Thursday, November 30, 2017

Squirrels Can't Afford Robust Landscaping But Will Pay Their Mortgage




  • Someone tweeted about an asshole Wisconsin governor whose name puts this album in my head.
  • Waiting on Papa.
  • M said over pints last night, Democrats, and I said, yup.
  • I said, I am going to work until I die. I've paid into Social Security for 40 years, my benefits will be stolen, and all the money I've put into retirement accounts will be stolen.
  • I said to M, by the time the Clusterfuckerers have wrung all they can out of Trump before they shoot him in back of skull and dump him in a ditch they'll have written a law that allows banks to collect exorbitant monthly rent out of my completely paid-off house, and when I'm a day late once they'll foreclose.
  • There's a reason every post but two a year are tagged My Complicity.
  • M said, Democrats, and I said, our fault.
  • Earth-shattering humbug.
  • Surly, they slipped the bonds of earth.
  • Just the facts.
  • Anyone heard (or has anyone read) about this? Was on new book cart.
  • I didn't write about it after the Pere Ubu show a few weeks back - and Thomas has looked like a walking heart attack the last four shows I've seen - but he looked dangerously weak and fatigued, and he hasn't the wind for his voice anymore, and the rate folks are falling I expect the RIP post sometime soon.
  • George died sixteen years ago yesterday.
  • Lots of Tommy Keene on Belock's show Monday past.
  • That A&C song below in my head at three this morning, been there since.
  • Yo La Tengo playing DC on April 4 2018! I'm guessing I won't see you there.






ANIMAL FARM

Marcus Wicker

Consider the toucan’s festive gold breast.
Its multicolored pecker, oddly cutesy  
& perhaps, a cartoon-comfort
to the gym-roped Westerners
reclining on a beach in Costa Rica.
It’s the same old song: good-natured
smile, hard work, a hat’s off kind
of attitude & before you can say
post-racial, you’re a Resort Toucan.
The benefits are room & board
but the cost is blood. Most times
it’s the closest ones—birds
of the same rainforest, same
quadrant, same tree—who give up
your whereabouts to the jaguar.
Quick as you got the gig, the boss
is tossing you out on your ass
all over some flipped umbrellas   
& a tourist’s scarfed thumb. So now
you’re roofless, alone, vulnerable
& the beast is licking his chops
in your mirrored aviators. Stifling
too is the Midwestern Subdivision
in its treatment of the black squirrel.    
Science tells us black squirrels
have driven out native grey squirrels
in numerous areas, but no bullshit
in my development, black squirrels
are relegated to lots with a view
of the highway. Mornings
they work shade for acorns
between homes narrow as Lincoln Logs.
History tells us black squirrels
can’t afford robust landscaping
but will pay their mortgage—
chair the neighborhood watch
if you like. Slenderizing, their night
of hair. They’re sun’s prey.
They avoid overexposure, make tanning
trend. Black squirrels
they fit in, get along. Know no one.
They see other black squirrels & run.


5 comments:

  1. It appears Rexi's out, and the stylish, eager Mike Pompeo is in, as SecState.

    Hmmm. Replacing an arschloch ex-CEO who's used to being his 'own man', who prefers negotiation, with a canny conservative opportunist arschloch who will follow orders... is that a signal they've already decided to Play War?

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    Replies
    1. I don't know if they've decided to Play War, but they have determined they're winning and nothing and nobody is gonna stop them whatever they decide to do.

      They're right: they're winning.

      Delete
    2. Continuing to read Rosbottom's book about Paris under the occupation: he describes Adolph's early-morning dash around Paris after the French surrender in 1940. There was something way too familiar in his recorded utterances, infinitely self-referential, some reading as if lifted from a transcript of Our Leader's monologues ["Paris -- maybe I'll protect it; maybe I won't. It's up to me"]. This doesn't mean Trump is Hitler -- but, you've seen one megalomaniac, you've seen 'em all...

      I was also reminded that the nazis were terrific showmen, but despite organizational ability and some nifty mass spectacles, they were a pack of Cabals fighting for the favor of The Leader, to dominate each other. Ultimately the nazi state wasn't just defeated on the battlefield -- not being truly cohesive, its center couldn't hold, and was pulled apart by the centrifugal forces of its own erratic, unbalanced spinning.

      So, yeah; they're winning, for now. What they're doing may beggar belief, but none of it is really organized. It's incoherent and unsustainable. I understand there's no viable alternative, and off in the shadows the PTB smile and live soft lives with compounded interest.

      I still hope for a better long-term: In your face, History. The problem with long-term is, we and our children still have to live in the now, the Clusterocene (for myself, I see it as penance, having benefited at other's expense from the Rule of Rome when times was good).

      Take a look at A Short History Of The Future by Wagar -- from 1989, ten years before Rorty's Leftist Thought in 20th-Century America.

      Delete
  2. 1)i read about novelist matthew mcintosh at wikipedia and at the amazon page for the book you cited supra

    thoughts i can share include:

    a)i wondered "who finds the money when you pay the rent" - i.e. apparently his first novel was well received, in 2003, there are extremely few short stories listed for him, this is his second novel - day job(s)? spouse/equivalent?

    b)it looks like reading this newest novel would require serious and prolonged attention - is that what i want to spend my time on? - at first glance, no - although maybe it would be enjoyable and/or rewarding

    2)jehovah's witnesses came to the door just now - i recited "the prayer of st francis" for them, and invited them to drop in to a catholic service sometime - probably they won't, but as yogi berra could have said, you never know when something surprising might happen

    3)chances are you WILL get your social security, though its purchasing power will keep going down (if the future is like the past - which it usually is, until it isn't)

    4)your link to the tweets re joy reid's remarks helps me understand why bernie sanders is up there with harvey weinstein and donald trump in the big 3 of "enemies of women" -according to some people

    5)i listened to the yo lo tengo track - thanks for posting it

    6) with regard to squirrels of color, in this neighborhood i have seen the melanistic subgroup from time to time, but they are not the majority - the wikipedia article on them is interesting

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    Replies
    1. I will try the McIntosh next. It's got a good object to hold and look at and I'm game. I'm having to stop myself stopping what I'm reading to read the McIntosh.

      Will be a few weeks before I get to it, or sooner, but I hereby resolve not to read anything about it until I try to read it first.

      Delete