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Below are all the links to the various texts that were written by poets and writers giving close(ish) readings of Kristen Stewart’s poem published last month in Marie Claire. If there are others out there, let me know!

Kismetly I Rear and Wonder
Kazim Ali
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2014/02/kismetly-i-rear-and-wonder/ 

UCLA Prof Blames “Beatniks” for Kristen Stewart’s Poetry
Stephanie Nikolopoulos
http://stephanienikolopoulos.com/2014/02/12/ucla-prof-blames-beatniks-for-kristen-stewarts-poetry/

“My Heart is a Wiffle Ball/Freedom Pole” (annotations)
RapGenius
http://poetry.rapgenius.com/Kristen-stewart-my-heart-is-a-wiffle-ball-freedom-pole-annotated#note-2781083

25 Points: Kristen Stewart’s “My Heart Is A Wiffle Ball/Freedom Pole”
JD Scott
http://htmlgiant.com/reviews/25-points-kristen-stewarts-my-heart-is-a-wiffle-ballfreedom-pole/

Kristen Stewart’s heart is a wiffle ball/freedom pole, according to ’embarrassing’ poem she wrote
Hilary Busis
http://popwatch.ew.com/2014/02/10/kristen-stewart-poem/

Kristen Stewart, Secret Poet, Shares Her Art With ‘Marie Claire’
Tess Lynch
http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/kristen-stewart-secret-poet-shares-her-art-with-marie-claire/

The The Kristen Stewart Debates: Poetry, Taste and Mass Culture!
Johannes Göransson
http://www.montevidayo.com/the-the-kristen-stewart-debates-poetry-taste-and-mass-culture/

Open Letter to Kristen Stewart
Brian Kim Stefans
http://www.arras.net/fscIII/?p=2258

Almost all of this music is still unavailable on services like Spotify and Pandora, and much of it is simply not available commercially at all. But a few of the bands (like Marina Swingers and the Deadbeats) have reformed or created websites where their music can be purchased. My next post will be a series of links to these sites. In the meantime, enjoy!
Su Tissue, Suburban Lawns (Photo: Bruce Kalberg)
1 Wild Kingdom — Roma / Destiny (1981) 5:51
2 Abecedarians — Benway’s Carnival (1985) 5:09
3 Suburban Lawns — Janitor (1981) 2:31
4 Zolar X — Science (1982) 1:25
5 B People — Can Can’t (1981) 2:27
6 Life After Death — In Living Color (1985) 1:54
7 Christian Death — When I Was Bed (1985) 7:57
8 Beat-E-O’s — China Sleeping (1981) 2:12
9 Wet Picnic — He Believes (1982) 5:33
10 Dogma Probe — Thirteen (1982) 4:30
11 Iron Curtain / Steven Fields — Legalize Heroin (1988) 5:07
12 Null And Void — The Motorcycle Song (1982) 2:27
13 Savage Republic — Next To Nothing (1982) 3:24
14 Human Hands — Blue Eel (1981) 2:51
15 Gleaming Spires — While We Can (1982) 4:19
16 Nu Beams — One Step For What? (1981) 3:09
17 Abecedarians — I Glide (1986) 7:31
18 Standard Of Living — So Hard (1982) 1:53
19 Rich and Famous — Neutron Star (1978) 4:05
20 Monitor — BEAK (1979) 1:50
21 Fibonaccis — Some Men (1987) 2:42
22 Freshly Wrapped Candies — Judas (1987) 3:41
23 Green on Red — Two Bibles (1981) 3:29
24 League of Nations — Thin Ice (1984) 3:42
25 Atila — Mr. Kritik (1981) 1:12
26 Outer Circle — Another Moon (1982) 3:25
27 Rand Kennedy — Enorma Jones (1983) 1:03
28 Animal Dance — Under Pulse (1984) 3:21
29 Steaming Coils — Singing Notice (1991) 3:12
30 Geza X And The Mommymen — The Paranoids Are Coming (1982) 3:11
31 Null And Void — A Party Filled With Thieves (1982) 3:33
32 Rikk Agnew — 10 (1982) 2:58
33 Trotsky Icepick — Mar Vista Bus Stop (1988) 3:03
34 IQ Zero — Zero Gravity (1981) 3:09
35 Perfect Imperfect Circular — From The Ocean Above (1986) 4:09
36 The Plugz — Touch For Cash (1981) 2:40
37 The Screamers — 122 Hours of Fear (1978) 3:32
38 Deadbeats — Brainless (1979) 2:31
39 Fourwaycross — Apologize (1985) 4:18
40 Cindy Lee Berryhill — Headin’ For The Border Line (1987) 3:56
41 The Weirdos — Helium Bar (1980) 3:22
42 Jobriath — Heartbeat (1974) 2:45
43 Kommunity FK — Incompatible Disposition (1983) 2:48
44 Drowning Pool — Festival of Healing (1987) 2:56
45 Peter Ivers — Sweet Enemy (1974) 2:46
46 17 Pygmies — Suit Of Nails (1985) 3:35
Jack Brewer and Joe Baiza, Saccharine Trust (Photo: Victor Sedillo)

 

 

Disk 3

47 Phranc — One O’ The Girls (1985) 4:58
48 The Cramps — Green Fuz (1981) 2:08
49 Pop Art — Never No (1987) 2:31
50 Moebius — Video Soldier in a Radio War (1982) 4:26
51 Party Boys — I Love You (1986) 3:22
52 Johanna Went — Slave Beyond The Grave (1981) 2:50
53 Marina Swingers — Little Swine (1979) 2:57
54 Eddie & The Subtitles — Magic (1981) 3:53
56 Autumnfair — Arterial (1986) 3:09
57 The Untouchables — Lovers Again (1985) 3:27
58 Vidiots — Laurie’s Lament (1981) 1:41
59 Slow Children — Spring in Fialta (1981) 3:24
60 The Salvation Army — Happen Happened (1981) 3:02
61 The Nerves — Hanging On The Telephone (1976) 2:05
62 What Is This — Days Of Reflection (1984) 3:42
63 The Dickies — Attack of the Mole Men (1979) 3:41
64 Zoogz Rift — The Great Apes Ate Grapes (1979) 2:34
65 Marnie Sounds — Coquette, Circus Girl (1991) 5:48
66 The Quick — My Purgatory Years (1976) 5:17
67 Le Forte Four — The Lowest Form Of Music (1980) 3:09
68 X — Adult Books (1981) 3:19
69 The Brainiacs — Stunned (1979) 2:33
70 Boyd Rice — Untitled (1977) 1:40
71 Opal — Happy Nightmare Baby (1987) 2:57
72 Pat Smear — Golden Boys (1987) 3:20
73 Redd Kross — Love Is You (1987) 2:29
74 Descendents — Impressions (1987) 3:08
75 Twisted Roots — The Yellow One (1981) 3:03
76 Nip Drivers — Cindy (1984) 1:34
77 Jimmy Smack — Untitled (1982) 1:27
78 Vivabeat — Man From China (1979) 5:23
79 Cindy & the Gidget Haters — Pogoin’s For Me (1980) 2:18
80 T.S.O.L. — Soft Focus (1982) 3:33
81 Christian Lunch — Strangling Of a Small Dog (1981) 1:43
82 Black Randy and the Metrosquad — I Slept in an Arcade (1980) 2:30
83 The Skoings — Do The Orbit (1977) 3:23
84 20/20 — Yellow Pills (1979) 4:17
85 Visiting Kids — Trilobytes (1989) 3:21
86 Fender Buddies — Dancing a Frenzy (1980) 1:48
87 Red Hot Chili Peppers — Why Don’t You Love Me (1984) 3:23
88 Germs — No God (1993) 1:54
89 The Motels — Art Fails (1981) 2:58
90 The Bangles — Going Down to Liverpool (1984) 3:43
91 The Toons — Video Games (1982) 2:46
92 5uu’s — The Birth Of Compromisation (1985) 3:02
93 Minutemen — The Anchor (1983) 2:34
94 A Produce — Pulse (1988) 4:00
95 Urinals — Surfin’ With The Shah (1979) 2:42

Jimmy Smack (Photographer Unknown)
96 Che Blammo — Stupid for Your Love (1981) 3:07
97 Hundredth Monkey — Mute Lament (1986) 4:50
98 Bad Religion — Chasing the Wild Goose (1983) 2:50
99 100 Flowers — All Sexed Up (1983) 2:43
100 God And The State — My Name Is Mud (1985) 2:42
101 Hilary — Goose Step, Two Step (1983) 3:37
102 The Romans — Big Neck (1983) 1:46
103 Nick Paine — Solid State (1985) 3:23
104 Afterimage — Strange Confession (1984) 2:47
105 Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo — Forbidden Zone (1980) 2:52
106 The Alley Cats — King Of The Street Fights (1981) 3:43
107 Thelonious Monster — I Live In A Nice House (1992) 3:47
108 fIREHOSE — Brave Captain (1986) 3:15
109 Magnolia Thunderpussy — Circle (1985) 4:33
110 Concrete Blonde — Tomorrow, Wendy (1990) 5:09
111 The Rub — Death of Pop (1987) 2:46
112 Gone Fishin’ — Too Many Eyes (1986) 3:11
113 The Wake — Forever’s Fair (1985) 3:38
114 Ethyl Meatplow — Silly Dawg (1990) 3:37
115 Bone Cabal — I O Betulah (1983) 4:34
116 Dos — Taking Away The Fire (1986) 4:15
117 Food And Shelter — Nun With A Gun (1984) 3:18

 

118 The Kipper Kids — Sheik of Araby (1983) 4:28
119 Flesh Eaters — See You In The Boneyard (1981) 3:30
120 Rain Parade — This Can’t Be Today (1983) 4:35
121 Alfalfa — Jewels (1985) 3:09
122 Mark Lane — Pushing and Pulling (1981) 3:15
123 Holly Beth Vincent — Honalu (1982) 3:49
124 Earle Mankey — Mau Mau (1980) 3:18
125 Q — Sushi (1982) 2:02
126 Tyrants in Therapy — In the Shadow of Hitler (1984) 2:31
127 Saccharine Trust — Drugstore Logic (1986) 2:28
128 B People — Give Up (1980) 2:02
129 White Glove Test — Peter (1986) 3:04
130 All — Alfredo’s (1988) 3:52
131 Mumbles — Diamond (1990) 4:09
132 Red Temple Spirits — Soft Machine (1989) 4:02
133 Crimony — Vampire Party (1988) 2:37
134 Plebs — Redhead (1982) 1:44
135 Failsafe — 1943 (In Germany) (1984) 3:33
136 Susan Rhee and the Orientals — There’s Something In The Air (1983) 4:32
137 Zimbo Chimps — Inca Vacation (1985) 5:21
138 Swamp Zombies — We Just Don’t Belong (1989) 4:14
139 The Unknowns — The Streets (1982) 2:42
The Plugz (Photographer Unknown)
140 Francis X and the Bushmen — Grey Talk (1987) 4:15
141 Peace Corpse — Mental Malady (1986) 3:12
142 Pilgrim State — Deathwish (1983) 3:24
143 Ten Foot Faces — Get Out of That Tree (1986) 2:23
144 Gary Valentine — The Ballad Of Nathaniel West (1979) 4:01
145 Gothic Hut — Undermatter (1988) 5:37
146 Christian Lunch — This Media Sucks! (1990) 4:30
147 Blackbird — More (1987) 5:09
148 Frank Zappa — Duke of Prunes (1979) 4:20
149 Wall Of Voodoo — Longarm (1980) 3:46
150 Kommunity FK — No Fear (1983) 5:13
151 Departmentstore Santas — Kaleidoscope (1984) 2:49
152 3D Picnic — Murdermaid (1991) 3:03
153 Friends of Ghosts — Juju Digby Juju (1986) 3:57
154 Iron Curtain — The Burning (1987) 5:01
155 The Last — You (1989) 4:47
156 The Bullets — That Certain Glow (1987) 3:48
157 This Ascension — Alex Kidd (1989) 3:55
158 The Rub — Who Killed Bob Crane? (1987) 3:35
159 Extremes — Animals Part III 1 (1979) 3:32
160 Alisa — I Want To Be a Prostitute (1982) 2:38
161 Marty Gras and the Flamingos — New Clothes Part 1 (1981) 3:21
162 Death Ride 69 — Elvis Christ (1988) 4:49
163 The Middle Class — A Blueprint for Joy (1980) 2:27
164 Sparks — Angst In My Pants (1982) 3:28
165 Flash Bouyancy — Do The Ray (1980) 2:42
166 Suburban Lawns — Hug You (1983) 4:49
167 The Jetzons — 4/3/2001 (1982) 4:18
168 Fishbone — Slick Nick, You Devil You (1987) 4:44
169 D.O.M.E.S. — It’s Too Bad, Mother Dear (1985) 3:44
170 Kim Fowley — 1980 – Run For Your Life (1979) 3:12
171 Caterwaul — Not Today (1988) 4:01
172 Deception Bay — All My Future (1991) 4:50
173 Cathedral of Tears — She Won’t Talk (1983) 3:58
174 Paul Collins’ Beat — You and I (1979) 2:49
175 T.S.O.L. — Silent Scream (1981) 2:46
176 Mnemonic Devices — Marriage Of Convenience (1982) 3:42
177 Artistic Decline — Andy Warhol (1983) 1:43
178 Gary Panter & Jay Cotton — Artist’s Hymn (1989) 2:11
179 Mark Lane — Love Is So Aggravating (1981) 2:34
180 The Egyptian Lover — I Cry (Night After Night) (1984) 5:04
The Screamers (Photographer Unknown)
181 Motor Totemist Guild — Get Angry (1984) 2:43
182 Black Flag — Its All Up To You (1985) 5:20
183 Claude Coma And The I.V’s — Minimum Wage (1982) 2:41
184 Bulimia Banquet — Satan’s Doorstep (1986) 2:24
185 Battery Farley — Dress For Obscurity (1985) 3:39
186 Corpus Delicti — No Conflict (1984) 2:56
187 Shadow Minstrels — Popular Song Of The Hour (1983) 4:23
188 Dennis Cooper — Seven Poets Chosen By John Ashbery (1983) 2:18
189 L7 — Snake Handler (1988) 2:29
190 Los Illegals — Guinea Pigs (1983) 4:45
191 Danny & the Doorknobs — In Exile (1985) 2:40
192 Christian Death — Romeo’s Distress (1982) 3:15
193 Red Wedding — Drums (1982) 3:47
194 Subjects — Augie (1982) 2:36
195 Steaming Coils — Diamond Pillow (1987) 3:43
196 Agent Orange — Blood Stains (1980) 1:46
197 The Squad — Scene Of The Crime (1981) 2:36
198 Dark Arts — Rivers (1986) 4:59
199 The Death Folk — Hobos (1989) 3:36
200 Doubting Thomas — Helen Keller (1987) 2:50
201 L.A. Burgers — Color Eyes (1980) 3:03
202 45 Grave — Riboflavin-Flavored, Non-Carbonated, Polyunsaturated Blood (1980) 2:38
203 White Glove Test — Dream #10 (1986) 3:41

204 Great City — Night Flight to Tangiers (1986) 5:05205 The Toasters — Teenage Tease (1980) 3:59

206 Irritators — Whack the Dolphin (1981) 4:20
207 The Middle Class — Out Of Vogue (1978) 1:07
208 Arrow Book Club — Get Down Part 4 (1980) 1:33
209 Oingo Boingo — Only A Lad (1979) 4:16
210 The Unknowns — Not My Memory (1981) 2:21
211 Paul Roessler — Dull Dreary World (1983) 3:29
212 Infantry — The Call (1987) 3:50
213 Zoogz Rift — The Breather (1986) 4:22
214 Legal Weapon — Too High (1985) 4:14
215 Savage Republic — Mobilization (1982) 3:21
216 Peer Group — I Saw That Movie (1981) 1:07
217 Choir Invisible — Hands of Another (1981) 3:49
218 Lotus Lame And The Lame Flames — Bad Sex (1983) 3:40
219 The Go-Go’s — Lust To Love (1981) 3:28
220 Ex-Voto — The Devil’s Work (1990) 4:11
221 John Trubee — Blind Man’s Penis (1976) 1:41
222 The Brat — The Wolf (1980) 3:30
223 Pat Smear — Sahara Hotel (1987) 5:24

224 Peter Ivers and David Lynch — In Heaven (1977) 1:46225 Nip Drivers — You Need Us (2000) 1:10

226 X — I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts (1983) 4:15

Just watched a ton of these on YouTube. These are some of the classics. Couldn’t embed It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, Psycho, and Casino (which I can’t find online but part of which is in the short doc below), but those are all great.

Walk on the Wild Side is recommended for cat lovers. Seconds is probably my favorite, but I can’t imagine half the audience not walking out of the theater during the titles.

Vertigo is somewhere between Duchamp’s Anemic Cinema and the time warp sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Are those computer generated swirlies? I wonder if he was hanging out with John Whitney?

The Man With the Golden Arm (1955)

Vertigo (1958)

North by Northwest (1959)

West Side Story (1961)

Walk on the Wild Side (1962)

Seconds (1966)

Cape Fear (1991)

Saul Bass: Title Champ (short documentary)

Dear Melts, Digital Humanists, and others,

So, in preparation for my presentation on Friday — for which I had planned on assembling an annotated bibliography of books that fell within my understanding of the field of “digital humanities” (and/or “digital literature”), I decided to assemble the books as Amazon “lists” via the site’s “listmania” feature — seductive capitalist trap that it is! I got a little manic.

What appears below are five lists of 40 books each (that’s the max per list) that more or less circumscribe, for the moment, my understanding of the field of new media studies as it relates to literature. The titles of each of the lists are provisional — certainly any number of the books could end up on another of the lists — but in general I think it gives a pretty good idea of how I approach things, and I hope, if you have several hundred dollars to spare, that you decide to pick a few of these up. I’m going to petition the library to purchase copies of these if they don’t have them already.

If you have additional books to recommend to me for a more formal list for English graduate students, then send them my way! Most likely they won’t end up on the Amazon lists unless I can swap them out easily, given the limitations, but I’d like to have some lists on hand for future part 1s.

The good news is that I won’t blab on for hours on Friday about 100 books from my library, but I will describe my reasoning behind each of these lists and point out a few of the more unusual inclusions. It’s a very idiosyncratic assemblage (Lipstick Traces anyone?).

Best,
Brian

PS. BTW, several of the more adventurous publishers are offering their books online as downloadable PDFs. I’ve found a few of the titles below (such as Harman’s book on Latour, Prince of Networks, and Marcus Boon’s book In Praise of Copying), for free. This is kind of the companion post to my earlier Freeware Guide, Introduction to Electronic Literature.

1. Foundations and Surveys

2. Graphic Design and Visuality

3. Ludology and Narrative Theory

4. Poetry and Poetics

5. Politics and Philosophy

I grabbed this list of punk and post-punk bands from the website (the name of which I can’t remember… seem to have lost the link), dropped it into an Excel spreadsheet, did a lot of search and replace, and voila!

Part of my on-going side project to create an anthology of obscure, and not so obscure, punk, post-punk and early hip hop singles by L.A. musicians. A Google search turned up yet another amazing photo of Su Tissue of Suburban Lawns.

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Just discovered this amazing review on Sustainable Aircraft of my polemic, Bank of America Online Banking: A Critical Assessment. It manages to say some poignant, provocative things about the state of “avant-garde” literature in the US and Canada.

I did actually put it back up on Lulu (free download), but took down the WordPress site since it seemed redundant. Bank of America changed their fee policies soon after I posted this, but certainly not because of me. I’m pretty sure that my assessment of their website still stands, though, but I’ve moved my account to Wells Fargo, which has a much more helpful, unadorned site.

Thanks, Marie, this very thoughtful and, in many ways, encouraging.

Bank of America Online Banking: A Critical Evaluation
Brian Kim Stefans
Citoyen Press: Los Angeles, 2010
Review by Marie Buck

Last January, the poet Brian Kim Stefans released a pamphlet entitled “Bank of America Online Banking: A Critical Evaluation” as a series of posts on his blog Free Space Comix, on a WordPress site, and as a downloadable file or purchaseable print copy on Lulu. (The WordPress site and Lulu page seem to have been removed, but the pamphlet is currently available as blog posts here. As Stefans writes in the press release, the pamphlet “argues that the great portion of the bank’s revenue accrued through overdraft fees is often the result of the deceptive and confusing nature of the online banking site.” Over the course of an introduction and ten brief chapters, Stefans demonstrates that several specific aspects of the website—which Stefans notes is in fact a software program which ought to be compared to other handier and better-designed software programs—are arranged to give misleading information, to advertise the ease of the site to customers (who are, in fact, already using the site) rather than warn them of potential hazards, and to obfuscate information that might help customers avoid overdraft fees. Stefans also crunches some numbers and suggests that the average person making less than $100,000 a year incurs $145 in overdraft fees each year.

Over the course of the pamphlet, Stefans implies that in continually insisting upon its own ease, the Bank of America website not only likely garners millions in overdraft fees, but also suppresses customer conversation and outrage about the fees. The site—containing such cutsey and condescending phrases as “[w]e’re all guilty of overspending from time to time, even though we know we shouldn’t”—is designed to make customers feel guilt, even shame, about overdrafts incurred when the site itself actively obscures information that anyone with a small balance needs in order to ensure s/he does not overdraft. The only ways to have all the information you need to make sure you don’t overdraft are to keep an old-school checkbook (when one function of the site seems to be precisely to replace such a checkbook) or to make sure you never let your balance get low—basically, to have a decent chunk of money in there at all times, to compensate for holds on your account and the like. In other words, to be wealthier.

Clear and well-researched, the pamphlet is recommendable for the information it provides about online banking and about the rhetoric of software and web design. However, it is also recommendable to read the pamphlet as an intervention into the contemporary poetry community of which Stefans is a part. The pamphlet begins with a Frank O’Hara quotation—“I go on to the bank / and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) / doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life…,” suggesting that Stefans might have poets in mind. And given the pamphlet’s avenues of distribution, it’s safe to assume many of the people who have read it are poets. (I, for one, started reading it thinking I was beginning some sort of conceptual poem.)

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Here is a short list of books available for free download online that I’ve discovered over the past month (along with a few oldies). Just type in “pdf” after a book you are looking for and there are fair, if not great, chances you’ll find it. Not that I’m trying to kill the publishing industry… I’m just finding it quite easy to read and annotate chunky texts like this on my tablet (my penmanship sucks).

There are several titles at re.press that are available for free download, including a volume of Hegel’s introductions. I’d be interested in compiling a list of publishers that make most or all of their material available online. Please let me know!

This is something I posted on netpoetic recently. Thought I’d put it here as well.

I’ve actually been scanning the internet, trying to find new (and old, forgotten) projects to include in a class I’m calling “Poetry in the Age of New Media.” I wish I had used “time” instead of “age” in the title, but I think there was a hint of satire in the use of “age,” like we were all Victorians or something (it would have been hilarious if I had used “era”). I think “time” would have been perfect, actually, as time is not only the subject but the content, the material, of so much new media art.

I’m sure much in this list is known to readers of this site. It’s mostly things that have not appeared in the ELC1 collection or which have not gotten much play (such as Facade), and mostly from artists outside the purview of “e-literature,” though not exlusively. This isn’t highly edited or exhaustive — really just pasted notes.

The Gates of Paradise, David Daniels
http://www.thegatesofparadise.com
Total outsider stuff, pdfs, some of which are animated. Links somewhat with the idea of “conceptual writing” that is promoted by writers such as Kenneth Goldsmith and Craig Dworkin (see the conceptual writing anthology on ubu.com). David died about a year ago.

Dagmar Chili, Toadex Hobogrammathon
http://dagmar_chili.pitas.com
More total outsider stuff, by someone who I had a small correspondence with years ago, but whose identity I still don’t know. I’ve blogged about Toadex quite a bit on www.arras.net/fscIII.

New Digital Emblems, William Poundstone
http://williampoundstone.net
Actually, Poundstone has a number of substantila projects, but I think the emblems are the most neglected as the piece is involved and seems to be non-fiction. I haven’t looked at his new pieces. I’m having lunch with him on Monday (never met him before). [P.S. The lunch went swimmingly, he’s a cool guy.]

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This blog post title is taken from one of the links below, a new slew of minor hits, this time using the single word “Toadex” in Google.

Nothing incredibly revealing here except that there is a “Toadex” appearing on a few forum pages (Newgrounds, for example), and there seems to be more evidence of actual correspondence between Mr. Toadex and a few blog authors.

These links are a mess; some are already from my previous post but I don’t feel like weeding out the doubles.

Geegaw
Some literary analysis of a recent Dagmar Chili post:
http://www.geegaw.com/archives/0111.shtml
Correspondence with Toadex?
http://www.geegaw.com/archives/0302.shtml

Apathy
I think these are in the previous post:
http://apathy.pitas.com/06_18_2000.html
http://apathy.pitas.com/04_09_2000.html

Newgrounds
Someone named Toadex contributed to these forums (probably more if I really searched):
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/128663/14
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/310812

Sylloge
More correspondence:
http://www.sylloge.com/the_past/2001_03_01_not_recent.html

Amiright
Nothing to do with our author, I think, but the cane toad chemical called Toadex:
http://www.amiright.com/parody/70s/johndenver44.shtml

Synthetic Zero
Another Toadex watcher from back in the day:
http://69.93.195.170/may2001a.html
And folllowing, some correspondence:
http://www.syntheticzero.com/jan2002.php
http://www.syntheticzero.com/dec2001.php

Webwasp
Someone named Toadex contributes to this as well:
http://www.webwasp.co.uk/forum/index.php

Metafilter
This has nothing to do with our author, but the great line that forms this post title is from here. Bonney’s translations of Baudelaire are interesting.
http://www.metafilter.com/63023/Sean-Bonneys-Translations-of-Baudelaire

Green in Australia
Information on “Toadex,” a spray for killing cane toads:

Control of cane toads is extremely difficult. Reproductive potential is high. Traditional techniques of dispatch are painful for the animal. Toadex is a new commercial spray product specifically for cane toads. However freezing is the most humane way to kill them. A CSIRO research program to investigate possible biological control options is in progress.

Evon Evonchoo
The Google search for Toadex led me to this blog which also engages in some strange language play, for example:

toadex went sch , supposed tuu miit ddear e lorhx , bud she cant make iit , den neber go , ad fiirst iintend tuu skiip sch and go shopshop wiiv her !!! L0ls ..
had sum funn iin e recess , chungg told miie tat e church hab dunnoe wad iindustriiex programme , den she saex iie can joiin e fashiion iindustriiex , bud e fuckiin edna saex tiis : afta e LV iinciicdent , can she stiilll make iit ? iie wanna roar !! iie hab alreadiiex regreated wore lyetat and euur hab been laughiin ferr almost 1weeks le lehx !!! L0ls .. home-ed and catch sum tv and chated on phone wiiv edna jux nao ..

Athica
Dagmar Chili included in an online web gallery — without permission, of course — created by a group in Athens, Georgia.
http://www.athica.org/virtualart.php

Some time ago, when I posted a .pdf version of “Name: A Novel” on /ubu editions, I noted that there were exactly 4 Google hits for the author of the book, Toadex Hobogrammathon. Memory being what it is, I can’t remember what those links were, but I gave it another shot recently to see if I could dig up something about this mysterious personage. To date, I know of only the following which can be directly attributed to him/her, or at least to this pseudonym — there might be others out there. Two are weird blogs, one is the novel.

The primo blog to read by Toadex H. is Dagmar Chili Pitas. I’ve already linked to this blog from FSC, but haven’t as yet done any serious writing about it. The real title might just be “Dagmar Chili,” “Pitas” being simply the name of the service provider. But like Kleenex and Xerox, the name seems to have stuck.
http://dagmar_chili.pitas.com/

What appears to be a test run up to Dagmar Chili Pitas is Doxo Wox. I found out about it on a blog that seemed to be following Toadex H. back in the day. I haven’t seen proof, other than a similarity of style, that this is by Toadex H., but the similarities are strong (or more particularly, with the early part of Name, the next link).
http://doxowox.org/

And then there is Name: A Novel, which I describe in some detail on the following page.
http://ubu.com/ubu/toadex_name.html

I can’t find the original page on which “Name” first appeared. I don’t remember who among us (mostly like one of the ubuweb folks) discovered it. But I do remember exchanging an email or two with Toadex about putting it up, all lost in one of several crashed or stolen hard drives.

In any case, I’m trying to, uh, research Toadex Hobogrammathon for some writing I hope to do on digital poetry and the whatnot. Below are the only links (not including links to the ubu page, of which there are several) that come up with “Toadex Hobogrammathon.” Appears that, at some time, he/she occasionally dropped a note on some blogs regarding some issue (Zukofsky one time) that needed addressing, though in typically off-beat fashion.

One poster writes that “Mr. Toadex is a friend” of his/hers, that person being listed only as “a” (with no email address). So I’m hardly hot on the trail. But if any of you out there (does anyone read this blog anymore? If not, I understand, it’s sucked for so long) know anything about Toadex, drop me a line.

Erswhile.net
http://erstwhile.net/?t_z=1091343600&t_s=2678400

Apathay
(Hmmm… didn’t realize that apathy was housed at pitas.com, maybe this is the break I needed.)
http://apathy.pitas.com/compconc.html
http://apathy.pitas.com/04_09_2000.html

Bellona Times
http://www.pseudopodium.org/ht-20011014.html

It’s at this website that Toadex asks about Zukfosky:

thro yr Ardent urgency, have I can come to Z;
accidental Ctrl-b, close window, I wrote a something to Ray, … ;;;; What may I be writing an Rutgersial anthological comment on Zukofsky, do yo have any bookings to recomment,?? Or articles?? Are you attributed to him?
I mean, I’m drafted by class, to write by an anthology of Rutgers, what Z did and said, and so forth. I got a goddamn refridgerator the last guy had to assault me with some whirr less than buzzing, when one dranks enough to listen.

And before a four days ago, I didnaot know tha te emoeuseic of A24 is H via C, so enough of tracking up and through the left,

good days to you and thakn yuo of all the

Gewgaw
http://www.geegaw.com/archives/0111.shtml

Miette’s Bedtime Story Podcast
(It’s in this one that one of the commentors mentions that Mr. Toadex is a friend, in the same sentence as recommending Kenneth Goldsmith’s Fidget for a conceptual audio project.)
http://www.miettecast.com/2006/09/30/the-scarlet-ibis/

[Postscript: the word “Toadex” brings up several more hits that are relevant, but I don’t have the time right now to post them. Will soon.]

Here are some recent, and not so recent, things written about my books and chapbooks over the past years.

I try to keep track of this stuff once in a while, since these books and things often seem to disappear into oblivion, and I like to think my poems and things are meaningful to someone… sigh. I’ve also moved four times in four years, now, and feel pretty out of touch with readers and writers, though finally settling in LA and meeting the poetry folks here and in San Francisco has been pleasurable (and a relief). “Stabilizing” might be more therapy-session way of putting it.

There are two interesting shout-outs tacked on at the end. First, is a poem by Rachel Blau DuPlessis, in which my Flash animation “The Dreamlife of Letters,” which borrowed liberally from a text of hers, is discussed at length in the footnote and poem itself. (She didn’t like the project at all, from what I understand, when she first heard about it and saw the poem, but I think she’s ok with it now. Maybe.)

The second is from the intro to the Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry, in which my playful co-option (or “liberal borrowing”) of Blake’s “Proverbs of Hell” (along with other works by other poets like Ashbery, Muldoon and Lisa Robertson) is given as proof that British Romantic poetry is still very much alive and useful to poets of today (or something like that). Anyway, I thought it was funny.

Noah Eli Gordon
Boston Review
microreview of Kluge: A Meditation, and other works

Clive Thompson
Collision Detection (blog)
“Why Interactive Poetry Beats Interactive Fiction”

C St Perez
Tarpaulin Sky
review of What is Said to the Poets Concerning Flowers

Jason Morris
Jacket Magazine
“The Time Between Time: Messianism & the Promise of a ‘New Sincerity'” (general aesthetics essay discussing a number of poets)

Michael McDonough
Electronic Book Review
review of Before Starting Over: Selected Essays and Interviews

Michael McDonough
Econoculture
review of Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics

Stan Mir
Fascicle
“Matter Ordered to be Made” (review of several chapbooks)

Ben Basan
Luminations (blog)
notes on Fashionable Noise and some digital work

Mark Mendoza
Verse Magazine
review of “The Window Ordered to be Made”

Ron Silliman
Silliman’s Blog
review of “Jai-alai for Autocrats”

Jack Kimball
Talisman (print edition)
“Review of Carter Ratcliffe’s Arrivederci Modernismo, Laynie Browne’s Daily Sonnets, Brian Kim Stefans’s Kluge: A Meditation and Other Works

Mark Wallace
Verse (print edition)
review of Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics

K. Silem Mohammed
The Consequence Of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics (ed. Craig Dworkin, print)
“Creeping It Real” (this might be on his blog, Lime Tree, somewhere)

Rachel Blau Du Plessis
P.F.S. Post (blog)
Draft 59: Flash Back

James Chandler and Maureen N. McLane
“Introduction: The Companionable Forms of Romantic Poetry”

Here’s an interesting development in the world of Debord and plagiarism… I’ve just downloaded the beta version of the game. The story is from Rhizome — here’s the rest.

KS_screenshot_08Jan30efinal1.gif

“Ideas improve. The meaning of words participates in the improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. It embraces an author’s phrase, makes use of his expressions, erases a false idea, and replaces it with the right idea.”

So wrote Guy Debord, prominent member of the Situationist International and major instigator of the infamous Paris uprisings of May ’68. In his most famous text The Society of the Spectacle, Debord articulates the belief that free trade of thoughts and ideas is not only acceptable, but necessary for the intellectual advancement of culture. He did not simply advocate plagiarism as a means of reference, but as an active way to critically engage and subvert dominant media images — what he and his fellow Situationists referred to as ‘détournement.’ Put simply, détournement is the appropriation of these prevailing images for meanings in opposition to their original intent — a strategy that has influenced generations of activists, academics, and artists. So when the estate of Guy Debord recently sent a ‘cease and desist’ letter to a group of American artists for copyright infringement, people familiar with Debord’s oeuvre were rightly shocked. Beyond the obvious irony of the situation, this particular case has raised questions about the complexities of copyright, monetary compensation and the historical legacy of our anti-establishment icons.

Nice set at onedit by the English poet Sean Bonney called “Baudelaire in English.” Suggests Steve McCaffery’s “Carnival” crossed with Pierre Guyotat’s Eden Eden Eden.

S4.gif

 rainyscreen21.jpg

One of my favorite sites these days is the Experimental Gameplay Project. Started by a small braintrust at Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the website has expanded beyond the initial goals — to prototype and create as many games as possible within two semesters, each game being designed and completed within 7 days — to include excellent contributions from non-original members of the team.

Kind of like Dogme 95, which I also loved, there are some basic rules involved, simple but suggestive:

1. Each game must be made in less than seven days,
2. Each game must be made by exactly one person,
3. Each game must be based around a common theme i.e. “gravity”, “vegetation”, “swarms”, etc.

The final one reflects the project’s engagement with simulation–i.e. using algorithms that replicate phenomena from physics, to pull the games out of the already outworn genres of “first-person shooter,” etc. The goal is the creation of new video game genres, in fact; at least, that’s how I read it. No more jumping over barrels!

I’ve been interested in the idea of an “auteur” theory to game design, which is to say, games that–collectively under the sign of a single creator–reflect an individual vision by the maker, something inchoate that lurks behind the single productions that reflects a “signature” style or set of interests. Perhaps a poetic vision–speed, movement, color, causality, all point toward a sort of philosophy, if not “of life” than at least of society, as described in Homo Ludens (but I won’t go there right now).

Video games, like films in the past, have been associated with exteremely expensive, commercial production, usually collaborative (the collaboration often collapsing, or being overly-determined, by economic pressures), but the Experimental Gameplay Project seems to point to something new–like independent comics, toward a quirky if often unsettling interaction between illustrative or even abstract visual styles, elliptical or pop-savvy narrative and “interactivity” (in the comics’ case, in the negotiation of the formal intricacies of creating connections from often crazily arranged boxes, speech bubbles, iconic/ambiguous gestalt-driven drawing/symbolic style, etc.)

Did you get all that?

One of my favorites is “On a Rainy Day,” which is downright creepy but calming in an indescribable way. You can also play the terrorist at “Suicide Bomber” (not so much a game as a fascinating simulation engine) or play the master builder at “Tower of Goo” or “Suburban Brawl.”

 gamer_theory_cover_new.jpg

I’ve just finished a major upgrade to McKenzie Wark’s personal site. It’s a site I designed several years ago when I was in my “cheap sites for artists” phase — Abigail Child, Tim Ellis, Jane House, the Segue Foundation and my sister, Lindsay, were all beneficiaries of this mode of my existence.

I’ve just added a slew of reviews in several languages, along with a bunch of other stuff such as images of books covers of Japanese, Greek, French and Italian translations of his work. It’s interesting to see where these various cultures go with the subject matter of Wark’s texts — designs negotiating the “underground” yet commercial aspects implicit in an academic book deriving partly from post-Situationist theory.

I’m not doing freelance anymore, too much other shite to do and I can’t bother to keep up with all the Web 2.0 upgrades. I’d be more prone to design someone’s blog these days than design a new website.

But I’ve always liked the solution I came up for Ken, which was to stick to a sort of nothingness.org aesthetic — keeping it in the Situationist agit-prop Unibomber’s-typewriter sphere of things, but touch it up with a little Flash and making it perfectly (easily) expandable when new material comes in, so any teen anarchist could make an update should she want to. Very Web 1.0.

http://www.ludiccrew.org/wark/index.htm

Ken is the author of A Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory, both of which I highly recommend. I have my problems with both books — I’m not sure how much both fall into the category of postmodern entertainments rather than the sort of foundation radical theory that they allude to (if not aspire to be, though I’m not sure about that), but in terms of prose strategies — crisp (if not quite Debordian) rhetoric, the pacing of the text, the synthesis of observations grounded in new media phenomena and classic “crypto” Marxism — they are very lively and suggestive.

Marx and Rez — two great tastes that taste great together. (Uh, did that sound glib?)

The scariest man in poetry… though here, he looks like John Wieners (I mean, the turtleneck).

Pound-Ezra_Erker-Verlag_St-Gallen.jpg

I wish they would put one of his (very bad) operas on PennSound someday… I really want to hear Le Testament (which is, I think, the only one recorded).

http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.html

Nothing moves very quickly in the poetry world, but I was very happy to have Fashionable Noise, from 2003, reviewed in the online journal EconoCulture by a guy I knew (barely, he was two or so years younger than me, which in college means a decade) back at Bard named Mike McDonough. He’s got a sense of humor!

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Cyberpoetry

by Michael McDonough

Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics
by Brian Kim Stefans
Atelos, $12.95
ISBN 1-891190-14-8,
Supplements to the book can be found here.
    I hates cyberpoetry
    And I can’t hates no more
        — a poet

I had no idea what cyberpoetry was before I encountered Brian Kim Stefans’ book Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics, (Atelos 2003) and, subsequently, the work on his website http://www.arras.net/.  I already knew Stefans as a brilliant student of Modernism, from our undergrad years at Bard College (he was seriously into Zukofsky’s A when I had just figured out Lawrence Ferlinghetti), so I thought I would give it a try.  I figured anything with the prefix cyber- was going to be self-consciously cool and high-tech. 

A chat Stefans had with Darren Wershler-Henry is transcribed in the book, and it provides a breezy overview of the field, but abounds with high-tech jargon and avant garde movements: Neo-Fluxus and Brazilian Concrete are just the tip of the iceberg.  There seem to be as many sub-genres of cyberpoetry as death metal.  Soon, we’re down to genres with only one pure practitioner—maybe not the best start for a beginner.  But the chat makes clear that cyberpoetry exists in the zone where words meet readers: the interface, a word I am going to say a lot in this piece.  Some examples of artistic interfaces are animated texts, digital settings of printed texts, and cyberpoems created by running source texts through various computer algorithms. 

Read the rest of the review…

Yay… (I ripped this off of Amazon).

stefans-cov.jpg

Stefans’s multigenre Fashionable Noise: On Digital Poetics (2003) has already emerged as a major text on its subject, and his digital poems would make most cognoscenti’s top 10 lists. Published simultaneously with Stefans’s essay collection Before Starting Over (Salt Books), this set of five chapbooklike sections of poems reads like a “real playstation/ or organic whist” that treats history as a kind of textual joke; every line signals a deep, playful, Frank O’Hara–like imbrication in the 20th-century’s pains and pleasures: “Pound’s flopping of oars… crises that approach with the grace/ of guttural, 32-bit Nazis, or with jodi.org’s antique ‘pro-situ’ strains.” The section “The Window Ordered to be Made” contains “They’re Putting a New Door In” (which made The Best American Poetry 2004) and “Poem Formerly Known as ‘Terrorism’ ” (“I’m hurt like Rocky,” notes its speaker). There’s a set of 15-line poems documenting the travels and travails of a figure named Pasha Noise, who also appears in a concluding comic strip (with illustrations by Gary Sullivan). These new poems broaden the range of Stefans’s wonderfully supersaturated sensibility. (Nov.)

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A friend forwarded to me all these links re: stuff to do in Philly. Just putting them up for my benefit, but if you happen to live in Philly, might be of interest to you.

Art Venues

Kelly Writers House (http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~wh/)
Institute of Contemporary Art (http://www.icaphila.org/)
Slought Foundation (http://www.slought.org/)
Philadelphia Museum of Art (http://www.philamuseum.org/)
Fabric Workshop and Museum (http://www.fabricworkshop.org/)
Vox Populi (http://www.voxpopuligallery.org/)
Painted Bride Art Center (http://www.paintedbride.org)
BaseKamp (www.basekamp.com)
inLiquid (http://www.inliquid.com/)

Music Venues

Pollstar (http://www.pollstar.com/ — search city schedule)
RVNG (http://www.igetrvng.com/)
R5 Productions (http://www.r5productions.com/)
Black Mountain Collective (http://blackmountainmusic.com/)
Plain Parade (http://www.plainparade.org/)
Khyber (http://www.thekhyber.com/)
Northstar Bar (http://www.northstarbar.com/)
Tritone (http://www.tritonebar.com/)
700 Club (http://philadelphia.citysearch.com/profile/8970063/philadelphia_pa/700_club.html)
Silk City (http://www.silkcitylounge.com/)
Manhattan Room (http://www.themanhattanroom.com/)
Starlight Ballroom (can’t find website)

Foodstuffz

Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/entertainment/dining/)
Citysearch (http://philadelphia.citysearch.com/)
CityPaper (citypaper.net)

News

Philly Inquirer (http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/)
Citypaper (citypaper.net)
Philadelphia Weekly (http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/)
Blog (http://www.philebrity.com/)
Blog (http://www.phillyist.com/)

Just got a copy of this in the mail… I have an essay about my website Circulars in there, and a few of the other pieces deal with my work. I haven’t finished it yet but it’s a pretty cool collection of writers, and the first substantial book to deal with digital literature from the perspective of poetry and poetics. And it’s got a pretty cover…

 0262134632-f30.jpg

New Media Poetics
Contexts, Technotexts, and Theories

Edited by Adalaide Morris and Thomas Swiss

New media poetry–poetry composed, disseminated, and read on computers–exists in various configurations, from electronic documents that can be navigated and/or rearranged by their “users” to kinetic, visual, and sound materials through online journals and archives like UbuWeb, PennSound, and the Electronic Poetry Center. Unlike mainstream print poetry, which assumes a bounded, coherent, and self-conscious speaker, new media poetry assumes a synergy between human beings and intelligent machines. The essays and artist statements in this volume explore this synergy’s continuities and breaks with past poetic practices, and its profound implications for the future.

By adding new media poetry to the study of hypertext narrative, interactive fiction, computer games, and other digital art forms, New Media Poetics extends our understanding of the computer as an expressive medium, showcases works that are visually arresting, aurally charged, and dynamic, and traces the lineage of new media poetry through print and sound poetics, procedural writing, gestural abstraction and conceptual art, and activist communities formed by emergent poetics.

Contributors:
Giselle Beiguelman, John Cayley, Alan Filreis, Loss Pequeño Glazier, Alan Golding, Kenneth Goldsmith, N. Katherine Hayles, Cynthia Lawson, Jennifer Ley, Talan Memmott, Adalaide Morris, Carrie Noland, Marjorie Perloff, William Poundstone, Martin Spinelli, Stephanie Strickland, Brian Kim Stefans, Barrett Watten, Darren Wershler-Henry

Adalaide Morris is John C. Gerber Professor of English at the University of Iowa, where Thomas Swiss is Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry.

Thomas Swiss is Professor of English and Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa.

Table of Contents

1. New Media Poetics: As We May Think/How To Write
Adalaide Morris

I. Contexts
 
2. The Bride Stripped Bare: Nude Media and the Dematerialization of Tony Curtis
Kenneth Goldsmith
 
3. Toward a Poetics for Circulars
Brian Kim Stefans
Exchange on Circulars (2003)
Brian Kim Stefans and Darren Wershler-Henry
 
4. Riding the Meridian
Jennifer Ley
 
5. Electric Line: The Poetics of Digital Audio Editing
Martin Spinelli
 
6. Kinetic Is As Kinetic Does: On the Institutionalization of Digital Poetry
Alan Filreis

II. Technotexts
 
7. Screening the Page/Paging the Screen: Digital Poetics and the Differential Text
Marjorie Perloff
 
8. Vniverse
Stephanie Strickland and Cynthia Lawson
 
9. The Time of Digital Poetry: From Object to Event
N. Katherine Hayles
 
10. 10 Sono at Swoons
Loss Pequeño Glazier
 
11. Digital Gestures
Carrie Noland
 
12. 3 Proposals for Bottle Imps
William Poundstone
 
13. Language Writing, Digital Poetics, and Transitional Materialities
Alan Golding and Giselle Beiguelman
 
14. Nomadic Poetry

III. Theories
 
15. Beyond Taxonomy: Digital Poetics and the Problem of Reading
Talan Menmott
 
16. Time Code Language: New Media Poetics and Programmed Signification
John Cayley
 
17. Poetics in the Expanded Field: Textual, Visual, Digital . . .
Barrett Watten

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