BLCKDGRD: 2013-06-09

Saturday, June 15, 2013

My Theory Is Simple-Minded to Be Sure: That Beneath His Public Head There Was Another Head and It Was a Pyramid or Something

Three more David Thomas songs, I promised myself I'd post at least one each day of June. I promise not to do this to you with Kate Bush in July though an October of Robert Pollard songs is very possible if not inevitable. I've also sent my self on a James Tate fix, have another poem, and yes, the one of you, keep your eye on your mailbox. Also, new stuff at the other place. Regular links and shit return here tomorrow or Monday or Tuesday....

THE LIST OF FAMOUS HATS

James Tate

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.

Friday, June 14, 2013

I Got a Call from the White House, from the President Himself, Asking Me if I Would Do Him a Personal Favor. I Like the President, so I Said, “Sure, Mr. President, Anything You Like.” He said, “Just Act Like Nothing’s Going On. Act Normal. That Would Mean the World to Me. Can You Do That, Leon?" "Why Sure, Mr. President, You've Got It. Normal, That's How I'm Going to Act. I Won't Let On, Even if I'm Tortured," I Said, Immediately Regretting That "Tortured" Bit.

What, you didn't listen to the Pere Ubu songs in the previous post celebrating today's High Egoslavian Holy Day, David Thomas's 60th birthday or read the James Tate in the post? Have three more songs you won't listen to and another James Tate poem you won't read! Don't listen to them LOUD! Don't read the poem OUT LOUD!

BOUNDEN DUTY

James Tate

I got a call from the White House, from the
president himself, asking me if I would do him a personal
favor. I like the president, so I said, “Sure, Mr.
President, anything you like.” He said, “Just act
like nothing’s going on. Act normal. That would
mean the world to me. Can you do that, Leon?" "Why
sure, Mr. President, you've got it. Normal, that's
how I'm going to act. I won't let on, even if I'm
tortured," I said, immediately regretting that "tortured"
bit. He thanked me several times and hung up. I was
dying to tell someone that the president himself called
me, but I knew I couldn't. The sudden pressure to
act normal was killing me. And what was going on
anyway. I didn't know anything was going on. I
saw the president on TV yesterday. He was shaking
hands with a farmer. What if it wasn't really a
farmer? I needed to buy some milk, but suddenly
I was afraid to go out. I checked what I had on.
I looked "normal" to me, but maybe I looked more
like I was trying to be normal. That's pretty
suspicious. I opened the door and looked around.
What was going on? There was a car parked in front
of my car that I had never seen before, a car that
was trying to look normal, but I wasn't fooled.
If you need milk, you have to get milk, otherwise
people will think something's going on. I got into
my car and sped down the road. I could feel
those little radar guns popping behind every tree and bush,
but, apparently, they were under orders not to stop
me. I ran into Kirsten at the store. "Hey, what's
going on, Leon?" she said. She had a very nice smile.
I hated to lie to her. "Nothing's going on. Just
getting milk for my cat," I said. "I didn't know
you had a cat," she said. "I meant to say coffee.
You're right. I don't have a cat. Sometimes I
refer to my coffee as my cat. It's just a private
joke. Sorry," I said. "Are you all right?" she
asked. "Nothing's going on, Kirsten. I promise
you. Everything is normal. The president shook
hands with a farmer, a real farmer. Is that such
a big deal?" I said. "I saw that," she said, "and
that man was definitely not a farmer." "Yeah, I
know," I said, feeling better.

Battered by the Avalances and Private Tornadoes of Just Being a Gnome, or: Sixty Today, or: High Egoslavian Holy Day

David Thomas is sixty today. Have I ever mentioned that I love Pere Ubu in particular, all Thomas projects in general? Have I ever mentioned that Pere Ubu/Thomas Projects have one of three permanent spots in my Sillyass Deserted Island Five game? Of course I have. Do I play these same four songs on his birthday every year? Of course I do. The song below is this shitty blog's Theme Song Two. High Egoslavian Holy Day.

Five myths about privacy.
NSA surveillance program: the brown person in the room.
Contamination test kit.
Thousands, not eight.
Who's responsible.
We could use more rebels.
Preparing for civilian protests.
Backlash.
Work and the politics of refusal.
The elusive quest for poor peoples' justice.
122 things he was not taught about in high school.
My future hell.
Dangerous finds from around the web.
oddly compelling distance...
BLCKDGRD translated into Korean.
BLCKDGRD translated into Japanese.
It'd been a while since I'd seen these, to get those two within ten minutes of each other is delightfully weird.
40 Days.
Almost sixty.
UPDATE! Never the fuck mind.
Song's in this post all from the third iteration of Pere Ubu, latest Pere Ubu, my favorite Ubu, though I love early and middle Ubu too, will get to them in the daily Thomas posts for the rest of this month.
I've told this story before: we went to see David Thomas open for someone (I think it was either Tom Verlaine or Chris Spedding) at the real 930 on F St in the early 80s. He came out and read poetry. No music. Was heckled mercilessly by idiots. Told everyone to fuck off, be damned if he'd ever come back to DC again, the closest he comes is the Mason Dixon line.

SHROUD OF THE GNOME

James Tate

And what amazes me is that none of our modern inventions

surprise or interest him, even a little. I tell him

it is time he got his booster shots, but then

I realize I have no power over him whatsoever.

He becomes increasingly light-footed until I lose sight

of him downtown between the federal building and

the post office. A registered nurse is taking her

coffee break. I myself needed a break, so I sat down

next to her at the counter. "Don't mind me," I said,

"I'm just a hungry little Gnostic in need of a sandwich."

(This old line of mine had met with great success

on any number of previous occasions.) I thought,

a deaf, dumb, and blind nurse, sounds ideal!

But then I remembered that some of the earliest

Paleolithic office workers also feigned blindness

when approached by nonoffice workers, so I paid my bill

and disappeared down an alley where I composed myself.

Amidst the piles of outcast citizenry and burning barrels

of waste and rot, the plump rats darting freely,

the havoc of blown newspapers, lay the little shroud

of my lost friend: small and gray and threadbare,

windworn by the ages of scurrying hither and thither,

battered by the avalanches and private tornadoes

of just being a gnome, but surely there were good times, too.

And now, rejuvenated by the wind, the shroud moves forward,

hesitates, dances sideways, brushes my foot as if for a kiss,

and flies upward, whistling a little-known ballad

about the pitiful, raw etiquette of the underworld.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Many Trophies Show Us Frozen

Yes, this is the second consecutive Meerkat Thursday, as long as Ken keeps posting meerkat gifs on his Wednesday morning radio show there will be Meercat Thursdays. So we didn't go to the US Open Cup game. One of Planet's uncles woke up with a grippe and bagged, logistics from work would have made making it by game-time iffy (fucking United even starts these games at 7:00, Germantown Maryland, a 7:00 start, cause there's no rush hour traffic in Montgomery County, like there aren't just two two-lane roads into SoccerPlex), and wicked thunderstorms were predicted to start by late game (as it turned out, that was a false concern). Fine metaphors abound, where once I wouldn't miss a United game in Germantown because United, the whole point of the evening was a family reunion. And United won, there will another game in Germantown in two weeks, though of course no one saw that coming when we decided not to go.

I'm not going to do the research, but I'm certain that the need for Sun Kil Moon cascades are often followed by the need of Mazzy Star cascades.
Story about a relative (a panopticon technician) who is thoroughly disgusted with me re: Manning/Snowden, I could tell you the story but won't because it's private .
Story about a friend (whose wife is a upper tier panopticon poobah) who is thoroughly disgusted with me re: Manning/Snowden, I could tell you the story but won't because it's private.
Overheard conversations about Snowden and fucking peasants by professors at work who couldn't give a flying fuck what I think, they are influential motherfucking Grand Poobahs of the Royal Order of Buffalos (identify that allusion!) I could tell you what they said but won't because I'm just the hired help and I've two years left in the commitment I made 25 years ago.
Fine metaphors abound.

Red room with spooks.
Living in a virtual panopticon.
The five stages of living in a national panopticon.
Fed up with all the bullshit.
Insubordination and the surveillance state.
The banality of condemnation.
One in three.
BroadSnark's things you might have missed.
Own to rent.
At least one David Thomas song each day for June

Tomorrow his birthday. Requests solicited.
Ten Mile Creek!
Meditations of an oaf.
Gaddis, for those of you who do.
Rachel Kushner interview. I'm halfway through Flamethrowers, it started fast, is slowing down, I have no idea if it's the book or if it's me.
Love triptych.

DANGERS

Rodney Jones

From the first, I was too reluctant, achieving by dribs and drabs,

Happy to linger in shallows while others jackknifed from cliffs, wrong

To exact perfection from a sad piece or add notes to a proven tune;

But ever the classicist:

in swimming lessons, slowest to learn;

In fights, tentative, preferring the hammerlock to the jab and hook; cautious

In the earliest romances, choking in the clutch, fumbling the caress; or shy

Among the crew-cut Cupids bristling at the armory’s weekend dances;

But shifty in every game, keeping it close. Always holding still

And adjuring others to go slow

until we leapt forward that night out of control

And pinned to the seats of Tyler Wilson’s outlandishly unstock Ford

While, from the opposite side of the valley, scalding in each curve, came the black din

And brunt of Sonny Walker’s highjacker Chevrolet, everyone screaming

And bearing down to be first across the bridge at Hurricane Creek.

Many trophies show us frozen: a leg poised for the hurdle, an arm cocked for the unanswerable spike.

What I remember through the windshield’s splintering lens is time, a mailbox

Rushing by, the letters TURRENTINE,

then darkness rolling inside;

Though memory, at best, retrieves maybe six percent in studio light,

So even now I think we might have turned:

smart with his hands,

There is a kind of savior who blusters through the South, good with animals and machines,

Who surely somehow would have found a gap, through an open gate

Into a marshy cornfield

or up a logging road into a hillside wood.

At any rate, there is just a little while, shy of any bridge, just as judgment

Balances its two blind alternatives and a third accelerates head-on.

I’ve made a careful study: things that can only be accomplished in deep space,

In another language, in far history, at an almost incalculable speed. Courage is not included, or much foolishness.

They spin the purest glass, they split the atom, they speak with God.

They make a sort of Teflon hip and attach it with metal screws,

Only the threads upbone keep stripping

so they have to operate

Again and again, and what she’s accomplished is more of a gait, really,

Than a walk, so when she moves toward me, across any room,

I think too much of my own will

implicated in that dragging brace.

Each step is obviously trained, and the whole earned motion full

Of muscle, plastic, and bone

is coordinated by nerves even the

Strictest dance does not require. She has said there is no fault,

But even in such talk,

grace occurs as an accident someone caused.

If what I require is a thing too certain, braided from probabilities,

There is another thing

articulated in the scars that saved her face—

And no right now in that night we were shaken and rolled like dice, no right to

Say this guilt to be alive is love, or the opposite of lucky is wrong.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

The Scrimmage of Appetite Everywhere

Well, I knew today was going to have a Sun Kil Moon cascade because Serendipitously a new song yesterday, because Serendipitously I always resort to Sun Kil Moon cascades at kaboom clusterfucks.
Propaganda.
Oiling the propagandists.
Motherfucking Obama.
Dystopian secrecy.
Capitalism in a surveillance state.
Bless the ACLU.
In praise of mess, chaos, panic.
A-n-a-r-c-h-y.
Al Franken, motherfucking load.
Josh Marshall, motherfucking load.
A profound lack of imagination.
The vain media cynics of the NSA story.
David Brooks and the mind of Edward Snowden.
David Brooks, the last Stalinist.
Let the character assassinations begin.
Confronting Edward Snowden's comments on Bradley Manning.
Charley reminds you: When you call a friend on the phone, you're calling every friend they have ever called too.
Oh yeah, drones.

For the record, I've no idea what Edward Snowden's motives were, so without knowing his motives I can't unreservedly call him a hero though I can say I'm pleased he did it, not because it will slow the advance of the surveillance state (I keep yodeling, whoever, whatever, whyever this now, this is a MAJOR PLUS for the surveillance state for all the short-term pain-in-the-ass Snowden may or not cause panopticon operators), but because it reveals the motherfucking loads I was stupid enough once to think smart and .06% less-motherfuckeringly loadish, because it flash-gauges everyone's current state of loadishness.
Let me hasten to add: this is always about my complicit loadishness, my fascination with these solipsistic watersheds, he types into his blogger edit page and pushes Publish.
For instance, me and Planet and Ari and Hamster and Laudru and Ilse and DataBoy and Whispers (?) are going to Germanboyds tonight to watch a US Open Cup game between my sucky soccer team and Chester. Despite my dire concerns over the surveillance state, I will use a debit card to purchase gas that can be tracked, will drive on MOCO roads that are fully videoed at stop lights, and during the game a Park Police cruiser will record all the license plate numbers of cars parked at SoccerPlex. It'll be a blast, and there will be Stanchion Porn on Thursday.
Gaddis, for those of you who do.
Cover of Pynchon's Bleeding Edge, out in three months.
Life story.
Prunella's latest playlist.
Today's David Thomas song, one song at least a day through June, Thomas' birthday the day after tomorrow people, REQUESTS PLEASE, or not. This one you'll hear at least twice this month, probably more:

THE HEAVY BEAR THAT GOES WITH ME

Delmore Schwarz

The heavy bear who goes with me,

A manifold honey to smear his face,

Clumsy and lumbering here and there,

The central ton of every place,

The hungry beating brutish one

In love with candy, anger, and sleep,

Crazy factotum, dishevelling all,

Climbs the building, kicks the football,

Boxes his brother in the hate-ridden city.

Breathing at my side, that heavy animal,

That heavy bear who sleeps with me,

Howls in his sleep for a world of sugar,

A sweetness intimate as the water’s clasp,

Howls in his sleep because the tight-rope

Trembles and shows the darkness beneath.

—The strutting show-off is terrified,

Dressed in his dress-suit, bulging his pants,

Trembles to think that his quivering meat

Must finally wince to nothing at all.

That inescapable animal walks with me,

Has followed me since the black womb held,

Moves where I move, distorting my gesture,

A caricature, a swollen shadow,

A stupid clown of the spirit’s motive,

Perplexes and affronts with his own darkness,

The secret life of belly and bone,

Opaque, too near, my private, yet unknown,

Stretches to embrace the very dear

With whom I would walk without him near,

Touches her grossly, although a word

Would bare my heart and make me clear,

Stumbles, flounders, and strives to be fed

Dragging me with him in his mouthing care,

Amid the hundred million of his kind,

The scrimmage of appetite everywhere.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Now the Summer Air Exerts Its Syrupy Drag and the Half-Dark City Under the Strict Surveillance of Quotation Marks

That's today's David Thomas song, one a day for month of June.
Lookit, I'm gonna talk through links today, I simultaneously feel incredibly powerful FUCK YOUS and indescribably sad fuck its.
The surveillance state and the rise of Ronald Reagan.
Blarney!
Why Snowden's a hero. OK, I'm gonna say something - Let's say for the sake of argument that Snowden's act was heroic: he just advanced Power's timetable of how much shit people will eat and like it in the larger scheme of feeding people shit and not caring whether people like it. Irony sucks, right?
A vote for hero.
Ellsberg votes hero. He was paid by the Koch brothers to say it, but...
Do the people who scream, But he broke his oath realize the flipside to the coin is He was just following orders?
The ecstasy of being told what to do.
Vile, evil Dianne Feinstein, thank you for your invaluable assistance in my apostasies, for teaching the truth of who really is .06% more shitty, though to be fair, she far out-shits that marker. Motherfucking Democrats.
vicious and grotesquely fallacious.
Has anyone asked Ben Cardin (D-NSA) or Barbara Mikulski (D-NSA) what they think about this yet?
Laura Poitras is a hero.
Snowden and the snobbery of credential factory graduates.
There are no accidents around here.
Inside the United States.
Cops.
Photography is not a crime. Yet.
Forgive me, I saw this headline, thought of Emily Litella.
From apps to zombies?
Commissioner Gordon has activated the Zombie Signal. Might have been answered as far as I know, I was answering to Serendipity.
Silliman's always generous litlinks.
Beautiful new Mark Kozelek song.
Monk!
Scelsi!
I was reminded of Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons.

"AN ARCHIVE OF CONFESSIONS, A GENEALOGY OF CONFESSIONS"

Joshua Clover

Now the summer air exerts its syrupy drag on the half-dark

City under the strict surveillance of quotation marks.

The citizens with their cockades and free will drift off

From the magnet of work to the terrible magnet of love.

In the far suburbs crenellated of Cartesian yards and gin

The tribe of mothers calls the tribe of children in

Across the bluing evening. It’s the hour things get

To be excellently pointless, like describing the alphabet.

Yikes. It’s fine to be here with you watching the great events

Without taking part, clinking our ice as they advance

Yet remain distant. Like the baker always about to understand

Idly sweeping up that he is the recurrence of Napoleon

In a baker’s life, always interrupted by the familiar notes

Of a childish song, “no more sleepy dreaming,” we float

Casually on the surface of the day, staring at the bottom,

Jotting in our daybooks, how beautiful, the armies of autumn.

Monday, June 10, 2013

Stultifying with Its Threats and Tears, Dissembling Always Its Mad Obsession with the Blurred Distinction

I know myself well enough: I can rid myself of obedience to particular obsessions but not rid myself of the need to fill the vacuum of my obsessions. I run at a certain level; the level can rise, it's yet to fall. We went down to East Wing National Gallery yesterday because Earthgirl wanted to see the Albrecht Durer exhibition and realized yesterday was the last day (plus East Wing is closing for three years of renovations this coming January, we're going while we can). When we walked out of Durer, over the entrance to the next gallery over was a sign that read, Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929. We what-the-fuck entered.

I mean, I had never seen these. I mean, I know the music, in some cases love the music, I'd never seen these.
I have HUGE gaps, I don't know movies, I don't know theater, I don't know dance. I have only so many hours, too many obsessions.
It will probably blow over. Almost all my new obsessions are infatuations I can't sustain.
Which proves my addictions to old obsessions are strong.
Though lordy, am I sick of an astonishing percentage of old obsessions.
Homeland.
A psychopathology of internet surveillance.
A marker for 60-second Arendts.
So yes, these ballet scenes discovered yesterday and watched all last night are substitute for any more yodeling and linking on that subject today.
A strange place full of dragons.
New Inquiry's Sunday links.
Stoner, done for the autobiographical pun, of course, but also to vouch for the novel, on my short-list of re-reads if what I can't talk about less I jinx and oh fuck.
The edge of the forest.
The good earth.
You have no core and it's good.
Old games.
On poetry anthologies.
Immerse yourself.
Enjoy yourself.
Neil Young throws a shitfit.
One of my favorite WFMU djs goes on hiatus, here is his last show, LISTEN TO THIS goddamn it from START TO END.
Yes, he played the Rolling Stones. Lordy, that song sucks even by the standard Rolling Stone's suckitude, and Lordy, the Stones suck. Suck. Fine metaphors abound.
A David Thomas piece each day of June:

THE TRUTH ABOUT LOVE

Howard Moss

It seems to have traveled at night,

Supremely ironic, lighting fires,

Laying golden eggs in the midst of squalor,

Its outer garments, in the latest version,

Sumptuous, its linens more than shoddy,

Drunk, moreover, at a seedy party

The discriminating shunned, and, later, bawdy

In a run-down neighborhood, with whores and sailors

Chosen as companions while the queen went needy.

Now that everything about it is known,

Why does it come up purple or threadbare,

Thrashing all its sunsets in a fit of pique,

Or stripped, in the seamiest hayloft, ready

To repeat dull anecdotes the millionth time,

Its poise unquestionable, its voice unsteady?

It is brilliant, androgynous, and stultifying

With its threats and tears, dissembling always

Its mad obsession with the blurred distinction.

And yet who else

Is so elementary and badly needed

That fifty cultures rise at the merest rumor

Of its presence, and, finally, punctually fall

Whenever it departs, as if on schedule?

Interviewed, Monday, in the city dump,

Which turned, by magic, into a hotel tower,

Shedding poems and paintings for its bath

(It takes ten centuries of running water

To wash it clean), it then emerged, all dirty

Again, in a costume of ferocious splendor,

A hat some milliner in old Vienna

Sweated over, its pumps exchanged for sneakers,

And raced across the city, breaking records,

Just to prove its powers of endurance.

It lies down anywhere, and loves the country,

But is so unassuming it can even flourish

Beneath electric signs and in railroad stations

It goes to for the summer, estivating,

It says, near fountains that escape our notice,

And comes back in the fall, its ribbons flying,

Wheeling through the leaves, singing all the voices

Of every opera in the repertoire

Plus one no one has ever dreamed of writing.

Going about its gigantic business,

It masks itself as any shape or hope,

Appearing as a vicious telephone call,

Or a flat, disturbing message in an envelope.

It praises calmness but adores upheaval,

Is most to be desired when it apes composure,

And much to be distrusted when it boasts it has

The only fingerprint that can be changed at will.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

panopticon of cameras cutting in timed procession from aisle to aisle to aisle on the overhead screens above the carts asleep inside each other—

This needs saying again: my soccer team sucks. After 14 games, a goalless draw on the road increased United's point total by 20%. Whooptyfuckingdoo. Oh, I trademark the name Porterchenko and the tagline Porterchenko fails another audition, not that the three people who know who and what I'm talking about will try to steal this copyrighted intellectual property.
Capitalism, intellectual property, and surveillance state.
The logic of the surveillance state: What is being run right now is a vast experiment to see if modern technology has fixed these problems with surveillance and opporessive states. Is it cheap enough to go full Stasi, and with that level of surveillance can you keep control over the economy, keep the levers working, make people do what you want, and not all slack off and resist passively, by only going through the motions?
This needs saying again: this is of course about me, but I'm 2/3rds the way through my life, this is more about my daughter who's only 1/4th through her life. When she is my age it will be 2046. What world will she be living in?
Mass surveillance in America: a timeline.
Of course it's worse than has been revealed.
A dedication to Dianne Feinstein.
Yes, yes, yes, Republicans moaning about state surveillance are hypocrites, so the fuck what.
Nostalgia's just another word for nothing left to lose.
After Sparrows Point.
Capitalism and Christianity. Disclosure - I've not read the book (and probably won't, I don't do non-fiction very well, though I'll read the first and final chapters sometime this week), but I find Stan's blog posts smart and thought-provoking.
{ feuilleton }'s weekly links.
Maggie's weekly links.
Things that have been cut to pieces.
My future hell.
So, I've closed the blogroll Newest Gag the First - there are 29 new sites there, meaning that of the 31 days in May I meant to post a new site I did better than I could have ever guessed. I've opened up Newest Gag the Second where I'll add stuff whenever I want without enforced schedule. As always, requests for new places to read are always solicited. As always, thanks for reading, and as always, if you are doing me a Kind and me not you please let me know.
I am, however, posting a David Thomas song each day through June.