Without Asking, The Assistant Re-Sprays Her w/Glycerine

• Bryce's tribute to Bernard Parmegiani yesterday on wfmu.org. 
• Verily, for both reasons I don't want to share and for reasons I do but can't, I'm in as vile a mood as I'm capable, I was going to give you Vile Mood Theme Songs One and Two (old-timers can vouch), bracketing these bullets. Happily, therapeutically, Parmegiani instead.
• Of the five dead days of the five deadest days of the year in Blegsylvania the Saturday is the deadest of the dead. Which requires a post according to my bleggal teleology.
• A summary and conclusion to Tarzie's leak-keeper series.
• Information monopoly defines the deep state.
• Motherfucking humans and motherfucking Giftmas.
• Not an original observation, but fuck that the day after we are told to sanctimoniously give thanks for all we have we're told we have enough shit, go buy some, and many people do.
• How retail sees it's workers.
• I was going to post a link to the Washington Post and Villager Court Jester Dana Milbank calling today for a return to mandatory military service, but the fucking Washington Post says this was my eleventh look at one of their articles in November so give them money, and fuck that. 
• Here, something not angry, Rachel Blau DuPlessis.
• Also too, Rae Armantrout.
• Kristen Hersh on new Throwing Muses album.

THE OBJECTIFIED MERMAID

Matthea Harvey

The photographer has been treating her like a spork all morning. “Wistful mouth, excited tail! Work it, work it!” He has no idea that even fake smiling spreads to her eyes and her tail and there’s nothing she can do about it short of severing her spine. Without asking, the assistant re-sprays her with glycerine. It’s gonna be hell getting all that grease off her scales tonight but she can’t scum up her tank at the bar—its weekly cleanings seem more like monthly these days, and fewer and fewer patrons have been inviting (read: paying) her for a Tankside Mertini and quick feel of her tail. There’s one regular who lapses in and out of consciousness and he’s the real reason she stays. Every once in a while he seems to have forgotten where he is and he looks at her with the kind of wonder she imagines her grandmother inspired when she first risked coming ashore. After an hour under the studio spotlights, she’s starting to smell pretty fishy. Can’t blame it (as she has before) on her standard seaweed bra because this fool of a photographer has her holding two clear fishbowls in front of her breasts so it looks like goldfish are swimming past her nipples. She’s supposed to pretend it tickles. She wants to ask if he’s heard the phrase "gilding the lily" which she recently learned at Land Berlitz. When asked if she’s tired, she lies. A downward spiral means the opposite up here.