Sunday, September 9, 2012

How Many Calories Are Consumed while Lolling in This Dimness, Mentally Lamenting the Lack of Anything to Indicate Some Faint Mirage of Right-Mindedness Has Been Sighted on the Horizon?




Woke up with that in my head, be in yours. Colonel Sanders was born one-hundred twenty years ago today. I saw that, thought, Hey, the Colonel Sanders scene in Elkin's The Franchiser when Ben Flesh is fooled by a fake Colonel Sanders, I'll post the spectacular paragraphs when Flesh realizes and reacts, fine bleggal-metaphors abound, but then I realized I loaned my copy to Pheven Stillups, I know you're reading this Pheven, if you've finished the book return it please, if you haven't finished the book finish the book and return it please. No, that's not bleggalgazing's end: I've been adding good new links, especially to Because Left, I've discovered Blooger has a limit of 125 per blegrell, so I've begun moving the moribund to Canned Hiatus below. No one has been purged; I doubt any of them read this bleg, but still. Also, suggestions for good reads always solicited. Also, as always, thanks for the Kind.















DOOMSDAY

Amy Gerstler

The dark that’s gathering strength
these days is submissive,
kinky, silken, willing;
stretched taut as a trampoline.
World events rattle by like circus
trains we wave at occasionally,
as striped, homed and spotted
heads poke out their windows.
Feels like I’m wearing a corset,
though I haven’t a stitch on.
Burn the place setting I ate from,
OK? and destroy the easy chair
I languished in. Let birds
unravel my lingerie
for nesting materials.
Fingers poised on the piano keys,
I can’t think what to play.
A dirge, a fugue?
What, exactly, are crimes
against nature? How many
calories are consumed while
lolling in this dimness,
mentally lamenting the lack
of anything to indicate
some faint mirage of right-
mindedness has been sighted
on the horizon? The world
is full of morbid thinkers,
miserable workers and compulsive
doodlers. Darling, my mother
used to croon, you were a happy
accident, like the discovery
of penicillin. When I sense
the zillions of cells in my body
laboring together, such grand
fatigue sweeps over me.
Once in a blue moon I smell
the future’s breath,
that purgatorial whiff
shot through with the scent
of burnt hair, like when sailors
have been drifting at sea
for a long time and suddenly
they see gulls circling
and the ripe composty odor
of land unfurls in the air,
but they’ve no idea whether
an oasis of breadfruit
and pineapple awaits them
or an enclave of cannibals.


14 comments:

  1. Kim Gordon looks rather awesome in a formal gown.

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  2. Ten reasons not to vote for Obama.

    That's a good link. I think that the "weakness", aka the often expressed need to compromise with the Republicans, is a scam.

    It's just cover to do what the big corporations want and screw the voters.
    ~

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  3. Well, first of all, the title of the post is "ten reasons Obama does not DESERVE your vote" which is not quite the same thing as 'ten reasons not to vote for Obama'.

    Because I would agree with the first construction. However, with regard to the second, my position (as thunder well knows) is that in every one of those ten considerations, Rmoney and the Republicans would be substantially and heinously worse, and would have tragic consequences for quite a large number of people.

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  4. There are many regulars here who agree w/you, I had this discussion today and yesterday and the day before with friends and acquaintances digital and flesh. I say those tragic consequences are coming regardless who wins the pennant because whichever the one of two the league wins. I think the league *wants* Obama to win, we'll get the GOP in 2016 after Obama the Sapper does four years more damage than Mitt Romney can only dream of much less implement did he win the pennant. And he's not going to win the pennant.

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    Replies
    1. This. Plus the best Colonel Sanders moment was from Spaceballs.

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  5. Yeah, two different things. Voting for someone other than Obama is not the same as not voting. To my thinking, the latter is defensible, however marginally (in my personal scheme of values, your mileage may vary, etc.). The former, not so much. Same goes for cancer.

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  6. Y'see, I may be a bit biased, as my career and practice (and perhaps my life) were most likely saved by the ARRA, which helped to finance two projects that I worked on during Depression 2.0.

    These are things that Rmoney and the Republicans-at-large would NOT have done. It is only anecdata, I know. But it was not-tragic (although thunder probably disagrees) due to the Democrats.

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  7. Voting for someone other than Obama is not the same as not voting.

    Hey, people can vote however they want, or not. They can vote for Ralph Nader and pretend they are making a point. But I will argue against the thesis that the Republicans will not be more destructive and evil than the Democrats. For evidence, I will point to the Clinton interregnum (a neoliberal at least as transgressive as Obama) vs. the Dubya Nightmare.

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  8. The problem is 1) the lesser evil keeps getting worse (why not, it's got your vote) and 2), prevents something better, or even adequate, from being an alternative.

    So yeah, having one good leg amputated is better than having both cut off.

    But where's the alternative of not having a good leg amputated? I know, I know, I'm letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
    ~

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  9. I don't think that the Calories which i was searching is the same mentioned above the post ! lolzz

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  10. Yes, now I will get hits on how many calories are spent ducking fogs.

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  11. BDR,
    Remember you said the ticket was going to be Obama/Clinton? When are they dumping Biden?

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  12. Hah! The league choosing Romney as opponent kinda made rendered that unnecessary.

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  13. Nice to see my post generated some discussion and BDR, thank you for the link. It got me about 30 hits, which for me is A Big Deal.

    I'll offer just two comments on the discussion here:

    1. Voting for someone other than Obama is not the same as not voting. ... [T]he latter is defensible.... The former, not so much.

    Um, so voting for, say, Jill Stein (which is what I'm going to do) is worse than not voting? Unless you're going the "Don't vote; it only encourages them" route, I just don't get that.

    2. I will argue against the thesis that the Republicans will not be more destructive and evil than the Democrats.

    First, on at least some of the points I listed in the post - specifically, government surveillance, government secrecy, expansion of executive branch authority, and conducting secret wars - Obama has been worse than Bush. So the argument that GOPpers will inevitably be more evil than Dems really doesn't hold up.

    More importantly, to make such a thesis the basis for political, specifically voting, decisions is to give carte blanche to the Dems, as ifthethunderdontgetya noted, to get continually worse.

    The lesser of two evils is still an evil; "less bad" is still bad. The question is, when does "less bad" cross over, as it must at some point if we are not to be reduced to merely offering palliative care to a terminally-ill body politic, into "not good enough?"

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