Friday, July 8, 2011

Absurdly Confident. Even Over the Noise of the Shapeless Fires






Of course Obamadick was Topic One at Thursday Night Pints. Don't I feel betrayed, I was asked. Today's kaboom, I said, a week from now everyone will have settled into the positions you can predict today: everyone will have shifted whatever number of hexagonals in exact relationship to anyone else. I will hate motherfucking crackers, I will hate Team Corporate GOP and Team Corporate Democratic and hate The Villagers who blow them then tell you how good it tastes; I will hate motherfucking Obama and his motherfucking obamapologists and I will especially hate motherfuckingly complicitous obamapostates like me, in no more or less proportion to any of them than I do right now, though we'll all be, in exact ratio to each other, another incremental kaboom closer to Serbia.

The ridiculously priced scotch was Glensomething. It tasted like NyQuil. Next time I want a beer, I said. Play by the rules or shut the fuck up, snorted L.








  • Shit, I bet pints on Obama the Gameplayer. If I had any faith in Obama the Gameplayer, and by that I mean solely in terms of innate political savvy and clairvoyance and superior political survival and killer instincts, I could believe he'd designed, patiently lured, more patiently waited to spring this elegant trap for two years. If he is the gameplayer I once thought, it's brilliant, he can ride this to an easy landslide reelection.
  • Not your friends.
  • Condoning evil.
  • Can you imagine Obama saying this at the 2012 Democratic Convention? For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves. We will keep our sleeves rolled up. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob. Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred. I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.
  • I can, if he thought he needed to. And Ronald Dworkin is a fool. And FDR was running a reelection campaign.
  • Profile in courage
  • And yes, of course Corporate wants him to win reelection: he can do more damage to safety nets than any Republican currently could, and will, in 2016.
  • Petraeus in 2016.
  • Krugman's obamapostasy will never be ready.
  • Screwing America.
  • The pathology of elite organizations.
  • Count on this.
  • Slap in the face.
  • The sorrow and the pity
  • Derrick Jensen revisited.
  • Unfoldings.
  • News, out of the world
  • Multiplicity.
  • Yes, I have posted the Spicer poem before. 
  • Burning Man, part 8. I've tried three times, not going to work. 
  • HEY! Any of you read Vladimir Sorokin's Ice Trilogy? Whatcha think?
  • Lit links.* (K: this.)
  • The genesis of Nick Cave.
  • Big Star documentary in the works.
  • I've no Pale Saint CDs, just cassettes I found last night looking for something else; tape would crumble had I a cassette player and tried.







ORPHEUS IN HELL

Jack Spicer

When he first brought his music into hell
He was absurdly confident. Even over the noise of the
       shapeless fires
And the jukebox groaning of the damned
Some of them would hear him. In the upper world
He had forced the stones to listen.
It wasn’t quite the same. And the people he remembered
Weren’t quite the same either. He began looking at faces
Wondering if all of hell were without music.
He tried an old song but pain
Was screaming on the jukebox and the bright fire
Was pelting away the faces and he heard a voice saying,
       “Orpheus!”
             He was at the entrance again
And a little three-headed dog was barking at him.
Later he would remember all those dead voices
And call them Eurydice.




21 comments:

  1. 3 out of 4 right-sized videos ain't bad ;)

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  2. I think I may end up using my entire NYT article quota for the month just reading Krugman not quite getting it.

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  3. Hey, thanks for the link!

    Am I stupid for not seeing how destroying social security will give O a landslide?

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  4. Since FDR was as big a crook as Obama, Reagan, Poppy Bush or Dubya Bush, that quote proves quite readily how The Big Crooks are able to sound contrite and self-effacing and opposed to Big Money and Big Criminality, White Collar Variety... convincingly enough to get re-elected.

    When FDR loses his sainthood among the Donklefaithful, America will have inched closer to post-America. Meanwhile we can expect decades of continued reverence of a mythological FDR who saved the poor and hammered the rich.

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  5. What Sasha said.

    I do appreciate the linkage. I'm not suggesting you read AdF; Canetti is difficult slogging muchly b/c he's so damn unsympathetic to his characters. It's an important book to know about. I hope, by reading WoW's take, you can at least get some sense of why. I wasn't kidding when I said it takes serious effort.

    Again, thanks for the kind.

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  6. Am I stupid for not seeing how destroying social security will give O a landslide?

    So very shrill. You rabid ideologues don't realize that this country's political system can't survive without compromise.
    ~

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  7. Thanks for the mention. I find it hard to believe that BHO will engender a landslide, but if he wins I doubt he cares how he does it.

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  8. Partially it's the incredible lameness of the GOP field - if Corporate *really* disliked Obama they could find somebody better than Fuckface or Mittens or Bachmann. And Obama's *doing* what they want - DISemployment, police state, protecting moneyed interests, and now, even if there *is* no Social Security reform this term, he's opened the door - from the "Left" - for his second term. He'll be rewarded with enough Corporate funding for a comfortable reelection.

    As for his gameplaying, it's a sign of my bigotry towards pigs, crackers, and christers to think his simplest, most efficient and best strategy was/is to goad pigs, crackers, and christers into extreme pigosity, crackerosity and christerosity. Getting them to reject what the claim they want - killing Social Security - is a great way to do it, with the additional bonus the Obama's opened the door for future killing of social security.

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  9. I can't count being born black as a strategy, BDR.

    While the results you mentioned are achieved, it's still not a strategy in the sense that the Benko Gambit, for example, is a strategy.
    ~

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  10. I think he already has that "enough Corporate funding" locked up, BDR.

    That's pretty much what his 2004 speech at the Democratic National Convention signaled.

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  11. I will hate Team Corporate GOP and Team Corporate Democratic and hate The Villagers who blow them then tell you how good it tastes; Wow, spot-fucking-on Dude! I will filch said quote and provide attribution if used.

    I am betting on Obama the droll, boring gameplayer myself.

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  12. Dude, did you affix one of the video's correctly and not the other?

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  13. At this point I'm going to lazily assert that it's akin to the deliberate flaw in a Persian carpet.

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  14. He's not a gameplayer. He's a quivering, shaking, frightened little bitch who desperately wants people to like him and can't understand why they point and laugh.

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  15. Sadly, that's the best case scenario.

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  16. I would rather think he is smart and a gameplayer than an idiot who dreams of being liked. To see him thusly would tell me he is a friggin moron...and he isn't.

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  17. It's a nasty either/or, I grant you: a diabolical mastermind masquerading as a liberal while simultaneously expanding war and the powers of the police state and undermining eight decades of progressive economic achievements OR a moron and empty vacuum and intellectual void easily manipulated by assholes appealing to his vanity and latent lack of self-esteem.

    Wait! Didn't someone here banish the tyranny of the either/or?

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  18. ...a diabolical mastermind masquerading as a liberal.. Nope, never thought he was a liberal, not for one fleeting moment in the 08 campaign for Pres. did I think that.

    Did you m'dear Host? Just curious.

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  19. Dusty, are you one of those people who voted for him while congratulating yourself on how you had no illusions about him, as if that demonstrated some kind of virtue?

    (You're not really Eric Alterman,by any chance?)

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  20. Dusty, are you one of those people who voted for him while congratulating yourself on how you had no illusions about him, as if that demonstrated some kind of virtue? I have never been accused of being virtuous, first off. Did I hold my nose when I voted for him? Yes. Did I hope he would do what he said he would? Yes.

    I am not registered as a Democrat and haven't been for over 20 years. I am registered as "Decline to State" which is the third option here in Cali.

    Any other questions dear man?

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  21. (You're not really Eric Alterman,by any chance?) No Comment

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