Evidence Suggests Eight Complexly Folded Scuttling Works of Armament

Sam Brownback apologized (of a sorts) after his asshole staff hammered an eighteen-year-old smart-ass tweeter, and ask yourself, in Kansas (or your state) politics, what is more dangerous to Brownback's permanent Senate seat than cyber-dissent by high school seniors?

UPDATE! He's governor of Kansas now? Last time I thought of him he was a senator and 2008 Republican primary's Santorum.

Blogbud Duncan wrote about the incident, and here I plagiarize the email I sent him in response to the post, his email to me, my email to him:

Me: Re: tweet - when I stop to think of the ways I voluntarily - thoughtlessly - like this email, for instance - enter evidence into panopticon's data base, that's when I recognize with a thump how complicit I am. They know I bought tofu at Safeway yesterday, or, rather, not know, have stored the data I bought tofu at Safeway yesterday in case they ever want to know. We buy products that help us be tracked, easier and easier with every upgrade, 4D today, 5D tomorrow.

Duncan: Y'know, though, "voluntarily" and "thoughtlessly" mean two different things.  Most people aren't aware that everything they do that involves a computer is trackable, and many wouldn't be happy if they realized it.  I'm reading a good book on ethics right now that mentioned something that's bothered me before, the tendency to assume that if I voluntarily do something now, I somehow accept its most distant consequences.  This is invoked very selectively, of course: if a woman has unprotected sex, she's supposedly 'choosing' to get pregnant; if she goes for a walk alone, she's supposedly 'choosing' to be raped.  But it's not applied to other people: if a bank CEO decides to deal in risky derivatives and causes lots of people to lose their homes, he's not said to have 'chosen' to be strung up from a lamppost by an angry mob; if a very high government official chooses to have captives waterboarded, he's not 'choosing' to spend the rest of his life in a jail cell in the Hague.  But even distinguished professional philosophers have made that false connection.

Me: Yes, you're right, re: voluntarily v thoughtlessly - I thought about this when we were in the UK (London especially) when everyone everywhere is under constant surveillance when on the streets, the tube, everywhere; it's not precisely voluntary (one has to go out) and thoughtlessly is both a strategy and an avoidance.

Adding: as for tweetguilt, blogguilt, emailguilt, cellguilt, I burst to fill Our Overlord's Dossier Against Me, so far they don't (and rightfully) give a flying fuck though I flatter myself they're listening. Hey! Bankers suck! Up against the wall, motherfuckers!

• Dare I say, E.J. Dionne's revolutionary manifesto. It will convince Joe Lieberman to stop being a self-serving dick.
• Here's the sublede of a Pastor Sanctimonious column up on the front webpage at YFWP as I type this at 830 PM EST 11/28/11: Romney’s new ad is misleading, but Obama can’t complain about distortions. That may or not be gone by the time you read this sentence. What won't be gone is this final sentence in Pastor Sanctimonious' sermon on good and evil, typed without a hint of irony or self-awareness: In political advertising, it is not impurity that rankles most. It is the pretense of purity. He's a B-List asshole by YFWP's exceptionally awful standards of assholosity, but he's a sanctimonious asshole Pastor Sanctimonious is.
• Occupy London at crossroads.
• Post-democracy.
• I'm convinced Corporate wants Obama to win.
• As nature allows.
• You are what you buy.
• Narrative is distorting. 
• Someone else's children.
• Blogbud JV emailed, recommends this and this for your consideration.
• Also, motherfucking crackers.
• Hey, someone else thinks the new kits are lame.
• Hey, don't take tylenol.
• MOCO and big boxes. Hey, why are there no Sheetzs or WaWas in MOCO? I'm asking.
• What you can buy me for Giftmas.
• Elkin.
• Musashi plain moon.
• Yes, I did do some tweeking of the blog. The WFMU widget crashed so it's been removed, I've moved Me and Mine higher on the left, and I've expanded Because Left to twenty-five showing at once instead of ten. 
• There are some new occupants in Because Left and Because Right. As always, if you're Kinding me and me not you, let me know.

A GREEN CRAB'S SHELL

Mark Doty

Not, exactly, green:
closer to bronze
preserved in kind brine,

something retrieved
from a Greco-Roman wreck,
patinated and oddly

muscular. We cannot
know what his fantastic
legs were like--

though evidence
suggests eight
complexly folded

scuttling works
of armament, crowned
by the foreclaws'

gesture of menace
and power. A gull's
gobbled the center,

leaving this chamber
--size of a demitasse--
open to reveal

a shocking, Giotto blue.
Though it smells
of seaweed and ruin,

this little traveling case
comes with such lavish lining!
Imagine breathing

surrounded by
the brilliant rinse
of summer's firmament.

What color is
the underside of skin?
Not so bad, to die,

if we could be opened
into this--
if the smallest chambers

of ourselves,
similarly,
revealed some sky.