A Well-Moistened, Adenoidal Sound, Part Sigh and Part Growl

Halfway through a piece on - get this - my complicity, this time about Occupy Wall Street and how easy and lazy it is for me to simultaneously envy the naivete of the protesters while justifying my own inaction because I presume all action to be naive, but instead of finishing it I decided to watch a soccer game, so fresh links before they go stale, two-songs, poem.

 

• Dissent, not protest. 
• On Occupy Wall Street (and Jim provided the songs below Fleabus)
• Fucker: Obama may have flown by the fail-safe line, especially when it comes to waterboarding. For many civil libertarians, it will be virtually impossible to vote for someone who has flagrantly ignored the Convention Against Torture or its underlying Nuremberg Principles. As Obama and Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. have admitted, waterboarding is clearly torture and has been long defined as such by both international and U.S. courts. It is not only a crime but a war crime. By blocking the investigation and prosecution of those responsible for torture, Obama violated international law and reinforced other countries in refusing investigation of their own alleged war crimes. The administration magnified the damage by blocking efforts of other countries like Spain from investigating our alleged war crimes. In this process, his administration shredded principles on the accountability of government officials and lawyers facilitating war crimes and further destroyed the credibility of the U.S. in objecting to civil liberties abuses abroad.
• On the above.
• Fucker: It was first reported in January of last year that the Obama administration had compiled a hit list of American citizens whom the President had ordered assassinated without any due process, and one of those Americans was Anwar al-Awlaki.  No effort was made to indict him for any crimes (despite a report last October that the Obama administration was "considering" indicting him).  Despite substantial doubt among Yemen experts about whether he even has any operational role in Al Qaeda, no evidence (as opposed to unverified government accusations) was presented of his guilt.  When Awlaki's father sought a court order barring Obama from killing his son, the DOJ argued, among other things, that such decisions were "state secrets" and thus beyond the scrutiny of the courts.  He was simply ordered killed by the President: his judge, jury and executioner.
• On the above. Motherfucking pwoggles.
• End of loser liberalism.
• A beautiful anarchy.
• Cornucopia. 
• Rhetorical question.
• The Hayek/Rand Hypocrisy Club.
• Questions for POTUS candidates that will never be asked.
• Motherfucking crackers.

 

• What you can buy me for Giftmas.
• The Wedding Present, Every Mother's Son.
• Dog Day, Lydia.
• The Undertones, Teenage Kicks.
• Woggles, I Got Your Number.
• The Chesterfield Kings, Stop.
• The Mantles, Cascades.
• Sebadoh, Rebound.
• MC5, Shakin Street.
• The Black Lips, Ain't No Deal.
• Polly Jean Harvey, When Under Ether.
• The Dirtbombs, I Hear the Sirens.

THE DOG STOLTZ

August Kleinzahler

The dog Stoltz pushed his paw pads into my neck,

the warm, beaten leather deep under my chin,

and let slip the one paw to up near my mouth

with all the filth of the many blocks we trod,

together trod, a well-moistened, adenoidal sound,

part sigh and part growl, coming out of him,

transported, he seemed, in a slow-motion delirium

as I tickled his chest and behind his ear

when he just then told me he’d tear out my throat,

looked in my eye and smiled, best as a dog can,

then turned ruminative and spoke once more:

—I simply have to knock off that essay on Sassoon.

This would have been Sassoon the war poet, understand.

Dogs cannot write. My mother told me this.

As for his talk, well, I took no special notice.

His love of the war poets was well known.

Stoltz would have been part bull and something else.

Two friends walked by just then, handily as these things go,

and inquired of us sitting down there on the stoop,

not even, a doorway merely, along a busy street,

how went the day and what pursuits was I attending;

but what interested the two of them most

were the tergiversations of the dog Stoltz,

first beast, then scholar, then abject and adored.

(Say, who among us does not care to be undressed?)

He was not really my dog, you see, and of this made note,

but were glad as well at my having a new dog in my life.

It was a busy stretch of pavement, Amsterdam maybe,

or Broadway, or farther down just south of Chelsea.

I can tell you it was the West Side, of that I’m certain,

and it was mild, spring-like, a few drops in the air.

The friends passed along and the dog Stoltz slept.

He was not my dog, you know. He simply followed me out

of what can only have been a very fine home,

such were his graces, his recondite tastes.

But he was a killer too, and rather smelled.

I cannot accommodate another animal now, please understand.

I am between places. I will yearn for Stoltz, but no.

Chester 3, United 2

I really don't mean to dump all this on Clyde Simms, but midfield defense is this team's major weakness and Clyde Simms in defensive holding mid the prime suspect. It's true that it was collectively Brandon McDonald's and Ethan White's worse night in central defense in recent memory, but those balls over the top to the feet of phucking Le Toux came from wide open Chester midfielders who consistently beat United's forward midfielders to 50-50 balls with more than enough time to pinpoint passes and Simms and King don't have the wheels and chops to backtrack in support. This is how teams have attacked United all year. St Benny knows this, but he has no other options. Baal bless Clyde Simms for his years of service, but Perry Kitchen (or somebody) is next year's holding mid.

Good, exciting, fun-to-watch game. Najar had a sitter on his forehead and gacked it. United could have quit and didn't. Not a devastating or demoralizing loss though it makes this Sunday afternoon's game at Columbus - we're going to be watching it at my house before we go see Bonny Prince Billy, you who know how to get there are welcome to join us - that much more important. It's going to be fun hating Chester, hopefully, fuck-me-jig, for decades to come. Fuck Peter Nowak, I hated that motherphucker when he was United's coach.

Two Minutes, or: Autoblogography

• Cheap Trick - Hello There. 
• The Fall - Prole Art Threat.
• Vaselines - Monsterpussy.
• Vaselines - Molly's Lips.
• Sleater Kinney - Little Mouth.
• Big Star - I'm In Love with a Girl.

• The Replacements - I Hate Music.
• The Jam - But I'm Different Now.
• Wire - 1 2 X U.
• Wire - Field Day for Sundays. 
• Mekons - Never Been in a Riot.
• Guided by Voices - A Salty Salute.
• Songs and playlists solicited.

I Invoked the White Robes, Gleaming Blades Ready for Blood, and, Feeling the Scourge of Increase and Multiply, Made Affirmation: Yes, Deliver Us from Complicity

Thursday Night Pints was Wednesday Night Pints at my request: United's on TV tomorrow, so thanks! Hey, did you see what Led Teonsis said, I asked? Who's Led Teonsis, asked L. D said, went to Hilltop, has Axe's ear big time, inner sanctum. I said, he owns DC's professional hockey and basketball franchises and the Verizon Center. What did he say, asked D. I gave them a Billionaire's Lament, we are Creators, goddamn the fucking Lilliputians. Fuck him, said L. Then my cell urped, excuse me, and Earthgirl told me she'd been pulled over by the same bottom peg morons in brown shirts who protect us at soccerplex, gave her $150 ticket for overdue car farts. Was an asshole, just an asshole, which is a feature, not a bug.

Where is your soccer team's owner's peg in pigdom, L asked me when I got back, the second time I was asked that appropriately accusatory question yesterday. I've no idea, I said, I'm sure he's a capitalist, and for almost it's entire history MLS has floated on the ocean of Phil Anschutz's money, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger peg in pigdom. Then I told them the story of my wife's treatment by the biggest pegs' tiny thuggish peg. Fuckers, said L. True that, I said, then bought them a round for moving today to last night so I can watch United tonight.

• Justice is the absence of crime. 
• Psychology of killer drones: At the behaviour locus, people transform lethal means into benevolent and moral ones through moral justification, advantageous comparison, and sanitizing language. At the agency locus, they are relieved of a sense of personal accountability by displacement and diffusion of responsibility. At the outcome locus, the injurious effects of lethal means are disregarded, minimized, or disputed. At the other end, foes are dehumanized and blamed for bringing the suffering on themselves.
• The greatest academic con-man of his generation. Please don't misunderstand me: I say this admiringly.
• The dangerous cult of The Guardian.
• Obamendacious. Probably not worth trademarking, yes?
• Driving through Holland Tunnel on the Way to Occupy Wall Street.
• Don't be afraid to say Revolution?
• Behind the scorn.
• Why she was maced.
• Remember how outraged we were when the Bush FBI set up morons as terrorists for propaganda opportunities? Stunts like this?
• Chris Christie at age 18.
• Post-Darwinian experiments.
• Good shepherd. 
• Prelude 6.
• Lightning set my butt on fire.
• The things that you do.
• Closer to the ground.

VASECTOMY

Philip Appleman

After the steaming bodies swept

through the hungry streets of swollen cities;   

after the vast pink spawning of family   

poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;   

after the gamble of latex and

diaphragms and pills;

I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades   

ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge   

of Increase and Multiply, made

affirmation: Yes, deliver us from

complicity.

And after the precision of scalpels,

I woke to a landscape of sunshine where   

the catbird mates for life and

maps trace out no alibis—stepped   

into a morning of naked truth,

where acts mean what they really are:   

the purity of loving

for the sake of love.

Jim's List

Blogbud's generous playlist from my request for power pop songs no longer than two minutes, thirty seconds. THANKS!






It's amazing how many of them feature reverb - Jim's taste or a short power pop song trait? In any case, your playlist solicited, will be posted.
 

• Reigning Sound - Straight Shooter.
• First Base - I Gotta Girl.
• Neutral Milk Hotel - King of Carrot Flowers.
• The Tours - Tourist Information (yes, the youtube says three + minutes, but it's a two minute song).
• Sweet Jesus - Phonefreak Honey.

• The Left Banke - She May Call You Up Tonight.
• The Pandoras - It's About Time.
• Wire - Dot Dash (All Wire is good Wire).
• The Cynic - Revenge.
• Lyres - Help You Ann.

Catfish Is the Whisker Lurking Behind the Bobbing Cork

I know that only the loyalist most trusted rubes and apparatchiks gain entry to major party POTUS primary debates, but what if Obama blinked his left eye seven times like a door knock and said a magic word in a turgid speech and sleeper pwoggles, asleep as bonafide mouthbreathing crackers, got the signal and are agents provocateurs, how (so-so) cool would that be?

How cool would it be if Hamster was a secret sleeper agent who has inside access to motherfucking Led Teonsis and I could wake Hamster (and we're seeing Bonny Prince Billy this coming Sunday, in case you were wondering what music is coming here soon if not next) and order him to slap motherfucking Led Teonsis, whose teams (and I dearly love people who love his stupid-ass ice-soccer team) can never win another fucking game not soon enough, with a three-day dead catfish, but Hamster isn't, though he does send this song and this song and this:

• Time never tells.
• Thugs of the organized criminal class.
• The World's Second Shittiest Human loves her some frothy mix of fecal matter and lube.
• Not only am I not giving money to or voting for a Democrat again, I haven't given money to or listened to or donated to motherfucking NPR in two years, nor will ever again. 
• America is - everywhere is - a racist country. 
• Harris-Perry poll.
• Why Liberals are lame.
• Why David Brooks is mendaciously lame.
• A friend asks me to remind you of October 2011.
• The kids are alright.
• Occupy Wall Street.
• Yeah, fuck Democrats, but still, motherfucking crackers. 
• But still, motherfucking crackers.
• Keeping the lights on.
• How much money is Chris Christie spending on private investigators to investigate himself to gauge risk/reward?
• Rethinking Rockville Pike?
• Donate and adopt.
• Fuck City.
• A friend of twenty years has a new photography blog.
• New Bjork. I'll say it's me, but mehful.
• I listened to his Fifth last night, serendipitously. 
• Mallet Quartet.
• Ten feet tall.
• I'm a mess.
• This week's new releases.
• Drosophila Melanogaster.
• Unsurprisingly I woke up with the below in my head - what a great fucking song - but look, two-minutes, thirty-seconds, the maximum length for a great pop song. Hear how it feels like a full meal while five minute songs feel like gluttony? Please please please, two minute thirty second or less great songs solicited.

APPALACHIAN FRONT

Robert Lewis Weeks

Panther lies next to Wharncliffe
and Wharncliffe next to Devon
and Devon next to Delorme.
In each a single fisherman casts
in the slow, black water of the Big Sandy.
Catfish is the whisker lurking
behind the bobbing cork.
He lives, it seems, in dense night
from day to day until the fisherman
from Wharncliffe pulls him out
to be fried in tin-roof, tarpaper shacks
from there to Matewan.

Politicians call this valley
a depressed area.
But, under the sun, my heart
will not have it so.
Straight up from the brackish water,
up the mountainside, green pointed trees
as close as bird's wings
grow fierce and clean,
and then for miles beside the tracks
the river moves faster over the rocks
and the water isn't black at all--
only the silt underneath.
The water over the rocks
is running clear and cold and pure.

It Was Time to Leave that Town for an Empty Drawer into which They Sailed

Sorry, no sound, listen to this while watching the video and considering this:


The National Park Service said Monday that the Washington Monument will be closed indefinitely and that the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in August had done more damage to the monument than had been previously disclosed.


The Washington Monument will never reopen: Yes or No?





That's another sign of the times in POTUS 12, the game where all metaphors, however strained, are valued and honorable metaphors because and until (plus I'd written something about Blegsylvania that turned out far snarkier than intended, so I ate it, because and until).

• What a great song, listen to it again. In the top 20 of most air-guitared.
• Advice for children, unsolicited.
• Women under capitalism.
• Women in Labor.
• Kaboom.
• Theduh. Strained metaphors will continue because and until they please me less than daily theduh.
• Anarchy, State, Moore's Law.
• The motherfucking senators hate the motherfucking representatives.
• Romney and The Apology Tour.
• Crackers.
• Figures with meat.
• Obama's everyone problem.
• Alarm.
• I want United to reacquire Nodax just so they can trade him to Metros again.
• The first of these I've seen this year.
• Classical music and the layman.

INSTEAD OF LOSING

John Ashbery

Anyone, growing up in a space you hadn't used yet
would've done the same: bother the family's bickering
to head straight into the channel. My, those times
crackled near about us, from sickly melodrama
instead of losing, and the odd confusion...confusion.

I thought of it then, and in the mountains.
During the day we perforated the eponymous city limits
and then some. No one knew all about us
but some knew plenty. It was time to leave that town
for an empty drawer
into which they sailed. Some of the eleven thousand
virgins were getting queasy. I say, stop the ship!
No can do. Here come the bald arbiters
with their eyes on chains, just so, like glasses.
Heck, it's only a muskrat
that's seen better years, when things were medieval
and gold...

So you people in the front,
leave. You see them. And you understand it all.
It doesn't end, night's sorcery notwithstanding.
Would you have preferred to be a grownup in earlier times
than the child can contain or imagine?
Or is right now the answer—you know, the radio
we heard news on late at night,
our checkered fortunes so pretty.
Here's your ton of plumes, and your Red Seal Records.
The whole embrace.

Addendum to the Previous Post

Was going to wait for tomorrow, but friends via email and in comments want some solo Ferry too.....







Did you know he released an album last year?







And he's playing a sold-out Strathmore - sold out in a day, I didn't know until it was a day too late, and scalpers are starting at $275 for farthest away - October 3, the day after we see Bonnie Prince Billy. Damn, seen Roxy (just the Avalon tour in Baltimore and Philly) and/or him solo at least ten times, and damn.

Or Faith, Strange to Feel in That Zoo of Manners

I understand the circle-jerking in honor of the 20th anniversary of the release of Nevermind even if I think Nirvana the most over-hyped band since the last until the next (though credit Cobain for ensuring it's legacy by killing himself - as with Joplin, Hendrix, motherfucking Morrison, ask yourself: if they hadn't died the young genius' romantic death, had they sobered and lived and produced inevitably lesser and self-derivative music, then, at fifty, sixty, to keep the checks coming, played Wolftrap for old farts, whither their sainthood? It's an old question, asked without malice.).

I don't hate Nirvana (I don't lurch for the radio to change stations when Nirvana comes on like I do for The Motherfucking Doors) any more or less than I hate, say, Ernest Hemingway or Raymond Carver, though holyfuck, I hate the motherfucking swarms of shitty imitators they all spawned, which is to say while I may not like Nirvana I need be even smaller than I already am not to acknowledge their influence.

I do, however, like Bryan Ferry, who was born sixty-six years ago today, and I love Roxy Music (all line-ups), which is in the permanent inner-rotation for the remaining three spots of five in my sillyass desert island game.

• So to be clear, I'm not against circle-jerking; the argument, as always, is who is worthy of the circle-jerk by compulsive circle-jerkers, and the argument, as always, is whether circle-jerking is more nature or nurture.
• Toward a provisional definition of disequalibrium.
• Nelson, my dog.
• America's first Jewish president.
• Got your goat.
• Another blogfriend struggles with the -.06% less-shitty problem.
• Yes, I understand why motherfucking crackers, but motherfucking crackers.
• Why the Antichrist matters in politics.
• On the less-shitty meme. (h/t)
• Motherfucking crackers don't do pastels! 
• Motherfucking crackers.
• Police state.
• Even though I'm certain I'd be just as pissed-off at a Hillarypotus as I am at Obamapotus, I'm preparing to be called a racist for hating Obamapotus.
• Fuck Obamapotus. 
• American values.
• Inconceivable.
  
• Go sign Thunder's petition.
• Better exam questions, please. 
• Zero. 
• Fundamentalists are not equivalent to Christianity.
• Holyfuck, just fuck KEXP, the circle-jerkiest of them all.
• A meditative ABC on rock & roll and poetic composition.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Richard Thompson.

• Love is the drug.
• Avalon. Dozens of the five best nights of my life Avalon was played.
• All I want is you. Jeebus, 70s' video production values.
• To turn you on.
• I'd solicit - OK, I'm soliciting - Roxy and/or Ferry solo suggestions in comments and promise to post them if that offer wasn't six months and four or five alienated readers ago.
• Amazona.
• Mother of pearl.

GO GREYHOUND

Bill Hicok

A few hours after Des Moines
the toilet overflowed.
This wasn't the adventure it sounds.

I sat with a man whose tattoos
weighed more than I did.
He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.
His Electric Ladyland lips
weren't fast enough
and if pitch and melody
are the rudiments of music,
this was just
memory, a body nostalgic
for the touch of adored sound.

Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.

You hope a forgotten smoke consorts
with lint in the pocket of last
resort to be upwind
of the human condition, that the baby
sleeps
and when this never happens,
that she cries 
with the lullaby meter of the sea.

We were swallowed by rhythm.
The ultra blond
who removed her wig and applied 
fresh loops of duct tape
to her skull,
her companion who held a mirror
and popped his dentures
in and out of place,
the boy who cut stuffing
from the seat where his mother
should have been—
there was a little more sleep 
in our thoughts, 
it was easier to yield.

To what, exactly—
the suspicion that what we watch 
watches back,
cornfields that stare at our hands,
downtowns
that hold us in their windows
through the night?

Or faith, strange to feel
in that zoo of manners.

I had drool on my shirt and breath
of the undead, a guy
dropped empty Buds on the floor
like gravity was born
to provide this service,
we were white and black trash
who'd come
in an outhouse on wheels and still

some had grown—
in touching the spirited shirts
on clotheslines,
after watching a sky of starlings
flow like cursive
over wheat—back into creatures 
capable of a wish.

As we entered Arizona
I thought I smelled the ocean,
liked the lie of this
and closed my eyes 
as shadows
puppeted against my lids. 

We brought our failures with us,
their taste, their smell.
But the kid
who threw up in the back
pushed to the window anyway,
opened it 
and let the wind clean his face,
screamed something 
I couldn't make out
but agreed with
in shape, a sound I recognized
as everything I'd come so far
to give away.

United 4, Salt Lake 1

UPDATE! Here.

What's this? Fuck-Me-Jig? Well, fuck-me-jig (for those who are new here: I will do a fuck-me-jig and post it via youtube when I'm standing in front of my seat in a new stadium in DC - not Baltimore; DC), of far more immediate impact was St Benny of Olsen benching Davies and Quaranta and Woolard.

If anyone has to sing the anthem, Stu the K.

Highlights here. All I ask for are beautiful goals and primal screams.

Oh! interesting post-game conversation/confrontation between St Benny and Clyde Simms. Imagined transcript - Clyde: Still can! Benny: Sorry, you can't.

Road games Thursday in Philly and Sunday in Columbus, it's not hyperbole to call this the most important week of the season since the last until the next.

A Giant Breathing Cell Exhaling Its Waste

Still have zero desire to play POTUS 12 (much less the next gnashing of motherfucking congressional chicken). I do feel like playing some John Coltrane, who two DJs told me was born 85 years ago yesterday, a song one of them played.






Hey, did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

• It's true! and run, mekcufrehtor.
• I wonder if DeRossario gacked the PK out of guilt, purposely or not.
• I wish Rush Limbaugh was right about Elizabeth Warren.
• Profoundly stupid. Call me when any senior Democrat with power calls motherfucking lying cracker-baiters motherfucking lying cracker-baiters.
• On the above.
• Here's another Overlord getting it half right.
• Which doesn't mean Hred Fiatt isn't profoundly mendacious.
• Hred Fiatt's proxy tells you to leave millionaires alone. 
• Corporate.
• Corporate.
• Hide your sheep. 
• Goats in trees.
• His if he wants it.
• Casinos.
• Serendipitously, days after I post a Bukowski poem, Bukowski.
• Yes, yes I have used today's poem before. I like it. 
• Yes, yes I have played the song below the poem many times, it's been a month's theme song at least once, and I like it (I like Wire) alone but really like it with that poem in this particular post.
• I remember liking (if I don't remember) a few Whiskeytown songs, and I always liked this song's reverb (though it's two minutes too long), and I remember when Ryan Adams was going to be a superstar.
• Woke up with this in my head:

MEAT

August Kleinzahler

How much meat moves
Into the city each night
The decks of its bridges tremble
In the liquefaction of sodium light
And the moon a chemical orange

Semitrailers strain their axles
Shivering as they take the long curve
Over warehouses and lofts
The wilderness of streets below
The mesh of it
With Joe on the front stoop smoking
And Louise on the phone with her mother

Out of the haze of industrial meadows
They arrive, numberless
Hauling tons of dead lamb
Bone and flesh and offal
Miles to the ports and channels
Of the city's shimmering membrane
A giant breathing cell
Exhaling its waste
From the stacks by the river
And feeding through the night

The Lack of Any Bed but One’s Music to Sleep In

How much money, I asked, do you think Hilltop is out if UConn leaves the Big East too? Not as much as you'd think, said D, though I'm sure Hilltop's inner sanctum is closely monitoring the situation and war-gaming and their top lawyers are rereading all contracts. I asked, there are enough quality basketball programs at universities that don't play professional football to form a conference that will make money? Marquette. Villanova. D said, I heard the have-nots in the Big 12, the remaining non-Texas, OK schools, want to join the Big East. Texas to the ACC, said L. Shit, I said. Texas to the ACC, L said again. Shit, I said, I was agreeing with you. How'd your soccer team do last night, asked D.

Pissed me off, I said, though I'm waiting until at least this coming Sunday morning before drawing conclusions about all ramifications of what seems to me a pervasive franchise-wide sense of... Only four guys came even halfway to thank LOUD SIDE! the four hardest-working, least talented of the fourteen players who played last night. Shit, said L, here comes one of your micro-macro metaphors. Not if you put a pint in my hand, I said. Too late, she laughed, then did.

• History of greed.
• Tea-parties and scholars.
• No longer can teach military history.
• Roadmap.
• New hope.
• False realities.
• Obama sucks, Democrats suck, but motherfucking crackers. 
• Motherfucking cowards.
• The World's Shittiest Human farts, giggles, cashes check.
• Blubbering babies.
• Bananaman in Crackerstan.

• Painted on my curb when I got home yesterday. We think we might finally be getting the replacement tree from the County to replace the maple they took down years ago, though it could be the new universal symbol identifying crazy cat people with lots of garden statuary. 
• Someone else is reading George Mills too.
• Who is the cleverest crow of them all?
• Your lousy floor.
• SPIN's 10 all-time favorite REM moments.
• The most influential American band of the past three decades?

• Jesusfuck, I was young once too.
• I don't Wilco, but maybe you do.
• Woke up with one of the below in my head, you get them all.
• Microbes.
• Red Lady Too.
• Tabla and Pakavaj.
• In the Park.
• Drilling a Home.
• Guru Vandana.
• Greasy Legs.
• Ski-ing.
• Gat Kirwani.
• Dream Scene.
• Party Seacombe.
• Love Scene.
• Crying.
• Cowboy Music.
• Fantasy Sequins.
• On the Bed.
• Wonderwall to Be Here.
• Singing Om.

ORFEO

Jack Spicer

Sharp as an arrow Orpheus
Points his music downward.
Hell is there
At the bottom of the seacliff.
Heal
Nothing by this music.
Eurydice
Is a frigate bird or a rock or some seaweed.
Hail nothing
The infernal
Is a slippering wetness out at the horizon.
Hell is this:
The lack of anything but the eternal to look at
The expansiveness of salt
The lack of any bed but one’s
Music to sleep in.

I got in the shower and burned my balls last Wednesday

Once, twice a year, my mood is so comprehensively vile about almost everything (but thankfully not me and mine), and shazam, today. Hopefully it will last until tonight's Thursday Night Pints and past when I write about it. Here, let me violate one of my sillyass blog rules and say that sad librarians are the exception and there are no happy librarians, and if you want to piss off a librarian, ask him if his undergraduate degree was in English or Art History.

• The value of human life.
• The wrong side of history.
• Water everywhere.
• Lynching.
• Bent.
• Time of death.
• Killing.
• Cruel and usual.
• Boom, for real.
• Inequality if FAKE.
• Instruments of evil.
• Alliances and obfuscations.
• Counter-messaging.
• Home invasions.
• Growing old or not.
• Derrida for those of you who do.
• Purple Line.
• REM found their river. I liked but never loved REM.
• Irwin's first air-break addresses the REM break-up. 
• Remembering REM. I do remember when REM was influential, and if their music didn't age well with me, that doesn't diminish their early influence.
• Nick Cave is fifty-four today. This is this shitty blog's Bleggalgazing Anthem:

trouble with spain

Charles Bukowski

I got in the shower

and burned my balls

last Wednesday.

met this painter called Spain,

no, he was a cartoonist,

well, I met him at a party

and everybody got mad at me

because I didn’t know who he was

or what he did.

he was rather a handsome guy

and I guess he was jealous because

I was so ugly.

they told me his name

and he was leaning against the wall

looking handsome, and I said:

hey, Spain, I like that name: Spain.

but I don’t like you. why don’t we step out

in the garden and I’ll kick the shit out of your

ass?

this made the hostess angry

and she walked over and rubbed his pecker

while I went to the crapper

and heaved.

but everybody's angry at me.

Bukowski, he can’t write, he’s had it.

washed-up. look at him drink.

he never used to come to parties.

now he comes to parties and drinks everything

up and insults real talent.

I used to admire him when he cut his wrists

and when he tried to kill himself with

gas. look at him now leering at that 19 year old

girl, and you know he

can’t get it up.

I not only burnt my balls in that shower

last Wednesday, I spun around to get out of the burning

water and burnt my bunghole

too.

United 2, Chivas USA 2

When I find myself actively rooting for a United player to miss a PK (for a dive) that would win the game, I have to ask: if United plays (and responds to its fans) like it doesn't give a fuck, why should I? The question has broader ramifications.

Here and here.

The Most Important News of the Day

SHAZAM!

Guided By Voices classic '90s line-up will release an album of new material in January 2012.
 

The cult, low-fi heroes - Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos, Mitch Mitchell and Kevin Fennell - have returned to the studio to record Let's Go Eat The Factory. It will be this line-up's first new LP since 1996's fan favourite Under The Bushes, Under The Stars. The band have just completed a year-long reunion tour.

Let's Go Eat The Factory will be released on January 1, 2012.

Here's the modest (by GBV standards at any rate) 21-strong track list:

Laundry And Lasers
The Head
Doughnut For A Snowman
Spiderfighter
Hang Mr. Kite
God Loves Us
The Unsinkable Fats Domino
Who Invented The Sun
The Big Hat And Toy Show
Imperial Racehorsing
How I Met My Mother
Waves
My Europa
Chocolate Boy
The Things That Never Need
Either Nelson
Cyclone Utilities (Remember Your Birthday)
Old Bones
Go Rolling Home
The Room Taking Shape
We Won't Apologize For The Human Race

Holyfuck, GbV - especially the Tobin Sprout-era GbV - is on the permanent rotating shortlist for third, fourth, or fifth on the sillyass desert island.

A Caricature, a Swollen Shadow, a Stupid Clown of the Spirit's Motive

You are playing the song while reading this (if your motherfucking warmongering employer isn't hording motherfucking bandwidth), yes? I need admit I love these dependably regular and necessary cycles of bleggalgazed molting. I find blogging and Blegsylvania endlessly fascinating, you but especially me in it, watching me perform, what I allow myself to do, what I don't. The rules I set on myself, where they came from, if they're challengeable, it's fun! so much so I hereby, as Knez of Egoslavia, CWCF, proudly present the new flag of Egoslavia!

• OK, I'm done. Till next time. 
• Dammit, I'm number 23 again. Serendipity's a bitch.
• It's still breathtaking how stupid Obamadick thinks you are.
• Heh!
• Drone. 
• One of these things doesn't belong.
• Republicans: a view from Canada.
• Motherfucking cracker.
• The honor of a motherfucking cracker. 
• Frothy mix of lube and fecal matter.
• Motherfucking cracker.
• Confronting the -.06% problem.
• Democrats are pomo? I hate motherfucking Democrats as much as the next guy, but motherfucking crackers. 
• Bipartisan corporatism.
• Juxtaposition.
• Confused? 
• Not unemployment, disemployment.
• About that whole.....
• As predicted: Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

• Home game tonight. Motherfucking about time.
• Hey! Did you know Glasgow has a professional soccer team?
• I hate when this happens. 
• Olde Towne!
• Ignore it. Walk away. 
• Nobody likes West Virginia. 

• Buy me these for Giftmas! (It's not too soon to start thinking about what you're not buying me for Giftmas, yo.)
• Down in the street.
• Belew, Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club.
• This week's new releases. Good news? Ivy. Bad news? Pearl Jam.
• Yes, you're right: this is the song I woke up with in my head yesterday morning; thanks for playing!

THE HEAVY BEAR THAT GOES WITH ME

Delmore Schwartz

The heavy bear who goes with me,   
A manifold honey to smear his face,   
Clumsy and lumbering here and there,   
The central ton of every place,   
The hungry beating brutish one   
In love with candy, anger, and sleep,   
Crazy factotum, disheveling all,   
Climbs the building, kicks the football,   
Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,   
That heavy bear who sleeps with me,   
Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,   
A sweetness intimate as the water's clasp,   
Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope   
Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.   
—The strutting show-off is terrified,   
Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,   
Trembles to think that his quivering meat   
Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,
Has followed me since the black womb held,   
Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,   
A caricature, a swollen shadow,
A stupid clown of the spirit's motive,   
Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,   
The secret life of belly and bone,
Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,   
Stretches to embrace the very dear
With whom I would walk without him near,   
Touches her grossly, although a word
Would bare my heart and make me clear,   
Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed   
Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,   
Amid the hundred million of his kind,   
The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

Don't Blog While Eating Lunch and Talking to Daughter Calling from College

My apologies, hadn't plunged publish instead of save in months, but saw Planet's number on caller ID and excitedly went to save so I could talk to her and I mistakenly hit publish. I'd stopped composing on dummy site because it's a pain in the ass; guess where I'm composing now. Those who read me via readers had ten minutes to read the beginning of tomorrow's post but now have just this, like you, my apologies and a favorite song:

Under Conditions of Sufficient Pressure — Measured Roughly in Years + Lead ÷ £s — Black Blood Is Highly Combustible

To those fretting sudden downturns in knocks, it's called Fantasy Football: the world didn't just discover you suck. There are wounded useless mercenaries to replace, spurts to claim, and here, you dumb motherfucker, trade me your superstar for my bag of garbage! Dogzilla Wafers! Fuck yeah!

Heh, true that, my competitive bleggal cobastards, baseball, not football, the late eighties, The Wafers bitter rivals the Arshallmay Ommelsray (the Bove Dars the fucksticks) (and we badgered Hamster

into playing though he really didn't want to - and Hamsters is what he named his team, is what he sigs here when he comments, is seeing Bonnie Prince Billy with us in three weeks).

Anyway, bleggalgazing: I woke up with two of these songs in my head and chose the third and fourth ten hours earlier. Serendipity is Lord. Guess.

• Drone. 
• Torture hotel.
• Fake.
• On the fake.
• After diaphanous irrelevance.
• It's called marketing.
• Coming apart.
• David Brooks doesn't miss it, he ignores it.
• One word. 
• License to kill. 
• Motherfucking cracker.
• We who cannot fuck.

PLAYING WITH FIRE

Evie Shockley

something is always burning, passion,
                        pride, envy, desire, the internal organs
        going chokingly up in smoke, as some-
                thing outside the body exerts a pull
that drags us like a match across sand-
                        paper. something is always burning,
        london, paris, detroit, l.a., the neighbor-

                hoods no one outside seems to see until
they're backlit by flames, when the out-
                        siders, peering through dense, acrid,
        black-&-orange-rimmed fumes, mis-
                take their dark reflections for savages
altogether alien. how hot are the london
                        riots for west end pearls? how hot in tot-

        tenham? if one bead of cream rolls down
        one precious neck, heads will roll in brix-
ton: the science of sociology. the mark
                        duggan principle of cause and effect:
        under conditions of sufficient pressure—
                measured roughly in years + lead ÷ £s—
black blood is highly combustible.

At Some Party I'd Said It Was the Best Novel Since Absalom, Absalom!, which May Have Been True, but Mostly I Was Trying to Impress Her and Convince Myself

I'm still fighting the urge to bleggalgaze - and this post signifies I'm still mightily losing - though I can offer this advice: posting post-classical noise, 20th century high modernist poetry, news of your cats and kid, and reviews of your favorite soccer team's latest games as a means of asserting your authorial independence over your insatiable pinglust at the cost of alienating all but your most loyal, patient, tolerant, and most forgiving readers is win!

Those of you left, as thank you gift, here: motherfucking professional progressives:

Liberal activists and academics displeased with the Obama administration’s handling of several issues popular with progressives say they are seeking candidates willing to mount a primary challenge against President Obama next year.

The group, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, said it faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.

The group said Saturday it is seeking six “recognizable, articulate” candidates who would not mount serious challenges to Obama, but “rigorously debate his policy stands” on issues related to labor, poverty, foreign policy, civil rights and consumer protections.

Gah. Comedy gold. Meanwhile, more new blegs added left and right.

• Fake.
• Aldous Tyler for President!
• Social programs.
• Of course they are. So are all Attorneys General.
• Compassionate conservatives.
• On the above.
• Why are our revolutionaries only from the Right?
• Paper of record puzzled.
• On the Suskind book: A depressing book yes, but savvy and informative. And some of that depression will be temporarily alleviated by the doubtlessly entertaining circular firing squad that is likely to emerge in the next week once Summers, Geithner, Warren, Emanuel, Rubin, Volcker, Orszag, Rouse, Barney Frank (who does not fare well), and perhaps the president get their hands on it.
• Whore Ring Tone.
• Tea Party Zombie Game.
• Constitutionally deficient.
• Mainstreaming.
• Wikileaks, music, power.
• MOCO is 235.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Mists part one, part two.
• Sherbet:

BOOK LOANED TO TOM ANDREWS

Bobby C Rogers

I'd already found out that one of the secrets to happiness was never loan your
 books. But I loaned it anyway. We were all of us poor and living

on ideas, stumbling home late to basement apartments, talking to ourselves.
 What did we own except books and debt? When the time came

we could move it all in the trunk of a car. Tom knew what a book was worth—he
 brought it back a week later, seemingly unhandled, just a little looser

in the spine, a trade paper edition of The Death of Artemio Cruz, required reading
 for a course in postmodernism we were suffering through.

The book's trashed now, boxed up and buried in the garage with a hundred other
 things I can't throw away. When I moved back south I loaned it again

to a girl I'd just met. At some party I'd said it was the best novel since Absalom,
 Absalom!, which may  have been true, but mostly I was trying to impress her,

and convince myself, still testing all I'd been told about the matter of a book
 is best kept separate from, well, matter. Months later it turned up

on my front steps without comment, the cover torn in two places, the dog-eared
 pages of self-conscious prose stuck together with dark, rich chocolate.