Stop Repeating Yourself. You Old Motherfucker. Your Skies Are Bad Enough. [He looks to the ground.] A Parody Is Better Than a Pun.

Please welcome today's guest DJ, blood brother Hamster, who sends this NSFW playlist! which I insist you listen to at work at full volume, motherfuckers.





I agree. Weirdest fucking days of our lives. Hope to see you Wednesday.

Hamster belongs to the exclusive group of three people who were both at my wedding almost twenty-two years ago and who read this shitty blog. The other two have to submit their playlists for this shitty blog's administrative thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Hamster can request any motherfucking song at any motherfucking time and I will motherfucking post it if I can motherfucking find it.

O! I agree with this too:

Peace, this is my favorite post ever Since The Last Until The Nest, a new word, STLUTN, pronounced as you please, may you be stlutned often in grace and with faith.

I think that sums things up except for the necessary poem (I was told I post poetry to bolster my bleggal authority, to which I say, Yeah, sure, that too) (and Hamster you're getting the Spicer for your birthday), PLUS our guest DJ has one more song.

FIVE POEMS FROM "HELEN: A REVISION"

Jack Spicer

Nothing is known about Helen but her voice

Strange glittering sparks

Lighting no fires but what is reechoed

Rechorded, set on the icy sea.

All history is one, as all the North Pole is one

Magnetic, music to play with, ice

That has had to do with vision

And each one of us, naked.

Partners. Naked.

*       *       *

Helen: A Revision

ZEUS: It is to be assumed that I do not exist while most people in the vision assume that I do exist. This is to be one of the extents of meaning between the players and the audience. I have to talk like this because I am the lord of both kinds of sky—and I don't mean your sky and their sky because they are signs, I mean the bright sky and the burning sky. I have no intention of showing you my limits. The players in this poem are players. They have taken their parts not to deceive you [or me for that matter] but because they have been paid in love or coin to be players. I have known for a long time that there is not a fourth wall in a play. I am called Zeus and I know this.

THERSITES: [Running out on the construction of the stage.] The fourth wall is not as important as you think it is.

ZEUS: [Disturbed but carrying it off like a good Master of Ceremonial.] Thersites is involuntary. [He puts his arm around him.] I could not play a part if I were not a player.

THERSITES: Reveal yourself to me and don't pretend that there are people watching you. I am alone on the stage with you. Tell me the plot of the play.

ZEUS: [Standing away.] Don't try to talk if you don't have to. You must admit there is no audience. Everything is done for you.

THERSITES: Stop repeating yourself. You old motherfucker. Your skies are bad enough. [He looks to the ground.] A parody is better than a pun.

ZEUS: I do not understand your language.

[They are silent together for a moment and then the curtain drops.]

*       *       *

And if he dies on this road throw wild blackberries at his ghost

And if he doesn't, and he won't, hope the cost

Hope the cost.

And the tenor of the what meets the why at the edge

Like a backwards image of each terror's lodge

Each terror's lodge.

And if he cries put his heart out with a lantern's goat

Where they say all passages to pay the debt

The lighted yet.

*       *       *

The focus sing

Is not their business. Their backs lay

By not altogether being there.

Here and there in swamps and villages.

How doth the silly crocodile

Amuse the Muse

*       *       *

And in the skyey march of flesh

That boundary line where no body is

Preserve us, lord, from aches and harms

And bring my death.

Both air and water rattle there

And mud and fire

Preserve us, lord, from what would share a shroud

and bring my death.

A vagrant bird flies to the glossy limbs

The battlefield has harms. The trees have half

Their branches shot away. Preserve us, lord

From hair and mud and flesh.

The Kinds of Selfishness I Could Freely Adopt As My Own

This has been this blog's Official Theme Song since Day One and this is the most thoroughly self-indulgent post since the last and until the next.

The last of the nine schools Planet applied to just passed its verdict and fuck Oberlin, Lorain's a hellhole anyway, but Yay! Planet! who got into more than she didn't and got into the ones it would have stung not to. Of those that said no, I think only the Maine school hurt a bit, though they were the nicest saying no of the bunch and the news came after truly good news. I think the process worked because (a) I'm a self-rationalizing bastard who thinks you a fucktard you say no to my daughter and (b) the schools I liked best anyway all said yes and (c) the schools I sincerely think Planet will grow best at all said yes. We drive to St Mary's College Monday for its Accepted Student Day to let them try to convince Planet. Good luck with that.

Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team!





It's true, and the answer to my question re: Where's Branko? has been answered! He showed up to camp fat and lazy and was benched and now management has put out the word Branko showed up fat and lazy.

Bet we see Branko in Bermangoyd this coming Wednesday when United plays Phunion in a play-play-play-in USOC game. This guy bought four tickets, I bought three, one for me, one for Seat Six, one for Planet, who swears she's going but who also just got drafted against her wishes volunteered happily to work crew for her school's Spring musical, Motherfucking Pippen, so I bet I'll have an extra ticket this coming Wednesday. Check back for chance to win it! I'm looking at you, Hamster.

A United ticket agent emailed me thanks for buying, and I wrote back:

A word to the wise - someone at DCU might want to find out if Philly supporters clubs are busing down for the game and, if yes, keep them on the side of the field next to the building - Barra and Eagles are on the opposite. Not saying there's gonna be trouble, just saying why create a situation where trouble might happen. Probably not a good idea to have them standing next to each other.

Nothing will probably happen, but considering what assclowns will be policing SoccerPlex and considering what fans pour out of tour buses after a four hour ride pouring beer down their gullets and considering they're phucking Philly phucks, shouldn't someone in, um, authority, at least think about it?

Here there was going to be three paragraphs on bleggalgazing, authority, power, resistance in Blegsylvania, but because I love you and because I love me more, instead have this blog's Official Bleggalgazing Anthem then some links and the always necessary poem.

• Tax the rich or face revolution?
• The collapse of globalization?
• Mad in America.
• Why Liberals are lame.
• Motherfucking pigs.
• The Conservative States of America.
• Eyes on the cruise missile.
• Everything old is new again.
• Who gives a crap?
• Guess the nation.
• Capitalism.
• Census maps.
• Seizure World!
• More on Silver Line names.
• Serendipitously found yesterday, or: Heh! in Stringtown Blegsylvania:
• The uselessness of literature.
• Literary talent vs baseball talent.
• Kavan again. There was a blogflurry about Ice a two, three years ago. Read it. Better than meh, less than wow.
• Looking at music.

STILL

A.R. Ammons

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

A Vivacious Mother Hides a Gawky Daughter. The Daughter Hides Her Own Vivacious Daughter in Turn

More proof of my mother's theory that bad kids skip generations:

FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Authorities in southwest Florida say a 17-year-old girl pointed a gun at her mother, pistol-whipped her and forced her to drive to a dealership to buy her a used car.

The sheriff’s office in Lee County said Monday that the teen has been charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon without intent to kill, among other counts, and was being held at a juvenile detention center.

According to officials, the mother said she didn’t want to press charges because her daughter had been accepted to several Ivy League schools.

We offered to buy Planet a car if she went to a certain nearby school and I'm certain she's going to turn the car down, though if I don't stop asking what she's thinking about her decision I swear she's going to brain me upside my right ear with a shovel.

• Questions?
• The speech.
• The fun continues. One train may hide another.
• If these be rebels...
• "Progressive" idiocy.
• The Fallacy of the .06% Less-Shitty Theory distilled. This is also why I've said and still believe that Corporate would rather four more years of a house-broken Obama than Michelle Gingrich Mike Palin Newt Huckabee Sarah Bachmann. I could be wrong. Still betting pints I'm not.
• The answer is No. 
• On the above.
• Ruling class tactics.
• What are unions good for?
• Burning down the house.
• Eating garbage.
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Being in the world. 
• I stopped reading Mother Jones the day they hired Kevin Drum. 
• Shocking.
• Things you might have missed.

• It needs to be said that I have never heard of ANYONE in the Dogred blood-trees EVER referred to as vivacious, nor anyone associated with them through marriage. Gawky? Yes.
• Silver Line! or NOVA is boring.
• Wheaton as Bethesda?
• I did tell Fobin Ricker to die slowly and painfully in a puddle of his vomit and piss when I saw him on Woodmont Avenue in Bethesda a couple of months ago. Felt good. He acted like he hears it all the time, which no doubt the motherfucker does.
• Something Kensington doesn't need. Lame motherfuckers. Stop sending me mail asking me for money. 
• Whatever you do, don't raise property taxes on motherfucking mcmansionists.
• My future hell.

• I have used the best line in this poem in a blogpost title before, but since I'm no longer (until next time) having fever dreams I am not permitted to use it for this post's title, though when I began to tune this post it was one of the first poems I thought about. 
• This year's Man Bookers. Snore.
• This week's new releases.
• Try it before you buy it.
• Open your eyes.
• Tear it all away.
• UPDATE! Trick or treat.
• Not in my name.
• UPDATE! Heh.
• Help me lift you up.

ONE TRAIN MAY HIDE ANOTHER

Kenneth Koch

(sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya)

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train.
That is, if you are waiting to cross
The tracks, wait to do it for one moment at
Least after the first train is gone. And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line--
Then it is safe to go on reading.
In a family one sister may conceal another,
So, when you are courting, it's best to have them all in view
Otherwise in coming to find one you may love another.
One father or one brother may hide the man,
If you are a woman, whom you have been waiting to love.
So always standing in front of something the other
As words stand in front of objects, feelings, and ideas.
One wish may hide another. And one person's reputation may hide
The reputation of another. One dog may conceal another
On a lawn, so if you escape the first one you're not necessarily safe;
One lilac may hide another and then a lot of lilacs and on the Appia
     Antica one tomb
May hide a number of other tombs. In love, one reproach may hide another,
One small complaint may hide a great one.
One injustice may hide another--one colonial may hide another,
One blaring red uniform another, and another, a whole column. One bath
     may hide another bath
As when, after bathing, one walks out into the rain.
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex, as in the prose of Gertrude Stein
One sentence hides another and is another as well. And in the laboratory
One invention may hide another invention,
One evening may hide another, one shadow, a nest of shadows.
One dark red, or one blue, or one purple--this is a painting
By someone after Matisse. One waits at the tracks until they pass,
These hidden doubles or, sometimes, likenesses. One identical twin
May hide the other. And there may be even more in there! The obstetrician
Gazes at the Valley of the Var. We used to live there, my wife and I, but
One life hid another life. And now she is gone and I am here.
A vivacious mother hides a gawky daughter. The daughter hides
Her own vivacious daughter in turn. They are in
A railway station and the daughter is holding a bag
Bigger than her mother's bag and successfully hides it.
In offering to pick up the daughter's bag one finds oneself confronted by
     the mother's
And has to carry that one, too. So one hitchhiker
May deliberately hide another and one cup of coffee
Another, too, until one is over-excited. One love may hide another love
     or the same love
As when "I love you" suddenly rings false and one discovers
The better love lingering behind, as when "I'm full of doubts"
Hides "I'm certain about something and it is that"
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too. In the
     Garden of Eden
Adam and Eve may hide the real Adam and Eve.
Jerusalem may hide another Jerusalem.
When you come to something, stop to let it pass
So you can see what else is there. At home, no matter where,
Internal tracks pose dangers, too: one memory
Certainly hides another, that being what memory is all about,
The eternal reverse succession of contemplated entities. Reading 
    A Sentimental Journey look around
When you have finished, for Tristram Shandy, to see
If it is standing there, it should be, stronger
And more profound and theretofore hidden as Santa Maria Maggiore
May be hidden by similar churches inside Rome. One sidewalk
May hide another, as when you're asleep there, and
One song hide another song; a pounding upstairs
Hide the beating of drums. One friend may hide another, you sit at the
     foot of a tree
With one and when you get up to leave there is another
Whom you'd have preferred to talk to all along. One teacher,
One doctor, one ecstasy, one illness, one woman, one man
May hide another. Pause to let the first one pass.
You think, Now it is safe to cross and you are hit by the next one. It 
     can be important
To have waited at least a moment to see what was already there.

In Times of Crisis, We Must All Decide Again and Again Whom We Love

Tell me, what would Corporate do if despite its best efforts a motherfucking cracker is elected POTUS and s/he's rogue with a Christ-complex and a growing, rabid base:

The impasse broke into the open on Friday, after Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said there had been progress. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) shot back that Schumer's contention was "far-fetched." Schumer responded, in kind, with a line of attack on the Tea Party.

"After days of positive negotiations, with significant flexibility shown by the Speaker, the House Republican leadership is back to agonizing over whether to give in to right-wing demands that they abandon any compromise on their extreme cuts," Schumer said. "The Speaker knows that when it comes to avoiding a shutdown, his problem is with the Tea Party, not Democrats."

True that, more proof you and me are bupkis. We're not worth a single X in their models. To protest, I won't buy an iPad until there's a sale or I cave first.

• More Bageant.
• The peaceful violence of the government.
• The meaningless concept of ethical war.
• Democracy is FAKE (Part 1).
• The sub-proletarianization of America.
• Not one of us.
• Agorism.
• Soggy, expedient mush.
• You couldn't be more wrong, Jodi.
• UPDATE! More.
• Zik zik zik. Name the allusion.
• Getting into Amherst. We visited but Planet didn't apply, though I imagine the process is similar at all the places she did.

• Suburban Virginia? 
• Jesusfuckingchrist.
• Very good news.
• Kensington!
• Beltway.
• ICC!
• Silver Line!

• Geoffrey Hill.
• Frank O'Hara.
• Un beso llega.
• Envelop.

TO THE FILM INDUSTRY IN CRISIS

Frank O'Hara

Not you, lean quarterlies and swarthy periodicals
with your studious incursions toward the pomposity of ants,
nor you, experimental theatre in which Emotive Fruition
is wedding Poetic Insight perpetually, nor you,
promenading Grand Opera, obvious as an ear (though you
are close to my heart), but you, Motion Picture Industry,
it's you I love!

In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again whom we love.
And give credit where it's due: not to my starched nurse, who taught me
how to be bad and not bad rather than good (and has lately availed
herself of this information), not to the Catholic Church
which is at best an oversolemn introduction to cosmic entertainment,
not to the American Legion, which hates everybody, but to you,
glorious Silver Screen, tragic Technicolor, amorous Cinemascope,
stretching Vistavision and startling Stereophonic Sound, with all
your heavenly dimensions and reverberations and iconoclasms! To
Richard Barthelmess as the "tol'able" boy barefoot and in pants,
Jeanette MacDonald of the flaming hair and lips and long, long neck,
Sue Carroll as she sits for eternity on the damaged fender of a car
and smiles, Ginger Rogers with her pageboy bob like a sausage
on her shuffling shoulders, peach-melba-voiced Fred Astaire of the feet,
Eric von Stroheim, the seducer of mountain-climbers' gasping spouses,
the Tarzans, each and every one of you (I cannot bring myself to prefer
Johnny Weissmuller to Lex Barker, I cannot!), Mae West in a furry sled,
her bordello radiance and bland remarks, Rudolph Valentino of the moon,
its crushing passions, and moonlike, too, the gentle Norma Shearer,
Miriam Hopkins dropping her champagne glass off Joel McCrea's yacht,
and crying into the dappled sea, Clark Gable rescuing Gene Tierney
from Russia and Allan Jones rescuing Kitty Carlisle from Harpo Marx,
Cornel Wilde coughing blood on the piano keys while Merle Oberon berates,
Marilyn Monroe in her little spike heels reeling through Niagara Falls,
Joseph Cotten puzzling and Orson Welles puzzled and Dolores del Rio
eating orchids for lunch and breaking mirrors, Gloria Swanson reclining,
and Jean Harlow reclining and wiggling, and Alice Faye reclining
and wiggling and singing, Myrna Loy being calm and wise, William Powell
in his stunning urbanity, Elizabeth Taylor blossoming, yes, to you
and to all you others, the great, the near-great, the featured, the extras
who pass quickly and return in dreams saying your one or two lines,
my love!
Long may you illumine space with your marvellous appearances, delays
and enunciations, and may the money of the world glitteringly cover you
as you rest after a long day under the kleig lights with your faces
in packs for our edification, the way the clouds come often at night
but the heavens operate on the star system. It is a divine precedent
you perpetuate! Roll on, reels of celluloid, as the great earth rolls on!

The Inexact Praise of the Easy Graces

I'm in the clean-up stage of grippe. Though it signals recovery, it's the worst part of the bug. For all the angry moods and vile moods I claim, there is nothing that fuels a self-pitying mood like day five of a bug. Everything, from mucus to work to world has settled in my lungs and I need to cough it out and know I won't.

I wasn't going to post today, but perspective must be gained and notice need be made. RIP, Joe Bageant. I got to Bageant late - I was a demstooge, a .06% less-shitty percenter up to and through the 2008 elections. The promises I made to mine before my apostasy will be honored, but Bageant helped me confront and, in my small ways, begin changing the terms of my complicity.

• Bageant.
• As has Arthur Silber. Throw him some coin, please.
• We're Number One!
• Rinse and repeat.
• Sandbagging.
• Complexity.
• Palladion.
• Our many devious enemies.
• UPDATE! Immaculate destruction.
• Koch.
• Economics as cultural warfare.
• On corporate and academic institutions.
• Dead skunk.
• unflappable.
• Metro turned 35 yesterday.
• Is David Bowie dying?
• Ravonettes cover Stone Roses.
• Hermetic. 
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.

QUARANTINE

Eavan Boland

In the worst hour of the worst season
    of the worst year of a whole people
a man set out from the workhouse with his wife.
He was walking – they were both walking – north.

She was sick with famine fever and could not keep up.
     He lifted her and put her on his back.
He walked like that west and west and north.
Until at nightfall under freezing stars they arrived.

In the morning they were both found dead.
    Of cold. Of hunger. Of the toxins of a whole history.
But her feet were held against his breastbone.
The last heat of his flesh was his last gift to her.

Let no love poem ever come to this threshold.
     There is no place here for the inexact
praise of the easy graces and sensuality of the body.
There is only time for this merciless inventory:

Their death together in the winter of 1847.
      Also what they suffered. How they lived.
And what there is between a man and woman.
And in which darkness it can best be proved.

Ningland 2, United 1

Saw the first half, didn't see the second half (forgive me) though (this guy provided updates via txt) believe me when I say I've seen enough United-Ningland games to have seen the second half many times.

Just as I was irresponsible last week with hope let me be almost as equally irresponsible with despair: Either United doesn't have a 10 or Benny doesn't have a plan. ha-HA! There are no either/ors!

Yes refs, yes motherfucking Ningland, dirtiest, cheatingest motherfuckers in MLS, yes injuries and national call-ups: regardless, either Benny doesn't design plays to put his wingers into position with the ball at their feet or the captain and designated 10 can't deliver the ball. ha-HA! Got you again.

How much must Benny dislike Branko - as a player, as a person, who cares - that Benny would bring in Fredsux before Boskovic? (And I didn't see the second half, but I bet you Fredsuxed.) It's entirely possible this is all on Branko - he could be a bad guy in any number of ways, skill, work ethic, wanting to flee the opulent capital of the world's hegemonic power to return to a hellhole in Lower Serbia - but that's...





ZNYRTZ!

ONE winter evening, Brian Beutler, 28, a reporter for the online publication Talking Points Memo, sat with his friend and roommate Dave Weigel, 29, a political reporter for Slate and a contributor to MSNBC, at a coffee shop on U Street. Recovering from a cold as snow fell outside, Mr. Beutler spoke about his younger — well, relatively younger — days in the city.

“Everyone’s gotten a little bit older and a little more boring,” Mr. Beutler said, speaking of a wave of Washington bloggers who have come of age together. “Four years ago, we were far less professionalized, and the work was less rigorous and less stressful. So in addition to being younger, we were also a bit less overwhelmed. That all has changed.”

ha-HA!.... Quick, read this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and listen to this and this and this and this and read this and especially listen to this.....





...your Designated Player, your $500K+ Designated Player, and not only does he not start, he doesn't even sub. No one's saying anything:  I hear no euphemisms ("he's nursing a hammie"), no "he's gotta step it up in practice," nothing. I mean, either Boskovic never was as good as thought by Kasper Payne when they signed him or they've so mismanaged him since he got here he's now useless. ha-HA!

UPDATE!

Goff:

Facing a two-goal deficit, Olsen turned to Charlie Davies (no surprise) and Fred (surprise). Later, with the score unchanged, he inserted Santino Quaranta. And with those moves to enhance the attack, Olsen left Branko Boskovic, United’s designated player, on the bench. Ominous.

A guy who started for Montenegro’s national team at Wembley last fall can’t crack United’s lineup. One has to wonder whether he’s in United’s long-term plans, but as far as I know, he has a guaranteed contract for the entire 2011 season. Unless I’m unaware of a salary cap loophole, he will remain on United’s account all year, whether or not he remains on the roster.

Next week in Colorado, the - what, when did this happen? - defending MLS Tournament Champions. United will be without both central defenders from opening day, Kitchen on duty with U-20 USMNT and Jakovic out for a dumb red card. I understand Benny's decision to reward the starters of the opening game with starting the second. I'm curious to see who starts - and subs - next week, because a shocking number of players who started and subbed yesterday sucked.