But I Will Turn My Face Away from This Ruin of Summer, Collapse of Fur and Bone

Ken Beatrice (he doesn't eat the curly-fries, he's been told they're very good) always said that more games are lost than won. Crediting the USWNT with losing the game doesn't deny the Japanese their victory any more than crediting the Brazilians with losing the game didn't deny the USWNT a place in the semifinals (the symmetry of the two games is remarkable, actually). I point this out because once this bullshit kabuki plays out exactly like you think it will, the debate will be more about who lost the fight than who won. It's started already.

Also, this post exists because I've a bunch of good links with rapidly approaching expiration dates (if they haven't already passed), plus, guess what band's cassette tapes I found last night while looking for something else:

• Documenting the Peace Laureate's progressive atrocities.
• War in Iran this Fall?
• On the above.
• On the above.
• Now starring Yemen and Somalia!
• America's disappeared.
• We're spent.
• Crisis of growth.
• They're going to cut to the bone and keep the fat.
• It's started already.
• The glory of radicalism through inaction.
• Balloon payment.
• Mad libs.
• Moving closer.
• Convert's syndrome.
• Hacktacular!
• Motherfucking crackers come in all colors. 
• Politics and race in DC.
• Speaking of Beatrice, what was his favorite flavor milkshake?
• My future hell. 
• Speaking of Beatrice, a reminder that Kony Tornheiser is an asshole. 
• The Bayou.
• It's debatable whether I'm anti-Christian, though I can declare I'm anti-Christer. 
• UPDATE! Wait! Ro Laren is still on TV?
• The best fraud of his generation. I wonder if he's read The Recognitions. I am again, will be posting passages when I feel like it, like this, the opening sentence: Even Camilla had enjoyed masquerades, of the safe sort where the mask may be dropped at the critical moment it presumes itself as reality. A novel about the nature of kayfabe: sounds timely, is laugh out loud funny.
• Field trip.
• Field Mice.
• Forty noises that built pop.
• Benediction.
• Circulation.
• Well of loneliness.
• This Nelson Rockefeller.
• Should the Bible be banned?
• Get a knife between your teeth.

ON THE SKELETON OF A HOUND

James Wright

Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
Shuttles of moonlight weave his shadow tall,
Milkweed and dew flow upward to his throat.
Now catbird feathers plume the apple mound,
And starlings drowse to winter up the ground.
thickened away from speech by fear, I move 
Around the body.  Over his forepaws, steep
Declivities darken down the moonlight now,
And the long throat that bayed a year ago
Declines from summer.  Flies would love to leap
Between his eyes and hum away the space
Between the ears, the hollow where a hare
Could hide; another jealous dog would tumble
The bones apart, angry, the shining crumble
Of a great body gleaming in the air;
Quivering pigeons foul his broken face.
I can imagine men who search the earth
For handy resurrections, overturn
The body of a beetle in its grave;
Whispering men digging for gods might delve
A pocket for these bones, then slowly burn
Twigs in the leaves, pray for another birth.
But I will turn my face away from this
Ruin of summer, collapse of fur and bone.
For once a white hare huddled up the grass,
The sparrows flocked away to see the race.
I stood on darkness, clinging to a stone,
I saw the two leaping alive on ice,
On earth, on leaf, humus and withered vine:
The rabbit splendid in a shroud of shade,
The dog carved on the sunlight, on the air,
Fierce and magnificent his rippled hair,
The cockleburs shaking around his head.
Then, suddenly, the hare leaped beyond pain
Out of the open meadow, and the hound
Followed the voiceless dancer to the moon,
To dark, to death, to other meadows where
Singing young women dance around a fire,
Where love reveres the living.

    I alone
Scatter this hulk about the dampened ground;
And while the moon rises beyond me, throw
The ribs and spine out of their perfect shape.
For a last charm to the dead, I lift the skull
And toss it over the maples like a ball.
Strewn to the woods, now may that spirit sleep
That flamed over the ground a year ago.
I know the mole will heave a shinbone over,
The earthworm snuggle for a nap on paws,
The honest bees build honey in the head;
The earth knows how to handle the great dead
Who lived the body out, and broke its laws,
Knocked down a fence, tore up a field of clover.