Thoughts for a Strong Week

May your bricks be

As strong as your mortar

May your jokes be short

And your pants even shorter.

One of Many Internal Conversations

 About the Medical Crisis of 2013

The extreme medical crisis brings me full circle on the brain question, the question about whether our brains are in charge of anything, and if so how much, because in a medical crisis you pretty much have to trust the medical professionals, because, let's face it, they use their brains and the accumulation of medical knowledge, to do things – such as save lives – that you, with your carpentry and plumbing tools and paint brushes and nice way of talking and cool life experience, simply can't do, plus they can prescribe morphine, which you also can't do, but speaking of brains, there's nothing like a medical crisis to engage you and your own brain to ask the bevy of doctors urgent questions and more questions and more questions until you start to notice that their answers don't always fit their other answers nor do they always fit the others guys' answers, so you ask more questions until you are layers deep into the accumulated medical knowledge of the eons, and now your questions are getting pretty good and engaging their brains because your brain has been paying very close to attention to the words they speak and parsing the words and breaking the facts down and stacking the facts up since this is a matter of life and death, and one day in the office of a major doctor dude, you realize that regarding the question you are asking he doesn't know the answer. He's never thought about this before. This is a scary moment. The doctor doesn't want to admit it. Neither do you. He's got his reasons. You've got yours. But none of the reasons are worth a flip compared to life and death, and within the space of one more question you don't care about anything but your hunger for knowledge, because his reasons and your reasons are small and shabby compared to life and death, and because your brain is engaged with your heart because your heart wants to go on beating and your brain wants to keep on breaking through the veil with new questions about the brain question and because of the crazy desperate throbbing exuberance of the immortal dizzy deep mystery of cells and space and the spinal column, and what doesn't belong there.

Some Favorite Obscure Wikipedia Pages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heuriger

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sanders_Pierce

Photo of Photo of Joel by Calvin Burgamy

Car Wash by Calvin Burgamy/Tina Kite

Dream Diary

 

I'm at an arts center, like the High but smaller. There is a sudden hubbub, people moving around excitedly, almost like a crime scene. Turns out a forgery has been discovered - one of the featured pieces. Patrons, workers, art people, everyone is commenting on it and giving their take. A spontaneous seminar takes place with gallery people talking about the history of "art crime" and individuals, even the waiters who are circulating with finger food and ice water, piping up with anecdotes, jokes and pointed remarks.

The atmosphere is "we're all in this together" in this spontaneous event, very convivial, a brief comersion of rich and poor, patrons and workers. It's hot, and amid the talk, people are guzzling ice water and asking for refills like there's no tomorrow. You can hear the click of ice cubes against glass all over. The waitrons are happy to oblige, whisking around with big pitchers of water, commenting on the forgery and pouring water here and there. At my table the waitron pours water into our glasses and I take a satisfying pull of clear ice cold water. The guy is just about to go away to refill the pitcher when another table nearby waves to him urgently about something. He can't do two things at once so he stands there for a second and in a moment that crosses the usual boundaries he turns to look at me, holds out the empty pitcher and asks if I would do him the favor of refilling the pitcher with water.

This is THE LOOK - our eyes are locked and a lot is going on in that look. He's taking advantage of this spontaneous democratic atmosphere, and I'm wondering why me and why should I and am I obligated. But I am thirsty so.... I say ok. He is greatly relieved and pushes the pitcher into my hands and mutters something about the kitchen being back there before rushing off to the other table.

So I get up and move uncertainly to the back of the big central room. There's no kitchen, just a sink, and I fill the pitcher. I'm just about to go back to join in the fun when I look down and notice there's just a couple of weakass little leftover ice cubes floating on the top of the pitcher. The water's cold, but its not ICE COLD. This won't do. That was the whole thing that made the water so good - the ice. I look back at what is now a party and look around for an ice machine, but there isn't any. I've got a choice to make - go back or look for ice. The ice wins.

There's a couple halls leading out of the room so I walk down one holding the pitcher of water. The sounds of the party fade and it seems the rest of the center is empty. And no ice machines. Everything looks dark, weird and eerie as I proceed. I get to a room and there's a woman there. She turns and asks, "so what should I paint?" Turns out she's here for a class and we chat and I clear up the misunderstanding. "I'm just looking for some ice" I say, hefting the pitcher by way of explanation. I ask her if there's a fridge or ice machine nearby and she gives vague directions to another part of the center, so I head off again, in search of ice for the pitcher of water.

Item: Government mandates wildly expensive study of "schooling" phenomenon. In an effort to rouse its lethargic, dimwitted and hopeless school children, the nation's leaders have determined that fish are the answer. The Department of Education has been renamed the Department of Fish, and every graduate thesis submitted to an accredited institution will be limited to the study of fish and their amazing capacity to "school". Says Jeffard Whitby, obviologist and Phish PhD, "We want to find the genetic markers that make fish want to school and once in "school" stay in school until they die or are eaten by sharks or are made into fishsticks. We can use this to increase children's desire to "school" and then later in life to keep a really cruddy job without killing more than half the people in the local cubicle area."

Monument Avenue

by Jonathan Marcus

View From the Motel Room

behind the beige plastic light-proof curtains
above the whisper quiet
weather control unit

bricks

baked red bricks
in rows
red baked rows

stacked like
bricks
a lotta bricks
a million bricks
stacked up
and across
up
and across
up
and across
in lines
that don’t line up

mortar brick
brick mortar
every where
a sun-baked mortar grid
above the weather control unit

sun creeps ticktock
across the bricks
slow as a brick factory
bakes bricks red in the sun
lots of angles
lots of cubes
lots of mortar
big stack
big view

from the motel room

by the boy poets, reviewing the viewing

Words of the Week

Snoyty: When you use summer as a verb.

Blahdroyd: When your favorite color is beige.

Packhead: Going to a big box store to buy small boxes.

Somnesianity: Praying god will make everyone really sleepy. 

The Obelisk of Kartoon 



The Obelisk of Kartoon 
blasts 
into the outersphere 
a terrific fire 
propelling 
and pushing 
and pulsating 
the high techno, super lightweight, 
superduper ultra alloy, outerspace  metal 
mocalvinium, 
flaming, 
hurtling 
its weightless 
astronauts,  faces 
pressed 
against their visors which are 
pressed 
against the quadruple thickness, 
built to last 
in the vacuum of space portals 
flashing 
terrific grins,  no gravity,  hell bent.

by Calvin Burgamy

News of the Week

Item: Man Gets All His Ducks in Row, Briefly. Joe Schmoxli of West Huffakers, NV, owner/operator of the Family Innocence Petting Zoo, assisted by his trained ferret, Hinky, recently arranged all 47 of his ducks in a row in front of a mesmerized crowd of Cub Scouts, confused emus, wet-cold-blooded-codfish and paying customers. Combining provocative rhetoric, disco hustle dancing and magic fancy swipes with a broom culled from his years as an Olympic curler, Mr. Shmoxli finally squeezed all the ducks into stringent alignment for an official 1.3 seconds, a standard set by the Global Council of Imposing Linearity. Moments later, overwrought by maintaining such a taxing vector, several fowl spontaneously converted to Sufism, broke ranks and waddled recklessly towards Greater Duckness like it was 1999.

231st Street

FDR Built This Park

I can still hear the mighty hammers

of truth and justice and public opinion

clanging against the hard rock of the land

knocking out a great depression

picnic tables made from ropes

strong arms and B-52's

soaring from the mountain side

black and white, bricks and beer

a red white and blueprint and oh so green

bald eagles and wild turkeys

wild as broncos smoking FDR's tobacco

and now I sit here 50 years later

wishing Delano his large self and his rich sister

were right here

drinking our Budweiser, eating our potato salad

and seducing our neighbors

toasting the New Deal and Social Security

stacking the Supreme Court

gently reminding him not to say "japs"

and in general enjoying

the fine weather we're having

maybe he brought it with him

the boy poets remember a distant time

.

Interesting Thoughts

"Everything is somewhere always."  - Max Zictim, a relative of the Absolute

"If you wonder whether or not you did something, you either did or did not do it."  - Fergus III, Duke of Whaxam


"I wanna be in a nut commercial." - Gregg Almond

Road Work #2

by Calvin Burgamy

Godot Family Reunion

This just in from the whirled headquarters 
news desk! 
Godot family reunion turns into waiting game. 

Muh-muh-muh My Fedora

left in the position of far and wide 
look to my fingers to see the other side 
on one side this and the other side that 
can't remember where I left my hat 
gat 
and then boom went the noise 
boom  
boom boom boom went the noise 
and I found my fedora 
yes, I found my fedora 
I'm tellin' you 
I found my fedora 
exactly where I left it

News of the Week

Item: Upyersjohn, the rising pharmaceutical company, has announced the newest in contrapreventive medicine: the Clinic in a Condom. Licensed and distributed under the name brand, "Terminator XXX", these condoms mark the latest in nanotechnological convenience. Not only is the Terminator lined with antigens for the twelve major sexually transmitted diseases, but it also features an aqueous film of biolipids in which swim scores of microbiologically genengineered urologists, infectious diseases and sperm killing experts. "Yes, of course they're licensed" said Jonny Wadd, PR rep for Upyersjohn, "they just have really small diplomas."

See Major Fortissimo

Item: Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” fail to impress Richmond couple. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln E. Lee checked out the movie from the Strawberry Street Slacks That Fit Gift Shop and Video Rental Store World, and readied themselves for a unique cinematic spectacle only to find that the whole “drama” was clunky and artificial and without either believable characters or redeeming social value or scary birds or a plot for chrissakes, which was especially annoying since it cost them four bucks out of their slacks that fit and video rental budget, not to mention the time spent travelling to and from the rental store in some pretty sucky weather. “I got yer Birds right here,” said Mr. Video Store Magnate, like he was all of a sudden some kinda Confederate general before Ft. Sumter. But two hours later, when The Birds was over, it as quiet as Appomatox throughout the ununited union. “That’s when I changed my name from Bob to Lincoln,” confided the enigmatic Lincoln E. Lee.

Words of the Week

Villionaire: The rich bad person we all want to be.

Doon: When your comprehension of the day peaks at lunch.

Dunderbreast: Nursing a bad idea. 

Radio-Active

the sofa is a radio

the sofa is radio active

searching for signals

sit on the left, pick up NPR

on the right, get Fock Snooze

in the middle, all the hits

99x Robert “Bob” Robertson

laughing living loving lounging and loathing

coming at you 1000 miles an hour

from downtown Willacoochee, GA

straight from the heartland

straight from the atomic heart

the sofa is a radio-active

radio

Report from Armuchee:

talked to my dad last night. he just took delivery of a Massey Ferguson 45 hp 4wd tractor paid for with insurance money from the fire.  So he's out there with his macular degeneration and his periodic neuropathy, at 94 years old. putting about with this drop dead sexy tractor pulling up burnt cedar trees.  a good hobby at 94, no?  the last time he took delivery of a new tractor was more than 70 years ago, just before he and his brother entered the war.  He may be nutz in his intellectual allegiances but he is rock solid in the Artes Mechanicae.  His twin brother with Alzheimers is still holding steady too.  Makes me wish I had abused myself more when the opportunity was there, as I obviously have an account to cash in, at least on his side of the family.  None daunted, there is still time to exhaust the ledger.   wish we could do it together . . . 

Ro-Tel

Ro-tel 
motel 
coat tail 
blood cell 
ground swell 
death knell
ark cell 
farewell 
get well 
hard sell
misspell 
repel 
raise hell
propel
retell
soft sell
pastel
alarm bell
william tell
silica jell
liberty bell 

Word of the Week

High Coo: Japanese poetry recited in an whacked-out sandpapery falsetto, by someone who is nuzzling your lobe.

News of the Week

Item: Woman Gets Art Grant, Shoots Car. District attorney Milo Hightones of Jupiter, Florida, claims to have "more than enough circumstance" to indict local conceptual artist, platinum blonde and late night Waffle House dessert queen Candy Kane, who's not really from Jupiter, Florida, according to just about anybody who is from Jupiter, Florida.
What is not in dispute is that shortly after Ms. Kane received a $112 check from the Jupiter Bureau of Cultural Affairs, she pumped 1,973 rounds of hot lead into Mayor Chuff Whitbee's 1973 Chevron Algonquin Matador Custom deluxe all leather Full Tilt Cruiser at midnight last Tuesday under the harsh pinkish glow of the new mercury vapor street lights installed at Jupiter City Hall. Said a beaming Ms. Kane, "Metaphorically, Chuff's Matador is a piece of crapola but realistically it's not about symbols. It's about time and love and bullets."
Fortunately, Mayor Whitbee had recently insured the Matador against bad conceptual art and store-bought ammo. Mayor Whitbee was last seen under the self same harsh pinkish glow of the new mercury vapor street lights, running a trembling hand over the bullet-ridden side panel of his beloved Matador, weeping loudly and deconstructing modern art. Whether this was due to simple remorse or aesthetic catharsis is best left in the eye of the beholder, or perhaps stuffed in the glove compartment of the Chevron Algonquin.

Video - The Red Dress

This movie was made during the Rapid i Movement Film Festival. Contestants had 50 hours to write, direct, produce a 5 to 7 minute movie. The theme: "Originality Unfiltered". The criteria: no women tied up, no killing old people, no guns killing people, no "it was all a dream", no white rappers and there had to be a person or place that was quintessentially Atlanta. And then we re-did it and added another ending just for us.

Indelibility Study

how many edible seconds do you get?

as many as you crave

memory is a function of desire

desire, lust and sex

thirst and yearning

beast and angel

beagle and eagle

converging on this

moment

this bright night

this howl at the moon light

this nice slice

this river writes itself

Sleeping at the summit. 

Eleven Leading Job Interview Questions:

1. With whom have you hobnobbed?
2. Do you have chapstick on your lips? Lipstick on your chaps?
3. Have you ever had sex with a Bolivian?
4. What is the capitol of Missouri?
5. Where would you like to massage Mrs. Bush?
6. What color bra are you wearing?
7. Do you know my half sister Meagan?
8. Do you know when to punt? If so, when?
9. Where is the Crimea?
10. Do you believe in Atlantis?
11. Say something interesting in Esperanto.
12. Are small potatoes good for you?
13. How long was The Hundred Years War of 1812 Overture?
14. How do you pronounce “pronunciation?”
15. How bad are you in bed?
16. Would you work here for free?
17. You wanna go get something to eat?

fluxion = flowing ⸞

fluxion = flowing ⸞

> the derivative relative to time

whatever that means

dendrons axons atoms

fibers, even wood become

the beginning of words

< before we say them

____ baseline actions

performed in the background ⇐

the medulla oblongata

cranking out wisdom

of the ages ⇄

whatever that means ᓥ

thought is the pulse

the heartbeat  of the brain

played out on hardscrabble

a rocky place

dividing ÷ its time

its space ⊭

altered

Official Announcement

no photos available at press time

Our work at WhirledHeadQuarters is certified state-specific, as duly noted in the archives. In addition, at no extra charge, we offer our ironclad guarantee: None of our work is done in the eternal now because the eternal now is driving us all crazy. With one foot in the last millennium, the other foot in the millennium before that, you can trust us to pitch you hungrily and irritably through the digital divide and onward into the next-to-the-last millennium. 

Night Light

snow cones

in the snowfield

night light

made of daylight

amber lamps

and amber skies

New HQ Videos - I Came From Within Me / I, Kuchar

I Came From Within Me, Trailer

I, Kuchar by Calvin Burgamy, Jon Marcus, & Matt Rosenberger

Way Back Project

Whirled HQ is starting a new side project - The Way Back archives. We started our first website way back in 1997, when we were an org. World Headquarters dot org, to be precise. Due to lax accounting, we lost that web address to a Costa Rican travel agency somewhere along the way, and started anew with whirledhq dot com. We've had lots of iterations of our web page, and most of the sprawling and pungent content we've posted over the years is now only available through internet archives, which we were surprised to find has preserved most of our "stuff" relatively intact.

The picture above (click on it to embiggen) is the earliest screenshot of our home page we could find, dating back to August 2000. We'll post some other screengrabs, but more importantly, we're going to start combing through all of our historical stuff and  re-posting selected pieces here. And, as the severest of understatements, we've posted a crapload of the utterest of stuff over the years.

You'll notice a couple new tabs on this blog: Way Back News and Way Back Poetry. Check'em out for samples of classic HQ produce, everfresh from the Aesthetic Poetron Converter (our unique collaborative process). We may add other tabs for Words and the like, but for right now that's our story and it's stickin' to us. To be continued...

Ice Cream For Breakast

Descartes woke up and thought a thought

The first one of the morn

“I think therefore I am” it was,

which delighted him on the spot

But after a stretch he became quite vexed

As another thought was born

Because the second thought Rene thought that day was

“What will I think of next?”

Whirled Headquarters just had another live show at the DooGallery in Reynoldstown. For the first time we have posted our "script" and accompanying  material (poems, videos, words, etc). Check out the link to the show.
Most of the people who came to the show were ecstatic and made enthusiastic comments like, "Wow. I loved the hula hooper." and "That vodka was really tasty!" and "I miss the snacks." Very gratifying to hear such complimentary comments.
Thanks to everyone who came and to those who didn't. The next show is in its nascent stages and if carefully treated and groomed it may bloom in the near future.