FORTUNECITY has CENSORED me.

The thing about it is this: the institution that watches over fortunecity believes
that they owe NOTHING to their users/customers. Because it's free. Thus,
the relationship between the mulitple offensive advertisers on their site is non-reciprocal.
One view: the advertisers allow users to use personal web space. But it's also the
other way around, the users ALLOW Fortunecity to pay its workforce. Without
users, NO ONE WOULD CLICK ON THE BANNER AND POPUP ADS.

THERE IS NOTHING ON THE USER AGREEMENT ABOUT USING .SWF
or .GIF files. Thus, their blockage can only be a FORM OF CENSORSHIP.
I can download and view the files, but they are being blocked by FORTUNECITY.

This is a FREEDOM OF SPEECH ISSUE. When contracts, even if agreed to,
are fundamentally restrictive of speech and expression (even in business-oriented
non-disclosure acts), they partake in discourse which is one step closer to
state and institutionalized censorship. This is a movement toward an
ECONOMIC FACISM, where the control of freedom is based primarily
on economic profitability and not on HUMANITARIAN reasons.

Offering web pages should NOT be viewed in terms of "a good deal" or
"an opportunity," the HOST does not realize he/she has a responsibility
toward FREEDOM OF SPEECH first and foremost. It is, therefore,
a privilege, for the host to promote a virtual space where an individualized
human being, who works and pays bills and thinks and volunteers for
communitarian efforts (food shelters, forest maintenance, mentorship
for teens), can spend a few hours fashioning words and graphics
to encourage individual expression (not institutionally sanctioned self-expression,
ie not ready-made cliche's of art or thoughts) amongst others.

Even if someone at Fortunecity claimed ignorance of the deep and
serious political nature of their destruction of individual expression
and their subsequent PROMOTION OF CENSORSHIP, that is not
an excuse. One does not excuse the seventeen-year old guard
at Auschwitz or Birkenau that he is exempt from ethics and morality
because he is too ignorant to know that roasting Jews alive is not
right or decent.

Fuck off Fortunecity. Ignorant bastards. Go read some Rousseau
or Jefferson or Paine. Oh, you don't know how to read do you?

Have NOT heard back from Houston. I sorta assumed that they would take me.
Sometimes, as evidenced by my time at U. Oregon, I get the sense that programs
would like to mould younger, malleable minds. Given the fact that "teaching
creative writing" is a tricky proposition at best -- fraught with what might be
termed 'writing tendencies and prejudices' ("you should" check out this author,
I really like the work of that author), it wouldn't be totally suprising if my interest
in more postm0dern aesthetics would be a turn off.

I still need to write back here on "Middle Passages" ...and perhaps contrast
that with Johnson's _Middle Passage_ or even the role of magic in Beloved?
While Middle Passage and Beloved share elements of a magical,
non-realist narrative, Brathwaite's "magic" seems to more nuanced in that there
isn't a kind of hegemony or assumption on realism. A poet like Philip Levine
is something of an innovator because he is such an advocate of realism
in his work. So is Dorianne Laux. Garrett Hongo's relationship to magical
realism is complicated -- it seems non-existant. But certainly some passages
of _Volcano_ invoke a magical Hawaiian past. OK I"m just rambling.
Need to go back to Brathwaite's _Middle Passages_, then Theresa's
_Dictee_ and Giscombe's book. Postmodern? Mostly. Highly lyrical.

UCSD: NO, by email. Jeez, thanks for your email.

So, I went to Curt's house, my rich Microsoft friend. Amid the rubble of their remodelling, I waited for
Curt to return from the hardware store, the grocery store, and dinner fixins. Meanwhile, his 3 yr old
daughter Bailey tells she has to poop, though she doesn't like to. Ole'

Had a discussion about grad schools. Chuck is of the opinion that money/financial assistance is
the deciding factor, while Curt concurs, he keeps mentioning that I'm playing games when I think
about elite schools and such. Mr. Columbia, Jeff, suggests that I should take the more prestigious
Virginia or Chicago route over Illinois. Hmm. The only advantage to Virginia is that I sorta know
people there and I believe the faculty/dept would be well suited toward my interests. In the long run,
it's probably a better school. But Illinois isn't bad. Urbana-Champaign...sorta a little bit like
Eugene-Springfield. Don't know. Must think.

Ok...more results:

Virginia: MA - yes, no $

Illinois (Urbana-Champaign): YES!!!!

Well...Duke U. said NO WAY.

Chicago, said, NO, but have a cookie, the MAPH.

Two down, nine more schools to hear back from.

But what about the poetry? What about it? Some notes:

Come down through time, come down
the river and hear faint tinkles
and chime as the muddy river flows
through you; ther's a rivulet caressing
the aorta, a spider bracing
its fibrous threads between neurons.
If the thought trembles, if the sky blinks
purple, pimpled with sweat,
find the chemical, the emulsifier,
the noun lodged in the voicebox which
schemes into landscapes of fire, pure flow,
the vibrato of being caught in
the millisecond after mortar fire.
I have cupped my hand against my cheek,
a mistake, a slicing away, as though
my wet skin were a sensual code,
a secret storehouse of language,
creating a debt more thick than ice.
Last night, we were molasses
dipping into each other like the first spring
rain stippling frozen leaves
of Panjumon, the furze, the corrugated metal roofs,
the weave of diesel smoke threading the grey
as though it were a suture of unstoppable touches.
Come down and see the water stretching a form
in the ditch....

He begins to drift away from his wife...he goes against his community
and begins to question the house and community, he takes long walks
and takes up painting. His wife begins to flirt with a younger man
on the council. The couple fight, blaming the other for the illness.
His wife begins to complain about the way he looks at her, the small things,
the smells, the mannerisms begin to become hateful. She doesn't
want to have kinky sex -- something they used to do a lot of -- box of
sex toys collecting dust in the attic. She discovers that she wants to,
she actually enjoys causing him to feel miserable.

Ok. Had an idea for a novel. A man living with his family at a seaside community
has learned that he has moved into a house eroding into the sea. He's been
fortunate most of his adult life...a beautiful wife, one child, one adopted Korean
baby, early retirement at forty, Microsoft. But he discovers that the real estate
agent didn't tell him of the whole situation about his house... that it was estimated
it would be underwater in a hundred years. He puts money into a community fund
and tries to lobby the city to fund a seawall or a barrier, then he discovers that he
can re-grow the beach by adding sand from a dredging project a hundred miles away.
What starts off as a brilliant decision turns into a secret timebomb as the sand
and dirt from the dredging project contains toxic and nuclear waste -- his oldest kid,
his daughter cuts herself near where the first dredging sand starts...she gets sick,
developing mysterious bruises -- signs of mercury poisoning.

On the contrary, a candid investigation of these subjects,
accompanied with a perfect readiness to adopt any theory
warranted by sound philosophy, may have a tendency to convince
them that in forming improbable and unfounded hypotheses, so far
from enlarging the bounds of human science, they are contracting
it, so far from promoting the improvement of the human mind, they
are obstructing it; they are throwing us back again almost into
the infancy of knowledge and weakening the foundations of that
mode of philosophising, under the auspices of which science has
of late made such rapid advances. The present rage for wide and
unrestrained speculation seems to be a kind of mental
intoxication, arising, perhaps, from the great and unexpected
discoveries which have been made of late years, in various
branches of science. To men elate and giddy with such successes,
every thing appeared to be within the grasp of human powers; and,
under this illusion, they confounded subjects where no real
progress could be proved with those where the progress had been
marked, certain, and acknowledged. Could they be persuaded to
sober themselves with a little severe and chastised thinking,
they would see, that the cause of truth, and of sound philosophy,
cannot but suffer by substituting wild flights and unsupported
assertions for patient investigation, and well authenticated
proofs.

Mr Condorcet's book may be considered not only as a sketch of
the opinions of a celebrated individual, but of many of the
literary men in France at the beginning of the Revolution. As
such, though merely a sketch, it seems worthy of attention.

HEy I'm back!!!!

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