SeatSix, who I love like a brother, is forty-two today, Happy Birthday! He digs The Church, sent this playlist this past December Reptile, June, You're Still Beautiful, Paradox, Antenna, Under the Milky Way, All the Young Dudes, Tear It All the Way. Thanks!
- "Intelligence," Corporatism, and the Dance of Death.
- Political ideology and the avoidance of dissonance-arousing situations.
- Via the invaluable :: wood s lot:: who you should ping daily.
- More than fifty!
- NSA stopped skin cancer too!
- No, NSA didn't.
- And the FBI never makes mistakes.
- Partisanship.
- RIP Michael Hastings.
- RIP Michael Hastings.
- RIP Michael Hastings.
- RIP Michael Hastings.
- Motherfucking Econ Departments. I can vouch.
- Photography is not a crime.
- Nick Drake was born 65 years ago today. Every year I write some version of I really like but don't love Nick Drake but I've friends who do so have songs on his birthday.
- Fuller story tomorrow, or not, but me and Earthgirl (and Planet and Ari) are today visiting the marina on they Bay we lived in during our very earliest years together 27 years ago.
- Kafka, for those of you who do.
- Elizabeth Bishop, for those of you who do.
- Gaddis, for those of you who do.
- If you only read one link today please read this one, I swear it's Ed's take on Pynchon's Against the Day and not payback for his Kindness.
- The consolation of sociobiology.
- Today's David Thomas song.
- Demetrio Stratos.
- When I try to sort the blur of some of those years into some semblance of categories when I think of The Church I think of Catherine Wheel and the Teardrop Explodes song (psst, one of my favorite songs and most air-guitared songs ever) if for no other reason that if I was someplace hearing one of the bands odds were prohibitive I'd be hearing the others.
THE NATIONAL INTEREST
Ted Mathys
We are interested in long criminal histories
because we've never bedded down in a cellblock.
With the sibilance of wind through the swaying
spires of skyscrapers as my witness. When I say
cover your grenades I mean it's going to rain I mean
there is mischief in every filibuster of sun.
We are interested in rigorously arranging
emotions by color as we've never been fully
divested of blues. With drinking till my fingernails
hurt as my witness, with hurt as my witness.
When I say be demanding I mean be fully
individual while dissolving in the crowd.
We are interested in characters who murder
because we've never committed it or to it.
With an origami frog in a vellum crown spinning
on a fishing line from the ceiling as my witness.
When I say please kneel with me I mean between
every shadow and sad lack falls a word.
We are interested in ceaselessly setting floor joists
because we've never pulled a pole barn spike
from a foot. With bowing to soap your ankles
in the shower as my witness, lather as my witness.
When I say did you see the freckle in her iris I mean
the poem must reclaim the nature of surveillance.
We are interested in possessing others who possess
that which we possess but fear losing in the future.
With a fork as my witness. A dollop of ketchup,
hash brown, motion, with teeth as my witness.
When I say you I don't mean me I don't mean
an exact you I mean a composite you I mean God.
We are interested in God because we can't
possess God, because we can't possess you.
With a scrum of meatheads in IZOD ogling iPods
as my witness, technological progress as my witness.
When I say no such thing as progress in art I mean
"These fragments I have shored against my ruins."
We are interested in ambivalence as ribcages
resist being down when down, up when up.
With the swell of the argument and the moment
before forgiveness as my witness. When I say power
is exclusion I mean a box of rocks we don't
desire to deduce I mean knowing is never enough.
