Friday, January 7, 2011

Which of These/My Clumps Do You Want Me to Be (Say)?

Either Obama's stupid or Obama's following orders or Obama's running for reelection and figures his best strategy is if he can't get everyone to love him better everybody hate him or all of the above:
Smarter conservatives already claim - with some evidence - that the White House and the Democratic Party are pawns of the big banks, or that Big Government and Big Business are in a mutually beneficial corrupt relationship. (Ahem. And who would argue with this?) Picking the JPMorgan Chase exec -- who sat on Fannie Mae's board -- doesn't prove the president loves unfettered free markets, it "proves" that the elites are still enriching themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The Mobamafucker and the motherfucking Democrats are going to flanked on the left by the Right on demagoguing Wall Street, which is either stupid or flowing orders or Obama's best chance for reelection or all of the above.

Doopty:
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO -- two powerful players that are often at each other's throats -- are considering teaming up for a campaign against the House GOP's planned cuts to infrastructure spending, spokespeople for both groups tell me.

The two groups rarely agree on anything, and frequently target each other in the harshest of terms, but one thing they agree on is that they don't want the House GOP to make good on its threat to subject highway and mass-transit programs to budget cuts. GOP leaders announced earlier this week that such cuts could not be taken off the table in the quest to slice up to $100 billion in spending.
Who's more Fredo in a rowboat, the CoC or the AFL-CIO?

Gah, political duh, though those pint bets that Obama is reelected still stand, yo.












EVERYONE IN THE ROOM IS A REPRESENTATIVE OF THE WORLD AT LARGE

Catherine Wagner

Things mean, and I can’t tell them not to.
Things       they moralize, to meet
my expectation, because I want advice
on how to live. The seaweed says:

This is a river; I am river-weed.
Which of these/my clumps do you want me to be (say)?

The closest one. That more animated brown one
rolls and unrolls its lengths of hair
and makes me feel unwell.
You quieter green clump, why don’t you speak. 
Then

A most beautiful bright blue bird
knifed down the stream
and veered left at the oak,
where the stream bends. A
male bird. He says: I am the
excellent wanderer 
flashing above
the stream,
a blue muscle that centers past
and future

a blue muscle roping future in
as past behind me cedes

blue muscle flying future into past

blue muscle flashes future

instantaneous wingbeat pasts.

Under the bird, forest and water. Above 
the bird, forest and cloud.

The twig trails in the water.
Twig-end disappears, twig resurrects
in reflection and continues down,
leads back to the tree, the undertree
that lives on the top of the water.
If I penetrate (look beneath) the water, the twig end
dangles and the forest
disappears.

The bird was a flying fist

It smashed up nothing

I pursued it round the corner,
a blue punch

my violence goes on out along the stream.


Thursday, January 6, 2011

We Had to Beg a Stranger to Be a Victim and Crouch Behind a Girder, and Let the Dogs Discover Him and Tug Him Proudly, with Suppressed Yaps, Back to Command

Unless this is your first or at most second time visiting this shitty blog, you know I'm constitutionally incapable of not noting this:

Ethan:
FUCKING WEIRD.

Two days ago I decided I really, really needed to transfer all of my various different lists (in my head, bookmarked sites, printed out lists, handwritten, wishlists at various stores, etc.) of books I want to read into one central location. And last night I had to track down the Barthelme syllabus again, because the place I had seen it three years ago no longer had it. And now today you post it.

Synchronicity.
Me:
Serendipity! And thanks for bump at your place. I know you were being Kind, but I got an email back at the old place (before you joined in, I think) ripping me for "competitive blogwhoring" with all the links. Well, duh and all, of course I'm an attention slut - I'm a fucking blogger - but he completely refused to accept any chance I might be Kind too.
Ethan:
I've never understood why "blogwhoring" should be considered a bad thing...and like I said, people who provide lots of links for me to look at are damned useful. Hah--you're useful.

So noted. Consider this:
With four minutes remaining, Steve Kean's side fretting and Steven Gerrard sizing up his second goal of the night from the penalty spot, Liverpool sensed another remarkable comeback and escape route for Hodgson. But those days are over. At least under this manager and with this squad. The captain who has forged a career on rescue missions blazed over and, quite possibly, the 63-year-old's fate was sealed.

Defeat was accompanied by the now familiar refrains of "Dalglish" and "Hodgson for England" from the Liverpool supporters. A new ditty was added last night. The Blackburn fans chanted "You're getting sacked in the morning" after Benjani Mwaruwari stroked home his second of the game and Rovers' third shortly after the interval. The Liverpool fans then joined in.

Discuss the difference between serendipity and synchronicity (beyond the primary and obvious benefit that the word serendipity doesn't remind you of Gordon (The Bad) Sumner, though synchronicity just sparked this moment of serendipity).

As for blogwhoring, thanks for the business, John, Jane.








SEARCHERS

D. Nurkse

We gave our dogs a button to sniff,
or a tissue, and they bounded off
confident in their training,
in the power of their senses
to re-create the body,

but after eighteen hours in rubble
where even steel was pulverized
they curled on themselves
and stared up at us
and in their soft huge eyes
we saw mirrored the longing for death:

then we had to beg a stranger
to be a victim and crouch
behind a girder, and let the dogs
discover him and tug him
proudly, with suppressed yaps,
back to Command and the rows
of empty triage tables.

But who will hide from us?
Who will keep digging for us
here in the cloud of ashes?


Wednesday, January 5, 2011

I Happen to Be There Myself in a High Fever Taking My Plastic Medicine Seriously with the Doctors, Who Are Dying

Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?



It's true! but not for long if Kevin Payne's whipping it out and slapping it on the table is to be believed:
While the club continues to explore stadium opportunities in Washington, United is taking a hard look at the Maryland Stadium Authority's economic feasibility study concerning a mixed-use waterfront project in the Westport area near Interstate 95 and Camden Yards in Baltimore.

"Our name is D.C. United, but we're not playing [tactical] games here," team president Kevin Payne told the Insider. "Baltimore has dealt with us in good faith and it's a very good opportunity. It's a good location. The developer has also dealt with us in very good faith. We believe Baltimore can get something done. It's a real opportunity."

Notice the dissonance between Payne's statements we're not playing [tactical] games here and dealt with us in very good faith, since Payne is playing crudely obvious and obnoxious tactical games here.
Payne said he hopes to meet with D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray this month to discuss a possible project in Washington, United's home since its inception in 1996. There are no talks with any jurisdictions in the Maryland suburbs or Northern Virginia, Payne added.

"We would love to be in Virginia," Payne said, noting that more United supporters are from there than any other area. Based on where those fans live, "the ideal location would probably be Tysons Corner, but it's very difficult to make a stadium work in Virginia because the state and municipalities will not provide any credit enhancement at all. I think it's a very shortsighted position, and that's why there are no professional teams in Virginia. I don't see any realistic way we could build a stadium in Virginia."
Fuck-me-jig, I don't blame United for waving the first tiny hammer they've had in years at the assholes in DC and the crooks in PG and the developers in NOVA who aren't wasting a square foot of real estate on a soccer stadium where there could be high-end condos, and I won't blame Will Chang for not wanting to lose money into perpetuity and will be brokenhearted and bathetically self-pitying (double beyond normal) when United moves, even to Baltimore, but the idea of Kevin Payne threatening local jurisdictions as if he had a bullwhip makes me giggle.




Speaking of giggling, please recalibrate, with irony, humor, and a larger comprehension of just how fucked we are, your clusterfuck-compass after reviewing the following ranking of the most influential Left intellectuals in Europe:

1. Paul Krugman
2. Juergen Habermas
3. Slavoj Zizek
4. Anthony Giddens
5. Daniel Cohn-Bendit
6. Umberto Eco
7. Zygmund Bauman, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen
9. Oskar Lafontaine
10. Ulrich Beck
11. Manuel Castells, Ed Miliband
13. Alain Baidou
14. Julian Assange, Joschka Fischer
16. Helmut Schmidt
17. David Held, Alain Touraine
19. Neal Lawson, Jacques Ranciere

The list goes to 50 and I'm not on it, meaning I must have been 51st.







ON THE SUBJECT OF DOCTORS

James Tate

I like to see doctors cough.
What kind of human being
would grab all your money
just when you're down?
I'm not saying they enjoy this:
"Sorry, Mr. Rodriguez, that's it,
no hope! You might as well
hand over your wallet." Hell no,
they'd rather be playing golf
and swapping jokes about our feet.

Some of them smoke marijuana
and are alcoholics, and their moral
turpitude is famous: who gets to see
most sex organs in the world? Not
poets. With the hours they keep
they need drugs more than anyone.
Germ city, there's no hope
looking down those fire-engine throats.
They're bound to get sick themselves
sometime; and I happen to be there
myself in a high fever
taking my plastic medicine seriously
with the doctors, who are dying.


Tuesday, January 4, 2011

I Thought I Was a Five-Part Someone Who Had to Decipher the Air in Things Before Navigating Them and Each Error Was Necessary



Bernard (The Good) Sumner is 55 today. There is still always a New Order song in my head, but that song has been in my head for three months. Whenever I sit down to write some angry duh about infuriating duh, that New Order song blessedly plays in my head instead.

Kevin Drum writes: But assume that a deal is possible. If it is, I think it's wrong to insist that it will come solely at the expense of the elderly, or that it won't do any good because Social Security will never be off the table anyway. On the first point, it's quite possible to structure a deal that requires nothing more than a very modest slowdown in the the future increase of benefit levels that (a) affects only those with fairly high incomes and (b) phases in over a period of decades. That's hardly Armageddon. On the second point, sure, Republicans will probably go after Social Security forever. But that's not what matters. What matters is that if the program is officially in balance then Republicans no longer have the traction to succeed

What a m therf cking p ofe sio al pro res ive t ol, h  k  ws t a




Dunbar's number. I don't think all is hopeless, I just think this is as good as humans can do. One of the reasons I insistently bleggalgaze is Blegsylvania provides a digital terrarium to observe our s itty spe ies op r t ng (a d, ju t t  b  c ear, if w 're m t ally k nd  'm n t  al k ng a out  ou . .

 K, t is t o:






  • Most anticipated books of 2011? A few look interesting, but none has me omfging, I can't wait.
  • Most anticipated books of 2011? Am I a bad person for having zero interest in DFW's unfinished novel?
  • Most anticipated books of 2011 (English edition)? New Edward St Aubyn!
  • Books Biblioklept hopes to read this year.
  • Top ten books about books.
  • Speaking of reading, Aue's been transferred to Stalingrad by his SS superior for not finding ample scientific/linguistic/racial reasons to liquidate the Caucasian Bergjuden (who are allied with other Caucasian tribes who see the Germans as better than the Russians). The novel is preposterous, gratuitous, and this time through fabulous, in all meanings of that word.
  • I call bullshit that she read 462, I call bigger bullshit if she did.
  • 2010 albums part three. Circle? Something new to check out. Where to start? 
  • UPDATE! Richard kindly emails: Regarding Circle, I have four of their albums. Raunio was the first one I got, and it's kind of proggish metal (no deathly vocals!), and for a while I was under the impression that they were a metal band. But all their albums are different, as Ethan suggests. Andexelt is very krautrocky. Forest and Miljard more folky. I think Raunio and Miljard are my favorites, though I have to admit that I'm getting the latter mixed up with Forest in my memory. Not sure if that helps, but that's what I know. Thanks! I'll investigate. Richard emails because for some reason the comments won't work from his PC - anyone else having this problem send me an email. Don't know that I can do anything about it, but I can try to figure something out. (And while I'm here, if you're Kinding me and me not you, send an email, and as long as you're not a Coach Outlet, I'll reciprocate.) 
  • UPDATE! Is our national nightmare over?
  • KxXP's listener voted Top 90 albums of 2010. Arcade Fucking Fire is of course number one, but numbers two and three I love, so w ere do s  h t le v  a d p  ik  m . .



IS KNOWING

Fanny Howe

Is knowing the same as owning?
Do I already have it

(Poetic model)
a spiral thumb-print
taped responses
to each event


I thought I was
a five-part someone

who had to decipher the air
in things before navigating them

and each error was necessary


Monday, January 3, 2011

You Come to a Gentle Indifference About Being Thought Either a Fool or Someone with Valuable Secrets







A VOICE AT A SEANCE

Anthony Hecht

It is rather strange to be speaking, but I know you are there
Wanting to know, as if it were worth knowing.
Nor is it important that I died in combat
In a good cause of an indifferent one.
Such things, it may surprise you, are not regarded.
Something too much of this.

You are bound to be disappointed,
Wanting to know, are there any trees?
It is all different from what you suppose,
And the darkness is not darkness exactly,
But patience, silence, withdrawal, the sad knowledge
That is was almost impossible not to hurt anyone
Whether by action or inaction.
At the beginning of course there was a sense of loss,
Not of one's own life, but of what seemed
The easy, desirable lives one might have led.
Fame and wealth are hard to achieve,
And goodness even harder;
But the cost of all of them is a familiar deformity
Such as everyone suffers from:
An allergy to certain foods, nausea at the sight of blood,
A slight impediment of speech, shame at one's own body,
A fear of heights or claustrophobia.
What you learn has nothing whatever to do with joy,
Nor with sadness, either. You are mostly silent.
You come to a gentle indifference about being thought
Either a fool or someone with valuable secrets.
It may be that the ultimate wisdom
Lies in saying nothing.
I think I may already have said too much.