The Hinterland, the Hinterland, We're Gonna Sail to the Hinterland. And It's Far Far, Far Far Far, Far Far Far Away Its a Far Far, Far Far Far Fa Da Da Da-Da Da

Three four.

My favorite Bowie song ever - people can vouch - easily one of my five most air-guitared songs ever.

Here is the 60+ song list for his RIP two years ago. Some even still work.

High Egoslavian Holy Day. Born 71 years ago today. Innermost circle MSADI5G.


 
 
Mongo requests (get your requests in, I'll try to post):


 
 
Charlie requests:

Holds the Record for Missing Fingers

• My aunt did give me a FitBit, I wore it for three days, felt disloyal to and cheating on this watch. All I wanted to do is see how the FitBit worked, I was curious. I am not convinced my watch forgives me, though it's kept faithful time.
• The increasing unfitness of Donald Trump.
• Reminder from Silber: I begin from the indisputable premise that anyone who wants to be President is insane or too close to insane to countenance. I've discussed this issue here, and I will have more to say about it soon. For the moment, I merely emphasize that I don't mean this fancifully, and I don't express the point in these terms simply to be colorful. I mean it literally and clinically: anyone who wants this degree of power is extraordinarily dangerous, primarily because he/she is fundamentally disconnected from the realities of life, suffering and death on the ground.
• Black Hole Sun God.
• Yodel again: watch what's done while folk freak at Trump breaking kayfabe.
• Working at Amy's Frozen Foods. At least I don't fall for the because they're vegetarian they're not corporate fuckers fairytale.
• Yodel again: motherfucking Democrats.
• UPDATE! via davidly:

• The Year Ahead: September 6: Congress passes a law requiring that all persons arrested in anti-war demonstrations must be sterilized. President Trump says it is “a huge law”. Congressional Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi votes for the law but declares that she has misgivings because there’s no provision for a right of appeal. 
• I am telling you three times we are being reprogramed, but I don't mention enough how easily our pitchforks tune to chaos.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Should the demise of the literary novel trouble us?
• Watches die on me, I don't die on watches. 
• UPDATE! Poem about boogers. 
• Poetry and meaning: Like Ruefle I also teach poetry for a living, so I guess I am also in the business of teaching my students not to know, and teaching them to understand how and why they cannot know, and to regard this as the “only true wisdom”, that is, to see not knowing as a crucial advancement of knowledge. It’s really the only kind of knowledge we were born with, and we spend our lives forgetting and remembering it.
• Fine metaphors abound.
• Charge of the league's brigades. I love davidly, you couldn't pay me to watch the NBA.
• Jim's desert hiking. 
• Mary Ruefle interview.

SENTIMENTAL EDUCATION

Mary Ruefle

Ann Galbraith
loves Barry Soyers.
 
Please pray for Lucius Fenn
who suffers greatly whilst shaking hands.
 
Bonny Polton
loves a pug named Cowl.
 
Please pray for Olina Korsk
who holds the record for missing fingers.
 
Leon Bendrix loves Odelia Jonson
who loves Kurt who loves Carlos who loves Paul.
 
Please pray for Cortland Filby
who handles a dead wasp, a conceit for his mother.
 
Harold loves looking at Londa's hair under the microscope.
Londa loves plaiting the mane of her pony.
 
Please pray for Fancy Dancer
who is troubled by the vibrissa in his nostrils.
  
Nadine St. Clair loves Ogden Smythe
who loves blowing his nose on postage stamps.
 
Please pray for William Shakespeare
who does not know how much we love him, miss him and think of him.
 
Yukiko Pearl loves the little bits of toffee
that fall to the floor when Jeffrey is done with his snack.
 
Please pray for the florist Marieko
who wraps roses in a paper cone then punches the wrong code.
 
Muriel Frame loves retelling the incident
that happened on the afternoon of November third.
  
Please pray for our teacher Ursula Twombly
who does not know the half of it.
  
By the radiator in a wooden chair
wearing woolen stockings sits a little girl
in a dunce's cap, a paper cone rolled to a point
and inverted on her hair; she's got her hands
in her lap and her head bowed down, her chin
is trembling with having been singled out like this
and she is sincere in her fervent wish to die.
 
Take it away and give it to the Tartars
who roll gloriously into battle.

  

Explain That You Live Between Two Great Darks

• Bernie Sumner turned 61 yesterday.
• Another post on my assisting Power surveil me: What capitalism realised in the neoliberal era, Han argues, is that it didn’t need to be tough, but seductive. This is what he calls smartpolitics. Instead of saying no, it says yes: instead of denying us with commandments, discipline and shortages, it seems to allow us to buy what we want when we want, become what we want and realise our dream of freedom. “Instead of forbidding and depriving it works through pleasing and fulfilling. Instead of making people compliant, it seeks to make them dependent.”
• My aunt gave me a FitBit for Giftmas. It bluetooths to my iPhone. I presume all the information the FitBit collects is stored in my iPhone's cloud for any who can to see.
• I had to ask for something - my aunt, who I love, does not accept "I don't want anything for Giftmas" as an answer to the question "what do you want." The day before she asked we'd been on a hike - the app on my phone said we hiked 6.7 miles, the same brand app on Earthgirl's phone said we'd hiked 8.2, the info on the hiking website said the hike was 7.4. I'd read somewhere that FitBit is an accurate pedometer. Wish I'd asked for bluetooth headphones.
• Every post but two a year tagged My Complicity.
• The telecom revolution is authoritarian.
• Mapping a world from Hell.
• When we are all there together.
• Checkmating. Life in the Trollocene.
• In the wee small hours of the morning.
• Remake / Remodel. I put the Roxy Music song there in comments, not approved yet as I type.
• It is true that once upon a time there was always a New Order song in my head. The song just below is without question one of half a dozen of my most air-guitared songs of my life. Not in my head all the time any longer, sweet still when yes.

THE CONTINUOUS LIFE

Mark Strand

What of the neighborhood homes awash

In a silver light, of children hunched in the bushes,

Watching the grown-ups for signs of surrender,

Signs that the irregular pleasures of moving

From day to day, of being adrift on the swell of duty,

Have run their course? O parents, confess

To your little ones the night is a long way off

And your taste for the mundane grows; tell them

Your worship of household chores has barely begun;

Describe the beauty of shovels and rakes, brooms and mops;

Say there will always be cooking and cleaning to do,

That one thing leads to another, which leads to another;

Explain that you live between two great darks, the first

With an ending, the second without one, that the luckiest

Thing is having been born, that you live in a blur

Of hours and days, months and years, and believe 

It has meaning, despite the occasional fear

You are slipping away with nothing completed, nothing

To prove you existed. Tell the children to come inside,

That your search goes on for something you lost—a name,

A family album that fell from its own small matter

Into another, a piece of the dark that might have been yours,

You don't really know. Say that each of you tries 

To keep busy, learning to lean down close and hear

The careless breathing of earth and feel its available

Languor come over you, wave after wave, sending

Small tremors of love through your brief, 

Undeniable selves, into your days, and beyond. 

Didn't the Flowers' Restoration Cat Fugue Keep Spilling?

• I suspect the winter hurricane won't destroy New England but will kill enough homeless to make a news cycle, possibly 24 hours, probably not, twelve, three.
• I started a list today of each of 2018's days' kaboomiest kaboom - people yesterday honking at Trump: The World's Best Air Traffic Controller, for instance. 
• Wait! Last evening Trump invited the nine countries that supported Trump against condemnation for naming Jerusalem sole Israeli capital to a sleepover.
• Wait! Then he tweeted: North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un just stated that the “Nuclear Button is on his desk at all times.” Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!
• Wait! then he tweeted: I will be announcing THE MOST DISHONEST & CORRUPT MEDIA AWARDS OF THE YEAR on Monday at 5:00 o’clock. Subjects will cover Dishonesty & Bad Reporting in various categories from the Fake News Media. Stay tuned!
• I understand Trump serves at Fuckers' pleasure and Trump be gold to Fuckers so far, I'm starting to wonder if Fuckers' succession plan has been activated.
• Go full WATCH OUT! HE'S NUTS! DON'T MAKE HIM ANGRY! GIVE HIM WHAT HE WANTS! pillaging what's still salvageable, meting out Fucker justice - we don't need it, you just can't have it - while planning the eventual coronation - Fuckers (capitalism an apocalyptic suicide cult) gonna ride Trump as far as they can - of
• Our Savior, Mike Pence, and kayfabe's restoration (and the midterm GOP indigestion that's part of the succession plan).
• Cause that's what I'd do if I were them.
• UPDATE! 1/3/18, 20:17 EST: those tweets? old news, farts in a bathtub.
• I am telling you three times: we've always been programmed this way.

PEOPLE BEHAVING BADLY A CONCERN

John Ashbery

Aggressive panhandling, public urination, verbal threats,

public nudity and violation of the open container law

followed us down the days, for why

are we here much longer,

or even this long? I ask you

to be civil and not interrupt night’s business.

   

It was fun getting used to you,

who couldn’t have been more nicer.

This was as modern as it had ever been.

They were influenced by him: some dirty magazine

on the air tonight. (Amid the chaos, reports of survivors.)

   

Didn’t the flowers’ restoration cat fugue keep spilling,

and like that? It wouldn’t be the first time, either.

The pro-taffeta get up and laugh,

investigate or communicate. The night you were

going to stay up late, others will kiss,

and he talks about you, and I don’t know what.

Come in, anyway,

and don’t lack for tales of the Assertion.

   

We’re talking civilian unrest.

Yes, well, maybe you should take one.

   

(Do not bite or chew.)