Currents Worry Themselves Coiled

• Woke up with that in my head. So, string quartets today.
• My apologies, I by no means meant to suggest that I would, or you should, regardless even if you think it the yummiest sandwich ever, eat at Chik-Fil-A and give the motherfucking christercrackerpig (and by no means did I mean to suggest the motherfucking christercrackerpig isn't a motherfucking christercrackerpig) money to motherfucking christercrackerpig front groups. What I was suggesting: I mentioned Uncle, my favorite person at hilltop, a conservative economist and an academic department Cold War vet, and when he gives me shit it's about a Rahm Emanuel not only censoring speech but suggesting legislating against speech Rahm Emanuel doesn't like. I know visa versa. So here's my problem: playing the visa versa.
• Now, whether or not local governments can deny licenses to Chik-fil-A based on their business practices (as opposed to thought crimes) is another and far more complicated issue.
• Why is McDonalds in my twitter timeline promoting its crap as Food of Olympians? Rhetorical question, that.
• But don't forget: on America's descent to Britaingreeceserbia, on the matter of your future catfood allowance measured against the Empire's estimate of your minimal caloric sustenance needs versus your usefulness to the Empire, our Overlords, regardless of which tribe they play for, are in complete agreement.
• Alternatives don't exist.
• Obama the pioneer.
• Police state.
• YMOBMC.
• YMOBMC.
• Landru and Ilse. after their visits to each other's in-laws stopped in Asheville, visited the Biltmore, the Vanderbilts' monument to themselves. Earthgirl, Planet and I visited seven years ago (I had just bought my Matrix, it's a 2005) on our way home from the Smokies, we, like hundreds of thousands of peasants, paid money to see a robber baron's family honor the legacy of their family's robber baroncy. Capitalism, bitches.
• Figures with meat.
• Another book from his generation's greatest academic fraud - I say that admiringly.
• Grammar of the real.
• So, the aargh: it's eased in four of five places, in the fifth it hasn't so much eased as been resigned: I won't go into details here (though up the road, who knows), but my MiL received her death sentence, three to six months. Both a good and sad thing. She and I reached an armistice a decade ago. We like and respect each other begrudgingly. Gonna be tough on Earthgirl. 
• I've always wanted to suspend my native English fluency for five minutes to hear what English sounds like to a non-English speaker.
• I didn't listen to Payne and Olsen on Kojoshow, because what the fuck else is Payne going to say.
• Home game tonight. I'd like multiple primal screams at multiple beautiful goals, please. 
• Why cats are better than people. When I said it was both a good and sad think, I was of course thinking about my MiL when we needed to euthanize Sarah. What is quality of life worth?
• The painter dreaming in the scholar's house.
• I'd forgot about This Heat.

IN MEMORIAM MAE NOBLITT

A.R. Ammons

This is just a place:
we go around, distanced,
yearly in a star’s

atmosphere, turning
daily into and out of
direct light and

slanting through the
quadrant seasons: deep
space begins at our

heels, nearly rousing
us loose: we look up
or out so high, sight’s

silk almost draws us away:
this is just a place:
currents worry themselves

coiled and free in airs
and oceans: water picks
up mineral shadow and

plasm into billions of
designs, frames: trees,
grains, bacteria: but

is love a reality we
made here ourselves—
and grief—did we design

that—or do these,
like currents, whine
in and out among us merely

as we arrive and go:
this is just a place:
the reality we agree with,

that agrees with us,
outbounding this, arrives
to touch, joining with

us from far away:
our home which defines
us is elsewhere but not

so far away we have
forgotten it:
this is just a place.

Sarah

A great cat. Rest in peace.

The Hand That Puts Fish on the Saucer Has Changed, Too

That's Jess, who I never write about. She's younger than Sarah, older than Fleabus, eight, nine maybe? She's smart but bitter, resents Sarah and Fleabus and Stanley and Rose and Napoleon, torments Sarah since Sarah's old and is the only cat that can't kick Jess' ass. She doesn't meow or purr, she gacks and hisses. She walked up to me last night while I was reading and, for the first time ever, or at least since the last time that I've forgotten, made a please love me sound. You may or not have noticed, but I am making a conscious effort to be more tolerant towards all and everything that always piss me off, it's pissing people off; I'm not going to do the research, but I bet I say motherfucking crackers much less recently than I used to when I used to say it repeatedly every day. I picked her up, put her in my lap, rubbed her ears, she has beautiful green eyes. Stanley jumped on the sofa next to us, Jess hissed, ripped open a two inch gash in my right thigh leaping away.  

Here's Napoleon this morning in our dogwood tree.

• The first ad: who are the Nazis now?
• I am an Al-Q enabler!
• Obama's SOTU, authoritarian followership, civil society, part two.
• Obama, pragmatic hypocrite, I'm sure we'll be told.
• Vladimir Obama.
• Delusional psychopath deep in denial about criminal past. (That sentence from someone tweeting from New Left Project.)
• I swear to Baal, this is an actual headline on YFWP web as I type this: Romney Tries to Fend Off Santorum Surge as Three States Hold Contests.
• I confess, I'm still small enough to smile when Karl Rove gets pissy.
• Silk skin paws hang by both feet.
• If I'd known Madonna's halftime show would be a satanic ritual I might have watched.
• David Hockney's road home.
• This is true: I walk by a new book cart this morning, see a novel called Vaclav & Lena, three minutes later see this post of Biblioklept, went and grabbed the book.
• Here's 35 minutes of live PJ Harvey:

CAT IN AN EMPTY APARTMENT

Wislawa Szymborska
Translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh

Die - you can't do that to a cat.
Since what can a cat do
in an empty apartment?
Climb the walls?
Rub up against the furniture?
Nothing seems different here,
but nothing is the same.
Nothing has been moved,
but there's more space.
And at nighttime no lamps are lit.

Footsteps on the staircase,
but they're new ones.
The hand that puts fish on the saucer
has changed, too.

Something doesn't start
as it's usual time.
Something doesn't happen
as it should.
Someone was always, always here,
then suddenly disappeared
and stubbornly stays disappeared.

Every closet has been examined.
Every shelf has been explored.
Excavations under the carpet turned up nothing.
A commandment was even broken:
papers scattered everywhere.
What remains to be done.
Just sleep and wait.

Just wait till he turns up,
just let him show his face.
Will he ever get a lesson
on what not to do to a cat.
Sidle towards him
as if unwilling
and ever so slow
on visibly offended paws,
and now leaps or squeals at least to start.

The Inevitable Gap Tragic

Consider this article about Corporate soccer as good a summary of why there's no reversal to the clusterfuck our puny species would design, much less implement.

That's Sarah, our oldest cat, once a wonder cat, who after four years of extraordinary sulking by extraordinarily petulant cat standards because of guess who and her idiot idolator has decided to fight for attention by almost wonder catting again - and talking, even now and then singing again - and wonderful. Not her last appearance.

• Global cannibalism.
• Undoing a century of reforms.
• Sermon to the sharks. 
• The geography of injustice.
• Distant sound of churning. (h/t)
• Flag Day.
• Sharia.
• Shithead and tyrant and inept asshole.
• Police state.
• Kafka's America.
• Don't know much about history.
• Mission accomplished.
• Matter of time.
• I ruined the economy and all I got were tax cuts.
• Ooga Booga.
• No, fuck you.
• Weenie roast.
• Feminism 101.
• On the above, and more.
• Frank passes on Weiner. 
• FMFML!
• Do we need to describe neighborhoods negatively?
• Big news in Kensington!
• If Obama wants to do something useful, he should ban Kasper Payne from traveling to Latin and South America.
• Huh?
• King Blame.
• Lots of Gravity's Rainbow quotes (plus other stuff!)!
• 100 greatest non-fiction books?
• The Clash in Manchester, 1977.
• This week's new releases, full album streams.
• Harry Nilsson was born 70 years ago today.
• Woke up with this in my head. Be in yours.

CATASTROPHE THEORY III

Mary Jo Bang

Now we sit and play with a tiny toy
elephant that travels a taut string.
Now we are used and use in turn
each other. Our hats unravel
and that in itself is tragic.
To be lost. To have lost. Verbs

like veritable engines pulling the train
of thought forward. The hat is over-
turned and out comes a rabbit. Out comes a man
with a monocle. Out comes a Kaiser.
Yikes, it's history, that ceiling
comprised of recessed squares, each leg a lifeline,

each lie a wife's leg. A pulled velvet cord
rings a bell and everyone comes running
to watch while a year plummets
into the countdown of an open mouth. A loop of razor wire
closes around the circumference of a shaken globe
of snow. Yellowed newsprint with its watery text,

a latticework of shadow thrown
onto the clear screen of the prison wall.
From a mere idea comes the twine
that gives totality its name. What is a theory
but a tentacle reaching for a wafer of reason.
The inevitable gap tragic. Sure, tragic.