Instead of Leader We Had Louder, Instead of Lover, Never

Saturday afternoon we drove to Edgewater to have dinner with Hamster. First on the Beltway then on 50-East we passed beneath at least seven overhead traffic alert signs urging us to please please please report suspicious behavior. For at least the past two months, unless there was a traffic notification for which the signs were designed (?), the OMFG! CALL ME! message has been flashing.

Now this:

Shoppers at Walmart will soon have something other than glossy magazines and chewing gum to look at when in the checkout line: A "video message" from the Department of Homeland Security asking them to look out for "suspicious" activity and report it immediately.

It's part of a new Department of Homeland Security program that could see Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano's face on video screens in malls, retail outlets and hotels across the United States.

The Walmart video, which will soon be launched at 230 locations nationwide and may eventually be expanded to nearly 600 locations in 27 states, features Napolitano thanking the retailer by name for participating in the program.

Napolitano then says: "If you see something suspicious in the parking lot or in the store, say something immediately. Report suspicious activity to your local police or sheriff. If you need help, ask a Walmart manager for assistance."

For your safety, for the security of the country, run screaming to a Walmart manager!

Lambert finds an ulterior motive. Me, I think Corporate is puny, thinks you're punier, feeds you Puny Chow to make you ever punier though you'll never be puny enough for Corporate, but I am a rube.
  

• Wee, the people.
• Montag's Humble Theory of Human Nature.
• Susan from Texas saves me doing this about Ishmael Reed's assclownery in NYT. It is amusingly piquant to have the racism card thrown back in my face by obamargeddonists like Reed.
• Here I am being called a member of the dickhead colony because I don't know the trouble Obama's seen or the trouble Obama sees, and like a dickhead don't acknowledge what he's accomplished despite those nasty Republicans much less the traitorous motherfucking hippies.
• Not your friends.
• Griftopia and complicity.
• E.J. Dionne is profoundly a fool.
• Three stooges.
• Mark Warner says eat shit and die.
• WikiLessons.
• 2010 in pictures.
• Stop the presses!
• Is the Internet due for a takeover?
• Clarksburg! 
• Frederick's Most Wanted!
• Politics and Prose.
• What's wrong and not wrong with American poetry: At any point in poetic history, one finds hand-wringing about the state of the art. These days, Tony Hoagland is concerned by the “skittery poem of our moment,” Ron Silliman complains about the pervasiveness of the “School of Quietude,” anzFray ightWray [JG: Sorry for inserting the Pig Latin there, but if I ever mention this person on my blog he gets a notice through google alerts and then comes and says mean things about me in the comment stream] worries about the chatty sociability—the lack of focused quietness—found in the “MFA generations,” Dorothea Lasky is bothered by too many poets writing “projects,” John Barr complains about the lack of safari-going among today's poets, Ange Mlinko decries the legacy of Lowell’s “tyranny of psychological verismo,” Michael Theune frets that “middle-ground poets” don't have clear evaluative criteria, Anis Shivani worries about the “mechanical” nature of our poetry, and numerous poets have asserted in response to Ashbery that “the emperor has no clothes.”
• Ballad at the State Capitol. 
• I'm only starting to read Larry Eigner. 
• I have access to e-books of Eigner. If you want access, send me an email and I'll hook you up.
• The 13 most underrated books of 2010.
• A Zappadan round-up.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight. 
• Obscure Sound's Best Albums of 2010, 50-41, w/sound. 
• UPDATE! Ear-candy!
• Said the Gramophone's Best Songs of 2010, w/sound.
• LIVE ENO!
• Tom Verlaine is 61 today.

THE DARKER SOONER

Catherine Wing

Then came the darker sooner,
came the lower later.
We were no longer a sweeter-here
happily-ever-after. We were after ever.
We were farther and further.
More was the word we used for harder.
Lost was our standard-bearer.
Our gods were fallen faster,
and fallen larger.
The day was duller, duller
was disaster. Our charge was error.
Instead of leader we had louder,
instead of lover, never. And over this river
broke the winter's black weather.