Too Late: Duty Has Become Habit, Habit a Duty

Fuck, the blogdays of summer, here's inside baseball to alienate everyone else, re: yesterday's United post - you do realize the danger of Shevchenko coming to United, yes, what a bullet that's been dodged that was never shot? Hear that sound Jill St John makes when she sees that Bombe Suprise? That's the sound Rosie, top shelf below, makes for treats. That EEE sound Jill St John makes when the kabobs are... wait, have I mentioned this?





....aflame? Rosie when we pick her up and put her in a room because she's on a vet-ordered diet. By the way, I may post links of the reflexive pukestorms over this week's SCOTUS rulings but I'm not going to flotsam in the SCOTUS pukestorm of jetsam this week, awoo. Somewhere Rod Dyachenko is failing another audition.

• Hi Stanley.
• Morality play.
• Rubes make marks' lives easy.
• The brain-dead talking point.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• I've long used my ten free reads of the fucking New York Times this month just clicking on links on other people's blogs, so I couldn't read David Brooks piece today on Springsteen (here's the sublede on the op-ed page: Bruce Springsteen's appeal is a reminder of our deeply human need to experience and express meaning within a bounded framework of a place, a people and a history) even if I wanted to, which I don't, it's another example of why the New York Times can go fuck itself for as long as I won't give them a fucking nickel.
• The first I've seen of the inevitable many mockings of the Brooks piece.
• Frances' alternative newspaper!
• Daily note of wonder at the deadness of Blegsylvania. Go scroll Because Right, open up to see all the blogs, note how long it's been since almost all have updated. Deadest Blog Days of Summer ever.
• Why Always Me makes me laugh in a happy way.
• My favorite new word is quilombo.
• Note that in the piece linked in monologue that says Shevchenko not coming to DC that Olsen will likely start Boskovic this coming Saturday and move DeRossario to withdrawn forward just like this guy said he should.
• More interesting than River Plate gaining promotion is that David Trezeguet, 57, is still playing professional soccer.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.
• Edwin's review of Mantel, part two.
• Silliman's always awesome lit links.
• Yoko Ono + Thurston Moore + Kim Gordon.
• New Raveonettes song.
• I need to get tickets. New Dead Can Dance:
• Prunella notes the new album can be streamed here. Gonna buy tickets this week for the August 27 Wolftrap show. Hamster's in - anyone else?

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

Lost after all. You can leave any time
This rat's like me, she has a human soul
Too late: duty has become habit, habit a duty
Poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away
But there's dance in the old dame yet
No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before

From Behind the Bush Sometimes Someone Still Unearths Rust-Eaten Arguments and Carries Them to the Garbage Pile

Dinner last night with Earthgirl's bestfriend and husband, very decent and Kind people, rote Democrats and supportive Obamabots. I went to dinner promising myself I'd not initiate a political discussion nor much more than nod and uh-huh if it was introduced by others: I knew that if an awkward silence fell on the conversation I could always reintroduce some discussion re: our respective daughters' freshman second semesters in college that would fill fifteen minutes. I kept the promise to myself, but when one of them said, I think it's important that Obama keep Iran from getting the Bomb even if it means war, I thought about saying, why shouldn't Iran have a nuclear weapon, it's surrounded on 360 degrees by nuclear weapons, American and surrogates, Iran's desire for a nuclear weapon beyond reasonable: by the same logic that those who have the weapons don't want Iran to have the weapons it would be lunacy for Iran to not want the weapons to discourage those who have the weapons from using them against Iran, and then I.... had another bite of excellent salmon nigiri. Other topics arose; more sushi was eaten.

Then I woke up this morning and read the motherfucking Park Police raided McPherson just before sunrise. In two hours I take Stanley and Rose to the vets to get their butts shaved and hopefully get advice on a better diet than Iams or Science Diet (that will no doubt cost double) that doesn't give them the runs that sticks to their hair. And then I'm going to go get lost in the woods.

Links tomorrow, or not. Remember, this is Blogroll Amnesty Weekend. Please scroll the blogrolls and click on something you've never read before, and be Kind yourself. Have another Szymborksa poem.


THE END AND THE BEGINNING

Wislawa Szymborksa
Translated by Joanna Trzeciak

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.

Someone has to push the rubble
to the sides of the road,
so the corpse-laden wagons
can pass.

Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.

Someone must drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone must glaze a window,
rehang a door.

Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.

Again we'll need bridges
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.

Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls how it was.
Someone listens
and nods with unsevered head.
Yet others milling about
already find it dull.

From behind the bush
sometimes someone still unearths
rust-eaten arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.

Those who knew
what was going on here
must give way to
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.

In the grass which has overgrown
reasons and causes,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

And While Certainly They Are Laughing at Me, and All Around Me Is Racket of These Cats Not Making It, I Make It in My Wicker Basket

Sorry, forgot to put up a header photo last night. Out to dinner last night with Planet and he who it occurs to me I haven't written about much less considered a nom-de-blog but nonetheless seems to be a good guy who makes my daughter happy and Earthgirl and Ilse and Landru, came home stuffed, played with Stanley, read 1Q84 (holyfuck), didn't even log in and check my statcount, what the fuck's up with that, I'm a fucking attention slut, I'm always checking my statcounter just like you do. I'll try to remember to post a header tonight.

Still, it reminds me that for all I gently badger Planet for new Fleabus photos, they aren't forthcoming. That phase is over. Up above is Napoleon, the domesticated feral, shot taken by me. Consider this the year end bleggalgaze: unless otherwise noted, any and all pheline photos displayed hence (which will include Fleabus, but also Nap and Stanley and Rose and Sara and Frankie and Mom Cat and Gray Cat and probably never Jess), including this one below, a recent night header and popular among two of you, are taken by me, with the commensurate dip in quality.

• Year end bleggalgazing: Catch It!
• Itinerant punk.
• O, while I always try to employ the wtf here - I'm still too cautious of it's potential alienating effects, though I hope to wtf the wtf - over at the other place, still in indecipherable calligraghy....
• Towards a typology of scholars.
• Hope in a cold season. (h/t)
• Working arrangement.
• Marginalizing Ron Paul.
• Down with all reactionaries.
• Crucifying Ron Paul. 
• Excommunicating Ron Paul.
• I'm not supporting Ron Paul, I won't vote for Ron Paul, it's grimly entertaining watching Corporate go after Ron Paul.
• I'd also point out that many of the Leftbots Snoopy-dancing the crucifying and excommunicating of Ron Paul by Rightbots would happily crucify and excommunicate a Left Ron Paul.
• Annals of nincompoopery.
• The miracle of solvency.
• Capitalism.
• The year in review.
• To be honest, I'd forgot about Sarah Hall. Time to remedy.
• Books read and not read in 2011. Look, someone else read The Recognitions in 2011, and Elkin. And I never got Auster - I assume that's on me.
• I feel obliged to post at least one link to Dove v Vendler.
• Apex 2011.
• Classical music's ethically challenged funders.
• Wanna hear a new song by Karin Andersson?
• 70 minutes of the New York Dolls.
• The Mekons interviewed.
• Asparagus Song live! You only think I play a lot of Yo La Tengo here. Wait till next year.

WICKER BASKET

Robert Creeley

Comes the time when it's later
and onto your table the headwaiter
puts the bill, and very soon after
rings out the sound of lively laughter--

Picking up change, hands like a walrus,
and a face like a barndoor's,
and a head without any apparent size,
nothing but two eyes--

So that's you, man,
or me. I make it as I can,
I pick up, I go
faster than they know--

Out the door, the street like a night,
any night, and no one in sight,
but then, well, there she is,
old friend Liz--

And she opens the door of her cadillac,
I step in back,
and we're gone.
She turns me on--

There are very huge stars, man, in the sky,
and from somewhere very far off someone hands
   me a slice of apple pie,
with a gob of white, white ice cream on top of it,
and I eat it--

Slowly. And while certainly
they are laughing at me, and all around me is racket
of these cats not making it, I make it

in my wicker basket.

The Old Wound in My Ass Has Opened Again, but I Am Past the Prodigies of Youth's Campaigns

Since when does the NYPD investigate Al-Qaeda bomb plots? When it's transparently shameless bullshit in a world run by shameless professional bullshitters:

New York officials said on Sunday police had arrested a man trying to build a pipe bomb with instructions from an al Qaeda magazine which he planned to use against U.S. soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan... The suspect - identified as Jose Pimentel, 27 - was charged with three terrorism-related counts and two other counts, court documents said... Beyond soldiers, his intended targets were allegedly police officers and post offices, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a joint news conference with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and District Attorney Cyrus Vance, the chief prosecutor for Manhattan... Pimentel had been under surveillance since May 2009 and was a "lone wolf" who got instructions on building a pipe bomb from "Inspire" magazine, published by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Kelly said.

Since 2009! Imperative he be arrested yesterday! Thank god for the NYPD for saving us massive terrorist destruction, please note that the police themselves were the target! A pint to the first of you who catches a motherfucking professional cracker-baiter tagging Pimental "The Occupy Terrorist." Fuck me Christ, here's Rose in the kitchen sink showering off the bullshit:

• What lack dooms movements?
• The ammo may be different but it's the thought that counts.
• How Wall Street views Occupy.
• Fairly standard police procedures.
• Occupy versus police repression.
• Throwing out the masters' tools.
• The occupation of Franklin. 
• Curling up into a ball is violent resistance.
• Letter.
• #OccupyAlbany continued arrests under Cuomo curfew. #OccupyBangor Why R U Here? With drummer! #OccupyBoston Interviews with Occupiers. #OccupyChicago twitter stream infested with trolls. Rahm? Dave? #OccupyDC occupies closed homeless shelter DC hopes to develop, makes Pravda. #OccupyIowa Iowa caucus wild card. #OccupyNashville mike checks Rummy at fundraiser. #OccupyNashville link to fake “Nashville Electric Service” van doing surveillance. #OccupyOakland situation fluid as of this writing. West Coast port shutdown December 12 (George Washington). #OccupyPortland: Confluence with single payer advocates. #OccupySeattle Interview with Dorey Rainey. #OccupyWallStreet: "NYPD Don’t Be Wall Street Mercenaries" (May S). (h/t)
  .01%.
• The smell of Corporate fear.
• Glitch in the matrix.
• Liberalism: an ideology of exclusion?
• The Annotated Ann Coulter, part one.
• Do NOT buy me this for Giftmas.
• On the above, or: go ahead, stab yourself in the eye with a pen.
• Poop. I got slapped by Father Meyer when I was twelve when I asked him the same question during a CCD class at St Martins.
• For Thine is the Corporation.
• Darkblack's (last for a while) Sunday Overnight.
• Playlist.
• Triumph of life.

FABRICATION OF ANCESTORS

Alan Dugan

The old wound in my ass

has opened up again, but I

am past the prodigies

of youth’s campaigns, and weep

where I used to laugh

in war’s red humors, half

in love with silly-assed pains

and half not feeling them.

I have to sit up with

an indoor unsittable itch

before I go down late

and weeping to the storm-

cellar on a dirty night

and go to bed with the worms.

So pull dirt up over me

and make a family joke

for Old Billy Blue Balls,

the oldest private in the world

with two ass-holes and no

place more to go to for a laugh

except the last one. Say:

The North won the Civil War

without much help from me

although I wear a proof

of the war’s obscenity.

Alone with Our Madness and Favorite Flower We See That There Really Is Nothing Left to Write About

I was running errands last evening, flipping stations in the car (my CD player died four days ago, I need a new car for Giftmas! yo), I landed on WAMU at 6:10, Market Place, public radio's Corporate business propaganda show, they were clowning Occupy deliberately and clowning Occupy (with varying levels of awareness) when trying not to clown on Occupy, and it occurred to me, clown the fuck away, Occupy the brand gets love-mocked or hate-mocked on NPR, on South Park, remember Corporate's Rules of Branding, all publicity is good publicity, even the nasty things, so please, clown away.

Oh! my watch isn't broke. I got duped by a fraud watch-repairman at Rodman's in Friendship Heights who sold me a bad battery, so I was told by the sales clerk at some jewelry store at L and Connecticut where I dropped it off to have it fixed before having lunch with a digital friend who's now an analog friend. Please note the newest addition to Me and Mine. This opportunity can be yours too! One major advantage is that while Me and Mine does update when one last posts it is organized alphabetically rather than by most recent post so your blog doesn't sink like an anchor of shame to the bottom of the blogroll when you don't post.

I've never had a digital wristwatch, I've always done circle 1-12. It'd been five, six days without that watch on my wrist after forever years with a watch on my wrist and, holyfuck, I put it on yesterday afternoon as soon as I had it back but didn't look at it until 9:30 last night and for the first time since I learned how to tell time, for a fraction of a fraction of a second I couldn't tell time, the oddest sensation I've had since the last until the next. Fine metaphors abound.

• Have another Earthgirl painting. 
• After the eviction.
• Occupy turns a corner.
• Occupy Congress? Fake.
• We are all occupiers. 
• Have another police beating.
• The nerdiest way to think about Occupy is the best way.
• The coming slime campaign.
• Infra violence.
• Harvey's Urban Roots of Financial Crisis, part two.
• More Harvey.
• Today's bleggal-viral image:

• Fuck, She Is as Shitty as the World's Shittiest Human (FSISWSH!) accuses Obama of not honoring his oath to uphold the Israeli constitution.
• Busy.
• Threat #1.
• Copyleft.
• We're all postmodern these days. 
• The Parable of the Green Mug.
• Heh. Ashbery hate. I do understand.
• Zombies.
• Grapes of Roth.
• Handke for those of you who do. (h/t)
• Literary Hipsters Handbook.
• Dimensions of time and space. 
• Thanks to R for sending me the Aphex Twin/Penderecki below!

LATE ECHO

John Ashbery

Alone with our madness and favorite flower

We see that there really is nothing left to write about.

Or rather, it is necessary to write about the same old things

In the same way, repeating the same things over and over

For love to continue and be gradually different.

Beehives and ants have to be re-examined eternally

And the color of the day put in

Hundreds of times and varied from summer to winter

For it to get slowed down to the pace of an authentic

Saraband and huddle there, alive and resting.

Only then can the chronic inattention

Of our lives drape itself around us, conciliatory

And with one eye on those long tan plush shadows

That speak so deeply into our unprepared knowledge

Of ourselves, the talking engines of our day.

At Some Party I'd Said It Was the Best Novel Since Absalom, Absalom!, which May Have Been True, but Mostly I Was Trying to Impress Her and Convince Myself

I'm still fighting the urge to bleggalgaze - and this post signifies I'm still mightily losing - though I can offer this advice: posting post-classical noise, 20th century high modernist poetry, news of your cats and kid, and reviews of your favorite soccer team's latest games as a means of asserting your authorial independence over your insatiable pinglust at the cost of alienating all but your most loyal, patient, tolerant, and most forgiving readers is win!

Those of you left, as thank you gift, here: motherfucking professional progressives:

Liberal activists and academics displeased with the Obama administration’s handling of several issues popular with progressives say they are seeking candidates willing to mount a primary challenge against President Obama next year.

The group, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, said it faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.

The group said Saturday it is seeking six “recognizable, articulate” candidates who would not mount serious challenges to Obama, but “rigorously debate his policy stands” on issues related to labor, poverty, foreign policy, civil rights and consumer protections.

Gah. Comedy gold. Meanwhile, more new blegs added left and right.

• Fake.
• Aldous Tyler for President!
• Social programs.
• Of course they are. So are all Attorneys General.
• Compassionate conservatives.
• On the above.
• Why are our revolutionaries only from the Right?
• Paper of record puzzled.
• On the Suskind book: A depressing book yes, but savvy and informative. And some of that depression will be temporarily alleviated by the doubtlessly entertaining circular firing squad that is likely to emerge in the next week once Summers, Geithner, Warren, Emanuel, Rubin, Volcker, Orszag, Rouse, Barney Frank (who does not fare well), and perhaps the president get their hands on it.
• Whore Ring Tone.
• Tea Party Zombie Game.
• Constitutionally deficient.
• Mainstreaming.
• Wikileaks, music, power.
• MOCO is 235.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Mists part one, part two.
• Sherbet:

BOOK LOANED TO TOM ANDREWS

Bobby C Rogers

I'd already found out that one of the secrets to happiness was never loan your
 books. But I loaned it anyway. We were all of us poor and living

on ideas, stumbling home late to basement apartments, talking to ourselves.
 What did we own except books and debt? When the time came

we could move it all in the trunk of a car. Tom knew what a book was worth—he
 brought it back a week later, seemingly unhandled, just a little looser

in the spine, a trade paper edition of The Death of Artemio Cruz, required reading
 for a course in postmodernism we were suffering through.

The book's trashed now, boxed up and buried in the garage with a hundred other
 things I can't throw away. When I moved back south I loaned it again

to a girl I'd just met. At some party I'd said it was the best novel since Absalom,
 Absalom!, which may  have been true, but mostly I was trying to impress her,

and convince myself, still testing all I'd been told about the matter of a book
 is best kept separate from, well, matter. Months later it turned up

on my front steps without comment, the cover torn in two places, the dog-eared
 pages of self-conscious prose stuck together with dark, rich chocolate.

If You Would Recover, You Have to Get Over the Shattered Autos in the Backwoods Lot to that Bridge in the Darkness Where the Sentinels Stand Guarding the Border with Their Half-Slung Rifles, Warned of the Likes of You

To honor F9U1C1K I slept in until eight in the morning, remarkably late for me, but I'd stayed up past midnight watching United beat Goats USA the night before. After I made coffee I wrote a post about the game (and I reiterate: fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, adding, after reflection, fuck) in which I made My Official F9U1C1K Statement. I then took photos of Stanley and Rose, emailed some to Planet.

I've nothing to add to F9U1C1K other than note that Osama bin Laden didn't cause the converging clusterfucks but he sped up up the collapse, the inevitable serbianization of the United States, perhaps by a decade. Corporate saw 911 as as the greatest opportunity in a generation to crush balls, crushing it's own balls in it's greedy frenzy to crush my balls. just as bin Laden, or anyone like you, me, at our own paces, reflecting now, could have predicted Corporate would.

I'm warned against a teleological bent, but what's changed isn't Corporate's future but how they are speeding up the wringing of the last fucking drop of my profitablilty now that resources are short and deadlines are overdue before set. I'm asking: do you think Corporate wouldn't kill you for a cigarette? I've overseen the execution at 240 men, damn the DNA, and I'm running for President. I've killed thousands of women and children, ordered the execution of US citizens, and I'm running for reelection.

Maybe waterboarding wasn't scheduled to go mainstream until 2015 in Corporate's 2000 long-term plan and 911 gave Corporate the opportunity to rush the install, but fuck any moaning about fucking lost innocence: it never existed, and what was marketed to you as your innocence was never yours to lose.

• World of the warlord.
• Progressively losing.
• Lost dreams of American renewal.
• Boofuckinghoo. Fuckers criticize fucker.
• One-sided war.
• Crocodile tears.
• Never Forget! the time Rudy Giuliani....
• The day that changed everything.
• The day that changed nothing.
• Everyday is 911.
• Erev Nineleven.
• Commemoration. 
• Grief porn.
• The world after 911.
• Or against us.
• Decade of fear.
• Politics of fear.
• Police state. Remember, America will need be Britain before it can be Serbia.
• Strange politics of 2012.
• What the Tea Party is and isn't includes this (among many) breathtakingly stupid paragraph: That the tea party sprang to life during Obama’s presidency should have been less surprising than it was. According to Alan Abramowitz of Emory University, “The tea party movement can best be understood in the context of the long-term growth of partisan-ideological polarization within the American electorate and especially the growing conservatism of the activist base in the Republican Party.” It wasn't surprising at all, it was utterly, crackerifically, predictable (as predictable as my disdain for motherfucking crackers).
• 25 motherfucking crackers on 911. 
• Call me when any Senate Democrat or motherfucking Obama says Mitch McConnell would rather your car plunge through a hole in a bridge into the Ohio River than raise taxes on investment bankers, but until then, stfu.
• Weekend wrap-up.
• Little Danny Snyder drops lawsuit, the fuck.
• Mystery gunk in Anacostia River identified.
• Frates for Cello and Piano.
• Arvo Part turned 76 yesterday.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO GET OVER

Bruce Smith

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,

the blue one, especially.

Your first love rounding a corner,

that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,

you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance

before evening falls,

letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,

meaning “to proceed, to journey,

to travel from one place to another,”

as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,

the sun in the morning and the moon at night,

all those shadows of yourself you left behind

on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to

cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,

crawl over this ego or that eros,

then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning

“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen

or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,

you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness

where the sentinels stand

guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,

warned of the likes of you. 

I Gave the Cat Half of My Sandwich to Buy My Life

We didn't get our internet connection back (we never lost power) until just before one yesterday afternoon, though I had internet access at 730 Sunday morning as I was checking the building I work in for flood damage. I did make a comment yesterday to a friend's comments on Saturday's post, so while I technically posted something yesterday it wasn't a new post, so yay me, I can go at least one day without attention-whoring, which is good, my attention-whoring so powerful exactly one person in my immediate family remembered yesterday was someone's birthday, and that person called the birthday person from Ohio. Heh, if I hadn't been out grocery shopping and that person from Ohio hadn't reminded the other person in my immediate family that yesterday was my birthday, I wasn't going to tell her. I got a re-gifted Chia Pet and charming apologies. Yay me!

I was going to toggle and bleggalgaze, but while toggling and bleggalgazing are both here and on assignment: Woof's great. Funny, brave, funny, sweet, funny, fearless, funny. I've had to rubberband shut cabinets he's learned how to open; he taunts the older cats (including Napoleon, who is three times Woof's size) until they swat, then chirps (he's always chirping) and runs sideways, his ass catching up to and almost passing his head, and lets himself into the cabinets where he climbs as high as he can and purrs and chirps. Chirps, is funny, won't leave me alone. Yay me!

Daily Gaddis:

There, old vicary, congratulate my refuge, the saneside outside sheltering the insane inside: to present the static sane side outside to another outside saneside, to be esteemed for that outsane side as though we weren't both playing the same game, and gone down Summer Street (singing unchristian songs) the inane sinside, pocketing a cool million wearing the shoutside outside and the doubtside inside, the vileside inside and the violinside outside skipping dancing and foretelling things too come all ye faithful, of thine own give we back to thee.

• The worst case scenario has always been that Obamadick believes he's acting nobly and in America's best interest.


• Obamadick needs a war? 


• The War on Terror and the Left.


• Maybe Obamadick is toast.


• Extremists to the left of me, moderates to the right!


• Apt pupils.


• The basics.


• Digby censors? Doh!


• Gratuitous bump.


• Holyfuck.


• There's one of these columns every six months it seems.


• Myself and movement.


• St Vincent, Bjork, Feist. I feel like I'm breaking up with girlfriends: it's not you; I've changed.


• Some tales wait shy.


• Seven papers torn.


• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.


• Future Bible Heroes cover The Human League!


• Yes, I did post this within the past month:

ANOTHER INSANE DEVOTION

Gerald Stern

This was gruesome—fighting over a ham sandwich                  

with one of the tiny cats of Rome, he leaped

on my arm and half hung on to the food and half

hung on to my shirt and coat. I tore it apart

and let him have his portion, I think I lifted him

down, sandwich and all, on the sidewalk and sat

with my own sandwich beside him, maybe I petted

his bony head and felt him shiver. I have

told this story over and over; some things

root in the mind; his boldness, of course, was frightening

and unexpected—his stubborness—though hunger

drove him mad. It was the breaking of boundaries,

the sudden invasion, l but not only that it was

the sharing of food and the sharing of space; he didn't

run into an alley or into a cellar,

he sat beside me, eating, and I didn't run

into a trattoria, say, shaking,

with food on my lips and blood on my cheek, sobbing;

but only that, I had gone there to eat

and wait for someone. I had maybe an hour

before she would come and I was full of hope

and excitement. I have resisted for years

interpreting this, but now I think I was given

a clue, or I was giving myself a clue,

across the street from the glass sandwich shop.

That was my last night with her, the next day

I would leave on the train for Paris and she would

meet her husband. Thirty-five years ago

I ate my sandwich and moaned in her arms, we were

dying together; we never met again

although she was pregnant when I left her—I have

a daughter or son somewhere, darling grandchildren

in Norwich, Connecticut, or Canton, Ohio.

Every five years I think about her again

and plan on looking her up. The last time

I was sitting in New Brunswick, New Jersey,

and heard that her husband was teaching at Princeton,

if she was still married, or still alive, and tried

calling. I went that far. We lived

in Florence and Rome. We rowed in the bay of Naples

and floated, naked, on the boards. I started

to think of her again today. I still

am horrified by the cat's hunger. I still

am puzzled by the connection. this is another

insane devotion, there must be hundreds, although

it isn't just that, there is no pain, and the thought

is fleeting and sweet. i think it's my own dumb boyhood,

walking around with Slavich cheeks and burning

stupid eyes. I think I gave the cat

half of my sandwich to buy my life, I think

I broke it in half as a decent sacrifice.

It was this I bought, the red coleus,

the split rocking chair, the silk lampshade.

Happiness. I watched him with pleasure.

I bought memory. I could have lost it.

How crazy it sounds. His face twisted with cunning.

The wind blowing through his hair. His jaw working.

Correct Answers: C, D, D, B, B, A, B, A, A, C, B, B, B, C, B, D, B, D, C.

I hadn't thought about Stu Spasm and Lubricated Goat in a dozen years until Irwin played Stu's Thunderball cover at precisely the microsecond I needed to laugh out loud in a cumulative kaboom, a cleansing bwack, a shut-the-front-door snort.

Good day. I've remembered Lubricated Goat. My daughter is strong and brave. I'm increasingly convinced Woof is a wondercat. I've got a date Friday night to eat the best Indian food in Mocoland and then see a movie. I'm gonna STAND! for United with three of my favorite people in a hurricane Saturday night. I'm not urped, this second, with a trapped laugh of complicit guilt in any of my worlds. Castigate me.

• War on the poor.


• Worshiping the status quo.


• Obamadick.


• Obamadick.


• Pwoggle's lament.


• Dickdick.


• Dickdick. Reading club?


• People, get ready:

• Enjoy! It's gonna be crackers!


• It will be Perry for the simple reason that crackers think he'll make pwoggle heads explode the most.


• In retrospect, one of the major reasons I supported Obama over HRC was because I thought he'd make cracker heads explode the most.


• Crackerstan. 


• 2012.


• Fighting the backlash.


• Fracking? 


• He gets letters.


• Miscellany.


• Dang. He was on the mound often when I was at Memorial often.


• Have you lost your emu?


• Silliman's always generous lit-links. 


• Hav? Anybody?


• Mining the audio motherlode.


• Mythologies.


• Gargoyles.


• Promised Land.


• Shut Your Mind.


• The Goats always reminded me of The Verbs.


• Holyfuck, I love The Verbs.

QUIZ

Linh Dinh

Invaders invariably call themselves:

a) berserkers
b) marauders
c) frankincense
d) liberators

Our enemies hate us because:

a) we’re sadists
b) we’re hypocrites
c) we shafted them
d) we value freedom

Our friends hate us because:

a) we’re bullies
b) we hate them
c) we’re hypocrites
d) we value freedom

Pushed to the ground and kicked by a gang of soldiers, about to be shot, you can save your life by brandishing:

a) an uzi
b) a crucifix
c) the Constitution
d) a poem

A poem can:

a) start a war
b) stanch a wound
c) titillate the masses
d) shame a nation

Poets are:

a) clowns
b) parasites
c) legislators
d) terrorists

A nation’s standing in the world is determined by:

a) its buying power
b) its military might
c) its cultural heritage
d) God

A country is rich because of:

a) its enlightened population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography

A country is poor because of:

a) its ignorant population
b) its political system
c) its small stick
d) its geography

A man’s dignity is determined by:

a) his appearance (skin color, height, etc)
b) his willingness to use violence
c) his command of English
d) his blue passport

Those willing to die for their beliefs are:

a) idealists
b) terrorists
c) suckers
d) insane

Those willing to die for nothing are:

a) principled
b) patriotic
c) insane
d) cowards

Terrorists:

a) abuse language
b) hit and run
c) shock and awe
d) rely on ingenuity

Smart weapons:

a) render hopeless and dormant kinetic objects
b) kill softly
c) save lives
d) slaughter by science

Pain is:

a) payback for evil-doers
b) a common misfortune
c) compelling drama
d) suck it up!

Humiliation is:

a) the ultimate thrill for bored perverts
b) inevitable in an unequal relationship
c) a fear factor
d) sexy and cathartic

The media’s job is:

a) to seduce
b) to spread
c) to sell
d) to drug

The Internet:

a) allows us to be pure minds
b) connects us to distant bodies
c) disconnects us from the nearest minds and bodies
d) improves illiteracy

Pornography is:

a) a lie that exposes the truth
b) a needed breather from civilization
c) class warfare
d) nostalgia for the garden of Eden



Correct answers: c,d,d,b,b,a,b,a,a,c,b,b,b,c,b,d,b,d,c.
—If you scored 14-19, you’re a well adjusted person, a home-owner, with and income of at least $50,000 a year.
—If you scored 8-13, you either rent or live with your parents, never exercise, and consume at least a 6-pack a day.
—if you scored 7 or less, you’re in trouble with the FBI and/or the IRS, cut your own hair, and use public transit as your primary mode of transportation.

Hence, or: Woof Called Woof, Moo Moo

Stanley is now Woof, Rose is now Moo. Both fit. Both approve.

Also, Honor Blackman was born eighty-five years ago today.

Automatic Catering Naturally Does a Better Job than a Hand with a Watering Can Can

That's the state of cat affairs: rather than sulking in my bedroom, Fleabus now comes out and glowers. Progress. Relatedly, only for the purpose of this Saturday-lazy post, I got this in my email yesterday from Al Franken:

Dear BLCKDGRD,

One day I'll have the opportunity to raise my hand and repeal DOMA. But first we have to make that happen -- and as much as I wish I could, I can't talk to every single person from one coast to the other and tell them about our petition. That's our challenge.
 

The solution? Online ads. They're fast and effective, and best of all, they're inexpensive to run. And this new kind of advertising is so efficient, that the $5 and $10 contributions that our supporters have been chipping in are making a huge impact and helping us grow our coalition faster than we ever thought possible.

Will you help us keep our ads running by chipping in $5 today?

I thought I'd killed all the email subscriptions I'd stupidly signed up for when I was a stupid ticket-pulling moron, so I canceled this one, and when the Will You Tell Us Why You're Canceling dialogue box came up I typed:

Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

It's true! and they've a home game tonight I won't even try and taunt a result out of, though the best news is I'm meeting a friend of this blog (and maybe yours) before the game for a beer, he's mentioned in the poem below.

Daily Gaddis:

  - Plagiarized? Recktall Brown sat back. With a quick look over his desk, locating a manuscript, he pushed it forward with one hand and took off his glasses with the other. He fixed the figure across from him with his sharp eyes, and laughed. - Take a look at this, he said, as the quivering yellow fingers received it. - This is lifted. The whole God-damned novel is lifted. One of our readers spotted it the first thing. A lawyer went over it, and it's safe. a couple of things changed around, it's safe and it's good, and it will sell.

• Hard and complicated aren't synonyms.


• The death and next life of Keynes.


• Do any leading Democrats, in heart of hearts, disagree w/Romney.


• Limbaugh complains Fox not cracker enough!


• Paul versus FMFML: The difference is that for anarcho-syndicalists like Chomsky, the good guys of history are the workers and ordinary folk, whereas for Libertarians, it is entrepreneurs. Both theories depend on a naive reading of social interest. Right anarchists seem not to be able to perceive that without government, corporations would reduce us all to living in company towns on bad wages and would constantly be purveying to us bad banking, tainted food, dangerous drugs, etc. I mean, they behave that way when they can get away with it even when there is supposed government oversight, usually by capturing the government oversight agency that should be regulating them and then defanging it (e.g. BP and the Minerals Management Service). On the environment, private companies would never ever curb emissions without government intervention because of the problem of the commons. (Tellingly, Ron Paul calls global climate change a “hoax.”)


• British crackerism.


• British crackerism.


• Deliberate misunderstanding.


• Deeper understanding.


• Anniversaries, anesthesia, Elizabeth Bishop.


• On that sillyass list of overrated books.


• My favorite three radio hours of the week.


• Pynchon's Inherent Vice playlist.


• New Feist. My tastes have changed; the stuff I once love doesn't move me anymore, so please take this meh to this song with that disclaimer, but major meh.


• Shameless use of Teap-baiting as excuse to play The Minutemen.


• Rupture.

E-MAIL FROM AN OWL

Frederick Seidel

The irrigation system wants it to be known it irrigates
The garden,
It doesn't water it.
It is a stickler about this!
Watering is something done by hand.
Automatic catering naturally
Does a better job than a hand with a watering can can.
Devised in Israel to irrigate their orange groves,
It drips water to the chosen, one zone at a time.
Drip us this day our daily bread, or, rather, this night,
Since a drop on a leaf in direct sunlight can make
A magnifying glass that burns an innocent at the stake.
The sprinkler system hisses kisses on a timer
Under an exophthalmic sky of stars.
Tonight my voice will stare at you forever.
I click on Send,
And send you this perfumed magic hour.

After the Hammering of So Much Insistence on the Need for Naming After the Travesties that Passed as Faces

This bit was going to be this post's lead, though better, smarter, archer than it was when I mishit publish, with keen and acerbic insights into celebrity pwogglism and the pwoggles that love them, but by the sillyass and bogus Bleggal Code of Ethics I live by I could not unblog the post once it fed into the feeds, so today instead:

That's Stanley above and Rose below. Why Stanley and Rose? Elkin (one of my favorite novelists) and Tremain (one of Earthgirl's). We felt morally obligated to name them something at some point but never felt strongly about any other names, which is another sign of the strange days, my need to claim naming rights as strong as anyone else's usually.

The only two animals I've owned with Earthgirl whom I insisted on naming are Fleabus and Frank the Assassin (sorry, the photo's gone, picture a healthy golden retriever in a dog food commercial), but once Archer and Loaf were shot down I bitchlessly gave up any stakes in their names. I like Archer for multiple reasons, but not enough to insist to two noes.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm going to go home, go out to dinner to whatever restaurant Planet chooses (Planet is back from Michigan: Yay! I drive her to college in nine days: Holyfuckingshit!) and present the case for Archer again. I'm going to ask please forcefully then ask please whiningly then accept the cat's name if not Archer is Stanley and go home and play with him (and Rose).

• (And Fleabus too.) 


• The view from the Lords: Why does the British government not do its duty? Because it is the government of a modern Western nation, sunk like the rest of us in trembling, whimpering guilt over class and race.


• On Moore and Damon.


• The Obama Catastrophe.


• It's not people, it's power.


• Till the end of the age.


• Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready. 


• Reich's obamapostasy will never be ready.


• Why rich people hate looters.


• American Leftist has good UK updates.


• New European far right.


• Irresponsible socialism, now more than ever!


• A view from Scotland.


• A view from England.


• Last night Nathan and Landau (not Landru, whose been told the joke), occurred to me, but neither fit either cat.


• Heh.


• Innocent ideas.


• Hiding in plane sight.


• Things you might have missed.


• The pressure.


• Didn't get a chance to read yesterday, so no Daily Gaddis today.


• Never cared for Philip Levine's poetry, though it's no surprise he's been named sillyass poet laureate.


• Mindeaters.


• Painbirds.


• Solace for pain.


• You are my everlovin'.

EASTER MORNING

Amy Clampett

at stone at dawn
cold water in the basin
these wall's rough plaster
imageless
after the hammering
of so much insistence
on the need for naming
after the travesties
that passed as faces,
grace: the unction
of sheer nonexistence
upwelling in this
hyacinthine freshet
of the unnamed
the faceless

The Faster You Spin, the Stiller You Look

Much virtual ink was spent yesterday on Drew Weston's What Happened to Obama:

When faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far.

Yes, well, we snicker. Then this:

I have no idea what Barack Obama — and by extension the party he leads — believes on virtually any issue. The president tells us he prefers a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction, one that weds “revenue enhancements” (a weak way of describing popular taxes on the rich and big corporations that are evading them) with “entitlement cuts” (an equally poor choice of words that implies that people who’ve worked their whole lives are looking for handouts). But the law he just signed includes only the cuts. This pattern of presenting inconsistent positions with no apparent recognition of their incoherence is another hallmark of this president’s storytelling. He announces in a speech on energy and climate change that we need to expand offshore oil drilling and coal production — two methods of obtaining fuels that contribute to the extreme weather Americans are now seeing. He supports a health care law that will use Medicaid to insure about 15 million more Americans and then endorses a budget plan that, through cuts to state budgets, will most likely decimate Medicaid and other essential programs for children, senior citizens and people who are vulnerable by virtue of disabilities or an economy that is getting weaker by the day. He gives a major speech on immigration reform after deporting a million immigrants in two years, breaking up families at a pace George W. Bush could never rival in all his years as president. 

Yes, well, we snicker:

The most charitable explanation is that he and his advisers have succumbed to a view of electoral success to which many Democrats succumb — that “centrist” voters like “centrist” politicians. Unfortunately, reality is more complicated. Centrist voters prefer honest politicians who help them solve their problems. A second possibility is that he is simply not up to the task by virtue of his lack of experience and a character defect that might not have been so debilitating at some other time in history. Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography; and that, before joining the United States Senate, he had voted "present" (instead of "yea" or "nay") 130 times, sometimes dodging difficult issues. 

Yes, well....

A somewhat less charitable explanation is that we are a nation that is being held hostage not just by an extremist Republican Party but also by a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election. Perhaps those of us who were so enthralled with the magnificent story he told in “Dreams From My Father” appended a chapter at the end that wasn’t there — the chapter in which he resolves his identity and comes to know who he is and what he believes in.

Yes, well....

Or perhaps, like so many politicians who come to Washington, he has already been consciously or unconsciously corrupted by a system that tests the souls even of people of tremendous integrity, by forcing them to dial for dollars — in the case of the modern presidency, for hundreds of millions of dollars. When he wants to be, the president is a brilliant and moving speaker, but his stories virtually always lack one element: the villain who caused the problem, who is always left out, described in impersonal terms, or described in passive voice, as if the cause of others’ misery has no agency and hence no culpability. Whether that reflects his aversion to conflict, an aversion to conflict with potential campaign donors that today cripples both parties’ ability to govern and threatens our democracy, or both, is unclear.

Drum roll:

But the arc of history does not bend toward justice through capitulation cast as compromise. It does not bend when 400 people control more of the wealth than 150 million of their fellow Americans. It does not bend when the average middle-class family has seen its income stagnate over the last 30 years while the richest 1 percent has seen its income rise astronomically. It does not bend when we cut the fixed incomes of our parents and grandparents so hedge fund managers can keep their 15 percent tax rates. It does not bend when only one side in negotiations between workers and their bosses is allowed representation. And it does not bend when, as political scientists have shown, it is not public opinion but the opinions of the wealthy that predict the votes of the Senate. The arc of history can bend only so far before it breaks. 

Snark snarkity, snarkle snarksnark, snarkably snarkous, snarko... snark snarkcreous snarklicity, snarklestic snarkleyomama. Snark, snarkwink, snarkfu.

We all have our own paths and paces to apostasy. As obtuse as Reston remains - he thinks the fault remains Obama, not him, he thinks the fault remains Obama, not the system that employs Obama - this is still a remarkable if minor watershed, saying what it does where it says it. I'm reminded of Carlen's joke, assholes drive slower than me, jerks drive faster.

Daily Gaddis:

 - Simpotico, came that voice, - I say they're so simpotico... what? Harry? Oh God no, not for months, he's still in Hollywood where they're filming his novel... yes, it was changed a little. What?...yes, the homosexual boy to a negro and the Jew to a cripple. Sensitive minorities... Of course I'm interested in politics... Don't be tiresome, I couldn't care less about Harry using me in his ghastly book, but giving me a name like Seraphina... No, of course I don't need the money, I'm just suing him because money is the only language he understands...

• Impotence of the "intellectual" elite.


• UPDATE: Mischaracterizing FDR to indict Obama.


• Split the D's for your third party?


• Mixin' up those amendments. 


• Still Superman?


• Been six months or so since I reminded you what Corporate's investing in in anticipation of your unrest.


• Murdoch hacked us too.


• Tottenham.


• Tottenham.


• Professionalism and teachers.


• Bunchalinks.


• Hate when this happens.


• Re: cat names: I proposed Glen and Echo to Earthgirl and Planet to weak maybes. Professor R suggests Deleuze and Guattari.


• Jim's back from Europe.


• Interstellar overdrive goes boink.


• Some lit-links.


• Indie's sacred cows (h/t Frederick's reader).


• Forgive me, I love a good pop song. 


• UPDATE! My girlfriend is a rock.


• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.


• Woke up with this in my head:

SONNET SUBSTANTIALLY LIKE THE WORDS OF F RODRIGUEZ ONE POSITION AHEAD OF ME ON THE UNEMPLOYMENT LINE

Jack Agueros

It happens to me all the time--business

Goes up and down but I'm the yo-yo spun

Into the high speed trick called sleeping

Such as I am fast standing in this line now.



Maybe I am also a top; they too sleep

While standing, tightly twirling in place.

I wish I could step out and listen for

The sort of music that I must make.



But this is where the state celebrates its sport.

From cushioned chairs the agents turn your ample

Time against you through a box of lines.

Your string is both your leash and lash.



	The faster you spin, the stiller you look.

	There's something to learn in that, but what?