There Was a Small Butcher Shop in the North End of Boston Whose Specialty Was Inferior Foods

A MAN IN BLACK AND WHITE

Jack Gilbert

There was a small butcher shop in the North End
of Boston whose specialty was inferior foods.
Chicken feet and chicken heads. Gizzards, tripe,
and beef hearts. Salty fatback and wet brains.
Prosperous people came from the suburbs to pay
too much for the food they ate in hard times.
The man living with difficulty in the winter woods
remembers as he looks at the fresh raccoon tracks
in the snow and wonders if they will tug at him
in the Mediterranean light, if he will write
about the classical bareness of cold and truth
while eating the suckling pig and fried bananas
of Indonesia. Will he miss the Mill River
with its slags of ice and the sound of crows
in the silence. Some years ago, a child was asked
whether he liked radio or television best. The boy
said radio, because the pictures were better.





Jeebus, today deserves the above or it deserves the below.





Kidding. Death to the motherfucking either/or. Plus fuck City, fuck ManUtd.

The Mask with a Sutured Mouth

• Couple of pieces working which I had no desire to work on yesterday, instead threw plastic at metal, dined with loved ones, started Vineland for it's every four year reread and then it was eleven. Links from the weekend while they're fresh.
• The Big Empty.
• Capitalism.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• The Obama contradiction. I don't think it's a contradiction at all.
• Call me when Krugman has his obamapostasy. Or when motherfucking Obama calls Paul Ryan a motherfucking fraud.
• Capitalism.
• Motherfucking crackers.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Not an accident.
• Motherfucking Democrats.
• On the motherfucking bet: I failed to mention that L, who initiated the bet that I can't go the month of May onblog without using any form of the word motherfucker, including slides like emeffer, herself has a bet that she can't go the four scheduled Thursday Night Pints (there are five Thursdays in May, though I'll not be at the 5/10 cause I'll be in Bamgier picking up Planet! Yay me!) without saying motherfucker and, far more challengingly, cocksucker. I look forward to my pint this Thursday, L, after only two, three minutes of goading.
• David Harvey interview.
• Arendt on secret police.
• Pirate radical philosophy.
• A new Karl.
• Margaret Atwood uses Moby Dick to explain America to Martians.
• On Lisa Robertson's new book of essays. Want.
• Lisa Robertson.
• Tell me know so I know.
• Mazzy Star 2012 live!
• Woke up with this in my head:

CARNIVAL

Rebecca Lindenberg

The mask that burns like a violin, the mask
that sings only dead languages, that loves
the destruction of being put on. The mask
that sighs like a woman even though
a woman wears it. The mask beaded with
freshwater pearls, with seeds. The plumed mask,
the mask with a sutured mouth, a moonface,
with a healed gash that means harvest. A glower
that hides wanting. A grotesque pucker. Here’s
a beaked mask, a braided mask, here’s a mask
without eyes, a mask that looks like a mask
but isn’t—please don’t try to unribbon it.
The mask that snows coins, the mask full of wasps.
Lace mask to net escaping thoughts. Pass me
the rouged mask, the one made of sheet music.
Or the jackal mask, the hide-bound mask
that renders lovers identical with night.

United 3, Houston 2

To be honest, it's been so long since I felt surges of optimism this intense towards United that I'm unsure how to proceed to Baal-taunt. Watching DeRossario round into form, Pontius develop into a forward as he learns on the job, DeLeon the most exciting rookie since? and Santos out-work and overpower defenders is exhilarating. Watching Dudar limp to the locker-room with a ripped hamstring and the ensuing defensive confusion, Kitchen pulled from midfield to right back, promptly giving ball away that led to Houston's second goal (and yes, Willis should have stopped it, and yes, that gives Hamid an entrance back, and yes, I've witnesses, I called - or at least Baal-taunted - Bruin's two goals), Russell looking lost in central defense, I think this three game road trip to San Jose, Toronto, Houston, could be long and pointless. What fun is Baal-taunting for four points out of the three?

• Dudar's injury, while utterly, thoroughly predictable, as will the following one once he recovers from this one - he's 88 in soccer years -reminds me, Jakovic? White? Gah.
• Cruz' poorest game. He should have been straight redded for a horribly reckless two-legged studs-up tackle from behind early (he was yellowed) and should have been given a second yellow for a deliberate handball five minutes later. He was constantly beat (Houston's first goal is on him) and constantly gave the ball away on offense. (In one of the Goff links below Cruz blames playing his former team, and STFU). He may have given Najar and chance back in.
• Woolard is a minus defensive defender but a plus offensive defender (he gets beat, he has a great cross from the left).
• The Balkans aren't seeing the field again unless (until) someone gets hurt. Let's hope Kasper Payne gets his passport to Austria revoked.
• Here's the video:

Here's Goff once, twice, here's Fullback, here's Shatzer, here's United Mania, more later if and when, or not, here's a photo from 300 of the East Capitol Street bridge:

Whatever Urge Drove the Rogue to Sow Itself and Strive Beyond All Cultivation Might Offer a Vital Lesson to Any Apostate Instinct Aspiring to Survive

Yes I saw the news of Obama's new ad calling Romney a wuss then saw news the same day Hillary Clinton calls Bin Laden snuff just one of thousands of snuffs Obama's ordered and my first thought was there are no accidents round here, my second was of course Obama's running Hard Big Dick now to defuse the standard Republican cry that Democrats are soft on national security, demonstrating that while I'm an apostate in practice my knee-jerks still respond to decades of conditioned response to game situations. I've always known it was a game, and just because I root for neither team now it's still a game, but motherfucking Obama. I'll know when I'm fully apostate when I stop enjoying my apostasy so much, and Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

• It's true, and they have a home game tonight versus their nemesis, Houston, which beats United usually and thoroughly on crosses and set pieces. With a three game road trip - including to Houston for Houston's first game in their brand new state-of-the-art stadium - all three points tonight would be as sweet as it would be surprising. Waiting to see if seats three, four, and six are filled tonight. That? Would be a sweet as it would be surprising.
• Also too. If you play there let me know. Yes, shoot me.
• Reminder! May will be a motherfucking-free month at BLCKDGRD. L offered me a pint bet I can't go the entire month without typing and publishing here the word motherfucker. I understand that motherfucking Obama will make it incredibly difficult for me, but I've accepted the bet. You can get in on the bet too, in real beer or digital beer. I was offered a second pint bet that I could go the entire month without typing and publishing here any word that contains the consecutive letters f-u-c-k, but I'm not fucking stupid, L. Though I'll buy you a pint anyway.

• On the same day, Fuckface Hiatt gives you Fuckface Luntz and Fuckface Goldberg.  
• The fuckface's were there to balance out this Mann/Ornstein piece calling GOP batshit crazy.
• Call me when
• Several signs of the apocalypse.
• What foreign corporations will motherfucking Obama empower to undermine environmental laws near you?
• Motherfucking Obama.
• I'd like to say Hi! to the DHS bot who scrolled through the night. I want to emphasize I made the motherfucking bet with L before the last two days of bottage.
• #STOPDRONEY2012.
• Motherfucking Pelosi. Was but a matter of time.
• The war on women in the Middle East.
• Anti-racism as social sorting.
• All of Blegsylvania is moribund, but Musicville and Litsburg especially.
• Creeley on acid.
• The state of poetry.

ROGUE RUSSETS

R.T. Smith

Surprised by a frill of white flower
where I'd never planted an eye,
I decided to fence it with sticks

and let the renegade live
in undoctored soil where the garden
gave way to volunteer poplars

and acidic white pine. Why not?
After all, away from the tribe,
in clay where beetles drill

and weeds emerge inspired,
it might grow eccentric, proliferate
and thrive.
When autumn air

said disinter, to fill the bin
for winter, I troweled under
and pulled the stem

until a rabble of rough spuds
red as Etruscan urns emerged
as if to prove

that whatever urge drove
the rogue to sow itself and strive
beyond all cultivation

might offer a vital lesson
to any apostate instinct
aspiring to survive.

Propelled By the Huge Wings on the Sides of Her Wimple

We did the what if Obama truly is an honorable Liberal schnauzer doing the honest best he can against forces he cannot control in a center-right country, not a Corporate pull-toy debate at Thursday Night Pints, which is worse? What's worse of course is both all agreed, and then we gossiped happily and cattily about stuff I'm not going to talk about here. The NFL draft was on TV over the bar. It caught our eye, the ritual, from the three minutes of hugging the family and agents by the player after his name was announced to the handing of the player's new team hat and jersey to the complex and choreographed slapping handshakes and culminating dramatic hug between the player and the commissioner as if this white millionaire Corporate lawyer and 22 year old football player have been blood friends for years. Fascinating, creepy, chockful of symbolism. Remember that paper you wrote for me, asked L, referring to a paper I wrote two decades ago about carnival via Bakhtin, Althusser's Ideological State Apparatuses, and the NBA. Sure, I said, the punch line was, I said for the benefit of D and K, that in reality a person had a better chance of being a CEO of a Fortune 500 company than an NBA player (the math worked at the time; I have no idea how many more NBA teams there are now than twenty years ago) and that Corporate (although I wasn't calling it Corporate then) held out the promise of NBA jobs as both the release of state-sanctioned carnival release within reiterated markers of class matrixes and reaffirmed the holy American myth of equal economic opportunity to impoverished, primarily African-American men . We watched the next draftee hug his family, hug his agents, walk the ramp to the stage, be handed his new team's hat and jersey, already stenciled with his last name on the back, walk to the stage, high-five, low-five, hand-slap, fist-bump, and demonstratively hug the commissioner, then ESPN's clowns started screaming at each other over the pick.

• Photo taken at FedEx field last night minutes (via Sportsbog) yo after the Little Danny Snyder's took Robert Griffin III. How great would it have been if at the last minute Indianapolis had taken Griffen instead of the guy they took?
• I want to send out a Hi! to the FBI bot that's scrolling this shitty blog from front to back. There are lots of motherfuckers used, but no threats.
• Speaking of which, May is going to be a motherfucker free month. I accept your pint bet, L. Anyone else want in?
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Fairness v inequality.
  
• Modernism, surrealism, political imagination.
• Music, modernism, twilight of the elites.
• Another type of carnival.
• Part of his culture.
• Prose v poetry.
• How books will survive Amazon. 
• Don't you flush?
• Last stop on the groove line.
• Today's music via Hamster, who Kindly sent me this check-this-out:

THE THREAT

Denise Duhamel

my mother pushed my sister out of the apartment door with an empty
suitcase because she kept threatening to run away my sister was sick of me
getting the best of everything the bathrobe with the pink stripes instead of
the red the soft middle piece of bread while she got the crust I was sick with
asthma and she thought this made me a favorite

I wanted to be like the girl in the made-for-tv movie Maybe I'll Come Home
in the Spring which was supposed to make you not want to run away but it
looked pretty fun especially all of the agony it put your parents through and
the girl was in California or someplace warm with a boyfriend and they
always found good food in the dumpsters at least they could eat pizza and
candy and not meat loaf the runaway actress was Sally Field or at least
someone who looked like Sally Field as a teenager the Flying Nun propelled
by the huge wings on the sides of her wimple Arnold the Pig getting drafted
in Green Acres my understanding then of Vietnam I read Go Ask Alice and
The Peter Pan Bag books that were designed to keep a young girl home but
there were the sex scenes and if anything this made me want to cut my hair
with scissors in front of the mirror while I was high on marijuana but I
couldn't inhale because of my lungs my sister was the one to pass out
behind the church for both of us rum and angel dust

and that's how it was my sister standing at the top of all those stairs that
lead up to the apartment and she pushed down the empty suitcase that
banged the banister and wall as it tumbled and I was crying on the other side
of the door because I was sure it was my sister who fell all ketchup blood and
stuck out bones my mother wouldn't let me open the door to let my sister
back in I don't know if she knew it was just the suitcase or not she was cold
rubbing her sleeves a mug of coffee in her hand and I had to decide she said I
had to decide right then

Does He Imagine That Some Wisp of Cloud Reveals the Signature of Things to Come?

Motherfucking Obama:

The United States has begun launching drone strikes against suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen under new authority approved by President Obama that allows the CIA and the military to fire even when the identity of those who could be killed is not known, U.S. officials said...

U.S. officials said that Obama approved the use of “signature” strikes this month and that the killing of an al-Qaeda operative near the border of Yemen’s Marib province this week was among the first attacks carried out under the new authority.

The decision to give the CIA and the U.S. Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) greater leeway is almost certain to escalate a drone campaign that has accelerated significantly this year, with at least nine strikes in under four months. The number is about equal to the sum of airstrikes all last year.

The expanded authority will allow the CIA and JSOC to fire on targets based solely on their intelligence “signatures” — patterns of behavior that are detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance, and that indicate the presence of an important operative or a plot against U.S. interests.

Until now, the administration had allowed strikes only against known terrorist leaders who appear on secret CIA and JSOC target lists and whose location can be confirmed.

Congressional officials have expressed concern that using signature strikes would raise the likelihood of killing militants who are not involved in plots against the United States, angering Yemeni tribes and potentially creating a new crop of al-Qaeda recruits.

Silly Congressional officials: that creating a new crop of al-Qaeda recruits? That isn't a danger, it's the motherfucking point.

• Motherfucking Obama.
• Motherfucking Obama and motherfucking pwoggles.
• Motherfucking Romney and motherfucking crackers.
• Capitalism.
• Occupy and the inviolability of private property.
• The End.
• The Pilate State.
• Silliman's always generous litlinks.
• A medley of Gass.
• Rainbow in curved air.
• greyhoos' latest downloadable playlist.
• Everything reminds me of my dog.
• Sail Across the Water.
• The Lobby.
• One more colour.
• Besides Ignatz, I also woke up with Jane Siberry in my head. I have no idea why those two, though I flatter myself that's the first time Ignatz and Jane Siberry have been used in the same sentence in any language.

PROPHECY

Dana Gioia

Sometimes a child will stare out of a window
for a moment or an hour—deciphering
the future from a dusky summer sky.

Does he imagine that some wisp of cloud
reveals the signature of things to come?
Or that the world’s a book we learn to translate?

And sometimes a girl stands naked by a mirror
imagining beauty in a stranger's eyes
finding a place where fear leads to desire.

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It's not so much what's spoken as what's heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.

Life has its mysteries, annunciations,
and some must wear a crown of thorns. I found
my Via Dolorosa in your love.

And sometimes we proceed by prophecy,
or not at all—even if only to know
what destiny requires us to renounce.

O Lord of indirection and ellipses,
ignore our prayers. Deliver us from distraction.
Slow our heartbeat to a cricket's call.

In the green torpor of the afternoon,
bless us with ennui and quietude.
And grant us only what we fear, so that

Underneath the murmur of the wasp
we hear the dry grass bending in the wind
and the spider's silken whisper from its web.

Isn't This Itself Dreamed/Criticized By an Expert?

Here are two more of Planet's collages. Her assignment actually isn't the collages themselves but rather to take a composition designed initially as a collage and then draw it in oil and pastel. The one above is the one she's chosen as her final out of many. The two I posted yesterday? They were her two least favorites, I'm told they lacked unifying factors and weren't thematically coherent. Coherence? Dammit, I'm an English major, Jim, not an artist.

,

• Had drinks w/B last night, and at his request won't discuss here what was discussed there beyond mentioning his impassioned defense of the -.06% less shitty was sincere and impressive. The point of difference, I said, to use my sillyass tug-of-war trope, is that you feel a need to tug against the  +.06% while I feel a need to tug against you for insisting that -.06% can be maintained as a constant moral standard no matter how much shittier the +.06% gets. And thus, at his request, does B disappear from this shitty blog forever. 
• Silent majority millennials.
• Murray's white plight.
• Guts and Glory: the Ross Douthat Story.
• Kicking Douthat.
• Torturers "disgusted" at being labeled torturers.
• I don't say motherfucking Leon Panetta enough.
• Why we love sociopaths.
• This article by the righteously angry but resolutely not apostate Garry Wills fascinates me micro and macro for reasons I wrote about more than this sentence then deleted all but this sentence and spared us all.
• As I link this article to this post it's the lead story on YFWP website, presumably it could have been posted three weeks ago, three weeks from now, why is it published now, who benefits, it fascinates me micro and macro for reasons I wrote about more than this sentence then deleted all but this sentence and spared us all.
• Who the hell uses sillyass Star Trek allusions:

• Twinbrook!
• Waiting for Wotan hits the crossbar on a PK.
• Have some litlinks.
• Grab Jack Spicer while you can!
• Sine off.

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

Isn't sleep fitted to this world?
Aren't dreams a form of internal criticism?
Doesn't each dream catch a previous day of the world in an
      act of criticism?
Isn't this itself dreamed/criticized by an expert?

Sometimes Dogs Eat Melon Rinds and Apple Leaves but Though I Know This There Has Never Until Now In the Dark Been an Occasion on Which I Could "Happen" to Say So Unless I Were Willing to Interject the Information into Conversation as a Non Sequitor and I'm Not Sure That Would Contribute Nothing to the General Good

• Collages by Planet, two of at least six for her final project.
• I wouldn't say yesterday was a one-off, though don't worry, it'll not be a habit, neither poetry here or elephant painting with the iPad.
• That's all I got but links, songs, poem, and this, this shitty blog's monthly public service announcement: bunch of new sites on both Left and Right Because and in Feedless, please check them out. If you are Kinding me and me not you, please send me an email. As always, thanks for reading.

• Shame redistribution.
• Occupy crackdown documents.
• DHS arming against you.
• Drones aimed at you.
• The two constituencies of liberalism.
• Politics of hate in the USA part one, part two.
• What is more revolutionary, Facebook or porn?
• Is Facebook making us lonely?
• Facebook's lawyers and lobbyists.
• Tom Friedman's war on humanity.
• I don't say motherfucking Leon Panetta nearly enough.
• On the above.
• Krugman will never have his obamapostasy.
• When oligarchs fight oligarchs!
• The FM dial.
• Ear candy.
• Time Bomb.
• Forgive me, I love The Raveonettes - stream the new album.
• Woke up with this in my head:

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

Sometimes dogs eat melon rinds and apple leaves but though I know this there has never until now in the dark been an occasion on which I could “happen” to say so unless I were willing to interject the information into conversation as a non sequitur and I’m not since that would contribute nothing to the general good. Talk among us, perhaps at L’s or K’s or perhaps here at home, no matter the degree of animation, no matter the force of our agreements or disagreements, is all intended for the general good. There was talk the other night about forests. B so strongly disagreed with A’s opinion that the adaptation of birds to blighted environments can be regarded as progress that I thought she was going to cry. Then M interjected that his friend T considered vinyl superior to CD’s, and R cracked, “Hurray for crackle.” That was an unpleasant moment, R’s tricks can sometimes be harmful, though I am never able to tell in retrospect whether R has been malicious or clumsy and I certainly never see things coming. Things in my particular experience don’t make ordinary approaches.

A can broke thinking about the mistakes I N making ago see heat happens and then a the ill pretend it elephant painting league weight.

United 4, Metros 1

While celebrating Pontius' hat-trick please remember Metros were missing two starting defenders, its starting defensive-mid, and its left-back was starting his first game, then say so-the-fuck-what, enjoy! Primal screams, yo! Pontius punking Henry off the ball, racing towards goal as Henry falls - Oh! I've been wounded! - dramatically to ground clutching his face, a sequence I'll always cherish. Is Pontius the answer at second forward? I'm not sure - there were moments in the box where his inexperience with his back to the goal snuffed out opportunities - but he'll surely get another chance this coming Saturday v Houston.

Busy, some quick points:

• Dudar makes a huge difference on defense. Calm, organized, good in the air. Makes everyone on the backline better. The anti-Jakovic.
• And Dudar makes Kitchen better, allows Kitchen to play ten yards farther forward. Very good game from Kitchen.
• NoDax still suxxxxx.
• OK, I'm sold on Maicon Santos. Watch the second goal - Pontius scored, but it was Maicon Santos who earned it.
• DeRossario's best match; he's finally looking fit.
• OK, I'm sold on Cruz. His work rate is phenomenal and contagious.
• As is DeLeon's.
• SeatSix is a wuss.
• Willis positions himself well in the run of play but still looks lost on set pieces. It's his job until he brain farts a couple of soft goals, but with Houston next - who always devastate United with crosses in play and set pieces - brain farts may be arriving soon.
• Here, watch:

Here's Goff, Fullback, Shatzer, Floyd. More later, including photos from the stadium, or not.

I Must Report Failure in My Assignment, Principally Regarding the Tomato Plants

The three photos in the post are from this past Wednesday night's United game at RFK. It's freaky, even in a crowd of 10K you can walk up a ramp to the 300 level of Loud Side and not see anybody but other goofs like me. Tonight, for instance, there's a home game, what should be one of United's three top draws of the season, a game against fucking Metros. There's a Capitals' elimination playoff game starting at 330 and up to three inches of torrential rain in 45 degree temperature predicted and the game is stupidly scheduled on a Sunday school night at the equally stupid six o'clock because of motherfucking cable television contractual obligations, so oops, lost revenue (even if three out of three United had no say). Oops. Oh, by the way:





Waters is 66 today. Yes I know he now makes his living shatnerizing John Waters. As for tonight, if it does rain half as much as predicted the field will be for suck. I love RFK, will be photographing as long as United plays there, the field will be for suck. There likely would have been red cards on a perfect pitch in 70 humidity-free degrees, but a field for suck in a downpour in 45 degrees? This game has a chance to be memorably weird.

My apologies for kicking the motherfucking Obama hive harder recently more than I normally daily do: when provoked - that's right, it was you, B, see you Tuesday night - I need remind myself that's a learning opportunity for ME to shut the fuck up re: if I was charged with dithering publicly over kabuki shitstorms ginned up by PR to distract from my laser-like focus on undermining any and all civil liberties pertaining to domestic political and economic dissent and/or litigation, I'd have tried to do as magnificent a job as motherfucking Obama has too. Gah, missed opportunity again.

• The fetish of National Security.
• On the above.
• Drones.
• Oracular phiz.
• Profiles encourage.
• Wanker Moment Three.
• Facebook in the Age of Facebook.
• My sentiments on the new blooger exactly.
• St Benny of Olsen's roster balancing act. Mild hint the Age of Branko may not be irretrievably over.
• Louise Glück is 69 today.
• Charles Mingus was born 90 years ago today. I must hurriedly admit that while I enjoy jazz when I hear it I when I hear it it's usually because someone else put it on. I've asked Hamster to DJ today's selections.
• Tonight at Noon.
• Celia.
• Folk Form #1.
• Goodbye Pork Pie Hat.

VESPERS

Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

Fifty-Three Today

And for M, wherever she is:

Sixty-Five Today

Egoslavian Holy Day Eve

Neither has had a spot in the farthest orbit of Sillyass Desert Island Game's rotation in two decades, though their time on my soundtrack three decades ago demands celebration. If neither's music has aged as well for me as I thought it would, well, neither have I.

Not Only Will Things Go On But This Going On Will Repeat

Earthgirl and I went out to dinner two, three weeks ago with Earthgirl's cousin and her husband, I said at Thursday Night Pints. I then gave more background than is needed here, then said, I'd not met the husband: Earthgirl told me before the dinner he's a six-foot-seven practicing Buddhist from Seattle. I'm not sure what I expected but he seemed a decent, personable mid-50s upper middle-class white not-axe murderer. What did you expect, asked L. Not somebody who ate a sizzling pile of tandoori lamb and goat, I said. Did you talk politics, D asked. Earthgirl and Cousin kept bringing it up, I said, presumably because Cousin and Husband talk politics and Earthgirl and I talk politics so I think they schemed, Maybe we can get them to talk about politics since both are doing this dinner with you-owe-me-one reservations, but no, I didn't motherfucking Obama him, if that's what you're asking. K asked, so the husband, the six-foot-seven Buddhist, didn't want to talk about politics either? O, no, I said, he was cracker-this, cracker-that, Obama has to be reelected don't you agree as he shoveled lamb and goat into his mouth. Did you agree, asked K, or rather, how did you disagree? I asked him, I said, if he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and when he said no I talked obligingly about nothing.

• No rule of law.
• Corporate's manipulation of democracy.
• O Ye of too much faith.
• On Faith of the Faithless.
• Drones are paranoid androids.
• Our weird politics.
• Eugene Robinson says BE AFRAID!
• Hobsbawn remembers Judt.
• A short history of eggs.
• On some faraway beach.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Why couldn't Yo La Tengo open for Lambchop this past Monday?
• Magnificent obsession.
• Please rise.
• The man who loved beer.
• RIP Jonathan Frid. UPDATE! Link fixed.
• RIP Levon Helms.
• Shoot me.
• Paul Westerberg's song for Sylvia Plath.

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

      Now in bed suddenly I remember having rescued a spider from the
bathtub this morning. I imagined that I had established rapport with my
environment. I observed the spider eerily. I was in harmony with my life and
times. Not only will things go on but this going on will repeat.
      After all, I can vow kindness in relation to something I cannot know.
      The spider, when it appears within a "range of alternatives," will be
rescued - dished out of the nicked and polished porcelain tub and knocked
onto the shrubbery just outside the open window.
      Of course, it will not be the same spider each time but one in a
sequence of spiders.

Two Pickpockets Are Denying a Robust Policeman's Suggestion That They Are "Suspiciously Encumbered"

MOCO ex-pat and dearly beloved Paleo Jay Old Dirty Arra 101 Bama sent me an email this morning, he has a song, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it, though I've discovered many don't want to: Would you care to blog about dealing with 0bots who tear into you for being an asshole because you question the almighty Great Leader? Happened to me today and I was stunned. It was over the Potemkin Mortgage Fraud Investigation, calling me an asshole by pointing out that 0 was lying. They trotted out the usual crap about suppressing the base, etc. I thought Bush Dead-enders were bad...Tribalism is the way now. I responded : To be honest, I've been holding back because it pisses off actual flesh and blood friends. I mean, I motherfucking Obama all the time, but I'm holding back as your request demonstrates. But please, if it's in a comment thread of something PLEASE send it. PJODA101B responded: I'll just send you what he wrote. This guy is a high school friend, totally liberal until he became an 0bot:"I don't know why you, and some other liberals, are so outraged by Obama, as if he were immune to the forces that have molded all of our politics for the last 30 years or so. He doesn't lie any more than any other president that I can tell. ...In my view, Dems are slightly better than Republicans, just in their social values. But everybody could be much better. If you keep attacking Obama, his base won't turn out and Mitt will be our next president. Can you not get over your disappointment with the guy? It is unwarranted, and, no offense, childlike." I responded "0bot (not his real name), did you even read the article? If so, the outrage would be crystal clear. Childlike would be to answer STFU to someone who had their house stolen by a bank and now have no recourse. I thought lack of empathy was a Conservative feature, but pretty much everyone is a Conservative these days." PJODA101B then followed-up to me: I suppose the part that's hardest to digest is how supposedly educated people can sign on to this bullshit and think it is awesome. 0bama took what was left of the left and turned them into champions of Conservative values. Should I be impressed or saddened at how easy it was? Looks like a recipe for the next World Horror that people ask in following generations "How did they allow that to happen?" And now I've posted it as I promised. Too bad he doesn't have a shitty blog! Please come visit PJODA101B! And if we do go to Montreal this summer, we'll come visit you!

UPDATE! Thunder emails sending me here where he was set upon by angry obamapologists in comments - it's about halfway down the comment thread.

• Who and what we are.
• Drones.
• Drones as national symbol.
• Drones.
• The way of the drone. Yes, I posted it yesterday.
• In which I enjoy watching She Who Is as Shitty mock motherfucking Obama.
• As I said to PJODA101B, saying motherfucking Obama more doesn't mean motherfucking Christers less, and not saying motherfucking Christers less is the reason to say motherfucking Obama more.
• On Carlo Ginzberg.
• Silver Line.
• Poetry versue prose.
• Lyn Hejinian's newest collection is SITTING ON MY DESK! 
• Hey, I'm done with The Unconsoled, suggest a novel, something I've never read.
• Pulitzer judge slams Pulitzers.
• Gaddis on the Pulitzer.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Waiting for Wotan, 12.
• Blue Sausage Infant.
• I promised a friend some Go-Betweens:

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

Perhaps my dear family can profit from my story
As it continues two pickpockets are denying a robust policeman's
        suggestion that they are "suspiciously encumbered"
If encumbered, they insist, they would resemble kids with a lot to say
They would resemble unwanted sympathy
They would not be like holes in a hallway

United 1, Montreal 1

Well, I asked for Boskovic and got Boskovic, I asked for DeRossario at withdrawn forward and got DeRossario at withdrawn forward, and while I didn't ask for United to come out in the first half fat and lazy, which certainly contributed to the shittiest half of soccer I've ever seen since the last and until the next, it's almost time to conclude that Boskovic is just a poor fit for the offense that United wants to run. I'd still like to see more than 58 minutes of him, let him find a rhythm, get more fit, but with two horribly lost points and crucial games this coming Sunday versus Metros and the following Saturday against Houston ahead of a three game road trip, second half substitute is the most Boskovic will see the field. Oh, the other Designated Player, the Albanian Allsopp? Utter an expletive under your breath towards Kasper Payne. And then think of a back line winged by Chris Korb and Daniel Woolard and utter another.

Here's Fullback, here's Goff, here's Shatzer. I've written more but it's unreasonably angry because I've unreasonable expectations for this team which includes, but is not limited to, beating a crappy expansion team at home even when resting two starters from the previous victory and fielding a bandaged backline. As for fat and lazy, even if to be fairer I concede the new line-up could be expected to be start-and-stoppy at first, five more months of halftime tirades by Ben Olsen is going to get old in that locker room fast.

Or Faith, Strange to Feel in That Zoo of Manners

Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true! and they have a home game tonight against Montreal Impact, an expansion team that, of the entire palette of colors visible by the human eye, chose to wear Wigan blue. I can't imagine there will be a less attended league home game this year, April, midweek. Buzz that Branko and Najar and Pontius start so they can be benched this coming Sunday v Metros for those rested tonight. I'm very curious to see how St Benny of Olsen manages this game, a game we've - yes? - pocketed the three points? I may have an extra ticket as SeatSix has already signaled he will most likely honor his tradition of never attending weeknight games.

• I discovered yesterday the identity of one of my few regular readers at Hilltop whose identity I don't know. Are you, he asked. Yes, I admitted. Questions about my rejection of .06% and then a scolding similar to this one, serendipitously posted this morning in Salon. I had to get to a meeting - true, B - though this all caught me off-guard, both that B reads and that B engaged. Drinks after work one night next week as discussed? You know where to find me.
• Drones as emblem of cowardice. I could do a better job of tagging these posts; I'd be able to more easily find the post when I riffed on the moral cowardice of drone warfare, but fuck that.
• Paul Begala says BE AFRAID! give money.
• Positively negative.
• Thinking about toilets.
• Socialist ten commandments?
• The Hillary fad is fascinating on multiple levels.
• On Assange's new show.
• NYT calls Assange "nuts."
• Millions. And it still won't change a thing.
• Never forget it was a Democratic POTUS that brought you NAFTA.
• POTUS 12 and the inequality narrative.
• A send-off for Barney.
•  Return of return of ambulance fees.
• Bleggalgazing!
• Mindless hedonism or tedious connoisseurship of a rapidly ossifying underground? Choose!
• Serendipitously, days after Frances mentioned vitreous humor, Smut Clyde mentions vitreous humour.
• Not the Pulitzer Prize. Remember when people were furious it wasn't awarded this year? Two days later, not so furious. Hmmm.
• Kafka for those of you who do.
• Gaddis for those of you - and I do - who do.
• Twenties 26. 
• I've never played any Himi Jendrix here or mentioned Himi Jendrix here, I've nothing again Jendrix it's just not love, so I've no idea why I got dozens of google search hits yesterday of Himi Jendrix. Still, below is a poem with Himi Jendrix's name because what the fuck.
• Meaningful Love.
• Heard this for this first time yesterday and wow.
• A king at night.

GO GREYHOUND

Bob 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.

What Astonishes Is the Singing

Marvelous, special evening in Annapolis with Earthgirl and Hamster. More details may or not be forthcoming: the conversations before and after the Lambchop show, the incredible performance of a band in full command of overwhelmingly powerful understatement. I may or not try to distill, I may or not share if I do distill. There is this: Kurt Wagner, in his baseball hat and horn-rims, smoking a cigarette in front of Rams Head after the show thanking us for coming, looks like my Uncle Steve from the nose up, like my Aunt Pat from nose to chin, especially the smile, Earthgirl saw it too. Past experience has taught me not to try distilling the uncanny less I lose it.

• Meanwhile.
• Murder, inequality, corporate greed, free trade.
• Division, representation, collectivity.
• Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years.
• Personalizing civil liberties abuses.
• Occupy the Upper West Side: Just slip those awful Republicans a roofie - they believe - and tinker a bit with the tax code and all will be well.
• And, not either/or.
• Motherfucking Leon Panetta says he regrets spending $800K in tax payer dollars flying home to California every weekend, adding fuck you, he's not gonna stop.
• I don't read Huffington Post for many reasons of my own, including but not limited to their whack advocacy of anti-vaccination bullshit, but if you needed more to induce you to stop, here. I do wish Froomkin had landed elsewhere after his expulsion from YFWP.

• Meh plus. Better than what they had been wearing.
• While I do make sillyass Star Trek allusions (but only to the original and Next Gen), I won't be attending this.
• Not out of principle but out of lack of damn I stopped caring about literary prizes beyond the Nobel long ago, so if I can't get outraged that Pulitzer declined to name a fiction winner, I can also note that while I had not read any of the nominees, it did sound like a shitty pool, and I am interested in that what the fuck.
• Foreclosure/dispossession.
• Facelessbook.
• Meg Baird opened. Sweet.
• They played all of Mr M for the 3/5ths of the show, then earlier stuff, interspersed with yapping with the audience. Wonderful.
• Much smaller band last night than in the below - no brass, not an electric guitarist, just five, an excellent drummer and bass-player (Wagner gives melodic leads to the bass), a keyboardist, a synthesizer, and Wagner's brilliantly understated guitar. Holyfuck. 
• UPDATE! Sorry, I've removed the live clip of Lambchop's entire live set at Merge XX - it was spinning fucking blooger into clusterfuck. You can youtube it if you want to find it. Here, have a photo of my mussel shells from dinner pre-concert. The food was delicious. Italian restaurants are a RIP-OFF.

HORSES AT MIDNIGHT WITHOUT A MOON

Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Fifty Today

(Yes, this is last year's c/ped, I'm working through lunch, don't have time to compile, plus this still works for me.) I'm almost certain I was at that DC Space show, but yes or no, Ian MacKaye is 50 today. Odds are excellent I was at this 930 show too:

I'm know I was at this next one, though, forgive me, I can't remember where this was:

Dozens of dozens of times, they all blend together, though I know I was at this:

Synthesized into Chirp

That's 23 deep at Seneca in all Seneca's Spring glory (holyfuck, truly, the dogwoods), my best four of the day cause it should have been three, fucking chains. I 36(clown-pin)3circle4circle5(both hit trees well right and rolled to inches over the rope)4343/344344433/453!34!3!33!3 and woot! used the goddamn Leopard off the tee but Beast forehand on 3, which by my count is 17 so I broke a hundred. That back nine, the first nine we played, someday I try warming up before walking to the tee, that last seven, as good as I am capable of playing, that second exclamation point for the four on the above hole, the third for a forehand roll on the second shot after I first-treed the teeshot, the fourth for the best S I've thrown in two years, the first because 21 was in long and it's the first time I've ever threed the long (and easily), plus.

I had a wonderful round of golf yesterday, my soccer team won the day before while - bonus! - infuriating me; Napoleon came home last night from a five day vacation last night  (I was thinking, how do I put out an rescue alert for a feral cat), I'm seeing Lampchop tonight with Earthgirl and Hamster, so I'm in good mood,  no direct scab-scraping or clusterfuck haranguing beyond proxying through links, instead enjoy another motherfucking unremarkable photo of my cat, this one Fleabus yesterday in our front window looking out into our ecstatically happy azaleas. Blame the photographer, in this instance, not Fleabus or the azaleas.

• Long-timers can vouch I've been yodeling about the weapons being developed for crushing American civil dissent for as long as this shitty blog has existed.
• When robots attack.
• Robot prison guards.
• Rise of the killer drones.
• Murder in the Simulacrum.
• The rule of capital.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Texts from predator drone!
• Motherfucking Israel.
• Royal asshat.
• A hungry gorge.
• Debt.
• Hilltop student can't write well enough for Hilltop, can write good enough for Fred Hiatt.
• Understanding Amazon.
• Silence is a rhythm.
• Toward an organic philosophy.
• He might get a stand alone birthday notice later today if I have the time, but Ian MacKaye turns 50 today, one of the few musicians younger than me whose birthdays I note here.

MECHANISM

A.R. Ammons

Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,
       morality: any working order,
    animate or inanimate: it

has managed directed balance,
       the incoming and outgoing energies are working right,
    some energy left to the mechanism,

some ash, enough energy held
       to maintain the order in repair,
    assure further consumption of entropy,

expending energy to strengthen order:
       honor the persisting reactor,
    the container of change, the moderator: the yellow

bird flashes black wing-bars
       in the new-leaving wild cherry bushes by the bay,
    startles the hawk with beauty,

flitting to a branch where
       flash vanishes into stillness,
    hawk addled by the sudden loss of sight:

honor the chemistries, platelets, hemoglobin kinetics,
       the light-sensitive iris, the enzymic intricacies
    of control,

the gastric transformations, seed
       dissolved to acrid liquors, synthesized into
    chirp, vitreous humor, knowledge,

blood compulsion, instinct: honor the
       unique genes,
    molecules that reproduce themselves, divide into

sets, the nucleic grain transmitted
       in slow change through ages of rising and falling form,
    some cells set aside for the special work, mind

or perception rising into orders of courtship,
       territorial rights, mind rising
    from the physical chemistries

to guarantee that genes will be exchanged, male
       and female met, the satisfactions cloaking a deeper
    racial satisfaction:

heat kept by a feathered skin:
       the living alembic, body heat maintained (bunsen
    burner under the flask)

so the chemistries can proceed, reaction rates
       interdependent, self-adjusting, with optimum
    efficiency—the vessel firm, the flame

staying: isolated, contained reactions! the precise and
       necessary worked out of random, reproducible,
    the handiwork redeemed from chance, while the

goldfinch, unconscious of the billion operations
       that stay its form, flashes, chirping (not a
    great songster) in the bay cherry bushes wild of leaf.