When I Was Driving Once I Saw This Painted on a Bridge: "I Don't Want the World I Just Want Your Half"

This year's edition of the traditional post, odometer honest:

Sixty-five today, this guy. When we met in 5th grade fifty-five years ago neither of us predicted the weirdest year of our lives would be 2025.

Always this: thirty-two years ago Landru was the first human not L or me or a doctor/nurse to hold C

   
*

   

And especially

Give Me a Name; I've Never Heard My Voice or Seen My Face

After my root canal yesterday morning I checked out books (I work in a university library) to a tenured professor and enthusiastic 2ionist who was talking at a student accompanying him/her/they and extolling Gigi's benocide, 2ionist professor exclaiming he/she/they just signed with a major publisher for his/her/their book on October 7th as justification for Gazan eradication, when I finished and handed him/her/them the books he/she/they said, Good to see you again, Jeff, you're quiet today, and I said... have a nice day. He/she/they said, I'll get you a copy of the book, I plan to mention you in the acknowledgments (I've helped him/her/they for three decades with course reserves, with finding and acquiring material necessary for his/her/their research, with waiving literally tens of thousands of dollars of fines when he/she/they wouldn't return that and other material on time if at all, with locked private space in the Library). Please don't, I said, he/she/they said, what, with the copy? no, I said, with the acknowledgment. He/she/they looked at me, got it. As of now I still have my job

Vanity domain name renewal time, email from blooger itself and from two of the three companies who they subcontracted to handle domain names since I first domained this shitty blog in 2010, due to autorenew or not between today and July 19th, usually works without a flaw though twice it's been a shitshow, if this shitty blog disappears that's why, probably. It may surprise you that Robert Pollard has a new project and the project a new album

Genocidal monster poses for photo with his motherfucking senior Democratic Party friends
What We Learned From The New York Times’ Anti-Zohran Crusade
The Sad (Very Familiar) New York Times and Its Mamdani Hit Piece
Democrats will fight against Mamdani harder than they've ever fought against Trump
"A top adviser for Hakeem Jeffries is threatening to "go after the democratic socialists" because Team Jeffries is upset that average, moderate, run-of-the-mill Dem Party voters are unhappy and uninspired with him as a House leader"
"Chuck Schumer spending time laundering the reputation of a corrupt, Trump-loving genocidal war criminal is a demonstration of why he’s unfit for his role"
The Empire has accidentally caused the rebirth of real counterculture in the West
The option to Fetterman Pennsylvanians were offered was the horrifyingly ickyoily and psychopathically greedy Dr Oz, mentioned only to remind you the choice our shitlords give us is Shittier or Shittiest, amen
The long thread of white grievance
"Can’t tell you how many times I’ve set out to write a piece attacking the theory behind MAGA rationalization of Trump policy only to give up because there’s no theory to attack. It’s just racism and personality"
"This sounds batsh*t crazy but it's, quite literally, a straightforward an purely factual description of what's going on here"
The head of the Shitlord Post emailed his staff and warned anyone who is not on board with the Post's "champion(ing) the timeless American values" of shitfunneling shitlord shitnarratives better take the shitty buyout off or else
➥	Washington Post Publisher Seeks to Crush Newsroom Dissent
➥	"Here's a fact: Glenn Kessler is politically conservative, heir to not one but two large fortunes, absolutely despises Bernie Sanders, and frequently gets confused and/or lies about elementary statistics"
➥	"Joe Davidson, longtime Washpost columnist, quit due to editing restrictions. He couldn't call a pay raise for fed'l employees "well deserved" or say that a hallmark of Trump’s "turbulent months in office is his widespread, ominous attack on thought, belief & speech”
The Coming Fall of the U.S. Economy
Uneasy Oligarchy				Anti-Labor Forces Pushing the Abundance Movement
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
The science behind Texas’ catastrophic floods
Texas flood exposed America’s warped priorities
"The man below is the founder of Al Qaeda in Syria. The US just took his organization off its terror list and lifted sanctions on him. The woman below is the UN rapporteur on Israel and Palestine. The US is about to impose sanctions on her"
Anyone who claims, or pretends to claim, he/she/they doesn't understand why Democrats aren't gleefully flaying Trump over Epstein will never get it
What do politicians do?					Lisbon in Reverse
In the past two years, without much notice, solar power has begun to truly transform the world’s energy system
Why Science Hasn’t Solved Consciousness (Yet)
The Legacy of Wayne Booth's "Ethical Criticism"
Kind of nothing			Beautiful music logical warts		Way of arrival
New short stories from Joy Williams coming in November!
Rest in Peace, Fanny Howe					Fanny Howe interview w White Review
The Fanny Howe Art of Poetry Interview at Paris Review
RIP, Fanny Howe			Rest in Peace, Fanny Howe
43 minutes of This Heat playing live in 1980

FATE'S MAN

Fanny Howe

Wild berries grow
in my hands when I'm nice
but my fingers turn
into shears when I'm not.

I am an ordinary girl
from an ordinary part
of the world. I wear pink skin
like bullet-proof glass.

What happened to my hot-
blooded paws creased
with time and swinging?
What happened to my language?

I am Hitler's mother
and that's enough.
Two-sided eternity erases
my death. I have lived for good

and will: part child,
part ape, part whore.
Give me a name; I've never heard
my voice or seen my face.

Thirty-Seven

The Failure to See God Is Not a Problem God Has a Problem With

Strangest recent symptom of something: I more and more a little each day actively don’t want to write in tablets, as in with pencils on paper, I’m still in the It’s OK to Take a Day Off, Dude stage, and it is ok to take a day off, isn’t it? Reading’s weirder: while I’m failing a novel I’m thinking about next novels and when I find the one I’m most thinking of and start it within ten pages I’m thinking this is not working, what does it have to do with this current life, and start thinking about the next failure. Weirder still: I *can* still read non-fiction which I don’t, exactly: introductions only, thank you, please give me your thesis and outline for proof, I’ll skip the proof, except with Hobsbawm, in this case, a segment a day starting today and especially when I’m in Maine with L, two weeks from today we will be there, two weeks there, his *Age of Extremes.* Lots of people whose opinions on music I value lauded Cindy Lee’s *Diamond Jubilee,* I got what they got the first four or five listens but past weekend listening one more time I now get what they get

And have listened two times more. No more 100 link grids for now for me: if I’m hammering the same issues daily I don’t need to do dozens on that issue daily especially if it’s a daily duh, maybe? Currently attempting to not click through on every link I see verifying what I think myself, it's hard not to. I've been reminded why I don't copy/paste from ggl files to ggl blggr now that I'm typing again, you'd think they'd talk but they don't. Tomorrow I dress up in a cat suit and dance with Bjork for the 37th time, so have a more constrained grid than usual I am pleased to abandon below before the links that are stale go stale below (think about the adjective *stale,* there is nothing staler than stale)

You only thought you knew how ruthlessly evil the sociopath and sadist Mehpen Stiller, the Trump-Whisperer, is
A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse
You only thought you knew how batshit crazy Theter Piel is
Today in know your batshit crazy sociopathic shitlords
Your reminder that Christian societies, historically, ever since the Roman takeover, are the most violent societies in existence, and it isn't close
Indiana church tells LGBTQ+ community to kill themselves or they will face the death penalty under Trump
Eleven Theses on Technological Hype as Capital
How the Trump Show Outwits Reality
""Fury over our Nazi propaganda proves we should continue to publish Nazi propaganda." - NYT senior reporter
The Catalyst for Declining Political Engagement			Reconfiguring Hegemony
Don't Mess With Zohran					The small and dreary political imagination of billionaires
Unelected President Stephen Miller			The Mamdani moment
NEW POLL: A Hebrew University poll shows that roughly 82% of Jewish Israelis agree with the genocidal idea that there are “no innocents in Gaza.”
"What's wrong this headline? Mamdani "faces scrutiny" **ONLY AND EXCLUSIVELY** because NYT decided to make this a "thing."
"There was nothing to salvage. The New York Times is the propaganda wing of the Israeli government"
Musk's media coverage				GILDED CITY
ICEBlock app developer had ‘better watch out’ says US attorney general
The Rise of Pro Wrestling in the American Psyche
Maggie		➡	Laugh, I am rereading, or was before I started thinking of other novels, a chapter a day, *The Mill on the Floss,* takes a while to get cooking, and I like Maggie as much if not more than Dorothea		{ feuilleton }
2025 July Half-Portrait				Alternate US-40 from Cumberland to Keyser Ridge is my favorite drive in Maryland
undone		Topolect in the big city				Escape Velocity

THE GODS OF FAIRNESS John Ashbery

The failure to see God is not a problem
God has a problem with. Sure, he could see us
if he had a hankering to do so, but that’s
not the point. The point is his concern
for us and for biscuits. For the loaf
of bread that turns in the night sky over Stockholm.

Not there, over there. And I yelled them
what I had told them before. The affair is no one’s business.
The peeing man seemed not to notice either.
We came up the strand with carbuncles
and chessmen fetched from the wreck. Finally the surplus buzz
did notice, and it was fatal to our project.
We just gave up then and there, some of us dying, others walking
wearily but contentedly away. God had had his little joke,
but who was to say it wasn’t ours? Nobody, apparently,
which could be why the subject was never raised
in discussion groups in old houses along the harbour,
some of them practically falling into it.
Yet still they chatter a little ruefully: ‘I know
your grace’s preference.’ There are times
when I even think I can read his mind,
coated with seed-pearls and diamonds.
There they are, for the taking. Take them away.
Deposit them in whatever suburban bank you choose.
Hurry, before he changes his mind – again.

But all they did was lean on their shovels, dreaming
of spring planting, and the marvellous harvests to come.

At First, as You Lie in Bed in Your Motel Room or Mobile Home It Merely Disrupts Your Sleep, Your Nervous System. Later You Kill Your Dog and Wife

Done building the latest gridolinks for this barky place, though this time links added since last Saturday in (my head) the chronological order of when I discovered them rather than sorting them thematically per usual as I have every single fucking time not only since I emigrated to gridolinks but when I merely bulleted, and all the monologue in the grid after a link the immediate reaction to that link in real time



These two paragraphs partially stolen from other place. The hexjeff above painted over the days of this gridolinks. These hexjeffs repel people, I’ve been told I’d be a nobodY instead of a nobody if I didn’t post them. The gridolinks calm and corrode and coordinate me and help diffuse my anger, hexjeff’s save me. The above is today's especially fat-assed and angry gridolink’s album cover. Remember when Coil covered Soft Cell? Woke up at 530 this morning with it in my head

I will try to not start a new grid today, wish me luck, I'm curious to see if I start one despite trying not (as opposed to not wanting to, which I will and will need to consciously not) to
"SCOTUS is aiming to undo birthright citizenship and the VRA and keeps gutting the first amendment, while GOP is set to pass a bill that outlaws green energy and kills medicare, so Hakeem is ready to do what must be done: direct all fire at the charismatic leftist promising better through solidarity"
"With this budget, ICE alone would have nearly as large a detention operation as all 50 states' prison systems combined. Bigger budget than the Marine Corps. Police-state levels of spending"
"All fascisms are interconnected as Israel's ambassador to Serbia demonstrated by saying that Srebrenica shouldn't have been adjudged as an act of genocide. Ironically, ultra-nationalists are really internationalists in this particular way"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"They can grovel all they like, the cops can sabre-rattle all the want, the politicians and tabloids can condemn all the want, we're not shutting up. The IDF are genocidal murderers. Death, death to the IDF"
"Fortunately the Democrats are leading the way in critical public messaging about the imputed foreign policy preferences of a single mayoral candidate"
"I can't get over how we're being asked to pretend "Death, death to the IDF" is some kind of hate crime at the exact same time IDF soldiers are telling the Israeli press they're being ordered to massacre starving civilians at aid sites"
FINDING BEAUTY IN FAKE FLOWERS
"This was never said but here it is in quotes on the front page of a national newspaper. It’s a calculated lie and it’s libelous"
"If scandal-plagued Cuomo had won, every major Dem official in America woulda instantly endorsed him. Dems refusing to quickly endorse Mamdani - who has none of those scandals - is a tell about the party's priorities & who they still think they answer to"
Magastan is building a loyal-only-to Magastan police/military megaforce while simultaneously speed-building concentration camps, yo
➥	TODAY'S MONOLOGUE!						⬆
"Yes we must absolutely be temperate and measured in our response to a literal army of occupation literally carrying out a genocide, with the support of our government, which is literally criminalising opposition to this atrocity. I mean, come on, let's be reasonable, eh kids?"
"It's important to understand that Democratic Party elites don't see this as exciting potential. They see it as a terrifying threat. What good is Democrats winning elections if the current elites aren't running things anymore?"
"We have enough information to conclude that the law won't save us"
"The idea that this process might be stopped by a free and fair election in 2026 or 2028 is absurdly optimistic. Unless age catches up with him, Trump will appoint himself as President for life, just as Xi and Putin have done"
➥	Adding, Vance will too if Trump dies
"Why Did a 75-Year-Old Man in Poor Health Just Die in ICE Custody?"
Maggie's		Pale Criminal, pt 2			{ feuilleton }
"The manufactured outrage and obscene abuse of state powers surrounding Kneecap, Palestine Action, and Bob Vylan are all meant to scare you into silence. Because they know they've lost the argument"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"We should all be disgusted by the flood of anti-Muslim remarks spewed in the aftermath of Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the NYC mayoral primary — some blatant, others latent. Shame on the members of Congress who have engaged in such bigotry and anyone who doesn’t challenge it"
➥	My state's senior Senator, not as shitty as most Democrats, thankfully (though I suspect the new junior Senator is going to be a typical Democratic shitsmear if her early voting is a sign
"This will draw no headlines and certainly no outrage, because fundamentally our media considers actual violence against innocent Palestinians more acceptable than violent words against the soldiers carrying it out"
Maybe he's just a bad person
"Democrats who stop doing stuff like this as soon as the winds change are making it *very clear* what we knew all along: that they will only do the bare minimum and only if there are zero consequences to them. the exact opposite of having principles"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"Mamdani gave a nuanced answer about "Intifada" so nobody cares, but here's a Republican Congressman spreading the conspiracy that the Pritzker family, a wealthy Jewish family, is trying to turn kids trans. This is a common conspiracy on the right that combines antisemitism with transphobia"
"By making federal law enforcement nothing but deportations, Trump 2.0 may induce an increase in crime, which the right-wing media distortion machine will paint as inherent proof of immigrant criminality. We have to stop a vicious circle before it starts"
"Nothing to see here, just footage Al Jazeera obtained of Israeli forces murdering a Palestinian man carrying a sack of flour on his back"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"belaboring the obvious but it feels historically significant that an entire generation has been witnessing the worst human acts imaginable broadcast every single day for two years while governments and institutions make it illegal to talk about them — unbelievably crazy-making"
Supreme Court Agrees to Hear GOP Effort to Further Gut Campaign Finance Law
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"What do we talk about when we talk about “globalize the intifada?”
"Since when it is radical to ask that you care about your fellow human beings in their full humanity? That's what it means to fundamentally have a politics of any kind. It's also part of what writers and critics innately do in writing. This is not a big ask"
"Put another way: Project 2025 let right-wing legal groups sketch out the agenda for a new GOP DOJ. Do you think "Project 2029" will hand the DOJ section to the ACLU? No. The opposite. It's about getting a Dem message disconnected from left-wing groups"
➥	Project 2029, Democrats ARE just like the Democrats in The Onion stories
"How should people be allowed to oppose genocide? Let’s ask the people doing it"
My visitation will be scheduled at the appropriate time later (there are so many to eliminate), another advantage of being nobody
"BREAKING: A source tells me that the Trump administration has shut down public access to every single National Climate Assessment, the Congressionally-mandated quadrennial report assessing how climate change is affecting the U.S.
"We knew this day could come but here we are. The 2026 proposed @NOAA budget shutters all world-class federally funded meteorological, oceanographic, and climate labs in America. Included is @HRD_AOML_NOAA , a fixture for over 50 years in Miami. Hundreds of top scientists tossed"
"A Lesson From Martin Luther King, Jr. About "Globalizing the Intifada"
"Next time we should steer more directly into the iceberg"
FART!	This fart farting for fame and fortune sniffs and adores his own farts
"We Apologise for This Temporary Breakdown in our Breakdown"
Art of the Gaslight				Make fun of them
The Rage of Billionaires and the Frenzy to Stop Zohran Mamdani From Becoming New York’s Mayor
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"It's utterly obscene for anyone in the US to pretend they're not living in the largest and most lethal criminal enterprise in history"
In the Court of the Ochre King
"Children have been shot in other conflicts I have covered. But never before have I watched as soldiers enticed children like mice, into a trap, and murdered them for sport.”
"Analysts make a mistake when they describe the Supreme Court's speed and docket as set in stone. The modern SCOTUS can move basically as fast or as slow as it wants. If it wanted to block any of Trump's unconstitutional moves very quickly, it could. Not doing so is a choice"
"I also underline that this farcical bullshit is a direct consequence of the War On Terror, when political elites bullshat themselves into claiming support for America’s imperial devastation of huge tracts of the planet was brave and principled, and that opposing it was some frightful fanaticism"
Get your Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp gear here!
➥	Concentration camp porn is a terrific way to keep racist crackers distracted while they die because they lost their medicare and only hospital within a hundred miles of Bumfuck closed, and crackers will really jerk off while dying when Trump starts sending the yous and me of the world
Sheeyit, I would go to this in a nanosecond if the nearest show to DC wasn't Louisville KY
"The Big, Beautiful Bill assigns each American a billionaire who will live the American dream for you. You can check in on your billionaire at intervals and see how he is using your money. Maybe he’s building a 19th pool. Maybe he’s buying himself some formerly public land! Maybe he’s taking a Supreme Court justice on a dream vacation! Maybe he is reupholstering the Statue of Liberty to hide the poem. Maybe he’s throwing a Great Gatsby–themed cocktail hour as part of his wedding extravaganza! Maybe he’s replacing his blood with transfusions from his “blood boys.” Maybe he has bought hundreds of eggs and is pelting the house of a mere hundred-millionaire with them. Maybe he has bought some $TRUMP coin and is attending a special bash! There’s never a dull moment for the lucky beneficiaries of this wonderful bill!
"This must be the most vile, racist, truly Nazi statement from a European leader in decades"
"Shimon Atiya is a settler from an illegal outpost near Hebron, but last night he decided to settle in the yard of a Palestinian family in the village Umm al-Khair. Listen to the terrified toddlers sobbing & see the criminal's happy smug face"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
"It’s insane that a revolving door of Democrats are going on television to denounce Mamdani while Republicans shepherd through the most destructive piece of legislation in recent memory"
There is a chance, small but bigger than ever before, this the last grid, last post
"In the past 24 hours, Trump’s threatened Elon Musk, Thomas Massie, Japan, a judge in Israel, the CEO of AT&T, Jerome Powell, Canada, Thom Tillis, a Forbes reporter, Harvard, & migrants with being eaten by Burmese pythons in the Everglades, while releasing a new line of colognes"
"Sure would be nice if the leaders of the Democratic Party could be doing a full court press against the worst piece of legislation in US history, rather than refusing any public interviews cause they can't figure out how to appease their AIPAC backers without being super racist"
Entrepreneurism: The Catalyst for Declining Political Engagement
"as ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press and CNN's State of the Union all demagogue and smear Mamdani today over a phrase he never said remember that in 631 days of genocide in Gaza none of these shows have ever once platformed a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American"
A guide to fielding even the most ridiculous anti-Palestinian smears
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
I HATE MOTHERFUCKING DEMOCRATS
"human suffering and excruciatingly painful death is just another form of entertainment to joke about for these sadists"
"It's a blood libel to hit *play* on our genocidal tiktoks"
"Bold. Now do the Israeli genocide of Gazans, asshat, that you have helped fund"
"Trump calls for deporting US citizens: "We also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time ... many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too, if you want to know the truth. So maybe that'll be the next job."
➥	Reminder: these links in the chronological order I found them, I wrote about you and me in the concentration camps before I saw the above link
➥	"this is it, folks. this is the showdown. nothing can be off the table in this fight, they're not gonna follow rules. we either stop this from happening or just watch our communities get murdered and wait to get fed into the labor and death camp"
➥	Some of us have been screaming about motherfucking shitlords and their crackerchrister motherfuckers and their motherfucking professional Democratic accomplices for motherfucking decades, and snide motherfuckers called us crazy
"They're not just killing, they're taking joy in killing. Butchering journalists, aid workers, doctors, artists, poets. Sniping children in the head. Burning hospital patients alive. Shelling families begging for scraps of food. And still, they have the audacity to play victim"
"very striking how every right-wing conspiracy freakout was just a prophecy of what they planned on eventually doing - whether it was Jade Helm or FEMA camps, the moment they had the opportunity to make these imaginary monstrosities they came up with come to life, they did"
Israeli terrorists MOCK a CHILD that just lost his MOTHER!
Mamdani's statement on Trump's threat to arrest and deport him, Mamdani is not going to save us but I'm sure as fuck gonna give him a chance cause who the fuck else
"Thomas Kincade, the great American who stole from his employees and peed on Winnie the Pooh. The perfect patriot for our times"
"Opinion | Yes, I voted for Trump’s megabill despite knowing it will harm my constituents. But if I hadn’t, I’d be primaried by someone who’d vote just like me but not give anti-Trump comments on background to The Times"
"I know this is hard to accept, but when a liberal says "there is no alternative to markets" and a socialist says "actually here's a proof-of-concept state-run solution" that is not "hate" that is just basic and conventional disagreement"
"Read whatever you want to… and read it proudly! In the idiocracy that is America (or Albion for that matter), to read is to belong to an increasingly endangered species, one I have great affection for. (PS I love INFINITE JEST)"
"Living under a regime of pure evil, whose main goal every hour of every day is to ensure as many human beings as possible suffer horribly, really really sucks
Blog about recent (non)reading
There will be no real presidential election in 2028
"Zohran Mamdani Eats ‘Like An Animal’ Says Woman Who Ate Dog Food On Air"
"So Trump gets $16 mil while Paramount admits mo wrongdoing and they release interview transcripts which they already did anyway. So it’s a bribe. It’s literally just a bribe"
UN Expert Accuses Major Corporations of Profiting Off of Israel's Assault on Gaza
Quiet, West Bank Pogrom in Progress
Americans Have Never Been Less Proud to Be American, New Poll Finds
"I used to think of vice signaling as a minor point about political communication. now I wonder if we need to develop it as a core aspect of political theory, at least as far as the Americas are concerned"
The Ascendance Of Algorithmic Tyranny
"If only there were a clinically proven, totally safe way to prevent diseases like measles…"
"Alligator Alcatraz was built in 8 days. It took just over a week to create a massive concentration camp. Remember this the next time those in power claim they can't house the homeless, feed the starving or provide medical care to the poor. They can, they don't want to"
"Hitler: The trains start tomorrow. Chuck Schumer: We have renamed the trains to "evil choo choos"
Browsing at the Gitmo gift shop
➥	That's as shitty a place to stop as any
Bought this yesterday at Bandcamp, holyfuck, my drone/ambient genes are more rampant the clusterfuckier everything gets							⮯

POPULATION CONTROL IN GILLETTE

Tom Clark

The coal trains go through all night long
with a racket like all of hell being unleashed as noise.
At first, as you lie in bed in your motel room or mobile home
it merely disrupts your sleep, your nervous system. Later you kill
     your dog and wife