Our Secret Past Required That You and I Forget Why and Where We Lost Our Place When We Went Off the Books

Can you think of anyone - you, me, friends, family, political and media figures, the guys we shoot pool with in Stringtown, Blegsylvania - whose visceral reaction in the 24 hours after the shooting wasn't to the gestures and inflections utterly predictable, because I can't, and that's grimlyfunny scary.

• Lessons from the past two days.
• Violence.
• Violence, gov't violence, and anti-gov't violence.
• Our words, not our violence, causes this violence.
• UPDATE! A sensible take.
• Even if the sky is falling down.
• The most influential Left intellectual in Europe brings the predictable.
• Motherfucking empty gesture.
• Alexander: Tea-Partiers don't read. 
• On Loughner's booklist.
• Pwog eliminationism.
• And no one wants to know.
• We are not weaker than the tyrants.
• Robert Reich's obamapostasy.
• I am PLEASED! the Eagles lost: the beatification of Michael Vick had he made it to and won the Super Bowl is deathaargh I don't need.
• Poole's Store closed. Makes me sad.
• Can I just reiterate: Fuck King Farm.

• Stop blaming the internet.
• Towards a quantum poetics.
• The state of the short story. I've never particularly liked short stories.
• New partner.
• This is true: My aunt was placed in hospice this past weekend. She's disappeared into her alzheimers years ago, and fifteen minutes ago I thought of Chocolate Genius' My Mom (I dare you) and ten minutes later WFMU's Frank played Chocolate Genius' She Smiles. Serendipity. Sad serendipity, but serendipity.
• Albums of 2010, part five.
• UPDATE! The morning dj at KEXP went a whole hour into his shift this morning before playing Arcade Fucking Fire, an hour and ten minutes before playing the new Fucking Decembrists! (He did play Fleet Fucking Foxes the first hour.) I need thank him and the midday host for driving me to WFMU, where as I type this they're playing this Dungeon Dots' song.
• Sir Richard Thompson?
• I am goodbye.

WHY YOU AND I

Harryette Mullen

Who knows why you and I fell off the roster?
Who can figure out why you and I never passed muster
on our way out yonder?
Does anyone wonder why you and I lacked
the presence of minding our blunders?
Can anyone see why you and I, no longer intact,
pulled a disappearing act and left without scratch? Our secret past
required that you and I forget why and where
we lost our place when we went off the books.
Could anyone guess, does anyone know or ever care
why you and I can't be found, as hard as we look?
Who'll spell out of us, if we exist,
why you and I missed our turn on the list?
Who can stand to reason why you and I let
our union dissolve to strike the orderly alphabet.