A little something to read...

[MC Moot]

"The Ape Play" by Stuart Ross

THE ACTOR SITS ON A CHAIR at centre stage a rudimentary cardboard house at his knees.
In each hand he holds a plush toy ape or two.
He speaks all his lines far too loudly as though he is the idiot he is.

This is the ape house where the ape play will begin.

These are the apes.

When this ape comes on stage, everyone on this side of the room should gasp and say, “You are a bad and troublesome ape!"

When the other ape confronts the first ape in a particularly tense scene in Act III and then eats a moth, everyone on this side of the room should say, “It is better to eat a moth than to stop the rain from pouring from the sky.”

At the part where there is an earthquake and the house shakes {shakes house around},everyone who has been in the shaking house should say,”Run,apes, from the collapsing building! Save yourselves!”

When you see this ape go like this {waves ape around erratically},you should picture your head, as if you are dreaming, a bowling alley with apes bowling but where the bowling pins are all penguins wearing bowler hats.

During the intermission, those audience members closest to the stage should say, “The ape play consists of apes! We can see the best!”

The ape play contains both drama and heart-warming humour. When the apes do or say something funny, like the thing about the banana peel, you should laugh.

When something dramatic happens, like the part where the ape tells of his difficult childhood, you should be silent and thoughtful, and reflect upon your own difficult childhoods, measuring whose childhood was more difficult – yours or the ape’s.

If anything happens to this ape, another ape will take his place in the ape play. Just because he is not the original ape, you should not ostracize him.

The ape play was written by an actual ape.

Also there is a part where the ape turns a crank on an organ. Imagine there is a little human on his shoulder dressed in a red cap and holding a tin cup. Due to the budget constraints of staging the ape play, a real little human could not be afforded.

Now I would ask that you all subside and extinguish your respiration, as the ape play is about to begin.




(y)

[MC Moot]

"Bono Gives the Rush-Hour Traffic Report" by Alyssa Lang

"Listen, everybody. Listen up. There's an epidemic in this country. An epidemic of waiting. An epidemic of sitting. In traffic.

There are people waiting in line. Day after bloody day. People. Wanting to go home. People. Sick. And tired.

Of waiting.

People. Waiting for the government to fix the problems of the people. People. Waiting for a sign. For a sign that says "END CONSTRUCTION ZONE"!

Waiting.

To see the flashing lights. In the distance. Under a blood-red sky. The flashing lights that say, "I've passed the three-car pileup on the westbound turnpike." I see people. Sitting in their cars. Burning their fossil fuels. Their transmissions. I-DL-ING! On the Expressway. Sitting. On I-95.

Waiting.

You want to know what I see? A car fire on Route 422? A stalled vehicle blocking the right lane on the A.C. Expressway? No. I see an overturned tractor-trailer on 76. Spilling its toxic load. Poisoning the innocent commuters. And I see people. People looking down the barrel of a 10.

Mile.

Delay.

People.

They want to know. When will this madness end? How long until I reach my exit? How long will the U.S. government, and its hired contractors, be repaving Interstate 476? It has to end. And if we don't do something about it our children are gonna suffer. And our children's children. And our children's children's children. And our children's children's children's children.

People.

Waiting.

Back to you, Jim."

[MC Moot]

"America" by Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for
murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over
from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie
producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals
an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and
twentyfivethousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in
my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his
automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they
sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the
speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the
workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party
was in 1835 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have
been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

[MC Moot]

"Tourists" by Sherman Alexie

1. James Dean

walks everywhere now. He's afraid of fast cars
and has walked this far, arriving
suddenly on the reservation, in search
of the Indian woman of his dreams.
He wants an Indian woman who could pass
for Natalie Wood. He wants an Indian woman
who looks like the Natalie Wood
who was kidnapped by Indians
in John Ford's classic movie, 'The Searchers.'
James Dean wants to rescue somebody beautiful.
He still wears that red jacket,
you know the one. It's the color of a powwow fire.
James Dean has never seen
a powwow, but he joins right in, dancing
like a crazy man, like a profane clown.
James Dean cannot contain himself.
He dances in the wrong direction. He tears
at his hair. He sings in wild syllables
and does not care. The Indian dancers stop
and stare like James Dean was lightning
or thunder, like he was bad weather.
But he keeps dancing, bumps into a man
and knocks loose an eagle feather.
The feather falls, drums stop.
This is the kind of silence
that frightens white men. James Dean
looks down at the feather
and knows that something has gone wrong.
He looks into the faces of the Indians.
He wants them to finish the song.

2. Janis Joplin

sits by the jukebox in the Powwow Tavern,
talking with a few drunk Indians
about redemption. She promises each of them
she can punch in the numbers
for the song that will save their lives.
All she needs is a few quarters, a beer,
and their own true stories. The Indians
are as traditional as drunk Indians can be
and don't believe in autobiography,
so they lie to Janis Joplin about their lives.
One Indian is an astronaut, another killed JFK,
while the third played first base
for the New York Yankees. Janis Joplin knows
the Indians are lying. She's a smart woman
but she listens anyway, plays them each a song,
and sings along off key.

3. Marilyn Monroe

drives herself to the reservation. Tired and cold,
she asks the Indian women for help.
Marilyn cannot explain what she needs
but the Indian women notice the needle tracks
on her arms and lead her to the sweat lodge
where every woman, young and old, disrobes
and leaves her clothes behind
when she enters the dark of the lodge.
Marilyn's prayers may or may not be answered here
but they are kept sacred by Indian women.
Cold water is splashed on hot rocks
and steam fills the lodge. There is no place like this.
At first, Marilyn is self-conscious, aware
of her body and face, the tremendous heat, her thirst,
and the brown bodies circled around her.
But the Indian women do not stare. It is dark
inside the lodge. The hot rocks glow red
and the songs begin. Marilyn has never heard
these songs before, but she soon sings along.
Marilyn is not Indian, Marilyn never will be Indian
but the Indian women sing about her courage.
The Indian women sing for her health.
The Indian women sing for Marilyn.
Finally, she is no more naked than anyone else

[MC Moot]

ummmmm would someone else post something to read?

[paul jones]

He told me I didn't understand, that we were from the bleak industrial wastes of North England, or something, and that we didn't understand the Internet. I told him Fall fans invented the Internet. They were on there in 1982.
Mark E. Smith

[paul jones]

A part of me has become immortal, out of my control.
Brian Eno

Agressive music can only shock you once. Afterwards its impact declines. It's inevitable.
Brian Eno

As soon as I hear a sound, it always suggests a mood to me.
Brian Eno

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art.
Brian Eno

Avant-garde music is sort of research music. You're glad someone's done it but you don't necessarily want to listen to it.
Brian Eno

Every collaboration helps you grow. With Bowie, it's different every time. I know how to create settings, unusual aural environments. That inspires him. He's very quick.
Brian Eno

For me it's always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it's always sound first and then the line afterwards.
Brian Eno

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.
Brian Eno

I always use the same guitar; I got this guitar years and years ago for nine pounds. It's still got the same strings on it.
Brian Eno

I don't live in the past at all; I'm always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.
Brian Eno

I enjoy working with complicated equipment. A lot of my things started just with a rhythm box, but I feed it through so many things that what comes out sounds very complex and rich.
Brian Eno

I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.
Brian Eno

I had a lot of trouble with engineers, because their whole background is learning from a functional point of view, and then learning how to perform that function.
Brian Eno

I had wanted a tape recorder since I was tiny. I thought it was a magic thing. I never got one until just before I went to art school.
Brian Eno

I hate the rock music tradition. I can't bear it!
Brian Eno

I have a definite talent for convincing people to try something new. I am a good salesman. When I'm on form, I can sell anything.
Brian Eno

I have lived in countries that were coming out of conflict: Ireland, South Africa, the Czech republic. People there are overflowing with energy.
Brian Eno

I often work by avoidance.
Brian Eno

I see TV as a picture medium rather than a narrative medium.
Brian Eno

I take sounds and change them into words.
Brian Eno

[paul jones]

I think generally playing live is a crap idea. So much of stage work is the presentation of personality, and I've never been interested in that.
Brian Eno

I thought it was magic to be able to catch something identically on tape and then be able to play around with it, run it backwards; I thought that was great for years.
Brian Eno

I wanted to get rid of the element that had been considered essential in pop music: the voice.
Brian Eno

I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.
Brian Eno

I'm very good with technology, I always have been, and with machines in general. They seem not threatening like other people find them, but a source of fun and amusement.
Brian Eno

I've discovered this new electronic technique that creates new speech out of stuff that's already there.
Brian Eno

If I had a stock of fabulous sounds I would just always use them. I wouldn't bother to find new ones.
Brian Eno

If you want to make someone feel emotion, you have to make them let go. Listening to something is an act of surrender.
Brian Eno

If you watch any good player, they're using different parts of their body and working with instruments that respond to those movements. They're moving in many dimensions at once.
Brian Eno

If you're in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.
Brian Eno

In the 1960s, people were trying to get away from the pop song format. Tracks were getting longer, or much, much shorter.
Brian Eno

It's not the destination that matters. It's the change of scene.
Brian Eno

Most of those melodies are me trying to find out what notes fit, and then hitting ones that don't fit in a very interesting way.
Brian Eno

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.
Brian Eno

Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
Brian Eno

My guitar only has five strings 'cause the top one broke and I decided not to put it back on: when I play chords I only play bar chords, and the top one always used to cut me there.
Brian Eno

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.
Brian Eno

Nearly all the things I do that are of any merit at all start off just being good fun, and I think I'm sort of building up to doing something else quite soon.
Brian Eno

One of the interesting things about having little musical knowledge is that you generate surprising results sometimes; you move to places you wouldn't if you knew better.
Brian Eno

People assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I remember the words.
Brian Eno

[paul jones]

Robert Fripp and I will be recording another LP very soon. It should be even more monotonous than the first one!
Brian Eno

Set up a situation that presents you with something slightly beyond your reach.
Brian Eno

The basis of computer work is predicated on the idea that only the brain makes decisions and only the index finger does the work.
Brian Eno

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don't set out to say anything very important.
Brian Eno

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.
Brian Eno

The reason I don't tour is that I don't know how to front a band. What would I do? I can't really play anything well enough to deal with that situation.
Brian Eno

We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience.
Brian Eno

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.
Brian Eno

When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
Brian Eno

[paul jones]

Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
Peter Ustinov

By increasing the size of the keyhole, today's playwrights are in danger of doing away with the door.
Peter Ustinov

Children are the only form of immortality that we can be sure of.
Peter Ustinov

Comedy is simply a funny way of being serious.
Peter Ustinov


Critics search for ages for the wrong word, which, to give them credit, they eventually find.
Peter Ustinov

Did you know that every two hours the nations of this world spend as much on armaments as they spend on the children of this world every year?
Peter Ustinov

Her virtue was that she said what she thought, her vice that what she thought didn't amount to much.
Peter Ustinov

I was irrevocably betrothed to laughter, the sound of which has always seemed to me to be the most civilized music in the world.
Peter Ustinov

I'm convinced there's a small room in the attic of the Foreign Office where future diplomats are taught to stammer.
Peter Ustinov

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done.
Peter Ustinov

In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.
Peter Ustinov

It is our responsibilities, not ourselves, that we should take seriously.
Peter Ustinov
Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.
Peter Ustinov

People who reach the top of the tree are only those who haven't got the qualifications to detain them at the bottom.
Peter Ustinov

The only reason I made a commercial for American Express was to pay for my American Express bill.
Peter Ustinov

The point of living and of being an optimist, is to be foolish enough to believe the best is yet to come.
Peter Ustinov

To refuse awards is another way of accepting them with more noise than is normal.
Peter Ustinov

Unfortunately, the balance of nature decrees that a super-abundance of dreams is paid for by a growing potential for nightmares.
Peter Ustinov

Contrary to general belief, I do not believe that friends are necessarily the people you like best, they are merely the people who got there first.
Peter Ustinov, Dear Me (1977)

[paul jones]

Kate Winslet's gushing awards babble of 2009

Winslet's highlights A simple thank you would have done

*Best Supporting Actress – The Reader

"OK, you have to forgive me because I have a habit of not winning things. [She puts award on the floor then picks it up]. No that doesn't feel right putting that down ... Penelope, Amy, Marissa and Viola. It is such an honour to be in your company ... Sorry this is going on a bit but I'm gonna make the most of it. I must also, I really must also thank our hair and make-up department ... Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack were producers on this film. They died while we were filming and they never got to see the finished product; I hope they would have been proud. My husband Sam for your incredible support ... I'm sorry I was so mental at the end. And my children Mia and Joe who are watching this on TV. Look, I won!"

*Best Actress – Revolutionary Road

"I'm so sorry Anne, Meryl, Kristin, and oh God, who's the other one? Angelina. Now, forgive me. Gather. This is really happening ... Thank you so much. You should wrap up. You have no idea how much I'm not wrapping up ... I want to thank the late great Richard Yates for writing this remarkable novel ... Leo, I'm so happy I can stand here and tell you how much I love you and how much I've loved you for 13 years. And your performance in this film is nothing short of spectacular‚ And my husband Sam. Thank you for directing this film, babe, and thank you for killing us every single day. It made me love you more."

[MC Moot]

When Vonnegut Spoke:


Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college.

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful

I am eternally grateful..for my knack of finding in great books, some of them very funny books, reason enough to feel honored to be alive, no matter what else might be going on.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.