- Charlie Parker was born 93 years ago today. Playlist graciously provided by Hamster.
- The payload in Wednesday's launch is thought to be "a $1-billion high-powered spy satellite capable of snapping pictures detailed enough to distinguish the make and model of an automobile hundreds of miles below," the LA Times reported.
- US remaindered clusterbombs sold Saudis.
- Interesting coincidence, just days before bombing Syria, the announcement of that arms deal.
- If this is true: One U.S. official who has been briefed on the options on Syria said he believed the White House would seek a level of intensity "just muscular enough not to get mocked" but not so devastating that it would prompt a response from Syrian allies Iran and Russia, it would tend to suggest a friend's belief that Obama isn't evil, he's a wussy playground bully, though of course it's not an either/or.
- This would support that contention, though I think we all can agree Obama just follows orders.
Has got the NSA off the front page, the bomb Syria debate, yes?- UPDATE! Scratch the above, cause BOOM! and by BOOM! I mean it's back on the front page.
- David Cameron's go-to-war checklist.
- It's not a bug, it's a feature.
- Me: Reads this obamadoration, sputters furiously, incoherently, points, See? See?
- UPDATE! Indeed, if we are -- as the president asks us to be -- honest with ourselves, we will see that we have elected a president who claims to oppose racial profiling one minute, and then flirts with inaugurating the country's greatest racial profiler the next. If we are honest with ourselves we will see that we have a president who can condemn the riots as "self-defeating," but can't see his way clear to enforce the fair housing law that came out of them. If we are honest with ourselves we will see a president who believes in particular black morality, but eschews particular black policy.
- UPDATE! How Obama demobilized the anti-war movement?
- Trump University. As opposed to fraudulent, legal, deceptive conduct.
- Fired by Starbucks for eating a sandwich out of the garbage.
- Have I mentioned that Thom Gunn was born 84 years ago today?
- Robertson Davies was born a hundred years ago yesterday. Here's an interview. The Deptford Trilogy, read first when I was eighteen, helped change the way I read.
- Note to self: don't make Wings jokes to philosophy professors on twitter.
- Kindness. (h/t the invaluable :: wood s lot :: who you should ping daily).
- Stephen Dixon, for those of you who do.
- Mining the audio motherlode.
- Step inside WFMU.
- More Parker:
- The Savoy Recordings (full album).
- Scrapple from the apple.
- Koko (original).
- Koko (live).
- Groovin' High.
- Charlie Parker w/Strings.
- All the Things You Are.
- Anthropology.
- Perdido.
- An Oscar for Treadwell.
- A Night in Tunisia.
- Omnibook.
CAT ISLAND
Thom Gunn
Cats met us at
the landing-place
reclining in the sun
to check us in
with a momentary glance,
concierges
of a grassy island.
(Attila's Throne,
the Devil's Bridge,
and "the best Byzantine
church in the world",
long saints admonitory
on kiln-like inner walls.)
And lunch in a shady court
where cats now
systematically worked
the restaurant, table
by table, gazing into eyes
pleading "I'm hungry
and I'm cute", reaching
front paws up to knees
and always getting
before zeroing in
on the next table, same
routine, same result.
Sensible bourgeois
wild-cats working
with the furred impudence
of those who don't pretend
to be other than whores,
they give you not
the semblance of love
but simply
a look at their beauty
in return for food.
Models, not escorts.
They lack, too,
the prostitute's self-pity,
being beyond shame.
And we lack
what they have.
