Friday, March 4, 2011

Sacrifice Them on the Altar of Our Ineffable Cause

Have some links, music, poem. I'm going to shut up and listen to myself think for a day or few. There might be birthday music Saturday. There will be music Sunday.



  • The dilemma
  • The morality of power.
  • Full disclaimer: my parents were teachers, my favorite aunts and uncles were teachers, one of my good friends is a teacher, my wife is a teacher, and I've benefited greatly from wonderful teachers in high school and college, so I want to take take this opportunity first to tell motherfucking fat cracker-baiting governors attacking teachers for political gain to fuck themselves with affect in the eye with a motherfucking fork, but I especially want to take this opportunity to tell motherfucking Democrats who are not defending teachers, from Mobamafucker down to the pissantest precinct leader, to doublefuck themselves in both eyes with the rusty lid of a rancid can of catfood. Fuckers.
  • The trouble isn't that people are ignorant.
  • Politics of entitlement.
  • America.
  • America
  • On the above.
  • The enemy is us.
  • America
  • America.
  • Sorry
  • Bombing Libya.
  • Solidarity.
  • Capitalism
  • Pop goes the Republic.
  • American meritocracy.
  • American meritocracy:
  • Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was in the Capitol on Wednesday for the unveiling of his official portrait. Former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were also on hand for the event. Below is our pool report on the gathering, which took place in the Old Senate Chamber, the room where the Senate used to meet from 1810 to 1859 but which is now used mostly for ceremonial events:
  • Scores of current and former senators, aides and administration officials - including former President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- filled the Old Senate Chamber shortly after 3:30 p.m. Wednesday for the unveiling of the portrait of former Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who served as majority leader from 2003 until his retirement in 2007.
  • Bush, clad in a dark blue suit, appeared upbeat as he sat onstage next to Frist to the left of a podium. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former Senate chaplain Llyod Ogilvie sat on the opposite side of the podium. Cheney was sitting in the audience, as were several other Bush administration officials, including former Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld and McConnell's wife, former Labor secretary Elaine Chao.
  • Among the former senators in attendance were Republicans Fred Thompson (Tenn.), Pete Domenici (N.M.), Don Nickles (Okla.), Rick Santorum (Pa.), Norm Coleman (Minn.), John Warner (Va.), Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) and Spencer Abraham (Mich.). A host of current senators from both parties were present; MSNBC host Chris Matthews was also spotted in the crowd.
  • There's democracy and democracy.
  • Sheen, Beck, or Qaddafi?  
  • Scott Walker of Roger Goodell?
  • The battle for the internet.
  • Sillyass bleggalgazing.
  • Seven essential things about blegging to ignore.
  • Women and cats?
  • ICC!
  • I see coyotes all the time in Rock Creek Park.
  • I'm sympathetic to Burleith residents' objections to student group houses, but SHUT THE FUCK UP









    LETTER TO DR.B - - -


    Diane Ackerman

    I have found you among the texts
    (but not the textures) of your life,
    in the library of your cunning,
    where the abstracts of forty papers
    open, one by one, like small windows
    partly sealed by terminology's lacquer.
    They reveal you both aloof and enthralled,
    a restless mind of intersecting planes.
    
    How can I resist the paper "Artist and Analyst"?
    Yet I do, thinking it best to stay
    within the frame we've chosen,
    using the palette we invent,
    creating a mosaic in motion.
    Whenever I set a shard in place,
    the mosaic evolves, blurs a moment,
    then a new scene refines, throwing past into relief,
    drawing present into mind.
    
    So I will sacrifice my yen to know
    the what and whim of you. Though my curiosity
    is swelling like a Magellanic Cloud
    filled with a luminous starfield of questions,
    I'll sacrifice them on the altar of our ineffable 
    cause. A padded altar. A cause quilted with passion,
    and insight whose razors cut clean as thrill.
    A sacrifice intoxicating as any pill.


    11 comments:

    1. I hope the portrait showed Sen. Bill Frist performing a diagnosis via television.
      ~

      ReplyDelete
    2. Thankee suh foah th'linkahhhdj.

      ReplyDelete
    3. If you don't wanna be outshined, monetize!

      ReplyDelete
    4. Holy fucking disclaimer: I had a few good teachers, but I fucking hated most of them! My ex-wife is a teacher! But fuck every fucking fuck on a government payroll, from Obamafucker down to the newest school crossing guard and every fucked up cop, lying DEA agent, ATF murderer, TSA scab, DoD layabout, NSA eavesdropper, HUD bribe-taker, state federal and local teat sucker that can hold a fucking pencil that is not actively supporting these teachers. If this tepid response shows one thing, it is that the teachers have utterly failed in teaching their students how this great liberal democracy works and that is a fucking shame. I hope we are not too late.

      ReplyDelete
    5. Serendipitously topical.

      I have a theory that one (of many) reason(s) teachers take this kind of shit is a latent misogyny (nurses get it too). Yes, there are male teachers, but teaching (and nursing) is stereotypically perceived to be a "woman's job."

      ReplyDelete
    6. In the end, many bloggers that start out with high hopes and expectations wind up deciding that blogging really isn’t worth their time.

      See, they made their mistakes right at the start, with high hopes and such.
      ~

      ReplyDelete
    7. What you and Drip said. My mother taught HS English and Drama her whole working life. Funny thing that, she could've been pretty much anything in the corporate world she wanted to be, risen as high as she desired, but the workplace opportunities for a woman-child of the '30s were mainly limited to the nursing and teaching professions.

      Navel-gazing instead of bleggal-gazing for a few days, eh? I hope you can get your read on again.

      Thanks again for pointing the way to my little corner of blegsylvania.

      Best,
      Jim H.

      ReplyDelete
    8. Serendipity? I'll give you serendipity, I don't try to bleg because I can't even post a comment. This is my 3d try at this one and I have no idea what I am doing wrong. But rest assured, I have no hopes.

      Misogyny is definitely a part of it. So is bigotry directed at the students and the teachers in the large urban jurisdictions. And there is an exceptionally american combination of homophobia and disdain for the educated that comes out in things like George Bush's very weird macho-based communication set, Jim DeMint's campaign to keep lesbian women out of SC classrooms by banning single teachers, and the great prosecutor's argument in Idiocracy "He talks like a fag." Yeah, the teachers have some hills to climb. But these are more reasons for them to reach out to others so that they are fighting alongside other workers for more than the scraps that fall from the pigs tables.

      ReplyDelete
    9. i think it's vacation envy.

      but again, the issue shouldn't be that teachers shouldn't have the time off that they do, or the pay and benefits they get. the problem's everybody else is getting the shaft!

      ReplyDelete
    10. I agree with you entirely. Except for English teachers. They're just fuckin' weird.

      ReplyDelete
    11. Also. They want to get rid of public education as a decent option, vouchers so that the taxpayers pay for Jesus-schools and home-winger-schools. Public schools should produce ignorant fodder for the military.

      Think large and paranoid. They're evil bastards.

      ReplyDelete