What Really Kills Me Is Standing in the Need of Prayer I'm Standing in the Need of Jokes That Come Back

• Found my Go-Between stash yesterday while looking for something else.
• Here, some links fished Sunday morning before Act Three of My Brother-in-Law's wedding.
• Acts One and Two were fine, highlighted in Act Two by an old man who looked like Gauron who posted himself beside the open bar and didn't move the rest of the night. 
• Yes, 30% of the motivation for this post was that gag. I knew it the instant I saw him.
• I didn't realize Rob had reopened the shop.
• The cybernetics of Occupy: an anarchist perspective.
• More defenders have meant more goals: All defenders make mistakes. On Thursday, Gary Cahill’s poor positioning and misjudgment of the flight of the ball left Luis Suarez with a free run at goal to score the 86th minute goal that chucked England out of the tournament. But Cahill will always find forgiveness from English fans because not only is he a talented defender, but he has the short back and sides, steely-eyed seriousness and complete lack of adventure that assures the English that their goal is being defended by a good, honest, straightforward sort of chap. When Luiz made mistakes for Chelsea, these were invariably taken as symptoms of profound personal failure as a center half. Not only had he been caught out of position, or risked dribbling past an opponent, but he had done so with a trademark mop of long curly hair and an unmistakable sense of personal style.
• Fine metaphors abound: the above applies to more than half of English language lit-bloggers when judging English language lit-bloggers too. Though I'm bald. 
• Adding, this blog may indeed be shitty, though the above bullet is true. 
• The ninety-minute anxiety dream: The positive lesson to be learned from the negative dialectic of England’s failure can be summarized in two words: Costa Rica. Los Ticos have shown tactically how soccer should be played. They maintain a high defensive line, they are incredibly well-organized by their passionate and very shrewd coach, Jorge Luis Pinto, they are physically fit, young, and strong, they relentlessly close down the opposition in midfield, they have great passing accuracy and are fast on the break into attack. Costa Rica didn’t just win against Italy, they completely dominated the Italians in every part of the game.
• Catenaccio is dead! Or at least resting. Hardly any buses have been parked – most matches, with a few exceptions, have been free-flowing. Among the explanations so far: sides are trying to emulate Spain’s one-time-dominant tiki-taka; the heat is causing more gaffes; formations are more fluid; the international talent gap is closing; and the spate of early strikes has forced sides to attack. The goals per game stats are the best since 1958 – which was also the last time England folded in the group stage.
• England out? What did you expect?
• Secrets of the keeper.

• Lit-links.
• Full metal Zizek.
• Serendipitously if inadvertently, the same author mentioned in the above is mentioned here. I have access to a university library's stacks and will check out said author, though I am sure to fail the scifi test again.
• Meanwhile, sssh, 2013's failed Year of Reading Calmer Stupor is resurrected and 2014's Year of Reading Car Elm Sprout is proceeding calmer, without stupor.
• Maggie's weekly links.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Adrienne Rich poem.
• Another poem that's not Auden's on Brueghel's Icarus.
• I had picked up John Taggart's In Music three or four years ago, the book got buried on my desk, it needed to be returned to the consortium school I had borrowed it from and I unforgivably forgot about it. Good thing I still have access to a university's consortium loan services.

ALL THE STEPS

John Taggert

     1

Those who hear the train they had better worry worry

those who hear they had better worry worry.
 

     2

No disgrace to worry to have the worried life blues

might do some good to be worried in the hour of our need.
 

     3

Run run run away going to run run run away

there are those who think they’re going to run away.
 

     4

To hear and to be facing and to be facing what is heard

to hear and to be face to face with what is heard.
 

     5

Run run run away they’re going to run run run away

there are those who think they’re going to run away from the train.
 

     6

Fort built to protect the community from desert raiders

community thought to protect itself from raiders.
 

     7

Those who hear the train they had better worry worry

better worry worry about a gift of tears.
 

     8

Those who are gathered in the fort had better learn

they had better learn how to cure their wounds.
  

     9

The train with its poison and its tongue

the lurking train with its poison and its tongue.
 

     10

Those who are gathered better learn to be insensitive

learn how to put on a show of being insensitive.
 

     11

Danger of its poison and of its tongue

danger of its poison and of its tongue against our teeth.
 

     12

Had better break the habit the habit of prayer

better let the jokes come back to us when we’re at prayer.
 

     13

What really kills me is standing in the need of prayer

standing in a gathering in the need of prayer.
 

     14

Don’t if we don’t if we don’t break the habit

we will be made to climb all the steps of the ladder.

     15

Brood over someone else’s dream: three-story red tower

beneath the tower the train is always departing.
 

     16

Danger of its tongue for those gathered like a group

gathered like a group of all virgins with their downcast eyes.
 

     17

There is this problem with cutting off the prayer hand

there is this problem with the other hand.
 

     18

How insensitive is how those who hear better be

how insensitive how unmoved and cold they had better be.
 

     19

You can call him you can call him up and ask him

if we had only asked for “Sleep Walk by Santo & Johnny.
 

     20

Red tower green sky three-story tower against green sky

beneath the tower the train is always departing.
 

     21

Don’t break it be made to climb all the steps

we don’t break it we’ll be made to climb all the steps.
 

     22

Ant on the floor the small ant on the kitchen floor

the small ant anticipates by sound or shadow.
 

     23

Light turns out in the kitchen when somebody pulls on the string

those gathered not able to anticipate the danger.
 

     24

If we had only stayed in the school of the prophets

in the school of the prophets who catch thoughts from words.

     25

Ant on the floor the small ant on the kitchen floor

those gathered not able to anticipate the danger.
 

     26

Those who are gathered are fondled and taken by the hand

taken by the hand and made to climb all the steps.
 

     27

Perfectly built fort bound to make the community unhappy

bound to make those in the community unhappy.
 

     28

What really kills me is standing in the need of prayer

I’m standing in the need of jokes that come back.
 

     29

Standing in the need of prayer in a perfectly built fort

bound to make you unhappy bound to make me unhappy.

     30

Not broken the habit of prayer not been broken

those who are gathered better learn how to cure their wounds.

This Goes to Show That If You Have the Wit to Be Small, Common, Cute, and Live on Shit, Though the Cage Frets Kings, You May Make Free with It

• New obamapostates? Anyone? No?
• Saw that story first on my Verizon 3G iPhone.
• Let me save the spook in his cubicle in the big black building off the BW Parkway and MD 32 time: I called me wife, I called my kid, I texted my brother, I texted one dear friend, I texted another dear friend, I called my parents, I texted the plans for the overthrow of America to a Hezbollah pal, then called him to make sure he got it.
• UPDATE! On the story.
• UPDATE! Trained for totalitarianism.
• UPDATE! Has a prominent Democrat called yet for an investigation on how this information on the program was made public? Asked at 1:26 PM EDT 6/6/13.
• I am almost certainly wrong, 99% probability I'm wrong, but this Michelle Obama versus protester story stinks of FAKE! on so many levels it wasn't a stunt, think how FAKE! it'd stink if it was a stunt.
• UPDATE! On the above. Not the part about me sensing FAKE! on the heckling Michelle Obama part. 
• I have no idea who Rex Hupple is, but this tweet about the Michelle Obama Affair that appeared in my timeline is true, or at least as true as I can believe since I won't watch either MSNBC or Fox.
• There is only kayfabe. That's the key swerve of the past ten years, the granting of unlimited digital reveals which are real and therefore reflective of your true worth versus the power's willingness - fucking eagerness, tiny you - to remind you or how puny you are, you, me, kings, clowns, hobos of our Stringtowns. 
• Age of fraud.
• The scheduled death of God.
• Rise of Pop Fascism, part six.
• Good stuff on culture of gaming and culture of games. Worth the $2.
• Brookeville!
• Writing and breathing. RE: Proust - I finished Combray enraptured, started Swann's part, what a freaking anticlimax of meh.
• Agamben, for those of you who do.
• On being plagiarized.
• UPDATE! Yes, I know yesterday was Laurie Anderson's 67th birthday, a song didn't fit yesterday's post, meant to post this to this post from the start but forgot:

• Mr Alarum got this Fur's request in after the deadline, but he's a bud.
• I don't want Jack White on my radio, but credit where due.
• Absolutely horrifying news. I confess, I'd forgotten about the fucker.
• Woke up with the album below the poem in my head this morning, would post below but instead:
• Via Dangerous Minds, holyfuck:

POLITICAL REFLECTION

Howard Nemerov

No bars are set too close, no mesh too fine
To keep me from the eagle and the lion,
Whom keepers feed that I may freely dine.
This goes to show that if you have the wit
To be small, common, cute, and live on shit,
Though the cage frets kings, you may make free with it.

His Artificial Heart Gives Him Insomnia

Courtesy of two running nights of insomnia, not only have I proved to myself that Proust is not a soporific (and who is, to my discovered delight, as I might finally have unlocked him, laugh out loud funny), you benefit with a weekend's boatload of links: Deranging America. How many rights have Americans lost? The coming world of killer mini drones. Law and justice in the digital age. Democrats' complicity in political murder. Workplace abuse, racism, unfair firing. Liberal racial hypocrisy. On the above. On vampire's tears. On economic justice. Of course he does. Dilemmas of the rentier class. An essay on abjection. Agamben, for those of you who do. Good question. Drones at home. Perspective, plurality, pragmatism? Are we having fun yet? Always wrong. Enabling opposition? A duh moment in history? Twenty-two tips for dodging drones. Fucking POTUS 16. The week that was. Where I work, where I have a degree, where I have another degree. I have zero feelings about the basketball team - I was a Maryland fan and hated Hilltop before I graduated to not giving a flying fuck about college basketball. Fifteen great David Foster Wallace quotes. Catoptric tristula. Beckett, for those of you who do. Olson, for those of you who do. Lispector, for those of you who do. Proust, for those of you who do. I do for a couple of days, don't for a few. Melville, for those of you who do. Glück, for those of you who do. On listening to poets. Rhythm - anyone who has talked with me knows I speak with an odd, rushed rhythm, so when I read my poetry out loud to myself it has a different rhythm than I imagine the reader gives it. A fragment of Ibykos translated six ways. Steely Dan albums ranked. I'm always amused at the visceral hatred some friends have towards Steely Dan. Rock and roll as spontaneous paganism. Mining the audio motherlode. Monday is Egoslavia's Highest Holy Day.





HIS HEART
Caroline Knox

His heart keeps him awake while he's asleep.
He listens to his heart while he falls asleep in bed.
His artificial heart gives him insomnia.
As long as I can hear the sound, I know I'm here.

His heart keeps him alive while he's asleep.
My heart helps me to sleep while I'm alive.
Oh, patient, this valentine if for you.

I had no choice. I knew that I was dying.
We are trying to survive. We are standing on the shoulders
of the makers of the heart while we lie on our back in bed.
They walk with their hearts on their sleeves and their noses to the grindstone.
He listens to his heart while he falls asleep at night.

Oh, Valentine, this contraption is for you,
device the sacred, the sacred heart.
It feels heavy to me - it makes a constant whir
which keeps me awake when I'm trying to get to sleep.
It has no heartbeat, only this constant whir.

Crocking the Way the Unfocused Photographs of Crooked Faces Do that Soil Our Coats

                             
Planet is seeing Yo La Tengo tonight in Ann Arbor (she is safely there - for those of you who tune in for Planet news - the car is good), Earthgirl and I and Hamster and Mr Alarum and Xtina see them a week from tonight at 930, I said last night at Thursday Night Pints., adding, !wOOt! Three more from the same session as above here. No, I don't hate KEXP, I said when K said I thought you hated KEXP after I showed her the above video. It's true, I said, they pissed me off over Beefheart and they play fedora-wearers' shit I don't want to hear, but I don't hate KEXP - El Toro's a Mocomofo ex-pat, we no doubt were at




                      
concerts together without knowing it in the early 80s, Zoom is a bud. We touched on the Brennan hearings, the obsolescence of the tug-of-war trope, of us, twelve-year-old golden retrievers with bad hips who whine at the bottom of steps. I said, drones are a soothing red herring, I mean, is there really anyone who doesn't believe Obama kills people all the time by various other means?

K asked about this shitty blog, I said I've got an idea for a lame-ass Star Trek allusion for my next post, I said I got a very Kind email yesterday morning, thank you very much. I was told I still have the rest of February and 2013 to meet the Proust requirement which would save me hundreds of dollars next year, I paid down the first January 2014 Thursday Night Pint's bill for motherfucking amber NyQuil last night. I mentioned an article on Marianne Moore to L, she's a major fan, the article serendipitously published in yesterday's ::wood s lot:: one day before Elizabeth Bishop's (born 102 years ago today) birthday, Bishop's birthday serendipitous in itself because what I said about X on Exene's birthday is true about Bishop re: the work aging badly to me - I blame me. D, you're missed, feel better. I'm afraid of Americans. This week in war. Fucking Christ, I just saw next week's Villager digital dinner will be SOTU sausage. The Moose. Police state. Idiocies. Pastor Sanctimonious on the holiness of drones. The transparency illusion. Visit to St. Elizabeths. Two ways to be wrong about the internet. Hollywood stars. My current and future hell. Bolano's five tips for short-story writing. Flowers in concrete. Badiou, for those of you who do. Incoming books. Mary Carr, I said when asked by L what I'm reading. Hejinian, Olson, nothing but poetry, I'm incapable of reading prose now. And tablet, asked K. Shit, I said, the fucking blog is tablet. Anthony's links of the week. One Art. Low: see Bishop and X. Feldman's Complete Works for Two Pianos (spotify needed). Apples and oranges. Oranges and Lemons. Stream the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.





SUICIDE OF A MODERATE DICTATOR

Elizabeth Bishop

This is a day when truths will out, perhaps;
leak from the dangling telephone earphones
sapping the festooned switchboards' strength;
fall from the windows, blow from off the sills,
—the vague, slight unremarkable contents
of emptying ash-trays; rub off on our fingers
like ink from the un-proof-read newspapers,
crocking the way the unfocused photographs
of crooked faces do that soil our coats,
our tropical-weight coats, like slapped-at moths.
                  
Today's a day when those who work
are idling. Those who played must work
and hurry, too, to get it done,
with little dignity or none.
The newspapers are sold; the kiosk shutters
crash down. But anyway, in the night
the headlines wrote themselves, see, on the streets
and sidewalks everywhere; a sediment's splashed
even to the first floors of apartment houses.
                    
This is a day that's beautiful as well,
and warm and clear. At seven o'clock I saw
the dogs being walked along the famous beach
as usual, in a shiny gray-green dawn,
leaving their paw prints draining in the wet.
The line of breakers was steady and the pinkish,
segmented rainbow steadily hung above it.
At eight two little boys were flying kites.

We’ll Dismiss the Event as a Glitch in Transmission

Fleabus! Cats as killers: In a report that scaled up local surveys and pilot studies to national dimensions, scientists from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that domestic cats in the United States — both the pet Fluffies that spend part of the day outdoors and the unnamed strays and ferals that never leave it — kill a median of 2.4 billion birds and 12.3 billion mammals a year, most of them native mammals like shrews, chipmunks and voles rather than introduced pests like the Norway rat. There is a full-on anti-cat war raging in my neighborhood, on the listserv I subscribe to, anti-catters have latched onto this article. I am remaining silent there, keeping an eye on our ferals for their safety. OK, I'm not going to do the whole XTC discography song by song here, at the time I proposed it it seemed like a worthy ritual, now seems a worthy ritual I can do in private with my earbuds. Weird, this not wanting to scream motherfucker in this post-inaugural cereal box shake, settling to bottom of box as my old reflexes finally crumble. Polanyi, for those of you who do. Liberty, feminism, equality. Capitalism. Slippery things. Bleggalgazing of a sort. The power of critical thinking. Unknown Brooklyn. Najar here, there? Musil, for those of you who do. Via Mark Woods, lots of Timothy Donnelly, who I haven't posted here in a couple of years, whose brilliant Cloud Corporation is below. Serendipitous to yesterday's post, Proust reviews Nyquil. Mantel's rules for writers. Jim has a playlist. Was reminded of Delta 5 yesterday. Rothko's Chapel in Rothko's Chapel.






THE CLOUD CORPORATION

Timothy Donnelly

1

The clouds part revealing a mythology of clouds

assembled in light of earliest birds, an originary

text over water over time, and that without which

the clouds part revealing an apology for clouds

implicit in the air where the clouds had been

recently witnessed rehearsing departure, a heartfelt phrase

in the push of the airborne drops and crystals

over water over time—how being made to think

oneself an obstruction between the observer

and the object or objects under surveillance or even

desired—or if I am felt to be beside the point

then I have wanted that, but to block a path is like

not being immaterial enough, or being too much

when all they want from you now is your station

cleared of its personal effects please and vanish—

not that they’d ever just come out and say it when

all that darting around of the eyes, all that shaky

camouflage of paper could only portend the beginning of the

end of your tenure at this organization, and remember

a capacity to draw meaning out of such seeming

accidence landed one here to begin with, didn’t it.

    

2

The clouds part revealing an anatomy of clouds

viewed from the midst of human speculation, a business

project undertaken in a bid to acquire and retain
                                                       

control of the formation and movement of clouds.

As late afternoons I have witnessed the distant

towers borrow luster from a bourbon sun, in-box

empty, surround sound on, all my money made

in lieu of conversation—where conversation indicates

the presence of desire in the parties to embark on

exchange of spirit, hours forzando with heartfelt phrase—

made metaphor for it, the face on the clock tower

bright as a meteor, as if a torch were held against

likelihood to illuminate the time so I could watch

the calm silent progress of its hands from the luxury

appointments of my office suite, the tumult below

or behind me out of mind, had not my whole attention

been riveted by the human figure stood upon

the tower’s topmost pinnacle, himself surveying

the clouds of the future parting in antiquity, a figure

not to be mistaken, tranquilly pacing a platform

with authority: the chief executive officer of clouds.

3

The clouds part revealing blueprints of the clouds

built in glass-front factories carved into cliff-faces

which, prior to the factories’ recent construction,

provided dorms for clans of hamadryas baboons,

a species revered in ancient Egypt as attendants

of Thoth, god of wisdom, science, and measurement.

Fans conveying clouds through aluminum ducts

can be heard from up to a mile away, depending on

air temperature, humidity, the absence or presence
   

of any competing sound, its origin and its character.

It is no more impossible to grasp the baboon’s

full significance in Egyptian religious symbolism
   

than it is to determine why clouds we manufacture

provoke in an audience more positive, lasting

response than do comparable clouds occurring in nature.
   

Even those who consider natural clouds products

of conscious manufacture seem to prefer that a merely

human mind lie behind the products they admire.
   

This development may be a form of self-exalting

or else another adaptation in order that we find

the hum of machinery comforting through darkness.

4

The clouds part revealing there’s no place left to sit

myself down except for a single wingback chair

backed into a corner to face the window in which
   

the clouds part revealing the insouciance of clouds

cavorting over the backs of the people in the field

who cut the ripened barley, who gather it in sheaves,
   

who beat grain from the sheaves with wooden flails,

who shake it loose from the scaly husk around it,

who throw the now threshed grain up into the gently
   

palm-fanned air whose steady current carries off

the chaff as the grain falls to the floor, who collect

the grain from the floor painstakingly to grind it
  

into flour, who bake the flour into loaves the priest will offer

in the sanctuary, its walls washed white like milk.

To perform it repeatedly, to perform it each time
  

as if the first, to walk the dim corridor believing that

the conference it leads to might change everything,

to adhere to a possibility of reward, of betterment,
  

of moving above, with effort, the condition into which

one has been born, to whom do I owe the pleasure

of the hum to which I have been listening too long.

5
    

The clouds part revealing the advocates of clouds,

believers in people, ideas and things, the workers

of the united fields of clouds, supporters of the wars
       

to keep clouds safe, the devotees of heartfelt phrase

and belief you can change with water over time.

It is the habit of a settled population to give ear to
    

whatever is desirable will come to pass, a caressing

confidence—but one unfortunately not borne out

by human experience, for most things people desire
      

have been desired ardently for thousands of years

and observe—they are no closer to realization today

than in Ramses’ time. Nor is there cause to believe
         

they will lose their coyness on some near tomorrow.

Attempts to speed them on have been undertaken

from the beginning; plans to force them overnight
            

are in copious, antagonistic operation today, and yet

they have thoroughly eluded us, and chances are

they will continue to elude us until the clouds part
          

in a flash of autonomous, ardent, local brainwork—

but when the clouds start to knit back together again,

we’ll dismiss the event as a glitch in transmission.

    

6
       

The clouds part revealing a congregation of bodies

united into one immaterial body, a fictive person

around whom the air is blurred with money, force
          

from which much harm will come, to whom my welfare

matters nothing. I sense without turning the light

from their wings, their eyes; they preen themselves
            

on the fire escape, the windowsill, their pink feet

vulnerable—a mistake to think of them that way.

If I turn around, the room might not be full of wings
           

capable of acting, in many respects, as a single being,

which is to say that I myself may be the source of

what I sense, but am no less powerless to change it.
          

Always around me, on my body, in my mouth, I fear them

and their love of money, everything I do without

thinking to help them make it. And if I am felt to be
          

beside the point, I have wanted that, to live apart

from what depends on killing me a little bit to keep

itself alive, and yet not happily, with all its needs
            

and comforts met, but fattened so far past that point

I am engrossed, and if I picture myself outside of it

it isn’t me anymore, but a parasite cast out, inviable. 

    

7
             

The clouds part revealing the distinction between

words without meaning and meaning without words,

a phenomenon of nature, the westbound field
            

of low air pressure developing over water over time

and warm, saturated air on the sea surface rising

steadily replaced by cold air from above, the cycle
              

repeating, the warm moving upward into massive

thunderclouds, the cold descending into the eye

around which bands of thunderclouds spiral, counter-
            

clockwise, often in the hundreds, the atmospheric

pressure dropping even further, making winds

accelerate, the clouds revolve, a confusion of energy,
          

an incomprehensible volume of rain—I remember

the trick of thinking through infinity, a crowd of eyes

against an asphalt wall, my vision of it scrolling
             

left as the crowd thinned out to a spatter and then

just black until I fall asleep and then just black again,

past marketing, past focus groups, past human
                       

resources, past management, past personal effects,

their insignificance evident in the eye of the dream

and through much of the debriefing I wake into next.

Full of the Same Wind

Full on XTC cascade, YAY! sparked by listening to Nonsuch on drive home from Ohio. Full album at bottom of post. Expect LOTS next week or so. A friend asks, Proust? I failed, will be buying amber Nyquil for TNPers all of 2014. Why I wanted a quieter mind is a larger question than why I thought I could achieve one. Another friend asks, Tablet? Maybe. Another friend asks, fucking blooger? YES! If anyone has any suggestions on how to make the Apply to Template button work, I'll buy you amber Nyquil all the rest of 2013 if you can fix it. Links: Police state. Capitalism. Capitalism. Capitalism. Priorities. The myth of justice. The coming collapse. Dirty Wars. Israel's Tuskegee. More here. Police state practice. One year ago. Why aren't you using these apps to track your death?




 
Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?  Writers on writers. I've never heard of Joseph Ceravalo. While I have failed Proust, I have not failed Olson, Maximus works. William Gass discusses Rilke. Everybody knows this is nowhere. On not like Wallace Steven's poetry. Pynchon and Ashbery. Prunella's latest playlist. Mr Alarum provides a Rainer Maria cascade: Rain Your Hand, Viva Anger, Viva Hate, Breakfast of Champions, Contents of Lincoln's Pockets, Make You Mine. FourTEEN. Gubaidulina.





THE SNOW MAN

Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. 

XTC's Nonsuch, what a great fucking album, listened for the first time in maybe a year between Friendsville all the way downhill to Hancock this past Sunday (and at least three times since, and HOLYFUCK! what an XTC cascade I'm only beginning to indulge, it's medicinal). Peter, above. My Bird Performs. Dear Madam Barnum. Humble Daisy.
    




Holly Up on Poppy. Crocodile. Rook. Omnibus. Not only is that one of my favorite songs in the world, there's an allusion - I insist on believing - to Yvonne Craig in the lyrics. Then She Appeared. War Dance. Wrapped in Grey. The Ugly Underneath. Bungalow.

He's a Clown Car with an Extra Car

United has changed it’s home game starting time from 7:30 to 7:00  except for start times dictated by TV contractual obligations, I ranted at Thursday Night Pints. Setting aside a lower case fuck you for TV contractual obligations, let me send out a FUCK YOU, UNITED! for the move to 7:00. I’ll be there, but I’ll need short something good in Saturday’s daylight I can’t reclaim at 9:10 in the dark, I’m in a parking lot in DC queueing to queue on the BW Parkway, I’ve lost three to six holes depending on difficulty of disc golf course, lost two miles of hiking, you fucks. You fucks, I added for emphasis. I bet you however many pints of stupid small glasses of nyquil you wager, the home kits will be red by time of fuck-me-jig (before the fuck-me-jig, the fuck-me-jig will never be ready), LOUD SIDE! will be in an endzone, they’re gonna cut the balls off the best part of the experience as soon as they fucking can. Does it beat not having a team of indifferent mediocre soccer-playing professionals? As always, fine fucking metaphors abound. L said, you've fallen behind on the Proust, haven't you. Yes, I said.





See, at this point I think blooger is deliberately fucking with people. Up until two days ago I couldn't change link colors in chrome, I had to go to firefox to change colors. Yesterday and today firefox wouldn't allow me to change link colors, I figured oh well, fuck blooger and all, back to bulletpoints. This morning I see an article on the Purple Line, I traditionally bright purple it, I try to in chrome, and I can now change link colors in chrome. I'd forgive blooger much if I knew they were fucking with me for giggles. Origins of neo-liberalism, part three. Daily motherfucking Obama. Are designations congruent with things? No dogs barking. His generation's greatest academic fraud. I say that admiringly still, just not with as much joy as once. Stop versus cease. Cyclorama to be destroyed. Anheuser-Busch to introduce two new crappy beers. Your 4/20 soccer match. For those relatively new to me, I've promised to do a Fuck-Me-Jig in front of my seat in a new soccer-specific stadium in the District, have a friend record it, and post the youtube, so little faith did I have (and still have) there will be a new SSS in the District when I made the offer six lifetimes ago. RIP Evan Connell. Prekop.  New Jim James song. I've long fallen out of love w/MMJ, but. Three hours of noise and syrup. Berio. Thanks, here's where today's cascade got sparked.






FOR THE MAN WITH THE ERECTION LASTING MORE THAN FOUR HOURS

John Hodgen

He's supposed to call his doctor, but for now he's the May King with his
     own Maypole.
He's hallelujah. He's glory hole. The world has more women than he can
     shake a stick
at. The world is his brickbat, no conscience to prick at, all of us Germans he can ich
lieber dich at. He's Dick and Jane. He's Citizen Kane. He's Bob Dole.
He's Peter the Great. He's a czar. He's a clown car with an extra car.
Funiculi, Funicula. He's an organ donor. He works pro boner. He's folderol.
He's fiddlesticks. He's the light left on at Motel 6. He's free-for-alls.
He's Viagra Falls. He's bangers and mash. He's balderdash. He's a wanker.
He's got his own anchor. He's whack-a-doodle. King Canoodle. He's a pirate,
     Long John
Silver, walking his own plank. He has science to thank. He's in like Flynn. He's
     Gunga Din,
holding his breath, cock of the walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
      He's Icarus,
hickory dickorous, the mouse run up the clock. He's shock and awe. He's Arkansas.
He's the package, the deal, the Good Housekeeping Seal. He's Johnson
     and Johnson.
He's a god now, the talk of the town. He's got no place to go but down.

I Saw a Juxtaposition, It Happened Between an Acrobat and a Sense of Obligation

  
Dinner last night with Planet and Hamster and Ilsa and Landru and SeatSix (Earthgirl obliged to be elsewhere), then fell asleep with Proust, only quick links today plus Bowie covers. Crow falls down. People rebooting or opening alternative joints is trending. See a blegrell on left. For me it's more fuck blooger than reformatting bleggalgazing. Taking it personally. Obama's rabbit holes. Not what you think but what you are. The origins of neo-liberalism, part one. New dependency theory. Capitalism. Three things. The imminent death of blogging predicted, except not. Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? Conjuring Weldon Kees. Kafka, for those of you who do. Krasznahorkai, for those of you who do. I like, a lot, but fuck, it's work. Letter already broadcast into space. How to be a critic. Yes, I know the new Ubu out today, thanks to all who've emailed and DMed and texted. Gonna get my ears on it before saying much more. The cover at bottom reminds me I haven't cascaded Superchuck here lately. I love Superchunk. Reactions to the new Bowie song. I didn't realize it was his first song in ten years, something for me to think about.





[I SAW A JUXTAPOSITION]

Lyn Hejinian

I saw a juxtaposition
It happened to be between an acrobat and a sense of obligation
Pure poetry
Of course there is a greater difference between and egg and a
     napping man

Keeping the Aberrant Periphery Worked Clear So the Central Current May Shift or Slow or Rouse Adjusting to the Necessary Dynamic

Here's more Radulescu as I promised. Didn't have chance to web-read yesterday - this is the busiest week of work of my year, what time I had to read I spent with Proust trying to get ahead of schedule. Here's another list of what novels are forthcoming in 2013: besides the Gass in March and the recently announced Pynchon some time this fall, there's a new Hemon (whose work I love), a new Vollmann (whose work I love), a new Coetzee (whose work I don't love, feel I should, will try to force myself to love and fail again - though I'll finish the novel), a new Stephen Dixon (whose work I don't love, feel I should...), a new Joseph McElroy (whose work I don't love, feel I should... and a new English translation of another Krasznahorkai (who I'm in negotiations with), all of which to say I hope to spend more time in books than online in 2013. I'm an aargh-addict and attention-slut, don't worry, there will be links, though just these today: on A.R. Ammons, whose Garbage I'm rereading constantly, and a St Louis Post Dispatch article on friend Frances' adventures in rural Missouri - background and more at her place. Re: Proust - it's working.




   

GARBAGE (Section 3)

A.R. Ammons

And Wow He Died as Wow He Lived, Going Whop to the Office and Blooie Home to Sleep and Biff Got Married and Bam Had Children and Oof Got Fired, Zowie Did He Live and Zowie Did He Die

Laziest-ass post ever. I cede to Fleabus reruns. No, can't let it go there. Had discussion over coffee yesterday afternoon with He Who Does Not Want to Be Named (though he owns that pseudonym), the obamaphile professor of a Discipline He Doesn't Want Me to Name at the University We Both Work at He Doesn't Want Me to Name. He is proud of Obama for the deal to avoid the Fiscal Cliff, proud that Obama supposedly intends to spend major political capital over the nomination of Chuck Hagel for War. I asked, Why do you think Obama chose the fight of nominating a Republican senator to run the Drone Corporation as rallying cause to energize the American Left? I'm too cynical, I'm told. I said, I have tried being less of a scold, not saying it's working. Shirking responsibility. Understanding Obama's strategies. Motherfucking New York Times. On that fucking NYT article. Obama versus physics. Magical surpluses. Happy 8th Blegday! I finished my Week One Proust assignment - it can be laugh-out loud funny. Bristol Road, Birmingham. Pynchon and decadence. Dutilleux Cello Concerto. Albums that are now 20 years old. Bowie's birthday is Tuesday, if you give a fuck-enough and want to hear a song, let me know.





  
DIRGE

Kenneth Fearing

1-2-3 was the number he played but today the number came 3-2-1;

   bought his Carbide at 30 and it went to 29; had the favorite at Bowie but the track was slow—

O, executive type, would you like to drive a floating power, knee-action, silk-upholstered six? Wed a Hollywood star? Shoot the course in 58? Draw to the ace, king, jack?

   O, fellow with a will who won't take no, watch out for three cigarettes on the same, single match; O democratic voter born in August under Mars, beware of liquidated rails—

Denouement to denouement, he took a personal pride in the certain, certain way he lived his own, private life,

   but nevertheless, they shut off his gas; nevertheless, the bank foreclosed; nevertheless, the landlord called; nevertheless, the radio broke,

And twelve o'clock arrived just once too often,

   just the same he wore one gray tweed suit, bought one straw hat, drank one straight Scotch, walked one short step, took one long look, drew one deep breath,

   just one too many,

And wow he died as wow he lived,

   going whop to the office and blooie home to sleep and biff got married and bam had children and oof got fired,

   zowie did he live and zowie did he die,

With who the hell are you at the corner of his casket, and where the hell we going on the right-hand silver knob, and who

the hell cares walking second from the end with an American Beauty wreath from why the hell not,

Very much missed by the circulation staff of the New York Evening Post; deeply, deeply mourned by the B.M.T.,

Wham, Mr. Roosevelt; pow, Sears Roebuck; awk, big dipper; bop, summer rain;

   Bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong, Mr., bong.