The Radio Operator's Name Is Sparks

Slowest week of the Blegsylvanian year I type this week every year but wasn't going to this year though it's also the bleggalgaziest because it's the slowest, but then I just watched The Sparks Brothers which spent five minutes celebrating one of this shitty blog's two Bleggalgazing Anthems

People can vouch. If you like Sparks you'll love them after seeing the documentary, if you love Sparks like me you'll adore Sparks after seeing the documentary. 

O, hey! I have two tickets to see Sparks at Lincoln Theater on U Street on March 23, 2022 on the condition the world not destroyed by then! 2nd ticket gleefully claimed, happy laugh

I'm stupid for Sparks. Remember the guy who youtubed himself reading his poems that I posted here? Ran into him on campus and he turned and ran away, I had sent him Joyelle McSweeney's Toxicon & Arachne which he said he admired (I sent him some of my poems at his request which he praised then hinted to help me get published in small mags but I said no), and then I sent him Johannes Göransson's (McSweeney's husband) The Sugar Book, he emailed me as soon as he received it, called it an example of the disgusting disturbing trend in modern poetry (without elaborating further) and cut off all communication with me, not responding to my O, say more email, not sending another youtube of his poetry, now running from me when he saw me on campus, today in bleggalgazing (and fine metaphors abounding)

Haven't link mined since the last post and no grid today though do see this and this and this. The compulsion to post remains but the compulsion to post at regular intervals now feels like a job and fuck that. The recurrent complaint regarding the increasing duhiness of reiterating the accelerating pace towards and sheer volume of our impending death by duh depresses yes but doesn't shut me up mostly, this the slowest week of the Blegsylvanian year notwithstanding

I'm sideways too, reading Murnane again reminds me how his fascination with personal lodestar events and images is my fascination with personal lodestar events and images, when I knew I would write about the Sparks documentary past weekend I remembered the Silliman poem below so I'd have the title of the post but also remembered the last line of the poem which triggers my worse constant nightmare, the Humane Society tv ad I saw fifty years ago where a guy in a pick-up drives to a dead end, gets out of the truck with his dog, throws a tennis ball into the woods and when the dog races after it the guy gets in his truck and drives off, the dog comes back to where the truck was parked, the dog drops the ball, his tail stops wagging, there is not a single day I don't think of this and not a single dog I meet that I don't think of this and every time I think of this I'm thrown completely sideways, all my dark started then

YOU, PART 1

Ron Silliman

Hard dreams. The moment at which you recognize that your own death lies

in wait somewhere within your body. A lone ship defines the horizon. The

rain is not safe to drink.

In Grozny, in Bihac, the idea of history shudders with each new explosion.

The rose lies unattended, wild thorns at the edge of a mass grave. Between

classes, over strong coffee, young men argue the value of a pronoun.
 

When this you see, remember. Note in a bottle bobs in a cartoon sea. The

radio operator’s name is Sparks.
 

Hand outlined in paint on a brick wall. Storm turns playground into a

swamp. Finally we spot the wood duck on the middle lake.
 

The dashboard of my car like the keyboard of a piano. Toy animals anywhere.
 

Sun swells in the morning sky.
 

Man with three pens clipped to the neck of his sweatshirt shuffles from one

table to the next, seeking distance from the cold January air out the coffee

house door, tall Styrofoam cup in one hand, Of Grammatology in the other.

Outside, a dog is tied to any empty bench, bike chained to the No Parking

sign.

whirling in a spangled frenzy toward a riddle and a doom

I'd typed a full description of a happy and surprisingly kind and generous event aimed at me at work, me, who strives for invisibility then resents my invisibility at work, it reminded me how often wrong I am (I am not Data and Lor's father) and always sideways in my perpetual dark anger, momentarily broke my perpetual dark anger and reminded me, laughingly, how dependent I am on my perpetual dark anger for self-definition.

Description deleted, perpetual dark anger back. Angry links below harvested before the happy interlude, even if I'd kept the not dark and angry description of a happy event I'd have given you the dark and angry links, fine metaphors abound (lame TNG allusions too), fuck me

The resources of reaction
Liberalism, Racism, and the White Unconscious
M***********g Democrats
are our shitlords' most m************g weapon
M***********g Republicans
M***********g Democrats
Welcome to the quagmire
Democrats and Republicans both work for shitlords
This m***********g country
Imagine the worse				Say "corruption" in English?
INCREDIBLY CAPABLE CRONE
Meta-moves and cancel culture
Disclosure: above written by a friend
Avedon Carol's occasional links
Ten questions ignored by philosophy
Johannes Göransson interview
Alice Notley reading!			More New York School news
Beckett on richter scale					⬅	On Dara
The Argument is 20 (and I miss Fort Reno shows)
But I don't want to post a Fugazi song, I am often wrong and always sideways in my comfortable snuggable dark anger, it pleases me how angry it made me at me when I tried to listen to my Dischord compilation two weeks ago and failed it completely

THE CHASTE STRANGER

James Tate

All the sexually active people in Westport

look so clean and certain, I wonder

if they’re dead. Their lives are tennis

without end, the avocado-green Mercedes

waiting calm as you please. Perhaps it is

my brain that is unplugged, and these

shadow-people don’t know how to drink

martinis anymore. They are suddenly and

mysteriously not in the least interested

in fornicating with strangers. Well,

there are a lot of unanswered questions

here, and certainly no dinner invitations

where a fella could probe Buffy‘s inner-

mush, a really complicated adventure,

in a 1930ish train station, outlandish

bouquets, a poisonous insect found

burrowing its way through the walls

of the special restaurant and into one

of her perfect nostrils—she was reading

Meetings with Remarkable Men, needing

succor, dreaming of a village near Bosnia,

when a clattering of carts broke her thoughts—

“Those billy goats and piglets, they are

all so ephemeral ...” But now, in Westport

Connecticut, a boy, a young man really,

looking as if he had just come through

a carwash, and dressed for the kind of success

that made her girlfriends froth and lather,

can be overheard speaking to no one

in particular: “That Paris Review crowd,

I couldn’t tell if they were bright

or just overbred.” Whereupon Buffy swings

into action, pinning him to the floor:

“I will unglue your very being from this

planet, if ever ...” He could appreciate

her sincerity, not to mention her spiffy togs.

Didymus the Blind has put three dollars

on Total Departure, and I am tired of pumping

my own gas. I’m Lewis your aluminum man,

and we are whirling in a spangled frenzy toward

a riddle and a doom—here’s looking up

your old address.

Careening Over the Highway in My Lightweight Japanese Death Star

In my new car's console I've a GbV rune and a WFMU woof-moo bumpersticker but haven't me-branded the car yet, I think about it then decide no

This reflects no changed feelings towards GbV or WFMU, both continue to get monthly donations, clang clang ho

Doesn't reflect fear of jinxing the new car, I've jinxed this car because I don't want to drive a spaceship and I'll never find as basic a new car again, I like it, just run and play music

What percentage of humans who saw the GbV rune and woof-moo stickers (and muted trumpet and osprey wings stickers) on my dead subaru's ass (a) knew what they represented then (b) felt that sad tiny tribal tingle?

The new car a silver car and the black and white GbV rune and WFMU woof-moo bumpersticker, if and when I apply them, won't pop against the silver versus the dead black, this might have small impact on my delay, today in me and my complicity

If I had some place to move the stuff to I'd love to get everything I've accumulated at work and empty myself of the building but for the forty hours, one of inity things typed but classified, forbidden to be posted here, nine-tenths of what I type now

Why individualize my new car when I won't individualize this shitty blog the way I want despite the hundreds of hours a year I waste not individualizing this shitty blog

The new silver car is a sedan, I've a trunk, after a month I haven't used it for useless storage yet, the thing I find in a new car that I had to have left there at least six months ago makes the new car old not the muddy floor mats after a hike in the rain

Shakey turned seventy-five Friday past

You can't hide from your cat (though why would you?)

David Graeber's possible worlds

Notes on Losing: US in Afghanistan

Loopholes for kleptocrats

Tenured, trapped, and miserable!

Casablanca for conservatives

The state of elite academia

Democrats' reliance on false narratives

Doomed to succeed, or: Downsizing Subjectivity

Rise of intangible capitalism

Maggie's weekly links

Polemic against the empathy racket

{ feuilleton}'s weekend links

"As is the case with most serious weirdos, the details of Barthelme’s life have always provided readers with ample opportunity to misinterpret his work."

Ordered Books of Jacob last night!

I vouch for both *Drive Your Plow* and *Flights*

Proust's Panmnemonicon

When Roxy Music covered Neil Young

BUMPER STICKER

Rebecca Wolff

Careening over the

highway in

my lightweight

Japanese

Death Star

buffeted by the great and powerful

winds

 

icy winds

of winter warming

cold air with hot air

under it

 

accordion pleats

of natural disaster

my disaster

 

in the past if you were to say to me

 

or to rage at me

in a poem

about America I would charge you

a great failure

 

to even use the word. It is

banality

this land is suffering because poets—

 

their great cohort—

 

 

I look twice

to save lives.

A Tiny Universe in Your Hand Made of Stringy Oil, Cats' Hair

Fleabus, photo from Monday night past, now in dotage, eats too much then won't eat at all, still poops in box but pisses next to it, kidneys drying to raisins, the meds and the special RX food she eats too much then won't eat at all working as well as possible says vet, the cat is eighteen, now going blind too, like the old fuck below, photo from last night, in hat knit by Planet holding the phone with a Fleabus protective case, a gift from Planet

Animals distill into their essence getting older, Fleabus getting sweeter day by day, the fuck below more sideways

Washington Post has an article on digital front page: Why Do People Mistreat Dogs, won't link to, won't read, will rip out my blinding eyes with a butterknife before I look at the photos, need more proof the eternal and infinite assholosity of humans than sillyass helmetball which is only the finest metaphor? watch in reality how humans treat animals (including the shittiest animal when they can, daydream of doing so if they can't)
The Great Tree Migration
The Economics of Repulsion
The Great Duh		☚	I work at a university whose most profitable programs teach students to Zero Sum Win at Clusterfuck, it's training for Shitlordia, I particularly like how cohorts are mandatory, Shitlordia HR using death matches in each cohort then pitting cohort top dogs against each other to find the brightest, most amoral ensigns they can then make more vicious and sociopathic by dangling bonuses and promotions over their noses. So no, Democrats won't save you, the university I work at gave you Bill Clinton
Shitlords hold the planet for ransom
I have two utterly useless in a professional sense degrees from the university where I work- I took (and still have) the tool job before I took advantage of tuition benefits and then getting fun but useless degrees, a BA in Antifa Hand Signals and an MA in Critical Race Theory, was fun! you are reading this because my trajectory would be different had Earthgirl not badgered me to apply to a job I thought you'd need at least a college degree to get
Planetary Rift
The problem with safety
Everything is an argument
Wallace Stevens and the New York School of Poets
The Villainous Empath			Link in part related to my thinking about Auster writing an autobiography of Crane which made me think about Henry James (who is the half the subject at the link) and my peculiar itch to read James though every single voluntary attempt (I read, and disliked, for assignments) fails, but two dear friends, both whose opinions I trust and value, tell me that once I get the breakthrough I will work my way through James' canon, and for some nagging reason I think they're right
Big Star live concert tribute!
New Jack Spicer uncollected!

BE BRAVE TO THINGS

Jack Spicer

Be brave to things as long as
As long as
As long as the plot thickens
As long as you hold a tiny universe in your
hand made of stringy oil, cats’ hair,
tobacco, remnants
Of what was once wide.
As it was once as long as, the plot thickens.
Be brave to thinkers in the night, rusted
boxes, anything
That has dimension.
As if it were a foot wide
Tall, square, as long as boxes
Were.

Roaming the Sky Uneasily Like a Dog

Beloved Mr Alarum Sasha V Alexa has a new space and been added to the Me and Mine blogroll, we have met in the flesh, the sole ground rule for membership. Jim, who I met in the flesh precisely once when he was in DC with his kid for the Stewart/Colbert whatever the fuck that was years ago posted yesterday for the first time in months, a manifesto about killing my social media self and saving my analog life. Occurred to me I've met Elliott in the flesh, he was in one of the mortuary blogrolls (though he posted two weeks ago) (though not exhumed him from mortuary, remind me, please), he's now added to Me and Mine, I ran into him on Prospect week before last, he loved the Michigan photos, wants to hike, will be in touch, I could show him the Ten Mile Creek Trail, we did the north end yesterday (including Cold Spring Trail), this the most activity combined in Me and Mine in a decade

If we've met in the flesh but I don't know of your thing send me a link to your thing

The same old materialist civil libertarian marxist he's always been

The point of the above and the arguments made by those he alludes to and the fight that's occuring is that - duh - if the greater battle is versus crackers instead of versus shitlords you are waging war for the shitlords' benefit, which is what I've been saying while verily hating crackers for fifty years with every ounce of piss in my body (and yes, I'm aware of the issues with Freddie)

Daily struggles of our shitlords!

"Gogolesque does not begin to describe the grotesque credulity & stupidity of the American elites"

Fatalism, apathy, generalized despair

Maggie's weekly links

Without humans what would dogs become?

I don't get Knausgaard but maybe you do

Paul Auster wrote a bio of Stephen Crane?

{ feuilleton }'s weekend links

Leonard Cohen died five years ago today

LITTLE EXERCISE

Elizabeth Bishop

Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasily

like a dog looking for a place to sleep in,

listen to it growling.

Think how they must look now, the mangrove keys

lying out there unresponsive to the lightning

in dark, coarse-fibred families,

where occasionally a heron may undo his head,

shake up his feathers, make an uncertain comment

when the surrounding water shines.

Think of the boulevard and the little palm trees

all stuck in rows, suddenly revealed

as fistfuls of limp fish-skeletons.

It is raining there. The boulevard

and its broken sidewalks with weeds in every crack

are relieved to be wet, the sea to be freshened.

Now the storm goes away again in a series

of small, badly lit battle-scenes,

each in "Another part of the field."