I Invoked the White Robes, Gleaming Blades Ready for Blood, and, Feeling the Scourge of Increase and Multiply, Made Affirmation: Yes, Deliver Us from Complicity

Thursday Night Pints was Wednesday Night Pints at my request: United's on TV tomorrow, so thanks! Hey, did you see what Led Teonsis said, I asked? Who's Led Teonsis, asked L. D said, went to Hilltop, has Axe's ear big time, inner sanctum. I said, he owns DC's professional hockey and basketball franchises and the Verizon Center. What did he say, asked D. I gave them a Billionaire's Lament, we are Creators, goddamn the fucking Lilliputians. Fuck him, said L. Then my cell urped, excuse me, and Earthgirl told me she'd been pulled over by the same bottom peg morons in brown shirts who protect us at soccerplex, gave her $150 ticket for overdue car farts. Was an asshole, just an asshole, which is a feature, not a bug.

Where is your soccer team's owner's peg in pigdom, L asked me when I got back, the second time I was asked that appropriately accusatory question yesterday. I've no idea, I said, I'm sure he's a capitalist, and for almost it's entire history MLS has floated on the ocean of Phil Anschutz's money, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a bigger peg in pigdom. Then I told them the story of my wife's treatment by the biggest pegs' tiny thuggish peg. Fuckers, said L. True that, I said, then bought them a round for moving today to last night so I can watch United tonight.

• Justice is the absence of crime. 
• Psychology of killer drones: At the behaviour locus, people transform lethal means into benevolent and moral ones through moral justification, advantageous comparison, and sanitizing language. At the agency locus, they are relieved of a sense of personal accountability by displacement and diffusion of responsibility. At the outcome locus, the injurious effects of lethal means are disregarded, minimized, or disputed. At the other end, foes are dehumanized and blamed for bringing the suffering on themselves.
• The greatest academic con-man of his generation. Please don't misunderstand me: I say this admiringly.
• The dangerous cult of The Guardian.
• Obamendacious. Probably not worth trademarking, yes?
• Driving through Holland Tunnel on the Way to Occupy Wall Street.
• Don't be afraid to say Revolution?
• Behind the scorn.
• Why she was maced.
• Remember how outraged we were when the Bush FBI set up morons as terrorists for propaganda opportunities? Stunts like this?
• Chris Christie at age 18.
• Post-Darwinian experiments.
• Good shepherd. 
• Prelude 6.
• Lightning set my butt on fire.
• The things that you do.
• Closer to the ground.

VASECTOMY

Philip Appleman

After the steaming bodies swept

through the hungry streets of swollen cities;   

after the vast pink spawning of family   

poisoned the rivers and ravaged the prairies;   

after the gamble of latex and

diaphragms and pills;

I invoked the white robes, gleaming blades   

ready for blood, and, feeling the scourge   

of Increase and Multiply, made

affirmation: Yes, deliver us from

complicity.

And after the precision of scalpels,

I woke to a landscape of sunshine where   

the catbird mates for life and

maps trace out no alibis—stepped   

into a morning of naked truth,

where acts mean what they really are:   

the purity of loving

for the sake of love.