Caught in Corners Cramp and Wad

Neil Halstead teased a rumor of a Slowdive reunion, hence today's cascade courtesy of Mr Alarum. I really dig Slowdive/Mojave 3/his solo stuff, but this is in Mr Alarum's wheelhouse. Here's a video of the new John Cale single. Song kinda sucks, fun to look at. Once it would have generated a stand alone post, a late afternoon blogwhoring, get me to the top of floating blogrolls post, always a gross side consideration I admit but jesusfuck,  I never don't blow off responsibilities to get to a United home game, I never dismiss an icon's latest lame effort and fail to promote it as another addition to a saint's discography. I'm small. I'm failing miserably, but this pathetic effort to not hurl like a partisan beer-bonger into the POTUS pukestorm seems to effect my damn-levels in every other not family damn. Strangest days of my life. Poetry still works, I've never read better. Loved ones are loved. I wish it bothered me more it bothered me more I think that Cale song sucks, wish it bothered me more I didn't try harder to get to the game Wednesday night, but not much.

• Last night's blogheader - did you like it? - the main building at Allegheny College from our visit seven centuries ago.
• Of course they are liars, it's all good for Kevin Baker to bwah. So fucking what?
• Of course they are liars, it's all good for all the fact-checkers and publications to bwah. So fucking what?
• Bwah bwah bwah.
• Romney's head tilt.
• Work isn't working.
• Pantomime and power.
• Magical capitalism.
• Vote 2012.
• Citizens united.
• Farewell to Romney.
• The erotics of theology.
• Ignorance of death.
• On the road with Wallace and Wystan.
• Silliman's tenth anniversary bleggalgaze.
• New Bob Mould!

AFTER THE LAST BULLETINS

Richard Wilbur

After the last bulletins the windows darken
And the whole city founders readily and deep,
Sliding on all its pillows
To the thronged Atlantis of personal sleep,

And the wind rises. The wind rises and bowls
The day’s litter of news in the alleys. Trash
Tears itself on the railings,
Soars and falls with a soft crash,

Tumbles and soars again. Unruly flights
Scamper the park, and taking a statue for dead
Strike at the positive eyes,
Batter and flap the stolid head

And scratch the noble name. In empty lots
Our journals spiral in a fierce noyade
Of all we thought to think,
Or caught in corners cramp and wad

And twist our words. And some from gutters flail
Their tatters at the tired patrolman’s feet,
Like all that fisted snow
That cried beside his long retreat

Damn you! damn you! to the emperor’s horse’s heels.
Oh none too soon through the air white and dry
Will the clear announcer’s voice
Beat like a dove, and you and I

From the heart’s anarch and responsible town
Return by subway-mouth to life again,
Bearing the morning papers,
And cross the park where saintlike men,

White and absorbed, with stick and bag remove
The litter of the night, and footsteps rouse
With confident morning sound
The songbirds in the public boughs.

United 2, Metros 2, or: Yesterday, the Teacher Didn't Believe the Excuse Her Student Offered for Missing His Appointment— a Tire Gone Flat on the Thruway—but Today His Story Seems Almost Convincing

Didn't see it. Obstacles won. I wish I felt guiltier, once I would have been distraught. I could have made it, once I would have obstacle-coursed my way to the game without second thought of the shit I'd have to eat the next day. An early gag on this shitty blog was a trope, haven't used it in years, something like no one asks me how I distinguish between my politics and my soccer. There's a new professor here at Illtophay teaching a course on sports and nationalism, I've seen the syllabus, I'm going to read some of her assignments, there's a guy over in Because Left who blogs/writes/tweets about soccer and politics, check him out. I'm fascinated by this shit, see metaphors abounding, especially, essentially, about my rubity's influence in my negotiations with my complicity. The waxing and waning of complaint and resistance, compliance and submission, damn and undamn. This is why no one ever asked me how I distinguish between my soccer and politics, everyone no doubt aware that I'd tell them more than I do already.

• There must be a reason.
• Calmer, clearer assessment of lesser-evilism than I'm capable.
• Motherfucking cracker-baiters are also motherfucking me-baiters.
• Authoritarian politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism.
• Obama's last attempt to save capitalism: The whole aim of US economic policy under both Democrats and Republicans is essentially Hamiltonian: To counter the radical deflationary threat of abundance and ephemeralization through artificial scarcity. To prevent technologies of abundance from deflating the economy, destroying trillions in exchange value, making most investment capital superflous and radically reducing work hours, it’s necessary to make them artificially expensive and raise the capital outlays and overhead required to adopt them. This is a way to create artificial outlets for the surplus investment capital the rentier classes have lying around, and to enclose progress as a source of rents for the propertied classes.
• Rule by the rich.
• Condi hearts Obama.
• Why Bailout matters.
• Of course I contribute to my own surveillance.
• Revolt of the rich.
• Of course Republicans suck.
• I've never suggested Willard isn't a motherfucking pig.
• The case for Robot Romney.
• Motherfucking grifter.
• Things you might have missed.
• Both SeatSix and Landru watched the game on GalaVision, both texted complaints about Benny's player selections, WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE BALKANS! SeatSix said United will miss the playoffs because Benny overvalues hustle in motherfucking practice above all, Landru said, not completely in just, entirely in fun! Fire Benny. Heh.
• Jackson Mac Low.
• Things he believes.
• I have a friend who urges Oppen on me. Will try again.
• On Hejinian's new one.

CHANGE

Carl Dennis

Just yesterday my poem lamenting the power
Of time to sweep away all trace of the beautiful
Seemed done at last, but the light this morning
Shows it to be a sketch, evidence that my vision
Cleared as I slumbered, that my sense of beauty
Grows in the night like corn or bamboo.

Maybe a poem in praise of time
Ought to be next on my agenda,
The time required for seeds to open,
For leaves to push out on tender stems.

Yesterday, the teacher didn't believe the excuse
Her student offered for missing his appointment—
A tire gone flat on the Thruway—but today
His story seems almost convincing,
Suggesting how quickly the bruise to her ego
Has begun to heal, the first small step
From the tiresome realm of insult and umbrage.

Yesterday the lover couldn't commit himself.
Today he wants to write his beloved
A check for a million dollars,
Though the time hasn't come, he admits,
For her to cash it.
Meanwhile, though he has nothing,
Whatever he has is hers.

Born Eighty-Three Years Ago Today

Thom Gunn.

Four excellent poems below the fold, one of them possibly one of my most reread dozen. Click, yo. It's also Charlie Parker's birthday. Waiting on Hamster's playlist.


MOLY

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.
I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,
Or cringing dribbling dog, man’s servile friend,

Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat,
Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat:

Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea.
What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me.

These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.
No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Into what bulk has method disappeared?
Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared.

The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature.
My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature

That bites through anything, root, wire, or can.
If I was not afraid I’d eat a man.


CONSIDERING THE SNAIL

The snail pushes through a green
night, for the grass is heavy
with water and meets over
the bright path he makes, where rain
has darkened the earth’s dark. He
moves in a wood of desire,

pale antlers barely stirring
as he hunts. I cannot tell
what power is at work, drenched there
with purpose, knowing nothing.
What is a snail’s fury? All
I think is that if later

I parted the blades above
the tunnel and saw the thin
trail of broken white across
litter, I would never have
imagined the slow passion
to that deliberate progress.


MY SAD CAPTAINS

One by one they appear in
the darkness: a few friends, and
a few with historical
names. How late they start to shine!
but before they fade they stand
perfectly embodied, all

the past lapping them like a
cloak of chaos. They were men
who, I thought, lived only to
renew the wasteful force they
spent with each hot convulsion.
They remind me, distant now.

True, they are not at rest yet,
but now that they are indeed
apart, winnowed from failures,
they withdraw to an orbit
and turn with disinterested
hard energy, like the stars.


YOKO

All today I lie in the bottom of the wardrobe
feeling low but sometimes getting up
to moodily lumber across rooms
and lap from the toilet bowl, it is so sultry
and then I hear the noise of firecrackers again
all New York is jaggedy with firecrackers today
and I go back to the wardrobe gloomy
trying to void my mind of them.
I am confused, I feel loose and unfitted.

At last deep in the stairwell I hear a tread,
it is him, my leader, my love.
I run to the door and listen to his approach.
Now I can smell him, what a good man he is,
I love it when he has the sweat of work on him,
as he enters I yodel with happiness,
I throw my body up against his, I try to lick his lips,
I care about him more than anything.

After we eat we go for a walk to the piers.
I leap into the standing warmth, I plunge into
the combination of old and new smells.
Here on a garbage can at the bottom, so interesting,
what sister or brother I wonder left this message I sniff.
I too piss there, and go on.

Here a hydrant there a pole
here's a smell I left yesterday, well that's disappointing
but I piss there anyway, and go on.

I investigate so much that in the end
it is for form's sake only, only a drop comes out.

I investigate tar and rotten sandwiches, everything, and go on.

And here a dried old turd, so interesting
so old, so dry, yet so subtle and mellow.
I can place it finely, I really appreciate it,
a gold distant smell like packed autumn leaves in winter
reminding me how what is rich and fierce when excreted
becomes weathered and mild
but always interesting
and reminding me of what I have to do.

My leader looks on and expresses his approval.

I sniff it well and later I sniff the air well
a wind is meeting us after the close July day
rain is getting near too but first the wind.
Joy, joy,
being outside with you, active, investigating it all,
with bowels emptied, feeling your approval
and then running on, the big fleet Yoko,
my body in its excellent black coat never lets me down,
returning to you (as I always will, you know that)
and now
filling myself out with myself, no longer confused,
my panting pushing apart my black lips, but unmoving,
I stand with you braced against the wind.

It's a Day When All the Dogs of All the Borrowed Houses Are Angel Footing Down the Hardwood of Middle-America's Newly Loaned-Up Renovated Kitchen Floors

Planet is happy so I'm happy. The Anchovy Trip. 

I'm cooked. Back tomorrow. Songs below found looking for the video above, always surprising to revisit the blitty shog. Poem found yesterday.





ROADSIDE ATTRACTIONS WITH THE DOGS OF AMERICA

Ida Limon

It's a day when all the dogs of all
the borrowed houses are angel footing
down the hard hardwood of middle-America's
newly loaned-up renovated kitchen floors,
and the world's nicest pie I know
is somewhere waiting for the right
time to offer itself to the wayward
and the word-weary. How come the road
goes coast to coast and never just
dumps us in the water, clean and
come clean, like a fish slipped out
of the national net of "longing for joy."
How come it doesn't? Once, on a road trip
through the country, a waitress walked
in the train's diner car and swished
her non-aproned end and said,
"Hot stuff and food too." My family
still says it, when the food is hot,
and the mood is good inside the open windows.
I'd like to wear an apron for you
and come over with non-church sanctioned
knee-highs and the prettiest pie of birds
and ocean water and grief. I'd like
to be younger when I do this, like the country
before Mr. Meriwether rowed the river
and then let the country fill him up
till it killed him hard by his own hand.
I'd like to be that dog they took with them,
large and dark and silent and un-blamable.
Or I'd like to be Emily Dickinson's dog, Carlo,
and go on loving the rare un-loveable puzzle
of woman and human and mind. But, I bet I'm more
the house beagle and the howl and the obedient
eyes of everyone wanting to make their own kind
of America, but still be America, too. The road
is long and all the dogs don't care too much about
roadside concrete history and postcards of state
treasures, they just want their head out the window,
and the speeding air to make them feel faster
and younger, and newer than all the dogs
that went before them, they want to be your only dog,
your best-loved dog, for this good dog of today
to be the only beast that matters.

Having Got Ground Groaned, Furious Title Holder

 

That's to show Thudner that photos bleeding into the right blogroll is not technical ineptitude but aesthetic choice on my part. I have been screamed at about it by this guy, who notes today has some minor historical value, and thank you, xoxo. (The music started there is continued below.) I abandon Planet in Bamgier in three hours, I'm sitting now in the breakfast lounge of the Zanesville Holiday Inn Express, the big screen TV is tuned to a local Columbus television station, the commercials vary like this: Romney, Obama, whoever the fuck is running again Brown, Brown, then shuffle the order the next commercial break. While life's distractions suck (and apologies for the cryptic _____________s) they do distract me from the daily clusterduh. One distraction will never go away (or at least until Planet is done with college and my mortgage is paid off), one distraction will end with new glasses and probably daily eyedrops, one distraction is in her endgame, finally accepting hospice. Here's how photos should appear on this shitty blog.

Guns, not puppets. The best defense. The BadTV Wing of the GOP. Waiting for the apocalypse. Motherfucking Obama. Ditto. The economic engine. Schooling fish. Not that Fish. Where's United? NoDax as MVP? Notebook. Fancy words (psst: Pynchon). Silliman's always generous litlinks. The artist as mystic. Could the lawn be any goner? More links tomorrow, probably.





EFFORT FOR DISTRACTION

Josephine Miles

Effort for distraction grew
Ferocious, grew
Ferocious and paced, that was its exercise.

Effort for distraction strained,
Legged in the hour-like single stretch
Its heels and sight to feel, so slit its eyes.

Effort without effort or with
Greatest possible effort always centered
Back in the concentrated trough where lies

The magnet to the filings,
The saw tooth to the tongue,
The turn of life to a returning life.

By all the traction of mind and spin of spirit
Having gained grasp gasped to bear it,
Having got ground groaned, furious title holder.

Paced and cried, so sore for a different direction, grew
Ferocious, grew
Unkind to strength that gave it strength to grow.

Just West of St Clairsville Ohio

Driving by me, video by Planet, music by Julianna Barwick.

1, 2, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144

Couple of months ago I posted about David Thomas offering living room concerts, yesterday I got pings from seven different cities in three different countries on David Thomas living room concerts. Go on, google that, I'm on page two. I believe this calls for a song:





Self-palimpsesting bastard, me. I've a PDF for each first and middle and last washes, the invasion, the occupation, the post-colonialization. The below is the above tablet page occupied, is how this tablet page invades the next tablet page. I never let the pages of a live poem go bone dry for seven days though I only PDF days one, four and seven. I tell myself, I'll remember that Day Two wash, don't clutter the hard-drive with six PDF a day (I'm working from both ends of tablet towards a middle that only exists physically), but of course I both do some and don't others. Driving Planet back to college today, plus ____________________________ and __________________________ and _______________________, none of the last three good. Can't blog about it, though I can write about it. More later, or not.

Montreal 3, United 0

Benny took a gamble United could steal a point or three while resting DeRossario and Pontius (or Ponty-ass, as the Toronto pxpguy with the fake British accent and verbal mannerisms called him) on an 88 degree day on artificial turf in United's third game in six days ahead of two games in the next seven and Benny lost. That's fine. He knows best that DeRossario, through no moral failing, no new disposition to not work, tipped his point sometime late last season, maybe early this season, you can only rotate those tires so many times now. Pontius gets kicked tripped and hacked silly every game, it would require research, and fuck that, but I'd bet Pontius leads the team in drawn fouls and I'd double-bet he leads in most cheap shots taken off the ball. To be honest, what puzzles me more is why Olsen brought on either of them once United was down two.

Targeting Montreal after Chester last Sunday and Chicago last Wednesday and before Metros next Wednesday and Salt Lake (at altitude) next Saturday as the game to steal points and catch breath makes perfect sense. United, right now, isn't good enough. Not close. Long Tan. Lionard Pajoy. Boskovic suddenly sucks, I'm suchafucking moron, get the motherfucking corner kick over the defender-on-the-near-post's head. Lewis Neal. This is the second, third game DeLeon missed sick in his hotel room? Oh look, Kevin Payne is whining about the schedule. Hey Kevin, at least it's not like the clusterfuckage that playing in major international club tournaments creates that you bitched about in the mid-oughts. You fixed that problem. Hey! You still owe me Special Game B and C, by the way.

Salihi! Sorry, I sneezedaarghed. NiellCarvalloGallardoN'GalulaCastillo. Blessed Allsopp, what brought that on. Fred, I'm focusing all the combined aarghs in my life that I can't focus there here. Fred, I am using organized sports as designated ventosphere for anti-societal rage exactly as our overlords designed it. Here's Goff, here's Rockwell, here's Webb. Here's the latest in the Stanley in a Bag series:

For His Birthday, I Gave Stanley a Hyacinth Bean, an Annual, so He Wouldn't Have to Wait for the Flowers

That's the latest in the Stanley in a Bag series. In response to my speculations/inquiries re: political demographics of Ohio (where day after tomorrow I drive to take Planet back to college), G, good friend of Landru, sent along some Kind and this:

We live in Cincinnati, and I wanted to remark on the demographics of Ohio (in response to Planet being in Ohio all fall).  Despite appearances, Cincinnati proper is pretty blue.  (Take a gander at the 2008 results map here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Ohio,_2008 )  The four isolated blue counties in the southern half of the state are those around Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Athens.  The burbs in those counties and around are undeniably red, and the redrawn districts (done by a Republican legislature) after the 2010 census favors (surprisingly enough) the Republicans.  All of those democratic counties in the southern half of the state are split in half, so that the republican burbs and surrounding counties can overwhelm a divided democratic city.  See the map here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oh_districts_map.PNG .   Honestly, I don' t know how they keep getting away with this crap.

I'm sure that there are more Democratic voters than Republican--the election will turn on whether the Democrats will actually vote, and how many shenanigans will get in the way of the process.  (I still have bitter memories of 2004, when long lines in understaffed Democratic districts turned people away, while the Republican districts didn't seem to have such problems.  Well, that and the Diebold thing.)

And the followed-up: I used the 2008 map to show that Hamilton is blue; upon further research I've learned it has been red in the previous 3 presidential elections, and in many of the 'tweeners, but it has generally been closely divided between the city and the burbs.  I will always maintain, however, that something was seriously fishy in the 2004 election.  I work in (and drive through, to and from) a very Republican part of the county; US Rep Steve Chabot-R (of the combover fame) lives near where I work. I saw an overwhelming number of Democratic signs in the run-up to the 2004 election, to the extent that I actually and foolishly was convinced that Ohio would turn for Kerry.  I saw much less visible support for Obama in the same neighborhood in 2008, yet the county did come in Democratic that year.  Damn Diebolds. 

Offered here for my three Ohioan blogbuds. Living in MOCO, I get some of the POTUS noise in commercials run at NOVA, and puke-sound. The blarg in Ohio is gonna suck. Anyway, thank you, G, for the info and Kind words. Hey! Everyone, send me stuff. Here's the flagship of the Stanley in a Bag series:

• Crackers in bed. Made you look. Thanks Edmond!
• I was going to throw this 144 exactly twit in the wind: Getting outraged that Romney's outraged that Obama's acting outraged to exploit a Romney gaffe (plug variables in any order) is swirly dumb. Fuck it.
• Obama's constitution.
• Panopticon.
• What the fuck is a Ed Schultz?
• America will be Britain first on its way to Serbia.
• The American Conservative on American Conservatism. I've never said they aren't whack.
• Metaphor for something. 
• I've been using headers one out of three or four nights, gonna leave Stanley up there for the meantime just because.
• Read this out loud. No, really: Poor Americans die five years younger than the rich and are likelier to say that parents should stay together for the sake of the children. Black Americans, unlike white Americans, do not live longer if they marry rather than cohabit. Black women are, unlike white women and black men, expected to be assertive in the workplace; are as likely as white men to be ticketed during traffic stops; and tend toward obesity if they have been abused as children. Sons who have been abused by their fathers and daughters who have been abused by their mothers are especially prone to cancer. Fatherhood reduces gay men’s HIV risk. Children exposed to HIV in the womb are more likely to become deaf. Mother goats remember, for over a year after weaning, the voices of their kids. The death of a child increases a mother’s immediate risk of death by 133 percent. Women who have difficulty conceiving children are more likely to experience psychiatric hospitalization. California scientists disagreed with Danish scientists’ assertion that occasional binge drinking during pregnancy may be safe. Bullies peak in seventh grade. Cities polluted by leaded gasoline turn children violent. Two thirds of U.S. teenagers experience uncontrollable rage. Head injuries, undereducation, and farming make Americans punch and kick in their sleep. Ambient bullying makes employees want to quit. A landscape architect designed an edible playground for autistic children. There are two more paragraphs at the link. Read them out loud too.
• United plays in Montreal at four today. Don't know if I'll be able to see it - Comcast is showing a motherfucking exhibition helmetball game, I wonder if they'll blackout MLS Live like they normally do.
• Bob Ross on art and capitalism!
• Beefheart!

HEAVEN FOR STANLEY

Mark Doty

For his birthday, I gave Stanley a hyacinth bean,
an annual, so he wouldn't have to wait for the flowers.

He said, Mark, I have just the place for it!
as if he'd spent ninety-eight years

anticipating the arrival of this particular vine.

I thought poetry a brace against time,
the hours held up for study in a voice's cool saline,

but his allegiance is not to permanent forms.
His garden's all furious change,

budding and rot and then the coming up again;

why prefer any single part of the round?
I don't know that he'd change a word of it;

I think he could be forever pleased
to participate in motion. Something opens.

He writes it down. Heaven steadies
and concentrates near the lavender. He's already there.

Lacking the Three Glass Knobs

Today in what I can't talk about, here, have instead: I subscribe to the neighborhood listserv, don't read 99 of a 100 posts, the ones about lost dogs and cats and requests for recommendations for doctors and dentists, but this subject line, FREE KNOBS, caught my attention. I opened it:

I have an assortment of knobs free for the taking:

6 brushed nickel and frosted pink glass (~1 inch diameter)
5 white wood (~1 inch diameter)
14 pewter cup pulls (~3 inches across)
11 round pewter knobs - these match the above cup pulls (~1 inch diameter)

Let me know if you can use them and I'll set them out for you.

Fine metaphors abound, including but not limited to I'm not used to being offered knobs but having them thrust upon me by knobs, neither the knobs offered or the knobs thrusting brushed silver or pewter or frosted pink glass. Als0 to0? Shoot me.

• That was on the new book shelf yesterday.
• Today in Advanced Obamapologetics, two cases both for and against and finally, forlornly and with resignation and moral weariness, for Obama, first Thomas Frank then Ta-Nahisi Coates. Yes Harpers is subscription only but for $20 a year for a decent magazine?
• Fuck POTUS 12. Nothing is happening that wasn't expected, it's like being the kid in the twirler crushed by the centripetal force of friends' and then vomited on when the ride stops.
• Privacy: The motivations for the surrender of privacy also interest me. Convenience is obviously one. Conformity is another. But I think we can go deeper. Consumer capitalism is driven by the notion of obsolescence and by the anxiety that the consumer herself will become obsolete. In such a context, it’s no big stretch to extend “obsolescence” from products to basic rights. Suddenly, we’re “beyond” all that habeas corpus bric-a-brac. We’ve “outgrown” our “antique” privacy. Fatalism also plays a part. Technology and the Market have become our new divinities. Both are viewed as omnipotent and implacable. It’s, like, Global, man—there’s nothing you can do about it.
• Call me when Obama makes this point loud and repeatedly.
• Media contempt.
• Forcible legitimate life.
• Smacking a cracker goes viral. Call me when Obama does this.
• Foreclosure suicide.
• Home is where the vote is.
• Our curious case of economic bondage.
• The fantasy of fetal personhood.
• Uterus Rex.
• How can you say such a thing?
• Pastor Sanctimonious says Akin is not a Villager!
• In Celebration of My Uterus.
• UPDATE! Serendipitous to the above, I just found this.
• ExNPRer on NPR.
• Life does not progress towards complexity.
• Butler's Orchard!
• This isn't out in time for my birthday, buy it for me for Giftmas!
• The changing sameness.
• Remember to ping :: wood s lot :: daily.
• Murakami bettors' favorite to win Nobel.
• People are dumb.
• Popper in bed!
• Yes, it's a The Necks kind of day again.

THE EMPEROR OF ICE CREAM

Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,
The muscular one, and bid him whip
In kitchen cups concupiscent curds.
Let the wenches dawdle in such dress
As they are used to wear, and let the boys
Bring flowers in last month's newspapers.
Let be be finale of seem.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,
Lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet
On which she embroidered fantails once
And spread it so as to cover her face.
If her horny feet protrude, they come
To show how cold she is, and dumb.
Let the lamp affix its beam.
The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.

Crashing By Me

More from last night's light. Yes, stanchion porn of course, but blogwhoring or attention sluttery too? You decide! Trick question: death to the either/or. Haven't used that gag in a while. More photos below fold, plus Mazzy Star song cascade because someone put one of the songs in my head an hour ago.

United 4, Chicago 2

Incredible light, incredible sky, incredibly beautiful evening. On the way to game got a text from Big C, he had an evening out, showed me photos of the beautiful Greta, almost three months old, now interactive. To emphasize, gorgeous night.

To be frank, I figured one team would score four and I had odds on Chicago. Yes, I deployed the Baal-taunting. You can also thank me for Pajoy's goal, me and buds were arguing how many sitters he had gacked just before he scored, John having him at six, the bearded lawyer dude five, me four, giving Pajoy half a pass at a ball that took a funny bounce and hit his shin. He is not the answer up top, nor is Long Tan (who scored late). Nick DeLeon was announced as a starter and the box score says he played the entire game, so I'll take their word for it. And United still SUXXXXXXXXXXXX defending set pieces, it's gonna be the final bullet that ends the season. That's it for bitching.

I stand corrected on Saragosa, who hadn't impressed me in the least. He teamed excellently with Kitchen in defensive midfield, the teaming allowing Chris Korb and especially Andy Najar to overlap from the back. If Najar buys in, if he gets his footwork together on defense (he can be tied into knots at times), he is a major plus at right back, a bigger plus than on the wing (where he's a major plus over DeLeon - I'm told DeLeon played last night, I didn't see it). Najar was the best player on the field last night (well, and Marco Pappa too). But back to Saragosa/Kitchen - I am very curious to see if they start this Saturday afternoon in Montreal: last night was of necessity because of line-up options, Boskovic and Dudar are off red card suspensions for Saturday. Did I mention it was a gorgeous evening?

O! Shockingly competent refereeing. Ismail Elfath was no Kevin Stott

Here's the video. Here's Shatzer. Here's Goff. Here's Creditor. Here's Webb.

Born One-Hundred Fifty Years Ago Today

Claude Debussy. It's love. During the ten years Planet took piano and her teacher held two recitals each year I must have heard the below dozens of times. Yes it's Debussy's best known piece, it's beautiful. No matter how much the students butchered it it's still beautiful:





More below the fold, including Hamster's play list after the two Pollini:



















One via Brad:





One more via me:

I Keep a Dog and Bark Myself

• The Citizen Kane Era returns.
• The ten reasons Akin ain't quitting.  This POTUS is rolling out exactly as I thought it would when I offered pint bets on Obama's reelection the morning after his victory in 2008 - let the motherfucking crackers horrify enough independent voters and wobbly Democrats to garner Obama enough votes in swing states. Gonna work. Scritch my cutter instincts, I'm working to suppress them.
• UPDATE! Paul Ryan called, Akin said no. Remember this when a Democratic candidate says something controversial and Biden calls him/her urging quit.
• Republican landslide in Amazon book vote!
• Planet will be in Ohio all Fall. Her college is in a solid red county though it's near enough the swing-city of Columbus (you Ohioers, am I right in my assumption that Cleveland's blue, Cincinnati's red, rural is red, Columbus and suburbs tips the vote?) that she could see the candidates if she gave a major shit which, at least so far, she blessedly doesn't. But the noise will be unavoidable and suck.
• Villager Court Jester makes same joke I made on twitter seven hours earlier.
• From sophistry to agnotology. Had to look up the latter: agnotology = the study of culturally induced ignorance.
• Crime and Pussy Riot.
• Motherfucking christers.
• Sugar jubilee.
• Dog-shaming.
• Premise.
• The war in the shadows.
• Where I grew up, or rather, where I lived when I was a child.

• I played alto clarinet in that band, this guy cornet.
• Gaithersburg the 23rd best place to live in America? Behind Waldorf?
• North Bethesda plantation is in ROCKVILLE.
• Between the Seneca viaduct, the Monocacy viaduct, the Harpers Ferry tunnel and Harpers Ferry bridge, I only thought I was going to die via train a couple dozen times.
• Blegsylvanian history: was emailing with bud, we were recounting the early days of litbloggery, those who died, those who quit, those who morphed into megayucks, those we miss, those we still like, those still here who can fuck themselves. I've added maybe ten new sites to Because Left over the past month, please, any lit/music/art blogs you dig that you don't see there send me a bump. Nothing against anyone in Because Right, but I'm much more Because Left than Because Right in my damn these days.
• Abandoned Olympic venues.
• Dutilleux.
• Cello Concerto first second third fourth fifth.
• Petite Air a Dormir.
• A Prunella playlist.
• Robinson Jeffers.
• Madness, rack, honey.
• Happy Anniversary Melville House.
• Reminded of today's poem via consumptive.

THE SURLY ONE

Theodore Roethke

1

When true love broke my heart in half,
I took the whiskey from the shelf,
And told my neighbors when to laugh
I keep a dog, and bark myself.

2

Ghost cries out to ghost–
But whose afraid of that?
I feel those shadows most
That start from my own feet.

Since It Was Cold and Dark I Found Myself Singing the Brilliant Love Songs of My Other Religion

• No, The Clash haven't aged well for me (and they were never in that stupidass game's inner-rotation circa then)  but Joe Strummer was born 60 years ago today and respect will be paid in Egoslavia.
• Notebook (telescope).
• You have the right to be spied on.
• No accidents, comrade.
• Two Blegsylvanian stories from yesterday. Folk were asked about Blegsylvanian history, I know the answer but I can't provide it. I was asked why I don't use the word kayfabe as much as I used to, and my reflexive and facile response is if you're talking about kayfabe you've lost it. Plus I thought I was.
• Say Uncle.
• New kind of bleak.
• An ever dumber dinosaur.
• The return of Dr Strangelove.
• Rahowa.
• Occupy Tampa welcomes the GOP.
• Pastor Sanctimonious warns Romney that Trump is not a Villager.
• Palin endorses Bongino!
• Anyway, my apologies, this seems to be the format for now. It's odd, this need to stay in contact while not being able to relate anything of the four excellent if some fun some not storylines from real life I'm writing about in tablet and the fine and abounding metaphors they produce.

• World's greatest elk caller!
• Hatherley interview.
• languagehat.
• But I've always been a relayer, a good one, but a relayer. Yes, all this for that.
• Freida checks in!
• FGaQ checks in!
• Stargazing.
• Blog friend reviews a blog friend's novel!
• Shortly after I posted yesterday and before he'd read this post Hamster sent out the glad news that another Audrey exists in this world, so I rescind the taunt he join me Wednesday as he need honor the priorities. Which means I have two tickets for tomorrow night's United game v Chicago. Probably three. If all are taken, and they won't be, and Hamster still wants to go, I'll buy his ticket in exchange for a beer.
• Shoot me.
• Shoot me.
• Speaking of Hamster, he sent along this Hilary Mantel travel piece.
• Island.
• My complicity: fuck NPR. Listen to the new Swans on NPR.
• Bjork interviews Arvo Part.

DAY OF GRIEF

Gerald Stern

I was forcing a wasp to the top of a window
where there was some sky and there were tiger lilies
outside just to love him or maybe only
simply a kiss for he was hurrying home
to fight a broom and I was trying to open
a door with one hand while the other was swinging
tomatoes, and you could even smell the corn
for corn travels by wind and there was the first
hint of cold and dark though it was nothing
compared to what would come, and someone should mark
the day, I think it was August 20th, and
that should be the day of grief for grief
begins then and the corn man starts to shiver
and crows too and dogs who hate the wind
though grief would come later and it was a relief
to know I wasn't alone, but be as it may,
since it was cold and dark I found myself singing
the brilliant love songs of my other religion.

United 1, Chester 1

Didn't see it, obligations sucky, obligations fun instead, who the fuck schedules a game for five on a Sunday afternoon? Rinkydink League Soccer does, that's who. This guy was there. I am shocked to hear that Rinkydink League Soccer officiating sucks. I'll be at the game this and next Wednesday, see if the vibe is what I think, rinkydinkwise. That guy will be in Sucktucky this Wednesday so I may have an extra ticket or two. Or three. I'm looking at you:

I'll put the remaining two up for grabs once they're officially mine. You'll hear good stories, all the ones I can't tell here but are preoccupying both my time and my mind. Your linkages return later today and/or tomorrow or not, whole bunch in yesterday's post below. Hey! when I went to find Hamster's avatar I couldn't find it in my disorganized files so I just searched Hamster in this shitty blog's engine up top left and the first post it appeared in also contained the song below. Heh. It's dedicated to obligations sucky.

Maps Trace Out No Alibis

• Villagers. Fuckem. But it does bring up an interesting question: just how many fucking years are we going to hear Paul Ryan's name on a daily basis in election seasons? Cause fuck.
• I'm still pissed off that that motherfucking Pastor Sanctimonious column from Friday (it doesn't get another link) pissed me off. I've a tablet page written last night on why, it might appear elsewhere or not, but at least the purge did me the good of saving me aargh over this piece of shit Fuckface Hiatt editorial.
• Actually, tablet is bursting. It's not bleggalgazing, which isn't to say bleggalgazing doesn't make appearances, but a re-selfoscopy re: what the fuck am I doing. I've deleted the rest of this bullet. It will appear here and/or elsewhere sooner or later or never.
• But yes, what I will do with myself once my obligations to getting my daughter to adulthood are discharged is being considered. I still have a contract with my complicity, one I made 24 years ago when someone agreed to marry me, one I will honor. With love.
• Ryker is 60 today. Lurch with your shoulder while tugging at your tunic all day in honor. 
• I'm not daydreaming of taking myself off grid, btw.
• Yes, that Johnny Boy song is somehow connected too this, not sure how or why.
• Did you see this blog go noxzema bottle blue for ten minutes last night just for the fuck of it? Made me laugh, did it's job, gently punched me in the balls. Kept me from reorganizing the blegrells to - folks are just as moribund at the bottom of Becauses as they would be in the graveyard.
• Pussy Riot infographic. 
• Motherfucking crackers. 
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Motherfucking everyone.
• Paul Ryan's epic drum solo.
• Police state.
• Should Libertarianism be Cultural Leftism w/o the State? (h/t via twitter)
• The nature of capital.
• Core political beliefs.
• Lisa wants you to read this.
• A word from out sponsor.
• Motherfucking Obama. 
• Pyramid insurance.
• Texas justice.
• I still say Cabin John Bridge.
• Post-peak woodwork.
• Motifs of anti-intellectuals.
• Sebald and Joy Division. 
• A friend's playlist. 
• Manufacturing consensus.
• A friend's playlist.

VASECTOMY

Philip Appleman

After the steaming bodies swept
through the hungry streets of swollen cities;
after the vast pink spawning of family
poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;
after the gamble of latex and
diaphragms and pills;
I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades
ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge
of Increase and Multiply, made
affirmation: Yes, deliver us from
complicity.
And after the precision of scalpels,
I woke to a landscape of sunshine where
the catbird mates for life and
maps trace out no alibis—stepped
into a morning of naked truth,
where acts mean what they really are:
the purity of loving
for the sake of love.

But We're All Receiving, or: Theme Song August 2012

When this song blessedly appears out of nowhere in my head I feel morally obligated to Kindly put it in yours. This is at least the 5th time it's tsb's TSoM.

Lurid Conditions Are Facts

Colin Moulding is 57 today. I may have mentioned it already. I generally dig Partridge's songs much more, but still, Egoslavian Holy Day. Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true! (and they made a trade yesterday), and I looked at the schedule yesterday and I've a moral quandary. There was no Thursday Night Pints last night because there's a Sunday Night Barbeque at L's house for her birthday and SHAZAM! motherfucking MLS scheduled a soccer game for motherfucking five o'clock on a motherfucking Sunday, the motherfuckers. L wins unless a possible clusterfuck in her life materializes, won't know until Sunday morning. >>Deleted bleggalgazing<< Hey, be Kind, check out some new bips on the blegrells.

• Cynical days.
• Motherfucking Pastor Sanctimonious.
• Jesusfuck, it's pisses me off that that pisses me off. Acknowledging motherfucking Obama does not mitigate - why I thought it would, why I still think it can, is proof of my permanent rubity - my recreational disdain I've burnished for decades. Dammit.
• Criminalizing dissent.
• Canons to the Left of me.
• Britain's second empire.
• Sideshow's links.
• War Dance.
• Venus and Mars.
• The >>deleted bleggalgazing<< was actually re: the other place, but I'll let it go at thank you Russian pornbot for all the hits! Tis amazing.
• Who the hell uses stupidass Star Trek allusions?

• How the American university was killed in five easy steps.
• Peace, joy, etc.
• runaway return.
• Runaway.
• Creeley, reading.
• Evan S Connell is 88 today. I remember when the Bridges, Mr and Mrs, were regular reading for lit-folks.
• On Lisa Robertson's prose.
• Roundabout.
• In Loving Memory of a Name.
• What in the World?
• Gass.
• Grass.
• Gass.
• Vanishing Girl.
• Frivolous Tonight.
• In Another Life.

[UNTITLED]

Lisa Robertson

It was Jessica Grim the American poet
who first advised me to read Violette Leduc.
Lurid conditions are facts. This is no different
from daily protests and cashbars.
I now unknowingly speed towards
which of all acts, words, conditions—
I am troubled that I do not know.
When I feel depressed in broad daylight
depressed by the disappearance of names, the pollen
smearing the windowsill, I picture
the bending pages of La Bâtarde
and I think of wind. The outspread world is
comparable to a large theatre
or to rending paper, and the noise it makes when it flaps
is riotous. Clothes swish through the air, rubbing
my ears. Promptly I am quenched. I’m talking
about a cheap paperback which fans and
slips to the floor with a shush. Skirt stretched
taut between new knees, head turned back, I
hold down a branch,

Fifty-Seven Today

Colin Moulding is fifty-seven today. Holyfuck I'm old. XTC (and Dukes and other projects Partridge) is on the short-list for the two rotating spots on my Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game. Cascade later today (requests solicited for Moulding lead-vocal XTC songs, or not), or not. I've both been smacked with the fuck-it and smacked myself with the fuck-it to counter being smacked with the fuck-it. The difference between fuck-it and what-the-fuck is infinite. I'll let you know smacking the smacking works, or not.

Born Eighty-Three Years Ago Today

Here's Hamster's cascade for Bill Evans, born 83 years ago today.

• Peace Piece.
• Waltz for Debby.
• Milestones.
• Angel Face.
• Never Let Me Go.

they&#39;re not going to let you sit at a front table at some cafe in Europe in the mid-afternoon sun

• Bukowski born 92 years ago today. Above h/t Biblioklept.
• I don't watch TV much and cable news ever: did this shooting cause a shitstorm?
• The UK is just following orders.
• America's vassal.
• UPDATE! Who America's vassal wouldn't extradite. (h/t)
• It's a long dreary road to Britaingreeceserbia.
• YMOBMC.
• Motherfucking NYPD.
• Dude, it was a motherfucking friendly.
• Someone googled Fleabus and got kangaroo.
• Rooms below the floor.
• Speculative geographies.
• Don't bring me down.
• Lost Stephen Dixon novel found. I am going to try again. Was frightening how easy google wallet, which I had never set up, worked when I ordered the book.
• Re: Bukowski - when I was young and should have liked him more I didn't, now that I'm old and shouldn't like him I do.
• Absolutely horrifying news.
• Bill Evans born 83 years ago today. Bottom cut h/t Mr Alarum. I'm still awaiting Hamster's cascade. UPDATE! Hamster's sent a long cascade. Later this afternoon. Yowser.

RELENTLESS AS THE TARANTULA

Charles Bukowski

they're not going to let you
sit at a front table
at some cafe in Europe
in the mid-afternoon sun.
if you do, somebody's going to
drive by and
spray your guts with a
submachine gun.

they're not going to let you
feel good
for very long
anywhere.
the forces aren't going to
let you sit around
fucking-off and
relaxing.
you've got to go
their way.

the unhappy, the bitter and
the vengeful
need their
fix - which is
you or somebody
anybody
in agony, or
better yet
dead, dropped into some
hole.

as long as there are
humans about
there is never going to be
any peace
for any individual
upon this earth or
anywhere else
they might
escape to.

all you can do
is maybe grab
ten lucky minutes
here
or maybe an hour
there.

something
is working toward you
right now, and
I mean you
and nobody but
you.