Peter Hammill is sixty-four today. I remember Bavid Dogosian, when we'd park my car or more often his yellow bug in a cornfield off 355 where now the mcmansionist monstrosity called Millstone exists, would play Van der Graaf Generator and Hammill solo, it's been love for Hammill's music since. If you see Bavid, tell him give me a call, he moved to NYC, we fell out of touch. His uncle was Captain Ross on Law and Order: Criminal Intent, the facial resemblance is uncanny. I was asked last night by a professor I coffee with what I thought about Tuesday, I said it's extraordinary to not know what I think about Tuesday, to have a head pinging with competing ideas I understand and to some degree agree and disagree with and being unable to make them cohere and to not be upset with that, I've been trained to believe, I've always believed, I should be upset with that.
- Against voting.
- On voting.
- The S&M election.
- Vote or don't.
- Here's good friend Sasha in comments to the last post in response to my question of what percentage of people are voting against versus voting for: IMO there is no such thing as voting for v voting against unless one is a moronic ideologue. Every vote with some thought is mixed, nuanced, balances good and evil. I love some stuff Obama does, am sort of crabbily accepting about some, and loathing about some. And while I don't want a drone to kill a baby in my name, my and your daughter's need for unrestricted urgent medical care matters more. For example. Repeat for every issue I can think of. As for the notion that no vote is likely to be decisive. True. But misses the point. A very small popular vote plurality encourages/increases the likelihood that the Supremes will decide the election. I don't think that is a good thing for us now and for the future of the nation.
- Living in lesser times.
- 90 in 90.
- The politics of fear.
- Useless liberal intellectuals?
- Yes, but POTUS 16 starts Wednesday (unless POTUS 12 isn't over by Wednesday).
- Frostbitten!
- The next Republican candidate.
- Yes, they're motherfucking crackers, but: While I do hold the Republicans I know responsible for their hysteria -- I was forthrightly mean to the guy I knew vaguely in high school who posted the above photo to Facebook, especially since it wasn't the first time he's posted such garbage* -- I also hold Democrats responsible for matching the Republicans' frothing. If they were as rational as they like to think they are, the Intertoobz wouldn't be full of cute-Obama pictures, Ryan-as-Eddie-Munster caricatures, Romney binders-full-of jokes, and worse. Gary Younge has a not-crazy piece at the Guardian in which he argues that a Romney victory would merely reward the Republicans for bad behavior. I agree, but an Obama victory would merely reward the Democrats for their bad behavior. (As I've argued before, an Obama defeat will not convince the Democrats that they should have been more liberal; it will convince them that they should have been more like the Republicans. But an Obama victory will also convince them that being more like the Republicans was wise politically.)
- Two political worlds.
- The fall of liberal gods.
- Almost everyone sucks wrt Q7.
- But easy yes on 4 and 6.
- Where I went to high school.
- Houston up 2-0 v KC, United has chance to host Eastern Finals if they win Wednesday, plus FUCK GAX, lose motherfuckers.
- The storm next time.
- Clarity and complexity.
- Why call it a novel?
- The cranes are flying.
- Continuo is dead.
- Caberet Voltaire.
- Free Chris Stamey!
- Oneida!
OLD-STYLE PLENTIFUL
John Ashbery
I guess what I’m saying is
don’t be more passive aggressive
or purposefully vague than you have to
to clinch the argument. Once that
happens you can forget the context
and try some new bathos, some severity
not seen in you till now. Did they
send the news of you? Were you forthcoming
in your replies? It’s so long ago
now, yet some of it makes sense, like
why were we screwing around in the first place?
Cannily you looked on from the wings,
finger raised to lips, as the old actor
slogged through the lines he’s reeled off
so many times, not even thinking
if they are tangential to the way we
slouch now. So many were so wrong
about practically everything, it scarcely seems
to matter, yet something does,
otherwise everything would be death.
or purposefully vague than you have to
to clinch the argument. Once that
happens you can forget the context
and try some new bathos, some severity
not seen in you till now. Did they
send the news of you? Were you forthcoming
in your replies? It’s so long ago
now, yet some of it makes sense, like
why were we screwing around in the first place?
Cannily you looked on from the wings,
finger raised to lips, as the old actor
slogged through the lines he’s reeled off
so many times, not even thinking
if they are tangential to the way we
slouch now. So many were so wrong
about practically everything, it scarcely seems
to matter, yet something does,
otherwise everything would be death.
Up in the clouds they were singing
O Promise Me to the birches, who replied in kind.
Rivers kind of poured over where
we had been sitting, and the breeze made as though
not to notice any unkindness, the light too
pretended nothing was wrong, or that
it was all going to be OK some day.
And yes, we were drunk on love.
That sure was some summer.
Rivers kind of poured over where
we had been sitting, and the breeze made as though
not to notice any unkindness, the light too
pretended nothing was wrong, or that
it was all going to be OK some day.
And yes, we were drunk on love.
That sure was some summer.
