Lordy I love that song. Richard Butler is fifty-seven today. I really loved The Furs - many of the dozens of the best five nights of my life were at Furs shows, especially one at the Ontario Theater in Columbia Heights with Martha and the Muffins and Simple Minds (before that horrible single), then they aged bad for me (or me for them), now it's love again, they are always on the soundtrack either to or from Ohio when we go to visit Planet or take her there or bring her home.
So, um, I'm book-culling.
- This is the summer of purging the house of stuff we've collected since moving in twenty-one years ago that we haven't used in years. Most of the books I'm purging are non-fiction I stupidly bought thinking Hey! I'll read non-fiction and never read more than the intro plus novels I've read but will never read again or novels I've never read and will never read. I've a large stash of first editions which I will keep just because I don't want some asshole used book store owner to rip me off or get their fucking hands on them if I donate the books somewhere. Speaking of which, anyone have any suggestions for a good place to donate hundreds of books?
- No poetry in any of the bags.
- I found $380 in books. More to come, I'm sure.
- Sentence first, verdict later.
- The four plagues of the coming apolcalypse.
- Fall.
- The makers of global capitalism.
- The Rise of Pop Fascism part five.
- The all-powerful bike lobby.
- Photography is not a crime.
- Agamben, for those of you who do.
- Blood and roots.
- Sandy Spring! I have a friend who grew up on Brooke Road.
- TEN MILE CREEK! I've told this story many times before, will again, but as Gauron said to Kid Duras, perhaps, but not today.
- Imitation of Christ.
- Anthony's always generous lit links.
- In the bags: Jim Crace, Tim Winton, Rodney Hall, three novelists I hadn't thought of in ages, all heralded as the next big thing a lifetime or two ago.
- Hamster flagged this PERE UBU NEWS! too, wondered why I hadn't posted it, I responded, it requires a cascade, there is already a cascade today, and June 14th is a High Egoslavian Holy Day, there will be a massive Pere Ubu/Rocket from Tombs/Two Pale Boys/etc cascade that day.
- You only think I document the laws and bylaws of this shitty blog onblog.
- O, OK, have a Pere Ubu song.
- That Psychedelic Furs/Simple Minds/Martha and the Muffins concert is related to my dismissive disdain for used book store owners, the woman I was with at the time was the weeknight manager for Econdsay Torysay Books, the one in the big white house on Old Georgetown in Bethesda where now a giant condominium sits next to the Hyatt, the owner one of the biggest assholes I've ever met.
- Serendipity is sometimes great good, sometimes great bad, always awesome.
- She also worked the Econdsay Torysay on Greenmount in Waverly, it had four very cool cats, I'd stop by and pick her up, we'd go sit in the upper right deck of Memorial on Three-Buck Nights after we ate dinner at the St Paul Deli.
- I was young once.
- Lordy, I love this song:
FANTASIES OF MANAGEMENT
Timothy Donnelly
When we tell ourselves
that so many bells
have rung beyond
our understanding
what we really mean
is that so many ring
counter to the way
we wish to understand them.
When I think back
long ago, almost back
to that barbaric time,
what I want is to lie
down in a mile-wide
bafflement of grasses
until there is nothing
left of me but willingness
to go though it all
again, because unless
a donut box of dollars
falls down from the
sky I like beneath admiring,
it can't be avoided -
only this time, when they talk
as if I had a choice
in the matter, a way to say
no and live, I'll ask
if the wouldn't mind kindly
doing me this favor
of repeating that please
because I couldn't quite make out
whatever they just said
through all that privilege.
