The Kinds of Selfishness I Could Freely Adopt As My Own

This has been this blog's Official Theme Song since Day One and this is the most thoroughly self-indulgent post since the last and until the next.

The last of the nine schools Planet applied to just passed its verdict and fuck Oberlin, Lorain's a hellhole anyway, but Yay! Planet! who got into more than she didn't and got into the ones it would have stung not to. Of those that said no, I think only the Maine school hurt a bit, though they were the nicest saying no of the bunch and the news came after truly good news. I think the process worked because (a) I'm a self-rationalizing bastard who thinks you a fucktard you say no to my daughter and (b) the schools I liked best anyway all said yes and (c) the schools I sincerely think Planet will grow best at all said yes. We drive to St Mary's College Monday for its Accepted Student Day to let them try to convince Planet. Good luck with that.

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





It's true, and the answer to my question re: Where's Branko? has been answered! He showed up to camp fat and lazy and was benched and now management has put out the word Branko showed up fat and lazy.

Bet we see Branko in Bermangoyd this coming Wednesday when United plays Phunion in a play-play-play-in USOC game. This guy bought four tickets, I bought three, one for me, one for Seat Six, one for Planet, who swears she's going but who also just got drafted against her wishes volunteered happily to work crew for her school's Spring musical, Motherfucking Pippen, so I bet I'll have an extra ticket this coming Wednesday. Check back for chance to win it! I'm looking at you, Hamster.

A United ticket agent emailed me thanks for buying, and I wrote back:

A word to the wise - someone at DCU might want to find out if Philly supporters clubs are busing down for the game and, if yes, keep them on the side of the field next to the building - Barra and Eagles are on the opposite. Not saying there's gonna be trouble, just saying why create a situation where trouble might happen. Probably not a good idea to have them standing next to each other.

Nothing will probably happen, but considering what assclowns will be policing SoccerPlex and considering what fans pour out of tour buses after a four hour ride pouring beer down their gullets and considering they're phucking Philly phucks, shouldn't someone in, um, authority, at least think about it?

Here there was going to be three paragraphs on bleggalgazing, authority, power, resistance in Blegsylvania, but because I love you and because I love me more, instead have this blog's Official Bleggalgazing Anthem then some links and the always necessary poem.

• Tax the rich or face revolution?
• The collapse of globalization?
• Mad in America.
• Why Liberals are lame.
• Motherfucking pigs.
• The Conservative States of America.
• Eyes on the cruise missile.
• Everything old is new again.
• Who gives a crap?
• Guess the nation.
• Capitalism.
• Census maps.
• Seizure World!
• More on Silver Line names.
• Serendipitously found yesterday, or: Heh! in Stringtown Blegsylvania:
• The uselessness of literature.
• Literary talent vs baseball talent.
• Kavan again. There was a blogflurry about Ice a two, three years ago. Read it. Better than meh, less than wow.
• Looking at music.

STILL

A.R. Ammons

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

A Vivacious Mother Hides a Gawky Daughter. The Daughter Hides Her Own Vivacious Daughter in Turn

More proof of my mother's theory that bad kids skip generations:

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Authorities in southwest Florida say a 17-year-old girl pointed a gun at her mother, pistol-whipped her and forced her to drive to a dealership to buy her a used car.

The sheriff’s office in Lee County said Monday that the teen has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, among other counts, and was being held at a juvenile detention center.

According to officials, the mother said she didn’t want to press charges because her daughter had been accepted to several Ivy League schools.

We offered to buy Planet a car if she went to a certain nearby school and I'm certain she's going to turn the car down, though if I don't stop asking what she's thinking about her decision I swear she's going to brain me upside my right ear with a shovel.

• Questions?
• The speech.
• The fun continues. One train may hide another.
• If these be rebels...
• "Progressive" idiocy.
• The Fallacy of the .06% Less-Shitty Theory distilled. This is also why I've said and still believe that Corporate would rather four more years of a house-broken Obama than Michelle Gingrich Mike Palin Newt Huckabee Sarah Bachmann. I could be wrong. Still betting pints I'm not.
• The answer is No. 
• On the above.
• Ruling class tactics.
• What are unions good for?
• Burning down the house.
• Eating garbage.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Being in the world. 
• I stopped reading Mother Jones the day they hired Kevin Drum. 
• Shocking.
• Things you might have missed.

• It needs to be said that I have never heard of ANYONE in the Dogred blood-trees EVER referred to as vivacious, nor anyone associated with them through marriage. Gawky? Yes.
• Silver Line! or NOVA is boring.
• Wheaton as Bethesda?
• I did tell Fobin Ricker to die slowly and painfully in a puddle of his vomit and piss when I saw him on Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda a couple of months ago. Felt good. He acted like he hears it all the time, which no doubt the motherfucker does.
• Something Kensington doesn't need. Lame motherfuckers. Stop sending me mail asking me for money. 
• Whatever you do, don't raise property taxes on motherfucking mcmansionists.
• My future hell.

• I have used the best line in this poem in a blogpost title before, but since I'm no longer (until next time) having fever dreams I am not permitted to use it for this post's title, though when I began to tune this post it was one of the first poems I thought about. 
• This year's Man Bookers. Snore.
• This week's new releases.
• Try it before you buy it.
• Open your eyes.
• Tear it all away.
• UPDATE! Trick or treat.
• Not in my name.
• UPDATE! Heh.
• Help me lift you up.

ONE TRAIN MAY HIDE ANOTHER

Kenneth Koch

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia
     Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
     may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
     the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
     or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
     Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading 
    A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
     foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It 
     can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

In Times of Crisis, We Must All Decide Again and Again Whom We Love

Tell me, what would Corporate do if despite its best efforts a motherfucking cracker is elected POTUS and s/he's rogue with a Christ-complex and a growing, rabid base:

The impasse broke into the open on Friday, after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said there had been progress. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) shot back that Schumer's contention was "far-fetched." Schumer responded, in kind, with a line of attack on the Tea Party.

"After days of positive negotiations, with significant flexibility shown by the Speaker, the House Republican leadership is back to agonizing over whether to give in to right-wing demands that they abandon any compromise on their extreme cuts," Schumer said. "The Speaker knows that when it comes to avoiding a shutdown, his problem is with the Tea Party, not Democrats."

True that, more proof you and me are bupkis. We're not worth a single X in their models. To protest, I won't buy an iPad until there's a sale or I cave first.

• More Bageant.
• The peaceful violence of the government.
• The meaningless concept of ethical war.
• Democracy is FAKE (Part 1).
• The sub-proletarianization of America.
• Not one of us.
• Agorism.
• Soggy, expedient mush.
• You couldn't be more wrong, Jodi.
• UPDATE! More.
• Zik zik zik. Name the allusion.
• Getting into Amherst. We visited but Planet didn't apply, though I imagine the process is similar at all the places she did.

• Suburban Virginia? 
• Jesusfuckingchrist.
• Very good news.
• Kensington!
• Beltway.
• ICC!
• Silver Line!

• Geoffrey Hill.
• Frank O'Hara.
• Un beso llega.
• Envelop.

TO THE FILM INDUSTRY IN CRISIS

Frank O'Hara

Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals
with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants,
nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition
is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you,
promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you
are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry,
it's you I love!

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.
And give credit where it's due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me
how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately availed
herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church
which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment,
not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you,
glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope,
stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all
your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms! To
Richard Barthelmess as the "tol'able" boy barefoot and in pants,
Jeanette MacDonald of the flaming hair and lips and long, long neck,
Sue Carroll as she sits for eternity on the damaged fender of a car
and smiles, Ginger Rogers with her pageboy bob like a sausage
on her shuffling shoulders, peach-melba-voiced Fred Astaire of the feet,
Eric von Stroheim, the seducer of mountain-climbers' gasping spouses,
the Tarzans, each and every one of you (I cannot bring myself to prefer
Johnny Weissmuller to Lex Barker, I cannot!), Mae West in a furry sled,
her bordello radiance and bland remarks, Rudolph Valentino of the moon,
its crushing passions, and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma Shearer,
Miriam Hopkins dropping her champagne glass off Joel McCrea's yacht,
and crying into the dappled sea, Clark Gable rescuing Gene Tierney
from Russia and Allan Jones rescuing Kitty Carlisle from Harpo Marx,
Cornel Wilde coughing blood on the piano keys while Merle Oberon berates,
Marilyn Monroe in her little spike heels reeling through Niagara Falls,
Joseph Cotten puzzling and Orson Welles puzzled and Dolores del Rio
eating orchids for lunch and breaking mirrors, Gloria Swanson reclining,
and Jean Harlow reclining and wiggling, and Alice Faye reclining
and wiggling and singing, Myrna Loy being calm and wise, William Powell
in his stunning urbanity, Elizabeth Taylor blossoming, yes, to you
and to all you others, the great, the near-great, the featured, the extras
who pass quickly and return in dreams saying your one or two lines,
my love!
Long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances, delays
and enunciations, and may the money of the world glitteringly cover you
as you rest after a long day under the kleig lights with your faces
in packs for our edification, the way the clouds come often at night
but the heavens operate on the star system. It is a divine precedent
you perpetuate! Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth rolls on!

The Inexact Praise of the Easy Graces

I'm in the clean-up stage of grippe. Though it signals recovery, it's the worst part of the bug. For all the angry moods and vile moods I claim, there is nothing that fuels a self-pitying mood like day five of a bug. Everything, from mucus to work to world has settled in my lungs and I need to cough it out and know I won't.

I wasn't going to post today, but perspective must be gained and notice need be made. RIP, Joe Bageant. I got to Bageant late - I was a demstooge, a .06% less-shitty percenter up to and through the 2008 elections. The promises I made to mine before my apostasy will be honored, but Bageant helped me confront and, in my small ways, begin changing the terms of my complicity.

• Bageant.
• As has Arthur Silber. Throw him some coin, please.
• We're Number One!
• Rinse and repeat.
• Sandbagging.
• Complexity.
• Palladion.
• Our many devious enemies.
• UPDATE! Immaculate destruction.
• Koch.
• Economics as cultural warfare.
• On corporate and academic institutions.
• Dead skunk.
• unflappable.
• Metro turned 35 yesterday.
• Is David Bowie dying?
• Ravonettes cover Stone Roses.
• Hermetic. 
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.

QUARANTINE

Eavan Boland

In the worst hour of the worst season
    of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
     He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
    Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
     There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
      Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Ningland 2, United 1

Saw the first half, didn't see the second half (forgive me) though (this guy provided updates via txt) believe me when I say I've seen enough United-Ningland games to have seen the second half many times.

Just as I was irresponsible last week with hope let me be almost as equally irresponsible with despair: Either United doesn't have a 10 or Benny doesn't have a plan. ha-HA! There are no either/ors!

Yes refs, yes motherfucking Ningland, dirtiest, cheatingest motherfuckers in MLS, yes injuries and national call-ups: regardless, either Benny doesn't design plays to put his wingers into position with the ball at their feet or the captain and designated 10 can't deliver the ball. ha-HA! Got you again.

How much must Benny dislike Branko - as a player, as a person, who cares - that Benny would bring in Fredsux before Boskovic? (And I didn't see the second half, but I bet you Fredsuxed.) It's entirely possible this is all on Branko - he could be a bad guy in any number of ways, skill, work ethic, wanting to flee the opulent capital of the world's hegemonic power to return to a hellhole in Lower Serbia - but that's...





ZNYRTZ!

ONE winter evening, Brian Beutler, 28, a reporter for the online publication Talking Points Memo, sat with his friend and roommate Dave Weigel, 29, a political reporter for Slate and a contributor to MSNBC, at a coffee shop on U Street. Recovering from a cold as snow fell outside, Mr. Beutler spoke about his younger — well, relatively younger — days in the city.

“Everyone’s gotten a little bit older and a little more boring,” Mr. Beutler said, speaking of a wave of Washington bloggers who have come of age together. “Four years ago, we were far less professionalized, and the work was less rigorous and less stressful. So in addition to being younger, we were also a bit less overwhelmed. That all has changed.”

ha-HA!.... Quick, read this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and listen to this and this and this and this and read this and especially listen to this.....





...your Designated Player, your $500K+ Designated Player, and not only does he not start, he doesn't even sub. No one's saying anything:  I hear no euphemisms ("he's nursing a hammie"), no "he's gotta step it up in practice," nothing. I mean, either Boskovic never was as good as thought by Kasper Payne when they signed him or they've so mismanaged him since he got here he's now useless. ha-HA!

UPDATE!

Goff:

Facing a two-goal deficit, Olsen turned to Charlie Davies (no surprise) and Fred (surprise). Later, with the score unchanged, he inserted Santino Quaranta. And with those moves to enhance the attack, Olsen left Branko Boskovic, United’s designated player, on the bench. Ominous.

A guy who started for Montenegro’s national team at Wembley last fall can’t crack United’s lineup. One has to wonder whether he’s in United’s long-term plans, but as far as I know, he has a guaranteed contract for the entire 2011 season. Unless I’m unaware of a salary cap loophole, he will remain on United’s account all year, whether or not he remains on the roster.

Next week in Colorado, the - what, when did this happen? - defending MLS Tournament Champions. United will be without both central defenders from opening day, Kitchen on duty with U-20 USMNT and Jakovic out for a dumb red card. I understand Benny's decision to reward the starters of the opening game with starting the second. I'm curious to see who starts - and subs - next week, because a shocking number of players who started and subbed yesterday sucked.

The Phlegm Is Thick and Fast and the Bartender Says Time to Wallow in Byproducts

Better, sorta, not, but thanks for asking. The best of the fever is gone but the phlegm sea awaits a mucus Moses. Plus United plays today at 430 in Ningland. Plus Yay! for Planet! News! !wOOt! Choice One! plus scholarship! Then my complicity! whose innards I don't want to poke today.

So, songs for crashing, !!! links while they're fresh. The always necessary poem.

• Today's fury is motherfucking pigs pigging like assholes but (maybe? probably?) well within their legal rights against a University of Wisconsin (and thus a state employee) professor who wrote a NYT op-ed that employed the McC against Wisconsin's pig governor and pig GOP, but shit, all the GOP did was introduce a new tactic motherfucking Democrats are (a) wishing they'd thought of first and (b) will begin using tomorrow. This is an example of The Fallacy of the .06% Less-Shitty.  
• Lose the future.
• News is fun.
• To the editor of the NYT, Julian Assange = James O'Keefe.
• Obamaking.
• Heh! Obamamotherfucker.
• No-Fly-Zone for Syria! Obamadumbmotherfucker.
• Bitch set him up.
• Obamamotherfucker. 
• The Liberal defense of murder.
• Capitalism.
• Who the gov't works for.
• America is not Greece.
• Panopticon, or: paying for your own surveillance.
• Please please please please please.
• Please please please please please.
• Couldn't resist. I'm small this way.
• What's the real Ward 9? 
• Against fiction. Not an original argument, but one I haven't read in a while.
• Modernity's undoing?
• $15.
• DJ Handi's archive picks.
• For the birds.

SENTIMENTAL ATOM SMASHER

Darcie Dennigan

So this guy walks into a bar and asks for a beer. Sorry, 
      the bartender says, I only sell atom smashers 

      And the guy says well isn't that America for you—
every happy-hour Nelson's a homemade physicist and no thank you, 

just an ice cold one, but it's too late—suddenly, he's on his butt 
      in a ballfield where handsome men are chasing a ball over grass 

      sad grass, yellow like the hair of his once-young mother! 
and again he says, no thank you—I've seen this movie before 

And the bartender says it's a joke and you're inside its machine... 

      Hey, the guy wants to say—I'm not the guy—I'm me 
I'm just a guy who walked into a bar. I'm just a guy who retreats 

to his car for a private cry. Instead he sniffs and cries out—
      The sky smells like the bologna from when I was a boy! 

      Ahh, says the bartender, ahh yes. Someone has left 
the refrigerator door of the cosmos open a crack 

And the view! cries the guy. The beauty of an atom smasher, 
      says the bartender, even from the cheap seats you see 

      clear into 1952. And the guy, squinting into the distance, 
starts to bawl. Maybe it's the vendors hawking 

commemorative popcorn, or the programs promoting emotion 
      ("the matter of the universe!") printed on material whose pulp 

was milked from the trunk of a winesap apple tree, but— 
      What's the matter? says the bartender. And the guy says, 

I'm confused. Am I allowed to be homesick in a joke? 
       Yes, the bartender says. It's elemental, the bartender says—

 
       How streets are downtrodden atoms and falling leaves are aflutter 
atoms and beer is over-the-moon atoms. The moon's an atomizer 

of all matter's perfumes: And the guy starts to parse it out— 
       Wait, I'm not smart, but if emotion's a material substance 

       then when a leaf falls in my lap and I hold it, 
like an about-to-be-abandoned baby, I'm touching "aflutter" in 3-D? 

Dear fluttering leaf! 
Streets—I'm sorry for stepping on you! Apples—for coring you, and beer—

* * *
 
A guy walks into a bar, 

—actually just the beer-drinking bleachers of a ballfield—and says 
       is this some kind of joke? 

       Well, says the bartender who has observed the little lamb 
and the tyger burning bright and tickled their particulates, 

because your life has lately been stagnant, we have yoked you 
       to a joke and we await the gasp that will gas up the cosmos... 

       Just then, there's a hit at the plate—and it's going, 
it's going—gone to smash the guy in the skull 

       And since baseballs are made of nostalgia atoms, the guy, 
with concussion, says I want to buy a coke for a nickel 

       I want to install apple pie perfumemakers in the crotch of every tree 
Bartender, bring me dried nosegays! Start the stalwart pageants! 

        And the moon's spritzing its perfumes and the phlegm is thick and fast 
And the bartender says time to wallow in byproducts: 

        Where we planted peanut shells, we got shaky, palsied trees 
Where we planted nickel cokes, we got nicked cans 

Where we planted baseballs we grew large, sad eyeballs 
        as we watched for something to grow. Still, still 

        we atom-probe: In a dark building a child is 
about to be born. The smell of bread is about to 

        break. And our guy is going, O spring evenings! 
How I used to stand yelping in the alley by the bakery... 

        Who are these boys throwing baseballs? Who is this baby? 
O bartender, tell me, what is the message in this light rain? 

But the bartender's dark eyes are flying 
        over centerfield, over the rooftops and watertowers of the joke's 

        universe, over alleys and cold valleys of refrigerator light 
toward an aptest eve where these street kids are hurling a ball into 

the moonlight and the moonlight is curdling into freon... 

Somehow a Dog Has Taken Itself & Its Tail Considerably Away into Mountains or Sea or Sky, Leaving Behind: Me, Wag

While I celebrate serendipity, I hold in awe its ability to fuck with me. A few days ago a friend reminded me of Blood Meridian - a novel you must read if you haven't, forget all the post-Blood Meridian McCarthy you may have read or film adaptions of his novels you have seen. I commented in agreement about the graphic violence and mentioned a particularly gruesome scene in the novel. I went and found my paperback, was going to start Wednesday night but came down with a bug and high fever, can't do much but noodle online and, SHAZAM! look what gif serendipity just now gave me while I aimlessly looked for something else:





Holyfuck. There's nothing to do but offer a traditional fever dream song, my favorite Dream Song (forgive me, friends, this is the first time I've ever used the same line from a poem to title a post twice, but it's my fever), then another traditional fever dream song in tribute to serendipity, and then go back to sleep. Be back when.

DREAM SONG 14

John Berryman

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.   

After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,   

we ourselves flash and yearn,

and moreover my mother told me as a boy   

(repeatingly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored   

means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no   

inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

Peoples bore me,

literature bores me, especially great literature,   

Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes   

as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.   

And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag   

and somehow a dog

has taken itself & its tail considerably away

into mountains or sea or sky, leaving            

behind: me, wag.

UPDATE!

DESIGN

Robert Frost

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

Bats, Lisps of Pride

In last night's fever dream I was reminded of the scene in Barth's Sot-Weed Factor (Barth being in my mind) when Ebenezer Cooke, upon landing in Maryland to take claim the plantation he inherited, stumbles upon a legal argument about private property and, fashioning himself a legal expert as well as poet, passionately argues for fairness to win and, with sanctimonious nobility, forfeits his rights to his fortune.

Me. Who'd you think I was talking about? After I lost my property, Obama screamed at me, calling me a pussy for expecting him to make decisions based on right and wrong. I've always loved fever dreams. Could do w/o the sore throat. In any case, I promised The Bats. Requests solicited and posted if I can find them:

UPDATE!

• Moral sums and inquiries. 
• On intervention. Please read the comments too. All other arguments considered, what I pivot on is that I cannot believe Corporate intervenes on anyone's behalf but its own. 
• On the above. On the above.
• Giving up smoking. All best! one way or the other.
• Toddler or 85? Fight the Either/Or-Man, man
• CWCF?
• Heh! Now do one for Democrats! 
• Just your run of the mill Satan. 
• But how would Boeing make money? 
• Congenital liar.
• Fuckface. And Obama's best weapon.
• Fuckface.
• Fuckfaces.
• Capitalism. 
• Stoke.
• While I enjoy the fever dreams, fevers also make me, in waves, furious, give me Bendii Syndrome-like outbursts, make me want to purge blogrolls of unKind borderline plagiarists, so until this blows over this is the last post until the next post, which it would have been anyway.
• Charles Wright. I confess he's never worked for me, but since I wield Kind like a kid holding his pointed finger like a death ray out the backseat window of a moving car and, bored, mow down everything - telephone poles, trees, barns, people - I'll try again.
• Barnes and Noble next.
• Collapse of the poetry economy.
• Many meanings can have one word.
  

WOOD'S EDGE

Brenda Hillman

Infinity lifted: 
a gasp of emeralds.
 
I thought I felt 
the tall night trees 
between them,
 
no exactitude, 
a wait not even 
known yet.
 
I held my violet up; 
no smell. 
It made a signal squeak 
inside, bats,
 
lisps of pride;
 
ah, their little things, 
their breath: lungs of a painting,
 
they swept me 
in four ways, their square
plans, as I have made 
a good square saying,
 
you I 
you not-I 
not-you I 
not-you not-I,
 
ritual of hope 
whose weight 
has not been measured—

Deaf as Cassandra to Any Note but Warning

The pint bets I won from Dennis and Leona were paid off last night (the original Thursday meeting was set before discovered that was St Patrick's Day). Talk was of Libya (since Japan is so, like, last decade): my cynicism is shocking, I'm told.

I didn't pursue beyond saying that it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best. Is that why you capitalize the word Kind on your blog, asked Leona. Excellent wry and amber three hours.

• Torture and stupidity. 
• What I said yesterday said better.
• On propaganda.
• Again.
• The view from Scotland.
• Obamagoat?
• On the shaky prospects of meritocracy.
• National pride.
• Metro.
• Olney.

• Raw thoughts.
• Social media and the future of poetry.
• This week's new releases.
• Agalloch. It says something about these days that I wait all week for the death metal sets on Diane's Kamakazi Fun Machine. 
• UPDATE! Holyfuck, wanna drive up your hits? Make a link with the name of the band in the above bullet point and watch google spin.
• Wire.

BEACH GLASS

Amy Clampitt

While you walk the water's edge,
turning over concepts
I can't envision, the honking buoy
serves notice that at any time
the wind may change,
the reef-bell clatters
its treble monotone, deaf as Cassandra
to any note but warning. The ocean,
cumbered by no business more urgent 
than keeping open old accounts
that never balanced,
goes on shuffling its millenniums
of quartz, granite, and basalt.
                    It behaves
toward the permutations of novelty--
driftwood and shipwreck, last night's
beer cans, spilt oil, the coughed-up
residue of plastic--with random
impartiality, playing catch or tag
or touch-last like a terrier,
turning the same thing over and over,
over and over. For the ocean, nothing
is beneath consideration.
                    The houses
of so many mussels and periwinkles
have been abandoned here, it's hopeless
to know which to salvage. Instead
I keep a lookout for beach glass--
amber of Budweiser, chrysoprase
of Almadén and Gallo, lapis
by way of (no getting around it,
I'm afraid) Phillips'
Milk of Magnesia, with now and then a rare
translucent turquoise or blurred amethyst
of no known origin.
                    The process
goes on forever: they came from sand,
they go back to gravel, 
along with treasuries
of Murano, the buttressed
astonishments of Chartres,
which even now are readying
for being turned over and over as gravely
and gradually as an intellect
engaged in the hazardous
redefinition of structures
no one has yet looked at.

The Whir of I Should Be, I Should Be, I Should Be Slows to Silence

Not winning is winning: the debate between Right Corporate and More Right Corporate isn't between no war and war, it's about how much war is the best amount of war to keep the helium-balloon economy afloat, the best way to market the war so that patriotic serfs forfeit their benefits as docilely as possible. Corporate needs enough time to broil the kidneys, boil the tripe, suck the marrow out of the bones of what's left of the real economy. This is a strategic retreat, Corporate hopes a slow retreat, maybe twenty more years of Masters slow. War is the business model.

Consider Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, who may have done as much for the perpetuation of the permanent war against our current Other as any drone-bombing of wedding parties:

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year.

An investigation by Der Spiegel has unearthed approximately 4,000 photos and videos taken by the men.

The magazine, which is planning to publish only three images, said that in addition to the crimes the men were on trial for there are "also entire collections of pictures of other victims that some of the defendants were keeping".

In one incident in May last year, the article says, during a patrol, the team apprehended a mullah who was standing by the road and took him into a ditch where they made him kneel down.

The group's leader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, then allegedly threw a grenade at the man while an order was given for him to be shot.

Afterwards, Gibbs is described cutting off one of the man's little fingers and removing a tooth.

For further enflaming anti-American sentiment, for making the war that wins by not winning even more un-winnable - in other words, for advancing Corporate's interests in a significant but sloppy fashion - Staff Sergeant Gibbs will likely spend the rest of his life in the brig (where I hope he's treated humanely, the motherfucker) for violating Corporate's public relations rules. We all serve Corporate on multiple-levels.

Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.

Yes, we're all aware of the devastating consequences Abu Ghraib wrecked on both George Bush's reelection campaign and Corporate's ability to maintain public support for not just perpetual war, more perpetual war.

• Ugly truths.
• The lesson of Libya.
• Libya, for your consideration. 
• Oh my. Read the comments too. Then this (and its comments).
• This time for sure.
• Godlike powers of Obama.
• Winning hearts and minds.
• $157M worth of democracy. No heating oil for grandma, though.
• Death and after in Iraq.
• Good question.
• You'd have to be on glue.
• Orwell allusions work.
• Your president: Under cover of the quasi-war against Libya and the Japanese nuclear crisis, the Justice Department released two significant and long-outstanding Bush-era legal memoranda on Friday evening. Both deal with an intelligence community program so secret that even its name has to be redacted. Referred to by Bush Administration lawyers as simply “the program,” it apparently granted the Defense Department (and particularly its National Security Agency) authority to sweep through millions of communications—on telephone, by fax, in emails, through Internet visits, at home and abroad, involving U.S. citizens and foreigners.
• Small victory!
• Meanwhile.
• Motherfucking self-entitled pussy.
• On the above motherfucking self-entitled pussy.
• Quelle surprise!
• Anti-anti-racism.
• Oopsy!
• Another report from Japan. Two things: (a) Seb used both canary and Cassandra in reference to himself, which is halfway to me and my CWCF, and (b) he can't comment here  - other friends have told me the same - and does anyone know why blooger lets some people comment but not others and how I can fix that? I'm a dope - I see nothing on my dashboard that would unblock.
• Book of the Month Club.
• Žižek on tact in the age of wikileaks.
• Žižek hates tulips.

• What a clown, and I mean that in the best way. (h/t)
• Yoga-store murder: more. More.
• Donkey-botherers.
• On disappearing bookstores. I feel no sadness - which once would have surprised me - at the demise of Borders.
• The decline of second-hand bookstores, however, sucks.
• Silliman's always generous lit-links.
• New formats.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• I will not sing hateful songs.
• Please take.
• Now was.
• Moreover.
• Jeff the Brotherhood.

THE MOMENT

Marie Howe

Oh, the coming-out-of-nowhere moment

when,   nothing 

happens 

no what-have-I-to-do-today-list 


maybe   half a moment  

the rush of traffic stops.  

The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be 

slows to silence, 

the white cotton curtains hanging still.

Eighteen

Oh my, my kid is an adult.

A testimonial.

what i have to say will be lost in this quiet for which i was never quite successful at promoting an antidote

Do you doubt Qaddafi when he says he and his loyalists and his military and his mercenaries would show no mercy to any man, woman, or child they decide deserves no mercy?

Do you doubt Obama, immensely grateful for Qaddafi's statement, would have launched his tomahawks regardless had Qaddafi not handed Obama the perfect PR platform for launching his tomahawks?

• Familiar patterns.
• War and hypocrisy.
• The invaders. 
• UPDATE! Traveling salesman.
• Muammar don't surf.
• First as kitsch, then as custom.
• Decent Democrats. Drop out and form a new party.
• Declare independence.
• The stigmatization of the unemployed.
• Please master.
• Maoist douchebags.
• Also, Hitler.
• Motherfucking cracker.
• World's most expensive dog.
• Silver Line.
• ICC!
• A reading list. Blood Meridian is required reading if you haven't. 
• My new love.

the second hundred: for sid luft

David Antin

1.

there are two sides to every story and to abbreviate one side is to diminish a side of a wall    creating an absence that is stronger than any presence and making any attempt at accurate construction hopeless    sid luft is such an accusative absence    perhaps you have never had to address yourself to a wraith    to proceed adverbially    naming effects as of the wind upon trees or Van der Waals forces on a surface    but sid luft was a test pilot    had flown grumman p 47's called thunderbolts and twin-fuselaged p 38's called lightnings    and thought it an agreeable task    his eye proceeding over the control panel checking the readings on all of the luminous dials    letting his ear discriminate among the complex series of metallic sounds that would allege a private relaxation    the way it takes the sharp eyes and quick ears of an astronaut to foresee a future failure in the allusion of a single dial    what is out there is altogether conjectural    that is the attraction that can take a smart boy out of his apartment and suspend him over an entire atmosphere    this applies also to arctic explorers whom also some bubble must arouse    let this be an attempt at assessment

2.

you know how a small deviation in the suspension of a balance wheel can lead to a barbarous inflection of the entire mechanism?    bringing a belgian police dog to sit in your lap or a bicycle to rest under a moving van    and the imperfection is only borne in upon you once it has passed a certain boundary?

3.

and in a car a defect in the low speed carburetor circuit will leave the entire carriage sucking for air at anything below the highest throttle speeds    so it is necessary to go on a splurge in cincinnati and choose a tomato soup red oldsmobile before going to chef's college    to infuse a vessel with air here becomes a commission    it is required to create a sense of competition where there isnt any    on a farm by the connecticutt    then to stand back at a street corner refraining from criticism like roger de coverley    as much of a spectator and as kindly    a moss covered rock coolly withstanding the current

4.

such a machine is guaranteed to bring you to despair precisely when the situation isnt desperate    because a mounting anxiety approaches a maximum when you have nothing to record in your diary and you have nothing to fall back upon except a tenuous self-discipline

5.

which supposes not only a set of earnest resolutions    promises made to Eliot for a regimen of self-improvement to be undertaken in the doldrums    dance lessons at 12:00    voice in the afternoon    and strict control of your diet    the problem is how to go on being enthusiastic about swallowing air in the evening    it means being equipped with the sense of a soft worm under the shell of a mollusc    which is an excellent image but finally fails to exhilarate if you have never seen it

6.

yet what continues to fascinate us in the shell are the continuous depositions of calcium    which we undertake to unwind like a bandage    while each roll is just like the last    allowing for minor accidents    and merely somewhat smaller    it does not fulfill our expectations    but the belief that there is something to fulfil in our expectations is fundamental

7.

a guard outside of a warehouse suggests there is something to protect

8.

the idea of hypocrisy is expensive

9.

for someone to scream incidentally and interrupt lunch

10.

similar cases in "temporary amnesia" are also known

11.

all you have to do is go to the library to become convinced that they are very likely    energy coming from somewhere striking like lightning

12.

annulling a marriage in a minute    such impulsive behavior modifies the entire history of a landscape    when a car breaks down it appears there was always something wrong with the motor

13.

to a man on a tightrope the Falls at Niagara are the truth of a river    and living to ninety appears like a sudden nomination

14.

its hard to maintain your obedience to impulse when you know that at 5 o'clock you're about to enter Mercy Hospital for a colitis operation    which leaves you nothing to do but pretend that under the ether you're going back for a look at your origin

15.

have you noticed how psychological states are all nouns    Happiness  Sorrow  Rage  Fear  and Shame  are never named participially say    like Smiling-Preceding-the-Storm or Lining-the-Depths-of-an-Outer-Darkening or Something-Preferred-to-Nothing?    its almost worth becoming a professor and obtaining a right to prophesy    erecting a science of naming and calling it Pyschology    finding a net in our hands meaning that there is something we pursue

16.

Judith what i have to say will be lost in this quiet for which i was never quite successful at promoting an antidote

17.

the knack of a child cupping a radio to his ear on his walk through the traffic    i would really have liked to wrap you in music in elevators and airliners    which i could recommend over amphetamine for its more regular rhythm

18.

to engineer another moment in the wings at the palladium and wait for an illumination from the scene to come and seize you    what we can expect of speaking sincerely is an elevation of feeling that we can equate with sincerity    which makes Wearing-Your-Heart-On-Your-Sleeve more than a becoming fashion that can fit any college sophomore and be successful    it needs a desire to be stretched while you are still superintendent of your passions    to which you will ultimately surrender

19.

and recalling the moment of your triumph is a roll call of reporters in which i even remember Ted Thackerey of the Compass    the last time we were truly together

20.

though in your memory it was undoubtedly different

21.

maybe you remember a village where i was a villain

22.

and the weather was bad    yet you didn't know whether to leave or take Joey and Lisa to the movie    the separate inventories of facts in the memories of people who have shared common experiences are weird    though perhaps only this division preserves the welfare of individuals and is insurance against the inevitable separations of pairs of men and women