- Michael Gira on the new Swans album: "Imagine a huge growth on the face of a beautiful child, and it’s kind of glowing. Then cut that growth off and flush it down the toilet. Well, that’s what it sounds like…"
- Return of >>Deleted Bleggalgazing<< Wasn't of the forlorn sort. The Fuck It is strong.
- Though I don't know how I unintentionally disabled the hover over links. Some of you have told me you use the hover before deciding whether to click through. If anyone has an idea of what I did and how to fix it please let me know. In meantime I will try harder to provide more info on what a link goes to if the link title isn't clear enough.
- On the 12-Point Platform: Primary Colors is all about the meta. And the meta is the wrong metric. There is only thing that matters: policy. Only policy brings concrete material benefits for voters, along with any structural reforms needed to bring those benefits into being. And a series of litmus tests -- a checklist -- like the 12 Point Platform provides a simple and proven metric to hold politicians accountable for policy. "More and better Democrats" doesn't mean squat if nobody knows what "better" means!
- Why isn't Dianne Feinstein called a traitor and whistleblower?
- Culture as straitjacket: For as much as Ruth Marcus detests the choice Belle Knox has made, her ignorance of the context of that choice emerges from a worldview that Ruth has internalized which defines sexuality as inherently offensive and holds that women must be effectively sexless to be “respectable”, the act only considered in hushed tones, behind closed doors, and only for the fulfillment of men. That erasing the agency of women is not seen as an insult while women reclaiming said agency is frowned upon is a sign of just how far we have to go as a society, regardless of how enlightened we claim to be. In trying to point at what she calls sign of a cultural abyss, Ruth Marcus effectively points at herself.
- Inferior musicians giving comfort to themselves: First we will deny you permission; then we won’t permit you to leave. This is why people find it so hard to believe that people of faith desire only to be left alone, to be allowed to run their adoption agencies, parochial schools, and sacramental marriage ceremonies without outside interference; live and let live; à chacun son goût; il faut cultiver notre jardin; um, etc. The plea to be allowed to be particular pairs poorly with an evangelical universalism; the desire to be granted liberty frequently shades into a wish to become its grantor; you shall have no other gods beside me, or before me, becomes rather more ominously, there shall be no other gods.
- First as funny, then as die: five points on the Obama/Galifianakis show.
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- How much meat is too much meat?
- History made queasy: Taylor’s passing inspired a good deal of speculation. Some claimed typhoid carried the chief executive off; others, arsenic. Investigations failed to clear up the matter, and consensus eventually settled on run of the mill food poisoning as cause. Cucumbers, cherries, unpasteurized milk, green apples — anything Taylor had eaten that Independence Day could have been the culprit. Even the water he drank attracted suspicion, the capital’s sewage system then in a deplorable state. Whatever the fatal food, it lent truth to the observation made by Paracelsus some three centuries before: “Poison is in everything, and nothing is without poison.”
- Bleggalgazing and a call for Kindness.
- Brad's serial short story, part four.
- On Elbow and Elbow's new album. I really disliked Seldom Seen Kid after really liking what proceeded it. Will give the new one a fair audition.
- Opera from the other side: on the history of stage production.
- Yes, the keyboardist's schtick gets old fast, but the music, I cannot urge the new collected Sparks on you enough. They'd completely fallen of my radar, what a dope.
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MARS BEING RED
Marvin Bell
Being red is the color of a white sun where it lingers
on an arm. Color of time lost in sparks, of space lost
inside dance. Red of walks by the railroad in the flush
of youth, while our steps released the squeaks
of shoots reaching for the light. Scarlet of sin, crimson
of fresh blood, ruby and garnet of the jewel bed,
early sunshine, vestiges of the late sun as it turns
green and disappears. Be calm. Do not give in
to the rabid red throat of age. In a red world, imprint
the valentine and blush of romance for the dark.
It has come. You will not be this quick-to-redden
forever. You will be green again, again and again.
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