There's One Regular Who Lapses In and Out of Consciousness and He's the Real Reason She Stays

If Bonnie Prince Billy in red beret and pink scarf isn't proof I love and trust you, what is? bullshit social climber faux anti-racism. (UPDATE: Freddie's follow-up to the previous.) My passive aggressive tool of maintaining privilege is Kindness. I give money to save cats, give apples and oranges to beggars on Rockville Pike. I was told last Thursday, I don't got no teeth, I don't want your fucking apple, she was standing at the corner of Nicholson and Rockville (NOT NORTH BETHESDA) Pike. I had a dentist appt yesterday to temp-crown the root canal of a month ago, dentist in building across from Dietles IN ROCKVILLE, NOT NORTH BETHESDA, THERE IS NO NORTH BETHESDA, IT'S ROCKVILLE. Dentist said, eat soup today, I drove to Whole Foods (which could exist in a hypothetical North Bethesda if such a place were possible) a block away, see woman who told me she doesn't want my fucking apple, buy her a small container of Chicken Noodle soup, walk it out to her, she didn't remember me or my apple, she took the soup, said Bless you. VICTORY FOR ME! Kindness, bitches. The killing of Callion Hamblin. The shocking savagery of America's Early History. Shocking only if one never stopped to consider America. Rewards in capitalism. Postmodern irony and the appreciation of tits. Whenever I think Obama is failing, I try to remember whose metrics I'm using. The Notebooks of Obama. The long death of the middle brow. Symbols. Why we can't have nice things. Whatever House of Cards is (I know it's a TV show, no idea what about), Jake Backpack ruins it for you! Though I know enough that if your agent comes to you and says I've got a lead role in a made-for-cable series that's perfect for you, I know my leading man Hollywood days are over. Atheist. If an atheist is someone who never believes my leading man Hollywood days are over, no matter how many tickets are sold, that's me. More retro and cities. Gula. This is true: I wish I was a born linguist. Ten of the most divisive authors? A short riff on Moby Dick. My newest theory on my reading block is that whatever I'm reading I feel like I should be rereading Moby Dick. Lord Garth. Silliman's always generous litlinks. Blanchot, for those of you who do. Stream the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs' single. I heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs bed music a Cadillac commercial this past weekend, remember (this is an old gag, forgive me) the outrage at Clapton "selling-out" for his Michelob commercial 30+ years ago? I tweeted about the YYYs' Cadillac commercial yesterday to resounding disinterest except from a Cadillac bot who is now following me. Penderecki. Jim's Stereolab playlist. Wanna hear the second single from Bowie's new album?






THE OBJECTIFIED MERMAID

Matthea Harvey

The photographer has been treating her like a spork all morning. “Wistful mouth, excited tail! Work it, work it!” He has no idea that even fake smiling spreads to her eyes and her tail and there’s nothing she can do about it short of severing her spine. Without asking, the assistant re-sprays her with glycerine. It’s gonna be hell getting all that grease off her scales tonight but she can’t scum up her tank at the bar—its weekly cleanings seem more like monthly these days, and fewer and fewer patrons have been inviting (read: paying) her for a Tankside Mertini and quick feel of her tail. There’s one regular who lapses in and out of consciousness and he’s the real reason she stays. Every once in a while he seems to have forgotten where he is and he looks at her with the kind of wonder she imagines her grandmother inspired when she first risked coming ashore. After an hour under the studio spotlights, she’s starting to smell pretty fishy. Can’t blame it (as she has before) on her standard seaweed bra because this fool of a photographer has her holding two clear fishbowls in front of her breasts so it looks like goldfish are swimming past her nipples. She’s supposed to pretend it tickles. She wants to ask if he’s heard the phrase "gilding the lily" which she recently learned at Land Berlitz. When asked if she’s tired, she lies. A downward spiral means the opposite up here.