What shall remain

Our civilization will be known for our diaper landfills
and our nuclear waste sites
Other fragments of our culture might survive as well:
bits of Tupperware
mountains of lithium batteries
or maybe the traces of our highway system.

The foundation of a skyscraper might make
for a breakthrough excavation
but the islands of plastic bottles
floating in the oceans may prove puzzling.

Perhaps we will bury a cache of digital archives somewhere
to be deciphered one day
like the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian sarcophagus.

From the Design Observer review of A History of the World in 100 Objects by Neil McGregor. By Grace Andreacchi.

Edits

Christmas episode.
Billboard of underwear
model in opening. Black.
Cup of tea or coffee prepared.
Fart sound. Tea served.
Black. Coffee served.
Two doctors are shown arguing with some physical contact as well.
Black. “Thank God
my husband is not my doctor.”
Coffee drunk, and coffee machine
in the background. Black.
Scene in operating room. A baby is born. Non-graphic
and the baby is covered with a cloth.
“Thank God.” “If God”
“If God really
chooses to bless
me” Black.

Taken from KBYU Edits Sheet for a Christmas Episode of “Doc”, starring Billy Ray Cyrus on the 1st February 2012. Submitted by Ben.

We’ve got a different CD player now

We’ve got a different CD player now
and so tonight we are here
listening to the two versions
of this song, which is
about divorce.
If it weren’t so hateful, the song
might almost feel like an attempt
to climb out of the undertow
and get a breath of air:
it’s got recognizable situations,
phrases from real life,
the human touch.
But it sticks its head up
above the self-absorbed,
inward-gazing
morass
only to draw attention
to the immeasurable depth
of it all. This is
a mean thing to do.

An untitled blog post about Radiohead’s ‘Morning Bell’. By Haley Patail.

Shreddies

For Fred Goodwin

For a few years, Shreddies’ advert campaigns
featured a cartoon personification
of ‘Hunger’ as an antagonist.

He appeared as a blue monster with big teeth
whose goal it was to taunt hungry individuals
by drumming on their stomachs
with a pair of silver spoons.

Hunger would then be dispatched
when the victim consumed
a bowl of shreddies,
sealing hunger inside a shreddie cage.

Despite his troublesome persona,
hunger was frequently used as a mascot
for the cereal during this period.

From the Wikipedia entry on Shreddies, 1 February 2012. By Nick Asbury.

Open Grave in a Public Place

Grip the fork in your right hand
with as much strength as possible.

With your left hand use sharp
downward blows in a circular motion.

If you are uncertain,
lift up the palm of your hand
as shown in the diagram

WARNING
Quick questions
Will guarantee
A serious bodily injury

Fitting instructions for a quick release Shimano bicycle wheel. By Winston Plowes.

On the surface

Greed probably undid her in the end.
She was said to have taken a bait of uncooked tiger nuts,
which swelled inside her until she floated upwards.
Telltale empty paper bags were found on the bank of the river.
Or she may have been pregnant,

with 300,000 eggs causing complications, or stressed
after so much catching and releasing,
those constant brushes with extinction.

On the line between life and death, at Kingfisher Lake,
she breathed the fatal air and did not sink again.
And there she lay,
like Wisdom drawn up from the deep:
as golden, and as quiet.

From the obituary of Benson, England’s best loved fish. By Mat Riches.

Post-Painterly Abstraction

for Helen Frankenthaler

She departed from the romantic search
for the sublime to pursue her own path,
pouring turpentine-thinned paint
in watery washes onto raw canvas
so that it soaked into the fabric weave
becoming one with it.

Her method emphasized flat surface
over illusory depth and the nature of paint,
releasing color from the gestural approach
and romantic rhetoric of Abstract Expressionism,
landscapes looking to many like a large paint rag
casually accidental and incomplete.

From the NYT biography of Helen Frankenthaler. By Jenni B. Baker.

Petrifaction

This happens to bone marrow
in the hollow
bird-y
dinosaur bones,
it’s very pretty.
it’ll seem like a solid
black fossil but
if you accidentally
break
it
you see it looks
like it’s filled with crystals

From a comment on a blog post about petrification, written 21 December 2011. By Haley Patail.

You can say I am a hater

You can say I am a hater
but I would argue I’m a lover
I’m a lover of traditional families
and of the right of children
to have a father and a mother

I believe the earth gets warmer
and I also believe the earth gets cooler

is anyone saying same-sex couples
can’t love each other? I love
my children, I love my friends, my brother
heck, I even love my mother
-in-law

Quotes as they appear in Rick Santorum Quotes As New Yorker Cartoons posted by Jack Shepherd.