Ferals

I'm told today is National Feral Cats Day. Serendipitously, I wrote about ours ten days ago in one of the last original posts at the old place. If you have a extra buck or two, please consider giving to an organization in your area that helps spay, neuter, protect, and help place abandoned and feral cats in homes. In the Maryland/DC area, if you'd like to donate, if you'd like a rescued kitten or adult cat as a pet, please contact Metro Ferals.

For those of you who haven't heard the story: a female feral that we had been feeding (but would not let us near her) had three kittens in our shed almost four years ago. All four are still there. Mom still won't let us near her (though she doesn't run if she knows we see her as long as we don't approach her), but the three kittens, one female (Gray Cat) and two males (Frankie and Napoleon) all talk to us.

Um, that's Gray Cat with a bluejay in her mouth. We thought the bird was dead. Planet tapped the door's window, Gray Cat was startled, and the bluejay flew out of her mouth. Heh! best laugh of the month.

Gray Cat likes to be pet but not held, Frankie is a clown who wants to be pet, brushes against our legs and purrs and is almost ready to overcome his skittishness, and then there's Napoleon:

Have I mentioned that Napoleon is a wonder cat? We daydream what his and Fleabus' kittens would have been like.

Bobsday

That Bob is 50 today. Serendipitously, blissblog went on a Husker Du binge this past Tuesday.

This Bob is 63 today.

That concert? was one of the best five nights of my life.

I Think I Would Do Better to Make Some Soup and Light Up the Cave

I'm getting the impression New England doesn't want Planet to attend any of it's colleges:

That was the view out the Holiday Inn window in Portsmouth NH at six this morning, and today's forecast was two-three inches of torrential rain with wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour. Hmmm, what happened last time we were up here last Spring during the storm that flooded Rhode Island:

That's a poncho they had ready for visitors (there were at least 100 of us) who weren't ready for the downpours, and despite all my preconceptions and doubts plus an hour-plus moving in and out of buildings and through a steady cold downpour.

Well, we just finished our second visit to Bowdoin as the storm was peaking, not for a tour - we toured last August and would have again today if the weather was good, but traveled this far for an interview with an admissions officer. Even in the rain, maybe especially in the rain, it's a beautiful campus:

And it was by far Planet's best interview experience. The guy was funny, smart, provocative, informative, encouraging, and then walking around campus afterward in the abating rain was fun. I realize that after most visits the leader in the clubhouse is the latest school visited, but until two hours ago I never heard the word's "I'm thinking about applying for early admission." Has Bowdoin jumped to the top of Planet's list?

• Harvey's Brief History of Neoliberalism. 
• The modern idea.
• Law in the box.
• All along the watchtower.
• Damn sand-niggers. 
• Why cutting military spending is never off the table. 
• Racket.
• Racket.
• Krugman's obamapostasy may never come: True to form, the Obama administration’s response has been to oppose any action that might upset the banks, like a temporary moratorium on foreclosures while some of the issues are resolved. Instead, it is asking the banks, very nicely, to behave better and clean up their act. I mean, that’s worked so well in the past, right? The response from the right is, however, even worse. Republicans in Congress are lying low, but conservative commentators like those at The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page have come out dismissing the lack of proper documents as a triviality. In effect, they’re saying that if a bank says it owns your house, we should just take its word. To me, this evokes the days when noblemen felt free to take whatever they wanted, knowing that peasants had no standing in the courts. But then, I suspect that some people regard those as the good old days.
• No good idea ever dies.
• Speaker-in-waiting.
• What happened to Pee-Wee?
• I get invitations:

Hello Mr BLCKDGRD

My name is Raz Godelnik of Eco-Libris , a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices in the industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books.

I'd like to invite you to participate in the 2nd Annual Green Books Campaign: On November 10, 200 bloggers will simultaneously publish reviews of 200 books printed on recycled paper or FSC-certified paper. The campaign will use the power of the Internet and social media to promote books that are printed in an eco-friendly manner. 

• Dunno. Will look at the titles, at least. 
• Senses of collaboration. 
• We were listening to Planet's CD mixes in the car. Here's one song:
   

THE FURY OF RAINSTORMS

Anne Sexton

The rain drums down like red ants,
each bouncing off my window.
The ants are in great pain
and they cry out as they hit
as if their little legs were only
stitched on and their heads pasted.
And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.
Depression is boring, I think
and I would do better to make
some soup and light up the cave.

Here's another of Planet's mix:
  

I and My Life Will Shut Very Beautifully

I'm three years away from being out from under a mortgage barring complete reaming by the coming mortgage clusterfuck, but I'm about to go half-a-mortgage under soon when Planet picks an elitist Liberal Arts school, one of which might be Bowdoin or Connecticut College; we're flying this afternoon to Boston then driving to Brunswick ME for an official interview at Bowdoin Friday morning, then driving to New London CT to interview Saturday morning. (We land at Logan Thursday at 7:00PM, probably get out with the rental by nine, then drive into New Hampshire, get a room, sleep a few hours, get up at six and drive north to Brunswick, interview, turnaround and immediately drive south to New London. Montag, I'll wave hi to and from from the 295 overpass over 309.)

I know this sounds callous and complicitous, but my generation of mes probably won't lack for catfood, it's my daughter's generation that will begin hording catfood, it's my grand-childrens' world that need survive the catfood famines, both natural and man-made, but my only child wants to go to Bowdoin or Hamilton or Carleton or any of seven others, we can afford to send her to a school which will credential her to be in a class of Americans who'll risk exposure to tainted blackmarket catfood almost next to last, and so would you.

I'm still distraught with the certainty I'm leaving my daughter a world shittier than my parents left me, but I fear I've underestimated with my puny hive-mind how many zeroes are multiplying zeroes in cascades of kazillions of totalitarian square-root signs, that my house may be repossessed by square root even after I've paid it off, that my timeline of catfoodery is too optimistic by at least one generation.

• Stand-up comedy.
• 5 myths about taxes.
• Progressive, like the 1980s.
• Work forever.
• PSA.
• Strawpersons. 
• Bay Bridge one of world's scariest?
• MOCO cops taze 65 year old man.
• I don't know if this was a suicide, but there's a history of people committing suicide by stepping in front of freight trains near Randolph Road.
• UPDATE! Yesterday I got a lot of hits at the old place from people googling images of Michelle Lissel, the dreamy dominatrix from Fox Soccer Channel who left FSC to take a front office job with Toronto FC and I wondered why. Maybe this had something to do with it.
• Poster Children is one of the bands in the CD crates found when Elric moved his stuff out of our basement.

Born 116 years ago today:

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

E.E. Cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

Here's another band in the CD crate found in my basement:

Consider the Abundance of Such Resource as Illuminates the Glow-Blue Bodies and Gold-Skeined Wings of Flies Swarming the Dumped Guts of a Natural Slaughter

I hadn't given Axelrod's statement that he was "hoping that with more seats, the Republicans will feel a greater sense of responsibility to work with us to solve some of these problems," much thought, dismissing it as his obamalamely attempt to establish a meme for the 2012 elections, which is the only election that matters to Obamaxelrod, don't you know.

But think why Obamaxelrod lifted the moratorium of deepwater oil drilling yesterday when they didn't have to until after the election, have a knee to the nuts, eco-progressives, and you know what? Axelrod may be right: having followed corporate mandate and disabused America's Left that America will ever move Left again, corporate will rein in the hyenas (though not as easily as they think they can) post-election. Obama has done his job. There is a center-right model of middle-American consumer-citizens corporate likes; corporate thinks there's 20 more years of coal in that middle-American center-right consumer-citizen, needs to keep you and me breathing until we motherfuckers can be top-mined for scrap.

• UPDATE! On corporate and the Right's hyenas.
• Enemies list.
• Sweet denial.
• Malaise, with no end in sight. 
• Clusterfuck nation.
• Punch a strawman.
• The cop. 
• UPDATE! Not gender identities but class distinctions.
• Ruth Marcus isn't as mendacious as the other YFWP columnists, but she is the stupidest.
• The education of Pam Geller. 
• Paladino: I'm very sorry I called you the disgusting fudge-packers and carpet-munchers you are. 
• UPDATE! Did Paladino open for the Butthole Surfers?
• Have more catnip: Every November, all five of The Dobbs Group’s show-jumping horses must be transported from their summer stables in Vermont to their winter stables in Wellington, Florida. The workers are transported to the tropics too, returning to New England with the horses in April. They ride in trucks each way alongside their expensive equestrian charges, tending to the horses’ needs throughout the thirty-two-hour journey. Their return to Vermont marks the start of a new annual circuit of horse shows—an exhausting schedule during the spring, summer and fall months that entails constant travel between their Vermont base and horse shows around the country. At these shows, it is not unusual for the grooms who care for Dobbs’s horses to rise in the middle of the night or in the predawn hours to clean, brush and prepare the horses for a training session or early morning competition. For years, undocumented immigrants from Mexico have been relied upon to meet these labor demands.
• State of the Kitty Address. 
• Rhee! 
• UPDATE! Leggett's priorities. Why not raise the property tax on the motherfucking mcmansionists?
• Yesterday's abandonment of a Euro Cup Qualifier in Genoa between Italy and Serbia because of Serbian hooligans reminded me of when Elric (whose father is a Serbian) was stationed in Belgrade within the past two years and was strongly recommended to stay away from any bar where Serbian soccer fans drank much less attend matches. Elric, send me the links from your archives, please.
• UPDATE! Elric in comments: A couple of Ultras saw me buy a Partizan scarf in a gift shop one evening and came after me, and I had to run a couple of blocks - fortunately there was a tram that I could jump in. By the time I got on the tram there were about a dozen of them chasing me. It went the wrong way and I got lost, but I eventually got back to my hotel. It could just as easily have been a Red Star scarf, but that was what they were selling that day. There's more. Go look.
• Booker.
• Funny old Booker. I have the Jacobson on my desk. It keeps Hey Sailoring me, and I pick it up and then put it down. It's not so much I don't want to read it, it's that other books keep butting in front of the line.
• UPDATE! Why the Booker is cool, or: Brits are different.
• Hejinian.
• On C, part four.
• Who cares if you read?
• Bookshelves.
• Bad music, worse politics.
• UPDATE! This week's new releases w/MP3.
• Try it before you buy it. 
• UPDATE! A review of the new place. I like the overlapping photos - and other than agreeing on the correct color of our soccer team's kit, we've never agreed on colors. And holyfuck, look at that dinosaur below.

THE CITY LIMITS

A.R. Ammons

When you consider the radiance, that it does not withhold
itself but pours its abundance without selection into every
nook and cranny not overhung or hidden; when you consider

that birds' bones make no awful noise against the light but
lie low in the light as in a high testimony; when you consider
the radiance, that it will look into the guiltiest

swervings of the weaving heart and bear itself upon them,
not flinching into disguise or darkening; when you consider
the abundance of such resource as illuminates the glow-blue

bodies and gold-skeined wings of flies swarming the dumped
guts of a natural slaughter or the coil of shit and in no
way winces from its storms of generosity; when you consider

that air or vacuum, snow or shale, squid or wolf, rose or lichen,
each is accepted into as much light as it will take, then
the heart moves roomier, the man stands and looks about, the 

leaf does not increase itself above the grass, and the dark
work of the deepest cells is of a tune with May bushes
and fear lit by the breadth of such calmly turns to praise.

Born 55 years ago yesterday:

Born 69 years ago today:

I love some Simon and Garfunkel songs, I like some Simon solo stuff, though he's written jackshit since Graceland.

And remember when Simon and George played together on SNL?

One of My Favorite Bands Covers One of My Favorite Peter Gabriel Songs?

I know it's relatively new, but how did I miss this?

Lucky for Us They Don't Know What They're Doing, These Puny Anonymous Creatures of Dark and Damp Who Eat Simply to Live, with No More Sense of Mission Than Nature Feels in Providing for Our Survival

Alright, I think I've successfully blogrolled everyone here who is still alive and who was on the blogroll at the old place. If you don't see yourself in the right-hand column under BECAUSE you're in the left-hand column BECAUSE because it makes things easier from a me organizational point-of-view. If you are on the old blogrolls but don't see yourself here, sorry, I goofed, please send me an email (blckdgrd ampersand gmail dot com), or if you are being Kind to me and I'm not reciprocating, or if you want to Hey Sailor me, send an email too.

I realize that moving at this time when I'm getting more hits than ever smacks of self-destructive stupidity, but getting angry at motherfucking typepad was motherfucking unfun and I can find unfun by the motherfucking bucketful without motherfucking typepad's help, and the look here is better and Ba'al bless the updating blogrolls, they're both boon to you bloggers I pimp and a lazy man's dream.

I recognize the inconvenience. Sincere and flattered thanks to friends who've already rewired their bumps here, advance thanks to everyone who will move their bumps and eyes here too. Regular programming resumes soon.

O!

Now would be an excellent time to remind everybody that all Fleabus photos and videos are copyright Planet.
 

• The law is an ass... armed with rockets.
• Imperial collapse. What if Obama is was a progressive and this is the honest best he could do?
• Daily obamapostasy.
• Obama's achievement.
• Yup.
• Streaking. 
• UPDATE! Sinking to the Right's level.
• Pig self-righteously (and correctly) calls hypocrisy on Democrats. 
• UPDATE! What are anarchist politics?
• Bought and sold. 
• Cult indoctrination.
• And no one's mind was changed.
• Not Elric, not Ehrlich, Elrich.
• More on Carla Cohen once, twice. 
• Go on, get a United shirt tattoo.
• Debating MFAs.
• On C, part three.
• Left of the dial.
• Bohemian Rhapsody flow-chart. 
• Wahwah. Just spend the long weekend with All Things Must Pass.
• Awaiting on you all.
• What a great album. Let it roll.

WORMS

Carl Dennis

Aren't you glad at least that the earthworms   

Under the grass are ignorant, as they eat the earth,   

Of the good they confer on us, that their silence   

Isn't a silent reproof for our bad manners,   

Our never casting earthward a crumb of thanks   

For their keeping the soil from packing so tight   

That no root, however determined, could pierce it?   

Imagine if they suspected how much we owe them,   

How the weight of our debt would crush us   

Even if they enjoyed keeping the grass alive,   

The garden flowers and vegetables, the clover,   

And wanted nothing that we could give them,   

Not even the merest nod of acknowledgment.   

A debt to angels would be easy in comparison,   

Bright, weightless creatures of cloud, who serve   

An even brighter and lighter master.   

Lucky for us they don't know what they're doing,   

These puny anonymous creatures of dark and damp   

Who eat simply to live, with no more sense of mission   

Than nature feels in providing for our survival.   

Better save our gratitude for a friend   

Who gives us more than we can give in return   

And never hints she's waiting for reciprocity.   

"If I had nickel, I'd give it to you,"   

The lover says, who, having nothing available   

In the solid, indicative world, scrapes up   

A coin or two in the world of the subjunctive.   

"A nickel with a hole drilled in the top   

So you can fasten it to your bracelet, a charm   

To protect you against your enemies."   

For his sake, she'd wear it, not for her own,   

So he might believe she's safe as she saunters   

Home across the field at night, the moon above her,   

Below her the loam, compressed by the soles of her loafers,   

And the tunneling earthworms, tireless, silent,   

As they persist, oblivious, in their service.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:
 

Volitionless, from Different Heights, and in the One Direction

Well, here's yesterday's obamapostasy. Today's Columbus Day, so it might not be until tomorrow Obama scolds me for my shallow fealty and selfishness, my blindness at his obamawesomeness, my traitorously irresponsible threats to not vote this cycle.

Speaking of threats. It's going to happen, but it's still in the exploratory stage, I haven't yet discovered all the ways blooger sucks, but tell me, old bloogers, is there a way to set links so they open in a new window? That's one thing typepad does that, as far as I can tell, blooger doesn't. That's not a deal-breaker, and I love the self-updating blogrolls (and if I move I'll be pinging some of you less because I've been using your self-updating blogrolls as a shortcut) (though the work and aargh of creating those blogrolls, both as a conscientious effort of Kind and as pain-in-the-ass time-wise is both mighty incentive and, subsequently, mighty disincentive). I like I can make photos and youtubes bigger and need break long lines in poems less often. I love that if I can find the poem I'm looking for online (so I don't have to type it) it formats in blooger with none of the grief formatting in typepad causes. I dig the url.

I haven't written about tablets here in a while which by no means means I've stopped writing about tablets. I'm a rube for a new tablet, as if it will make better what I scribble in it. I don't think I've ever gone as long between reformating BLCKDGRD's appearance since I switched to this template three years at least ago. Typepad doesn't allow archiving in an old formats when switching to a new format - if I widened the middle column every Fleabus photo fit for the old format will be too small, line breaks will be fucked. I worry about shit like this. But mostly I'm bored and I have a new tablet.

I'll will cross-post both places for at least a couple of months, but if you're inclined to be Kind, those of you who've blogrolled me, bookmarked me, subscribed to me, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you in advance for your taking the trouble to move with me.

• Radical pessimist's view of the next ten years.
• Whores, sluts, cunts, bitches.
• See, here's the thing: if Obama had been doing this a year ago instead of a month before an election it wouldn't look like a bullshit election pose.
• Krugman's obamapostasy, stage one.
• The man with no name.
• Glossy Karl.
• I am shocked to learn that Politico has a political agenda.
• What's the difference between Larry Flint and Linda McMahon? 
• How to think about Lou Dobbs.
• Rahmoron.
• ICC from the sky.
• I have never been able to finish a Peter Carey novel, though I stopped trying long ago.
• On poetry anthologies. I love American Hybrid, go back to over and over. 
• What you can buy me for Giftmas. 
• Coetzee reviews latest Roth.
• What's wrong with this picture?
• Nothing to get pissy about. 
• Bad moon rising.

PORCELAIN

Carl Phillips

As when a long forgetfulness lifts suddenly, and what
we'd forgotten—as we look at it squarely, then again
refuse to look—is our own
                                            inconsequence, yes, it was
mostly like that, sex as both an act of defacement and—
as if the two were the same thing—votive offering,
insofar as the leaves
                                     also were a kind of offering, or could
at least be said to be, as they kept falling the way leaves
do: volitionless, from different heights, and in the one direction.

Elric moved his stuff out of our basement yesterday and I found three CD racks I hadn't seen the four years and remembered a bunch of bands I hadn't thought of in a while, like this one: