Song for Annie

Hey I just came to say
I like the way you move clay
Shorty don't say nay
I got the rhymes that pay

so don't look at that paper
you already know the answer
work that calf anterior
moves be so superior

Little man
has a plan
on the stand
wave a hand
he's so grand
understand

Breakfast is for morning
Classmates be boring
My flow is soaring
we should hit the road touring

Don't get me as stalking
girl we just talking
we could be walking
to Maiden I'm rocking


I know you like my flow
Catch you laughing like whoa
But you didn't know
I got sick rhymes like Poe
And I ain't just so so
so if you wanna go
in the Acco'
To the grocery sto'
Need that avocado
get the quacamo'
Some chips and mo'
eat it nice and slow
no one's gotta know
We eatin that food together.
-Ill Lupo

This is a song about grammar. And boning.

Can't rhyme with <3
Yo It's not words to me
Could talk about our start
You fillin my mind with art
Or rhyme it with glee
emotions growing like a tree

So use your words
entire words
the kinds you find in a book
the way Carole King writes a hook
So use your words
entire words
So Grab that dictionary
get you in my lictionary

Shorty Baby Girl #1

Yo shorty baby girl at the table
making me write rhymes like some fables
holla at ya coming out the movie
Check out the museums we hit the Louvie

Yeah I'm layin sweet rhymes on your facebook page
making sweet music like thugged out John Cage
beats so sweet they could be the Whole Foods rage
conjuring hits like a James Brown Warcraft mage


This aint' the time for nice and slow.
Can't you feel my flow? Make that dough?
Take you to the show and let you know
my star is so bright it's about to blow.
My funds like plants they always grow.
So many seeds I sew holla like whoa.
Playin tic tac toe with a dinosau'
let him win though
I need those limbs, yo
So I can get you on the dance flo'
See my moves and you gonna need mo
Flailing so tight when we get low
I'm friend not foe
Wind me up and let me go
Don't let them call you a ho
You so classy.
-Ill Lupo

Peter's spacious Boylstone Ave Pad. Steven is on the couch. Some other guy just walked in with a plan for the sofa but is putting a blanket on the floor. Laments not having made a stronger move on some "sweet chicks in the elevator" in light of sleeping arrangement. Steve is a fucker, especially because he has an apartment just two blocks away.

An idea from a lucid dream:

A man works hard to find a place of extreme imagination, creativity and clarity. Meditation and Zen. Compelling, moving ideas. Finds success. Romance. Suffering. Possible redemption. Lapse of values. Turn to psychotropic drugs or whatever. Success, repeat. Something like that. It would be one of those motion comics on iTunes. After reviewing my idea, I thing the story is a little weak, almost seems a bizarre allegory of so much baseball hullabaloo. The art would have to be intensely quirky, innovative, intelligent and probably European.

What I do find interesting is some idea of the distinction between the ideas by someone using some kind of mind-altering substance and someone who wasn't. The difference in the innovation, creativity. The difference in clarity and insight. Certainly there are many successful examples of both. One would guess that what the altered version lacked in clarity and strict continuity it often made up for imagination. But perhaps not in depth of meaning, richness of details or well-thought plot development.

Or whatever. Your results may vary. Interesting to ponder, though clear scientific data might be hard-pressed to demonstrate it. Does my above list shed some light on the organization of the qualities of art I value?

A web of secrets in trust to another in trust. A web of close, committed relationships make it work. Possibly inescapable. How to destroy web of broken promises is A Brave New World. Image of blue, viscous strand, connecting a 3 d hexagonal shape. Pulsing red with secrets.

Sent from my Guy SmileyPhone

Social science

Jon Stewart, lampooning Jonathan Krohn just Monday night:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=219516

(I hope that link works.)

So Jonathan Krohn is some kid speaking at CPAC. I'd never heard of him, so I looked him up on that bastion of democratic knowledge, Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Krohn

I was surprised to see that about 5% of his entry is now about being lampooned on the Daily Show. Does that mean if I can get Jon Stewart to make fun of me, and do 19 other things, I can be on wikipedia?

It's not as easy as it sounds.

Twitter

Granted, I'm just getting my feet wet with Twitter. Two days of limited use isn't much. I've talked to people about it too. So far, I still don't really get the point.

I would say that "Highway Companion" by Tom Petty is a far more enjoyable experience than Twitter. Perhaps not his best work, but perfect for what it's title claims it to be. (That's my twitterific review of the album, just so you don't think I'm trying to make some snarky double-burn on Twitter and Tom Petty.)

So to hear people talk about Twitter like it craps Dilithium Crystals confounds me. I'm following eight people, including Shaq, MC Hammer, Britney and Wil Wheaton. Wil posts the most, second seems to be Hammer. Shaq is clearly to busy for grammar.

What's the point of just writing one sentence about a book you just read? I know I have a habit of writing about books I've just read on this blog, but I like to think I do some measure of analysis, however one-sided, ill-founded, unrefined and unclear.

Writing about it in Twitter is going to do what? Start some sort of one-sentence-at-a-time discussion? Tell the world you can read a book? (See, no one reads this blog, so I know I'm not bragging. If I were going to brag, I would write about how awesome I am at Marvel Alliance. Kraken probably can't look at himself in the mirror after what happened in Philly.)

Well feel free to discuss, please limit your response to 11 characters.

And I am putting that Tom Petty review on Twitter, maybe I'll just do that with my account. Reviews of old albums in 155 characters or whatever.

Intelligence

In the shower today, I was thinking about intelligence, and education. I do this often, it's probably a product of being smart enough to see a little more of the great big world of knowledge beyond my cerebral grasp. They say the more you know, the more you know you what you don't know. They also say you don't know what you don't know. Harumph.

Anyway, I'm not smart enough. That is, my education doesn't feel nearly complete, and I've been reading more than ever before. Intelligence and education are two different things, but they clearly relate. A person who continues to expand their education will generally be smarter in every practical sense.

So I was thinking about high school, that bastion of tangible educational accomplishment. My education progressed so much. I think I was too satisfied. I was too close-minded in college. I could have learned so much more. I think I'm back on track now. I feel young at mind.

The big picture I'm driving at here is that the same intelligence of seventeen, without any augmentation, doesn't look so smart at 26. Nine years of ignorance. I think it would be an easy trap to fall into.

Pre-conceived notions are a fog on the senses.

Obama recap, not as cynical as it may appear.

One of the things that bothered me before, during and after Barack Obama's win in November was the speculation on what it meant.

Even during the inauguration, I couldn't help but feel skeptical about it all. The history of slavery in the U.S. is a reprehensible mar on this country. Racism lingers on in many forms. Does one man's amazing ascent to the White House change it that significantly?

I guess I had hoped, in the primaries, that it wouldn't matter that his father was born in Africa. Subconsciously, I guess I wanted the issue of race to be so dead it didn't matter in a negative or positive way.

Obviously I was wrong.

So now the inauguration has come and gone, and after enduring countless people tell me how the world was changing leading up to and immediately after Obama's inauguration, I feel it.

Maybe it didn't take as long for it to set in with some people as it did with me, but now I am looking at the world in a new way. Of course, the media has already moved on with other news.

Philadelphia

I'm returning from Philadelphia now, in the car with Joey Baseball, Gannon and 'Oh Sweet Jesus' Richards. Pet Shop Boys on satellite radio, arguments on the merits of a 'geepiss.' (GPS)

Of course we met up with Stu Peloquin, he was the impetus for the trip. Trevor beingnin the city for six weeks of practical education made the decision even easier. Aidan came down on the train last night but left early this morning. We've been here since midday Monday.

We didn't take in too much of the local history, but plenty local color. Cheesesteaks every day ( Geno's the unanimous favorite), a Celtics/Sixers game won by the green team on a Ray Allen three with half a second left. Several pubs with great food and cheap beer, the kinds of places I would frequent If they were in Providence.

We took pictures with the statue of Rocky and traced his footsteps up to the Philadelphia Art Museum. We went inside, too. Nice collection. The Mutter Museum featured medical oddities. It was extremely interesting, but I'm not the medical student the museum claims to cater to, just a gawker, as I suspect 98% of it's clientele are. Nonetheless, there's nothing like a skeleton of a man whose ligaments turned to bone to reinforce the notion in my head of the careful balance of life.

I have been to Philadelphia before, but this was the first time I felt I experienced it. I certainly enjoyed my stay, despite the four inches of snow, which is apparently abnormal.

A Clockwork Orange

I read Anthony Burgess' venerable novel yesterday. The rest of this post is about that, and probably useless unless you also happened to spend your evening with the book.

I was struck by the way the language of the nadsat, the teens. It's mostly based on Russian, and by the end of the book, after a word or two each sentence, I was drawn in and reading it easily. A strong effect in a book about brainwashing.

The rest of this entry may spoil the book if you haven't read it, or movie, or whatever.

After living a life of crime, Alex is forced, through strange procedures to his psyche, to obey the law. So his morals haven't changed. His free will has just been taken. A pragmatic result, I suppose. My curiousity lies with his final transformation (in the chapter apparently not originally released in the U.S.) where he seems to bore of crime of his own volition.

Is this when Alex will finally approach a life of moderation, after a lifetime of seemingly pure evil, and then (though forced) pure good? I might be overstating it. Are we to believe that a psychopathic youth can suddenly tire of a life of violence? Not that any of that is stated, or even implied.

I know some people who were fairly awful to be around growing up that have shed ignorance, angst or insecurity to become amazing people. Hope!

I Way

Driving home from Pawtucket last night, HJY was playing Stairway to Heaven.

I realize that this song's reputation has diminished some, some say it's the most requested song ever, which can only be negative in some minds. Anyway, we've all heard this song many many times. I don't hear it much these days though, as we all seem to have more control over the music we listen to. This entire aside is not meant for the sake of exalting Zeppelins tune, but rather to explain that the song was on, I hadn't heard it in many months, I was enjoying and possibly hearing new things as is often the case in such situations.

So I-Way construction, or rather demolition, was underway on the Pine Street Bridge. Just a spring clean. Bright orange sparks cascaded down from a workman's tool to the closed lanes below. I was struck.

I contemplated getting off the highway and watching. I thought maybe I could stare at it until some new meaning in my life percolated to my mind. I could then write somethin very insightful in this very blog.

But I was already over the river at that point, as we wind on down the road. So I found no insight, my life didn't seem any more orderly and this entry has little purpose.

I saw a Dodge truck with a sticker portraying Calvin peeing on the Volkswagen logo, whatever that means.

Books and travel

I haven't slept well tonight. Now it's 615, most people are awake now anyway but for a bum liked it's early. I've finished "The Pillars of the Earth," a historical fiction. It was odd to find myself rooting for the Catholic Church, both figuratively and literally. Not that I was literally rooting, but that a physical cathedral is the framework of the story. My Uncle Bill recommended it to me, and I was a little surprised to see it was on Opran's book club. I won't make fun of that anymore because this novel was masterful.

Coincidentally, I'm also reading a historic account of the second battle at Bull Run lent to me by my other Uncle Bill. Inthink it might mean more to someone who has a little more knowledge about the American Civil War. Perhaps I'll seek out an overview at the Library. It has been some years since American history on high school.

I've given up on Kafka. That's not entirely true, I've read about 300 pages and almost all of his longer stories. I don't think I'll get through the anthology, but more significantly I just don't feel I understood it all as much as I could have. I'm not a dim-witted guy but I need more context.

It's that time of year when I yearn to get in my car and drive south on 95 until it's warm enough for a T-shirt and shorts. This wild be the year to do it, I've crafted an existance that enables more mobility than most. If only I knew where the key to drop the back seats down in the Honda.