Rough in the Distant Glitter of the January Sun

Still recovering - it's been a shitty January, first with Earthgirl's illness and then my aunt's death. We got a call yesterday from the batshit nasty daughter of my mother-in-law's batshit nasty and demented husband threatening to put my batshit nasty and demented mother-in-law on a bus in Gainesville FL and ship her to DC (my 89 year old mother-in-law can't fly: she has emphysema and must drag along a oxygen tank which can't be taken on a plane). Plus, regardless of all else, January is always the shittiest month at work as we toggle motherfucking semesters. Still, better moods flicker like mirages on August asphalt streets.

No bleggal hiatus, though hopefully less compulsive aargh, or at least less compulsive arrgh driven by personal arrgh, but probably not. And while the threatened increase in bleggalgazing reeled in the desired effect, for now I'll just giggle and introduce what's now by edict designated Bleggalgazing Anthem 2:

• American exceptionalism.
• Give me your tired, wretched analogies.
• Capitalism.
• The global ruling class. 
• Financial aristocracy. 
• Panopticon. 
• Technophilia v technophobia.
• I must confess, I don't give a flying fuck.
• Bad luck with that.
• Do not give to the United Way. (h/t drip in a comment at a friend's blog.)
• Blooger is still skeevy, so still no rotating Fleabus masthead. I kind of like the look now, which doesn't mean Fleabus won't return both in posts and on masthead once blooger decides it's going to fix its skeeviness.
• DeMarcus Motherfucking Beasley? Gah.
• New libraries. I drive by the new Tenleytown one everyday; it's excellent.
• Somebody in the NYT lists his Top Ten Composers. The dope includes Wagner (though to his credit he includes Bartok.
• One man's opinion on Wagner.

THE SNOW MAN

Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.