Richard Ramirez Died of Natural Causes I Watched the Film The Song Remains the Same I Can't Live Without My Mother's Love

  
New Sun Kil Moon. Have I ever mentioned I love Sun Kil Moon? Click tag for more.





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Streaky and Massed

• Bodah played that Hey Colossus song last night. I know I've played it before, often, will play it again. I like it.
• Jesusfuck, scroll down this link, see, listen to Mark Kozelek TILT! my universe by singing a traditional and crappy Giftmas song (and promising a whole album of them next year).
• UPDATE! I am asked to explain - Mark Kozelek, main force behind Red House Painters, puts out solo albums as Sun Kil Moon, is one of my favorite musicians. His songs have been a constant on this shitty blog since day one. You can see the Sun Kil Moon tag below. It's disconcerting, to put it most politely, to hear a Sun Kil Moon version of a shitty Giftmas carol.
• The culture, or: there is no money, another thing I used to constantly yodel but don't seem to anymore.
• Power is its own reward.
• Another once regularly recurring gag I no longer daily bump is: Your overlords, no matter how big a pipe dream it may be today, are planning (using money that isn't there) for the day you are no longer necessary.
• The Financial Crisis: why no prosecutions, or: the deliberate creation of ever more complex arguments of duh.
• Despicable human scum.
• Thought for the day.
• All of songs today either lifted directly or inspired by Bodah's show last night.

• Metro 2040!
• Drive this everyday. The issue wasn't the traffic calming, the issue was the weird lane shift at Calvert heading downhill that constantly caused accidents.
• My soccer team is about to sign Eddie Johnson. Eddie and Benny: what could possibly go wrong?
• Dentistry for the deceased.
• I had no idea JJ Cale wrote so many songs that I viscerally dislike.
• It occurs to me I'd have skipped the above snark - though it's true - had Mark Kozelek not TILTED! my universe by singing falsetto a crappy Giftmas song and promising a whole album of them next year. 
• I never got Neutral Milk Hotel, I've never minded Neutral Milk Hotel when I hear them I'll just never put them on myself, I have friends who like Neutral Milk Hotel, there's a list of gigs on their reunion tour if you've interest.
• Nirvana, Kiss, Peter Gabriel.
• A corner of paradise. If you give a damn, tell me, would you prefer I provide a sort of explanatory caption to these links? I generally try to use the title of the post given by its author, but would you be more likely to click on this bullet's link if I typed afterward something like A Corner of Paradise: on poetry and photography, with gorgeous poetry and photography? Cause the clusterfuck links are usually self-explanatory, it's the non-clusterfuck links I worry I might be under-selling.
• The Speed of Darkness. 
• Or rather, The Speed of Darkness, a Muriel Rukeyser poem.
• I've bought myself a good set of headphones for Earthgirl to give me for Giftmas, it's my present to her too. I can't stand listening to what I'm listening to these days on earbuds, she can't stand listening to what I'm listening to when we're sitting around weekend mornings drinking coffee.
• Yes, I've posted the Lisa Robertson poem before. I like it.

MONDAY

Lisa Robertson

First all belief is paradise. So pliable a medium. A time not very long. A transparency caused. A conveyance of rupture. A subtle transport. Scant and rare. Deep in the opulent morning, blissful regions, hard and slender. Scarce and scant. Quotidian and temperate. Begin afresh in the realms of the atmosphere, that encompasses the solid earth, the terraqueous globe that soars and sings, elevated and flimsy. Bright and hot. Flesh and hue. Our skies are inventions, durations, discoveries, quotas, forgeries, fine and grand. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Heavenly and bright. The day pours out space, a light red roominess, bright and fresh. Bright and oft. Bright and fresh. Sparkling and wet. Clamour and tint. We range the spacious fields, a battlement trick and fast. Bright and silver. Ribbons and failings. To and fro. Fine and grand. The sky is complicated and flawed and we’re up there in it, floating near the apricot frill, the bias swoop, near the sullen bloated part that dissolves to silver the next instant bronze but nothing that meaningful, a breach of greeny-blue, a syllable, we’re all across the swathe of fleece laid out, the fraying rope, the copper beech behind the aluminum catalpa that has saved the entire spring for this flight, the tops of these a part of the sky, the light wind flipping up the white undersides of leaves, heaven afresh, the brushed part behind, the tumbling. So to the heavenly rustling. Just stiff with ambition we range the spacious trees in earnest desire sure and dear. Brisk and west. Streaky and massed. Changing and appearing. First and last. This was made from Europe, formed from Europe, rant and roar. Fine and grand. Fresh and bright. Crested and turbid. Silver and bright. This was spoken as it came to us, to celebrate and tint, distinct and designed. Sure and dear. Fully designed. Dear afresh. So free to the showing. What we praise we believe, we fully believe. Very fine. Belief thin and pure and clear to the title. Very beautiful. Belief lovely and elegant and fair for the footing. Very brisk. Belief lively and quick and strong by the bursting. Very bright. Belief clear and witty and famous in impulse. Very stormy. Belief violent and open and raging from privation. Very fine. Belief intransigent after pursuit. Very hot. Belief lustful and eager and curious before beauty.Very bright. Belief intending afresh. So calmly and clearly. Just stiff with leaf sure and dear and appearing and last. With lust clear and scarce and appearing and last and afresh.  

The Scrimmage of Appetite Everywhere

• Well, I knew today was going to have a Sun Kil Moon cascade because Serendipitously a new song yesterday, because Serendipitously I always resort to Sun Kil Moon cascades at kaboom clusterfucks.
• Propaganda.
• Oiling the propagandists.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Dystopian secrecy.
• Capitalism in a surveillance state.
• Bless the ACLU.
• In praise of mess, chaos, panic.
• A-n-a-r-c-h-y.
• Al Franken, motherfucking load.
• Josh Marshall, motherfucking load.
• A profound lack of imagination.
• The vain media cynics of the NSA story.
• David Brooks and the mind of Edward Snowden.
• David Brooks, the last Stalinist.
• Let the character assassinations begin.
• Confronting Edward Snowden's comments on Bradley Manning.
• Charley reminds you: When you call a friend on the phone, you're calling every friend they have ever called too.
• Oh yeah, drones.

• For the record, I've no idea what Edward Snowden's motives were, so without knowing his motives I can't unreservedly call him a hero though I can say I'm pleased he did it, not because it will slow the advance of the surveillance state (I keep yodeling, whoever, whatever, whyever this now, this is a MAJOR PLUS for the surveillance state for all the short-term pain-in-the-ass Snowden may or not cause panopticon operators), but because it reveals the motherfucking loads I was stupid enough once to think smart and .06% less-motherfuckeringly loadish, because it flash-gauges everyone's current state of loadishness.
• Let me hasten to add: this is always about my complicit loadishness, my fascination with these solipsistic watersheds, he types into his blogger edit page and pushes Publish.
• For instance, me and Planet and Ari and Hamster and Laudru and Ilse and DataBoy and Whispers (?) are going to Germanboyds tonight to watch a US Open Cup game between my sucky soccer team and Chester. Despite my dire concerns over the surveillance state, I will use a debit card to purchase gas that can be tracked, will drive on MOCO roads that are fully videoed at stop lights, and during the game a Park Police cruiser will record all the license plate numbers of cars parked at SoccerPlex. It'll be a blast, and there will be Stanchion Porn on Thursday.
• Gaddis, for those of you who do.
• Cover of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge, out in three months.
• Life story.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Today's David Thomas song, one song at least a day through June, Thomas' birthday the day after tomorrow people, REQUESTS PLEASE, or not. This one you'll hear at least twice this month, probably more:

THE HEAVY BEAR THAT GOES WITH ME

Delmore Schwarz

The heavy bear who goes with me,   

A manifold honey to smear his face,   

Clumsy and lumbering here and there,   

The central ton of every place,   

The hungry beating brutish one   

In love with candy, anger, and sleep,   

Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,   

Climbs the building, kicks the football,   

Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,   

That heavy bear who sleeps with me,   

Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,   

A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,   

Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope   

Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.   

—The strutting show-off is terrified,   

Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,   

Trembles to think that his quivering meat   

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,

Has followed me since the black womb held,   

Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,   

A caricature, a swollen shadow,

A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,   

Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,   

The secret life of belly and bone,

Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,   

Stretches to embrace the very dear

With whom I would walk without him near,   

Touches her grossly, although a word

Would bare my heart and make me clear,   

Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed   

Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,   

Amid the hundred million of his kind,   

The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

Behind These Eyes a Desert Spirit

Will Oldham covers Jason Molina:





Mark Kozelek covers Jason Molina:




Info on tribute album here. Hat tip Stephen Mitchelmore via twitter.

The Clerk on Crutches Who Pauses Before His Building to Watch the Mechanic Lose Three Dollars at Blackjack

There's Big-C, former colleague, current friend and DCUer, admitting on Jeopardy last night that he was a bed-wetter. I hope to hear how he came to the decision (or was urged to the decision) to discuss his bed-wetting versus other awkward interview subjects a week from tonight at United's home opener. He came in second, losing by $3. He fell below zero early in Double Jeopardy and rallied to take the lead, got the last question in the round which was a Daily Double, he fucked up, bet more than would have assured him the lead going into Final Jeopardy, missed the Daily Double, and when both he and the returning champion answered a ridiculously easy Final Jeopardy question, three bucks short. Still, more than $20K before taxes.

UPDATE! Big-C writes: The most frequent question I've been asked -- not surprisingly -- has to do with my conversation with Mr. Trebek. When I was called to be on the show, I was sent a lengthy questionnaire/release form, and I gave them 9 or 10 general 'topics of conversation' or specific stories...if you're a repeat champion they've got to have lots of material for Alex to use. When I got to the studio for my taping, they had whittled those stories down to three -- my first date with Anna, a parasailing mishap in Mexico, and "The Bedwetter". A writer sat down with me to talk over the story lines, and he quickly discarded the first date story ("bor-ing!"). The parasailing story had some potential, but he thought the bedwetting story had some potential for laughs...as long as I was OK with talking about it to 9 million people. I'm a team player AND a fan of off-color, self deprecating anecdotes, and the rest is Jeopardy history. (BTW, I no longer wet the bed, in case you were wondering...the Wee-Alert 2000 worked like a charm!)
     
 



       

• The last link in this chain, with it's title, triggered a Sun Kil Moon cascade. It's a good thing.
• Oracle.
• Neo-liberalism and the arrogance of ignorance.
• The dangerous logic of the Bradley Manning case.
• It stuns me that smart people still see Obama as innocent.
• I want to ask again: Does anyone not think is wasn't an accident Obama arranged Presidential friend-of-the-court brief in half-assed (half-assed, yo) support of gay marriage so that that headline would appear on the same day as Day of Sequester?
• Obama and GOP's shared vision.
• More stuff you already know.
• Sean Wilentz has always been an asshole.
• War, theater, performance.
• Persistence.
• Dietles! Used to shoot pool there before smoking was banned in MOCO, once smoking was banned the pool people stopped going to Dietles.
• Another attempt at rescue.
• Yes L, as promised, against the futility of posting on Saturdays and Sundays. I blame Big-C's bed-wetting, my inability to not hector people with screams of Motherfucking Obama.
• My invisible sea.
• Searching Poetry and Poets, there is only one poem with the word jeopardy in their databases, and that an excerpt from a Christopher Smart poem.
• I post this excerpt from the same poem at least once a year here for obvious reasons.
• Red licorice.
• Ten things about Notes from Underground. It's been fifteen years since I last read Dostoyevsky (Devils), grabbed a copy of Notes, a 2009 translation by someone named Boris Jakim (the library's copy of the Peyear/Volokhonsky highlighted and underlined to shit) in latest attempt to break reading slump.
• Cities of ashes.

LAKE COMO 

Nicholas Christopher

The searchlight of a February moon

at the end of the street

bare trees black railing

an eastern star set like a pearl atop a steeple

that shadows the doorway

where the one-armed card shark squats

shuffling his deck on a milk crate

waiting for the No. 6 bus to discharge

the off-duty cop the seamstress

the drunken mechanic and the clerk on crutches

who pauses before his building to watch

the mechanic lose three dollars at blackjack

and then stiffly ascends the five flights

to his two rooms on a shaftway

hanging his coat on a hook

and sitting down at the table

on which this morning he placed

a soup bowl and spoon

a tin of crackers and the crossword

puzzle he had been laboring over

beneath the gaze of his late wife

her color photograph propped up in a small frame

a young woman in a boxy dress and felt cap

waving shyly by the edge of a lake

where over her shoulder beneath a clear sky

a sailboat rides the wind

passengers on the polished deck

gazing at the glowing mountain peaks

the cypresses lining the shore

and the pink palazzi with ancient gardens

these men and women in white

who seem to live upon the water

gliding among themselves oblivious to strife

and all else that wears a body down

some sipping from crystal goblets

others just drinking in the light