2011/08/22

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.



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My Daughter Cried Her Tears; I Held Some Ice Against Her Lip. That Was the End of It




She's there, we're here, incident free on the Turnpike. She woke up this morning, freaked a bit, she'll be fine. We woke up this morning, freaked a bit, we'll be fine.






The cuddle-slut orange cat of Middle Path. No collar, but sweet and well-fed.






Regular programming resumes tomorrow, though don't even imagine you've heard the last of this, but since these posts have driven away all who come here but you who know this and come back anyway, you know this. And thank you.

Also, I scored this excellent K hat. And the post's title from this.




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Kansas City 1, United 0



Didn't see it - was on the Turnpike. All I know is United wore for the last time this season and, if we're lucky and Lord Etcheverry blesses us, for THE LAST FUCKING TIME IN THE REMAINING EONS OF OUR UNIVERSE,  those FUCKAWFUL! red FUCKAWFUL! kits. Jeebusfuck, they're FUCKAWFUL!

Reading this, it sounds like St Benny sacrificed this game for the sake of the remaining season, which wouldn't bother me that much if St Benny hadn't sacrificed last Wednesday's game for the sake of this one.

Gah. Here, read this and this. More later if I see them. Or not.
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2011/08/21

Little Tooth




Easier and harder than I thought it would be so far. Everything we've done to make her strong and independent seems to be working. It would be melodramatic to say we're sad she's not more fraught - and the real goodbye is later today - but a bittersweet price of making her strong and independent is that she's strong and independent.






Parent orientation at 930 this morning, then brunch, then convocation - and it's pouring as I type this in a hotel room in Zanesville, the closest decent hotel room I could book, forty miles from campus, and it's supposed to pour all day. We meet her advisor at four, then goodbye goodbye (not goodbye goodnight), then a seven hour drive home, eight to nine if it's raining.

Gotta go. Something here tomorrow, regular programming probably Tuesday. As for the post's title, google it and *Thomas Lux.*



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2011/08/20

Waters Flow Past, Older, Younger Than He Is, or I Am



Seven hour drive, counting three rest and gas stops and a thunderstorm that freakily started on the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border and stopped at the West Virginia-Ohio border. Interstate 70, between New Stanton and the West Virginia line, is the narrowest, most poorly designed and engineered interstate I've ever driven, but the back roads in Ohio north of Zanesville were pretty, and with good weather and better planning, this can be an easy six hour drive.

Drove around campus, which is gorgeous, then tried to find something to eat in the nearby burg, and there's nothing: it's not a bad town, it's just a nothing town. What few local restaurants there are we don't know (and the woman who checked us in, when we asked, recommended nothing local - oh god no is what she said when asked about local restaurants, said stick with the chains, so we pulled into a Tuby Ruesdays at 830, starving, ordered, sat for 45 minutes, nothing. Earthgirl had ordered something which gave her salad bar and had eaten a plate. We asked the waiter to let us know how much the salad was, we're leaving, the manager came out, blessed us, told us the salad was free, apologized, busy, short-staffed, please come back. The experience wasn't a total waste: Earthgirl and Planet saw their first two sets of bumper nuts on pick-ups in the parking lot, and in the 45 minutes waiting for food that never arrived we tried to figure out which two in the restaurant owned the trucks. Lots of choices.

Six in the morning, I'm wide awake, others will sleep to nine, I can't turn the light on to read and I'm incapable of not posting (though I claim to be working on that) so have some links, a poem, two favorite songs posted too often, and this view out the window of a Omfortcay Inn in Some Town, Ohio. Also, apologies to greyhoos, who bore my anger at something blegsylvanian (no, not that, something else).













STRANGE BIRD

James Wright

Strange bird,
His song remains secret.
He worked too hard to read books.
He never heard how Sherwood Anderson
Got out of it, and fled to Chicago, furious to free himself   
From his hatred of factories.
My father toiled fifty years
At Hazel-Atlas Glass,
Caught among girders that smash the kneecaps
Of dumb honyaks.
Did he shudder with hatred in the cold shadow of grease?   
Maybe. But my brother and I do know
He came home as quiet as the evening.

He will be getting dark, soon,   
And loom through new snow.
I know his ghost will drift home
To the Ohio River, and sit down, alone,
Whittling a root.
He will say nothing.
The waters flow past, older, younger   
Than he is, or I am.



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2011/08/19

Dandle Us Once Too Often



Gonna be driving that Dodge Durango to Planet's abandonment and back. It's a "monster," said the rent-a-car guy when we picked it up an hour ago. Make sure you drive the speed limit and set the fuel/motor/thingee for economy or you'll get seven miles a gallon, he said. OK, sound advice, though doing the speed limit on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and then I-70 in Ohio - the most speed-trapped road I've ever driven - was the plan.

First emotional hurdle over, Planet saying goodbye to her grandparents, who generously picked up the tab for dinner. When they drive out to see her they can stop at the ancestral hometown of Republic rather than make the through drive. Next weekend I'm buying them a webcam and setting up skype on their computer. Thank you everyone for coming.

Tonight we stay together one last night - we're going to try and help Planet pick a proposed schedule; she must take an Art class re: scholarship, and I think she might as well get the Intro Psych out of the way - then tomorrow we move her into the dorm where she spends her first night after family affairs and distractions, and then Sunday morning there's a big family breakfast, after which we're told at ten by the school to go the fuck away.

Regular programming below opening bit today, photos and stuff tomorrow, Sunday, maybe Monday. I'm curious to see what shows up here Tuesday: I think it won't be the maudlin of this week, though I can't imagine it'll be a return of Look! Obama sucks! but Hey Look! Crackers! except I can, since that's what draws the pings.













PARENTS

William Meredith

What it must be like to be an angel

or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.



The last time we go to bed good,

they are there, lying about darkness.



They dandle us once too often,

these friends who become our enemies.



Suddenly one day, their juniors

are as old as we yearn to be.



They get wrinkles where it is better

smooth, odd coughs, and smells.



It is grotesque how they go on

loving us, we go on loving them



The effrontery, barely imaginable,

of having caused us.  And of how.



Their lives: surely

we can do better than that.



This goes on for a long time.  Everything

they do is wrong, and the worst thing,



they all do it, is to die,

taking with them the last explanation,



how we came out of the wet sea

or wherever they got us from,



taking the last link

of that chain with them.



Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,

to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.



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Chicago 1, United 1



Set aside it was Chicago's finishing not United's backline that prevented Chicago scoring four (and it was the worse game individually and collectively for Kitchen-Jakovic-McDonald-Woolard in a month), United lacks an attacking midfielder and a striker. Stephen King, whose name wasn't mentioned until the 67th minute, as quarterback? Charlie Davies, who's apparently been studying first touch techniques from Joseph Ngwenya, as target striker? It is no fucking coincidence United scored within three minutes of swapping Quaranta for King and Wolff for Davies, and Quaranta's out-of-position and not very good and Wolff is 137 in soccer years.

Benny. St Benny. Benny of the Firmament of My Personal Belief System, Stephen King? I understand Davies (or understood Davies - I won't any longer), but Stephen King? I cede your options are limited, especially if you want to play De Rossario at withdrawn, but Stephen King? Stephen King? What, Kurt Morsink not available?

Yes, flat. I expected Chicago to come out on, um, fire, the first game of a three game homestand that will determine their season, and I expected United's strategy would be absorb the first twenty minutes of pressure then energize once Chicago's first burst was spent, but United had nothing, so a fortunate point, just not a fun one.

Sunday night in Kansas City, when Quaranta and Wolff will start, not King and Davies, yes? with Louis Crayton in goal now that Bill Hamid crippled himself. Jeebus. Good news - it doesn't start until nine, and I should be home from abandoning my child in Ohio by then; better news - it's on Telemundo, and while I don't speak Spanish, I'm sure I'll glean more useful information from them than I did from Rob Stone and John Harkes, who made English language sounds for two hours last night but conveyed no meaning.
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2011/08/18

Black Sleeps, Gold Burns

Why don't you go back to school, asked D, talking about Planet's going to college at Thursday Night Pints, moved to Wednesday at my request. It's easy to say, I said, that I can't afford it. I've used up all my tuition benefits here. Even with the generous tuition benefits I get for Planet I couldn't afford Maryland w/in-state until Planet graduates from college. You've ins, said L, free tickets. Maybe, I said, but I don't think so. I don't know people or they know me like before, and more importantly, I don't want to, at least not now. Go back to school, said D. Go back to school, said L. Maybe I'll see if I can audit something in the Spring, I said, to remind myself how fat and out of shape I am academically, which at least changed the subject.

How's blogging, asked K. I remember why I never wanted to be class president, I said, and I got free pints not for that but because my friends are nice.

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






It's true! and (that photo of Chris Pontius makes me think of Amanda!) they play in Chicago tonight, a game I'll watch after we get home from Planet's farewell dinner with my parents, my brother SeatSix, Landru and Ilse, and hopefully this guy:







  • Daily Gaddis: - your friend Laughing Lazarus will be here in just a minute, but listen kids. Here's one real confidential question I want to ask you first, just between us. Do you have enough brothers and sisters? I know, you love your big brother or little Janey, don't you. But too many can spoil your chances. Look at it his way. When you have pie for dessert, how many ways does it have to be divided up? Do you get your share? If you have enough brothers and sisters, or even if you don't have any and don't want any, tell Mummy about Cuff. Cuff, the new wonder preventative. Cuff is guaranteed not to damage internal tissues of have lasting effects. But you don't have to remember all those long words, just tell Mummy to ask about Cuff next time she visits her friendly neighborhood druggist. Remember, Cuff. It's on the Cuff.

  • Buy a Micronesian island w/no extradition treaties with the U.S.

  • Odd days when my old trope of Micronesian islands not buying themselves becomes real.

  • On the above.

  • It does bear remembering that they will only bank and hold residency there, they will destroy the world before they'd live there.

  • Motherfucking christers.

  • The UK riots and the coming global war.

  • Moral covalence.

  • Obamadick and the Left. And get a load of this update: I should add that there are plenty of signs lately that the White House is gearing up to show the kind of fight the left is hoping to see. Sucker.

  • Robert Reich is profoundly stupid.

  • Bleggalgazing!

  • Bleggalgazing!

  • The Fugitive Guy. 

  • I'd root for any team to beat motherfucking Madrid.

  • White dwarf (not dorf).

  • This shitty blog's official Bleggalgazing Anthem:








NIGHT FEEDING

Muriel Rukesyer

Deeper than sleep but not so deep as death
I lay there dreaming and my magic head
remembered and forgot. On first cry I
remembered and forgot and did believe.
I knew love and I knew evil:
woke to the burning song and the tree burning blind,
despair of our days and the calm milk-giver who
knows sleep, knows growth, the sex of fire and grass,
renewal of all waters and the time of the stars
and the black snake with gold bones.
Black sleeps, gold burns; on second cry I woke
fully and gave to feed and fed on feeding.
Gold seed, green pain, my wizards in the earth
walked through the house, black in the morning dark.
Shadows grew in my veins, my bright belief,
my head of dreams deeper than night and sleep.
Voices of all black animals crying to drink,
cries of all birth arise, simple as we,
found in the leaves, in clouds and dark, in dream,
deep as this hour, ready again to sleep.





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2011/08/17

Amid the Stubble and the Stones, Amazed, a Small Worm Lisped to Me the Song of My Marrow-Bones

I was going to write that I'm not really as melodramatic in real life as I am as a pathetic pseudonymous yodeler onblog, but then I remembered the poem posted below, rediscovered looking for another like poem, so anti-SHAZAM! yo.

Also, busy, so I steal from my own comments: I'm dreading Planet away, but I'm not dreading the opportunities she will have at school or the opportunities we'll have with more time. Planet's freaking about being there, I'm freaking out, Earthgirl's freaking out, in two, three weeks, it'll still be weird but it will be fine.

Yes, I know melodrama is a coagulant, clotting doing anything unless everything can be accomplished. I'm working on it, and now I'll have more time.













END OF SUMMER

Stanley Kunitz

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.





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2011/08/16

Blew the Wiring Out from Behind His Headlights and Now, No Matter What, Can't Find the Knob to Turn Off the Show

What are we going to do when the rest of our lives begin this Sunday afternoon as we drive away from Planet's college? Go back to work Monday: we've four years of college and five more years of mortgage to pay for, plus all the complicit baggage that comes with the life. We'll be able to save some money with Planet away - her room is the dormer of our Cape Cod, we won't need to heat and cool it, plus the other costs of keeping a child in the house; the grocery bill will halve.

We've talked of taking yoga or pilates if the club we belong to offers it cheap, workout as much as reasonable on our middle-aged joints, hike lots on the weekends (maybe join PATC and do some volunteer trail work), maybe get bikes for trail riding. We'll be driving between Kensington and North Zanesville as much as Planet wants us, no doubt often early, less later. Me read and write, Earthgirl paint. Volunteer with some animal rescues, get a dog if our new timetables show we can exercise it right. I'd like to play disc again if my schedule and good weather ever collaborate on a weekend. More dinners with friends.

I can't envision myself ever disengaging from the grid. I'm so hopelessly complicit I can't imagine anyone anywhere not voluntarily complicit somehow,  though I daydream, if not of resistance yet, of a more actively conscious acknowledging of when and how and to whom I'm complicit, and then renegotiating with myself as to that particular complicity's need, and then renegotiating with whomever I contract with for new terms or no terms. I don't need to watch West Brom versus Wigan on Comcast on Saturdays, etc. Learn to forgive myself for not giving up everything so I don't end up doing nothing.

Serendipitously (if not coincidentally, given the days) both Archive Fire and What the TeeVee Taught posted yesterday on things I've been thinking about. Go read.

Meanwhile, Daily Gaddis:

 - It's about time you breathed some life into it, I suppose, Valentine said, dropping the thing on a chair by his coat. - It's become quite a dismal affair, a frightened little group who spend all their time criticizing each other's attempts in terms of cosmic proportions, and the defend each other against the outside world. Even the fiction, the stories they write about each other, they don't know anyone else. A sort of diary of dead souls.













GREEN SEES THINGS IN WAVES

August Kleinzahler

Green first thing each day sees waves—

the chair, armoire, overhead fixtures, you name it,

waves—which, you might say, things really are,

but Green just lies there awhile breathing

long slow breaths, in and out, through his mouth

like he was maybe seasick, until in an hour or so

the waves simmer down and then the trails and colors

off of things, that all quiets down as well and Green

starts to think of washing up, breakfast even

with everything still moving around, colors, trails,

and sounds, from the street and plumbing next door,

vibrating—of course you might say that's what

sound really is, after all, vibrations—but Green,

he's not thinking physics at this stage, nuh-uh,

our boy's only trying to get himself out of bed,

get a grip, but sometimes, and this is the kicker,

another party, shall we say, is in the room

with Green, and Green knows this other party

and they do not get along, which understates it

quite a bit, quite a bit, and Green knows

that this other cat is an hallucination, right,

but these two have a routine that goes way back

and Green starts hollering, throwing stuff

until he's all shook up, whole day gone to hell,

bummer . . .



                 Anyhow, the docs are having a look,

see if they can't dream up a cocktail,

but seems our boy ate quite a pile of acid one time,

clinical, wow, enough juice for half a block—

go go go, little Greenie—blew the wiring out

from behind his headlights and now, no matter what,

can't find the knob to turn off the show.



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2011/08/15

In Her Room at the Prow of the House Where Light Breaks, and the Windows Are Tossed with Linden, My Daughter Is Writing a Story

These are the strangest days of my life, and that's before this coming week, the strangest week ever, at the end of which I leave my daughter at college in Ohio. I've more to think about than I have to say, about everything mark and kayfabe, but especially this coming week and the milestone this coming Sunday which is not kayfabe, or what parts of it are are given lovingly without mark.

I'm incapable of not posting - and believe me, that's being not so much reevaluated as confronted before the reevaluation - so, expect what you expect, just more and less so, and maybe even more maudlin.













THE WRITER

Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house

Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,

My daughter is writing a story.



I pause in the stairwell, hearing

From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys

Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.



Young as she is, the stuff

Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:

I wish her a lucky passage.



But now it is she who pauses,

As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.

A stillness greatens, in which



The whole house seems to be thinking,

And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor

Of strokes, and again is silent.



I remember the dazed starling

Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;

How we stole in, lifted a sash



And retreated, not to affright it;

And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,

We watched the sleek, wild, dark



And iridescent creature

Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove

To the hard floor, or the desk-top,



And wait then, humped and bloody,

For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits

Rose when, suddenly sure,



It lifted off from a chair-back, 

Beating a smooth course for the right window

And clearing the sill of the world.



It is always a matter, my darling,

Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish

What I wished you before, but harder.



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2011/08/14

United 4, Vancouver 0




Yay! It'd been a long time not only since a home win like this. Bullets:

  • Yes, Charlie Davies dives, and if a defender could decapitate Davies with a scythe and Davies still not get the call, he's earned it, but what needs constant remarking is that when Davies is not diving, he's still not very good, and he's never been very good, just fast.

  • St Benny started Quaranta at top of midfield diamond, moving De Rossario to withdrawn forward, and once Tino got his mandatory brain-farting automatic over-kicks to nowhere out of the way, it worked. De Rossario serves best at the withdrawn, and for the moment Quaranta may be the best option in midfield.

  • Related: isn't tomorrow the close of the transfer window? No rumors floating.

  • Related: I wrote Goff last week asking about Boskovic, whether he'd be back this year and, more importantly, whether he was in United's long term plans, and he said no and maybe. He posted yesterday: United midfielder Branko Boskovic, who underwent ACL surgery in the spring, wasn’t expected to return this season, and the chances of him playing again in 2011 are slim. Nonetheless, Coach Ben Olsen told me that Boskovic is “not definitely” done for the year. “But it would be cutting it pretty close as far as getting his game fitness and mentality back.” I'd love to see how Boskovic and De Rossario would play together.

  • De Rossario wore the armband. De Rossario for Dax McCarty. Heh.

  • Both Najar and Pontius are wonderful with the ball on their feet, and this is the widest United team in recent memory. Both played hard defense last night (though Najar is a threat to land a red card at any time the way he petulantly lunges at attackers who beat him by a step).

  • Speaking of red cards, Jakovic should have got one for a punkass sneaky elbow to the back of a Vancouver head.

  • Attendance: 11,738 on Saturday after 11,684 last week. Yes, it’s the worst time of the season to sell tickets and the recent opponents haven’t driven sales, but United is having a hard time attracting fans to lovable/hateable RFK. After drawing 18,000, 26,000 and 18,000 in the first three home dates, United has seen crowds of 11K, 11K, 12K, 14K, 15K, 13K, 15K (on a Wednesday), 11K and 11K. One of the regulars implied he had inside information that Baltimore is not if but when, and most everyone agreed if Baltimore than partial, not full, season tickets. Gah.


Two road games this week, Thursday against a beatable Chicago (which I'll watch), Sunday against a decent Kansas City Wizards (which I won't watch, will be driving home from dropping Planet off at college, holyfuck)... wait, wait a minute, what the hell did Goff say? Playoffs? United is in good standing to end its three-year playoff absence. With the top three clubs in each conference assured of an automatic berth, United is just a point behind third-place New York and has played three fewer matches. Even without a top-three finish, if the season ended today, United would be among the four wild-card teams. Jeebusfuck, shut up.
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2011/08/13

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.













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.




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2011/08/12

A Little Purity to Sand the Rough Edges, a Slow Downpour from the Dark Ages, a Drizzle from the Pleistocene




Special guest T at Thursday Night Pints, good friend of L, was telling us of the vicious curriculum revision fight in X Dept of X University, how the faculty were breaking into utterly predictable factions. The young tenure-track professors - and the young star dept head - want to expand the width of the department, the tenured and full insist what's in place is fine, what's needed is depth. Each side has a firebrand, subordinate but enforcer, making threatening noises against possible defectors. Depth, snorted L, is code for the fat fucks reinforcing their status - remember the fights here, she said, once a fierce Width firebrand and enforcer. The world is full of revolutionaries, said D, smiling at L, most of whom could lead the NKVD but not the people, winning a Fuck You and last night's round of ridiculously priced scotch.












RAIN ON TIN

Rodney Jones

If I ever get over the bodies of women, I am going to think of the rain,
of waiting under the eaves of an old house
at that moment
when it takes a form like fog.
It makes the mountain vanish.
Then the smell of rain, which is the smell of the earth a plow turns up,
only condensed and refined.
Almost fifty years since thunder rolled
and the nerves woke like secret agents under the skin.
Brazil is where I wanted to live.
The border is not far from here.
Lonely and grateful would be my way to end,
and something for the pain please,
a little purity to sand the rough edges,
a slow downpour from the Dark Ages,
a drizzle from the Pleistocene.
As I dream of the rain’s long body,
I will eliminate from mind all the qualities that rain deletes
and then I will be primed to study rain’s power,
the first drops lightly hallowing,
but now and again a great gallop of the horse of rain
or an explosion of orange-green light.
A simple radiance, it requires no discipline.
Before I knew women, I knew the lonely pleasures of rain.
The mist and then the clearing.
I will listen where the lightning thrills the rooster up a willow,
and my whole life flowing
until I have no choice, only the rain,
and I step into it.



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2011/08/11

The Bogus Moon of Tenderness and Magic You Hold Out to Each Prisoner Like a Cup of Light




So, NPR, Rush Limbaugh, and magical thinking:

This is one way in which conservative journalism is actually far more sophisticated than mainstream news journalism. Conservative pundits, while usually slanting their account in highly partisan and often misleading terms, do a fairly good job of grasping and explaining the fact that the two parties fundamentally disagree on the causes of and solutions to the economic crisis and the long-term deficit. In this sense, a Rush Limbaugh listener may well be better informed about the causes of the impasse than listener of NPR or other mainstream organs. The former will have in his mind a wildly slanted version of the basic political landscape, while the latter's head will be filled with magical thinking.

Yay teams! Magical thinking? I'm watching the USMNT versus Mexico friendly, here's magical thinking: USMNT and Mexico will never win anything of importance, settling for automatic bids into World Cups and the occasional advance out of group play to lose in the round of sixteen, until CONCACAF and CONMEBOL merge, both club and country, making the Western Hemisphere equal to if not superior to UEFA!







All of us compete to be the biggest dick in this (and every) glory hole, dancing not as Corporate designed but as manipulated by Corporate which understands our design and markets Coke and Pepsi to keep us addicted to dancing on sugar water. Knowing I'm a cog doesn't make me not a cog; trying not to be a cog makes me a different kind of cog. Do you think it's an accident we scream the same things at each other with the assistance of Corporate's digital encouragement?






Daily Gaddis:

In the hall, where he stopped in the communal toilet, he was troubled again by the problem in arithmetic penciled on the wall there. Someone had multiplied 763 by 37, and got 38,321. He had checked it, idly, two years before; then carefully, at every sitting since. Who had made the mistake? Was it too late to find them and tell them? 10,000... what? Had this person gained it? or lost it? Was it too late? Stanley looked at his wrist watch. He walked out into the cold morning asking himself this rhetorical question: Can you start measuring a minute at any instant you wish?











HEAT

Denis Johnson

Here in the electric dusk your naked lover

tips the glass high and the ice cubes fall against her teeth.

It's beautiful Susan, her hair sticky with gin,

Our Lady of Wet Glass-Rings on the Album Cover,

streaming with hatred in the heat

as the record falls and the snake-band chords begin

to break like terrible news from the Rolling Stones,

and such a last light—full of spheres and zones.

August,

         you're just an erotic hallucination,

just so much feverishly produced kazoo music,

are you serious?—this large oven impersonating night,

this exhaustion mutilated to resemble passion,

the bogus moon of tenderness and magic

you hold out to each prisoner like a cup of light?



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2011/08/10

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).














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





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