Friday, August 14, 2026

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 MachineMedical Censorship and Gaza
ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks
Today's ➥ monologueToo 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
MaggieFuck patriotismSend him off
GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost
Prehistory from the airFreshman move-in day
All Trees Bear Witness: Colonial Histories, Climate Breakdown, and Sonic Experiments in Silvic Storytelling
The Unrelenting Hoofbeats of the New LiteratureWatergaw
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.

Friday, August 7, 2026

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 psychoticChuck 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 LeftI. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. No link, just a statement of fact
Moderate Democrats Prepare for ‘War’ Against an Ascendant Left
Today's ➥ monologueModerate 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 HoleNo CenterKetchup slices, ffs?
Who first formulated the wages of whiteness thesis?
Eternal SloptemberWhat was the internet?
Route 29 in Montgomery County is bad for everyone
Explosions in the MindBicentennial 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.

Tuesday, August 4, 2026

The Color of Stepped on Gum Is the Color of Our Times

I contemplated not honoring all four birthdays of the Great Run of BLCKDGRD Holy Days that I have every year (minus a forgetful oops or two) for more than two decades here and the prior iterations of this current shitty blog and then decided to for more than just the sake of Fuck It, which sake I'll keep mum. I may read the copy of Melville's *Redburn* I found in a Michigan used books store last month sometime in the next year though reading the first ten pages the night after I found the copy did not inspire me. I can't imagine summoning the determined concentration necessary to reread Gass' *The Tunnel* (though rereading it as the clusterfuck worsens and assholes and assholedom are celebrated as heroes and morality of the clusterfuck is probably a good idea) but I might do *Omensetter's Luck* in the next year, and I didn't binge on Kate Bush or the Grateful Dead for Jerry because I can hear any song in my head by both any time I want. I have been Hüsker Dü bingeing of late




A fine metaphors abounding work email chain today:

Dear Jeff,

I hope you are doing well! I am writing with a question and I realize you might not be the right person - or maybe there is no right person - but is it possible to have a course packet made up, for purchase by students? I am assigning several texts (short stories) in PDF format and I don't want students staring at a computer in class, so I'd like to make a hard-copy course packet. Is this something I would talk to you about, or someone at the bookstore? I would provide the PDFs. Thank you very much,

Sincerely,
Susanna

Hi Susanna, the Library hasn't done course packets for well over 25 years because of copyright (and the department that did them doesn't exist anymore). I don't think even FedEx will do them any longer. I'd be surprised if the bookstore will, though it doesn't hurt to ask. 

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

OK, now I feel like an absolute dinosaur. No seriously, thank you for the response. I will figure out something else!

Sincerely,
Susanna

Hi Susanna, 

Laugh, welcome to the club




Today's ➥ monologueMay Abdul El-Sayed win by twenty today so we can watch corporate Democrats melt the fuck down tomorrow and begin tacitly campaigning for the crackerchrister motherfucker running against him in the general. This link once upon a time would have been typed I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. That will always be true, but I'm now typing out more than I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. You're welcome
So it goes, but when does it stop?
Headline News 2026Don Corleone Trump
Nearly 60,000 children orphaned in Gaza as Israel's genocide destroys families and care systems
Frenzy of cruel and unusual ICE flights shows Trump’s ethnic cleansing campaign is escalating – again
"Always remember they destroy or hobble the genuinely useful functions of govt because they want citizens to stop expecting anything from them, and be reduced to learned helplessness"
The House of Ellison is on the Brink
"Level of blatant corruption is breathtaking"
How to be an empire propagandist
World's richest man subsidized by public, again
Billionaires are a public health hazard: Follow the money behind the diarrhea outbreak
Shell Profits More Than Double as Iran War Pushes Up Gas Prices
Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math
Brain Rot Fuels the Trillion-dollar AI Economy
Corporate landlords found a new way to raise prices
The Bezos Post editorial board wants you to thank private equity, you chittering ungrateful serf"Oh look, the Commerce Department quietly announced 7 new equity stakes in private companies. Brought to you by the people fighting "communism."
Sports Betting Giants Join Unprecedented Corporate Efforts to Buy 2026 Midterms
Today's ➥ monologueThe twelve+ links above would've all been labeled We Are Ruled By Motherfucking Sociopaths previously, this is better, yes?
The Obama Presidential Center monumentalizes a liberalism still incapable of seeing its flaws
Your worst fears about cultural collapse might be true – here’s what you can do about it (h/t Charley)
"Few things are more revealing about the Democratic Party than how they act in cities, large and small, where they have a lock on electoral power: openly cozy with the far-right, vindictively anti-worker and happy to team up with fash police who hate them to crush anyone who ain't gentry"
"Will never stop being wild to me that establishment Dems saw these enthusiastic, insurgent DSA folks and instead of saying "you guys are a lil weird but the enemy of my enemy is my friend so LFG" they threw a crashout tantrum & had to be dragged away like a toddler in a McDonald's"
All You Fascist Liberals
"The threat of fascism whips the electorate into line behind austerian liberals, while the resulting social misery and anomie provides the emotional mulch for rising fascism. Both prefer it if the left is excluded from the picture"
"Getting elected the new fascism"
ICE’s New Detention Center Contracts Declare State Laws ‘Shall Not Apply
Colorado GOP Gov candidate Victor Marx says God has given him a "gift" to uncover people's demons and rid them of evil spirits through a specialized prayer. Marx says you, too, can learn how to do it. The eight-part course is $99
"this is actually the wife-beatingest reply possible. this is the platonic ideal of how a guy who beat his wife would respond to a question about beating his wife"
"There’s almost a mob movie aspect to it. Trump was literally at Miller’s wedding. He was a made man. This isn’t a story of gotchas, this is a story of yet again our elected officials belonging to a cabal that believes abusing women is a perk of the job"
How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking
Ban Human Fetuses in Food, Lawmaker Says
"Ralph Shortey, the freshman Republican who introduced the legislation, acknowledges he is not aware of any company in Oklahoma or elsewhere that is attempting to sell food that contains fetuses, but he said, "There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors."
God, the original counterinsurgency guy
The Men Who Made Theory French
How to suppress women's writing
What Would It Mean to See a New Color?
{ feuilleton }Obstupefacting Excrescences
Today's ➥ monologueI did finish Henry James' *The Ambassadors* but only because I felt morally obligated to keep my promise to Leona and Dennis and I'll NOT be reading another James, the fucker does muddle for motherfucking muddle's sake
*Punching the Clown*, the new Lambchop album, drops in seventeen days, of the three songs released so far this one slays me most, slays me, yes I already posted it before the BLCKDGRD Holy Day posts, the album won't save me soul but it will salve is a little





Tom Clark

THE COLOR OF STEPPED ON GUM

is the color of our times.
The light of our times is
the light in the 14th St.
subway at 2 A.M. The air
of our times is the air of the
Greyhound depot, Market
& 6th. It is prime time. A passed
out sailor sits pitched
forward like a sack of laundry
in a plastic bucket seat
his forehead resting on
the movie of the week. The Long Goodbye