Fifty-Three Today

And for M, wherever she is:

Sixty-Five Today

Egoslavian Holy Day Eve

Neither has had a spot in the farthest orbit of Sillyass Desert Island Game's rotation in two decades, though their time on my soundtrack three decades ago demands celebration. If neither's music has aged as well for me as I thought it would, well, neither have I.

Not Only Will Things Go On But This Going On Will Repeat

Earthgirl and I went out to dinner two, three weeks ago with Earthgirl's cousin and her husband, I said at Thursday Night Pints. I then gave more background than is needed here, then said, I'd not met the husband: Earthgirl told me before the dinner he's a six-foot-seven practicing Buddhist from Seattle. I'm not sure what I expected but he seemed a decent, personable mid-50s upper middle-class white not-axe murderer. What did you expect, asked L. Not somebody who ate a sizzling pile of tandoori lamb and goat, I said. Did you talk politics, D asked. Earthgirl and Cousin kept bringing it up, I said, presumably because Cousin and Husband talk politics and Earthgirl and I talk politics so I think they schemed, Maybe we can get them to talk about politics since both are doing this dinner with you-owe-me-one reservations, but no, I didn't motherfucking Obama him, if that's what you're asking. K asked, so the husband, the six-foot-seven Buddhist, didn't want to talk about politics either? O, no, I said, he was cracker-this, cracker-that, Obama has to be reelected don't you agree as he shoveled lamb and goat into his mouth. Did you agree, asked K, or rather, how did you disagree? I asked him, I said, if he was a Seattle Sounders fan, and when he said no I talked obligingly about nothing.

• No rule of law.
• Corporate's manipulation of democracy.
• O Ye of too much faith.
• On Faith of the Faithless.
• Drones are paranoid androids.
• Our weird politics.
• Eugene Robinson says BE AFRAID!
• Hobsbawn remembers Judt.
• A short history of eggs.
• On some faraway beach.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Why couldn't Yo La Tengo open for Lambchop this past Monday?
• Magnificent obsession.
• Please rise.
• The man who loved beer.
• RIP Jonathan Frid. UPDATE! Link fixed.
• RIP Levon Helms.
• Shoot me.
• Paul Westerberg's song for Sylvia Plath.

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

      Now in bed suddenly I remember having rescued a spider from the
bathtub this morning. I imagined that I had established rapport with my
environment. I observed the spider eerily. I was in harmony with my life and
times. Not only will things go on but this going on will repeat.
      After all, I can vow kindness in relation to something I cannot know.
      The spider, when it appears within a "range of alternatives," will be
rescued - dished out of the nicked and polished porcelain tub and knocked
onto the shrubbery just outside the open window.
      Of course, it will not be the same spider each time but one in a
sequence of spiders.

Two Pickpockets Are Denying a Robust Policeman's Suggestion That They Are "Suspiciously Encumbered"

MOCO ex-pat and dearly beloved Paleo Jay Old Dirty Arra 101 Bama sent me an email this morning, he has a song, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it, though I've discovered many don't want to: Would you care to blog about dealing with 0bots who tear into you for being an asshole because you question the almighty Great Leader? Happened to me today and I was stunned. It was over the Potemkin Mortgage Fraud Investigation, calling me an asshole by pointing out that 0 was lying. They trotted out the usual crap about suppressing the base, etc. I thought Bush Dead-enders were bad...Tribalism is the way now. I responded : To be honest, I've been holding back because it pisses off actual flesh and blood friends. I mean, I motherfucking Obama all the time, but I'm holding back as your request demonstrates. But please, if it's in a comment thread of something PLEASE send it. PJODA101B responded: I'll just send you what he wrote. This guy is a high school friend, totally liberal until he became an 0bot:"I don't know why you, and some other liberals, are so outraged by Obama, as if he were immune to the forces that have molded all of our politics for the last 30 years or so. He doesn't lie any more than any other president that I can tell. ...In my view, Dems are slightly better than Republicans, just in their social values. But everybody could be much better. If you keep attacking Obama, his base won't turn out and Mitt will be our next president. Can you not get over your disappointment with the guy? It is unwarranted, and, no offense, childlike." I responded "0bot (not his real name), did you even read the article? If so, the outrage would be crystal clear. Childlike would be to answer STFU to someone who had their house stolen by a bank and now have no recourse. I thought lack of empathy was a Conservative feature, but pretty much everyone is a Conservative these days." PJODA101B then followed-up to me: I suppose the part that's hardest to digest is how supposedly educated people can sign on to this bullshit and think it is awesome. 0bama took what was left of the left and turned them into champions of Conservative values. Should I be impressed or saddened at how easy it was? Looks like a recipe for the next World Horror that people ask in following generations "How did they allow that to happen?" And now I've posted it as I promised. Too bad he doesn't have a shitty blog! Please come visit PJODA101B! And if we do go to Montreal this summer, we'll come visit you!

UPDATE! Thunder emails sending me here where he was set upon by angry obamapologists in comments - it's about halfway down the comment thread.

• Who and what we are.
• Drones.
• Drones as national symbol.
• Drones.
• The way of the drone. Yes, I posted it yesterday.
• In which I enjoy watching She Who Is as Shitty mock motherfucking Obama.
• As I said to PJODA101B, saying motherfucking Obama more doesn't mean motherfucking Christers less, and not saying motherfucking Christers less is the reason to say motherfucking Obama more.
• On Carlo Ginzberg.
• Silver Line.
• Poetry versue prose.
• Lyn Hejinian's newest collection is SITTING ON MY DESK! 
• Hey, I'm done with The Unconsoled, suggest a novel, something I've never read.
• Pulitzer judge slams Pulitzers.
• Gaddis on the Pulitzer.
• Bernhard, for those of you who do.
• Waiting for Wotan, 12.
• Blue Sausage Infant.
• I promised a friend some Go-Betweens:

[UNTITLED]

Lyn Hejinian

Perhaps my dear family can profit from my story
As it continues two pickpockets are denying a robust policeman's
        suggestion that they are "suspiciously encumbered"
If encumbered, they insist, they would resemble kids with a lot to say
They would resemble unwanted sympathy
They would not be like holes in a hallway

United 1, Montreal 1

Well, I asked for Boskovic and got Boskovic, I asked for DeRossario at withdrawn forward and got DeRossario at withdrawn forward, and while I didn't ask for United to come out in the first half fat and lazy, which certainly contributed to the shittiest half of soccer I've ever seen since the last and until the next, it's almost time to conclude that Boskovic is just a poor fit for the offense that United wants to run. I'd still like to see more than 58 minutes of him, let him find a rhythm, get more fit, but with two horribly lost points and crucial games this coming Sunday versus Metros and the following Saturday against Houston ahead of a three game road trip, second half substitute is the most Boskovic will see the field. Oh, the other Designated Player, the Albanian Allsopp? Utter an expletive under your breath towards Kasper Payne. And then think of a back line winged by Chris Korb and Daniel Woolard and utter another.

Here's Fullback, here's Goff, here's Shatzer. I've written more but it's unreasonably angry because I've unreasonable expectations for this team which includes, but is not limited to, beating a crappy expansion team at home even when resting two starters from the previous victory and fielding a bandaged backline. As for fat and lazy, even if to be fairer I concede the new line-up could be expected to be start-and-stoppy at first, five more months of halftime tirades by Ben Olsen is going to get old in that locker room fast.

Or Faith, Strange to Feel in That Zoo of Manners

Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team? It's true! and they have a home game tonight against Montreal Impact, an expansion team that, of the entire palette of colors visible by the human eye, chose to wear Wigan blue. I can't imagine there will be a less attended league home game this year, April, midweek. Buzz that Branko and Najar and Pontius start so they can be benched this coming Sunday v Metros for those rested tonight. I'm very curious to see how St Benny of Olsen manages this game, a game we've - yes? - pocketed the three points? I may have an extra ticket as SeatSix has already signaled he will most likely honor his tradition of never attending weeknight games.

• I discovered yesterday the identity of one of my few regular readers at Hilltop whose identity I don't know. Are you, he asked. Yes, I admitted. Questions about my rejection of .06% and then a scolding similar to this one, serendipitously posted this morning in Salon. I had to get to a meeting - true, B - though this all caught me off-guard, both that B reads and that B engaged. Drinks after work one night next week as discussed? You know where to find me.
• Drones as emblem of cowardice. I could do a better job of tagging these posts; I'd be able to more easily find the post when I riffed on the moral cowardice of drone warfare, but fuck that.
• Paul Begala says BE AFRAID! give money.
• Positively negative.
• Thinking about toilets.
• Socialist ten commandments?
• The Hillary fad is fascinating on multiple levels.
• On Assange's new show.
• NYT calls Assange "nuts."
• Millions. And it still won't change a thing.
• Never forget it was a Democratic POTUS that brought you NAFTA.
• POTUS 12 and the inequality narrative.
• A send-off for Barney.
•  Return of return of ambulance fees.
• Bleggalgazing!
• Mindless hedonism or tedious connoisseurship of a rapidly ossifying underground? Choose!
• Serendipitously, days after Frances mentioned vitreous humor, Smut Clyde mentions vitreous humour.
• Not the Pulitzer Prize. Remember when people were furious it wasn't awarded this year? Two days later, not so furious. Hmmm.
• Kafka for those of you who do.
• Gaddis for those of you - and I do - who do.
• Twenties 26. 
• I've never played any Himi Jendrix here or mentioned Himi Jendrix here, I've nothing again Jendrix it's just not love, so I've no idea why I got dozens of google search hits yesterday of Himi Jendrix. Still, below is a poem with Himi Jendrix's name because what the fuck.
• Meaningful Love.
• Heard this for this first time yesterday and wow.
• A king at night.

GO GREYHOUND

Bob Hicok

A few hours after Des Moines
the toilet overflowed.
This wasn't the adventure it sounds.

I sat with a man whose tattoos
weighed more than I did.
He played Hendrix on mouth guitar.
His Electric Ladyland lips
weren't fast enough
and if pitch and melody
are the rudiments of music,
this was just
memory, a body nostalgic
for the touch of adored sound.

Hope's a smaller thing on a bus.

You hope a forgotten smoke consorts
with lint in the pocket of last
resort to be upwind
of the human condition, that the baby
sleeps
and when this never happens,
that she cries
with the lullaby meter of the sea.

We were swallowed by rhythm.
The ultra blond
who removed her wig and applied
fresh loops of duct tape
to her skull,
her companion who held a mirror
and popped his dentures
in and out of place,
the boy who cut stuffing
from the seat where his mother
should have been—
there was a little more sleep
in our thoughts,
it was easier to yield.

To what, exactly—
the suspicion that what we watch
watches back,
cornfields that stare at our hands,
downtowns
that hold us in their windows
through the night?

Or faith, strange to feel
in that zoo of manners.

I had drool on my shirt and breath
of the undead, a guy
dropped empty Buds on the floor
like gravity was born
to provide this service,
we were white and black trash
who'd come
in an outhouse on wheels and still

some had grown—
in touching the spirited shirts
on clotheslines,
after watching a sky of starlings
flow like cursive
over wheat—back into creatures
capable of a wish.

As we entered Arizona
I thought I smelled the ocean,
liked the lie of this
and closed my eyes
as shadows
puppeted against my lids.

We brought our failures with us,
their taste, their smell.
But the kid
who threw up in the back
pushed to the window anyway,
opened it
and let the wind clean his face,
screamed something
I couldn't make out
but agreed with
in shape, a sound I recognized
as everything I'd come so far
to give away.

What Astonishes Is the Singing

Marvelous, special evening in Annapolis with Earthgirl and Hamster. More details may or not be forthcoming: the conversations before and after the Lambchop show, the incredible performance of a band in full command of overwhelmingly powerful understatement. I may or not try to distill, I may or not share if I do distill. There is this: Kurt Wagner, in his baseball hat and horn-rims, smoking a cigarette in front of Rams Head after the show thanking us for coming, looks like my Uncle Steve from the nose up, like my Aunt Pat from nose to chin, especially the smile, Earthgirl saw it too. Past experience has taught me not to try distilling the uncanny less I lose it.

• Meanwhile.
• Murder, inequality, corporate greed, free trade.
• Division, representation, collectivity.
• Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years.
• Personalizing civil liberties abuses.
• Occupy the Upper West Side: Just slip those awful Republicans a roofie - they believe - and tinker a bit with the tax code and all will be well.
• And, not either/or.
• Motherfucking Leon Panetta says he regrets spending $800K in tax payer dollars flying home to California every weekend, adding fuck you, he's not gonna stop.
• I don't read Huffington Post for many reasons of my own, including but not limited to their whack advocacy of anti-vaccination bullshit, but if you needed more to induce you to stop, here. I do wish Froomkin had landed elsewhere after his expulsion from YFWP.

• Meh plus. Better than what they had been wearing.
• While I do make sillyass Star Trek allusions (but only to the original and Next Gen), I won't be attending this.
• Not out of principle but out of lack of damn I stopped caring about literary prizes beyond the Nobel long ago, so if I can't get outraged that Pulitzer declined to name a fiction winner, I can also note that while I had not read any of the nominees, it did sound like a shitty pool, and I am interested in that what the fuck.
• Foreclosure/dispossession.
• Facelessbook.
• Meg Baird opened. Sweet.
• They played all of Mr M for the 3/5ths of the show, then earlier stuff, interspersed with yapping with the audience. Wonderful.
• Much smaller band last night than in the below - no brass, not an electric guitarist, just five, an excellent drummer and bass-player (Wagner gives melodic leads to the bass), a keyboardist, a synthesizer, and Wagner's brilliantly understated guitar. Holyfuck. 
• UPDATE! Sorry, I've removed the live clip of Lambchop's entire live set at Merge XX - it was spinning fucking blooger into clusterfuck. You can youtube it if you want to find it. Here, have a photo of my mussel shells from dinner pre-concert. The food was delicious. Italian restaurants are a RIP-OFF.

HORSES AT MIDNIGHT WITHOUT A MOON

Jack Gilbert

Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods.
Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.
But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down
but the angel flies up again taking us with her.
The summer mornings begin inch by inch
while we sleep, and walk with us later
as long-legged beauty through
the dirty streets. It is no surprise
that danger and suffering surround us.
What astonishes is the singing.
We know the horses are there in the dark
meadow because we can smell them,
can hear them breathing.
Our spirit persists like a man struggling
through the frozen valley
who suddenly smells flowers
and realizes the snow is melting
out of sight on top of the mountain,
knows that spring has begun.

Fifty Today

(Yes, this is last year's c/ped, I'm working through lunch, don't have time to compile, plus this still works for me.) I'm almost certain I was at that DC Space show, but yes or no, Ian MacKaye is 50 today. Odds are excellent I was at this 930 show too:

I'm know I was at this next one, though, forgive me, I can't remember where this was:

Dozens of dozens of times, they all blend together, though I know I was at this:

Synthesized into Chirp

That's 23 deep at Seneca in all Seneca's Spring glory (holyfuck, truly, the dogwoods), my best four of the day cause it should have been three, fucking chains. I 36(clown-pin)3circle4circle5(both hit trees well right and rolled to inches over the rope)4343/344344433/453!34!3!33!3 and woot! used the goddamn Leopard off the tee but Beast forehand on 3, which by my count is 17 so I broke a hundred. That back nine, the first nine we played, someday I try warming up before walking to the tee, that last seven, as good as I am capable of playing, that second exclamation point for the four on the above hole, the third for a forehand roll on the second shot after I first-treed the teeshot, the fourth for the best S I've thrown in two years, the first because 21 was in long and it's the first time I've ever threed the long (and easily), plus.

I had a wonderful round of golf yesterday, my soccer team won the day before while - bonus! - infuriating me; Napoleon came home last night from a five day vacation last night  (I was thinking, how do I put out an rescue alert for a feral cat), I'm seeing Lampchop tonight with Earthgirl and Hamster, so I'm in good mood,  no direct scab-scraping or clusterfuck haranguing beyond proxying through links, instead enjoy another motherfucking unremarkable photo of my cat, this one Fleabus yesterday in our front window looking out into our ecstatically happy azaleas. Blame the photographer, in this instance, not Fleabus or the azaleas.

• Long-timers can vouch I've been yodeling about the weapons being developed for crushing American civil dissent for as long as this shitty blog has existed.
• When robots attack.
• Robot prison guards.
• Rise of the killer drones.
• Murder in the Simulacrum.
• The rule of capital.
• Motherfucking Obama.
• Texts from predator drone!
• Motherfucking Israel.
• Royal asshat.
• A hungry gorge.
• Debt.
• Hilltop student can't write well enough for Hilltop, can write good enough for Fred Hiatt.
• Understanding Amazon.
• Silence is a rhythm.
• Toward an organic philosophy.
• He might get a stand alone birthday notice later today if I have the time, but Ian MacKaye turns 50 today, one of the few musicians younger than me whose birthdays I note here.

MECHANISM

A.R. Ammons

Honor a going thing, goldfinch, corporation, tree,
       morality: any working order,
    animate or inanimate: it

has managed directed balance,
       the incoming and outgoing energies are working right,
    some energy left to the mechanism,

some ash, enough energy held
       to maintain the order in repair,
    assure further consumption of entropy,

expending energy to strengthen order:
       honor the persisting reactor,
    the container of change, the moderator: the yellow

bird flashes black wing-bars
       in the new-leaving wild cherry bushes by the bay,
    startles the hawk with beauty,

flitting to a branch where
       flash vanishes into stillness,
    hawk addled by the sudden loss of sight:

honor the chemistries, platelets, hemoglobin kinetics,
       the light-sensitive iris, the enzymic intricacies
    of control,

the gastric transformations, seed
       dissolved to acrid liquors, synthesized into
    chirp, vitreous humor, knowledge,

blood compulsion, instinct: honor the
       unique genes,
    molecules that reproduce themselves, divide into

sets, the nucleic grain transmitted
       in slow change through ages of rising and falling form,
    some cells set aside for the special work, mind

or perception rising into orders of courtship,
       territorial rights, mind rising
    from the physical chemistries

to guarantee that genes will be exchanged, male
       and female met, the satisfactions cloaking a deeper
    racial satisfaction:

heat kept by a feathered skin:
       the living alembic, body heat maintained (bunsen
    burner under the flask)

so the chemistries can proceed, reaction rates
       interdependent, self-adjusting, with optimum
    efficiency—the vessel firm, the flame

staying: isolated, contained reactions! the precise and
       necessary worked out of random, reproducible,
    the handiwork redeemed from chance, while the

goldfinch, unconscious of the billion operations
       that stay its form, flashes, chirping (not a
    great songster) in the bay cherry bushes wild of leaf. 

Ningland 1, United 2

Josh Wolff? Josh Wolff? I emailed in derision, but here's the thing: United's need to substitute in a Josh Wolff type striker, who can hold the ball with his back to the goal then make the key pass that sets up a runner (which, so far, neither Salihi or Santos can), which was the offense Ben Olsen played in and is the offense he seems determined to coach, means the team needs a better Josh Wolff for the simple fact he's not the Josh Wolff he once was. I keep saying put DeRossario there, but here's the thing: DeRossario's not a ten but he's the best ten they have. Anyone not think the decision on Boskovic has been made? He either can't play or United's still not sure and won't risk any more money or Boskovic has made it into Benny's Doghouse of Work Rate and will never get the chance to see if he can play or all of the above but number three most. Ding. July 15 is three months from today, injuries may force United to use Boskovic and who knows, but I'm guessing we won't know who United's second half of the season ten and/or better withdrawn forward is until after the summer transfer window.

Out of Benny's Doghouse of Work Rate, Cruz and Santos, here's Benny's game plan: both are dirty, both have exceptional work rates, so have each outwork and whenever possible cheap shot the defenders in their zone until they're softened and slowed and then Benny introduces the players who are better at offense but won't play defense. This is not a complaint. I am curious what Benny had planned with the third substitute before Jakovic's injury forced a Korb. Was that Branko's? Najar's?





Three road points ahead of a run of home games, starting this Wednesday against expansion Montreal and a marquee game (as much as MLS can have a marquee game) next Sunday vs Metros. I feel a need to complain more (and thank you, Ningland defender Stephen McCarthy, the only man in the universe who didn't know Pontius was going to go right) but a bigger need to squash that urge and enjoy the three points, so OK. Here's a more positive than me Fullback, a happier than me Martin, and here's Goff's match report. More later if, but I doubt there's any more.