The Fucking Dog Barks at the Night, Mad at the Stars All His Life and Then Again

If there is no difference, said B, a friend of K's, at Thursday Night Pints, if there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans on Police State policy or bankster policy, even if I know I am fed social issues to keep me troughed, isn't thwarting crackers a cynical x cynical reasonable position? I paraphrase, but I hear some version of the question in my head constantly. Yes I'm yelling at you but I'm yelling mostly at me. I quickly gave my third generation Ellis Island disillusionment Mr Ed O! Wilbur story, successive fathers leaving children a better world more left of the world they inherited, so successful was the less-shittyism of the Left once upon a time. I use that as justification for my apostasies and proof of my still deep rubity. L gave her confession, she's twenty years older than me, the ripples of apostasy that radiate past the younger to older that I used to talk about capsized her goat (yes goat) after mine but her capsizing hurt her more than mine me. Your uterus is a negotiable prop, L said to B. Three of the flat-screens were showing the convention. We stared as the Foofucking Fuckingfighters came on stage. Fine metaphors abound, said L, whose anger I envy, who will not need buy a ridiculously prized Scotch at TNPs until the second Thursday after POTUS 12.

• A bet on transcendence favors the house.
• Boo god? I say boo your imaginary friend Jesus too.
• B, who lives in a swing state on the wrong side of the Potomac, said, well, I'm going to hold my nose and vote against Romney, I hope you don't think that makes me evil. Jesus Christ, said D, who got up to buy a round.
• Unity without unions.
• I'm told the crowd at DNC broke into USA! USA! USA! Awesome.
• Proudest achievement.
• UPDATE! Ask the Democrats - Is Romney Ready for the Kill List?
• Lacking the same delusional magic as 2008.
• Not the lesser evil, the more effective evil.
• Hello FBI! Someone found me googling a photo of West Street in Annapolis, found the post of the night we saw Lampchop at Ram's Head few months ago (hence the song), good swerve, Gumshoe.
• Roscoe!
• Shit in the Monocacy!
• Take it from the Chevy Chase Club's property.

• Sonny Rollins is eighty-two today. Hence the Hamster Signal.
• Josipovici (for those of you who do) on Kafka (for those of you who do).
• Bishop's Geography.
• Get your submissions in.
• Fuck You Poem #45.
• Luckily, the sound was off the flat-screens as the Foofucking Fuckingfighters farted their shit, plus I only looked once (for fear of seeing more): it might have just been a quick highlight shot. If it was live and you sat through it what the fuck is wrong with you?
• Three hours of Cage.
• Why you are so soft?

TO THE QUARRY AND BACK

Katia Kapovich

White hail pelting the frozen bog,
I’m stuck in the first line of January,
following my host’s dog
on his walk through the stone century,
around the quarry, slices of marble and mud,
past a herd of miners exhaling smoke,
past a barn smelling of merde,
and back to where I’m stuck and broke.
The fucking dog barks at the night,
mad at the stars all his life and then again.
I rethink kicking him out,
but being cool, I let him in.

Derusting Rings on the Coolant-Spouting Turntable

• Fine metaphors abound. 
• On the above.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• The people's hero.
• Improve or we'll kill you.
• No one, that's who.
• Fuckers.
• You know who else gave good speeches?
• In a mass knife-fight, which POTUS would win?
• Motherfucking pigs.
• Shock corridor.
• City under siege.
• The Present/.
• False flags.

• Would evidence be enough?
• Silliman's always astonishingly generous litlinks.
• Motel news.
• Joe Brainard.
• Labile.
• Friend's take on Lispector (who I am about to attempt an extended effort to read as the refreshing sherbet between heavy courses of Vollmann).
• Yes, we can try, but I don't talk about poetry, a terror is more certain, though thank you for asking: if I catch myself wondering why this poet works for but this one doesn't I'm OK but if I try to write about it I end up with neither. This is not the same laziness as my willful unwillingness to pissing-match subject/object/object/subject with folk, I hated it when I had to, fuck that when I don't.
• Birdseed was her middle name.
• With Tenure.
• Boatload of Cage links.
• How to say nothing.
• Prunella's latest playlist!
• Woke up with this in my head:

WHAT I KNOW ABOUT EPISTEMOLOGY

John Surowiecki

As the light goes, go.
Be the rustling in the grass, the fall from
convention's good graces: learn, or someone
will have you filing files or writing writs,
demonstrating cutlery or selling knowledge

door to door; someone might even drop
your lovely life into a factory and have you
derusting rings on the coolant-spouting
turntable of a vertical lathe.
It's best for everyone that what you know

is generally thought of as general knowledge.
You can find it in pool rooms and roadside bars,
in meadows as inviting as beds, in bedrooms
where it whispers like a ribbon untying;
you can even find it in schools. But be careful:

it's dangerous, inescapable and exact
down to every atom of everything there is,
to every name each thing goes by and every
law each thing obeys. And the best part is,
you always know more than you know.

nor dingsters die at break of dong

John Cage born one hundred years ago today. It's not love - I admire and acknowledge his importance without adoring the music. When I think of Cage I think of E.E. Cummings, whose importance I admire and acknowledge without adoring the poetry. It's hard now to remember how innovative Cage's music and Cummings poetry were once, perhaps the highest testimony to their influence. It is on me that both now feel old. The above was suggested by Abonilox, thanks.

Monday night, driving home from dinner with Earthgirl and Hamster, we were talking about music, I said, the only thing I want to hear these days is music I've never heard before - I need to apply that to novels, too, yo, suggestions solicited. Good buddy Paleo Jay Arra Old Dirty Bama 101 commented at yesterday's post: It is becoming very sucky that we seem to converge. I need newness, yet we are mostly the same. We read the same things. We don't listen to the same things because I don't really listen anymore...I avoid reading, because it depresses me...except for blogs that I read everyday and I play video games that let my id blow the shit out of people and et cetera ad nauseum. Please help and/or advise. Speaking of serendipity, after yesterday's poem entitled Rondo this headline in The Guardian. Pursuing the serendipity (the best and only advice I have is to pursue serendipity), a twooter friend tweeted something with three names all with Ks in them will flashed me to Killdozer, a good thing and, serendipitously, just who I needed to listen to.

• The decline of the West.
• The mainstream acceptance of austerity.
• Some basics on the economy.
• 52 shades of greed.
• Cleaning up the mess.
• Police state.
• I am going to permit myself one DNC snark per day.
• My future hell.
• ICC fish kill!
• Doom.
• They're playing motherfucking helmetball again this year?
• I have no interest in debating the E e E e Ccummings issue.
• Seidel's sordid glory.
• The death and afterlife of a modern novelist.
• The John Cage century.
• John Cage's search for silence.
• Nine films about John Cage.

[as freedom is a breakfastfood]

E.E. Cummings

as freedom is a breakfastfood
or truth can live with right and wrong
or molehills are from mountains made
—long enough and just so long
will being pay the rent of seem
and genius please the talentgang
and water most encourage flame

as hatracks into peachtrees grow
or hopes dance best on bald men’s hair
and every finger is a toe
and any courage is a fear
—long enough and just so long
will the impure think all things pure
and hornets wail by children stung

or as the seeing are the blind
and robins never welcome spring
nor flatfolk prove their world is round
nor dingsters die at break of dong
and common’s rare and millstones float
—long enough and just so long
tomorrow will not be too late

worms are the words but joy’s the voice
down shall go which and up come who
breasts will be breasts thighs will be thighs
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—time is a tree(this life one leaf)
but love is the sky and i am for you
just so long and long enough

Butt In Their Bone Cage Surges to Bursting

• John Cage centenary tomorrow. Requests solicited in comments or via email please and thanks. Provide links if possible, please.
• Reminder: I'm closing comments after they've laid moribund for a day or two: I'm getting major spammed - Hi! Mr Indonesia, Mr Bangladesh! - and as much as I hate the comment-squiggles I'd just as soon not impose them on you.
• Busy, have some linkages, songs, a poem.
• Not enough crackers.
• I'm going to try very hard not to bwah the Charlotte Bwah. Just failed.
• UPDATE! Of course they are. Pay no mind.
• Last call at the Playboy mansion.
• If the Republicans were interested in winning.
• Capitalism's ideological crutches.
• Shameless pandering to My Little Pony fetishists.
• Nietzsche, for those of you who do.
• Hey! Magnetic Fields playing DC Saturday and Sunday November 17, 18. Wasn't going to go: other than three songs, the new album bores me. Driving Planet back to Gambier she played some from all the earlier albums, bored me. I remembered the show we saw in Philly earlier this year, was lots of fun but Merritt's I hate you you fucking fucks and I hate being here act bored me. Still, Earthgirl and Planet said please and Sunday the 18th is when Planet flies in for Thanksgiving Break, so we're going. Will be fun just to go. Someone named Emma Straub, Novelist, is opening, what the fuck? What's an Emma Straub? Anyway, join us! Tickets are general admission, let's have dinner first!
• UPDATE! Handwritten Beefheart poem!
• What, you expect a Mag Fields' song before the poem. NO! Have new Bob Mould single first, then the poem, then Mag Fields.

RONDO

Janet Holmes

The noun one keeps batting away
refuses declension.

He says, I don’t want to be
twenty-four again.
Twenty-four was a handful:

the flawless
meatflesh, best self, miraculous
leap/thump on the hardwood,
the twist and splash.

The exuberance
in the present tense,

the timebound blood pump
two throbbing lungs butt
in their bone cage

surges to bursting.
He does not perdure

in this internal defection:
so rare, and so heroic.

Our Lizard Boy Merely Flaunts Crusty Skin

• Friday night there was a carnival on the main lawn of Illtophay, a Welcome Back! for the students, I've been thinking about carnival since: Bakhtin portrays carnival as an expression of a ‘second life’ of the people, against their subsumption in the dominant ideology. Ir replaces the false unity of the dominant system with a lived unity in contingency. It creates a zone in which new birth or emergence becomes possible, against the sterility of dominant norms (which in their tautology, cannot cretae the new). It also encourages the return of repressed creative energies. It is joyous in affirming that the norms, necessities and/or systems of the present are temporary, historically variable and relative, and one day will come to an end. Reading this in a contemporary way, we might say that carnival is expressive rather than instrumental. It involves the expression of latent aspects of humanity, direct contact among people (as opposed to alienation), and an eccentric refusal of social roles. It brings together groups and categories which are usually exclusive. Time and space are rearranged in ways which show their contingency and indissolubility. All of this is done in a mood of celebration and laughter.
• That's today's bleggalgaze and explains all the twitter-based links below. Consider how much carnival is now digital and the implications, ISAs, protest and surveillance, etc....
• Strike.
• Shunning evil.
• Malaise and third parties.
• Failure to fetishize the troops or acknowledgment that Romney can't get to the right of Obama on bloodspilling? That's right, the or is an and.
• Sasha, I think correctly, pointed out that O'Malley is running to be Hillary's VPOTUS in 2016, not POTUS as I suggested Sunday.
• Metaphor Database. Sweet holyfuck. (h/t).
• Careening.
• Insomniac thoughts on blogging and twitter.
• The Poet Laureate of twitter.
• Four Points Hotel at BWI Airport is following me on twitter.
• Twitter and free speech.
• Hey! Why did you unfollow me on twitter?
• Pentagon claims it's winning twitter war v Taliban.
• Don't stop retweeting.
• Download that Gilius Van Bergeijk deconstructing Schubert above.
• Lordy, I get it. Strangest days of my life.
• Houndmouth is a great band name.
• Eisler.
• Incredibly delicious Fleetwood Mac cover.
• Two hours of Hal David songs. I didn't realize how often I heard these when I was a kid.
• Someone else digs Kate Bush too.
• Ear Candy from yesterday at work:

A WORD FROM THE FAT LADY

Gabrielle Calvocoressi

It isn't how we look up close
so much as in dreams.

Our giant is not so tall,
our lizard boy merely flaunts

crusty skin- not his fault
they keep him in a crate

and bathe him maybe once a week.
When folks scream or clutch their hair

and poke at us and glare and speak
of how we slithered up from Hell,

it is themselves they see:
the preacher with the farmer's girls

(his bulging eyes, their chicken legs)
or the mother lurching towards the sink,

a baby quivering in her gnarled
hands. Horror is the company

you keep when shades are drawn.
Evil does not reside in cages.

Salt Lake 1, United 0, or: I Make a Whole Life Out of It: Everywhere I am, Its Sense of Loitering Lights on My Shoulder

Didn't see it. Wanted to see it but it was delayed an hour and a half by lightning and by the time it started Earthgirl was halfway through a movie she wouldn't have started if the game started on time and what, I was gonna pick a fight at 1030 to watch a game I was sure United would lose anyway? I do want to thank Barack Obama. The release of Eric Holder's announcement that no one of import will ever be prosecuted for murder and torture forever and ever (you do know this is about moving forward, not looking back, yes?) right after Crackerfest and before Obamagasm reminds me that we're so banjaxed, a word I learned a few nights ago reading the Guardian's transfer window deadline live blog. Buds in the UK said on twooter the word is "basically Irish middle-class for fucked" and "Irish for reduced to the condition of a pig's breakfast." Excellent. HEY! Today's NYT has a New Guide to the Democratic Herd! Describing four sub-tribes of Democrats, the article lists each sub-tribes' "motivating issues," guess how many sub-tribes are motivated by the protection of civil liberties and fighting the expansion of the police state and executive power and ending the atrocities of maintaining a mendacious empire and all else I yodel about daily. You're right!

• My apologies, I've yet to find a poem that uses the word banjaxed (I mean, other than in a first draft in somebody's tablet), hence its absence in this post's title.
• NYT also did a GOP herd thingee.
• Police state.
• Policing dissent.
• Roaming screeners.
• Police state.
• Voice of the new global elite.
• UPDATE! An unenthusiastic and world-weary defence of less-shittyism.
• The rise and demise of the university business model.
• Someone remarked, I can't remember who and where, that Eastwood served a valuable purpose, people are still talking about him rather than pursuing the GOP-lies meme. Not that it would have been pursued too vigorously.
• But yes, motherfucking crackers.
• Park Mrebelic once lived on Garth Terrace with one of the Morgenstern sisters, I forget which one.
• Sideshow's linkages.
• How to read his generation's greatest academic fraud (I say that admiringly).
• More on metaphor.
• Repost: Mary Ruefle.
• The Seer.
• On Roxy's 40th anniversary: Amazona was the first song on a Roxy album for which Manzanera received a credit. Because music publishing operates according to an antiquated, pre-rock conception of composition that rewards those who write the top-line melody and lyrics, most Roxy tunes are credited solely to Ferry. "It goes back to Tin Pan Alley and the 1930s," says Manzanera. "Eno's synth part on Ladytron, Andy's oboe parts – that came from them. Each member was contributing to the music and to all the arrangements. I like to think that we produced the musical context for Bryan to put his vision into. But that's not reflected in the publishing." It's all the more unfair because, according to Manzanera, from about halfway through For Your Pleasure and onwards, the band would write "the music first – all the music, including the solos. Then Bryan would listen to it and try to write a top-line tune and words. When it worked, it was absolutely brilliant. Because none of us knew what the song was going to be about until he recorded the vocal. Imagine, you've been working on Love Is the Drug for absolutely ages, with no idea that it's even going to be called Love Is the Drug. Then Bryan turns up, and he sings it, and we're like, 'bloody hell, we've got a single'." 
• At the Drive-In.

KEEPING IT SIMPLE

Mary Ruefle

I take the bird on the woodpile,
separate it from its function, feather
by feather. I blow up its scale.
I make a whole life out of it:
everywhere I am, its sense of loitering
lights on my shoulder.