At First I Thought I Wouldn't Say Anything About It But Then I Thought Keeping Quiet About It Might Appear Even Ruder

I am pleased to reaffirm I'm not the drooling fanboy I hope I never will be so I'm disappointed but not surprised I'm underwhelmed by the new Lambchop, as good as it is it hasn't saved me, I wanted it to, you can vouch, my fault for wanting another Bible.  < (listen gratis once)>  Punching the Clown gets better with each listen to the songs I didn't hear until last Friday but my favorite songs had already been pre-released. Unslayed, me, that's my complaint. Only me can save fucking me. Fine metaphors abound

Anhedonia is the name of my next band 

Today's ➥ monologue	Didya know that Israel is commiting genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Lebanon? Is true
The israelis killed this little Palestinian girl for fun, as she filmed herself live on air on her phone in a makeshift tent in Gaza
HOW THE MEDIA SELLS GENOCIDE
Israel published a video of its invading soldiers blowing up an entire town in South Lebanon
Israel’s far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for nightly killings in Gaza of dozens of people who he says are ‘not worthy of life’
Israeli settlers torch Palestinian homes amid record year of settler terror in West Bank
The Orwellian Company Behind ICE’s New Electric Shock Gloves
"Buried deep under this panic is the fear that authoritarian societies will lose their grip on the next generation. Authoritarianism begins in the home. If adult children reject the authority of abusive and toxic parents, how will they learn to submit to the abuse of other authorities?"
How Algorithms Are Reshaping Consciousness to Serve Capital
Charting the rise of tech fascism
Navy weighs renaming carrier slated to honor Black war hero, potentially switching it to Trump
How Democratic consultants, committees, and party leaders built a fundraising spam pipeline that funnels money from a captive pool of elderly donors into their own operations
Democrats would rather Crackerstan then People's Republic
➥	"America: where we live in a command economy but scream all day about the horrors of communism"
The Democrats Really, Really, Really Don’t Want People Investigating Their Scammy Fundraising
They are not misleading the rooms, they are taking direction from their bosses. Reminder - this shitsmear hates you far more than he dislikes the crackeriest authoritarian Republican
Thomas Frank on something to rekindle your obamapostasies
Reminding you for the xillionth time that if you think Democrats will save you you're the fool they think you are
"I do not want Democrats to figure out how they can work together to help Donald Trump enact his agenda. I want Democrats to win power and then act as a wrench in the gears of government for the rest of Trump's term"
The Bezos Post editorial board is horny for your Social Security
"We need to acknowledge that the bottom can fall beneath the US economy, practically, in any minute."
Today in Fear of a Socialist Country from your Bezos Post editorial board
"Technology capitalism treats technology almost like a force of nature, without an agenda, inevitable and unstoppable. This framing binds us to the status quo"
"here is the thing. if you tell me that you believe that race is a biological category and that it is a guide to the objective superiority and inferiority of groups of people, i am not calling you a racist to *insult* you, i am calling you a racist because it best describes your beliefs"
"But you see, Hanania put all of his racism behind him — except for the occasional racist tweet — and therefore could be welcomed and rewarded as a reformed public intellectual with interesting ideas"
Revenge of the White Supremacists
"The fact that Nathan Cofnas got hired by a university and now platformed in the Wall Street Fucking Journal proves why Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was necessary in the first place. He is *the poster boy for white mediocrity* yet he is inescapable and no institution will reflect on why this is"
Pentagon dismisses Stars and Stripes leadership after editor, reporter oppose military interference
Samuel Alito gained up to $2.9m from oil and gas assets since joining supreme court, analysis shows
Union-Busters Are Using ICE to Intimidate California Wine Industry Workers
"Postliberalism is a kind of liberal democratic excrement"
What is a conjunction?				The answer, as always, is racism
"Forcing everybody to start smoking cigarettes"
How Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump everything
Maggie		"Wealthy people announcing they're giving their fortune to charity when they die is not altruism but rather intended to put the money under their control permanently. "I want you to use this for charity" guarantees that the money will continue to be used exactly as they commanded even post mortem"
The Real Reason that Substack is Collapsing
Maggie		Pike & Rose is grotesquely stupid
{ feuilleton }			Today's monologue: hardest two weeks of my work year to celebrate my birthday, may be scarce here, it's not you		{ feuilleton }
I tried the Outline Trilogy and failed so I have no opinion on Cusk's novels but this review of her new one by Ryan Ruby uses the new Cusk for a long riff on the rise of autofiction and its meanings and significance and is worth your time

JOHN ASHBERY

AT FIRST I THOUGHT I WOULDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT IT

but then I thought keeping quiet about it might appear even ruder.
At first I thought I had died and gone to heaven
but that scapegrace the unruly sun informed me otherwise>

I am in my heavyset pants and find this occupation of beekeeping charming
though I have yet to meet my first bee.
We don't know if I get to keep the hat and veil.

"Too hot," he said: "Too hot for everything!"
He so caring, so mundane. "...to have you on board."
Bulgarian choirs everywhere stood up and sang the song of the rent.
It was lovely. Now I shall take a short vacation,
proof that I am needed here. Nobody wants my two cents

anymore, I believe. To some it was like skating in summer.
A small turret perched over the lake. It exploded.
That's the way I feel about people taking me out
to some nice repast, and afterwards you go home and
go over everything that was stated. I prefer flowers and breathing.

The Sedate One Is This Month's Skittish One

Not reactivating My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game beyond elevating Lampchop, who may already have a permanent seat, who remembers? from one of the permanent rotating members to an irrevocable permanent seat, Lambchop, the only drug that eases my bouts of dark despair at my dearth of hope for my daughter's life in the clusterfucked world I leave her (and I find myself wishing often for an on/off switch I could flip so I won't be a geriatric burden while she navigates the constantly worsening gruesomeness of the United States of Assholes). How's that for a Blog Days of Summer in a dying Stringtown, Blegsylvania post for you?





Gets better, me, every time I listen to that song. When my daughter is my age it will be 2059, the earth will still be here, will the world? The blog is getting more bot pings than ever, I told a friend, and what's truly weird now is that the latest mass sweep is not coming from the giant AI-shitlord bot farms but from seemingly private citizens on their home's local internet providers

each looking at an archived old post, is creepy, and my friend said, you know every fascist overlord and their shock troops are documenting and hording every nasty thing you say about them and I said yes, I'm counting on it, it's the only on/off switch I can contemplate enabling now even if I'm not the one that will throw *that* switch. More damning evidence of my treasonous opinions in grid below, but first

Trump Protected By Surface-to-Air Missile System While Golfing
"A mercurial, strange, demented grifter president now has near-complete power over the conjugation of two powerful states within the State, each of which has its own bipartisan life — the National Security State, and the Predatory Capitalist State"
Why Peace Would Spell Ruin for the Global Elites
Why the system of death and destruction fears Palestine advocacy
A dying West is eating its children
"The only way to understand about "MAHA" or Trumpism is that these people all believe the fundamental flaw with our society is that we devised too many ways to intervene against the laws of nature to allow The Weak to survive. They're solving the problem that some kids should be dying but aren't"
It’s a Third World After All
Thoughts on atomised society and why atomisation is related to alienation
Normativity from the Standpoint of Its Victims
The Shitlord Networks of America
How an Imperial Project Exploits Data Workers
Monopolies Made Life Unaffordable
Showing how Quickly the American State Can Plan an Economy When Empire Demands It
"I mean, there's really no hiding anymore that the purpose of The Atlantic is to ease centrists into gladly welcoming and accepting the rise of fascism"
"Culturally, this is because we had twenty years of roaring all-channels advocacy for increased racism, harder crackdowns and latterly more deportation and demonstrative cruelty. We had this alongside - at best - total contempt for those opposing austerity, war, racism, police violence and genocide"
"This is how you know we need a wealth tax"
Understanding the Dictatorship of Capital
Atheism, nationalism, and the conductor of the crazy train
"Says a lot about the incentive structure of US politics on the left of center that every single progressive is scrutinized for every little thing while the most rabidly right wing Democratic member of Congress can go talk to Trump's stenographer and call his fellow party members bigots"
"Republicans roll the dice on anti-Muslim bigotry one more time"
"Still thinking about the time my Jordanian pastor friend was on facebook trying to explain to fellow evangelicals that "Allah" is just the word in his language for "God" and everyone needs to stop talking about it being "demonic" or whatever because they saw it on the Internet"
"Republicans are gonna be so normal about this, I can feel it"
The Impunity Machine				Medical Censorship and Gaza
ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks
Today's ➥ monologue	Too many people do not understand that Dump's Army is double-dipping with immigrants, it thrills the bass and just as importantly trains and gives ICE live target practice for when they're coming at you after the imminent coup
➥	Here's the Manual for ICE's Electric Shock Gloves
➥	Incarcerated for Life in Shitlord’s War on the Left
➥	When will the resistance step it up?
Multiple USS Abraham Lincoln sailors have tried to go overboard amid extended deployment, families say
Shitlords use helmetball to launder money
Ross Douthat Knows the Fascists are On His Side
"If someone in a press relations role is exceedingly helpful and goes out of their way to do something for you it's usually important to figure out what they get out of that interaction"
Review of Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States
How Baltimore Achieved Historically Low Homicides—With Less Police
How Maryland’s Partisan Election System Disenfranchises a Quarter of Voters
Maggie		Fuck patriotism				Send him off
GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost
Prehistory from the air				Freshman move-in day
All Trees Bear Witness: Colonial Histories, Climate Breakdown, and Sonic Experiments in Silvic Storytelling
The Unrelenting Hoofbeats of the New Literature						Watergaw
Nonverbalnessmy spasmadvances myapace exblisscusing me
{ feuilleton }			Rest in Peace, John Crowley
Where the Meanings Are: on Fairfield Porter's art
➥	From James Schuyler’s Diary (August 5, 1968)
I probably liked REM too much then and probably dislike then too much now and both are on me but this then and now is a great song
The new Lambchop album drops a week from today, may it save me

LAST MONTH

John Ashbery

No changes of support—only

Patches of gray, here where sunlight fell.

The house seems heavier

Now that they have gone away.   

In fact it emptied in record time.   

When the flat table used to result

A match recedes, slowly, into the night.

The academy of the future is   

Opening its doors and willing

The fruitless sunlight streams into domes,   

The chairs piled high with books and papers.

The sedate one is this month’s skittish one   

Confirming the property that,

A timeless value, has changed hands.

And you could have a new automobile

Ping pong set and garage, but the thief   

Stole everything like a miracle.

In his book there was a picture of treason only   

And in the garden, cries and colors.

Who Am I To Try To Cheer Up the Self-Indulgent Universe

My compulsive response to the deadest Blog Days of Summer ever, exponentially deader than the deadest ever before (I'd like to take credit for here's decline but it's deader and getting deader everywhere), is of course to post an exceptionally self-indulgent autoblogographical bleggalgaze on a Friday, the deadest day of the week every week, and as many angry apocalyptic doomlinks I could collect since the last grid before pushing PUBLISH 

I used to burn off my extra-manic impulses by pruning the blogrolls of the dying and dead and planting them in one of the two mortuary blogrolls but I've reached peak Fuck That though I assure you it has everynothing to do with the endlessly terminal ghost-towning of this particular Stringtown - it's not just here shit be dying, everynothing be dying everynowhere- and now I'd just rather bleat and bray, bleat and bray the name of my next band, here's the first album cover




Reminder: each post is a poem and each painting a headshot. In good news for me if not for you, L gave me a bag of acrylic paint tubes, this the first headshot using it (the red background), I can now go completely opaque (one can only get so opaque with gouache no matter how thick it's applied). You are warned. Hey, there's a new Water Damage album coming in October, they just released one song off it

Ethnic Cleansing in the United States of Assholes
The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate
➥	The Argentine ranch where tech CEOs plan to ride out the apocalypse
➥	Yes, the Washington Post Wants Democracy to Die in Darkness
➥	This morning from the Bezos Post op-ed page, freaking the fuck out about Abdul Al-Sayed
➥	"The outrage people who own $12 million homes in New York are throwing about being subject to a $50,000 tax on them and the level of sincerity the media is providing them really validates the argument that "hoarder" is a term exclusively used for poor people"
"Now that Dr. Abdul El-Sayed has won the primary, i think he needs to begin addressing the concerns of people who are extremely racist against him"
"It looks like the US right has moved on from its previous core fear (swarthy black men having sex with white women) to a new core fear (swarthy Muslim men having sex with white women)"
US defense technology company appoints former Mossad chief as global president
How the Epstein Network is Privatizing the Government & Building Out the Surveillance State
Anti Communism Is Class Warfare
It’s Cute How Grandma Doesn’t Even Know How to Blood Tithe to the Data Lord
The Reflecting Pool story is about Trump’s grip on reality, but the press corps won’t go there
Against the Politics of Psychic Numbing
The president is psychotic				Chuck Schumer eats shit
After Michigan upset, Aipac looks to back Republican candidate against Abdul El-Sayed
Expanding the share of the population comprised of surplus labor simultaneously engorges empire and destroys the nation-state.
"Democrats are going to do major austerity when they get back in power. They're going to say it's about cleaning up Trump's mess and being the grownups and making unpopular decisions for the good of the country"
"there are moms and dads all over this country that do this petty shit to each other through their kids and it's vile every time, but i also assume "separate the kid from its security blankets and toys to torture it and the parents" is SOP for everyone who volunteered for trump's DHS"
Punching Left			☚	I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. No link, just a statement of fact			☟
Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left
Today's ➥ monologue	Moderate Democrats are not afraid a leftist candidate will lose to a magachoad candidate in 2028 but that a leftist candidate will trounce a magachoad candidate in 2028
The Platner disaster and the perils of for-profit politics
Memory Hole		No Center		Ketchup slices, ffs?
Who first formulated the wages of whiteness thesis?
Eternal Sloptember				What was the internet?
Route 29 in Montgomery County is bad for everyone
Explosions in the Mind				Bicentennial Madhouse
The feeble animal, the delicate tongue
Paul Simon's *Graceland* forty years after its release
➥	One of my first dates with L was the *Graceland* tour at Merriwether Post Pavilion
The new Parts & Labor easily one of my very favorite 2026 releases ☟

TRULY PATHETIC

Neal Bowers

Lately, the weather aches;

the air is short of breath,

and morning stumbles in, stiff-jointed.

Day by day, the sun bores the sky,

until the moon begins

its tiresome disappearing act,

making the oceans yawn.

Even the seasons change

with a throb of weariness—

bud, bloom, leaf, fall.

If it would help,

I would paint my house silver

or sell it or buy

a red convertible.

I would, but who am I

to try to cheer up

the self-indulgent universe.