BLCKDGRD: 2011-02-27

Monday, March 7, 2011

Born One Hundred Thirty-Six Years Ago Today

Charleston 1, United 2

United won the 2010 Carolina Challenge! How'd that augur?

But (and I saw maybe half of each half - Fullback has much more) --- I'm mildly optimistic we'll be Daxfans by week two. I wonder how much Benny's input bringing McCarty in weighed. McCarty had the armband.

I'm mildly optimistic the defense will be better (even if only by .06%). I'm mildly optimistic the midfield is not only better but has more options than last year. I'm not optimistic about the strikers until I see Davies running at full-speed for significant minutes, Pontius run at full-speed for two consecutive games without tearing a hamstring, or Wolff and/or Ngwenya prove me wrong.

I'm more pessimistic than ever I'll ever get to dance me a Fuck-Me-Jig. Hello, Mayor Gray, the District Attorney's on line one, your lawyer's on line two, Kwame Brown's on line three, Sulaimon Brown's on line four, and there's a Will Chang from something called the D.C. United on the line five asking for a stadium....

UPDATE!

Loney:

I'm not going to sit here and say there's no reason to pay any attention to DC United this year. There's Davies, Najar, and McCarty. But it's much more important for them to get their own stadium, that short of a run for the championship, nothing on the field compares with the risk of losing this team to Baltimore or Grand Rapids or wherever. Nothing against Menckenopolis, but if Baltimore wants to see FC Homicide in MLS, let them find a multi-millionaire like everyone else.

Yup.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Can You Taste the Ghosts Who Shed Their Creaking Hosts?

Year ago today. Favorite songs solicited in comments, will appear up here.

I'm almost through this week's sorrow (though hug your children today). Regular programming will resume tomorrow unless it doesn't (or unless, like me, you consider this regular programming). Meanwhile, links while they're fresh and urgent:

Kingdom of Evil.
Everything you need to know about torture.
Unmanageability.
Mentioning C-Words.
Next.
1977 again.
Put the Constitution on the ground and walk away.
White privilege.
Dana Milbank might go Froomkin: if he does, over/under date when Fred Hiatt fires him.
On the above.
Religious systems.
Toilet Paper. (h/t Frederick's google reader feed)
Scenes from a marriage.
Is happiness boring?
Where to begin.
The poem as graph.
de Selby.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Fifty-Four Today

Mark E Smith. Favorite The Fall songs solicited.

Via friends:

Friday, March 4, 2011

Sacrifice Them on the Altar of Our Ineffable Cause

Have some links, music, poem. I'm going to shut up and listen to myself think for a day or few. There might be birthday music Saturday. There will be music Sunday.

The dilemma.
The morality of power.
Full disclaimer: my parents were teachers, my favorite aunts and uncles were teachers, one of my good friends is a teacher, my wife is a teacher, and I've benefited greatly from wonderful teachers in high school and college, so I want to take take this opportunity first to tell motherfucking fat cracker-baiting governors attacking teachers for political gain to fuck themselves with affect in the eye with a motherfucking fork, but I especially want to take this opportunity to tell motherfucking Democrats who are not defending teachers, from Mobamafucker down to the pissantest precinct leader, to doublefuck themselves in both eyes with the rusty lid of a rancid can of catfood. Fuckers.
The trouble isn't that people are ignorant.
Politics of entitlement.
America.
America.
On the above.
The enemy is us.
America.
America.
Sorry.
Bombing Libya.
Solidarity.
Capitalism.
Pop goes the Republic.
American meritocracy.
American meritocracy:
Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was in the Capitol on Wednesday for the unveiling of his official portrait. Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were also on hand for the event. Below is our pool report on the gathering, which took place in the Old Senate Chamber, the room where the Senate used to meet from 1810 to 1859 but which is now used mostly for ceremonial events:
Scores of current and former senators, aides and administration officials - including former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- filled the Old Senate Chamber shortly after 3:30 p.m. Wednesday for the unveiling of the portrait of former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who served as majority leader from 2003 until his retirement in 2007.
Bush, clad in a dark blue suit, appeared upbeat as he sat onstage next to Frist to the left of a podium. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former Senate chaplain Llyod Ogilvie sat on the opposite side of the podium. Cheney was sitting in the audience, as were several other Bush administration officials, including former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and McConnell's wife, former Labor secretary Elaine Chao.
Among the former senators in attendance were Republicans Fred Thompson (Tenn.), Pete Domenici (N.M.), Don Nickles (Okla.), Rick Santorum (Pa.), Norm Coleman (Minn.), John Warner (Va.), Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) and Spencer Abraham (Mich.). A host of current senators from both parties were present; MSNBC host Chris Matthews was also spotted in the crowd.
There's democracy and democracy.
Sheen, Beck, or Qaddafi?
Scott Walker of Roger Goodell?
The battle for the internet.
Sillyass bleggalgazing.
Seven essential things about blegging to ignore.
Women and cats?
ICC!
I see coyotes all the time in Rock Creek Park.
I'm sympathetic to Burleith residents' objections to student group houses, but SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Some of Reed's paintings are in the building I work in. Amazing. I know shit about art, but I love Color School paintings.
Poetry, politics, and the body.
Haven't heard of, much less read, any of them.
Ur-story.
BANG! Ur-copyright battle!
On what you love.
On what you love.
Confirmation of motherfucking horrible news.
Best guest post ever.
Swimming.
Lying.
Torch song.
Medicina.
The fastest train.
We could build a better robot.

LETTER TO DR.B - - -

Diane Ackerman

I have found you among the texts
(but not the textures) of your life,
in the library of your cunning,
where the abstracts of forty papers
open, one by one, like small windows
partly sealed by terminology's lacquer.
They reveal you both aloof and enthralled,
a restless mind of intersecting planes.

How can I resist the paper "Artist and Analyst"?
Yet I do, thinking it best to stay
within the frame we've chosen,
using the palette we invent,
creating a mosaic in motion.
Whenever I set a shard in place,
the mosaic evolves, blurs a moment,
then a new scene refines, throwing past into relief,
drawing present into mind.

So I will sacrifice my yen to know
the what and whim of you. Though my curiosity
is swelling like a Magellanic Cloud
filled with a luminous starfield of questions,
I'll sacrifice them on the altar of our ineffable 
cause. A padded altar. A cause quilted with passion,
and insight whose razors cut clean as thrill.
A sacrifice intoxicating as any pill.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Theme Song March 2011

Holyfuck. Peace to J & K, peace to S & E, and peace to everyone who loves them.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Let It Be Insignificant and Let Its Insignificance Shine

This is a perfect example of why I don't enjoy blegging about politics in general and American politics in particular as much as I once did:

MALZBERG: Don't you think it's fair also to ask him, I know your stance on this. How come we don't have a health record, we don't have a college record, we don't have a birth cer - why Mr. Obama did you spend millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate. It's one thing to say, I've -- you've seen it, goodbye. But why go to court and send lawyers to defend against having to show it? Don't you think we deserve to know more about this man?

HUCKABEE: I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American. When he gave the bust back to the Brits --

Huckabee knows full fucking well Obama didn't grow up in Kenya, so there's a deliberate lie meant to play to his cracker base, but then here's a truth!

MALZBERG: He despises the west, he despises the Brits, and I think he could take it all out on Israel and that's why he despises Israel. He's not too thrilled with our history either. But let me just try to get an answer from you. Would you say to him, or at least ask him in a debate, why did you go to court and spend millions of dollars on lawyers to prevent from having to show your birth certificate. If you have one and it's there, why not show it?

HUCKABEE: The only reason I'm not as confident that there's something about the birth certificate, Steve, is because I know the Clintons [inaudible] and believe me, they have lots of investigators out on him, and I'm convinced if there was anything that they could have found on that, they would have found it, and I promise they would have used it.

Truth, truth, absolute and fundamental truth.

It's true Blegsylvania is in recession if not in depression. Look at my blegrells, see how bleggers haven't posted in days, weeks, months. The same is true on blegrells of bleggers I read on a daily basis. It's winter at the old folks home.

I've no doubt Twitter and Facebook contribute heavily to Blegsylvania's depopulation - we are trained to have shorter and shorter attention spans (we are trained to spend our wages on our over-priced training devices, and AWOO!) - and Twitter and Facebook will be obsolete soon themselves (remember when blogging felt fresh and, tee-hee, empowering?), but I neither Twitter or Facebook, and I can only speak for me and this shitty blog when I say it's not

it's too much fuck tossed in a pissy dressing of my insignificance, complicity, and my unconquerable vanity that I'll be proved right about the depth and width of the clusterfuck, and that's not as much fun to write about as once it was, and when it was more fun I still enjoyed posting songs and poems and writing about DC United and bleggalgazing more anyway.

Coup D'Etat, now with extra remorse.
Spending or investing?
Annals of white collar crime.
Winning hearts and minds.
Winning!
Bleggalgaze.
The options.
History of the Newt.
Buttboy slams asshole!
UPDATE! YFWP.
UPDATE! YFWP.
Things you might have missed.
ICC!
ICC!

That's from a huge pile of art Earthgirl picked up yesterday from the garage of her aunt who died last month or two. Wonder why she rushed home to give me that one.
Intro: Late American Novel.
On the above.
On Amy Clampett.
Writing tools.
Raskolnikov's inbox.
This week's new releases w/sound.
Obscure Sound's best of February w/sound.
UPDATE! Master of the Universe!
1984.
UPDATE! I am the fly.
Years (5-8).
I claimed this one out of the pile for obvious current and future use:

OUR FLAG

Carl Adamshick

should be green 
to represent an ocean.
It should have two stars 
in the first canton, 
for us and navigation. 
They should be of gold thread, 
placed diagonally, 
and not solid, 
but comprised of lines. 
Our flag should be silky jet. 
It should have a wound,
a red river the sun must ford
when flown at half-mast.
It should have the first letter
of every alphabet ever.
When folded into a triangle
an embroidered eighth note
should rest on top
or an odd-pinnate, 
with an argentine stem, 
a fiery leaf, a small branch 
signifying the impossible song.
Or maybe honey and blue
with a centered white pinion.
Our flag should be a veil
that makes the night weep
when it comes to dance,
a birthday present we open
upon death, the abyss we sleep 
under. Our flag should hold 
failure like light glinting 
in a headdress of water. 
It should hold the moon
as the severed head 
of a white animal
and we should carry it
to hospitals and funerals, 
to police stations and law offices. 
It should live, divided, 
deepening its yellows 
and reds, flaunting itself 
in a dead gray afternoon sky. 
Our flag should be seen
at weddings well after
we've departed.
It should stir in the heat
above the tables and music.
It should watch our friends
join and separate 
and laugh as they go out 
under the clouded night 
for cold air and cigarettes. 
Our flag should sing 
when we cannot,
praise when we cannot,
rejoice when we cannot.
Let it be a reminder.
Let it be the aperture,
the net, the rope of dark stars.
Let it be mathematics.
Let it be the eloquence
of the process shining 
on the page, a beacon 
on the edge of a continent. 
Let its warnings be dismissed. 
Let it be insignificant 
and let its insignificance shine.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

There Is in Fact a Certain Sadness to Pockets, Going in Their Lonesome Ways and Snuffling Up Their Sifting Storms

Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

It's true! and they now have a kickass Olsen's Army truck! As I type this opening kickoff is eighteen days, four hours, three minutes, and ten seconds away! And HEY! We get a USOC game v Phunion in Germantown in early April! !wOOt!

I've seen questions at a few blegs since I saw this article on BLAWG! decline. I ask, when did blegs succeed and what did they succeed at, then note that this post deploys the very three elements that most drives readers away, DC United/soccer, poetry, and bleggalgazing. It's intentional of course, though it's not my fault three poets I like and admire were all born on March 1, nor is it my fault that I first saw the youtube of the Benny Truck yesterday and I am required, by all Codes of Protesting I Only Bleg for Me and Mine, to write about the Benny Truck in the first post subsequent to the Benny Truck's sighting. As for bleggalgazing, that's entirely my fault, but might as well do here since many stopped reading at the tired United gag.

OK, that covers it. United, check; poetry, check; bleggalgazing, check. Wait, what about the half-dozen Guided by Voices songs?...

The state of emergency in which we live.
The immorality of empire.
Empire of lies.
Revival of imperialist ideology.
Lesson of the drones.
Of course it is.
Of course they are.
Fat fucking oink does victory dance in YFWP.
Only one revolution per customer. (h/t)
A joke.
The State.
Oh fuck, here come the humanitarians.
It has nothing to do with oil.
No other way out.
BLCKDGRD Theme Song 3:

Josipovici, for those of you who do.
Beckett, for those of you who do.
Child's play (w/cameos by Josipovici and Beckett).
Pulped fiction.
Auto da Fe, part one.
Hey, it's drive-time at WFMU. Do good.
Then go here and click pop-out player for latest show. Mmwah.
February listening hours, w/sound.
Echos Myron.
I'm Cold.
Hardcore UFOs.
14 Cheerleader Comfort.
Big day for birthdays!

POCKETS

Howard Nemerov (born 2/29/20)

Are generally over or around
Erogenous zones, they seem to dive
In the direction of those

Dark places, and indeed
It is their nature to be dark
Themselves, keeping a kind

Of thieves' kitchen for the things
Sequestered from the world
For long or little while,

The keys, the handkerchiefs,
The sad and vagrant little coins
That are really only passing through.

For all they locate close to lust,
No pocket ever sees another;
There is in fact a certain sadness

To pockets, going in their lonesome ways
And snuffling up their sifting storms
Of dust, tobacco bits and lint.

A pocket with a hole in it
Drops out; from shame, is that, or pride?
What is a pocket but a hole?

THE DRUNKEN FISHERMAN

Robert Lowell (3/1/17)

Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait.  They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
Its bloody waters into holes;
A grain of sand inside my shoe
Mimics the moon that might undo
Man and Creation too; remorse,
Stinking, has puddled up its source;
Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
This is the pot-hole of old age.

Is there no way to cast my hook
Out of this dynamited brook?
The Fisher's sons must cast about
When shallow waters peter out.
I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
And when the Prince of Darkness stalks
My bloodstream to its Stygian term . . .
On water the Man-Fisher walks.