Funny Shit poem from GR 94-116

[Joseph Tracy]

Well argued.

Here I will go a little political and also personal. Like many citizens I feel overexposed to snooping and the potential abuse of my online data and electronic communication.  What is in place now strikes me as Orwellian for those who expose military and political abuses of power,  and intrusive and intimidating  for almost everyone. The fact that Democrats took  no  stand against the massive, secret, unaccaountable growth of domestic surveillance is  simply unacceptable to me as a citizen. It is also one part of why I have zero admiration for Hillary or Obama. 

The general order of what is transparent and available for scrutiny needs to be reversed. The government should be more open to examination as the public servant of the people, and government agencies should be limited by truly represtative civilian oversight  and evidence of criminal action before they are allowed to spy or access private data. Our Senator Leahy from VT once asked why the Quakers of Vt were being spied on( that includes me). He never got an answer. The people responsible for this stuff are completely immune from representative democratic inquiry.  

One thing about Pynchon’s stand is that it asserts and demonstrates that a highly determined and smart person can participate in arts, letters, culture very effectively without submitting to the photo/video shooting gallery of modern publicity expectations.  He seems to have also been reluctant to participate in voice recording or grant interviews, but took a role in translating IV to film.

 


> On Jun 23, 2016, at 6:19 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> my reading of Pynchon and the cameras in his work--
> remember there are at least three major comic scenes from his first to his last big novel--that I can
> recall offhand ---    goes like this: 
> 
> 1) They all involve violating the act of making love. I suggest P has found a basic
> metaphor for the violation of such basic human privacy because of the modern world, a world
> where there are now cameras that others can use to see (into) us, so to speak. To violate us.
> To want to violate us. And, he has his characters, Benny, the woman in AtD, righteously 
> angry over it, a right attitude for human beings. 
> 
> 2) I also suggest that P's fictional vision makes use of that belief (and stories) about certain  
> pre-modern societies that treated pictures as a 'theft of one's soul". P sorta wants that as 
> a metaphoric "truth' at least in his vision, a lifelong piece of his vision. 
> 
> 3) As Ms. Sontag (and others) have noticed, to take a picture is described as 'taking a shot'.
> as with a gun. Metaphorically, she says, 'Killing time" by bringing it to a stop in the photo.
> Living in, embracing Time, is another part of P's vision of the Good Life, I suggest. So, killing 
> it is 'not good'. 
> 
> 4) His personal 'reclusive' camera aversion is NOT just shyness or a flight from 'publicity'
> but at one with part of his deepest vision of life. 
> 
> On Sat, Jun 18, 2016 at 3:29 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> So Teddy Bloat is again the stealthy cameraman....
> (on p 120 he is filming Slothrop and Darlene in bed ala
> Morris Teflon in V filming Benny)....and decades later
> in AtD, there is a cameraman trying to film the 
> nature-alive couple in the woods. 
> 
> Pynchon and sexual voyeurism, meanings of? 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Remember Morris
> 
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 1:50 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> FUNNY SHIT
> The secret cameraman is watching as
>  the blond enters the picture
> but his camera cannot detect any change in her face
>  that moment when the oven door opens
> 
>    not after Osbies banana crotch stunt
>   nor after pirate fondles his other scripto-magic decoder revealing crotch pistol
> but a little later
> not too long  after pirate handles his heavy crotchet pistol
> 
>  yes, then, right then when we zoom in on
> Osbie’s amanita smoke supply
>  fresh and warm from the oven  whose bliss zero teeth yellow in her memories
> memories blacker than the shit where the big bananas grow
> memories black as the face and curses of the Swarzcommando
> but the camera, neither then , nor later can catch  the change in the shadows
> when
> Katje catches  shared memories of Van Der Groov the killer  and
> sweet savior of the dodoes armed and comforted  with  a similar crotchet,
> which is the same one really
>   but with mere cameras Katje cannot be caught
> whose shadows remain impenetrable
> now reassigned to white visitation re ass signed to Slothrop
>   Slothrop whose own port holes  are also  re ass signed
> Porthos
> the man with the map to the future
>  the map to the man with the iron mask
> the once and future  porcine
>  king of futures fine and toilet style
> whose own teeth bite down on Quoad’s candy
> 
> alkaloid desolation
> adenoid
> paranoid
> meloid
> annoyed
> Jeez it must be pure nitric acid
> nitro glycerine medicine
> railroad extermination
> tongue a holocaust
> 
> Did somebody make him up
> make all this shit up
> what was God smoking that day
> That master chemist on the rooftop
> 
> Do the rockets from the crotchets fall on his house?
> is this shit supposed to be funny?
> 
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> 
> 

-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l