These Tumblers Empty Themselves and Yet I Persist

I didn't remember until noon yesterday that June 5th is Richard Butler's birthday, yesterday his 57th. Fuck we are old. The above is my favorite Psychedelic Furs song, or is it this one? at least this very moment:







At least a half a dozen of the one of five best nights of my life revolved around Furs concerts.

Hey, I get mail:

I am writing to you today to inform you that Nuestar, the Registry Operator for the .US domain, will be increasing its annual registration price by $0.50 USD.   As a result of this notification, eNom must raise our pricing for this domain name extension. The purpose of this notice is to inform you of the upcoming price increase and give you advance notice should you want to renew any names ahead of the price change.

On July 1st, 2014 your price for .US will increase by $0.50

I thought about last summer's domain name dramafuck last night, thought I'd better check the email account I use for non-personal correspondence this morning, and shazam. I can spare the fifty cents, can't bare the aggravation of last summer this summer. I was assured last summer that there will be no repeat of the dramafuckery this summer. I have modest hope, massive dread. So: it's that time of year, if this blog goes dark without announcement like it did last summer the domain renewal is why. I know you know if I killed the blog there would be a loud melodramafuck production.

• What we learned from the Snowden Affair.
• Goodbye, normal genes.
• Purple Line.
• My two months of traffic hell began today.
• Mark introduces me to Marie-Claire Bancquart.
• Jim's Hawaiian vacation.
• Ira goes to Canada.
• A dialectical appreciation of twee?
• Eulogy for a cat.
• Joseph Ceravolo: what chemicals have we forgot?

TWENTY-TWENTY VISION

Mark Ford

Unwinding in a cavernous bodega he suddenly
Burst out:--Barman, these tumblers empty themselves
And yet I persist; I am wedged in the giant eye
Of an invisible needle. Walking through doors
Or into them, listening to anecdotes or myself spinning
A yarn, I realize my doom is never to forget
My lost bearings. In medias res we begin
And end: I was born, and then my body unfurled
As if to illustrate a few tiny but effective words--
But--oh my oh my--avaunt. I peered
Forth, stupefied, from the bushes as the sun set
Behind distant hills. A pair of hungry owls
Saluted the arrival of webby darkness; the dew
Descended upon the creeping ferns. At first
My sticky blood refused to flow, gathering instead
In wax-like drops and pools; mixed with water and a dram
Of colourless alcohol it thinned and reluctantly
Ebbed away. I lay emptied as a fallen
Leaf until startled awake by a blinding flash
Of dry lightning, and the onset of this terrible thirst.            

We Crave Attention, Then Come Over All Coy

For those of you following along, here's Earthgirl's knee last night. (Background here for those who, um, need). The bruise is growing, larger and more colorful. There will not be a ten mile hike this weekend.

I've mentioned this before: my first love was baseball. After a bitterly delicious apostasy in the mid-90s (shouldn't all apostasies be delicious in their bitterness?) I've let baseball back in a few innings at a time though I'll never give my heart again. Still, RIP Don Zimmer, who embodied the wondrous daydream of the baseball-lifer and was a major character in baseball when baseball was part of my daily life. We had dinner with Hamster last night (who, along with Landru, took me to an Oriole game at Memorial, an 8-5 loss to the Washington Senators Texas Rangers, for my stag-party). He and Planet and I are going to try and get to a Nats game, perhaps as early as the next homestand (I didn't hear about Zimmer's death until this morning, Serendipity be great). Other Mocomofos and Bawlmer hons encouraged to join us.

I only link-fished friends this morning for new posts

• Don Durito on the return of force-feeding at Gitmo.
• Frances checks in from Santa Fe on the movement to end police violence in Albuquerque.
• Tom's School's Out.
• Smut Clyde does what Smut Clyde does.
• Flowerville on what proof is.
• Biblioklept rifts on William Vollmann's Europe Central.
• Ethan has science fiction for those of you who do.
• :-p wrote a poem.
• Jacob wrote a poem.
• Greyhoos has songs.

otherwise have two songs (fell asleep listening to Stephan Mathieu) and a poem (fell asleep reading Mark Ford, whose name I mention here since the poem's title is the beginning of a sentence, whose poetry I am overwhelmingly pleased to have just discovered, who has just been given his own tag, there will be more here):







WE CRAVE

attention, then come over all coy, and start fiddling
with watchstrap and buttons, or talking about a friend
of a friend who claims to own the world's largest collection
of aquarium ornaments, yet has no aquarium. In the mean-
time the tough-minded argue each of us is loved not
so much for his or her oddities, as in spite of them, or even
faute de mieux! Families form, squabble on long
car journeys, invent nicknames for strangers; the tires hum
their own tune, and in shimmering forecourts
the baked atmosphere presses from all sides, searing
the lungs. We commend, internally, the wisdom of the soft-
voiced tycoon who acquired the land, only
to flatten it, then skilfully divide it into distinct
yet related lots; a spongy layer of wood-chips lines
the criss-crossing paths, and whispers faintly underneath.

As it was drummed into me, I would drum it
into others: the art or science of management never
pauses, though it occasionally lies low, or enacts
retreat like a Parthian archer. Invariably, speed and stealth
take advantage of the famous, non-existent 'margin' poor
Herbert Pocket kept urging upon Pip; a sound decisive
as the whirr and double click of a computer mouse
signals the arrival of the inner bailiffs, and an era
of thrift. Listen harder, and through the virtual prison-bars
comes swarming the buzz of creditors and debtors over
lunch, each pledging allegiance to the other, to knowledge,
to the mysteries of living on this air....