There's a new shitstorm from what I see on twooter. I've heard and seen the name Chris Hayes in blooger and twooter but I couldn't pick his face out of a line-up or his schtick out of a soundbite. I confess I still find myself harnessed to POTUS 12, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna be tethered to motherfucking yapping heads on the plasma screen, help Corporate make money out of clusterfucking the clusterfuck. I heard Bob Schieffer on the local news radio station say, "I think the events of the next five months will determine who wins the presidency," and the morning drive-time morons said, "Good advice, as always, from Bob Schieffer," and I swore from that moment onward I will only listen to that station on the eights and only when I have to. Which I'd done countless times before.
Apparently Chris Hayes said something less than beatifying about those who volunteer to serve in the American Armed Services, and latest fucking shitstorm ensues. I haven't calculated this since the last time, but there are, as of noon EDT today, 171.5 days, 4,116 hours, 246,960 minutes, 14,817,600 seconds until election day, each one of them increasing by that second what you already believe to be true. All of which to say that instead of writing about that I'm going to marvel yet again at serendipity. Hamster sees a performance of Ligeti piano pieces a week ago, yesterday I remember it's the birthday of Rostropovich, last night I'm reminded that Ligeti was born 89 years ago today, here's his Sonata for Solo Cello:
- The authoritarian mind, the sequel to the imperial mind.
- Chris Hayes pleas, see, I was being obediently reverent!
- RIP Paul Fussell.
- RIP Paul Fussell.
- The road to amnesia.
- Colonial amnesia.
- Let us all become cowards.
- Memorial Daze.
- Fucker is a fucker.
- How dare other countries plot to kill Americans.
- Why she threw back her Global War on Terror medal.
- Too smart to fail.
- Law and order among the 1%.
- Marx and Facebook.
- The Communalist Project. (h/t)
- Identifying poor neighborhoods from space.
- Žižek on Greece.
- On the myth of infatuated Žižekians.
- He is the greatest academic fraud of his generation. I say this admiringly.
- A message from the Chester PA Tourist Bureau.
- I don't mind the red hoops, but the silver numbers are fucking lame.
- My boss, five layers between us, profiled.
- Bio-pic of Hockney.
- The Mekons and Kathy Acker.
- John Cheever born 100 years ago yesterday. It's been at least twenty years since I've read Cheever, mostly because his novels aren't good and I don't particularly like short stories (though I can write short stories but not novels - fine metaphors abound).
- Literary topographies.
- Beckett, for those of you who do.
- Beckett, for those of you who do.
THE END AND THE BEGINNING
Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Joanne Trzeciak
After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won’t
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall.
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it’s not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We’ll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.
