Size Matters

XKCD comics

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:23:00 GMT

BOYFRIEND

COVER UP

FERMIROTICA

CENTRIFUGAL FORCE

(Hat tip: Reason.com's blog, and its commenters)

I just applied to be an editorial cartoonist for Reason Magazine Online.

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 17:10:28 GMT

There's a good chance I'm crazy friends, but I've lost my fear of doom.

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 01:48:38 GMT

What Jesus Said
Into Your Heart Last Night

"Wouldn't you agree
that it is not to be imagined
that a world, like ours,
like this one,
which contains,
God bless it,
birth,
could ever really entertain
a death
that wasn't fake?"

Nicholas Moore

Amen.

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:02:35 GMT

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Peter Schiff

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Newt Gingrich Unedited Interview

Oo-blee-ay: a dungeon that only opens from the ceiling.

Thu, 28 May 2009 16:42:15 GMT

Love & Objectivity

"When you said that my mind glows
like beautiful tits,
you weren't being very objective,"
she said. I agreed saying,
"Not only doesn't love pay rent,
but you and I are antonyms."

When I met her she was dating
everybody, and I had recently fallen
into a well.
The last encounter, of that era,
as I remember, was just
my sensation of raw rice grazing
my face, having fallen through
the hole in my oubliette.

I assumed she was getting married.

The next time I met her,
I had been elected the president of
The Hair Club For Men,
and she was in the middle
of a lengthy and bittersweet car accident.
We shook hands, were brief but professional,
and boarded our separate airplanes.

Nearby a crowd of onlookers were paralyzed
by a cold front of dramatic irony.

The next time that I meet her,
I'd like myself to be
in the ocean, dying,
and I'd like her to appear in a houseboat,
her wedding dress wrapped around
ballast bricks.
I'd like her to throw me something that floats,
and I'd like her to say,
(while collapsing her telescope)
"Love and objectivity:
[teardrop] those are also
antonyms."

Nicholas Moore

ManBearPig leaves no one alive. I'm super cereal! And nobody'll listen to me. I'm cereal!

Wed, 20 May 2009 14:18:48 GMT

Onlookers,

The whole Tipler piece (from which I quoted in my previous blog) turns out to be excellent, of course. Here is another passage.

"...(7) I agree with Dick Lindzen that the AGW nonsense is generated by government funding of science. If a guy agrees with AGW, then he can get a government contract. If he is a skeptic, then no contract. There is a professor at Tulane, with a Ph.D in paleoclimatology, who is as skeptical as I am about AGW, but he'd never be considered for tenure at Tulane because of his professional opinion. No government contracts, no tenure.

(8) This is why I am astounded that people who should know better, like Newt Gingrich, advocate increased government funding for scientific research. We had better science, and a more rapid advance of science, in the early part of the 20th century when there was no centralized government funding for science. Einstein discovered relativity on his own time, while he was employed as a patent clerk. Where are the Einsteins of today? They would never be able to get a university job --- Einstein's idea that time duration depended on the observer was very much opposed to the "consensus" view of the time. Einstein's idea that light was composed of particles (now called "photons") was also considered crazy by all physicists when he first published the idea. At least then he could publish the idea. Now a refereed journal would never even consider a paper written by a patent clerk, and all 1905 physics referees would agree that relativity and quantum mechanics were nonsense, definitely against the overwhelming consensus view. So journals would reject Einstein's papers if he were to write them today.

Science is an economic good like everything else, and it is very bad for production of high quality goods for the government to control the means of production. Why can't Newt Gingrich understand this? Milton Friedman understood it, and advocated cutting off government funding for science."

--Professor Frank Tipler

Tipler Weighs In On ManBearPig

Wed, 20 May 2009 13:12:08 GMT

Readership,

My favorite writer who has ever lived is Frank Jennings Tipler the 3rd. He is a Professor of Mathematical Physics and Astrophysics at Tulane University in New Orleans.

I just came across a quote ascribed to him on the Interwebs, about Man-Made Global Warming. He agrees with me! We must be a couple of really smart guys.

(Parenthetically, if you want to have your mind blown, then you ought to read The Physics of Immortality by Professor Frank J. Tipler. It pretty much solves everything. But it's not about Global Warming; it's about "Modern Cosmology, God, and the Resurrection of the Dead".)

Here's the Global Warming quote.

"Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is a scam, with no basis in science...
It is obvious that anthropogenic global warming is not science at all, because a scientific theory makes non-obvious predictions which are then compared with observations that the average person can check for himself. As we both know from our own observations, AGW theory has spectacularly failed to do this.

The theory has predicted steadily increasing global temperatures, and this has been refuted by experience. NOW the global warmers claim that the Earth will enter a cooling period. In other words, whether the ice caps melt, or expand-- whatever happens --the AGW theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology."

--Frank Tipler

[Edit: I found the source.]

So, Will They Give Him Libby? The Tension Is Palpable!

Thu, 14 May 2009 13:45:23 GMT

Friends!

When the Poet Nick Moore isn't napping at work, he is usually lying in bed, in an terrified miscarriage of sleeping. But sometimes he pulls it together enough to yank the adult pacifier he calls a bottle of whiskey out of his mouth long enough to write a play. At which point God thunders down at him from the clouds, "Was that so fucking hard? You know, I gave you sentience to get some work done!"

What I'm saying is, go see his play at the Bloomington Playwrights Project! It'll be on this Friday, then the following Thursday, and then the weekend after that on Saturday, always at 8pm.

It's all a part of The 2009 BloomingPlays Festival, a celebration of original new plays, all written by playwrights from this, our great state of Indiana.

For the next three weekends (including Thursdays) it'll be going on. There are also plays that Nick Moore didn't write, if you're the kind of sick bastard who's into that sort of thing. (Here's a helpful, interactive calendar.)

Run, don't walk, to:

The Bloomington Playwrights Project
(107 W. 9th,
between College and Walnut on 9th,
you know, by the liquor store,
you reprobate.)

For:

The 2009 BloomingPlays Festival
(May 14 - 30, 2009)

The show Nick's play is in:

BloomingDoubleHeader

Two one-act comedies

directed by Gail Bray

May 15, 21 & 30 @ 8pm; May 24 @ 2pm

Give Me Libby by Nick Moore

George is the Captain of Security at Convenience Banking Incorporated. According to a beautiful teller at the bank named Libby, with whom he has fallen in love, the only way to get her to go out on a date with him is to rob the very bank that he has sworn to protect. To do this, he must employ all two of his underling security guards, which might work, if they can ever stop making out with each other long enough to help him. When his plan goes from botched to more botched, George finds himself in danger of losing even more than his freedom. Playwright Nick Moore combines his juvenile obsession with the profane with his grownup agility at utilizing his juvenile love of the profane. Give Me Libby is sure to tug at the heartstrings of anyone who has every tried to rob a bank in order to impress someone named Libby.

Irrational Exuberance by Jonathan Graham

The world is crashing down around Rich, the C.E.O. of a collapsing, Enronesque company. A grand jury may soon indict him, his assistant wants him to behave as if nothing is wrong and his wife thinks he should go to jail. When Rich tries to escape his troubles by running away to a cabin in the woods, he runs out of gas instead. When he reaches a gas station, he meets a former employee. She knows all about him and his company, even his shady plan to sell worried parents “air futures” as an insurance policy against environmental calamity. By the time Rich's assistant and wife reach the gas station, the situation goes from bad to worse in this black comedy.

Nicholas Moore (Playwright, Give Me Libby) is locked into a game of Chutes and Ladders with the Grim Reaper, and Death just helped a little kitty out of a tree. His most fun memories of the BPP so far, that spring most readily to mind, are the short plays: Naked In The Play, written for Sex/Death, Death Of A Hamster, written for The Playoffs, and the perennial favorite, Jack Burkhead Is A Dickhead, written for The Blizzard. If called upon to describe his style, the playwright would like to paraphrase something that he vaguely remembers seeing a spaced-out Bob Dylan say once to a reporter in 60s: "I write mathematical plays."

* * *

--Tom

The Libertarian Strategists

Tue, 12 May 2009 14:09:14 GMT

Readers,

A link over at Reason Magazine referred us, here at the Size Matters Editorial Staff, to a blog called "The Democratic Strategist". In an attempt to describe the core beliefs of those wacky and crazy Tea Partiers, said strategist ends up giving a pretty damn on-the-money comparison of "pre-Keynesian" views, and Keynesian views.

However, since the "Democratic Strategist" is, well, a Big-D Democrat, he describes the sensible and correct "pre-Keynesian" economics in a sarcastic tone, while describing the Keynesian shit with a straight face, as if it isn't in fact the ramblings of a nutjob (which it is: an English nutjob named Keynes).

What follows is the Democratic Strategists comparison, with comments from the Size Matters Editorial Staff (in brackets).

* * *

At the core of this view [the view(s) of the Tea Partiers] are a cluster of ideas that can best be summed up as “pre-Keynesian.” It is an approach that is unified by the idea that that government should be run according to the same principles that apply to running a small business.

The main ideas are:

1. Government spending to create jobs simply does not work. It can only create phony “make work” or “leaf raking” jobs and not “real” jobs that need to be done. This is rooted in the widespread but superficial [fuck you] “common sense” [nice scare quotes] notion that if there actually were a real demand for some service or product, private businesses would inevitably arise to provide it. As a result, aside from a limited set of necessarily public jobs (police, fire etc.) there is basically no need for the government to be involved in peacetime economic activity. [As anarchists, we don't think that even that is necessary, but nevermind.]

2. Government simply should not go into debt; it should maintain a permanently balanced budget. This idea, which in previous generations was called fiscal responsibility or “sound finance,” is based on making an analogy between an individual household and the government. If going into debt is bad for an individual, it must be equally bad for country. The “common sense” [fuck you] notion behind this view is that borrowing money to buy things one cannot afford (“going into hock”) is never a good idea on moral grounds. It undermines important virtues like thrift and hard work. [Yes it does.]

3. Banks are visualized as essentially profit-seeking businesses like any other and not as an abstract “credit system” that provides “finance” or “liquidity” to the economy. [Why can't it be both?] In this view, the fact that banks’ particular business happens to be taking deposits and lending money does not entitle them to any special treatment. In consequence, common sense dictates that they do not deserve to be “bailed out” when they fail any more than any other business. [Amen.]

4. Government regulation is seen from the perspective of a small businessman. As such it appears as a maze of annoying paperwork, licenses, permits, inspections, and so on. Since the 1970’s when the demands on small businesses – and particularly the paperwork required of them - increased exponentially, the view grew that many of these regulations were really created by government bureaucrats to keep themselves employed rather than as a sincere attempt to solve genuinely pressing social problems. For many small businessmen this is backed up by the “common sense” [fuck you] perception that in their personal experience there are more useless regulations imposed on them than useful ones. For every sensible regulation protecting the public from tainted food or lead paint, their personal business experience seems to suggest a dozen examples of regulations that seem unnecessary or so poorly enforced as to be useless. This very small scale view [Seriously, fuck you.] is then extrapolated to the economy as a whole [as it should be!].

5. Taxes are seen from a very limited point of view [Blow it out your ass.]-- as money that is simply taken away from individuals by the government -- and not visualized as part of a larger circular flow ["Circular flow": nutjob rambling alert! More on this later.] that returns in exchange services and a healthier society in which to live. The “common sense” [Kiss my ballsack.]notion simply is that “Taxes are my money, not the government’s money”. [These people think that "their money" is, um, their money? Weird.]

Before the 1930’s, most of these views were part of the dominant social philosophy in America – a broad consensus that extended from the economics textbooks to the leaders of industry and government. Since the 1930’s in each of these areas a broader, “system-wide” economic view has taken hold, one which can broadly be defined as Keynesian.

1. This view sees a substantial part of government spending as investing -- not just in national defense but in modern science, education, infrastructure development and other fields that have broad long-term benefits for the society as whole and multiple “spin-off” benefits for the private economy. [Notice that this in no way addresses the earlier objection that there is no reason to expect the government to invest the private sector's money more wisely than the private sector. The private sector is responsive to market pressures, whereas the government is responsive to the politically connected.]

2. This view sees the management of government debt and spending as part of maintaining the circular flow of income – of managing the business cycle and preventing mass unemployment or run-away inflation. [First of all, the business cycle is caused by the government trying to manage this imaginary tradeoff between unemployment and inflation. When the government lowers interest rates below what it would otherwise be, to "stimulate the economy" this makes investors think that there are more resources at their disposal than there really are, and everybody starts projects that they won't be able to finish when the inevitable inflation comes. "Circular flow" is a Keynesian idea that since you can increase demand by increasing production (Sayes Law), then you can also increase production by increasing demand. If people want stuff hard enough, then the stuff magically appears on shelves. This leads to the idea that we can spend our way out of recession, Obama-style. ]

3. This view sees the credit system primarily as a critical mechanism for providing finance for private investment and growth. An individual bank’s success or failure is seen as a secondary side-effect of this national economic function.[Isn't the fact that it's critical all the more reason to not let the bad ones stay in business? Or to pervert their incentives with promises of bailouts in the future?]

4. This view sees regulation as driven by genuine and significant market failures and vital to the economic system of any advanced country. From a broad social view, an advanced country simply cannot have babies dying of lead poisoning, stockholders routinely defrauded or “snake-oil” medicines sold without control.[Remember when all of that stopped happening because the government got involved?] Regulation is seen as vital for creating the basic level of trust and economic stability needed in a complex modern economy.

5. Taxes are seen as the price of necessary public services. They are the “overhead costs” of living in a stable advanced county rather than a destitute third world backwater. When pre-Keynesians describe a place without taxes as Utopia, proponents of the Keynesian view suggest Ethiopia as a more realistic example. [Prices are voluntary. To call taxes "prices", is like kidnapping someone and calling it a "vacation". Oh, and, Ethiopia! In Ethiopia, the government owns everything. It actually is written into Ethiopia's constitution, and I am not making this up, that it is illegal for anyone to own land except for the government.]

By the 1960’s, this Keynesian “big picture” view of the economy had become dominant among economists, corporate leaders and government officials –a dominance codified in the successive editions of Paul Samuelson’s textbook which defined the field of economics for the entire decade. Even today, after 40 years of massive attacks on its premises by conservatives, the essential elements of the Keynesian- Samuelson view – rather than its pre-Keynesian predecessor - remains dominant among corporate leaders and government policymakers. [In other words, a mess of incoherent ideas, the bottom line of which is that government should be free to print money and go into debt at will, is popular with the government.]

* * *

--The Size Matters Editorial Staff

No Big Deal; Just Hangin' With The Bammer

Mon, 11 May 2009 13:33:23 GMT

E-friends, and especially Jilliann,

Maria Bamford was at Ye Olde Funny Bone is Bloomington, Indiana, this last weekend! I got a chance to do some of my jokes for her, as she graciously requested to have a meeting with local stand-ups, earlier on Saturday evening at the Funny Bone, and hear some of our stuff.

She was very cool. She talked about the importance of doing it all the time to get good, and that we should put on our own shows, to afford the comic community more chances for stage time.

I saw her Saturday late show, which was genius, of course. And Brother Ben did 5-minutes at the top of her show! He was funny too.

Here is Comedy's my-twin-brother Ben, with Comedy's The Bammer, at the Funny Bone in Bloomington.

The last thing I remember Maria Bamford saying to Ben and me was, "Well, I'll probably see you around Show Business. You guys are funny."

So there. I've been indorsed. If you have a problem with me, take it up with the Bammer!

--The Poet Nick Moore

You Know Death Is Naked Under His Burqa

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:42:38 GMT

Last Words

"I have
grave reservations,"
said the man
among the patients.

"Okay, then,"
said the overseer,
"We'll send a hearse
to meet you."

Nicholas Moore

"All That Bullshit's True, You Know."

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:11:19 GMT

The Inevitable Hotness Of Modesty

The stripper came out
hot and hanged-out
wiggling her toes.

The waitress who
brought me my booze
was very fully clothed.

The stripper’s breasts
they smelled of sweat
and perfume, but were tasteless.

All I could do
was picture nude
our average-looking waitress.

Nicholas Moore

That Guy's Really Got Some Dyson Spheres.

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:01:09 GMT

Readers,

The New York Times did a story last week on Freeman Dyson.

We, at the Size Matters Editorial Staff, haven't ever read Dyson directly, but we like him. Firstly, he has a badass name. We also like that he writes about the future. Thirdly, we like that he is a brilliant physicist, but also a practising Christian. Finally, and this is what the New York Times article is about, we like him for being opposed to all of this Climate Change nonsense.

(Parenthetically, the fact that a Keynesian shithead like Paul Krugman would get a Nobel Prize should conclusively prove to everyone that they are now giving those things away to award stupidity. Which, in turn, proves, if any more proof were needed, that Al Gore's stupidity is both exceptional and award-worthy.)

From (the end of) the article:

Lately Dyson has been lamenting that he and Imme [his wife] “don’t see so much of each other. We’re always rushing around.” But one evening last month they sat down in a living room filled with Imme’s running trophies and photographs of their children to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” again. There was a print of Einstein above the television. And then there was Al Gore below him, telling of the late Roger Revelle, a Harvard scientist who first alerted the undergraduate Gore to how severe the climate’s problems would become. Gore warned of the melting snows of Kilimanjaro, the vanishing glaciers of Peru and “off the charts” carbon levels in the air. “The so-called skeptics” say this “seems perfectly O.K.,” Gore said, and Imme looked at her husband. She is even slighter than he is, a pretty wood sprite in running shoes. “How far do you allow the oceans to rise before you say, This is no good?” she asked Dyson.

“When I see clear evidence of harm,” he said.

“Then it’s too late,” she replied. “Shouldn’t we not add to what nature’s doing?”

“The costs of what Gore tells us to do would be extremely large,” Dyson said. “By restricting CO2 you make life more expensive and hurt the poor. I’m concerned about the Chinese.”

“They’re the biggest polluters,” Imme replied.

“They’re also changing their standard of living the most, going from poor to middle class. To me that’s very precious.”

The film continued with Gore predicting violent hurricanes, typhoons and tornados. “How in God’s name could that happen here?” Gore said, talking about Hurricane Katrina. “Nature’s been going crazy.”

“That is of course just nonsense,” Dyson said calmly. “With Katrina, all the damage was due to the fact that nobody had taken the trouble to build adequate dikes. To point to Katrina and make any clear connection to global warming is very misleading.”

Now came Arctic scenes, with Gore telling of disappearing ice, drunken trees and drowning polar bears. “Most of the time in history the Arctic has been free of ice,” Dyson said. “A year ago when we went to Greenland where warming is the strongest, the people loved it.”

“They were so proud,” Imme agreed. “They could grow their own cabbage.”

The film ended. “I think Gore does a brilliant job,” Dyson said. “For most people I’d think this would be quite effective. But I knew Roger Revelle. He was definitely a skeptic. He’s not alive to defend himself.”

“All my friends say how smart and farsighted Al Gore is,” she said.

“He certainly is a good preacher,” Dyson replied. “Forty years ago it was fashionable to worry about the coming ice age. Better to attack the real problems like the extinction of species and overfishing. There are so many practical measures we could take.”

“I’m still perfectly happy if you buy me a Prius!” Imme said.

“It’s toys for the rich,” her husband smiled, and then they were arguing about windmills.

Word, Mr. Dyson. Word.

Dear Diary, You Smug Bastard...

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:53:06 GMT

Some Prayers Are Like Bullets
Shot Straight Up In The Air

I prayed to God, "Send
me a date.
I don't even want to have to ask her."

God said, "My Son, you're bound
to participate
in an educational disaster."

Nicholas Moore

Because you are whatever the fuck you are, doesn't mean you are whatever the fuck you think you are.

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:26:57 GMT

Readers,
(We know you're out there, we can hear you sleeping.)

We at the Size Matters Editorial Staff remember a reoccurring bit of cognitive dissonance that we used to experience back when we considered ourselves Socialists.

We would read our Noam Chomsky, (probably purchased at Borders, or some other marvel of the free market), and we would feel our hatred toward Wal-Mart, (probably while actively shopping there, because, hey, that shit is cheap), and all was well and good.

(Parenthetically, Noam Chomsky's main topic is the violence of US foreign policy. On this, he is correct. But there's always, hanging in the background, hints about him being a "Libertarian Socialist" or a "Socialist Anarchist". Chomsky never devotes any ink to systematically defending Libertarian Socialism, which is convenient for him, because it's a dumb and incoherent idea. "Libertarian Socialists" ought to call themselves, "Big-Government Anarchists".)

But, among the other hypocrisies required of someone who considers himself a Socialist, the particular cognitive dissonance that we wanted to mention today was this: We'd read our left-wing Chomsky or whatever, and we'd come away with a certain perception of who the good guys and the bad guys were on the current world stage. Like, we'd say to ourselves, left-wingers like Hugo Chaves and Evo Morales, down in Sud Americana, are big-hearted philanthropists, beloved by their people.

But then we'd actually meet someone from Bolivia or Venezuela, and, in an attempt at conviviality, we'd say, "Hey, Venezuela, Vive Chavez, right?" And without fail the person would say, "No, fuck, no, that guy (whichever left-winger was in question) is a bastard. Everybody hates him." And we would think, "Huh... It's almost like Noam Chomsky is full of shit... Oh well, I'm going to go burn down a sweatshop."

And then we'd go burn down a sweatshop. And then the sweatshop workers would all be like, "Thanks white American Socialists! Now we can all go back to toiling in the fields!"

We bring this up, because over at Reason.com, we recently had the opportunity to be pointed to a TMZ video, in which a Venezuelan actress tells Sean Penn to shut the fuck up.

Seriously though, Sean Penn, in regard to politics, should probably shut the fuck up.

Before we go, we'd like to point out what the biggest, most glaring hypocrisy being perpetrated by rich white Socialists like Chomsky and Penn is: No one is stopping them from practicing full-blown Socialism right now, but they choose no to do it!

Milton Friedman explains this in his awesome book Free To Choose. Notice that the per capita GDP right now is $45,800. That means, if all the money being made were divided by all the people making money, then you would get $45,800. Well, if you are making over $45,800, then you can be a Socialist for real: just give away everything that you make over $45,800. The fact that everybody isn't doing it makes no difference. In a government-run Socialist redistribution, you'd still be giving the same amount. In fact this voluntary Socialism is better, because you, instead of Government, get to decide who gets your money, so you can be sure that it'll go to the most needy.

Now, if you make less that $45,800, I guess the way to be a real Socialist would be to steal from the rich until you've made up the difference between your income and the $45,800. But that, of course, is illegal. But, there's nothing illegal about Chomsky, as an individual, practicing Socialism with his income in the fullest sense that he ever could under any government that he might like to see. Of course, he isn't. And Michael Moore isn't either. So, in the humble opinion of us here at the Size Matters Editorial Staff, none of them is a Socialist; the evidence is crystal clear. So, if they say that they are, then they should stop saying it, because it's bullshit.

However, we would very much like to watch Milk whenever we get around to it. Also, Sean Penn was badass in HurlyBurly.

--The Size Matter Editorial Staff

I'd Like A Large Heart, Covered And Smothered

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:40:43 GMT

The Denny’s Not Taken

TWO Denny’s stood astride our town,
and being just one vanload full
of teenage still-drunk-in-the-morningers,
(like a piñata, if its candy smelled of vomit,
hunger, vodka, and hope)
we could not got to both—
I mean both Denny’s.

The north-side Denny’s was a cave,
as green as moss and smoggy
from the fireflies that danced
upon the haze
above the bacon.
There was a metaphysical dimness in the bathroom,
like there’d been a murder.
On every plate was another buttered corpse,
and then, there was always a tuft of parsley,
like an apology made out of plastic.

The south-side Denny’s was the same,
but we were more used to it.
There, in the waiting room & kitchen of life,
a 42-year-old grandmother
would set a plate of sausage links
between me, and a girl glowing goldenly.
But, because love was then a distant chimera
to my wounded teenage heart,
it all just felt like waiting
with syrup and butter
and dreams of removing my underwear.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two Denny’s stood astride our town,
and we, we chose the one we knew we liked.

…

I forget what happened

Nicholas Moore

Crap In One Hand, And Rhapsodize In The Other...

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:06:56 GMT

A Damsel-In-Distress Clause

“What we need is a radical form of patience.”

--William Greider

Give me a girl with a hip anti-style.
Give her hair as black as a virginless night,
or as blond as the sun for a pool-side while,
or as red as the insides of furious eyes.

Or better still, Fate, let me find her winking
in the sultry depot of closing time.
Her eyes will be conquistadors drinking.
She’ll have a brave time-traveler’s mind.

Maybe I’ll find her and not even know it,
as I scour forlornly some sleeping lawn.
The first thing she’ll say will be, “Aren’t you’re a poet?”
as our feet fall famously, hunting the dawn.

I’ll say she’s the woman my blankets need touching.
I’ll ask her what took her so long to appear.
“Was there a kidnapping or something?
I mean, it’s been twenty-three years…”

Then let us engage in ageless kissing
in undiscovered Indiana places.
Let foreign pillows embrace our faces.
Let’s wander the graveyards of Europe listening.

Let us lie, lover, in bed for years,
in Heaven in a library between shelves.
Let’s let our pink pieces cavort like elves,
and our organs cry their slimy tears.

I’d hitchhike and jump a train for your cause.
All my plans have a damsel-in-distress clause.

But, lover, please, let’s do it soon.
You’ve already missed so much of my youth.

Nicholas Moore (2003)

My Late Entry For A Valentine's Day Poem

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:46:35 GMT

My Hots For You

Your eyes are emerald cheerios,
your nose and cheeks are statuesque.
It's plain I've got the hots for you,
just like the dump has got a mess.

The hots I've got
are stretched and flushed.
The whole Dutch demimonde would blush.
If love's a sea,
my hots are rocks.
You've never seen these hots I've got.

My hots for you could drive a bus,
into the barroom ballroom black,
your hair describes with spears and knots.
It's clear from here: I've got the hots.

These hots I've got are not cold hots!
They spank and tickle, like your wit.
Just like your charm is full of plot,
so too my gaze at you's got hots.

These hots I've got are low-down hots,
tits to pavement, off they crawl
to face your window lapping lamplight.
Bud, these hots are primed to brawl.

I pray to Satan, to send you hots
to match these hot that I have got.
If all the poor burnt souls in Hell had
the hots I've got then they'd be glad.
But they'd still scream and scratch and bleed.
But they'd be in ecstasy.

If you had hots and tossed in bed,
then we could toss together,
and dampen cloth,
and steam up glass,
whisper hots,
and give hot shouts.
And we could sweat these damn hots out.

Nicholas Moore

The Night: She's Got A Lot Of Ball

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 06:40:00 GMT

Hanging With Mister Hooper

The moon is
the curious
clitoris of spacetime.

The moon is
an elephant sleeping
on fire under water.

The moon is
an uprooted stop sign
made of ivory

visiting from the movies.

Nicholas Moore

"Elegy"? Oh... I Thought You Said "Ali G."

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:24:02 GMT

Safety Last

I'm thinking of death as
a pressure valve.
The valve is the human body
and the pressure is the soul.

Also, I'm thinking of death as
a dance floor made of ice. Beneath
the ice is math and void.

But down there maybe there's a city.
I want to say about faith
and hope, that faith is hope
minus suspense.

But once you've fallen under there
there may be someone there to ask
"How is it that you got here?

And you can say,
"My dancing broke the floor.
My dance was what
it was."

Nicholas Moore

I Was Invited To Write Something About Playwriting For A Local Magazine (The Ryder). I Wrote This.

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 20:53:00 GMT

How To Write A Three-Page Play

by Bloomington Playwright Nick Moore

Author’s Note: Much of this is lies.

Hello, aspiring playwrights. My name is Nick Moore, and lately I’ve been making quite a splash in the fast-paced and glamorous world of amateur playwriting, with a little help from my friends over at the Bloomington Playwrights Project, Bloomington’s local community theater dedicated exclusively to the production of new plays.

Reader, do you often find that your daydreams are cluttered with vignettes, tableaus, and generalized melodrama? Yes? Then you, Dear Sir or Madame, just might be a playwright! Imagine if there were a channel on your television, where you could rewatch last night’s dreams. That’s what a career in playwriting could be like for you. And just as filthy! You pervert.

The Bloomington Playwrights Project, you know, is in the habit of putting on medleys of very short plays, and on these occasions, I’ve had the opportunity to write and submit three-page plays. It’s a fascinating art form. One of my three-page plays, The Old Testament: A Musical, was voted Audience Favorite, in a 2007 short-play festival all about religion, called Plays The Lord, And Pass The Exposition. The next year the BPP put on a jaunty series of ditties exploring the sensual side of our electoral politics (Sexual Congress), at which I again took home top honors with my rambling three-page opus, entitled, William Henry Harrison: Thirty Two Days Of Red-Hot Mojo.

So, since I’m obviously marinated in qualifications, I thought I might give you, Dear Reader, my advice on how to write a bang-up three-page play. I mean, why shouldn’t I, Dear Reader; you’re obviously no threat to me.

The First Rule is: “There are no rules!” The Second Rule is, “Hire a lawyer.” (He or she will come in handy as the First Rule relentlessly destroys you.) Now, let’s look at additional helpful rules, with the assistance of our hapless interloper, Shakes The Idiot.

Shakes: Nick, I’ve heard that every good story has a beginning (in which the hero attempts to get something he wants), a middle (in which the hero is required to do an unexpected thing, made necessary by the success or failure of his Beginning action), and an Ending (in which the results of both the Beginning and the Middle actions combine, to unexpectedly reveal a third perspective on his overriding goal, thereby illuminating what was misunderstood all along.). In light of this three-part structure inherent in all story-telling, when writing a three-page play, would it be a good idea to consciously dedicate one page to each of these three story parts?

My Response: Shakes, you ignorant slut. Here’s what I do: I grab a Sharpie, I float three pieces of cardboard in the bathtub, I drink some absinth, and I know I’m done writing when my marker gets wet. Other times though, I do get writer’s block. One time I wrote a play entitled The Major Battles Of World War II’s Mediterranean Theater: A Puppetshow. After painstakingly bringing the grand tragedy of it all to an exhilarating climax, I realized with horror that I was still on the first page.

Shakes: Characters in plays often have philosophical debates. But I imagine that such debates are only interesting if the plot depends, in some way, on the outcome of the debate. Right?

My Response: Shakes, I hate you, and I wish you would die. There is nothing wrong with the characters having a little chat that doesn’t advance the plot in any way. I once wrote a three-page play called Nick Gives Arguments As To Why His Landlord Should Give Him Free Rent. In the play I play myself and a traveling salesman comes to call. As he sits speechless on my couch, I deliver multiple lengthy arguments as to why my real-life landlord should give me free rent. It was very moving; There wasn’t a dry eye in my head.

Shakes: You know, Nick, I think you’re right.

My Response: About what?

Shakes: Your landlord really should give you free rent.

My Response: Shakes, this is what I call a happy ending.

Ron Paul To Obama: "Suck It!"

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:01:21 GMT

Where's The Steering Wheel On This Hangover?

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:12:55 GMT

Intercourse

When two great generals meet
on the field, historians look back
and say,
"Their geniuses collided like
the sparks and bang of fireworks."

That's what it ought to be like
the next time that I fuck somebody.
There's been a lot of fucking going on
it seems between me and the world
lately.

In broad daylight I'm dripping drunk
as if found innocent
by reason of insanity;
at night I toss and rotate:
shadowboxing my dream family.

All afternoon a voice says to me,
"The collisions will continue,
just until your mind contains
the perfect mix
of chaos and machinery."

Nicholas Moore

I Wrote A Poem About New Years Once, Which Proved Prophetic, As Years Have Been Ending Ever Since

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:27:29 GMT

My Great Lost Childhood

1.
"The world is cute in a doomed sort of way." This is the thought I have before the television set. It's New Year's Eve. And I'm at this party and it's like a cloud raining drunken friendship on me.

So I go to the balcony and climbing the railing I stand on its ledge, balanced and erect like Jesus in the breeze.

The night's black fondle rapes me.
The moon sings like an alien.

I think about the year.

2.
It was a year of injury. It was a year of waiting. But it was also the year of the tequila-shot turning point, and salivary invitations in the living rooms of yore.

It was the year that I fell in and out of love with cigarettes. They burned abusively, breaking my body, as I stood on midnight sidewalks, as I sat on curbs outside of airports. They made me need them like big-eyed orphans with rubble for organs, like dying lovers made of paper and always burning and always kissing good-bye.

This was the year of my burning flesh when I toiled shirtless in fields of crops. The rain, when it came, it felt like a thousand cold apologies. And you could hear it coming like a rolling wet avalanche on the grey horizon.

It was the year I was marooned on a feminine continent. Mine was a clumsy mission of love. I stripped completely naked to commit dishonest sign language. I must admit I fumbled dumbly with foreign cuisine.

And it was the year that I failed once again to unite the columns of my bleeding brethren of the blood bank. We have nothing to lose but our picked-pocket blues.

And it was the year of the tequila-shot turning point ( if I haven't mentioned that already ).

And it was the year that my lover and I kissed like puddles in a parking lot. My lover mixed with water was a flawless institution. We bathed in streetlamps and the static of raindrops. Her face tasted pink. Her edges were wet. And for hours we slid upon slippery tongues and I rode her lips down a waterfall.

This year I was wrong a lot. I slumped sadly on forsaken blueprints. I hurled last-year's love notes into a bonfire in abandoned campgrounds. I'll never need those ideas again.

This was the year a lover escaped me, as I stood shattered on a summer pier. I gave her back her father's hats. Her makeshift boat was upon the water. It was fashioned out of photographs of us in various states of the union and blankets we'd made love upon on purloined phantom evenings. All it took was one brave push with my shoeless foot to send her raft drifting into unknown waters, gradually and forever. I remember the sun like a tarnished puce headlight leaning slowly into the sea.

This was the year that heathens stormed the museum. They dragged beaten and barefoot through the streets the naked posers for the painters. And soon our guns will be in space.

3.
So there I am, remember, on that balcony, these memories crashing like drunken dump trucks of the mind, an archipelago of instants, and I, a crazed Magellan.

But for all its Sturm und Drang, a year is a thing that you leave.
Even for all its death and song, a year is a thing that you leave.

So I'm standing still on the balcony's ledge, erect and rippled by fingers of wind. And downstairs in tomorrow's parlors, everybody's in tails and top hats, clanging together their flutes of champagne. Lady Luck is down there dressed as a bride for an unborn groom. Her legs are spread like an open cash register. Her womanhood is a grassy steppe... steppe... step. Hot light pours out of the windowed facade from the parlors of tomorrow like a 24-hour soup kitchen of hope for the homeless vagrants of the soul.

And upstairs I'm balanced on the balcony's edge, playing chicken with Isaac Newton. Soon we'll all be as new as the year.

My thoughts turn to philosophy, what then is a human being?
A sentimental sentinel of a semi-century?
Then while I live, I'll plum the ages, pull the pin on love's grenade,

kiss my mistress, bloody-fisted,
sally down the promenade!

Then suddenly everywhere, live from New York City, that luminous sphere is falling earthward like a homesick spaceship. And aiming for the softest patch of future, I finally take my leap of faith.

Doom is a cuckoo clock. Luck comes like the sun.

My great lost childhood is yet to come.

Nicholas Moore

Stephen Hawking Visits African-American Prostitute, Revises No-Hair Theorem

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 08:59:39 GMT

A Gospel

Tonight by grave trees
under a blinking yellow stoplight,
I heard the voice of God

(He's getting to be
a wacky next door neighbor.)
I asked him to condense his overall
message, so I could spill it onto a page.

He said "The perfect, eventual everything
already exists", and that "it lures us
with whispers, naked,
to a bed in outer space."

Nicholas Moore