Archive for January, 2009
Posted in Uncategorized on January 28, 2009| 1 Comment »
The End (of Analog) Is Near!
Posted in Uncategorized on January 14, 2009| 2 Comments »
Think I’ll stand on the street corner with a sign that says, ‘The End is Near!” If I hear one more announcement about digital TV and ordering a convertor box, I’m going to go postal!
If I were a visitor from another planet, I would think that the highest priority among humans is to make sure they don’t lose a television signal for a microsecond. That broadcasting in digital is the pinnacle of truth, that receiving the signals in colorful plasma is the ecstacy of human experience, that a hand around a black rectangular box which controls the oracle is the power of one’s very destiny, and that the idea of it’s loss is a thought more untenable than an apocalyptic event.
Would it be sacrilegious to stand with a cross and a sign that says “Get Converted over to DTV before the analog world ends!”
Now that is a thought! Maybe the end of television would indeed be the end of the world for so many of us. What could be more tragically final than no TV? There was an survey done a few years back which determined that the majority of Americans would rather spend six months in hell than six months without a TV. Which makes me wonder, how much relief could one get in hell by having a TV to watch? I’d rather be in hell with a TV than in my comfortable living room without one? Oh my Gog and Magog! What was I thinking!!!!?????
Meet me at the corner of First and Church. We gotta help get the message out. The end of the analog world is near.
I Sleep With Pencil Lead in My Hand
Posted in Language about Language on January 2, 2009| 4 Comments »
I have a piece of lead stuck in the palm of my right hand
It happened in 1967 behind my school
I often wondered if it would go to my heart one day and kill me
Now I use graphite – the harmless carbon used to lubricate machinery
It is not deadly, like lead
I write, not because I have a piece of lead stuck in my hand
not to be praised
nor to prove I can
not from lead bottom boredom
or the graphite can’t-help-its
or to doodle my brains out
not to release steam from a leaky brain valve
I write for meaning, truth, beauty
Alternately raw shocking
numbing graveyard-shouting life
I want to write the rigor back into rigor-mortis
Prayer back into the praying mantis
To put the leap back into the boiling frog
To draw condensation out of rolling fog
To light up the city with the electri-city
To see the things we all praise pitied
Not to worry — I will not jam my lead into your flesh
But I will take the sigh out of your synapse
and put the fight back into graphite
So, if you ever shake my right hand,
squeeze tight, pause
and know why I write.
Lamar Howell's Weblog 