The Seriously Happy Heart Is a Problem

Somewhere I once read that March 30 is David Thomas' birthday but I can't find where. Wikipedia and other places list just March 1953, so regardless whether today is actually David Thomas' 59th birthday, today is a High Egoslavian Holiday. In my sillyass Desert Island Five game, all Thomas' projects, but especially Pere Ubu, have one of three permanent seats (yes, the Yo La Tengo petition I submitted to myself to make YLT  the fourth permanent member I rejected: nothing against YLT, I just want two rotational spots and I'm not kicking out Kate Bush or GbV/Pollard or Thomas). If you want lots of Pere Ubu/Thomas songs, use the search box up top, they're all over this shitty bleg. Hey, did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?





It's true, and we have a date tonight, then tomorrow Earthgirl and I rent a car and drive to Bamgier to take Planet and three friends out to dinner at the only Four Star restaurant in the county! Sunday we take Planet into the greater Vount Mernon metroplex to shop for basics, then we're going to take a four hour drive together on roads I've never driven and yap and don't yap and take photos and don't. Once Planet tells us to go away, she has homework, we'll start driving to wherever it is we want to disc (me) and paint (Earthgirl): I rented a big enough car Earthgirl can bring all the canvases she wants and I'm bringing the red bag. We're thinking of Forked Run State Park, with a world class 24 hole course and scenic views perfect for landscape artists. Tuesday we drive back to Bamgier - on as many scenic green-dashed roads as time allows - and take Planet out to dinner one more time, then drive home Wednesday. I will not seek to beat my 5.5 hour drive of last time. Expect lots of photos, travel narrative, the stuff most people hate but is my favorite flavor (besides bleggalgazing, of which I am always bursting, but) of blegging.

• My fantasy of Rohn Joberts being hit by a bus so Obama need choose his replacement on a very pro-Corporate SCOTUS is not going to happen, no doubt to his deep relief if he thought about it.
• American rubes.
• Motherfucking crackers.
• Motherfucking crackers.
• Motherfucking crackers.
• Republican conservatism: an infantile disorder?
• You know, an increasing dislike and distrust of professional progressives IS NOT OFFSET by a lessening of contempt for American conservatives. In fact, each increases the loathing of the other. I know I keep saying this - hopefully less than the everyday I used to - but this is not a Corporate bug, it's a Corporate feature.
• Motherfucking hipster libertarians.
• Racism: not what it used to be.
• Reality you make, reality you don't.
• On a clear day.
• Peter Nowak: still a dick.
• Literature flowchart.
• On Harry Crews. Read a couple, understand why they sang to people even if they didn't sing to me, have friends who love him.
• On Harry Crews.
• On Harry Crews.
• On Harry Crews.
• On Earl Scruggs. See above comment about Crews, transcribe.
• On Adrienne Rich.
• On Adrienne Rich.
• Twenty-one love poems.
• Five poems.
• On Adrienne Rich.
• On Adrienne Rich.
• Yesterday's link to a Dustin Wong song reminded me of Ponytail (or, rather, reading about Dustin Wong, I discovered he was in Ponytail).
• This shitty bleg's Official Theme Song 2:

TROUBLE

Jack Gilbert

This is what the Odyssey means.
Love can leave you nowhere in New Mexico
raising peacocks for the rest of your life.
The seriously happy heart is a problem.
Not the easy excitement, but summer
in the Mediterranean mixed with
the rain and bitter cold of February
on the Riviera, everything on fire
in the violent winds. The pregnant heart
is driven to hopes that are the wrong
size for this world. Love is always
disturbing in the heavenly kingdom.
Eden can not manage so much ambition.
The kids ran from all over the piazza
yelling and pointing and jeering
at the young Saint Chrysostom
standing dazed in the church doorway
with the shining around his mouth
where the Madonna had kissed him.