I Have These Minutes, All These Chances to Fail, I Must Be Many Lightbulbs

Serendipity and laziness, I was gonna whack at wikileaks and my complicity again, but no thanks, I'll just let Drebin capture the zeitgeist.

• UPDATE! Telling the truth.
• Who's next? I wonder what Assange spends on bodyguards and security.
• UPDATE! If this be treason.
• Leaking venom. 
• UPDATE! American legal logic and treason.
• Order and coercion.
• UPDATE! Rude awakening.
• No way, José. 
• UPDATE! In defense of Wikileaks: The careerists scattered about the world in America's intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America's unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.
• Why the sudden urge for civility? 
• UPDATE! Assclown or fuckstick? Does it matter?
• A question of eternal and immutable principle.
• In which James Fallows becomes a Conservative.
• UPDATE! Will Krugman ever have his obamapostasy?
• Working together.
• Book Snob's 100 (what I've read in blue):

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

=8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

=8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens

11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy

13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis

34 Emma Jane Austen

35 Persuasion Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières

39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne

41 Animal Farm George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving

45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies William Golding

50 Atonement Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi Yann Martel
52 Dune Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck

62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens

72 Dracula Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks

94 Watership Down Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo

• Most read for school, especially the 19th century and kids-lit. 
• I was telling a friend yesterday that I can't read anything now (I got to page 50 of The Man in the High Castle and can't read another page; I got to page 100 of Molloy and...) but poetry now. Which is not a bad thing, just interesting.
• UPDATE! Maybe it's time I reread Ishiguro again.
• On reading.
• On reading.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Poetry anxiety.
• UPDATE! NME's top albums of 2010.
• Coma summer.

THE CUNNING OPTIMISM OF LANGUAGE

Bob Hicok

She made me Overlord of the Sewers.
It was a quiet ceremony before bed, consisting of,
you are Overlord of the Sewers. I'm unsure
what my powers are, though clearly absolute,
I thought as we kissed good night. Waking
in this state, I found coffee tasted the same.
I've left a note to my underlings: make
everything better. I'm particularly curious
about raisin bread. How can raisin bread
be improved? Not the cheap shit
but the good stuff. This is love, I tell you,
the random bestowal of a title. Anything else
is fraudulent. Now you have something, sort of
like a tag, by which to gauge is your love is real.
As our beds will tell you, do not remove the tag
under penalty of law. Such stern cops, our beds.
Go to sleep, they tell us, make love, they tell us,
die. If your lover make you Overlord, don't ask,
of what? These are one-time offers, I fear,
just as the lightbulb that burned out
late nights gets one chance to fail.
I have these minutes, all these chances to fail,
I must be many lightbulbs. It's well-lit
except in the corners, this life.

The Joy That Descends on You When All the Trees Are Cut Down and All the Fountains Polluted and You Are Still Alive Waiting for an Absent Savior

Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

It's true! and they just hired the right guy at the wrong time for the wrong reasons:

Financial factors were also apparently in play in United's search. Onalfo was just eight months into a three-year guaranteed contract valued at an estimated $300,000 annually. Some observers believe that, with him on the payroll through 2012 and owner Will Chang actively searching for secondary investors, United does not have the budget to attract an experienced international coach.

and

Team source @ DC United tells me Richie Williams turns down head coach job due to club's instability. Source says Williams wasn't sure of direction of the club or future prospects of being in DC...once again per club source.

We don't have a right to a soccer team much less a good soccer team, and Will Chang can actively search for secondary investors until his balls turn blue, this franchise is dying even if Saint Benny of Olsen pulls a trophy out of next season's ass. I bet you a pint he does just so I can buy you a pint of beer.

Speaking of obvious:

• Putin and Berlusconi are corrupt mafia muppets.
• The U.S. spies on 'allies' as much as it does 'enemies'.
• The U.S. government thinks David Cameron is a lame duck.
• The Chinese Politburo censors/hacks its critics.
• Col. Qadaffi prefers the company of attractive young ladies.
• The British Army operates like headless chickens in Afghanistan.
• The Saudi monarchy sponsor international terrorism and are scared of Iran.
• The Afghan government is corrupt and weak.
• Nelson Mandela wasn't a big fan of Margaret Thatcher.
• Pakistan is a volatile nuclear state.
• The British monarchy behave "inappropriately".
• Transporting high-grade toxic materials is dangerous to the environment.
• Robert Mugabe is considered economically incompetent.
• The world is run by greedy, paranoid murderers who don't actually know shit from shinola.

Am I so detached from reality that nothing in these leaks would surprise or shock me? There's nothing in these leaks that would surprise or shock you, not policies or the incompetence implementing them, is there?

Here's what Wikileaks has accomplished: the revelations rebound to the benefit of those whom the Wikileaks meant to embarrass. Sure, anybody who's anybody at State is working as I type this. I imagine anybody who's anybody at any country's Foreign Office is working as I type this. I imagine nobody at State and nobody in any Foreign Office would be shocked or surprised at what the leaks reveal. They're not shocked or surprised at what's been revealed, they're working for advantage in Corporate's private poker game in light of this new dealt hand.

It won't be fascinating watching Corporate's marketing department take advantage of the leaks to turn whispered taboos into not only acceptable but honorable behavior. This is a golden opportunity to destigmatize whole ranges of SOPs, a prime opportunity to routinize even nastier levels of Corporate shittiness. If Corporate wasn't so clumsy and incompetent, I'd think they released the documents themselves.

• UPDATE! I don't think we were played. I don't think State wanted this stuff out, but now that it is out, now we're gonna be played. 
• UPDATE! Holyfuck, what I said, just more.
• UPDATE! Even if Wikileaks is a ratfucking operation, they still serve a good: WikiLeaks' primary purpose is to make information available to everyone. Each one of us can make our own judgments as to what should be done with that information, if anything, and what course of action might be indicated or not. But the kind of complaint conveyed by this Corrente post is precisely the issue I previously addressed: the complaint is that providing vast amounts of information freely to everyone isn't a good idea and might even be a very bad idea -- unless a particular outcome can be assured.
• UPDATE! Affecting the glowerful.
• Yup. That's how lame.
• Exposition (Corporate).
• Aggravated bitchery for the hell of it.
• Don't look up. 
• I'm glad Planet didn't choose early admission anywhere.
• Prince Georges.
• Superficial readings.
• From the inside.
• UPDATE! Talk about the passion.
• Presentation is a metaphor.
• Classical music and dumbed-down ears.
• UPDATE! Meanwhile, Rick James...
• Hey, someone else listens to Richard Thompson.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.

FIFTEEN FALSE PROPOSITIONS AGAINST GOD - SECTION VIII

Jack Spicer

Hush now baby don't say a word
Mama's going to buy you a mocking bird
The third
Joyful mystery.
The joy that descends on you when all the trees are cut down
and all the fountains polluted and you are still alive waiting
for an absent savior. The third
Joyful mystery.
If the mocking bird don't sing
Mama's going to buy you a diamond ring
The diamond ring is God, the mocking bird the Holy Ghost.
The third
Joyful mystery.
The joy that descends on you when all the trees are cut down
and all the fountains polluted and you are still alive waiting
for an absent savior.

On the Other Hand

Today marks the last day of the slowest week of the year in Blegsylvania, so enough blegangst over my complicity until probably tomorrow, one last bleggalgaze until the next: thanks to all who've bookmarked, subscribed, and/or blogrolled me in the past month or two, thanks to all of you who've sent eyes my way. xoxo to long-timers.

My Theory Is Simple-Minded to Be Sure: That Beneath His Public Head There Was Another Head and It Was a Pyramid or Something

Over Thanksgiving dinner dessert I listened to my two brothers and a favorite aunt, all employed by Corporate (and the seedier if not nastier side of Corporate), bitch about intrigue and backstabbing and cutthroat Corporate infighting, reminding me, Corporate are Triskelions, there's only one game in town and it's competing against one another; managing the Thralls is just a necessary cost of doing business.

Mind, I work at (and have degrees from) the above high-priced and highly-prestigious credentialing factory, one that bases it's prestige (and high tuition) by specializing in just those academic disciplines - Economics (Chicago School), MBA (Chicago School), Government (neo-con), International Affairs (neo-con) - that prepares Corporate's next generations for empire's projection and protection.
   

My aunt is... I'm not going to tell you who my aunt is other to say that where she started from to where she's at now is as good an iteration of the American success story of the rewards of hard work and self-reliance as can be ghosted by any sales-writer. She thinks I'm a motherfucking idiot who turned down opportunities of a lifetime thirty years ago - Who's to argue? At the time I was a motherfucking idiot (who to this day regrets nothing) - though I've done OK since (and fathering Planet has bought me some absolution).

She's executive level Corporate, I'm executive-assistant level Corporate. I used to think this some moral distinction that honored me. My aunt saw Corporate as inevitable and engaged it and played to win, I saw Corporate as inevitable and engaged and played to tie, my feeble fuck-you to Corporate's invincibility, my half-assed fully-invested complicitous self-congratulatory and comfortable pose.

• Every year.
• Team spirit. 
• At another Thanksgiving dinner.
• Spirit of the season. 
• The fire next time.
• Grifter-smart.
• These rich fucks.
• How did Pastor Sanctimonious not make the Hack List?
• Buttercup is a total feldspar.
• Winnie the Pooh mental disorder gifs.
• Gentleman's C.
• The Present.
• Lit links.
• Brit authors name their books of the year.
• Kakutani's ten best of 2010, so you know what not to read. (I tried the Mitchell, and no.)
• David Bowie, cracked actor. 
• In the morning. 
• UPDATE! Ferocious.

THE LIST OF FAMOUS HATS

James Tate

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.

Let Me Know of Any Recent Attempts on Your Part to Save Our Fellow-Citizens from Themselves

Thanksgiving.

Sarah Palin Clubs to Death a Fish on Reality Show Labelled 'A Snuff' Video by Animal Rights Group

There's so much more material if you've no rooting interest (which I still do; it ebbs slow), if, beyond kneejerk acknowledging yesyesyes Sarah Palin is indeed a dumbfuck with grifter-smarts, you look at the dishonest dumbfuckery of the attacks on her dumbfuckness - um, braining fish is the humane way to kill them; people misspeak - these next two years could be megaggigles rather than impotent rage.

Sarah Palin: "We Gotta Stand with Our North Korean Allies."

Also, "Labelled." Fucking Brits.

• Buy Nothing Day.
• The failure wasn't a failure.
• How the American class struggle works.
• Ruth Marcus tells you to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
• Politics of consent.
• Shit floats.
• Palin's strategy.
• It's a sign of how successfully my disaffection is blossoming that the Hack List struck me as juvenile and gratuitous (where once I would have cheered it gratuitously), but leaving The World's Shittiest Human off the list renders the whole exercise juvenile, gratuitous, and FAIL!
• It's a sign of how successfully my disaffection is blossoming that Tom DeLay's conviction didn't make me cum when once it would have.
• The bitter new Washington. Drew isn't an awful hack, but she is a Villager, and her article is insight into what not-awful hack Villagers think.
• What leading progressives are thankful for.
• For your Thanksgiving Day consideration.

• By the Waters of Babylon. (h/t) 
• The Windhover.
• Robertson Davies.
• Banana breakfast. Vineland's reread is next year, Gravity's 2012. 
• Stereogum's 50 most anticipated albums of 2011. Good news? My Morning Jacket and Mogwai. Shitty news? The Motherfucking Decembrists and Fleet Motherfucking Foxes.
• New Destroyer!
• Crazy rulers of the world.
• Heart and soul. 
• Dear God.
• Frost. 
• Helicopter.
• I'm sorry I love you.

THANKSGIVING LETTER FROM HARRY

Carl Dennis

I guess I have to begin by admitting
I'm thankful today I don't reside in a country
My country has chosen to liberate,
That Bridgeport's my home, not Baghdad.
Thankful my chances are good, when I leave
For the Super Duper, that I'll be returning.
And I'm thankful my TV set is still broken.
No point in wasting energy feeling shame
For the havoc inflicted on others in my name
When I need all the strength I can muster
To teach my eighth-grade class in the low-rent district.
There, at least, I don't feel powerless.
There my choices can make some difference.

This month I'd like to believe I've widened
My students' choice of vocation, though the odds
My history lessons on working the land
Will inspire any of them to farm
Are almost as small as the odds
One will become a monk or nun
Trained in the Buddhist practice
We studied last month in the unit on India.
The point is to get them suspecting the world
They know first hand isn't the only world.

As for the calling of soldier, if it comes up in class,
It's not because I feel obliged to include it,
As you, as a writer, may feel obliged.
A student may happen to introduce it,
As a girl did yesterday when she read her essay
About her older brother, Ramon,
Listed as "missing in action" three years ago,
And about her dad, who won't agree with her mom
And the social worker on how small the odds are
That Ramon's alive, a prisoner in the mountains.

I didn't allow the discussion that followed
More time than I allowed for the other essays.
And I wouldn't take sides: not with the group
That thought the father, having grieved enough,
Ought to move on to the life still left him;
Not with the group that was glad he hadn't made do
With the next-to-nothing the world's provided,
That instead he's invested his trust in a story
That saves the world from shameful failure.

Let me know of any recent attempts on your part
To save our fellow-citizens from themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to borrow Ramon
For a narrative of your own, remember that any scene
Where he appears under guard in a mountain village
Should be confined to the realm of longing. There
His captors may leave him when they move on.
There his wounds may be healed,
His health restored. A total recovery
Except for a lingering fog of forgetfulness
A father dreams he can burn away.

Theme Song November 2010 (2)

If It Was Only Loss He Wore, He Wore It to Assert, with Fierce Devotion, Complicity and Nothing More

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

It's true!

MLS is expanding to Portland and Vancouver next season. Each current MLS team must make available for draft by Portland or Vancouver eleven players (though no current MLS team can lose more than two players). Here's who the shittiest team in MLS made available:

GK Troy Perkins, F Pablo Hernandez, D-MF Devon McTavish, MF Brandon Barklage, F Adam Cristman, D Jordan Graye, MF Kurt Morsink, D Barry Rice, MF Carlos Varela, D Juan Manuel Pena, F Danny Allsopp.

If I was Portland or Vancouver, I'd take Troy Perkins and his salary in a nanosecond. Watch. Perkins is behind Hamid here (which is fine) but was once in USMNT keeper pool. Maybe he sucks now, maybe the team in front of him sucked more, probably it's both, but a chance of a veteran keeper who was not long ago almost all that? Watch Perkins leave a bad situation and go out West and play himself into the pool for WC14. I like Perkins - he gets LOUD SIDE! I hope it happens, for good reasons.

Just a clarification: when I said

She (Palin) was offered the Sarah Palin Decade and said yes...

and then said both Palin and Obama were

offered roles of a lifetime, (and were) smart enough to say yes.

I didn't mean to imply I wouldn't have said yes too. You be the judge of you.

United protected:

D Dejan Jakovic, MF Branko Boskovic, MF-F Chris Pontius, D Marc Burch, D-MF Rodney Wallace, MF-F Santino Quaranta, MF Stephen King, MF-F Junior Carreiro, D Jed Zayner, MF Clyde Simms, D Julius James.

Burch! Relief floods Casa Satanica! Me? I've no arguments with who United protected versus who was left unprotected - I wouldn't swap an a-lister for a b-lister - which speaks volumes about the general suckitude of the talent.

Ideally, a team would have their new head coach in place so he could have input re: his system and the players he wants for that system, though in United's case, being forced to protect players they'd just as soon go away, it doesn't matter. Good thing our deposits are in for next year's season tickets.

• 2016? Well, she'll be sitting VPOTUS. (Dem ticket 2012 = Obama/HRC. Pint bet anyone?)
• Today's moment of Zen.
• UPDATE! On the above. On the above.
• Your Weltanschauung sucks.
• Evolution of comedy.
• Security Theater Follies.
• Housebroken.
• Let the war begin.
• Gah. 
• Ireland.
• Dumby O'Shill and the Little People.
• Know anybody who works for MOCO?
• Hilltop gets a D? (As does SMCM?)
• World's stupidest song contest.
• Silliman's weekly lit-links.
• More lit-links.
• More lit-links.
• I take no pride in my inability to read science fiction. So. Philip K. Dick. Name one that would get me in. (Yes, I've asked before and tried before; I'll try again.)
• UPDATE! Futile devices.
• You. 
• UPDATE! Changes.
• Of course I do. 
• UPDATE! I've been tired. 
• EXCELLENT NEWS!
• UPDATE! Everyone Chooses Sides. 
• Desire Lines. LOUD! (and tripping, if possible).
• UPDATE! When I grow up.
• Linkous demos. Oh my. 

BLACK JACKETS

Thom Gunn

   In the silence that prolongs the span
Rawly of music when the record ends,
   The red-haired boy who drove a van
In weekday overalls but, like his friends,

   Wore cycle boots and jacket here
To suit the Sunday hangout he was in,
   Heard, as he stretched back from his beer,
Leather creak softly round his neck and chin.

   Before him, on a coal-black sleeve
Remote exertion had lined, scratched, and burned
   Insignia that could not revive
The heroic fall or climb where they were earned.

   On the other drinkers bent together,
Concocting selves for their impervious kit,
   He saw it as no more than leather
Which, taut across the shoulders grown to it,

   Sent through the dimness of a bar
As sudden and anonymous hints of light
   As those that shipping give, that are
Now flickers in the Bay, now lost in night.

   He stretched out like a cat, and rolled
The bitterish taste of beer upon his tongue,
   And listened to a joke being told:
The present was the things he stayed among.

   If it was only loss he wore,
He wore it to assert, with fierce devotion,
   Complicity and nothing more.
He recollected his initiation,

   And one especially of the rites.
For on his shoulders they had put tattoos:
   The group's name on the left, The Knights,
And on the right the slogan Born To Lose.

Woke up with that in my head. This too:

The Dog's Paws, Trotting, Rotate His End of Infinity

Does anyone reasonably believe Sarah Palin when she says:

There's nothing different today than there was in the last 43 years of my life since I first started reading. I continue to read all that I can get my hands on -- and reading biographies of, yes, Thatcher for instance, and of course Reagan and the John Adams letters, and I'm just thinking of a couple that are on my bedside, I go back to C.S. Lewis for inspiration, there's such a variety, because books have always been important in my life.

BWRTZ! If you didn't answer, It doesn't fucking matter whether it's bullshit, you're wrong.

There's nothing Palin can say or do that isn't breathlessly newsworthy. She has book deals, she gets a front page article in the NYT Sunday Magazine, she has Frank Rich the same day writing Oh Yes she can! She can command her price on speaker's fees. She can call Fox News and ask for face time whenever she wants on whatever topic she wants, she has Fox News as her publicist, marketer, and promoter. She's being paid for one-hour long campaign ads masquerading as a reality show. She's making gagagazillions more $$$ than everyone who reads this shitty blog combined times 10K.

Sure she's a hollow grifter, but stupid she's not. She was offered the Sarah Palin Decade and said yes. Her example is the carrot of our reeducation, especially the hollow grifter part, and here's the best part: every ounce of snarky-ass Liberal condescension towards Palin generates an ounce more profit for her (the very dynamic that boosted Obama's profits for every cracker attack on Obama's grifter hollowness - trust me, it worked on me).

Obama = Palin, grifters both, the black dude and the cracker woman, offered roles of a lifetime, smart enough to say yes. Palin didn't make me realize this, Obama did.

• RIP Chalmers Johnson.
• RIP Chalmers Johnson.
• Identifying evil.
• TSA and humiliating Americans. Remember, giving devout pinheads a pittance of power is a time-tested method of enforcing Corporate's preponderance of power. 
• Krugman still doesn't get it.
• On Krugman not getting it.
• America, soon.
• Jeb 2012?
• Angry gods.
• Are we high enough for this yet?
• Plagiarism and the mechanics of privilege.
• Tubes allusion!
• PERE LEBRUN (thanks for the Kind!)
• Ehrlich rhymes with fuckstick.
• Liquor and politics in PG.
• Heh! -- Justin Bieber was just a kid when Eminem put out his first album. Today, he's still just a kid, but they're on equal footing at Sunday night's American Music Awards in Los Angeles as both vie for the title of entertainer of the year.
• Vapid celebrity. 

• Learning from Modernism.
• Les Murray.
• 101 favorite albums.
• Les Savy Fav.
• What if The Beatles never broke up?
• Full moon, empty heart. 
• UPDATE! Why the fuck is Soundgarden on my radio?
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Benjamin Britten was born 97 years ago today.

AURORA PRONE

Les Murray

The lemon sunlight poured out far between things
inhabits a coolness. Mosquitoes have subsided,
flies are for later heat.
Every tree's an auburn giant with a dazzled face
and the back of its head to an infinite dusk road.
Twilights broaden away from our feet too
as rabbits bounce home up defiles in the grass.
Everything widens with distance, in this perspective.
The dog's paws, trotting, rotate his end of infinity
and dam water feels a shiver few willow drapes share.
Bright leaks through their wigwam re-purple the skinny beans
then rapidly the light tops treetops and is shortened
into a day. Everywhere stands pat beside its shadow
for the great bald radiance never seen in dreams.

Knobs

The fucks in the patriotic for profit clown suits are University of Maryland football players. Maryland's colors are red and white. Teams that wear black whose color isn't black are lame, teams that wear black whose color isn't black that trim the black with camo are asshats, teams that wear black whose color isn't black and trim them with camo and then put Courage and Country and Commitment and Duty and Loyalty and Honor for NOBs are lame motherfucking knobs. May they lose every fucking game forever and a day, amen.

A cynically manipulative marketing stunt, sure, but another reminder that the etc and yadda is getting worse by design and won't ever get better forever and a day, amen.

Say I Have a Wound Like a Flamenco Beauty's Horrible Red Camillia Set in My Flesh

Today is the first day of the slowest week of the year in Blegsylvania, slower even than Giftmas week. Since I like bleggalgazing best but am embarrassed by it almost, I've used this week in the past to push the plunger on necessary voids, but what? blogwise, everything's fine. Everybody's busy renegotiating the terms of their complicity. These clusterfucks, the romantic egoist in me wants to believe them the awesomest clusterfucks ever, but I wonder, doesn't every generation think their time the clusterfuckest ever? Are humans fundamentally shittier than ever or just as shitty with enhanced surveillance capability? Here, let me type anti-Corporate invective into googleblooger and plunge send.

In any case, those patdowns in airports are training whacks on your snout to sit the fuck down and STFU when told to sit the fuck down and STFU. Our overlords are busy renegotiating the terms of our complicity too. Blogwise though, everything's excellent. Thanks again to everyone who moved here with me, and thanks and welcome to any and all who've found here since.

• Principle of governance: Although military officials are apologetic in public, they maintain privately that the tactic has a benefit beyond the elimination of insurgent bombs. By making people travel to the district governor's office to submit a claim for damaged property, "in effect, you're connecting the government to the people," the senior officer said. 
• I was going to write more about that paragraph, but Silber already has. 
• Guilty until proven guilty: Is it too much to suggest that the federal government is putting all the tools in place that could one day lead to a totalitarian regime?  Patriot Acts, Military Commissions, NSA domestic spying, state secrets privilege, national security letters, and now a bill moving through the Senate that will permit censorship of the internet.  The constitution backed up by the judiciary should be protecting us from the invasive policies of the legislature and executive but has manifestly failed to do so. 
• Any questions? 
• This, of course, is provocation and unacceptable.
• Viktor Bout, Barack Obama.
• Insubstantial queries.
• Delusion points: In the midst of the "Mission Accomplished" euphoria that followed the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, a worried Iran sent a Swiss intermediary to Washington with a far-reaching offer for a "grand bargain," including an end to Iranian support for groups such as Hezbollah and a deal on Iran's nuclear energy program. The offer was reportedly approved by Iran's top leaders, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Bush administration turned the Iranians down flat -- why negotiate with the next candidate for regime change? -- and Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reportedly reprimanded the Swiss ambassador for even delivering the message in the first place.
• Democracy in action.
• Winston Smith's Nu-America.
• Kill faith.
• What was she doing behind a video game? 
• Apathy is self-congratulatory? Not what I was told.
• An image to ruin your weekend.
• David Gergen's world.

• Rocket scientist at AU.
• Metro awesomeness.
• Metro awesomeness.
• Fear of metaphor, part three.
• The room of my life.
• On getting poetry. 
• The poem, the poet.
• The case for books.
• 80s synth-pop, hot again.
• I wanna know girls.
• Remember when Ryan Adams was going to be a superstar?
• Age class.
• Starfucker.
• Surf City.
• Meredith Monk is 68 today.

THE THEORY OF ABSOLUTE FORMS

Albert Goldbarth

It isn't easy to picture an infinite universe,
a star that's traveling through an infinite universe,
but think of how far pain can go in your bone,
in it's marrow. - Forever, I think. When Plato
clutched his side and moaned, he knew how this world's
hurt is only the light from its star Generic Hurt.

Say I have a wound like a flamenco beauty's horrible
red camillia set in my flesh. I think the doctor's
whole career has been for this minute. The wound,
my wound, it's only been with me an hour.
His hands are exact. They life it and dance.
He's been intimate with this wound for years.

Owe Naught to Any Single Cord

Two minutes. Start this song, close your eyes, listen to the whole thing dancing, that two minute song does more in two minutes than 99.94% of other songs do in more.

Also, a friend's inquiry reminds me to ask: those few of the few of you who read this blog who read the poems I post are reading them out loud, yes? because reading poetry needs be a physical act for the total wow.

THE SILKEN TENT

Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when the sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To every thing on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

We Have Shapes but No Power

Little Danny Snyder might as well be POTUS. For years he's paid stupid money for overrated and washed-up players (one can't live here and not know what's Redskins). He was General Manager by Beard of Cerrano, and when the clusterfuckery bottomed in zookery, Little Danny Snyder (for PR) fired Little Danny Snyder as General Manager and paid stupid money for an overrated and washed-up CEO (George Macaca Allen's brother) and an overrated and washed-up asshole for asshole's-sake head coach who thinks he's Motherfucking Jesus Patton, who promptly traded for an overrated and washed-up quarterback, benched him, called him a stupid fat nigger, then gave him a $4M apology and contract extension.

Word is Obama's gonna replace Larry Summers with Roger Altman. The motherfucking coaching carousel. If it doesn't matter who's POTUS - and I'm grateful to Obama for grating my fucking face into slaw to teach me once and finally that it doesn't matter who's POTUS - I'm voting for a Palin presidency to grate away whatever giggles I have left.

• What I just said. Sorta.
• Palin shows the right stuff! 
• Economic advice from Caribou Spice.
• Fearing for our democracy.
• Beck of revelation.
• Preferential option.
• Any questions?
• Why fight?
• More like this.
• Chomsky on midterms.
• Guidelines for happy enemy blogging.
• Cycle of life.

• MOCO austerity.
• Lockhouses.
• More on the body in a box.
• I actually felt a twinge of sympathy for Kevin Payne for when he tried to negotiate w/PG.
• Hey, Tiffany Jewelry posted a comment at the old place: You really need to apply it. Don't get lazy and assume that just since you read it, that you may get the maximum results. You can not. You truly need to work on this and in fact go ahead and promise to yourself that you'll do all you'll be able to to obtain the very best out of these consultants that you simply can.Yepper!
• Hemon.
• Minor poets, major works. 
• UPDATE! NEW BARDO POND! 
• Magnetic Fields.
• UPDATE! Claudia Gonson likes Moby Dick (and has a new baby who looks like Laurie Anderson).
• Pavement.

ANNUALS AND PERENNIALS

John Ashbery

Telling it so simple, so far away,
as this America, home of the free,
colored ashes smeared on the base
or pedestal that flourishes ways of doubting
to be graceful, wave a slender hand...

We are fleet and persecuting
as hawks or crows.
We suffer for the lies we told, not wanting to
yet cupped in the wristlock of grace,
teenage Borgias or Gonzagas,
gold against gray in bands streaming,
meaning no harm, we never

meant it to, this stream that outpours now
haplessly into the vestibule that awaits.

We have shapes but no power.

After a Catbird Squeaked in the Special Silence

That's this blog's Official Theme Song, so this boy hasn't forgot Archers of Loaf:

Lost in the frenzy of a reunited Pavement was the equally energized college radio movement of the 80s and early 90s. Any lazy historian can point to the pioneering model of R.E.M., Hüsker Dü, The Minutemen, and The Pixies (among many others) and link to what was eventually labeled alternative rock. Their strident work, unfortunately, found a host of equally talented bands left unappreciated. Such was the existence of Chapel Hill darlings Archers of Loaf.

Pavement, yes, Husker Dü, sure, Pixies, maybe, but until the above paragraph I'd never thought of REM and Archers of Loaf in the same sentence.

I have a three-quarters finished bit on the Sarah Palin Decade in my notebook, but I've ten long years to write about the Sarah Palin Decade, and any and all excuses to post Archers of Loaf are excellent excuses to post Archers of Loaf, though some are more excellent than others.

• Stuck in Sucktucky. 
• Practicing anarchism.
• What's in Sarah Palin's mind?
• Search me.
• Opt-in.
• Warren Buffett thanks his uncle for the free trillions: So, again, Uncle Sam, thanks to you and your aides. Often you are wasteful, and sometimes you are bullying. On occasion, you are downright maddening. But in this extraordinary emergency, you came through — and the world would look far different now if you had not. I'm sure I'm not the first to tell Warren Buffett to clutch his chest and slump over. 
• Sonic reducer.
• Time to hate the motherfucking British again.
• UPDATE! Time to again like the British, or at least the Guardian soccer commentary: That's a lovely goal, as the England players could tell you, given that they stood idly by and watched it.
• Irish whisky and coffee good, Four Loko bad.
• UPDATE! Someone else thought the exact same thing.
• Blegangst.
• My future hell. 
• Envisioning Rockville Pike.
• Academic excellence at GHS?
• Wheaton!
• Tick Tock! When Elric's father moved us from western Pennsylvania to Maryland, the first place we lived was in an apartment behind Tick Tock in Langley Park.
• Body found in box in Frederick!
• The poetics of shameless self-promotion.
• 4'33"
• Wave back to Massachusetts.
• Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• This week's new releases w/MP3.
• Some band I never heard of covers XTC!

DARKLING SUMMER, OMINOUS DUSK, RUMOROUS RAIN

Delmore Schwartz

          1

A tattering of rain and then the reign
Of our and pouring-down and down,
Where in the westward gathered the filming gown
Of grey and clouding weakness, and, in the mane
Of the light's glory and the day's splendor, gold and vain,
Vivid, more and more vivid, scarlet, lucid and more luminous,
Then came a splatter, a prattle, a blowing rain!
And soon the hour was musical and rumorous:
A softness of dripping lipped the isolated houses,
A gaunt grey somber softness lick the glass of hours.

          2

Again, after a catbird squeaked in the special silence,
And clouding vagueness fogged the windowpane
And gathered blackness and overcast, the mane
Of light's story and light's glory surrendered and ended
- A pebble - a ring - a ringing on the pane,
A blowing and a blowing in: tides of the blue and cold
Moods of the great blue bay, and slates of grey
Came down upon the land's great sea, the body of this day
- Hardly an atom of silence amid the roar
Allowed the voice to form appeal - to call:
By kindled light we thought we saw the bronze of fall.