Some real kick-ass work from the class this year. I’m bringing donuts and a few other treats, as are some of the students. Kick off the summer with some ambidextrous avant-gardism, Brooklynism performism, techno-spiritualism, Las Vegas shrimp-ism, disease-riddled factism, Mallarmean sestina-ism, and cacophonous Irish-Mexicanism, UCLA style!

The journal won’t be ready but here’s what the cover looks like:

We Control the Weather (cover)

This is merely a test
of the short, bounded page,
how it, like an Englishman
knows no man is an island
but is afraid

–this is merely
a test, not a real poem
you’ll discover, momentarily
when it errs with a feminine
ending, in “ending”

it’s also, like something
from Charles Bernstein, very
easy to read (and, more,
full of feminine endings, as
only a girly man could write), and

I do, I write
a test poem on a half sheet
of paper I found, couldn’t use
for a post-it, no sticky,
and wanted to have make me cry

when I discarded
it–cry for the test poem,
the counterfeit poem,
promises of Enlightenment in whimsy
like a French poem

written in the Album Zutique
on the cusp of the Arab world
with the Party dying (or growing)
–either way, probing
this feminine continent.

If only for Grace Jones…

MEIGHTH DAY
A Mayday celebration on the 8th of May two thousandth and ten.

Pentagonal Monochrome (Tambourine) performance eventh by Scoli Acosta
and Area Sneaks Los Angeles launch

With: Scoli Acosta, Area Sneaks, Ara Shirinyan, Aaron Kunin, Alexandro Segade (the Universal Separatist), Pearl Hsiung & Scott Martin, Anna Sew Hoy, Gabriela Jauregui, Brian Kim Stefans & more

Featuring: DJ Jan Tumlir

Including: the levitating of the Pentagon, peddling of wares, vinyl records, skeins of homespun yarn yarn straight off the animal, ceramics, small press books, paper jewelry, dog balloon art, preserves and other foodstuffs, manifestations of poetry, the poetics of the manifesto

Date: Saturday, May 8, 2010
Time: 6:00pm – 10:00pm
Location: LA>< Art
Street: 2640 S. La Cienega Blvd.
City/Town: Los Angeles, CA
View Map

30 July, Friday – 7:30 PM
FACTORY SCHOOL POETS

FACTORY SCHOOL is a learning and production collective engaged in action research, publishing, media display and community service.

Readers include

• ALLISON COBB (NY),
• CA CONRAD(PHL),
• CATHERINE DALY (PHL),
• SUEYEUN JULIETTE (PHL),
• DEBORAH MEADOWS (LA),
• SAARAH MENEFEE (SAN FRANCISCO)
• KATHYRN PRINGLE (SAN FRANCISCO STATE),
• FRANK SHERLOCK(PHL)
• BRIAN KIM STEFANS(LA),
• HERIBERTO YÉPEZ (TJ)
• DIANE WARD I(LA).
 

Friend of mine from Bard and fabulous filmmaker… not to be missed.

JENNIFER REEVES: WHEN IT WAS BLUE
with a live score by Skúli Sverrisson
Los Angeles premiere
“Reeves’s captivating tour de force explodes all preconceptions about both experimental and environmental film.” The Globe and Mail

2008, 68 min., dual-projection 16mm

This double-projector film performance by New York artist Jennifer Reeves pays rapturous homage to the endangered beauty of our blue planet. Composed in four parts to represent the four seasons and cardinal directions, When It Was Blue traverses the globe and its diverse ecosystems from New Zealand to Iceland, the Americas and beyond, rejoicing in myriad fauna and flora, mountains, forests, oceans, the splendor of seasonal change—in short, the expanse of life as it exists on earth. Reeves hand-paints frames and optically prints other images to create impressionistic textures in what critic Mark Peranson calls “a wide-ranging play on the notion of ‘blue’—the color, the sensation, the sinking realization that the natural world (and 16mm film) must be captured as much as possible before it disappears.” New York-based bass player and composer Skúli Sverrisson—who directs music for Laurie Anderson—plays his soaring score live.

In person: Jennifer Reeves and Skúli Sverrisson

Curated by Steve Anker and Bérénice Reynaud.

I’m going… I’ve only read one of his books but it was really great.

The Korean Cultural Center and Green Integer/Douglas Messerli
invite you to a reading and reception
for the noted Korean poet, Ko Un
on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 7:30pm

Location: The Korean Cultural Center, 5505 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036
(parking is located behind the Center)

Ko Un will be reading in Korean, Douglas Messerli in English

Born in 1933 in southwestern Korea, Ko Un grew up in a Japanese-controlled land that was soon to experience the horrors of the Korean War. In 1952 he became a Buddhist monk, and began writing in the late 1950s. Since that time, Ko has been recognized as one of the most notable of living Korean writers and has regularly been nominated and short-listed for the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1982 Ko Un published his Collected Poems in Korea. The Los Angeles Publisher, Green Integer, has published two volumes in English by Ko Un to date, Ten Thousand Lives, selections from Ko Un’s 25 volumes of poems about people he has met during his life, and Songs for Tomorrow, selected poems from 1960-2002.

Friday May 7, 2010, 1-3 pm: Noah Wardrip-Fruin, “Meaning What We Play: Games, Fiction, and Expressive Processing”
(5826 Mathematical Sciences Building)

Today’s games have well-developed models of spatial movement, combat, and economics. But their models of fiction barely deserve the name. Even those supporting the most ambitious games are burdensome and bug-prone for authors – while providing the player quite limited ranges of meaningful choice. This talk discusses examples of more dynamic approaches to fiction, considering lessons past work presents for designers wishing to craft models that express their visions for playable fiction. At the same time, the talk argues that critics need to begin to interpret the computational processes of computer games (and digital media generally) and connect them to an understanding of audience experience.

The event will be open to all, but because seating will be limited, please RSVP to David Shepard (dshepard@ucla.edu) if you will be attending.

Additionally, on Monday, May 10, 2010, 4-6pm, in Humanities Building 193, Wardrip-Fruin will present some of his more recent, unpublished research for discussion. All are welcome to attend.

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I’d love to take total credit for the Bank of America’s decision to get rid of overdraft fees for purchases on a debit card. Revolutionary prose can set the heart of corporate America quaking. Thank you, Tom Paine!

Of course, it was just good timing. My piece went live on January 18th, and they made their announcement on March 9th. I sent their CEO/President, Brian Moynihan, a copy of the text on February 2nd, and their Customer Advocate, Jorge Pinedo, sent me a longish letter dated February 17th. They did refund the overdraft fees, which was nice. I also got a phone call which I never returned (purely because I was too busy — I’ve since lost the number).

No mention was made in the in the letter of the forthcoming policy change. The only reference to my text (which was more concerned with the website and its presentation of information) was noting that a bank website cannot keep track of checks written on paper. I mentioned that in the text, of course — I don’t expect a computer, even one with a camera above the screen, to be quite so panoptic. He did write that the Ecommerce Channel division were going to review the text — I wonder!

Anyway, I’m working on a new, shorter version of the document that only addresses the website and not issues with credit and debit. As it turns out, the Wells Fargo site is even less informative than the Bank of America site, but I haven’t tested matters such as how holds and other forms of pending debits are represented.

In case you missed it the first time…

Press Release

Bank of America Online Banking: A Critical Evaluation provides a detailed, easy-to-read critical evaluation of Bank of America Online Banking. It argues that the great portion of the bank’s revenue accrued through overdraft fees is often the result of the deceptive and confusing nature of the online banking site.

The average citizen has no choice but to rely on debit and credit cards for many transactions, which are impossible to track on paper due to the ubiquity of virtual transactions. The BoA online banking center, despite its fluffy tutorials and FAQs, does not make this task easier, but rather conceals the increasingly complex nature of virtual transactions.

This analysis, while informal, integrates the new fields of software studies and data visualization with perennial complaints about the abuses of the banking industry. It argues for a complete transformation in how online (and other forms of virtual) banking is conducted rather than the cosmetic policy changes of recent years.

Contents:

Introduction
Chapters
1. “Perhaps I am not good enough”—the new guilt paradigm
2. A response to bad press—the Clarity Statement
3. The InfoCenter—style without substance
4. The search function within the banking center—formless information
5. Selective education—no “cascading fees” in the search results?
6. Online bill pay—where are the pending checks?
7. Divide and confuse—related information is spread across several pages
8. Overdraft fees—the criminalization of the U.S. citizen
9. “Reviews” of online banking sites—extensions of public relations
10. Conclusions

Appendix I: Screen Captures from Bank of America websites

Appendix II: “The Card Game: Overspending on Debit Cards Is a Boon for Banks”

Appendix III: “5 Sneaky Overdraft Traps”

Appendix IV: Escalating a Complaint and the Executive Email Carpet Bomb

Appendix V: Final Chat Session with Bank of America Customer Service

Endnotes