I Have These Minutes, All These Chances to Fail, I Must Be Many Lightbulbs

Serendipity and laziness, I was gonna whack at wikileaks and my complicity again, but no thanks, I'll just let Drebin capture the zeitgeist.

• UPDATE! Telling the truth.
• Who's next? I wonder what Assange spends on bodyguards and security.
• UPDATE! If this be treason.
• Leaking venom. 
• UPDATE! American legal logic and treason.
• Order and coercion.
• UPDATE! Rude awakening.
• No way, José. 
• UPDATE! In defense of Wikileaks: The careerists scattered about the world in America's intelligence agencies, military, and consular offices largely operate behind a veil of secrecy executing policy which is itself largely secret. American citizens mostly have no idea what they are doing, or whether what they are doing is working out well. The actually-existing structure and strategy of the American empire remains a near-total mystery to those who foot the bill and whose children fight its wars. And that is the way the elite of America's unelected permanent state, perhaps the most powerful class of people on Earth, like it.
• Why the sudden urge for civility? 
• UPDATE! Assclown or fuckstick? Does it matter?
• A question of eternal and immutable principle.
• In which James Fallows becomes a Conservative.
• UPDATE! Will Krugman ever have his obamapostasy?
• Working together.
• Book Snob's 100 (what I've read in blue):

1 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights Emily Bronte

=8 Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

=8 His Dark Materials Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations Charles Dickens

11 Little Women Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the d'Urbervilles Thomas Hardy

13 Catch-22 Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare William Shakespeare
15 Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia CS Lewis

34 Emma Jane Austen

35 Persuasion Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin Louis de Bernières

39 Memoirs of a Geisha Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh AA Milne

41 Animal Farm George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney John Irving

45 The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies William Golding

50 Atonement Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi Yann Martel
52 Dune Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck

62 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones's Diary Helen Fielding

69 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist Charles Dickens

72 Dracula Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte's Web EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince Antoine de Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory Iain Banks

94 Watership Down Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Roald Dahl

100 Les Misérables Victor Hugo

• Most read for school, especially the 19th century and kids-lit. 
• I was telling a friend yesterday that I can't read anything now (I got to page 50 of The Man in the High Castle and can't read another page; I got to page 100 of Molloy and...) but poetry now. Which is not a bad thing, just interesting.
• UPDATE! Maybe it's time I reread Ishiguro again.
• On reading.
• On reading.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Poetry anxiety.
• UPDATE! NME's top albums of 2010.
• Coma summer.

THE CUNNING OPTIMISM OF LANGUAGE

Bob Hicok

She made me Overlord of the Sewers.
It was a quiet ceremony before bed, consisting of,
you are Overlord of the Sewers. I'm unsure
what my powers are, though clearly absolute,
I thought as we kissed good night. Waking
in this state, I found coffee tasted the same.
I've left a note to my underlings: make
everything better. I'm particularly curious
about raisin bread. How can raisin bread
be improved? Not the cheap shit
but the good stuff. This is love, I tell you,
the random bestowal of a title. Anything else
is fraudulent. Now you have something, sort of
like a tag, by which to gauge is your love is real.
As our beds will tell you, do not remove the tag
under penalty of law. Such stern cops, our beds.
Go to sleep, they tell us, make love, they tell us,
die. If your lover make you Overlord, don't ask,
of what? These are one-time offers, I fear,
just as the lightbulb that burned out
late nights gets one chance to fail.
I have these minutes, all these chances to fail,
I must be many lightbulbs. It's well-lit
except in the corners, this life.