1st Voice:

Tell me: where’s the fancy bread?
Did you eat it in my bed?
The sheets are full of crumbs and spread!
Reply. Reply!*

2nd Voice:

You mistrust me, and, in your eyes
I see where your suspicion lies.
The secret’s mine and, with me, dies!

1st Voice:
You ate my bread but will not tell!
I’ll evict you–!

2nd Voice:

Go to hell.
Go to hell.

*The first folio stanza reads as follows, although most reputable scholars believe this edition of the song to be spurious:
Tell me, where’s the fancy bread?
In the pantry or the shed?
Where’d it go? And where’s my spread?
Reply, reply!

How soon hath youth, the raucous thief of time
Stol’n on his wing my summer’s first full week.
My reading days pass by  me in a streak,
My wasted spring in bureaucratic grime.

Perhaps my brain can justify this crime:
If, in my work, I made my mind too weak,
Some books I read would simply seem antique
That with more timely rest I’d find sublime.

But whether I work hard or harder play,
The clock will still in strictest measure tick
And hours, weeks and fortnights pass me by,
Rushing toward examination day.
All hangs, if I work slow or I work quick,
As ever on the grad commitee’s  ”Aye.”

VI.
This saw the Greatbooke clerke did but frustrate,
For he mote not list spells he never knew,
Nor things he never heard of yet  relate,
And so he knew not what he did pursue:
As when that child of Danaë did subdue
The gorgon, victim both of wrath and love,
And, forced to fight a fiend he mote nat view,
Look’d onely at his shield, and blindly strove,
So he that elder followed wherever he did rove.

VI.
Eftesoons beside the path they did behold
A gorgeous damzell on an iuory mare,
Yclad in verdant dress, and locks of gold,
And well did she her tender tresses wear.
To accent her endowments, and a pair
Of scales shee held, shee Aura hight,
And eke her buxom sister, no less faire,
With face that seem’d to spurn and to invite,
Term’d Fama, looked fair from on her palfrey’s height

VII.
Those two to distant Conference were bound,
And they that clerk bade also to attend,
For sure they were that wizards did abound
Who surely would their wisdomes gladly lend
To one who sought that giant’s reign to end.
The elder daungers dire perceived in this,
And warned his charge what mischiefs did portend,
But here those ladies offered him a kisse:
The smallest fauour, yet to him it seemed the highest bliss.

I.
An Elfin Clerke was trotting through the cold
Ycladd in clothing cheap with face sevear
Wherein new lines of age that seemed olde
Did tell of long moneths spent in archives drear.
Yet bookes til that time oft had brought him chear:
His paensive steed his heavy brows did knit
As scanning matters deepe and formes unclear.
Full learned clerke he seem’d, and fair did sitt,
As one for ancient scrolls and lengthy lectures fitt.

II.
But on his back an heavy tome he bore–
The dread tradition of the Phaerie londes–
Which on his frame and minde did weigh full sore,
For in its leaves were writ the dread commaunds
That ancient mages with their mysticke wands
Did chaunt to wield th’ elements diuine.
The same such did he take with him on hondes,
To fashion spells and glammours to design
Though nothing new could make, but old charmes recombine.

III.
Vpon a great aduenture he was sent,
That great Philosophia to him gaue–
That greatest, wisest Duchess–who had leant
The work he bore in order it to saue
From one who hoped its power to enslaue.
And euer as he rode, his hart did earne
To slay the beast who that great booke did crave.
Now other textes abroadde he sought, to learn
The meanes to do’t: ’til then he mote not home return.

Helpe then, O Joseph Curvo, liquor fine,
Thy weaker Novice to perform thy will.
Draw forth from sweet agave’s bitter brine
The wildest fancies borne of Spanish still,
Of Phaerie clerks and fairest Tenyurquill,
Which solemn student of proud Elfin tong
Sought through the world, and suffered so much ill
That he for worldly skills would often long
So might he pay for bread and thus his days prolong.

And with him eke, O Poet Ireland hates–
And right well so, since you them did oppresse–
Great poet of that period whose dates
I oft forget, and oftener must guess,
Who shone in epick praise of good queene Bess,
Pray, raise no eyebrows at my thoughts too vile
To earn the right to imitate in jests
The least iota of your loftie stile;
Yet if thou can’tst, I prithee, look away a-while.

Art is a subtraction, it is an eruption of the void into the state situation. But the situation it disrupts is that which we commonly call “culture.” Culture, the supposed sum and total of human existence, the discursive field within and upon and through which the state exists and which insists upon its own summative nature. Art disrupts culture.

We are now at a moment in history–and here I mean not the linear history of the West, but rather the cyclical history of the seasons, of the calendar, and of the liturgy–which is undoubtedly embedded in culture.  We must think “Christmas” not as event, but as part of the state, a situation which rests upon the void and which awaits the marking of the evental site(site evenement) in order to become art. 

The event of the holiday, then, is that which exposes and names the void, and it is not to be found in our constant self-assurances of abundance and overflow. The void is not in the shopping malls. It is not to be found in the economico-cultural beacon of the times: the Christmas special, with its platitudes and  easy answers. These deny the void. They insist on its nonexistence. All is abundance. All is plenitude. Mr. Van Pelt’s declaration–”That is what Christmas is all about”–limits the situation while omitting to state its own stating of that limit. Van Pelt’s Christmas is local, as is the Christmas “miracle” of so many entertainments. It is cultural, and has nothing to say about truth–the saying of the void.

Only in the kitchen does the happening of truth, the beginning of the truth-procedure occur. Here, the cook–a parent or grand-parent (père)–seizes the bird which will be the sign of local plenitude for the Christmas feast, and marks it as void, sweeping out the innards and guts (entrailles) in order to fill it once more with stuffing. The bird is rendered empty: its fullness itself becoming the very articulation of its emptiness. From this site will proceed the truth in all its true universality in its declarations–”This is delicious,” “I’m stuffed,” “I need a nap,”–and in the beings-faithful which follow these declarations: satiation, sleep. Here, the declaration of fullness is itself the articulation of the void of the holiday: I am full now, not yesterday. Christmas thus is not, but rather becomes in the truth procedure of the dinner, where the diners insist on their being fulfilled now, and not in the local cultures of the Van Pelts and Geisels of the world.

Tremont Street’s third-year
student still reads through winter for his test to qualify;
his status is the same as yesterday.
His wife’s a lawyer. His baker
has sore throat and her nose is stuffy.
She’s writing, he reads gruffly,

Thirsting for
the effervescent dignity
of his advisor’s flattery,
he writes up all
his summaries once more,
in desperate scrawls.

The season’s ill–
We’ve lost our token Britisher,
who seemed to leap out of a BBC
Parody. He made our “y’all”s
apparent in their poverty:
His status has sat three days, silent, still.

But now our hermit
sophist tweets that sheer’s the best word of all
for fishnet stockings or ranged rocks;
strange, his sudden interest in long falls.
This will not help me with my work
but will defer it.

Late, late at night
my browser called up Aintitcool.
I read for hours of projects turned down,
movies put together, cell-by-cell,
while the minutes passed to hours….
That clock’s not right!

It’s not half-past eight
But–crap, oh holy crap–I fear
my ill-planned night has not gone well:
It’s midnight, and I’m out of Coke.
Ah, but what the hell,
Nobody’s here….

Only cats. They don’t work,
but canvas the house for a bite to eat.
They climb up my fridge for a late-night treat,
gold fur shining, then hop
in the cabinet, prodding till they drop
the food-bag with a lurch.

I groan and curse
in our back room and breathe the rich air–
the orange cat I’ve cared for since a kitten fills the litter pail.
He jabs his spade-paw in and stirs
the sour sand, looks at me a while,
and will not care.

Old Possum's Book of PracticLOLcatz

So here, in no particular order are things I like right now:

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As a long-term nerd, it’s a real admission of inadequacy to say that I have not yet seen Buffy in part or as a whole. We’ve just finished season one and are a few episodes into season two. Let me just say that there’s nothing finer than watching photogenic young teenagers kill demons, slay vampires, and snap witty comments at each other for an hour. I won’t say yet that the show is as brilliant as I’ve been led to believe, but it’s the most fun I’ve had with a show since the Doctor Who relaunch.
2. These webcomics: Hark, A Vagrant!, Questionable Content, Dinosaur Comics, MS Paint Adventures. I’m especially in love with the art on Hark, A Vagrant. I am intensely jealous of Kate Beaton, and will forever be so.
3. The Prisoner on AMC. The critics panned this, unfairly, I think. Okay, maybe the whole idea of constant, Foucauldian surveillance is a little played out these days, but I thought this was great. It’s trippy, episodic, bewildering, majestically paced (slow, if you’re a reviewer), and had an ending that really payed off.

Here are things I’m less thrilled about:

1. Swine flu. This thing is way overrated. While it’s the MacGuffin in my current imitative epic, “A Voyage to Allalamna,” it really was not near as rough on me as I was led to believe. Kids and old people should probably still watch out, though.
2. Disney’s latest shot at doing Dickens. This was an amazing disappointment. There was room for coolness here. Jim Carrey was Scrooge and all the ghosts. Gary Oldman was Cratchit, Tiny Tim, and Jacob Marley. This could have been interesting. Think about the implications those pairings have for Scrooge’s exclamation about there being “more of gravy than of grave about you” to Marley’s ghost. This casting could have been used to suggest cool things about the relationship of Scrooge’s ghosts to his own psyche. Instead, the movie boils down to useless roller-coaster sequences strung together in a frame vaguely resembling A Christmas Carol. Robert Zemeckis really needs to get off this mo-cap 3-d adaptation kick. He hasn’t made a decent movie since Castaway. Well… I like Beowulf, but it had a lot of problems.

And finally, things I hate:

1. Stomach viruses. These, unlike Swine Flu, are actually quite unpleasant. Here’s hoping things don’t get rapidly worse.