Keep Your Units Pliable and Folded, the Recourse a Mere Specter, Like You Have It Coming to You, Awash with the New Day and Its Abominable Antithesis

Two days left in June, two more Pere Ubu songs. When I started the gag June 1 in celebration of David Thomas' music having one of three permanent spots in My Sillyass Deserted Island Game (Thomas turned 60 on June 14th) I had no idea it would result in a Pere Ubu concert being scheduled for September in DC. Thank me, I'm welcome. In fact, had Prunella not alerted me to a Pere Ubu concert in Columbus Ohio I wouldn't have gone to Ubu Projex to look at the tour schedule - when last I looked in early June all scheduled concerts were in Europe, none for the US. That, combined with the fact that Pere Ubu never comes to DC, means I need reevaluate my promise that the July 30th birthday of another permanent member of My Sillyass Deserted Island Game doesn't mean a Kate Bush song every day of July. She doesn't tour. As of today.

• When I mentioned this on twitter yesterday I got four votes for a daily Bush song.
• Yes and yes.
• NSA surveillance and the male gaze.
• The dark forces behind Snowden smears.
• The wonderful American world of informers and agents provocateurs.
• Daily yodel: the surveillance is not about terrorism.
• How to circumvent the will of the people.
• Police state Canada.
• Reflections on violence.
• Song that can only be sung once.
• Bleggalgaze: coffee, sofa, quiet, reading, aggregating, writing on Saturday morning, my favorite post of the week on the slowest blogday of the week.
• Pyrography.
• Epistle: Leaving.
• Two people have recommended InoReader as google reader replacement. Haven't tried in yet so can't vouch. Anyone use it?
• What we need is a new sort of paintbrush.
• One possible meaning.
• Lost fugue for Chet.
• Jim's Hawaiian Adventure, part four.
• You thought the Buckingham cascade was over?

MOTTLED TUESDAY

John Ashbery

Something was about to go laughably wrong,
whether directly at home or here,
on this random shoal pleading with its eyes
till it too breaks loose, caught in a hail of references.
I’ll add one more scoop
to the pile of retail.

Hey, you’re doing it, like I didn’t tell you
to, my sinking laundry boat, point of departure,
my white pomegranate, my swizzle stick.
We’re leaving again of our own volition f
or bogus patterned plains streaked by canals,
maybe. Amorous ghosts will pursue us
for a time, but sometimes they get, you know, confused and
forget to stop when we do, as they continue to populate this
fertile land with their own bizarre self-imaginings.
Here’s hoping the referral goes tidily, O brother.
Chime authoritatively with the pop-ups and extras.
Keep your units pliable and folded,
the recourse a mere specter, like you have it coming to you,
awash with the new day and its abominable antithesis,
OK? Don’t be able to make that distinction.