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.
