The Poorer Quarters

It seems like every minute of every day we’re confronted with a sentence we never thought we’d read. But even in a world of non sequiturs, this press release from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stands out. It feels like it was written by Kafka and edited by Pynchon.

A few selections:

• “HHS agencies have launched more than 20 initiatives to expand the use of technologies including human organoids, tissue models, artificial intelligence, and computational modeling while reducing reliance on animal models.”
• “NIH has also closed its last intramural beagle laboratory and allows grant funding to be used to retire or rehome research animals.”
• “The agency has issued multiple guidances designed to reduce animal studies in drug development, including changes expected to spare hundreds of non-human primates and more than one million horseshoe crabs annually.”

Less than a two minute clip and it touches on music, language and comedy. From his appearance on Trevor Noah’s show.

Sacrifice transitive verb

1. To not do what you’d prefer to do. To do something you’d rather not.

2. To give to. To give up for. To give up.

3. To do less than you’re able. To slow down for, or take less than you want. To leave for the other, defer to. To hunger. To stop.

4. To endure absence. To abide. To miss. To continue.

5. To suffer pain or fear on behalf of another or on behalf of an ideal.

6. To trust that there is value in lessening yourself. To hope.

Are people covering single songs in the hopes of confused Spotify listeners playing them instead of the original? All for what – a nanometer of a penny? 

Though the date of 2019 on the song below, makes me wonder if it’s an honest attempt to put a song on Spotify by a band that is a bit naive. Whether malice or mistake, the attorneys of Faces, Rod Stewart, Ron Wood and all their subsidiary entities are clearly asleep at the switch. So feel free to start posting your shower performances of Stay With Me.

From Spotify:

Dangle: “Did you hear they closed that yogurt place up off Main Ave?”

Junior: “Which one, ‘Gurt Slingers’?”

Dangle: “Yeah, the one that used to be ‘Yo Yo MaGurt’?”

Junior: “Oh no, really? I loved that place. Makes sense, I guess, though.”

Dangle: “Definitely. Soooo many fights at that place.”

Junior: “Right. Like, a LOT of fights. To be honest, I think something shady might’ve been going on there?”

Dangle: “Oh yeah?”

Junior: “Yeah. You know, everytime I’d order, that guy behind the counter would ask if I wanted ‘fruit on the bottom’ and then he’d wink, ya know? Like a suspicious wink. Like… Watch… he’d wink like that, you see?”

Dangle: “Hmm. Well, I can’t see. You’re wearing sunglasses, remember?”

Junior: “Right. Right.”

Often, while perpetually treading water in the flood of curated content, we need a toehold. Something meaningful or substantive to balance the firehose of videos, images, headlines, etc. that leave us feeling like we’re on our second Four Loko.

But, to torture the metaphor, this flood, like all the ones before it, has reshaped the landscape. It feels harder now to find and digest something meaningful. We don’t have the space to both consume something AND consider it, evaluate it, interpret it. Time is shorter. Neglecting the content feels like opting out of society. On and on.

But The Poorer Quarters understands and is here to help. Below are a few small doses of substance that can hopefully serve as a palate cleanser when things feel too Loko. 

In no particular order:

• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula Le Guin – Short Story, Sci-fi

A four-page short story written in the 70s, but it still feels urgent. Explores themes of comfort, choice and our duty to others.

• What’s Expected of Us by Ted Chiang – Short Story, Sci-fi

Just one page is needed to destroy your perception of reality and your place in it.  

• A Little Fable by Franz Kafka – Very Short Story, Fable

Three sentences. And a story I think about every single day. 

• The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats – Poem, Apocalyptic

Already referenced here in TPQ. But it’s always worth a read even if only to remind yourself of the seventh and eighth lines in the first stanza. 

• If– by Rudyard Kipling – Poem, Guidance

It’s funny how the advice you’re supposed to give to the next generation winds up being the advice you, yourself also need.

Lester Bangs was a brilliant music critic and an even better writer. He wrote passionately and wasn’t afraid of being wrong.

And today we have to say he was incorrect. With all due respect, we have to revise and amend his perfectly composed final paragraph of the send off to The King, “Where Were You When Elvis Died?” (Village Voice, August 29, 1977)

There was another musician that we all agreed on. One that held us together as Elvis did: Dolly Parton. 

So long.

“If love truly is going out of fashion forever, which I do not believe, then along with our nurtured indifference to each other will be an even more contemptuous indifference to each others’ objects of reverence. I thought it was Iggy Stooge, you thought it was Joni Mitchell or whoever else seemed to speak for your own private, entirely circumscribed situation’s many pains and few ecstasies. We will continue to fragment in this manner, because solipsism holds all the cards at present; it is a king whose domain engulf even Elvis’s. But I can guarantee you one thing: we will never again agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis. So I won’t bother saying good-bye to his corpse. I will say good-bye to you.” 

“Let this be my annual reminder that we could all be something bigger.” – Constructive Summer, The Hold Steady

Why does Dana Gould’s “Hanging with Dr. Z” feel like one of those comedy projects that hits at the right time, despite (or because of) its being a washed-up ape talk show parody?