000-05:00

Election Resolutely

2010-11-05T10:12:00.000-05:00

"To believe in democracy is to be a prisoner of hope."
--- Cornel West

We Tell Stories

2010-11-01T09:27:00.000-05:00

Halloween Treat

2010-10-31T14:17:00.000-05:00

Producing on Saturday Night

2010-10-30T23:16:00.000-05:00

Home-carni(val) is a place

2010-10-30T12:03:00.000-05:00

Distracted by the overwhelming Here
and Now,
My place is easily dreamed,
forged from meat moods:
to tower and wavering;
or, too tired is soo trite for excusing;
able is relative.

This, evidenced at least for disrupting
Absence, and void avoidance.

Political Agency is to Tea Party as Art is to ...

2010-10-21T17:22:00.000-05:00

Ethan Lipton & his orchestra | PRI's The World

2010-10-14T08:56:00.001-05:00

http://www.theworld.org/2010/10/12/ethan-lipton/

This here's a 7 minute interview with my brother, Ethan Lipton, on PRI's "The World" (broadcast on 10/10/2010). Listen, as the interviewer works to unpack a historical cabaret context in Ethan's songs, Ethan continually shifts the discussion to exploring the significant role my guidance and support have had on his life decisions, his creative process and the quirky intellectualism of his musical stylings.
Bravo Bro!

A Doctor's Office Is Waiting

2010-10-08T09:05:00.000-05:00

Hegemony In Action: Income Inequality Makes The Poor More Conservative

2010-10-07T20:30:00.000-05:00

		Income Inequality Makes The Poor More Conservative
	Income inequality makes the poor more conservative -- more likely to support smaller government and actually to perpetuate income inequality, two academics argue in a...

(grafted from The Huffington Post, 10/07/10)

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Spiritual Politics

2010-10-06T20:19:00.001-05:00

HVAC Air Filters:
   20 x 24 x 1
   18 x 24 x 1
   12 x 12 x 1

Dishwasher detergent (green bottle)

Scented dryer sheets

Bulk toilet paper

Compassion and/or empathy

Light bulbs (swirly Xpensive kind)

Gratitude n' willingness

Scrub sponges (non-scratch)

Gravy mix (3 pks)

Mellon balls

Perspectival about Cloudlessness (an "Of&From")

2010-10-05T08:48:00.000-05:00

Pew Study: Atheists, Agnostics Know The Most About Religion

2010-09-28T12:23:00.000-05:00

		Atheists, Agnostics Know The Most About Religion
	A new survey of Americans' knowledge of religion found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperformed Protestants and Roman Catholics in answering questions about major...

From The Huffington Post (09/28/2010)

Drafting Floral (addendum to "Synthetic")

2010-09-23T18:16:00.000-05:00

Synthetic

2010-09-21T12:24:00.003-05:00

is a rosebud
long stemmed and vanity thorned
in a blue or glass vase posing

rose moan, trembles loafing,
its brown lipped petals forage
nostalgically, regrets for forgetting

the scars of artifice
defiant with a bruised swagger

there, right there, is a rose waiting
for you to compose it beautiful

here, on the front porch or balcony,
is a plastic rose placed careful,
pretending roseness is a perspective
about and abounds your willingness

when does a rose exact clarity
when are its ideas accidental

self-pitying is self imposed
for a self doubting rose in repose

it is an embarrassing occupation
this correcting of your memories

Cicada thrum and the drooped frame of the cowboy's mustache

2010-09-19T00:29:00.000-05:00

To pass time, the cowboy’d climb
down from his reedy steed
To pick up empty soda cans and bottles
that verily litter the verdant plains,
collecting them patiently
and postured purposeful
in a feed sack he’d pinched
from a grocery loading dock
in one of the nameless and dying
small towns he’d proved through
on his westward prowl.

Each day alone
(when the sun quits
it's quitting time/
noon is a boon
to napping under cool)
Necessarily lonelier
(rise and shine
for the promise of progress/
the time of your life
is now or never for the better)
Sculptural solitude settles in.

Chain smoking romantically
the cowboy eyes yonder nearby...
confides in his diary ...
stirs beans with a wooden spoon ...
darns holes in his undergarments ...
whittles n whistles to bore his insomnia ...
boot scrapes with a cedar branch
and whispers into a meaty breeze,
“damn, I am nature – too messsy for words”

He squints, he sits.

The cowboy posed on a ridge between two great mesas: supposing the nearby distances with caustic ambivalence; inhales deep the prairie's dusky flatulent bloom; caroms between memories of loves that bound him fast and loves that led him to embrace lonesome. He reckons himself attuned to his fears, sincerely, reflective and accepting of all he's done and the roles he's played in outcomes prior to his current circumstance.

Inching towards, inching away ... baby stepping is a baby sometimes falling down ... mapping any ol next-frontier or out-of-box hankering. Certain like a man of steel weighed down by a coat with pockets full of broken magnets.

Recalls a saloon floor's peanut-shelled clutter and the echo of floozie slurs. Card players, tall hatted even inside, and a cane barrel appropriated for branding iron on haunch anticipations. Prideful sniffs to catch her scent leaving through the buck and sway of flapping doors.

Cowboy pause to bed alongside the razzle dazzle of cacti thumbs and respite from his dust tour of the great wide open. Giddy for the next day's roam and blanket skinned against the cold lonesome of occupancy under a billion stars, his eyes close meditating on the vast variety of choices that might birth his tomorrow.

Sometimes I Have Nothing to Say

2010-09-17T14:12:00.000-05:00

So I am quieter then
And now

The Machinery of Silence

2010-09-08T23:10:00.000-05:00

I was caught today at the train crossing on my way to pick up the kids. Me and everyone else: Engines idling, thunderclaps spitting the leftover dribble from yesterday's storm, the gentle rocking lull of engine rumble. All of us on our way someplace else. All of us stuck in-between "there" and "here" together, waiting. Despite the roar and clang of boxcars brimming with granite pounding along over steel rails, my anticipation of the youthful squeal and complaint of tired and possibly ornery children that was soon to fill the car left me marveling and soothed by my current circumstance -- awash in the machinery of silence and quelled by the symphony of machines silencing the moment ...

Movie Review: MACHETE!

2010-09-05T18:33:00.000-05:00

Robert Rodriguez new film, MACHETE, opened this week, and in talking about I don't want to give too much away or set the stage for too many expectation. Blood, guts, steel, subterfuge, redemption and heat. Women with smooth skin and men who hide behind their pores and scars. There, I've said enough -- probably too much.

With both kids ensconced at friend's homes for sleep overs, my wife and I headed out for some grownup fun. Thankfully, Rodriguez homage to 70's era socially critical exploitation films satisfies completely with daunting and delicious self-aware glee.

I'm usually not one to celebrate violence as a trope for social justice, but Rodriguez' use of satire as a political weapon is so carefully honed and cinematically honeyed that I was sucked in to even the film's most explicitly depicted death scenes. The good guys are really good, and the bad guys are really really bad in this bloody critique on American xenophobia. I even laughed out loud during several moments, and I never laugh out loud.

While the film won't garner any academy award nods for acting, the actors (big names and small) all make perfect sense in and of their roles. Further, it's always nice to see Austin, TX put to good use as the interesting and complicated small big-city that it is.

Fortunately for me, my wife also found the movie to be an awesome visual and visceral escape from our routine kid-centric forays in cinema. I highly recommend to those of you with a refined taste for satire, slaughter and revenge hewn justice.

Labor Day Weekend -- Yeah Workers!

2010-09-03T23:11:00.001-05:00

ACLU: Sign the Pledge: Stand for Religious Freedom

2010-09-03T08:19:00.001-05:00

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageNavigator/Religious_Freedom_Bloomberg?s_src=UNW100001ACT&s_subsrc=100902_religious_freedom_nonAT

A Song of Progress for You

2010-09-01T22:22:00.000-05:00

you, you are a million years old today,
you sapiens:
bi-pedal and frontal lobed;
big idea'd;
maker and remaker of things.

but dates don’t matter
for a tool putterer like you.

your relatives are real,
really busy with their own lives:
wearing history;
machining sincerity;
connecting improvements:
meticulous evaluators of the particular.

"happy birthday human"
the plains whisper,
"we admire your entrepreneurial spirit."

the seas and boneless sky sing,
"gosh, everything ours is yours,
we applaud your industriousness."

the trees nag, “I remember when
you leapt out my limbs,
that was no joke,
tree faller-outer."

the animals chorus,
"you began too thin spined to speak,
you knuckle dragged grunting,
just wrecks of hair knot and gnat picking in small groups,
loping and hoping to bend bronze
or shake an acre."

the continents moan shifty,
"you are a big skull now,
all pulp filled up in the brain case.
you talker and detail preener:
efficient at key and lost sock finding;
weary of loneliness;
nervous at parties."

the wind chimes in,
"you know the story:
you read a lot of books;
act clever and practice emoting;
like to categorize understanding
and reflect on self-doubt.

happy birthday,
good luck."

*