You Come to a Gentle Indifference About Being Thought Either a Fool or Someone with Valuable Secrets

• I woke up at three Saturday morning with that FDR skit in my head, got up, turned on the computer, searched it, found it, saved it before I lost it, then went back to bed. It has to be at least a decade since I stayed up to watch Letterman, but once, youngsters, it seemed like it was pushing borders. In any case, newest avatar, yo. 
• UPDATE! Oxtrot's not dead! He's broke, he's skiing, but not dead.
• Battle lines. 
• UPDATE! Moving on from Zizek. Bet a pint Zizek never breaks kayfabe.
• 20th Century, now in reruns.
• Run through the lies.
• More life at the end of empire.
• Calling time on capitalism. 
• Later that Saturday we had a chance to tap into the benefits of our lower-upper-middle class status (all's fine now) by presenting an insurance card and twenty-five dollars at Sibley (not Suburban) and I didn't bat an eye much less stop to consider the inequalities of American health care while a world-class doctor (who left afterward, I saw, in a maroon BMW) emergency operated on and fixed one of mine.
• Tomatoes.
• Kettling.
• I was going to say something about this, but Crow and Ioz already have.
• American exceptionalism: Lindsay Graham-style.
• EJ Dionne is profoundly stupid.
• Obamapology. 
• UPDATE! Crist! I still say it'll be HRC.
• Still, unlike once, I won't be raging against Darrell Issa, motherfucking pig that he is.
• UPDATE! Palin's chances to be pig nominee for 2012.
• Democrats.
  
• 50 images from 2010.
• A visit to Maryland.
• Whatever happens, don't tax the motherfucking mcmansionists.
• Olde Towne.

• Me criticize pretty one day. Saves me posting all six links to yesterday's NYTBR feature on the current state of criticism.
• Books read 2010. Holyfuck, the one benefit of a shitty commute.
• A year of reading.
• Monk.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight has a different Monk.
• Best music of 2010.
• More best music of 2010. 
• UPDATE! The KxXP morning dj went NINE WHOLEFUCKING MINUTES in his shift this morning before playing motherfucking Arcade Fucking Fire. Nine minutes.
• Goodbye 2010.
• British Sea Power covers The Pixies.
• Remember The Drongos? Completely forgot about them until that post. Saw them open (at least once) for somebody (no idea) at 930 in early 80s. Elric, Landru, you remember seeing them?
• The Monkees.

A VOICE AT A SEANCE

Anthony Hecht

It is rather strange to be speaking, but I know you are there
Wanting to know, as if it were worth knowing.
Nor is it important that I died in combat
In a good cause of an indifferent one.
Such things, it may surprise you, are not regarded.
Something too much of this.

You are bound to be disappointed,
Wanting to know, are there any trees?
It is all different from what you suppose,
And the darkness is not darkness exactly,
But patience, silence, withdrawal, the sad knowledge
That is was almost impossible not to hurt anyone
Whether by action or inaction.
At the beginning of course there was a sense of loss,
Not of one's own life, but of what seemed
The easy, desirable lives one might have led.
Fame and wealth are hard to achieve,
And goodness even harder;
But the cost of all of them is a familiar deformity
Such as everyone suffers from:
An allergy to certain foods, nausea at the sight of blood,
A slight impediment of speech, shame at one's own body,
A fear of heights or claustrophobia.
What you learn has nothing whatever to do with joy,
Nor with sadness, either. You are mostly silent.
You come to a gentle indifference about being thought
Either a fool or someone with valuable secrets.
It may be that the ultimate wisdom
Lies in saying nothing.
I think I may already have said too much.