Monday, February 7, 2011

Theme Song February 2011



Also, I've got a Bank Vault in Heaven. Loud, mofo, please.

 UPDATE!



Because I love you.
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Sunday, February 6, 2011

Soon Barbie Was Begging Ken to Try on Her Spandex Miniskirt

I'm told that Billmon is blogging again. Billmon was Bush's best vivisectionist when watching Bush get vivisected was vicarious fun! He once did me a Kind, hat-tipping me to Atrios who then linked to me for a catch I had on Lee Siegel during the long ago fuss over Siegel's sock-puppetry. I got over 40K hits that day, more, at that time, then I had total in three years of blogging.

Both of those links I discovered yesterday within twenty minutes. Awestruck praise to Serendipity for providing the perfect Heh! to end Blogroll Amnesty Weekend (and all the bleggalgazing that comes with it).

UPDATE! Quin tells me (and thank you, Quin) that isn't Billmon. To be honest, I took Duncan's word for it, saw the author as b, and ran for the serendipity like the addict I am.

UPDATE! Duncan confirms it isn't Billmon. Wishful thinking on both our parts. All praise to Serendipity, who set me up Kindly.

Hey, look who I found!










Here are the newbies on the blegroll:








KINKY

Denise Duhamel

They decide to exchange heads.
Barbie squeezes the small opening under her chin 
over Ken's bulging neck socket. His wide jaw line jostles
atop his girlfriend's body, loosely,
like one of those novelty dogs
destined to gaze from the back windows of cars.
The two dolls chase each other around the orange Country Camper 
unsure what they'll do when they're within touching distance. 
Ken wants to feel Barbie's toes between his lips, 
take off one of her legs and force his whole arm inside her.
With only the vaguest suggestion of genitals,
all the alluring qualities they possess as fashion dolls, 
up until now, have done neither of them much good. 
But suddenly Barbie is excited looking at her own body 
under the weight of Ken's face. He is part circus freak,
part thwarted hermaphrodite. And she is imagining 
she is somebody else—maybe somebody middle class and ordinary,
maybe another teenage model being caught in a scandal.

The night had begun with Barbie getting angry 
at finding Ken's blow up doll, folded and stuffed
under the couch. He was defensive and ashamed, especially about 
not having the breath to inflate her. But after a round
of pretend-tears, Barbie and Ken vowed to try
to make their relationship work. With their good memories 
as sustaining as good food, they listened to late-night radio 
talk shows, one featuring Doctor Ruth. When all else fails,
just hold each other, the small sex therapist crooned. 
Barbie and Ken, on cue, groped in the dark, 
their interchangeable skin glowing, the color of Band-Aids. 
Then, they let themselves go— Soon Barbie was begging Ken 
to try on her spandex miniskirt. She showed him how 
to pivot as though he was on a runway. Ken begged 
to tie Barbie onto his yellow surfboard and spin her 
on the kitchen table until she grew dizzy. Anything,
anything, they both said to the other's requests,
their mirrored desires bubbling from the most unlikely places.


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Saturday, February 5, 2011


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In No Way Winces from Its Storms of Generosity




Last mention for this year of Blogroll Amnesty Day, saved for a Saturday, the slowest day of the week, at least in my hollow of Blegsylvania. Because I am incapable of abandoning thoughts about blogging when blogging is one of this blog's primary obsessions, I try blogging them on Saturdays because I love you: I try (but fail) to obsess only on the day you are most unlikely to read. You're welcome.





Did you know that one of the leading proponents and advocates of Blogroll Amnesty Day, who once blogrolled me, who I twice donated pocket change to, dropped me from her blogroll? I can't let that go, though it was two years ago, though at this point I wouldn't read her anyway if I was discovering her for the first time, that's how much my politics have moved. And then there's the guy who... well, never mind.






Here's blogroll (and blogging) truth, at least in my experience: they are merit badges of respect amongst like and Kind readers, not tickets to readership. It's rare I get a ping off someone's blogroll, I've other blogs on my blogroll that never get pinged from the blogroll. This isn't complaint, it's an observation: I use my blogroll as my bookmarks, others made their blogroll the day they created their blogs and haven't weeded or added since. Acts of unKindness are rare too; even I don't give so much of a shit that I'll remove you for a heresy.





I'm sorry, that was unKind. Plus I'm almost out of archived gifs (I can't find the Dole bananaman!). Again, if you are being Kind to me and me not you, please let me know. There are new additions to blogrolls left and right. I solicit suggestions for new toys for my eyes and and ears and brain. I'm not hopeful this post takes care of this gah until next year's Blogroll Amnesty Day, but I need more than one reminder a year to post whatever the fuck I want. I'm small this way.

And while I'm deeply aware that Kind is as much a cane to bludgeon you with as meanness, thanks very much for taking your beating.





THE CITY LIMITS

A.R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.


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Friday, February 4, 2011

Undressing to the Daily Logs of This Petty Boss

It's true I can make anything a metaphor for any worldview I'm yodeling, but Little Danny Snyder is going on his own radio station this afternoon to (I assume) escalate his war against the Washington City Paper. Is he an awesomely petty asshole out to destroy any dissent against his astonishing assholosity or is he an increasingly desperate asshole who's underwater in his debt services and whose radio stations he'd sell in a blink for seventy-five cents on the dollar if he could just create a media firestorm during February sweeps big enough to drive up ratings? Yes!

Sure it's 99% the former, but Death to Corporate's Either/Or, my fellow mofos!







Zen's reminder of Blogroll Amnesty Day and mention of Jon Swift remind me how generous Jon Swift was:
I was an even bigger nobody than I am now when Jon Smith, incredibly generous and Kind, reached out and contacted me.
I know that nine-tenths of the motives for why I bleg are base (and suspect the other one-tenth), but Al is a primary reason I try to be Kind here. And his blog was awesome.

I've still blogfriends (like Zen) who found me by Jon Swift's Blogroll Amnesty Day.

There are new additions to the left and right rolls. Please check them out.








THE ECSTASY

Phillip Lopate

You are not me, and I am never you
except for thirty seconds in a year
when ecstasy of coming,
laughing at the same time
or being cruel to know for certain
what the other's feeling
charge some recognition.

Not often when we talk though.
Undressing to the daily logs
of this petty boss, that compliment,
curling our lips at half-announced ambitions.

I tell you this during another night
of living next to you
without having said what was on our minds,
our bodies merely rubbing their fishy smells together.

The feelings keep piling up.
Will I ever find the time to tell you what is inside these trunks?

Maybe it's the fault of our language
but dreams are innocent and pictorial.
Then let our dreams speak for us
side by side, leg over leg,
an electroencephalographic kiss
flashing blue movies from temple
to temple, as we lie gagged in sleep.

Sleep on while I am talking
I am just arranging the curtains
over your naked breasts.
Love doesn't look too closely...
love looks very closely
the shock of beauty you gave me
the third rail that runs through our hospitality.
When will I follow you
over the fence to your tracks?

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Thursday, February 3, 2011

If You're Lucky, After a Number of Revolutions, You'll Feel Something Catch

I've been negligent re: Egypt yap-wise. During the last motherfucking crisis - when and what the fuck was the last motherfucking crisis, wasn't long ago - I wrote something to the effect - I remember, the Giffords shooting! I wrote:
Regardless the ultimate motives of the shooter, watch this play out in the media, in Corporate's boardrooms, in your head, exactly like you think it's going to play out.
The Giffords' shooting is a toss-away carnival toy in Americana yet everyone sprang to their default position and brayed. I'm not comparing the significance of the two events, I'm observing what reflexive barking asses we are.

I'm not comparing the predictability of the Giffords' story with predicting what will happen in Egypt: the stakes and dynamic are far different than progressives flinging poop at crackers and yadda and etc.... though I'm betting on Corporate winning this shitty hand in a long slow losing poker game, like it won/lost the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006, like it won/lost the Gaza War in 2009.....

I'm not saying Corporate's death by a thousand stabs isn't fair and deserved and inevitable. I'm not dismissing what is occurring in Egypt (and Yemen) as futile or counter-productive. I am saying that I'm not as eager to yodel at each passing shadow of a paradigm shift as I used to be. I'm not enjoying this most pivotal moment in history as much as some of you. Yes I'm old and complicit, but with that experience comes the knowledge there will be another most pivotal moment in history next week.

And it's not like I'm not assuming my assigned position.




  • Another in the same dilemma.
  • The plot thickens.
  • Clarification.
  • Dreams from our sponsor.
  • Mubarak Obama.
  • Capitalism.
  • Capitalism.
  • Fuck CBN.
  • Heh! I understand why you were upset by this article. By unkindly focusing only on the negative aspect of your ownership, the author, Dave McKenna, is suggesting that you are an avaricious, imperious, conscienceless plutocrat with callous contempt for the fans; a man whose Napoleonic, pouter-pigeon swagger conceals a doofus-like understanding of the game and whose pernicious, autocratic meddling has consigned the team to perpetual mediocrity and its players and coaches to a perennial state of harrowing anxiety, all of this starting virtually from the moment you arrived and continuing to this very minute. 
  • PEPCO!


  • Blogroll Amnesty Day. Again, if you're bumping me and I'm not bumping you, let me know.
  • Best bookstores in DC. Bridge Street is awesome.
  • Novel ideas.
  • Sillimans' always generous lit-links.
  • UPDATE! Jesusfuck, imagine my reaction when I saw on my blogroll that The Guardian was announcing that Neil Young has died.
  • Who the fuck cares? The same KEXP dj who wouldn't play Beefheart the day after he died played a block of White Stripes music as soon as this news broke. Fucking moron. 
  • Today's music brought to you by Ken's shift on WFMU yesterday.
  • Obscure Sound's Best of Dec/Jan, with MP3.



INTRODUCTION TO THE WORLD

Matthea Harvey

For the time being
call me Home.

All the ingénues do.

Units are the engines
I understand best.

One betrayal, two.
Merrily, merrily, merrily.

Define hope. Machine.
Define machine.  Nope.

Like thoughts,
the geniuses race through.

If you're lucky

after a number of
revolutions, you'll

feel something catch.

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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

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Immediately Afterwards, at the Packing Plant, These Miniature, or "Baby" Tags Were Affixed, Respectively to the Proper Bodily Parts

Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?
                                 (Cronin)
                                  Hamid

              
                                       (Korb)
(Zayner)             (White)       (Kitchen)           (Woolard)
Brasesco         Jakovic        James                Burch

                                    (King)
                                  (Morsink)
                                 (Shanosky)
                                   (Simms)
                                   McCarty

(McTavish)                                                (Carreiro)
   Najar                                                    Quaranta
                                                                    
                                  Boskovic                   

                (Pontius)                        (Ngwenya)
                   Wolff                             Davies

It's true! and that's Bromark's formation and depth chart assuming Charlie Davies, after surviving this crash,




is all the 80% of what he once was* but will never be again, which is still a major upgrade over every striker last year combined then squared then cubed.

A genuine yay! really truly. And daydream: what if he's 80.06% of what he once was!







THE BEEF EPITAPH

Michael Benedikt

This is what it was: Sometime in the recent but until now unrecorded past, it was decided by certain ingenious and commercially forward-looking cattle-ranchers in a certain large, modern Western nation which prides itself on being nutritionally forward-looking, that since people are increasingly nutrition-conscious, and increasingly insistent that "you are what you eat," all cattle on the way to market were to be marked with brief descriptive tags noting the favorite food of each animal; and also stating approximately how much each ate of it. This, it was felt, would both delight the diner and comfort the nutrition-conscious consumer: people would be able to tell exactly what kind of flavor and texture of beef they were purchasing beforehand, and always be able to secure exactly the kind of product most likely to delight their taste, since they would know a whole lot more than ever before about the quality and kind of nourishment which the animal had received (it was a little like our own, well-established, present-day modern American system of catering to preferences for light and dark meat in chicken--by supplying each part shrink-wrapped in a separate bag in the supermarkets). The system set up by those ingenious and commercially forward-looking cattle-ranchers was remarkably efficient; and seemed--at least at first--to be destined for success. This is how it worked: First, on each animal's last day on the ranch, they attached the main, or so-called "parent" tag--made out according to information provided by each rancher, or their hired hands, or even (in some cases) their immediate family--to each head of livestock. The information contained on each tag would be of course be definitive, since it was compiled just before the two or three days required for shipment of the animal to the slaughterhouse--during which travel time, of course, the animal customarily doesn't eat anything, anyway.... Once at the slaughterhouse, they carefully removed the "parent tags"; and during the slaughtering, mechanically duplicated them numerous times, preparing perhaps hundreds of tiny labels for each animal. Immediately afterwards, at the packing plant, these miniature, or "baby" tags were affixed, respectively to the proper bodily parts--each section of each animal being separately and appropriately tagged, each as if with an epitaph. But then something went wrong with this means of delighting the diner, and of comforting the nutrition-conscious consumer. At first, quite predictably, the tags came out reading things like "Much grass, a little moss, medium grain" and "Much grass, much grain, generally ate a lot." And this, as one might expect, proved (at least at first), a great pleasure to purchasers! But then tags began coming through reading things like "A little grass, a little grain, many diverse scraps from our table"; and "She was our favorite pet--gave her all we had to give"; and there was even one (featured at dinnertime one evening on network television news) which was tear-stained and which said, in a child's handwriting, "Good-bye, Little Blackie Lamb, sorry you had to grow up--I'll sure miss you!" And so, gradually, despite its efficiency, this system somehow ceased to delight the diner, and comfort the nutrition-conscious consumer. And this is how the practise of The Beef Epitaph became generally neglected over the course of time; and how the members of a large, nutrition-conscious, and otherwise generally quite sophisticated modern nation very much like our own, came to eat their beef--as indeed they still do today--partially or even totally blindfolded.


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Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Mad-Eyed from Stating the Obvious

I find myself increasingly incapable of not condensing and abbreviating. I'm not complaining - I'm reading and writing as well as I have in months. This isn't a coincidence, of course, but I know that the better I'm reading and writing the more obscure I become to everyone else; one side-effect of reading and writing well is an increase in what-the-fuckness. Luckily, many are saying what needs to be thought about, which is the selfish reason (besides blegwhoring, wink) I post so many links, to spare me from saying what needs to be said that I don't feel like saying too.

Another side-effect of reading and writing better is an increase in bleggalgazing (though with me, a side-effect of severe reading slumps and writer's blocks is an increase in bleggalgazing). The side-project will continue (or not) - and this will be the last bump here, though it's blegrelled for you to ignore at your pleasure. In the meantime, for your consideration, the awesomest bleggalgazing ever. Fine ironies abound! Maybe I'll write about them (or not). Everything is negotiation, yo.







ADVICE TO A PROPHET

Richard Wilbur

When you come, as you soon must, to the streets of our city,
Mad-eyed from stating the obvious,
Not proclaiming our fall but begging us
In God's name to have self-pity,

Spare us all word of the weapons, their force and range,
The long numbers that rocket the mind;
Our slow, unreckoning hearts will be left behind,
Unable to fear what is too strange.

Nor shall you scare us with talk of the death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?--
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone's face?

Speak of the world's own change. Though we cannot conceive
Of an undreamt thing, we know to our cost
How the dreamt cloud crumbles, the vines are blackened by frost,
How the view alters.  We could believe,

If you told us so, that the white-tailed deer will slip
Into perfect shade, grown perfectly shy,
The lark avoid the reaches of our eye,
The jack-pine lose its knuckled grip

On the cold ledge, and every torrent burn
As Xanthus once, its gliding trout
Stunned in a twinkling.  What should we be without
The dolphin's arc, the dove's return, 

These things in which we have seen ourselves and spoken?
Ask us, prophet, how we shall call
Our natures forth when that live tongue is all
Dispelled, that glass obscured or broken

In which we have said the rose of our love and the clean
Horse of our courage, in which beheld
The singing locust of the soul unshelled,
And all we mean or wish to mean.

Ask us, ask us whether with the worldless rose
Our hearts shall fail us; come demanding
Whether there shall be lofty or long standing
When the bronze annals of the oak-tree close.


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