My Theory Is Simple-Minded to Be Sure: That Beneath His Public Head There Was Another Head and It Was a Pyramid or Something

Over Thanksgiving dinner dessert I listened to my two brothers and a favorite aunt, all employed by Corporate (and the seedier if not nastier side of Corporate), bitch about intrigue and backstabbing and cutthroat Corporate infighting, reminding me, Corporate are Triskelions, there's only one game in town and it's competing against one another; managing the Thralls is just a necessary cost of doing business.

Mind, I work at (and have degrees from) the above high-priced and highly-prestigious credentialing factory, one that bases it's prestige (and high tuition) by specializing in just those academic disciplines - Economics (Chicago School), MBA (Chicago School), Government (neo-con), International Affairs (neo-con) - that prepares Corporate's next generations for empire's projection and protection.
   

My aunt is... I'm not going to tell you who my aunt is other to say that where she started from to where she's at now is as good an iteration of the American success story of the rewards of hard work and self-reliance as can be ghosted by any sales-writer. She thinks I'm a motherfucking idiot who turned down opportunities of a lifetime thirty years ago - Who's to argue? At the time I was a motherfucking idiot (who to this day regrets nothing) - though I've done OK since (and fathering Planet has bought me some absolution).

She's executive level Corporate, I'm executive-assistant level Corporate. I used to think this some moral distinction that honored me. My aunt saw Corporate as inevitable and engaged it and played to win, I saw Corporate as inevitable and engaged and played to tie, my feeble fuck-you to Corporate's invincibility, my half-assed fully-invested complicitous self-congratulatory and comfortable pose.

• Every year.
• Team spirit. 
• At another Thanksgiving dinner.
• Spirit of the season. 
• The fire next time.
• Grifter-smart.
• These rich fucks.
• How did Pastor Sanctimonious not make the Hack List?
• Buttercup is a total feldspar.
• Winnie the Pooh mental disorder gifs.
• Gentleman's C.
• The Present.
• Lit links.
• Brit authors name their books of the year.
• Kakutani's ten best of 2010, so you know what not to read. (I tried the Mitchell, and no.)
• David Bowie, cracked actor. 
• In the morning. 
• UPDATE! Ferocious.

THE LIST OF FAMOUS HATS

James Tate

Napoleon's hat is an obvious choice I guess to list as a famous hat, but that's not the hat I have in mind. That was his hat for show. I am thinking of his private bathing cap, which in all honesty wasn't much different than the one any jerk might buy at a corner drugstore now, except for two minor eccentricities. The first one isn't even funny: Simply it was a white rubber bathing cap, but too small. Napoleon led such a hectic life ever since his childhood, even farther back than that, that he never had a chance to buy a new bathing cap and still as a grown-up--well, he didn't really grow that much, but his head did: He was a pinhead at birth, and he used, until his death really, the same little tiny bathing cap that he was born in, and this meant that later it was very painful to him and gave him many headaches, as if he needed more. So, he had to vaseline his skull like crazy to even get the thing on. The second eccentricity was that it was a tricorn bathing cap. Scholars like to make a lot out of this, and it would be easy to do. My theory is simple-minded to be sure: that beneath his public head there was another head and it was a pyramid or something.

Let Me Know of Any Recent Attempts on Your Part to Save Our Fellow-Citizens from Themselves

Thanksgiving.

Sarah Palin Clubs to Death a Fish on Reality Show Labelled 'A Snuff' Video by Animal Rights Group

There's so much more material if you've no rooting interest (which I still do; it ebbs slow), if, beyond kneejerk acknowledging yesyesyes Sarah Palin is indeed a dumbfuck with grifter-smarts, you look at the dishonest dumbfuckery of the attacks on her dumbfuckness - um, braining fish is the humane way to kill them; people misspeak - these next two years could be megaggigles rather than impotent rage.

Sarah Palin: "We Gotta Stand with Our North Korean Allies."

Also, "Labelled." Fucking Brits.

• Buy Nothing Day.
• The failure wasn't a failure.
• How the American class struggle works.
• Ruth Marcus tells you to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.
• Politics of consent.
• Shit floats.
• Palin's strategy.
• It's a sign of how successfully my disaffection is blossoming that the Hack List struck me as juvenile and gratuitous (where once I would have cheered it gratuitously), but leaving The World's Shittiest Human off the list renders the whole exercise juvenile, gratuitous, and FAIL!
• It's a sign of how successfully my disaffection is blossoming that Tom DeLay's conviction didn't make me cum when once it would have.
• The bitter new Washington. Drew isn't an awful hack, but she is a Villager, and her article is insight into what not-awful hack Villagers think.
• What leading progressives are thankful for.
• For your Thanksgiving Day consideration.

• By the Waters of Babylon. (h/t) 
• The Windhover.
• Robertson Davies.
• Banana breakfast. Vineland's reread is next year, Gravity's 2012. 
• Stereogum's 50 most anticipated albums of 2011. Good news? My Morning Jacket and Mogwai. Shitty news? The Motherfucking Decembrists and Fleet Motherfucking Foxes.
• New Destroyer!
• Crazy rulers of the world.
• Heart and soul. 
• Dear God.
• Frost. 
• Helicopter.
• I'm sorry I love you.

THANKSGIVING LETTER FROM HARRY

Carl Dennis

I guess I have to begin by admitting
I'm thankful today I don't reside in a country
My country has chosen to liberate,
That Bridgeport's my home, not Baghdad.
Thankful my chances are good, when I leave
For the Super Duper, that I'll be returning.
And I'm thankful my TV set is still broken.
No point in wasting energy feeling shame
For the havoc inflicted on others in my name
When I need all the strength I can muster
To teach my eighth-grade class in the low-rent district.
There, at least, I don't feel powerless.
There my choices can make some difference.

This month I'd like to believe I've widened
My students' choice of vocation, though the odds
My history lessons on working the land
Will inspire any of them to farm
Are almost as small as the odds
One will become a monk or nun
Trained in the Buddhist practice
We studied last month in the unit on India.
The point is to get them suspecting the world
They know first hand isn't the only world.

As for the calling of soldier, if it comes up in class,
It's not because I feel obliged to include it,
As you, as a writer, may feel obliged.
A student may happen to introduce it,
As a girl did yesterday when she read her essay
About her older brother, Ramon,
Listed as "missing in action" three years ago,
And about her dad, who won't agree with her mom
And the social worker on how small the odds are
That Ramon's alive, a prisoner in the mountains.

I didn't allow the discussion that followed
More time than I allowed for the other essays.
And I wouldn't take sides: not with the group
That thought the father, having grieved enough,
Ought to move on to the life still left him;
Not with the group that was glad he hadn't made do
With the next-to-nothing the world's provided,
That instead he's invested his trust in a story
That saves the world from shameful failure.

Let me know of any recent attempts on your part
To save our fellow-citizens from themselves.
In the meantime, if you want to borrow Ramon
For a narrative of your own, remember that any scene
Where he appears under guard in a mountain village
Should be confined to the realm of longing. There
His captors may leave him when they move on.
There his wounds may be healed,
His health restored. A total recovery
Except for a lingering fog of forgetfulness
A father dreams he can burn away.

Theme Song November 2010 (2)

If It Was Only Loss He Wore, He Wore It to Assert, with Fierce Devotion, Complicity and Nothing More

Hey!  Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?

It's true!

MLS is expanding to Portland and Vancouver next season. Each current MLS team must make available for draft by Portland or Vancouver eleven players (though no current MLS team can lose more than two players). Here's who the shittiest team in MLS made available:

GK Troy Perkins, F Pablo Hernandez, D-MF Devon McTavish, MF Brandon Barklage, F Adam Cristman, D Jordan Graye, MF Kurt Morsink, D Barry Rice, MF Carlos Varela, D Juan Manuel Pena, F Danny Allsopp.

If I was Portland or Vancouver, I'd take Troy Perkins and his salary in a nanosecond. Watch. Perkins is behind Hamid here (which is fine) but was once in USMNT keeper pool. Maybe he sucks now, maybe the team in front of him sucked more, probably it's both, but a chance of a veteran keeper who was not long ago almost all that? Watch Perkins leave a bad situation and go out West and play himself into the pool for WC14. I like Perkins - he gets LOUD SIDE! I hope it happens, for good reasons.

Just a clarification: when I said

She (Palin) was offered the Sarah Palin Decade and said yes...

and then said both Palin and Obama were

offered roles of a lifetime, (and were) smart enough to say yes.

I didn't mean to imply I wouldn't have said yes too. You be the judge of you.

United protected:

D Dejan Jakovic, MF Branko Boskovic, MF-F Chris Pontius, D Marc Burch, D-MF Rodney Wallace, MF-F Santino Quaranta, MF Stephen King, MF-F Junior Carreiro, D Jed Zayner, MF Clyde Simms, D Julius James.

Burch! Relief floods Casa Satanica! Me? I've no arguments with who United protected versus who was left unprotected - I wouldn't swap an a-lister for a b-lister - which speaks volumes about the general suckitude of the talent.

Ideally, a team would have their new head coach in place so he could have input re: his system and the players he wants for that system, though in United's case, being forced to protect players they'd just as soon go away, it doesn't matter. Good thing our deposits are in for next year's season tickets.

• 2016? Well, she'll be sitting VPOTUS. (Dem ticket 2012 = Obama/HRC. Pint bet anyone?)
• Today's moment of Zen.
• UPDATE! On the above. On the above.
• Your Weltanschauung sucks.
• Evolution of comedy.
• Security Theater Follies.
• Housebroken.
• Let the war begin.
• Gah. 
• Ireland.
• Dumby O'Shill and the Little People.
• Know anybody who works for MOCO?
• Hilltop gets a D? (As does SMCM?)
• World's stupidest song contest.
• Silliman's weekly lit-links.
• More lit-links.
• More lit-links.
• I take no pride in my inability to read science fiction. So. Philip K. Dick. Name one that would get me in. (Yes, I've asked before and tried before; I'll try again.)
• UPDATE! Futile devices.
• You. 
• UPDATE! Changes.
• Of course I do. 
• UPDATE! I've been tired. 
• EXCELLENT NEWS!
• UPDATE! Everyone Chooses Sides. 
• Desire Lines. LOUD! (and tripping, if possible).
• UPDATE! When I grow up.
• Linkous demos. Oh my. 

BLACK JACKETS

Thom Gunn

   In the silence that prolongs the span
Rawly of music when the record ends,
   The red-haired boy who drove a van
In weekday overalls but, like his friends,

   Wore cycle boots and jacket here
To suit the Sunday hangout he was in,
   Heard, as he stretched back from his beer,
Leather creak softly round his neck and chin.

   Before him, on a coal-black sleeve
Remote exertion had lined, scratched, and burned
   Insignia that could not revive
The heroic fall or climb where they were earned.

   On the other drinkers bent together,
Concocting selves for their impervious kit,
   He saw it as no more than leather
Which, taut across the shoulders grown to it,

   Sent through the dimness of a bar
As sudden and anonymous hints of light
   As those that shipping give, that are
Now flickers in the Bay, now lost in night.

   He stretched out like a cat, and rolled
The bitterish taste of beer upon his tongue,
   And listened to a joke being told:
The present was the things he stayed among.

   If it was only loss he wore,
He wore it to assert, with fierce devotion,
   Complicity and nothing more.
He recollected his initiation,

   And one especially of the rites.
For on his shoulders they had put tattoos:
   The group's name on the left, The Knights,
And on the right the slogan Born To Lose.

Woke up with that in my head. This too:

The Dog's Paws, Trotting, Rotate His End of Infinity

Does anyone reasonably believe Sarah Palin when she says:

There's nothing different today than there was in the last 43 years of my life since I first started reading. I continue to read all that I can get my hands on -- and reading biographies of, yes, Thatcher for instance, and of course Reagan and the John Adams letters, and I'm just thinking of a couple that are on my bedside, I go back to C.S. Lewis for inspiration, there's such a variety, because books have always been important in my life.

BWRTZ! If you didn't answer, It doesn't fucking matter whether it's bullshit, you're wrong.

There's nothing Palin can say or do that isn't breathlessly newsworthy. She has book deals, she gets a front page article in the NYT Sunday Magazine, she has Frank Rich the same day writing Oh Yes she can! She can command her price on speaker's fees. She can call Fox News and ask for face time whenever she wants on whatever topic she wants, she has Fox News as her publicist, marketer, and promoter. She's being paid for one-hour long campaign ads masquerading as a reality show. She's making gagagazillions more $$$ than everyone who reads this shitty blog combined times 10K.

Sure she's a hollow grifter, but stupid she's not. She was offered the Sarah Palin Decade and said yes. Her example is the carrot of our reeducation, especially the hollow grifter part, and here's the best part: every ounce of snarky-ass Liberal condescension towards Palin generates an ounce more profit for her (the very dynamic that boosted Obama's profits for every cracker attack on Obama's grifter hollowness - trust me, it worked on me).

Obama = Palin, grifters both, the black dude and the cracker woman, offered roles of a lifetime, smart enough to say yes. Palin didn't make me realize this, Obama did.

• RIP Chalmers Johnson.
• RIP Chalmers Johnson.
• Identifying evil.
• TSA and humiliating Americans. Remember, giving devout pinheads a pittance of power is a time-tested method of enforcing Corporate's preponderance of power. 
• Krugman still doesn't get it.
• On Krugman not getting it.
• America, soon.
• Jeb 2012?
• Angry gods.
• Are we high enough for this yet?
• Plagiarism and the mechanics of privilege.
• Tubes allusion!
• PERE LEBRUN (thanks for the Kind!)
• Ehrlich rhymes with fuckstick.
• Liquor and politics in PG.
• Heh! -- Justin Bieber was just a kid when Eminem put out his first album. Today, he's still just a kid, but they're on equal footing at Sunday night's American Music Awards in Los Angeles as both vie for the title of entertainer of the year.
• Vapid celebrity. 

• Learning from Modernism.
• Les Murray.
• 101 favorite albums.
• Les Savy Fav.
• What if The Beatles never broke up?
• Full moon, empty heart. 
• UPDATE! Why the fuck is Soundgarden on my radio?
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Benjamin Britten was born 97 years ago today.

AURORA PRONE

Les Murray

The lemon sunlight poured out far between things
inhabits a coolness. Mosquitoes have subsided,
flies are for later heat.
Every tree's an auburn giant with a dazzled face
and the back of its head to an infinite dusk road.
Twilights broaden away from our feet too
as rabbits bounce home up defiles in the grass.
Everything widens with distance, in this perspective.
The dog's paws, trotting, rotate his end of infinity
and dam water feels a shiver few willow drapes share.
Bright leaks through their wigwam re-purple the skinny beans
then rapidly the light tops treetops and is shortened
into a day. Everywhere stands pat beside its shadow
for the great bald radiance never seen in dreams.

Knobs

The fucks in the patriotic for profit clown suits are University of Maryland football players. Maryland's colors are red and white. Teams that wear black whose color isn't black are lame, teams that wear black whose color isn't black that trim the black with camo are asshats, teams that wear black whose color isn't black and trim them with camo and then put Courage and Country and Commitment and Duty and Loyalty and Honor for NOBs are lame motherfucking knobs. May they lose every fucking game forever and a day, amen.

A cynically manipulative marketing stunt, sure, but another reminder that the etc and yadda is getting worse by design and won't ever get better forever and a day, amen.