The Squirming Facts Exceed the Squamous Mind

It's a two track attack, I said at a special Thursday Night Pints last night, all our lives and schedules whack. Some are angry at hippies because we won't vote for Obama, I said, some are angry at hippies because we won't vote. I agree with the second, K said. L said, I do too, but when I acknowledge the second is a more valid criticism than the first, I'm told you're with us or against us. (Yes, Bless Serendipity.) Bitch being, I said, I bet most if not every single person pissed at someone from their left not voting for Obama doesn't for a second think Obama is going to lose. K said, shit, landslide. L said, my son said I'd be personally responsible for taking breakfast out of the mouth of poor kids in Mississippi if I don't vote for Obama and Romney wins with Virginia's electoral college votes. (L lives in NOVA where her vote has infinitely more tiny weight than mine in one of the bluest precincts of bluest districts of bluest counties of bluest states.) Did you say, K said, that by that logic the son is personally responsible for the death and maiming of children in Yemen? Sucks, I said, complicity, how eagerly it's assigned to me by others, how eagerly I assign it to others. Trite, sure, a box, sure, but it got me a free pint.

• Not sure why it took so long for a Beachwood Sparks cascade here, my apologies, I've meant to for years.
• In which I am scolded.
• Police state. Yes, posted again.
• Who's counting.
• Flunking.
• It's 2004 again, just the other team.
• Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready. 
• From a comment to the post linked in monologue by the author of the post: Democrats now use Republicans as a threat that justifies all manner of bad behavior in exactly the way Republicans used Al Qaeda.
• Marxism and the media.
• Definitions.
• Your Fucking Washington Post's ombudsman writes possibly the stupidest column of deliberate mendacity ever.
• Ten years ago. That? I remember people - me - crouching behind cars when pumping gas.
• Have I said fack blaager lately, cause fack blaager, fack me. 
• Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia. (h/t - though via twaater)
• 666.
• Portrait of a wallaby-killer.
• Bleggalbegging. Good news - he's taking back his blog.
• Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true, and they tied 1-1 last night in Portland, I saw the (dull, uneventful) first half, was asleep the second.
• 100,000 poets for change.
• Bob Hicok interview.
• Thank you, but no, I don't want a pumpkin beer.
• Messiaen. Holyfuck. Been a while since a cascade.....
• It's the new album that put them back on my head's autoplay.

THE CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS

Wallace Stevens

I. 

A. A violent order is disorder; and
B. A great disorder is an order. These
Two things are one. (Pages of illustrations.)
                          
II. 

If all the green of spring was blue, and it is;
If the flowers of South Africa were bright
On the tables of Connecticut, and they are;
If Englishmen lived without tea in Ceylon, and they do;
And if it all went on in an orderly way,
And it does; a law of inherent opposites,
Of essential unity, is as pleasant as port,
As pleasant as the brush-strokes of a bough,
An upper, particular bough in, say, Marchand. 

III. 

After all the pretty contrast of life and death
Proves that these opposite things partake of one,
At least that was the theory, when bishops' books
Resolved the world. We cannot go back to that.
The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind,
If one may say so. And yet relation appears,
A small relation expanding like the shade
Of a cloud on sand, a shape on the side of a hill. 

IV. 

A. Well, an old order is a violent one.
This proves nothing. Just one more truth, one more
Element in the immense disorder of truths.
B. It is April as I write. The wind
Is blowing after days of constant rain.
All this, of course, will come to summer soon.
But suppose the disorder of truths should ever come
To an order, most Plantagenet, most fixed…
A great disorder is an order. Now, A
And B are not like statuary, posed
For a vista in the Louvre. They are things chalked
On the sidewalk so that the pensive man may see. 

V. 

The pensive man…He sees that eagle float
For which the intricate Alps are a single nest.
 

It Is the Great Arguments We Are Proud of, Over a Nibbled Peach, Hair in the Comb, a Faulty Lube Job

THE DEAD REMEMBER BROOKLYN

D. Nurkse

It is the great arguments

we are proud of, over a nibbled peach,

hair in the comb, a faulty lube job;

the reconciliations were always naked

in borrowed rooms, sometimes in Queens

or Staten Island, we touched each other

shyly—we reminded each other

of loneliness and funk and beautiful pigeons

with oil-slick necks, cooing bitterly—

but there we lost each other

in forgiveness; keeping score,

being wounded even in triumph,

walking home down leafy avenues

etched with the faint double line

of extinct trolleys, caressing

carved hearts under a sheen of sap

with a ragged nail, sleeping alone,

choosing the dream of betrayal,

entering by the wide door

and waking dead—there

we were superb. In Brooklyn

we held our own.

 





Bonus Fugazi! for a fuck-it post on a deadblog Saturday. Going hiking.

Headline Status Crumpled and Exploding

• My mother-in-laws memorial service was nice though religion creeps me out, I understand why people do it with God or without. Like me. Elsewhere, life is whack. Monologues will resume sooner or later or they won't. Links today, tomorrow maybe, or not. Songs and poems will appear regardless.
• A crucible of political disenchantment. 
• A definition of capitalism.
• A reason for civil libertarians to vote for Obama?
• The joke of Democratic accountability.
• A letter to her liberal allies. We are facing a radical right that has abandoned all interest in truth and fact. We face not only their specific policies, but a kind of cultural decay that comes from not valuing truth, not trying to understand the complexities and nuances of our situation, and not making empathy a force with which to act. I agree, motherfucking Republicans be motherfuckingly crackerbaitier and christerbaitier and pigbaitier than ever before, so why are Democrats still only .06% less-shitty? Why is the shitty-equilibrium pegged to motherfucking Republican shittiness? Shouldn't Democrats be more than .06% less-shittier than motherfucking crackers if in fact motherfucking Republicans are significantly shittier now than four, eight, twelve, years ago? Who are the more evil motherfuckers here?
• Fuckers both, though I'd hit tbogg with a shovel first. And second, third, fourth....
• Yup.
• Yup. And visa versa, of course, tribe-wise.
• And it bears repeating - one of the crucial motives behind expanding the police state and the surveillance state and eliminating your civil liberties is for the day Corporate no longer wants, needs, or grants you votes much less cares what you think about those issues you claim those of us bitching about the police and surveillance state selfishly ignore.
• >>Deleted bleggalgazing<<
• Defiling the profit.
• Sideshow's links.
• Schuyler, O'Hara.
• Woke up with this in my head:

FIGURE

Josephine Miles

A poem I keep forgetting to write
Is about the stars,
How I see them in their order
Even without the chair and bear and the sisters,
In their astronomic presence of great space,
And how beyond and behind my eyes they are moving,
Exploding to spirals under extremest pressure.
Having not mathematics, my head
Burst with anguish of not understanding.

The poem I forget to write is bursting fragments
Of a tortured victim, far from me
In his galaxy of minds bent upon him,
In the oblivion of his headline status
Crumpled and exploding as incomparable
As a star, yet present in its light.
I forget to write.

You Know You Don&#39;t Have to You Can Just Say No

An excellent list of Big Star's ten best songs, with sound. Their number two is my number one, but quibble aside, joy that it's now in my head again.

knowing. nothing. into. understand.

• Busy. Good news! Planet's home! Bad news! It's for her grandmother's memorial this morning. Have Roxy Music songs for Bryan Ferry's sixty-fifth birthday yesterday plus I'll harvest the links I'd been gathering.
• Why vote.
• American tune.
• A defense of less-shittism.
• A defense of less-shittism.
• UPDATE! Against less-shittism. Oh dear, another privileged white male who hates women's rights, no doubt.
• Yawn. Obama's gonna win. Everybody chill. Jeebus, I'm sick of this dance.
• Deploying shock troops against blogs.
• On the above.
• This Villager Court Jester column is creepy on infinite levels.
• Things you might have missed.
• Fuck blooger. Fuck me.
• I've missed more home games this season than the previous six or seven seasons combined, all for self-justifyingly reasoned excuses (including some valid). I don't think it can be underestimated what effect a successful Natinals season has been relative to this season's precipitous drop, though only in conjunction with a United home base conditioned to Kasper Payne rinkydinking his way to mediocrity. Salihi! Gesundheit.
• I had need of that last night elsewhere. It is astonishing the people on like blogrolls know the same guy in Indonesia whether capcha or nocapcha.
• Mining the digital motherlode.

NEGATIVE STATEMENT

Steve McCaffery

two divisions.

one)

        knowing. nothing. into. understand.

        two)

                something.

                touched.

                someone.

1)     sequences outside of the categories

         labelled ‘telephones’

         e.g. the milk arrived.

2)    the things all found a personal

        vocabulary. every word insulted

        everyone

        without looking.

1)    knowing nothing into understand.   and

        this almost said solemnly was the one

        that least occurred to me.

          ii) i sent my heart in the upper pocked

               or perhaps we made the bed in two

               seconds after we eliminated the

               third floor.

        and nothing else to risk but

        to hear her drinking.   1)

something solemn touched something in the

              upper pocket.

   

   

2)

knowing something touched nothing without

                           drinking.  1)

(i love onions 2)

i told her so one.

in one second 2.

in two seconds flat

the things that change conceal

a system of ideas

for instance the trains went by to come

back on a roll of film

they were both standing in the courtyard

when i came she was

 

2)    sitting on the steps in a mans

        handwriting shutting my eyes to what

        remains to be said.

1)    an immense silence which had nothing to

        do with silence.

 

 

2)    for a long spell

        a spell of weeping begins to come.

Science Is the Same as Poetry Only It Uses the Wrong Words

I must: the universal angst across all normally divided swaths of Americans over the horror and threat to the American way of life that scab referees in the National Helmetball League represent delights me. Listening to Chicago School-trained business professors who advocate crushing teachers unions on motherfucking Hayekian principles of assholic greed bark furiously that "32 rich fucks put personal profit above the integrity of The League just to destroy the union," makes me giggle. Not to worry, I'm sure these pigs will be back on message soon.

• Madrid yesterday above.
• Obama removed opposition to replacement workers in Democratic platform.
• Living under drones.
• On the above.
• What do these beautiful people have in common?
• UNbelievable.
• The race shouldn't be this close.
• On the new Badiou, for those of you who do.
• On the above Badiou, for those of you who do.
• Bleggalaargh.
• Re: King of Anarchists - he didn't apply, he was anointed; he never claimed to be an anarchist but some who claim to be anarchier than thou claimed him. He's always been Kind to me and this shitty bleg - the shot, such as it was or wasn't, wasn't at him. And it wasn't meant to be a shot at anyone but me.
• Checkmate.
• Dear Obama for America.
• Second fiddle, fiddling.
• Enlightenment sucks.
• Mental bronchitis.
• Faulkner's birthday and second chances.
• Robert Kelly? Luckily, I have access to a university library's stacks. Though I need get past the deliberate Maine Coon eyebrows.
• New Paul Westerberg song!
• Bryan Ferry is sixty-seven today. I wish Mitt Romney didn't look like Bryan Ferry. Bigger cascade later, or not. Short list for one of two rotating spots in sillyass game of five.

SCIENCE

Robert Kelly

Science explains nothing
but holds all together as
many things as it can count

science is a basket
not a religion he said
a cat as big as a cat

the moon the size of the moon
science is the same as poetry
only it uses the wrong words.

I Pay Five Cents for a Daily Synopsis of Current History, Two Bits and the Late Lowdown on Hollywood, Twist a Dial for Stardust or Shostakovich, and with Each Bleacher Stub I reserve the Right to Shout “Kill the Bum” at the Umpire—

Dmitri Shostakovich was born 106 years ago today. Have I mentioned I love his music? Today's pieces via requests from three friends, THANKS! I've been asked to tell stories of Blegsylvanian history, NO THANKS! I hear that NFL owners are willing to ruin the integrity of the game to save pennies against billions of dollars of profit to squash a union. Heh, integrity of the game. You're funny. Fine metaph.... o, fuck it.

• How do you take your poison?
• The rack of inequality.
• Bleggalgazing.
• 25 random things.
• OK, Blegsylvanian history: Stringtown's been dying for years. The King of Anarchists (who is a good guy, has been Kind to me and this blog, and understands the irony of the gig) in our stringtown hasn't posted in months, hastening the dying by millimeters. His resurrection if it occurs will set off hosannahs, and some not on his blegrells will compete in his comments for his attention to be Vice-King of Anarchists (though not all who comment there are necessarily competing). 
• The half-life of ephemera.
• Re: Dylan and Nobel - I apologize to me for letting those two words in the same sentence yoink me though the yoinking felt good. I don't hate Bob Dylan's music, it just bores me, that's on me. Dylan is Hemingway/Ashbery-like, one can agree and disagree of the merit of the original but hate the influence each cast, the many motherfuckingly awful decades of imitators their influence spawned.
• Stay hungry.
• Quartets 11, 12, 13.

SELF-PORTRAIT

Frank Marshall Davis

I would be

A painter with words

Creating sharp portraits

On the wide canvas of your mind   

Images of those things

Shaped through my eyes

That interest me;

But being a Tenth American   

In this democracy

I sometimes sketch a miniature   

Though I contract for a mural.

Of course

You understand this democracy;

One man as good as another,

From log cabin to White House,

Poor boy to corporation president,   

Hoover and Browder with one vote each,   

A free country,

Complete equality—

Yeah—

And the rich get tax refunds,

The poor get relief checks.

As for myself

I pay five cents for a daily synopsis of current history,

Two bits and the late lowdown on Hollywood,

Twist a dial for Stardust or Shostakovich,

And with each bleacher stub I reserve the right to shout “kill the bum” at the umpire—

Wherefore am I different

From nine other Americans?

But listen, you

Don’t worry about me

I rate!

I’m Convert 4711 at Beulah Baptist Church,   

I’m Social Security No. 337-16-3458 in Washington,

Thank you Mister God and Mister Roosevelt!

And another thing:—

No matter what happens

I too can always call in a policeman!