I didn't go. Could have, didn't, chose to get necessary things done so I can thoroughly enjoy my trip tomorrow and Saturday to bring Planet home for the summer. Easy choice. Watched on TV, United sucks and, here's the thing, other than Benny (and your mileage on Benny may vary from mine), the players don't give a fuck - to be fair they gave a fuck in the second half until they conceded the third goal - the front office doesn't give a fuck, ownership certainly doesn't give a fuck, why should I give a fuck? Oh, next home game another FIVE ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON GAME! Fuck you. Whether United had no choice to schedule FIVE ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON GAME! because of network television contracts or not, here's a valid Fuck You, schedule a weeknight game at SEVEN FUCKING O'CLOCK, clearly ownership hasn't been stuck in weekday DC rush hour traffic during thunderstorms, but FUCK YOU! and FUCK YOU! for all the other seven o'clock games that steal a half hour of my weekend daylight. Oh, check my record off your tickets scans since that technology was invented, my attendance record, you give some fuckers who aren't season ticket holders free beer for the price of tickets less than I pay? Fuck you. All United is waiting for is a stadium yay or nay in DC, if it doesn't get one United will leave, if it does get one LOUD SIDE will be abolished, they don't give a fuck about the product - or their loyalest fans - until then, the fucks.
On the bright side, Thomas Pynchon was born 76 years ago
- Proverbs for Paranoids:
- You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.
- The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.
- If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
- You hide, they seek.
- Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.
Gravity's Rainbow, above and below.
There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus -flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for awhile. It is purple in color.
"Now you're getting the idea!" Mrs Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?"
"Oh try this," hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.
"Gosh it must really be something, " doubtfully taking this nasty-looking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.`
"Go on then," Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.
"Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested."
"And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone."
Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be a luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fume, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned . . ." he is able to croak.
"Show a little backbone, " advises Mrs. Quoad.
"Yes, " Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "dont you know there's a war going on? Here now love, open your mouth."
Through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going "Yum, yum, yum," and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow - unless something is now seriously wrong with his brain - it tastes like gin. "Wha's is" he inquires thickly.
"A gin marshmellow," sez Mrs. Quoad.
"Awww . . . ."
"Oh that's nothing, have one of these- " his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, a little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powered cloves.
"More tea?" Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.
"Nasty cough," Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. "Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can."
The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin growing from the roof of Slothrop's mouth. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapers seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.
Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. Slothrop lies with Darlene, the Disgusting English Candy Drill a thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. The one candy he did not get to taste - one Mrs. Quaod withheld - was the Fire of Paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste - "salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another . . ."sugared violets" . . "Worchestershire sauce" . . . "spiced treacle" . . any number of like descriptions, positive, terse - never exceeding two words in length - resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet and sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date. The Fire of Paradise today is operationally extinct, and in 1945 can hardly be found: certainly nowhere among the sunlit shops and polished windows of Bond Street or waste Belgravia. But every now and then one will surface, in places which deal usually other merchandise than sweets: at rest, back inside big glass jars clouded by the days, along with objects like itself , sometimes only one candy to a whole jar, nearly hidden in the ambient tourmalines in German gold, carved ebony finger finger-stalls from the last century, pegs, valve-pieces, threaded hardware from obscure musical instruments, electronic components of resin and copper that the War, in its glutton, ever-nibbling intake, has not yet found and licked back into its darkness . . . . Places where the motors never come close enough to be loud, and there are trees outside along the street. Inner rooms and older faces developing under light falling through a skylight, yellower, later in the year.
"Now you're getting the idea!" Mrs Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, "you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?"
"Oh try this," hollers Darlene, clutching her throat and swaying against him.
"Gosh it must really be something, " doubtfully taking this nasty-looking brownish novelty, an exact quarter-scale replica of a Mills-type hand grenade, lever, pin and everything, one of a series of patriotic candies put out before sugar was quite so scarce, also including, he notices, peering into the jar, a .455 Webley cartridge of green and pink striped taffy, a six-ton earthquake bomb of some silver-flecked blue gelatin, and a licorice bazooka.`
"Go on then," Darlene actually taking his hand with the candy in it and trying to shove it into his mouth.
"Was just, you know, looking at it, the way Mrs. Quoad suggested."
"And no fair squeezing it, Tyrone."
Under its tamarind glaze, the Mills bomb turns out to be a luscious pepsin-flavored nougat, chock-full of tangy candied cubeb berries, and a chewy camphor-gum center. It is unspeakably awful. Slothrop's head begins to reel with camphor fume, his eyes are running, his tongue's a hopeless holocaust. Cubeb? He used to smoke that stuff. "Poisoned . . ." he is able to croak.
"Show a little backbone, " advises Mrs. Quoad.
"Yes, " Darlene through tongue-softened sheets of caramel, "dont you know there's a war going on? Here now love, open your mouth."
Through the tears he can't see it too well, but he can hear Mrs. Quoad across the table going "Yum, yum, yum," and Darlene giggling. It is enormous and soft, like a marshmallow, but somehow - unless something is now seriously wrong with his brain - it tastes like gin. "Wha's is" he inquires thickly.
"A gin marshmellow," sez Mrs. Quoad.
"Awww . . . ."
"Oh that's nothing, have one of these- " his teeth, in some perverse reflex, crunching now through a hard sour gooseberry shell into a wet spurting unpleasantness of, he hopes it's tapioca, a little glutinous chunks of something all saturated with powered cloves.
"More tea?" Darlene suggests. Slothrop is coughing violently, having inhaled some of that clove filling.
"Nasty cough," Mrs. Quoad offering a tin of that least believable of English coughdrops, the Meggezone. "Darlene, the tea is lovely, I can feel my scurvy going away, really I can."
The Meggezone is like being belted in the head with a Swiss Alp. Menthol icicles immediately begin growing from the roof of Slothrop's mouth. It hurts his teeth too much to breathe, even through his nose, even, necktie loosened, with his nose down inside the neck of his olive drab T-shirt. Benzoin vapers seep into his brain. His head floats in a halo of ice.
Even an hour later, the Meggezone still lingers, a mint ghost in the air. Slothrop lies with Darlene, the Disgusting English Candy Drill a thing of the past, his groin now against her warm bottom. The one candy he did not get to taste - one Mrs. Quaod withheld - was the Fire of Paradise, that famous confection of high price and protean taste - "salted plum" to one, "artificial cherry" to another . . ."sugared violets" . . "Worchestershire sauce" . . . "spiced treacle" . . any number of like descriptions, positive, terse - never exceeding two words in length - resembling the descriptions of poison and debilitating gases found in training manuals, "sweet and sour eggplant" being perhaps the lengthiest to date. The Fire of Paradise today is operationally extinct, and in 1945 can hardly be found: certainly nowhere among the sunlit shops and polished windows of Bond Street or waste Belgravia. But every now and then one will surface, in places which deal usually other merchandise than sweets: at rest, back inside big glass jars clouded by the days, along with objects like itself , sometimes only one candy to a whole jar, nearly hidden in the ambient tourmalines in German gold, carved ebony finger finger-stalls from the last century, pegs, valve-pieces, threaded hardware from obscure musical instruments, electronic components of resin and copper that the War, in its glutton, ever-nibbling intake, has not yet found and licked back into its darkness . . . . Places where the motors never come close enough to be loud, and there are trees outside along the street. Inner rooms and older faces developing under light falling through a skylight, yellower, later in the year.
- The economics of over-ripe capitalism.
- Today in Motherfucking Obama.
- Politics is the shit-end of life.
- Cause and effect.
- The sorrow and the pity.
- Things you might have missed.
- I am reminded of when I worked for a Christian Scientist in his hippie health food store in my early twenties.
- So, everyone seemed suitably unimpressed - there was one Kind word - by my rendering this shitty blog's title through an upside-down and backwards text generator, though I did enjoy the day off, I want to thank David Bowie for posting his new video on the day I asked him.
- Also too, Newest Gag - a new site added everyday through May to a blogroll literally to the left of this sentence as I type it - continues apace, latest two music blogs, check them out, send me suggestions of people I should be reading who actually still post in Ghosttown, Blegsylvania now that the Blog Days of Summer are here.
- Ishiguro interview from 2008, reminded by this guy.
- Silliman's incredibly generous litlinks.
- Rebumping this review of Middle C.
- Actually, most people didn't even notice.
- The standard of literature.
- Coetzee, for those of you who do.
- I don't know is it was serendipity or if Edwin did this for Pynchon's birthday, but yesterday he tweeted to his 2009 review of Inherent Vice.
- Slint. I never quite got the disease, but I've buds who did and do.
- Holyfuck! there was a Noise and Syrup Tuesday night.
- A Nurse w/Wounds primer.
- On the new Wolf Eyes.
- So, guess what I've been listening to the past couple of days, starting Tuesday night, it's only serendipity (and as I texted a beloved last night, sometime serendipity fucking sucks) I dialed up Kiss the Anus of a Black Cat on the iPod the two nights before a tirade.
THE MAN IN QUESTION
Daniel Borzutsky
They dropped the charges of homicide, filed new charges of
terrorism, dropped the charges of terrorism, filed
new charges of public nudity, dropped the charges of
public nudity, filed new charges of lewd and
lascivious behavior. A spokesman for the FBI
said they found him on the hood of an SUV in a part
of town known as the “Fruit Loop”. His penis was in another
man’s mouth and in the front seat were vials containing a rare
strand of bacteria known to cause blindness in rats. They
dropped the charges of public nudity and filed new
charged of sodomy. A spokesman for the police department
said they found him with his pants down and it appeared
that his penis was in another man’s anus. But since they
could not prove to what degree his penis had penetrated
the other man’s anus they dropped the charges of sodomy
and filed new charges of assault and battery. A
spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said
that he assaulted a worker from the Department of
Public Health who used a Q-tip to extract from inside of
his urethra a rare strand of bacteria capable
of causing pneumonia in chickens. He was placed in
solitary confinement and a spokesman for the
Department of Corrections suggested that he was a
serious threat to the community. They examined the
strand of bacteria found in his urethra but since they
did not properly store the bacteria in the
appropriate container with the appropriate seals and
signatures they could not charge him with intent to commit crimes
against humanity. They dropped the charges of intent to
commit crimes against humanity and filed new charges
of larceny. They said he had stolen the rare strand of
bacteria from his employer and that he had done so
with the deliberate and malicious intent to harm as
many civilians as possible. They tried to verify
for whom he had worked during the given time period but since
they could not verify the name or location of his
employer they dropped the charges of larceny and filed new
charges of tax fraud. When they discovered he was privately
employed, they dropped the charges of tax fraud and filed new
charges of theft with an unregistered weapon. A
grocery store in his neighborhood had recently been robbed
and the cashier said that the thief had carried the same model
of weapon that the man in question kept beneath his bed in
case of emergencies. They dropped the charges of theft with an
unregistered weapon when they discovered the cashier was
partially blind and that the weapon the man in question kept
beneath his bed in case of emergencies had been
properly purchased and registered. When they found on his
bookshelves several works of fiction with blind characters,
including King Lear, Oedipus Rex, Endgame, and Blindness by
José Saramago, they accused him of conspiring
to use the rare strand of bacteria to blind not only
the grocer but the seven other blind residents of his
neighborhood, each of whom had had perfectly good eyesight
until he came to town. They asked him why he had so many
books about blindness, but he refused to answer the question.
They asked him why he had so many books about blindness and
when his attorney arrived the man in question said that he
did not know why he had so many books about blindness. They
asked his friends and family why he had so many books
about blindness. No one knew why he had so many books
about blindness and they accused him in the press of
anti-social behavior. When his neighbors testified that
the man in question enjoyed society as much as he
enjoyed a quiet night at home, they dropped the charges of
anti-social behavior. They dropped the charges of
anti-social behavior and filed new charges of
jaywalking. An undercover police officer filmed him
with a video camera as he illegally crossed
the street. At the advice of his attorney, he pleaded
guilty to the charges of jaywalking. He agreed to pay
the fine.
