And the Kids Just Don't Understand

We used to play Monkees. I was Mickey (I was the oldest, I got to choose), my cousin Jennifer was Davy, Elric was Michael Nesmith, my cousin Wayne-Matthew was Peter Tork. I used to argue with Nadine Kneidler, who was my age, had cooties, lived two houses down, that The Monkees were better than The Beatles. I unsuccessfully badgered Mr Filsinger to change the Cub Scout pack meeting, held in his cat-piss smelling basement, from Mondays at seven to any other night at seven so I could watch The Monkees on Monday on NBC. I wanted to be Mickey because Mickey got the power-pop songs I loved while Davy got the bubble-gum songs I hated, though I do like the song above, noted because Davy Jones died today, noted because it's another mile marker past the halfway point passed.

Here and here and here and here, my favorite Monkees' song:

No One Could Have Assumed a Stiffer Welcome Than the One We Got

Flutterings! o! DHS monitored Occupy! Wouldn't any of you who participated in any way, from keyboarding to occupying, be offended if they didn't? Also - I assume the FBI and DHS is infiltrating rightwing militias as well as Occupy and Muslim mosques, don't you? When DHS flies drones over Oklahoma monitoring crackers in home-made uniforms war-gaming I feel __________ about it.  Also too, here's a Martin Luther Insult Generator.

• Battle lines.
• Drones, baby, drones.
• Drones over the Philippines.
• Lying the world into war is always an option.
• We have the technology.
• We have the technology.
• Your Fucking New York Times.
• I used to say this all the time. Go ahead, Alabama, secede again.
• That shithouse of an Eastern Shore discovered by European Stone Age hunters!
• Shithouse of an Eastern Shore is trademark Billy Don Melonhead.
• My imminent hell. Construction shit already off-loaded onto the grass at the corner of Cedar Lane and Rockville Pike.
• Things you might have missed.
• Owen gets reviewed by Self in LRB.
• When did writing become a career?
• I work at a Catholic university that requires all freshman take a Problem of God class, I see Walker Percy assigned all the time, though I imagine many my age haven't thought about Percy in years.
• The new Ashbery poem below made me think of my reaction to the new Magnetic Field's album. I'm going to try to wait until I get my hands on the new Mantel novel this May and even then maybe until I get my hands on the new Ishiguro whenever it's released, but there's definitely something going on that is either me or them or, most likely, and most likely the option I'll choose regardless, both.
• Stream the new Xiu Xiu for those of you who do.
• A Brendan Benson song for those of you who do.
• Waiting for Wotan, continued.
• Complete work of Carl Ruggles.
• Here I would normally post a youtube of a Ruggles piece, but my new obsession with Richard Youngs wins, so instead, the two pieces you didn't hear when you didn't see last nights WTF12HRMAX post:

POEM: ETUDES SECOND SERIES

John Ashbery

A cloud blew up and like
that: OK fun’s fun but we’ve got issues,
to wait until tomorrow. At least that’s
what I heard, a kind of rushing
as of water over steep slabs. More ants to fry.
I was placed on administrative leave, you
had to be there, nevertheless it sucked,
went back years. No one could find the original
copy, there were bats in the belfry.
Finally one comes down to me and says where were you.
I was only asking. Or if he had been there recently,
why there were more rafters to be removed
before you get to the roof, the actual core.
So I imagined there was infinitely more
copies like these and that we would recover
all of them. A dormer of truth sparkled.

And we were caught up, embarrassed in the shine
that hadn’t meant to spear us away like that.
Parts of it were yours. When it came back
to the truth that was there, nobody could imagine
otherwise. Where once lack had been, now
was embarrassment of riches. The riches themselves
were embarrassed for what they had brought us.
So it was time to go, even if it was
that other time when nothing came in or left,
a period of ragged glare. And why not? Why shouldn’t
the other trap have sprung? Its vagueness was sweet
for once. No guest could have assumed a stiffer
welcome than the one we got. The deputy was frazzled
and his sidekick hamstrung, but all came up
for the cause, there was no fighting ways about it
as long as mercenaries shuddered and satin slunk
along the shores. After all, it was the way it had
been ordered. Now I want you to just sit over there,
it’s June in February and a passel o’
wild things be headin’ here. If that’s the case
I think I’ll just be off. Oh no you don’t,
you sit over there, and more’s the pity.

So hours and hours were spent tapping the studs
until the requisite hollow sound whooshed forth,
making monkeys of us all. And do you think the
boy on the gourd took any notice of us? Naw, he
was too full of himself to be another’s. The end
result is eponymous, like they say. If no name clings
to the door’s outside you are all free to pick up
your things at the cashier’s desk and mosey outward,
I suppose, if that is the kind of thing that gets recorded
hereabouts. Only let no man call the spire a skyscraper,
or angle for further farthings in the dust. Shucks,
a salesman can call that tune, honest injun, he
appropriated. It happened on a remote median, six miles from the world.

Pull, You Know, Favor, Drag

I play the single from the new Magnetic Fields' album again just because inside baseball but mostly because I like it, unlike the rest of the new Magnetic Field's album which can be streamed here. Six times through, each time I like it progressively less. In my brain of hearts I knew when I voted for Obama in November 2008 exactly how February 28, 2012's obamapostasy would feel: my disillusionment at the Corporate fuck that Obama is is no rubier or kayfabier than my fantasies of Obama as progressive hero were, but in faith's marrow, I never expected to not adore a Magnetic Fields album.

• The absurdity of game theory.
• The hurt is on.
• On Freedom Plaza versus McPherson Square.
• The NYPD was just the hired help.
• The NYPD was just the hired help.
• Microcosm. 
• As expected, President Obama and major Democratic power brokers, including Chuck Schumer, D-Wall Street, have spoken out against the NYPD spying program. 
• Meh, I made a funny. Fuck Democrats.
• Your Fucking New York Times.
• Your Fucking New York Times.
• The global war on women.
• Anarchy as a personal relationship.
• Anarchist geographies.
• A last chance for Christianity?
• Odds and ends.
• Yes, I've been motherfucking motherfucking crackering more. Here's Robert Reich motherfucking crackering. Speaking only for me and acknowledging the self-justifying and self-serving intent of this statement, I am largely small enough to simultaneously understand the use of motherfucking crackers to control my behavior and still enjoy loathing motherfucking crackers.
• On the Robert Reich.
• Blooger is getting shittier faster.
• (Happy Birthday, Elric, if you're reading - or if you're not too.)
• The Garden of Effort.
• Burning down the architectural house of failure.
• The return of Silliman's incredibly generous lit links.
• The songs on the new Mag Fields that sound like I thought they would sound tired, the songs written to sound different sound forced. I'm the same age metaphysically as Magnetic Fields. I should have more sympathy for selfish reasons alone for the projector's predicament. Such is my loyalty to my addiction to faith that I'll listen to the album over and over until I like it.
• I've no problem loving this boatload of live Bonnie Prince Billy.

[In the great snowfall before the bomb]

Lorine Niedecker

In the great snowfall before the bomb
colored yule tree lights
windows, the only glow for contemplation
along this road

I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else.

I was Blondie
I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists
down by Larry the Lug,
I'd never get anywhere
because I'd never had suction,
pull, you know, favor, drag,
well-oiled protection.

I heard their rehashed radio barbs—
more barbarous among hirelings
as higher-ups grow more corrupt.
But what vitality! The women hold jobs—
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

When I Was Younger, When I First Made These Rules for Myself, I Would Always Carry Up to Three Suitcases, However Large or Heavy

• Busy, I'm behind on links because of my new weekend lazyass blegging policy, plus last night's post covers what I'd been thinking about, plus the new Tindersticks album is so good, have more again.
• Won't stop until there's nobody to kill.
• Grid, not goal.
• On carbon democracy.
• Coercion v control.
• Social class of teachers.
• Mapping stereotypes.
• EJ Dionne fears the end of the GOP cracker-baiting, prays for Frothy.
• Clarence Thomas for POTUS! No, really.
• College educated crackers are stupider than non-college educated crackers. I've no doubt this is true for college educated pwoggles like me too.
• Frothy (B.A., M.B.A, J.D) tells crackers don't go to college.
• The cracker obsession with ladyparts.
• They are motherfucking crackers.
• Posted because the guy with the shoe phone is my avatar's nemesis.
• My new second favorite soccer team.
• You are forewarned. I'm fully inhabited by The Unconsoled, my third time now. No author hits the chords in my head like Ishiguro. Love love love. See below in the usual poem spit
• Looking at birthdays, I notice that Peter De Vries was both 102 years ago. When was the last time you saw mention, much less read, a novel by Peter De Vries?
• I think the Oscars suck when it's good; I'm told by those who like the Oscars that last night sucked. I can't imagine the depth of that suck, except to guess it's the same to me.
• Stuart Staples interview.

Gustav the porter, first chapter, Ishiguro's The Unconsoled:

"I should be honest with you, sir. It's only fair. When I was younger, when I first made these rules for myself, I would always carry up to three suitcases, however large or heavy. If a guest had a fourth, I'd put that one on the floor. But three, I could always manage. Well, the truth is, sir, four years ago I had a period of ill-health, and I was finding things difficult, and so we discussed it at the Hungarian Cafe. Well, in the end, my colleagues all agreed there was no good reason for me to be so strict on myself. After all, they said to me, all that's required is to impress on the guests something of the true nature of our work. Two bags or three, the effect would be much the same. I should reduce my minimum to two suitcases and no harm would be done. I accepted what they said, sir, but I know it's not quite the truth. I can see it doesn't have nearly the same effect when people look at me. The difference between seeing a porter laden with two bags and seeing one laden with three, your must admit, sir, even to the least practiced eye, the effect is considerably different. I know that, sir, and I don't mind telling you it's painful for me to accept. But just to return to my point, I hope you see now why I don't wish to put down your bags. You only have two. At least for a few more years, two will be within my powers."

Doesn't This Remind You of Those Things We've Done Before?

That pink putter in the basket is my bird on hole three at Seneca, though the four on 13C and three on 21B and 24C were sweet but the three on 26D was gold. Played back 9 then middle then front. Back: 3-4-3-5-3-3-4-3-4. Middle: 3-4-4-4-6-3-3-4-3 (but wasn't in the water - didn't go in all day, Dr Z twice). Front - skipped first, newby group of six-4-2-3-5-4-3-4-3. I've never putted better. I haven't played in two months. Holyfuck, beautiful day.

That's Stanley shot this morning from inside the stairwell to our basement looking out underneath the door to hallway. I need note that while I don't watch many movies - it's not a principled thing, I like them when I do, I just don't, I think to do other stuff - I recognize, as someone who organizes his music and poetry and fiction and everything into Desert Island lists, why the Oscars - and Emmys and Tonys and - are so popular, that popularity, like everything else, reminds me of my training. I've been warned to stay away from twooter the next four hours to avoid people who often complain about the taxonomies and methodologies of our ruling hierarchies competing to be the wittiest, wisest, and archest - what do you think of my entry submitted here? - twootergod of a popularity contest that celebrates the taxonomies and methodologies of our ruling hierarchies. I don't know movies to play this one, that's why I'm sitting this particular tournament out. Let's play Best Furs Song Ever!

Born One Hundred Thirty-Three Years Ago Today

BTW, I have access to a huge and excellent database of classical music, whateverthefuck the sillyass phrase classical music means, covering whenever until now, including most of Bridge. Glad to give friends access. Email me.

Matins

Here, all of All Things Must Pass.

Here, a post from last September with all of Wonderwall Music in links.

Holiest Day of Egoslavia

George was born sixty-nine years ago today. I love George. Love love love. I can say with utter certainty that I have listened to All Things Must Pass more than any other album. In that sillyass desert island game, it's one of five.

Ric Flair is 63 today:

His shoes cost more than your house.

Clause of Claws

No Thursday Night Pints, bad week work-wise, grippe-wise, work-wise, and husband-wise respectively. Somebody would have mentioned Feingold or I would have, somebody would have mentioned Santorum or L would have, somebody would have mentioned the latest Hilltop gossip or K would have, somebody would have mentioned I'd sure write and read more if I stopped blogging or D would have. Once the first person bailed the rest of us quickly OKed. Fun gets old too.

Re: Feingold - tells me Obama's election is cake. Cake. I wonder what Cabinet position Feingold's been promised in Obama's second term, if he's been offered an audition for heir apparent.





A friend reminded me last night it's be a year or so since I ran my Official Autoblogography, so here it is again. Also, my apologies: I have so hopelessly fucked-up with my incompetence the coding to this blooger site, if you want to see the expanded version of last night's poem, which I assumed was expandable on this fucking blog but wasn't, it's over at the backward blog where it is expandable.

• Symposium on Graeber's Debt.
• Two opposing views of POTUS 12 here and here.
• GOP candidate update.
• Obamadickswinger.
• Category error.
• Which is worse, that he's lying, that he believes what he's saying?
• Pastor Sanctimonious: incoherently hysterical or hysterically incoherent?
• The Iranian threat.
• Drone wars as way of life.
• Fatfuck Thiessen complains that drones prevent torture.
• Baboons on the loose.
• Hey, Michel Foucault! (Thanks, AYV)
• Oh, heard another radio commercial yesterday, this one for Capital One Bank - a dweeb is bragging to the She-Bitch who dumped him at the prom about the points he accrues using his Capital One credit card. He tells the She-Bitch that he's earned enough points to take his yoga-instructor wife - she's very fit, She-Bitch, because of the yoga, he emphasizes - on a vacation to Hawaii flying first class. Did you know, She-Bitch, that seats in first class are made of supple leather? Know what the leather smells like, She-Bitch? Victory, that's what.
• Yay Maryland!
• Rescue cat saves owner's life. Adopt a cat today!
• In which we learn the world will be taken over by cats.
• A poetics of radical evil.
• Literature in times of crisis.
• Map of the Voyage of the Pequod.
• Sun and Necessity.
• If you dig Zeppelin, try this Janacek.

FORECLOSURE

Lorine Niedecker

Tell'em to take my bare walls down
my cement abutments
their parties thereof
and clause of claws

Leave me the land
Scratch out: the land

May prose and property both die out
and leave me peace

I'd Never Get Anywhere Because I'd Never Had Suction

New Sun Kil Moon was here but the widget was messing with motherfucking blooger.. Was going to write at length about Babs, Patron Saint of Spies; post another link and bitch re: Antiwar's pro-bombing fuckery; was going to cut myself for knee-jerkingly twooting a gross and predictable gif of Frothy to expand on the reflexive depth of my training cited yesterday; was going to post about the wisdom or lack thereof of outing myself onblog as a 52 year old happily married upper-middle class white male, but have an old Sun Kil Moon song instead.





Yes, there was more here last night, and Red House Painters too. Now here.

Also too:

WFMU widget was below, was messing with motherfucking blooger. See widget in blogroll left.

• I pledged Mouse of the Day! I'm getting: Dan Bodah's Break the Tabs & Check Dolby B, Julie's Living in the Dark, Irwin's I Want to Be a Singer, Fabio's O S T-The 2012 Marathon Premium for Strength Through Failure, Stan's Stoned in the Garden of Eden, Inflatable Squirrel Carcass Coloring Book III - Revenge of the Tints, Martha's That's Not Punk, You F**king Poseur, and a WF-MU tee. Yay!
• NYPD Zagat Guide to best and most threatening Newark Muslim restaurants.
• Yes, this occurred to me too.
• She Who Is As Shitty pronounces Frothy dead.
• Yes, but they are motherfucking crackers.
• E.J. Dionne is astonished - astonished! - re: motherfucking crackers.
• Drumbeat.
• Wawa creeping closer. Posted because months ago I asked why there are no Sheetz and Wawas in MOCO. I now vaguely remember hearing once years ago that gas stations in MOCO got some law written that protects them from Wawas and Sheetzs. Anyone?
• Floor, a new online poetry magazine, is worth your eyes.
• Who was Lorine Niedecker?
• I get email. PlayGround, a new online music magazine, asked nicely for a bump so here it is. Please note: Grimes is a motherfucking idiot.
• On Throbbing Gristle.
• Some The Clean to listen to.
• Something that occurred to me when posting Sun Kil Moon is how utterly Modest Mouse - who Kozelek clearly loves, he covers so much - has vanished from public consciousness.
• New Rufus Wainwright.
• Was asked to post some Brendan Benson, who I'd never heard of, in part because BLCKDGRD is a completely Jack White-free zone. 

IN THE GREAT SNOWFALL BEFORE THE BOMB

Lorine Niedecker

In the great snowfall before the bomb
colored yule tree lights
windows, the only glow for contemplation
along this road

I worked the print shop
right down among em
the folk from whom all poetry flows
and dreadfully much else.

I was Blondie
I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists
down by Larry the Lug,
I'd never get anywhere
because I'd never had suction,
pull, you know, favor, drag,
well-oiled protection.

I heard their rehashed radio barbs—
more barbarous among hirelings
as higher-ups grow more corrupt.
But what vitality! The women hold jobs—
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

How Many Traits Must a Thing Have in Order to Be Singular?

Driving home last night I heard two commercials back to back. The first was for Verizon Wireless, how much faster its 27-G wireless is than your sucky device; the voice-over was a teenage girl , the punch line of the commercial is that "Jenny doesn't know her boyfriend just changed his relationship status to single, but she will in three... two... one..." and then dumped teenage girl scream. The second was for Infinity from Comcast. A husband excitedly says to his wife, Honey, I bought this for reasons A, B, C, and she naggingly says, Aren't we supposed to be saving money? Husband says, But we are saving money with Infinity, what have you done, to which she defiantly says, I bought a new purse, it can hold all the money you're saving. Have you seen the new GEICO commercial where a middle-aged white male trying to save money on diet-plans hires three junior high girls in Valley Girl drag to follow him around and say in sequence whenever he put food to mouth "Ew" and "Really?" and "That's so gross" yet?

I'm a 52 year old American white heterosexual male faithfully married 24 years this summer with an almost 19 year old daughter in an elite liberal arts college. I'm three years from fully vesting in my pension at the elite university I've worked at for 22 years and from which I have two degrees. I've four years left on a mortgage for a house I bought 20 years ago for half a million dollars less than I could sell it today. I apologize for writing this post for the 3Kth day in a motherfucking row, but I want it clear I'm commenting on, not competing in, Stringtown's latest outbreak of King of Anarchists. I am not anarchier than thou, you win. I work to be less of an asshole in my complicity, part of which is recognizing my training and how it is constantly reinforced as in those three "comedic" misogynistic ads above reminding me that in our society, as power is constructed and imposed, women are designated as catty bitches and scolds and dependents sucking the marrow of male productivity who are spared deserved punishment only by men's restraint and benevolence. It's also part of my training that benevolence is as much threat as gift, its granting a reminder of its withdrawal and opposite. All I  can do is be consciously kinder for fair's sake and urge you to be too, though I also recognize power's use of that matrix to divide us from each other.

• Remember when I used to say I wish John Roberts would get hit by a bus at the height of POTUS 12 so that Obama would have to pick not only a new SCOTUS but Chief SCOTUS? Well, sure, though I think we all know how that will turn out.
• Yet another appeal to non-existent gods.
• Anti-war too?
• Germany's new Greek colony.
• Virginia governor considers his POTUS ambitions, backs off Virginia cracker/christer abortion bill.
• She who is as shitty turns on Frothy.
• Actually, Corporate, GOP Division, is turning on Frothy.
• Surveillance state.
• Things you might have missed.
• Waiting for Wotan, continued.

TWO, THREE

Rae Armantrout

Sad, fat boy in pirate hat.
Long, old, dented,
copper-colored Ford.

How many traits
must a thing have
in order to be singular?

(Echo persuades us
everything we say
has been said at least once
                                           before.)

Two plump, bald men
in gray tee-shirts
and tan shorts

are walking a small bulldog -
followed by the eyes
of an invisible third person.

The Trinity was born
from what we know
of the bitter

symbiosis of couples.
Can we reduce echo's sadness
by synchronizing our speeches?

Is it the beginning or end
of real love
when we pity a person

because, in him,
we see ourselves.

Everything Turns Away Quite Leisurely from the Disaster

W.H. Auden was born 105 years ago today.

 

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

• Lifted from my post, where I related some personal history.
• Where I noticed effingblooger has changed the font size on every single poem I posted that month. Effingblooger has also changed how my headers work, plus effingblooger is pissing me off in myriad ways. I'm effingsick of effingblooger. I'm not going to move to another effingplatform, but if any of you who've Kindly offered in the past to help me with effingblooger effingcoding are still willing, please send me an email.
• Objects collecting subjects.
• Humans are nice. It's used against us.
• The repressed never really went away.
• I wonder if Obama weighed the political benefits of antagonizing Iran versus the political liabilities of $5 a gallon gas and decided antagonize.
• Ten excellent reasons to bomb Iran.
• Yes, they are effingchristers.
• Pastor Sanctimonious acknowledges w/o using the term effingchristers that effingchristers help Obama.
• Eugene Robinson dances on effingchristers graves.
• Frothy and the construction of whiteness.
• Radical thought for the day.
• An alternative to the consumption model.
• Rachel Maddow is now goading Romney's billionaire (who has still not responded to Greenwald).
• Sorta like a conversation Earthgirl and I had last night over Indian.
• My past hell. Good riddance, though future hell will suxxxxxxx.
• More good United news.
• Stockhausen.
• Go throw the coins in your pocket at WFMU. Widget on left.
• Yes, I posted these songs last night. And?

THE UNKNOWN CITIZEN

W.H. Auden

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
   saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content 
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace:  when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
   generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
   education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

This Is the Topic We Discussed in Your Kitchen This Winter

I confess, this post's tone needed changing after I read news last evening that for the first time in recent memory there is potentially positive news regarding United's short term and fuck-me-jig long term survival in DC. I acknowledge that news, if it proves true, represents nothing more than a reprieve; it's strange and terribly good how nothing more than the prospect of a reprieve feels. The original post was going to sourly and darkly tie in my blegangst - I'm running three different blegs for three different purposes, what the fuck am I doing? - with the predictable but still demoralizing reading slump since finishing 1Q84, a slump so deep I don't trust what I think about 1Q84 though what I think is that Murakami wanted me to not trust 1Q84. Weird fucking days. Anyway, I think I know a way out, though I'm going to try rereading - it's been four years - Mason & Dixon first (and it's working so far, the capitalized nouns aren't pissing me off), but it's been two years since I last read The Unconsoled, it chirps at me from the bookshelf next to my bed at 530 in the morning, and a cryptic tweet from Paris Review about Ishiguro soliciting suggestions for his almost finished new novel and....

• Can we synchronize our souls? This song will not leave my head. I blame Stevie Zoom. It's now BLCKDGRD - Theme Song 6. 
• Sanctions are to war like foreplay is to....
• Well, if Lindsay Graham, John McCain, and Joe Lieberman are for it, it must be a good idea.
• Syria's curious transformation.
• Of course.
• Robert Reich might have his obamapostasy yet.
• E.J. Dionne will never have his obamapostasy.
• Concerning violence and nailing jello to walls.
• You know, they are motherfucking crackers.
• On the above.
• Of course they're motherfucking crackers.
  
• On circumscribing the unspoken.
• Romney's billionaire backer hasn't risen to Greenwald's bait yet.
• I need confess I've caught myself thinking of going to a Nat's game or two this year.
• Littell on Blanchot.
• Duplessis is my next poetry assignment.
• Look at Rich's playlist, same set, Archers of Loaf and David Thomas and Two Pale Boys. Now look to the left column, click on the WFMU widget, throw them some coin, it's marathon time.
• Kathleen Edwards live.
• Peter Broderick.
• Stephin Merritt interview.

THE STRICTURE

Lisa Robertson

'The 69 heads of Messerschmidt cast in lead are not heaven.'
'The magnetic cures of Mesmer on the plastic soul are more
     difficult to characterize.'
'The heavens of Flanders are like textile in lustrousness -
     a bridal textile.'
'We see the classic theme of a woman suffering, with pearl-
     sized nipples, pink cotton billowing or nacrous skin
     spouting feathers.'
'Here is a perfume burner of Khorasan, a bird sitting on top.'
'Birds perch on heaven habitually. They are not certainty-
     seekers.'

I wanted to think into the stricture of appearances.
There was a time when I came close.
To help the problem I changed into a clematis, I changed into
     a dog, I changed into a perfumed smoke.
Some of my organs were outside history, which gave me an
     advantage.
Place here the idea of a necessary inconspicuousness.

'This is wrong'
'This is beautiful'
'This is social'
'This is not thinking'

It is the handiwork of appearing only.

This is the topic we discussed in your kitchen this winter.
I said I didn't know what thinking is.
You said you were trying to understand your sense of an
     inner voice, which was separate from thinking.
I didn't understand.
I let myself go blank.

I began by taking everything that was doubtful and throwing
     it out, like sand.

Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

It's true, and fuck-me-jig, in news I just heard that I shouldn't be celebrating yet as a done deal, I can't explain to you how much I knew I needed but had no idea how much how much this completely unexpected and cathartic KABOOM OF JOY! would joy me.

Yes, I know I'll pay for this. And I just noticed Benny's wearing a Gax shirt when he's interviewed post-game; I wonder whom he swapped with.

All Day Something that Refuses to Show Itself Hovers at the Corner of His Eye

Serendipitous gah - when I re-packaged the old pregah site from the beta-post safe house into VNTY'SGRVYRD I didn't create a new site to act as beta-post safe house, so when I accidentally deleted last night three paragraphs of holiday weekend bleggalgazing prompted by someone sending me an invitation to Pinterest you were, despite my fully-hearted but ultimately half-assed attempts at recreating the paragraphs, spared. I am reminded to compose in tablet, not on screen, I am reminded to create a new beta-post safe house, I am reminded today is Dave Wakeling's 56th birthday which reminds me of the above, easily one of the five most air-guitared songs of my life.

• UPDATE! Verily fuck the fuck who blocked the original Save It For Later promo video on youtube. Verily, with a rusty spork.
• I have a waiter's access to Villagers, and when Robert Reich made his "no responsible American should accept a 10 percent risk of a President Gingrich" he was reflecting Villager doctrine that while Gingrich is an occasionally useful idiot the Villager's think he's batshit insane: Newt doesn't know he's a useful idiot, not only doesn't he know he's no more than a Villager jobber, he thinks he's working the Villagers and that makes Gingrich monstrously unimaginable as Emperor of Villagers to Villagers. You'd expect the history faculty at Hilltop to think Gingrich batshit insane, but the neo-liberals in government and the assholes in econ think Gingrich is batshit insane, by which they mean they've no faith they can control him. I've heard this yesterday in the sandwich line of Wagshel's from the mouths of two Villagers who've publicity-stills on Wagshel's walls: "Newt is fucking batshit insane." And no, I said nothing, ran neither fucker down in the parking lot.
• Hard-hitting, dissenting journalism w/out the hard-hitting and dissent.
• Scoring the global war on terror.
• Admitting you have a problem.
• Virginia is for shovers.
• Re: pinterest - apparently you need give them access to either a facebook or twitter account and they populate your page for you from who and what you read and post and fuck that. Which isn't what I wrote about and lost other than the fuck that.
• Cindy Sherman.
• Reading list from Barthelme.
• I officially give up on Flame Alphabet. I blame me. Only thing working now is poetry, and that not that well either.
• Poets in performance. (h/t Sasha)
• Charts and diagrams.
• It's also Stephen Dobyn's 71st birthday today.

IT'S LIKE THIS

Stephen Dobyns

Each morning the man rises from bed because the invisible

      cord leading from his neck to someplace in the dark,

      the cord that makes him always dissatisfied,

      has been wound tighter and tighter until he wakes.

He greets his family, looking for himself in their eyes,

      but instead he sees shorter or taller men, men with

      different degrees of anger or love, the kind of men

      that people who hardly know him often mistake

      for him, leaving a movie or running to catch a bus.

He has a job that he goes to. It could be at a bank

      or a library or turning a piece of flat land

      into a ditch. All day something that refuses to

      show itself hovers at the corner of his eye,

      like a name he is trying to remember, like

      expecting a touch on the shoulder, as if someone

      were about to embrace him, a woman in a blue dress

      whom he has never met, would never meet again.

      And it seems the purpose of each day’s labor

      is simply to bring this mystery to focus. He can

      almost describe it, as if it were a figure at the edge

      of a burning field with smoke swirling around it

      like white curtains shot full of wind and light.

When he returns home, he studies the eyes of his family to see

      what person he should be that evening. He wants to say:

      All day I have been listening, all day I have felt

      I stood on the brink of something amazing.

      But he says nothing, and his family walks around him

      as if he were a stick leaning against a wall.

Late in the evening the cord around his neck draws him to bed.

      He is consoled by the coolness of sheets, pressure

      of blankets. He turns to the wall, and as water

      drains from a sink so his daily mind slips from him.

      Then sleep rises before him like a woman in a blue dress,

      and darkness puts its arms around him, embracing him.

      Be true to me, it says, each night you belong to me more,

      until at last I lift you up and wrap you within me.

Born Eighty-Six Years Ago Today

CALLED INTO PLAY

A.R. Ammons

Fall fell:  so that's it for the leaf poetry:
some flurries have whitened the edges of roads

and lawns: time for that, the snow stuff: &
turkeys and old St. Nick: where am I going to

find something to write about I haven't already
written away: I will have to stop short, look

down, look up, look close, think, think, think:
but in what range should I think: should I

figure colors and outlines, given forms, say
mailboxes, or should I try to plumb what is

behind what and what behind that, deep down
where the surface has lost its semblance: or

should I think personally, such as, this week
seems to have been crafted in hell: what: is

something going on: something besides this
diddledeediddle everyday matter-of-fact: I

could draw up an ancient memory which would
wipe this whole presence away: or I could fill

out my dreams with high syntheses turned into
concrete visionary forms: Lucre could lust

for Luster: bad angels could roar out of perdition
and kill the AIDS vaccine not quite

perfected yet: the gods could get down on 
each other; the big gods could fly in from

nebulae unknown: but I'm only me: I have 4
interests--money, poetry, sex, death: I guess

I can jostle those. . . .

...........


h/t self-portrait and interview with Ammons.

Here's another. Time to read all but especially Sumerian Vistas and doubly especially Garbage again.

Bird's Bones Make No Awful Noise

Tried a screenshot capture but didn't work out so well, but as I type this sentence this headline is on the front of Your Fucking Washington Post

SANTORUM APPEARS ON OBAMA'S RADAR

Oh no! Obama's radar! One needs ask how it got there.

Speaking of shitty, the FBI could set-up some fuckwit named Billy Bob and arrest him near the White House for propaganda if they wanted, you know?

• Is it my imagination, or has blooger and/or firefox turned skeevy since that massive midweek windows update? All three machines - home PC, laptop, work PC, are for shit.
• Good day to be a Marylander.
• Why America keeps getting more conservative.
• Sex, Frothy, conservative imagination.
• Frothy!
• Jebmentum!
• Because if a Republican wins the White House then Limbaugh loses power, that's why. It's not more complicated than that.
• Greenwald picks a fight. There's no update yet, so the billionaire's lawyers must not yet have responded. They'd be smart to eat their anger and shut up.
• Is it a fishcicle?
• It's A.R. Ammons birthday! More later today, I betcha.
• Hilary Mantel (and others) on historical fiction. I'm debating rereading Wolf Hall a third time before the sequel comes out this May.
• Or I could read Beckett.
• Speaking of reading, I'm halfway through Marcus' Flame Alphabet and.... meh. It's not that it's bad though it is unpleasant, it's not that I don't buy the conceit though it is absurd, it's.... 
• Woke up with this in my head:

THE CITY LIMITS

A.R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Shred of Gale

What the hell was that, K asked me first thing at Thursday Night Pints re: whatever I was doing here yesterday. They've been told stories of King of Anarchist, I told them the latest, something shitty towards me, something obnoxious to a newby: nothing new, it's just that as POTUS 12 ramps up to unimaginable depths of tribal lunacy those of us screaming about tribal lunacy will be triply ignored so we'll scream at everyone else in our tribe triply viciously. That was yesterday's (meaning Tuesday's) piss-off, today's (meaning yesterday's) was I needed some lame what-the-fuck, make me giggle, alienate the readers by not only denying them their daily aggregator but by giffing them XYZ and music in a lame-ass full page stunt. The best way to quit POTUS 12 would be to quit blogging, said L. I know, I said. You'd read and write more if you quit, said D. I know, I said. Look at you smile, said K, you're proud of that page, there's no way in hell you'll quit. I know, I said.

• It still exists, just over here.
• Fred Hiatt praises the Park Police.
• The politics of the super rich.
• Of course Obama's gonna win.
• Unzipped.
• That's what the new breed says.
• The uses of a long GOP campaign.
• On Masters of the Uterus. It's not so much I've been avoiding the topic as much as what is there to say, though I will add that if the economic outlook vis a vis Obama's reelection was trending down instead of up the motherfucking GOP wouldn't be goading the motherfucking crackers and christers so hard.
• Notes on feminism and and reproductive power.
• Missing hammer.
• Kundera, economics, psychotic reasoning.
• Worst of the worst.
• Snore.
• For the record, it worked.
• I don't begrudge the $2.
• On Lisa Robertson re: feminism, marxism, poetry.
• Hard to find Robertson poetry on web, don't have my books with me as I type this, will post some in the days to come.
• The Weather: A Report on Sincerity.

EVERYTHING

Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Baranczak

Everything -
a smug and bumptious word.
It should be written in quotes.
It pretends to miss nothing,
to gather, hold, contain, and have.
While all the while it's just
a shred of gale

First, It's Just the Faces Disappearing

• Blogsick and blogpissed. Fuck it. Not here, not elsewhere. 
• Regardless, enjoy the new Tindersticks! Is excellent.
• Totem and taboo.
• I hope the Nobel committee strips Obama of his peace prize for his warmongering because I want to see what conservatives, who were furious Obama received it, do and say when Obama's punished for being as big a war-criminal as the conservatives want to be.
• Chasing the bone off the porch.
• Confederacy-light.
• Of course the decline is real and self-inflicted.
• I caught five minutes of the fuckwitted Tom Ashbrook interviewing Charles Murray and Joan Walsh last night, and if Ashbrook and Walsh are our designated Liberal intellectuals, sooooo fucked.

  

• I permit myself a gif.
• Don't tweet about this.
• If you see Richard H Bradley today, tell him to fuck himself.
• Did you know Washington DC is run by clowns?
• Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?
• Scattered post-mortem thoughts on Mike Kelley.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• O! My mood needed this: one of my favorite books, scheduled to be reread later this year, early next year. Remember when Antonia tried to set Maqroll on fire and then stole his gold? Good times.
• Waiting for Wotan, the never-ending saga.
• Stream a Marissa Nadler song.

LANDSCAPE WITH FIGURES PARTIALLY ERASED

D.A. Powell

First, it's just the faces disappearing.
Because, deflected, as the faces long have been,
with their hunched trunks
and mercilessly twisted necks,
they can only be regarded from a ground's-eye view.

The bellwort tips its fallow head down
in the hot tomato field. The green snake rests
beneath the green leaves, and the air is toast.
Diesel tractors grind to the frontage and idle there,
their heads bowed, too, like giant wooden horses
meant to sack an unsuspecting city.
Down come the earthen walls.

My father used to pour libations onto the ground
from the gas pump's nozzle, and I'd swirl
its iridescence, respire it into my lung's core,
so woozy, so sick, and awed by the vapors.
Fire beguiled me, too. As did the concept of force.

Whole villages burned in a single spritz.
Even now the past gets altered. We forget
because our friends won't suffer that subject again.
Because the students tap their pens uncomfortably,
look around to see if anyone else is taken in.
That's when we figure it's best to make a joke.

I've wandered, now, from the corrugated sheds,
with people half in and half out of nuclear range.
My retention of the facts is not a silo.
Even if it were, some disrepair gets fallen into.
I like to think we dismantle thought
as much as tortuous thought dismantles us.

I have seen sharp men lose limbs. Women too.
A hand pulled off, conveyed into the hopper.
But these were country matters.
Like frilled silhouettes of flowering wild carrot,
white against the mackerel white sky,
the texture is imperishable, the details

so far off. These bodies: their contours
uncertain. Just a general cast to the light.

No Layoff from This Condensery

I was going to write about how Occupy may not be dead but its death watch sucks, the return of King of Anarchists, the contests of who gets to say who's to blame that Occupy failed, who's anarchier than thou, I swear, if Corporate had a malicious sense of humor I could believe it kicked over the anthill just to watch the ants scramble to kill each other, but I've a delightful bleggal dilemma: I created a new category for the twelve hour overnight what-the-fuck posts that (more frequently than ever) appear then disappear, what do I do if people comment, as two (so far as I type this) did with last night's? Nothing demands more rigorous self-regulation than wanton what-the-fuckness in my universe: henchforth, any WTF12HRMAX post will be deleted in the morning unless it has received comments in which case it will be kept as will the WTF12HRMAX tag even though the post's lifespan exceeds the 12 hour maximum, though that night's header disappears. And yes, The Necks (and Lorine Niedecker) rule:

• Concerning Occupy and Black Bloc.
• Occupy prepares for what's next.
• The closest of strangers.
• The end of Wall Street as they knew it.
• Pied Cow cops.
• Greek fire.
• Nightmare without limits.
• New American way of war.
• Israel and proxy terrorism.
• Don' nobody deserve nuthin'.
• Pastor Sanctimonious violates his church's prohibitions on onanism.
• Hair of the dog that turned hair of the dog.
• Valentine's Day for bitchez.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Beefheart festival? I'll play.
• Another new Chuck Prophet song.

Poet's Work

Lorine Niedecker

Grandfather
         advised me:
                   Learn a trade

I learned
          to sit at a desk
                    and condense

No layoff
          from this
                    condensery

Mndy Nght, Nw Ctgry, Lbm Cn't Stp Lstnng, Ndckr Pm

[THE RADIO TALK THIS MORNING]

Lorine Niedecker

The radio talk this morning
was of obliterating
the world

I notice fruit flies rise
from the rind
of the recommended
melon

Sixty-Two Today

I know Gabriel pisses me off now - his last two albums are shameless - but most of Gabriel's Genesis and his first four and a half solo albums were daily soundtrack for a decade and a half, and November 14, 1982, Warner Theater, holyfuck, one of best nights of my life. Passed him forward on his way back to the stage.

In Aisle and Arch the Satin Secret Collects

Two hours Saturday, those boxes, that toy. Happiest cat I've ever. I've no idea why white-noise white-noised Stanley's purrs and trills the last 45 seconds, apologies.

Also too, the below is officially now this blog's Official Theme Song 5, I must have listened to it 25 times since I posted it and harder not faster, yo. I'm also petitioning the judge of my conscience to change the Shitty Desert Island Five game into the Shitty Desert Island Six game while I'm also petitioning the judge of my conscience throw out that motion, Yo La Tengo either becomes the fourth permanent member of the Shitty Desert Island Five or, if I want two rotation spots but want Yo La Tengo a permanent member kick out Kate Bush or Pere Ubu/David Thomas or Guided by Voices or shut the fuck up. I am also petitioning the judge of my conscience to ignore my obsessive/compulsive need to impose order and categories on the things that give me pleasure in response to my resentment at the imposition of order and categories on me by power that pisses me off. It's a feature of my training, not a bug.

• On technology and the classless society.
• Anarchism and teaching.
• The self-manufacturing of Romney. I confess, what bothers me the most about Romney is that he looks like Bryan Ferry.
• New Obama cinema?
• Bleggalgazing.
• Bleggalgazing.
• Kansas City Wizard fans called their renamed team the Sporks?
• The punk films of Amos Poe.
• Everybody thinks I'm a raincloud.
• God, I love Yo La Tengo.

[I rose from marsh mud]

Lorine Niedecker

I rose from marsh mud,
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs

to see her wed in the rich
rich silence of the church,
the little white slave-girl
in her diamond fronds.

In aisle and arch
the satin secret collects.
United for life to serve
silver. Possessed.

I'm Pillowed and Padded, Pale and Puffing

Any chance to play that I will, and my new policy of what the fuck, it's the weekend lends itself as well as the fact that Leslie Nielsen was born eighty-six years ago today, so. Yes, the fonts have changed, it was a total fuck-up, I was trying to do something else with the overnight header and fucked something up in blooger and couldn't find what I had, so 13-point Times New Roman from now until I fuck that up. This is of course an opening to further bleggalgazing, of which, lordy, I've satchels full, but instead, also too, the best joke ever:

• Pathologizing and privatizing Occupy.
• Occupy DC and its eviction.
• The Afghanistan report the Pentagon doesn't want you to read.
• The noise made by people.
• Are Americans done w/mcmansions? The ass building one behind us isn't.
• It takes no imagination to bet that Niall Ferguson is quite probably as insufferable an asshole as humanity can produce, and by all accounts it's true.
• It takes no imagination to bet that Andrew Breitbart is quite probably as insufferable an asshole as humanity can produce, and - HEH! - by all video accounts it's true.
• Romney praises himself as "severely cracker." It takes no imagination to be that Romney is quite probably as insufferable an asshole as humanity can produce, and by all accounts it's true.
• Frothy surges to 15 point national lead!
• The new improved no-more-tears drone!
• The chardonnay socialist. 
• The school man.
• Pied Cow partisan.
• Contemporary poetry and the aesthetics of failure.
• Poet's Work.
• Krapp's Last Tape.
• On the Japanese documentary, Godspeed You! Black Emperor. I know what CD's I'm digging out for the weekend.

[What Horror to Awake at Night]

Lorine Niedecker

What horror to awake at night

and in the dimness see the light.

               Time is white

               mosquitoes bite

I’ve spent my life on nothing.

The thought that stings. How are you, Nothing,

sitting around with Something’s wife.

               Buzz and burn

               is all I learn

I’ve spent my life on nothing.   

I’m pillowed and padded, pale and puffing

lifting household stuffing—

               carpets, dishes

               benches, fishes

I’ve spent my life on nothing.