Your Vesper Curfew Gnaws

I get email!

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: <CustoXXmer.Service@co.mo.md.us>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:52 AM
Subject: Montgomery County online ticket payment confirmation
To: disc197XX20@gmail.com

Thank you for using the Montgomery County online ticket payment.
Date: 12/21/2010
Time: 8:52 AM
Reference Number: 90228686
Amount Paid: 40.00
Type of Payment: Selected Items
Method: Visa
Credit Card: ********4306
Registration: MD007XE
Document Number: MCxxx
Document Type: Ticket

I responded!

From: Black Dogred <disc1X97X20@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:30 PM
Subject: Re: Montgomery County online ticket payment confirmation
To: Customer.SXervice@co.mXo.md.us

Bite me.

I got immediate feedback!

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <mailer-daXemon@googleXmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:30 PM
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
To: discX19720@gmXail.com

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently.

Brave me. Wait! There's more!
 

Out of curiousity I went to the website on the ticket to view the incriminating images, and the first gateway is Lockheed-Martin. Funny that. (I can send you the link if you want; I'm not posting that live link - even a broken with an X live link - here.)

I have a plastic gallon jar full of coins, mostly quarters:

I've been daydreaming about buying an iPad. Now I'll feel guilty about it (but not for too long) when I do. (UPDATE! Oh well, Apple sucks anyway. Mac and Apple fans are retarded, so what do you expect.)

Below is our maple tree the day before the county cut it down. We were told they'd mill the stump and replace the tree two years ago. Stump's still there.

That's a facile way to make an obvious point, but I've always liked the photo below and wanted to see what it looked like on the new blog.

 

• Influential left-wing ideas?
• Twilight of capitalism? 
• Capitalism.
• On cause and effect.
• To build a fire.
• Autoblogography and Creationism!
• Balanced perspective (don't forget to vote!)! 
• Mobamafucker.
• Damn right, I said. Despite the sales, it’s unlikely that many will ever read Decision Points, and even fewer will finish it. Those who do will find three revelations, besides the foetus in the jar. Junior killed his sister Doro’s goldfish by pouring vodka in the fishbowl. He was convinced he should run for president after hearing a sermon about Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. And, as a man who likes to go to bed early, at 10 p.m. on the night of 11 September 2001, President George W. Bush was complaining that he needed to get to sleep. W would be considered suspect by tea-crackers, yo.
• That's it for Huckabee.
• CIA WTF.
• Purple Line!
• Olde Towne!
• DC growing.
• UPDATE! Oh noes!

• Landru's been fired just before Giftmas!
• Seismic shift: In August, I wrote a piece for the Guardian's pre-season supplement in which I speculated that, after the World Cup and Internazionale's success in the Champions League, we may be about to witness a return to reactive football. Since when we've seen probably the most attacking Premier League in living memory, which goes to show two things: first, never believe anything anybody writes when trying to predict the future of football; and second, the World Cup is no longer a bellwether.That, perhaps, has been the most shocking aspect of the year; the realisation of just how far int'l football lags behind club football.
• Twelve books for 2010. I'm going to try War with the Newts.

• Good thing I've access to a university library's stacks. 
• On the fucking hipster.
• Important to whom? And I've said it a hundred times: the problem isn't Ashbery, it's the thousands of Ashbery imitators.
• UPDATE! Pull out the pin!
• I've heard only two songs off the upcoming PJ Harvey and it's love. 
• UPDATE! Stereogum's 50 most downloaded songs in 2010.
• This is true: after going to WFMU yesterday to stream some Beefheart, I stayed on after the tribute when the DJ went into her death metal regular programming (and I remembered why I stopped listening to WFMU - all the death metal - which I don't dislike, I've just never got). I had stepped away for a meeting, but when I came back there was a death metal song that I thought great by a band called Agalloch, whose 2010 album is Randal's #2 album of the year. Hey, what's with the vocals in death metal? Is it a federal law that all vocals on death metal have to sound like that the guy who does voice for Westwood One radio? 

UPDATE!

• Thanks! I like that one better of the two growls. I like them both better than any Arcade Motherfucking Fire song I've ever heard. 
• UPDATE! Lotsa Opath!
• Rick Nielsen is 66 (66?) today:

CRICKET

Lisa Ross Spaar

Apocalyptic knucklebone,
      black-letter font
so antique among the modern things,

you cause the room to flinch
      at my intrusion,
quaver in corners, trill

in mortised triplets the crowded
      heavy boots,
sodden mat, stiff thicket of broom.

Your ceremonial frequencies
      abrade what I might choose
to forget, lonely scrape of a chair

under fluorescent morgue-light
      of winter kitchen,
wince as the soul divides.

Hasp of flesh, sear fact
      through which your trespass,
your vesper curfew gnaws.