I've Never Been an Old Woman Knitting By a Fire But I've Played One in Images Where It Meant Being Foolish, a Mistress of Distraction's Indirection

My red hat should be finished today. If you'd like one let me know, I know a knitter, there are currently eleven on order so it will be awhile but let me know. Pathetic, me, not wanting to post on Fridays like recently, especially before the Holiest Weekend and Sunday in Helmetballstan. Rest of the monologue in red in the grid. Exene turned 70 two days ago, she's magashit now, the fuck? it was better before before they voted for what's his name, this was supposed to be the new world

"Bipartisan consensus: endless billions for Israel, tens of billions for ICE, a trillion for the Pentagon - while jacking up healthcare premiums on tens of millions of Americans by 200%-300%"
Meanwhile, in the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Israel
⮩	You do realize one of the main benefits of dispatching magagestapogoons on Americans is that Americans lose focus on the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza
⮩	Reading Edward Said in the context of the Gaza genocide
The Pentagon is Quietly Building Trump’s Concentration Camps
⮩	I made a mistake when I implied I would be sent to the Williamsport concentration camp, I will be sent to a concentration camp no nearer than West Texas, the Williamsport concentration camp will torture and starve to death lucratively paid protesters from Seattle, my apologies. Being blindfolded, shackled, kicked into position by taunting guards and barking dogs and flown to a destination you will never know where you are kneeling on concrete in the middle of the night and beaten if you slump unless and until you are released a key sadistic first class in your future
Organized opposition				The appalling vista
⮩	"'Rule by sheer violence,’ Hannah Arendt wrote, ‘comes into play when power is being lost.’ She continued: ‘The effectiveness of terror depends almost entirely on the degree of social atomisation, the disappearance of ... organised opposition.’ The resistance in the Twin Cities has not pushed ICE and CBP away yet, but it has turned a supposed projection of state power into a floundering tool of homicidal violence. It has also shown what kinds of rot must flourish in Washington in order to keep the goons in Minnesota
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
⮩	"It's interesting how pretty much none of the Democrats positioning themselves to run for president are actually trying to take advantage of the moment and instead seem to be acting on the assumption that they'll be installed as nominee by the donor class"
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
How To Message a State Murder Spree
"The latest batch of vomit from the belly of elite depravity is even worse than it looks"
Elite pedophilia isn’t a bug, it’s a feature
⮩	"If you want to be in the top echelon of American (or Israeli, and possibly UK) elites they need to know you can be trusted. They need blackmail. You have to make your bones. Once you’ve committed an unspeakable crime, and they have pictures and video (remember, Epstein had cameras everywhere), well you can be allowed in, because you’re not going to use any power you have in any way the betrays elite interests, because they can destroy you any time they want"
How targeting Black independent journalists creates a foothold for broader civil liberties erosion
Fighting for workers in the age of Trump and the tech oligarchy
Staircase of oppression					Fruits of anger
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
Starting to Look Like AI Has Killed the Entire Model of College
"The woke scolds are trying to make this about racism. But Musk is right. It's about historical and scientific integrity. When the God of Thunder disguises himself as a swan to seduce and fuck a queen and the resulting baby hatches from an egg, *of course* the baby will be white. It's just science"
The Legal Academy’s Leading Originalists Remain Breathtakingly Full of Shit
Don't forget xymphora				Don't forget Weldon
Some More Efforts, Comrades, If We Would Be Revolutionaries
Maggie		Maximally Perverse Obscurantism
Roland Barthes' Seminar on the Metaphor of the Labyrinth
The beautiful building and beautiful campus that once was the headquarters of National Geographic (long before the abomination that is Kentlands) on 28 near Quince Orchard now home to cops
{ feuilleton }			Blat	Tower of Babble
Right is wrong			Pynchon's *Shadow Ticket*
Prologue to Gilbert Sorrentino: An Introduction
We're taking a year off from Maine this summer and instead going to the very northern most tip of Michigan's lower penisula (L's in the Traverse City plein air, it's a big deal), I've been Modest Mouse bingeing of late, below is the last Modest Mouse song I will deliberately listen to until late June, Modest Mouse will be the main event in the long drives to hikes and disc golf courses and basic exploration

LIFE'S WORK

Rae Armantrout

1

 

Did I say I was a creature

of habit?

 

I meant the opposite.

 

I meant behavior

is a pile of clothes

 

I might or might not wear.

 

Before all the sowing and reaping

could go on for centuries,

 

before the calendar,

I must have been convinced

 

that my movements

were both mandated

 

and blessed.

 

     2

 

I've never been an old woman

knitting by a fire

 

but I've played one

in images

 

where it meant being foolish

or wise, a mistress

 

of distraction's

indirection.

 

To rock while entwining

is life's work,

 

but I am reckless,

restless

It Is the Lumps and Trials That Tell Us Whether We Shall Be Known and Whether Our Fate Can Be Exemplary, Like a Star

Democrats are screaming for Kristi Noem's, not Stephen Miller's, head and think the asshole who got a medal from Obama a moral upgrade from larping Bovino, they are in on the game, everything's a work, I said to a professor who I took a polisci class from back in the early 90s and have maintained friendly contact with - we don't lunch but do yap when we run across the other on campus - and for the first time in the thirty-five years he outright agreed without qualifying that I'm a hyperbolic nutjob. My right eye



News yesterday that DHS is considering buying an empty warehouse just southwest of Hagerstown, Maryland, my home state, and converting it into a processing plant for dispatching the kidnapped to torture prisons in Africa and South America. We send support to whistle-blowing Minnesotans, I'm saving my physical risks for Maryland, only two cities near enough to Williamsport, Maryland worth putting a rendering factory. (Update: bought, the future concentration camp) My left eye



April cataract-yoinking on the left eye scheduled. I'd like to see in both eyes like my right eye, I'd rather simmer like my left eye than seethe like my right. B, my professor with the same name as my brother (and is the third B in my life, I'd never have met L without the second), said, I agree with you that Trump will die in office because strategy and helping him die is on the table, but you're still a hyperbolic nutjob. We are in total agreement on the sociopathic amorality of our shitlords. Derek Bailey born ninety-five years ago yesterday

Meanwhile in the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza
Has America been made great again enough for you yet?
"If you won't eliminate a government secret police force dedicated to murdering your party's voters, I'm not sure what any electoral victories you might possibly be more likely to achieve from that stance are really worth"
"Time for Concrete Action on ICE. Sadly, We Have the Democrats"
"Barack Obama’s response to Pretti’s death was grotesque, dripping with the dishonesty you’d expect from the leading political charlatan of our time"
The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti
"FBI director publicly states his intention to target Americans over their first amendment protected speech and association"
The regime's mind-bending lies are a tactic
"Law enforcement as the protected class -- if a regular person kills someone, no penalty is harsh enough. If a cops does it, training and a new safe space"
You best start believing in cyberpunk dystopias
"White supremacy requires us to remain loyal to our whiteness in order to be afforded the protections of said whiteness. You stand with immigrants, Black and brown folks? You forfeit those privileges and no longer receive those protections, and you will perhaps be shot in the street as a result"
We Should Talk About The Morality of Political Violence
"This is the kind of fearless politician that a competent party would embrace. Instead, Nancy Pelosi formally rebuked her for criticizing Israel, smearing her as an anti-semite, and the Zionist Biden administration opened an investigation into her finances that went nowhere"
Politics of Raw Power				STOP EATING ANIMALS!
Political Theatre of Cruelty					Managing The Powerful
Land of the Free			I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS
"All the big platforms are owned by the biggest assholes imaginable"
REST IN POWER, MICHAEL PARENTI
This is the End of the US Global Monetary System
It is shocking - SHOCKING! - that an old white male professional helmetball broadcaster is a cracker. Shocking
The NFL’s priorities: protecting genocide, punishing conscience
The Long Shadow of Racial Fascism
A (not mine) bleggalgaze					Avedon Carol
Proximate Atrocities				Imperial Boomerang
The Universe’s Invisible Skeleton Is Finally Revealed
Maggie		Text is king			Meanwhile, in Mather Gorge, all of Loudoun County's shit is flowing into the Potomac River
What utility does making music have while the world slides inexorably towards unmitigated disaster?
JULES: a short story				You are the product, you are the platform, you are the brand
Writing toward the endless horizon
The Backcountry Rescue Squad at America’s Busiest National Park
The Stagnation of the Literary Left						Hel to ho
{ feuilleton }			The Clock that Changed the World
Maximally Perverse Obscurantism					Lord God Bird
The Collected Letters of Jack Spicer
Reissue of the Week: The Style Council’s Café Bleu							🡇

THE ONE THING THAT CAN SAVE AMERICA

John Ashbery

Is anything central?

Orchards flung out on the land,

Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills?

Are place names central?

Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Book Farm?

As they concur with a rush at eye level

Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough

Thank you, no more thank you.

And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness

The damp plains, overgrown suburbs,

Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity.

 

These are connected to my version of America

But the juice is elsewhere.

This morning as I walked out of your room

After breakfast crosshatched with

Backward and forward glances, backward into light,

Forward into unfamiliar light,

Was it our doing, and was it

The material, the lumber of life, or of lives

We were measuring, counting?

A mood soon to be forgotten

In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow

In this morning that has seized us again?

 

I know that I braid too much my own

Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me.

They are private and always will be.

Where then are the private turns of event

Destined to bloom later like golden chimes

Released over a city from a highest tower?

The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you,

And you know instantly what I mean?

What remote orchard reached by winding roads

Hides them? Where are these roots?

 

It is the lumps and trials

That tell us whether we shall be known

And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star.

All the rest is waiting

For a letter that never arrives,

Day after day, the exasperation

Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is,

The two envelope halves lying on a plate.

The message was wise, and seemingly

Dictated a long time ago.

Its truth is timeless, but its time has still

Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited

Steps that can be taken against danger

Now and in the future, in cool yards,

In quiet small houses in the country,

Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

Although I Mean It, and Project the Meaning As Hard As I Can Into Its Brushed-Metal Surface, It Cannot, in This Deteriorating Climate, Pick Up Where I Leave Off

This weekend we're scheduled to get sixteen feet of snow followed by seven inches of ice which will cause power outages lasting until April (until which daily high temperatures will not break -50), apt for this, my shittiest winter ever in all but two facets of my life, all caused by my moving from watercolor paper to hardboard treated canvases that don't warp, what a world, this is all my fault, my apologies

Maybe a good thing, not the canvases, my being cut-off from contact with the outside world until April Fools Day: I'm not only incapable of doing it voluntarily I'm incapable of not documenting the all-encompassing and constantly expanding clusterfuck, perhaps you've noticed. I no longer play the "if I was offered a free month in hiking and disc golf course paradise in perfect weather with gorgeous sunsets and primo sativa and fresh crisp bright local pilsners from the deck of a mountain top cottage on the condition I have no contact with the outside world would I?" game, because why play? it will never be offered and I'd never accept it if it was. If you don't believe me please buy me (and L) that vacation, I'd love to be wrong: just found my Renaldo and the Loaf CD stash, perhaps I'd choose to listen to some on that deck watching the sunset, unclusterfucking, I just might be willing to risk it. The test, and the rest, depends on you

I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
➥	This, for example, is what Democrats just bought						☟
"The purpose of a system is what it does"
Renee Good’s Murder and Other Acts of Terror
We Are Witnessing the Self-Immolation of a Superpower
The Campaign to Destroy Renee Nicole Good
Danish Politician Accuses Stephen Miller of Having ‘Mentality of a Rapist’ Towards Greenland
MAGA’s ‘Manifest Destiny’ Coalition Has Arrived
Zionist Billionaires Openly Acknowledge Manipulating The US Government
Kushner Reveals Dystopic Plan to Build Data Centers on Ruins of Gaza Genocide
The Unconstrained Presidency and the End of American Primacy
Today’s Public Intellectuals Are More Likely to Serve Power Than Challenge It
His final message before he's on an FBI watchlist
Mad and depressed and marinating in dread
Last election			Narrative control made easy
Today's duh: Behind Trump’s Meltdown Over Greenland
"After sponsoring genocide in Gaza, welcoming the kidnapping of Maduro, cheering the bombing of Iran, backing assaults on Lebanon, applauding assassinations, liberal European leaders have discovered international law just in time for the US invasion of Greenland"
Ugliest Americans			Reading Third Camp Socialism in the Time of Trump and Xi
Fascists are at war with journalism. Why aren’t journalists at war with fascism?
"This is what you do when you’re running death camps"
Why Aren’t All Americans Protesting?				Yes, I know blaager's blegrells are broken, fuck my free blooging platform
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
Couple of days ago I was thinking poobah Democrats must have told Wes Moore to cool his jets in the interest of his own career so guess what cynical me's first thought was when I first saw this
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
➥	"The correct response to Dachau was not better training for the guards"
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
Zionist 2028 Dem potus candidate resents being asked and thinks it's antisemitic he was asked if he was a Mossad agent when he was vetted (and not chosen) for vpotus in 2024
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
How to build a radically truthful news outlet
ICE vs You			Exporting Genocide
The Most Rancorous Line					☞	I am 7/8ths through Pynchon's M&D, got bogged down around chapter 50 but pushed through
Killing deer not the answer to reducing Lyme Disease			The Politics Of Planetary Color
"Jesus famously did not disrupt proceedings at a place of worship and call out religious hypocrisy"
➥	Fellowpagan, be a better Christian than a christer, they know, it drives them bonkers, and that's just the bonus, not the reason to do it
America’s new gambling epidemic						Fucker shivved
Whau-whau			Maggie's		Shape of Time
Care w/o coercion				List of rivers by age
{ feuilleton }			Abandon		Blanchot, for those of you who do

THE ICE CREAM WARS

John Ashbery

Although I mean it, and project the meaning
As hard as I can into its brushed-metal surface,
It cannot, in this deteriorating climate, pick up
Where I leave off. It sees the Japanese text
As among the most massive secretions of the human spirit.
Its part is in the shade, beyond the iron spikes of the fence,
Mixing red with blue. As the day wears on
Those who come to seem reasonable are shouted down
(Why you old goat! Look who’s talkin’. Let’s see you
Climb off that tower — the waterworks architecture, both
   stupid and
Grandly humorous at the same time, is a kind of mask for him,
Like a seal’s face. Time and the weather
Don’t always go hand in hand, as here: sometimes
One is slanted sideways, disappears for awhile.
Then later it’s forget-me-not time, and rapturous 
Clouds appear above the lawn, and the rose tells
The old old story, the pearl of the orient, occluded
And still apt to rise at times.)
                                              A few black smudges
On the outer boulevards, like squashed midges
And the truth becomes a hole, something one has always
   known,
A heaviness in the trees, and no one can say
Where it comes from, or how long it will stay —

A randomness, a darkness of one’s own.