When Good News Arrives by Email, Destroy the Computer

The one of  who asked in person, the four who asked via email, all recent friends and readers who weren't aware of certain Blegsylvanian history, have been answered re: yes, yes I did delete a comment yesterday because hate aimed at me is fine but leave my _________ out of it. Three friends who know Blegsylvanian history emailed to laugh, one dared me to write about this (Brooklyn Pilsner, please), one suggested enabling comment moderation, said this is precisely why he enabled his, and no, not yet, though who knows.

So, a Pere Ubu or Two Pale Boys or Rocket from the Tombs or some David Thomas production song a day for the month of June. This is an executive decision: you don't have a say.

• What's the matter with metadata.
• What metadata can do.
• Underestimating the surveillance state.
• PRISM and the Pentagon Papers.
• Drones and the quiet American.
• Who the fuck is David Simon and why should I care?
• American-made.
• Being rude to politicians.
• BroadSnark's things you might have missed.
• Paro.
• For in each of us there is a hidden realm.
• Extreme close-ups of dogs he walks.
• Lisa Robertson interview.
• Rae Armentrout reading and talking.
• Rogaine Bunny Sonnet.
• Juliana Barwick 2008.
• Yeah, I know I posted this within the past three months, I woke up with it in my head:

A REACTIONARY TALE

Linh Dinh 

I was a caring husband. I bought socks for my family.

My swarthy wife liked to wear these thick woolen socks that came up to her milky thighs.

I had a lover also. People could see me walking around each evening carrying a walking stick.

My most vivid memory, looking back, is of a pink froth bubbling out of my infant's mouth.

Not everything was going so well: one morning, malnourished soldiers marched down our tiny street, bringing good news.

When good news arrives by mail, the cuckoo sang, tear up the envelope. When good news arrives by e-mail, destroy the computer.

When an old friend came by to reclaim an old wound, I said to my oldest son: Go dump daddy's ammo boxes into the fragrant river.

To reduce drag, some of my neighbors were diving headfirst into a shallow lake.

We were rich and then we were poor. A small dog or maybe a cat now pulls our family wagon.

And the Pellegrino Bubbles Rise to the Surface and Dismember

I am blessed that everything reminds me of some Pere Ubu song and yesterday set off a cascade. After years of my inability to find anyone or anywhere who could cite David Thomas' birthday I will accept June 14th via unreliable wikipedia because I need one day a year to celebrate. Expect lots of Ubu this month. Any and all requests solicited for June 14 massive cascade. I am blessed that everything reminds me of some Pere Ubu song:

• Of course I've known that Power claims as its own any private act I commit - I've written on this blog since day one that if I was worried about Power spying on me via phone and internet I shouldn't use my phone or type on a computer. Power has always claimed as its own any private act a subject commits and used whatever means and technologies available to enact those claims; what's different now is Power's technological capabilities. Power sucks up my digital crumbs into its cloud because it wants to and can, it doesn't give a flying fuck about me beyond storing information against my hypothetical radical future (and aiming advertisements via algorithms chosen just for me for toys I buy to keep me digitally docile while simultaneously enabling my surveillance), it sucks up my privacy primarily, essentially, because Power wants to and can. I've offered (I offer) no threat - Power has my phone records and photograph from the few Occupy protests I attended, and its bots scrolled me heavily in the days after and every month or two now, but I'm nobody. I'm archived, you're archived, not because of who you are but because Power wants to and can.
• Here's how nuts I am: Power is delighted by this story (Obama may or not be; Obama is not Power, Obama is Power's puny pimp). The chance to crucify a leaker who leaked information that empowers Power by reminding every subject how much power Power has plus another once-taboo assertion of Power routinized? Win-win-win, motherfuckers. Loved ones and friends and family ensure me Power (is a figment of my imagination) is too clumsy for such coordination, I say, brute clumsiness isn't a bug, it's a feature, like the drunken lout offensive guard turned loose by the stars at a frat party the football team has invaded. The lout gets suspended, the stars get away with property destruction and rape.
• Bullshit talking points.
• Scarier than what we know, though not scarier than what we assume.
• And I know it should go with saying though it needs said: none of this  - none - has anything to do with terrorism, it has everything to do with the accelerating decline in the standard of living of the 99% of people and to the ruthless lengths the 1% will go to maintain the standard of living of the 1%.
• Trained for totalitarianism.
• Going after Greenwald?
• Note that the byline in the above article calls Greenwald a blogger, not a journalist or columnist, even though the article in question is in the Guardian. Fucking bloggers.
• UPDATE! George W Obama responds.
• Photography is not a crime.
• Ecocide and the soul of a nation.
• Toward an unhuman phenomenology. 
• Henry Green season continues. As I said a few posts back, one breaks out in Blegsylvania every two/three years.
• The third hour of the night.
• New Neko Case album forthcoming! Forgive me, I love Neko Case.
• Mining the audio motherlode.
• Have I ever mentioned how much I love Pere Ubu?

WHAT NEXT

Frederick Seidel

So the sun is shining blindingly but I can sort of see.
It's like looking at Mandela's moral beauty.
The dying leaves are sizzling on the the trees
In a shirtsleeves summer breeze.

But daylight saving is over.
And gaveling the courtroom to order with a four-leaf clover
Is over. And it's altogether November.
And the Pellegrino bubbles rise to the surface and dismember.

This Goes to Show That If You Have the Wit to Be Small, Common, Cute, and Live on Shit, Though the Cage Frets Kings, You May Make Free with It

• New obamapostates? Anyone? No?
• Saw that story first on my Verizon 3G iPhone.
• Let me save the spook in his cubicle in the big black building off the BW Parkway and MD 32 time: I called me wife, I called my kid, I texted my brother, I texted one dear friend, I texted another dear friend, I called my parents, I texted the plans for the overthrow of America to a Hezbollah pal, then called him to make sure he got it.
• UPDATE! On the story.
• UPDATE! Trained for totalitarianism.
• UPDATE! Has a prominent Democrat called yet for an investigation on how this information on the program was made public? Asked at 1:26 PM EDT 6/6/13.
• I am almost certainly wrong, 99% probability I'm wrong, but this Michelle Obama versus protester story stinks of FAKE! on so many levels it wasn't a stunt, think how FAKE! it'd stink if it was a stunt.
• UPDATE! On the above. Not the part about me sensing FAKE! on the heckling Michelle Obama part. 
• I have no idea who Rex Hupple is, but this tweet about the Michelle Obama Affair that appeared in my timeline is true, or at least as true as I can believe since I won't watch either MSNBC or Fox.
• There is only kayfabe. That's the key swerve of the past ten years, the granting of unlimited digital reveals which are real and therefore reflective of your true worth versus the power's willingness - fucking eagerness, tiny you - to remind you or how puny you are, you, me, kings, clowns, hobos of our Stringtowns. 
• Age of fraud.
• The scheduled death of God.
• Rise of Pop Fascism, part six.
• Good stuff on culture of gaming and culture of games. Worth the $2.
• Brookeville!
• Writing and breathing. RE: Proust - I finished Combray enraptured, started Swann's part, what a freaking anticlimax of meh.
• Agamben, for those of you who do.
• On being plagiarized.
• UPDATE! Yes, I know yesterday was Laurie Anderson's 67th birthday, a song didn't fit yesterday's post, meant to post this to this post from the start but forgot:

• Mr Alarum got this Fur's request in after the deadline, but he's a bud.
• I don't want Jack White on my radio, but credit where due.
• Absolutely horrifying news. I confess, I'd forgotten about the fucker.
• Woke up with the album below the poem in my head this morning, would post below but instead:
• Via Dangerous Minds, holyfuck:

POLITICAL REFLECTION

Howard Nemerov

No bars are set too close, no mesh too fine
To keep me from the eagle and the lion,
Whom keepers feed that I may freely dine.
This goes to show that if you have the wit
To be small, common, cute, and live on shit,
Though the cage frets kings, you may make free with it.

When We Tell Ourselves That So Many Bells Have Rung Beyond Our Understanding What We Really Mean Is That So Many Ring Counter to the Way We Wish to Understand Them

Lordy I love that song. Richard Butler is fifty-seven today. I really loved The Furs - many of the dozens of the best five nights of my life were at Furs shows, especially one at the Ontario Theater in Columbia Heights with Martha and the Muffins and Simple Minds (before that horrible single), then they aged bad for me (or me for them), now it's love again, they are always on the soundtrack either to or from Ohio when we go to visit Planet or take her there or bring her home.

So, um, I'm book-culling.

• This is the summer of purging the house of stuff we've collected since moving in twenty-one years ago that we haven't used in years. Most of the books I'm purging are non-fiction I stupidly bought thinking Hey! I'll read non-fiction and never read more than the intro plus novels I've read but will never read again or novels I've never read and will never read. I've a large stash of first editions which I will keep just because I don't want some asshole used book store owner to rip me off or get their fucking hands on them if I donate the books somewhere. Speaking of which, anyone have any suggestions for a good place to donate hundreds of books?
• No poetry in any of the bags.
• I found $380 in books. More to come, I'm sure.
• Sentence first, verdict later.
• The four plagues of the coming apolcalypse.
• Fall.
• The makers of global capitalism.
• The Rise of Pop Fascism part five.
• The all-powerful bike lobby.
• Photography is not a crime.
• Agamben, for those of you who do.
• Blood and roots.
• Sandy Spring! I have a friend who grew up on Brooke Road.
• TEN MILE CREEK! I've told this story many times before, will again, but as Gauron said to Kid Duras, perhaps, but not today.
• Imitation of Christ.
• Anthony's always generous lit links.
• In the bags: Jim Crace, Tim Winton, Rodney Hall, three novelists I hadn't thought of in ages, all heralded as the next big thing a lifetime or two ago.
• Hamster flagged this PERE UBU NEWS! too, wondered why I hadn't posted it, I responded, it requires a cascade, there is already a cascade today, and June 14th is a High Egoslavian Holy Day, there will be a massive Pere Ubu/Rocket from Tombs/Two Pale Boys/etc cascade that day.
• You only think I document the laws and bylaws of this shitty blog onblog.
• O, OK, have a Pere Ubu song.
• That Psychedelic Furs/Simple Minds/Martha and the Muffins concert is related to my dismissive disdain for used book store owners, the woman I was with at the time was the weeknight manager for Econdsay Torysay Books, the one in the big white house on Old Georgetown in Bethesda where now a giant condominium sits next to the Hyatt, the owner one of the biggest assholes I've ever met. 
• Serendipity is sometimes great good, sometimes great bad, always awesome.
• She also worked the Econdsay Torysay on Greenmount in Waverly, it had four very cool cats, I'd stop by and pick her up, we'd go sit in the upper right deck of Memorial on Three-Buck Nights after we ate dinner at the St Paul Deli.
• I was young once.
• Lordy, I love this song:

FANTASIES OF MANAGEMENT

Timothy Donnelly

When we tell ourselves
       that so many bells
have rung beyond
       our understanding

what we really mean
       is that so many ring
counter to the way
       we wish to understand them.

When I think back
      long ago, almost back
to that barbaric time,
       what I want is to lie

down in a mile-wide
       bafflement of grasses
until there is nothing
       left of me but willingness

to go though it all
       again, because unless
a donut box of dollars
       falls down from the

sky I like beneath admiring,
       it can't be avoided -
only this time, when they talk
       as if I had a choice

in the matter, a way to say
       no and live, I'll ask
if the wouldn't mind kindly
       doing me this favor

of repeating that please
       because I couldn't quite make out
whatever they just said
       through all that privilege.

If We Don't Move We Can't Be Missed

This story flew by twitter yesterday that Obama's pure progressive heart was trumped by Obama's fear of CIA assassins:

Which leads to the question, why would he do all these things? Why would he be afraid for example, to take the drones away from the CIA? Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s afraid. Number one, he’s afraid of what happened to Martin Luther King Jr. And I know from a good friend who was there when it happened, that at a small dinner with progressive supporters – after these progressive supporters were banging on Obama before the election, "Why don’t you do the things we thought you stood for?" Obama turned sharply and said, "Don’t you remember what happened to Martin Luther King Jr.?" That’s a quote, and that’s a very revealing quote.

First, common lore holds that J Edgar killed MLK, yes? I asked at a special Monday night edition of Thursday night pints, and second, we all fear CIA assassins, more now under Obama than ever before in fact. K said, no one thinks that true, do they, that Obama would actually say that in front of witnesses? My and others' bullshit meters hyper-geigered, I said, we immediately sought motives: have Obama's supporters resorted to a Obama's heart is pure but he's a pussy defense? L said, you didn't debate this for long, I hope, not whether Obama's a pussy or whether Obama's supporters would resort to the Obama's heart is pure but he's a pussy strategy but whether this story is true. Nope, I said, five, ten minutes. Everyone thought the story certainly improbable - it's a friend was at a dinner and told me story at a site that pretends to journalism for one thing. Still, no one dismissed it - it being Obama's supporters resorting to Obama's heart is pure but he's a pussy defense as entirely plausible, if grossly sloppy in this case.

• Last Bus.
• The rich man's crumbs.
• Capitalism now.
• We are all Luddites.
• Offered without a hint of irony or self-awareness: Fred Hiatt condemns police actions against peaceful protesters in Turkey.
• Old Foucault Place.
• Agamben, for those of you who do.
• Agamben, for those of you who do.
• The 1990's Rise of Pop Fascism one, two, three, four.
• Fullback emerges from hibernation to ask some questions re: DCU.
• On motherfucking blooger.
• The End of Oulipo?
• One last plug for You (Plural), film combining Joyce's Ulysses with Shakespeare's Hamlet.
• I say this, I promise, void of snark: every time I am reminded of Henry Green - and there's a new Henry Green season in Blegsylvania every two, three years, I try and fail again.
• Stream the new Boards of Canada. 
• I'd started to forget I dig Joanna Newsom, remedying.
• Joanna Newsom live set from 2004.

GLASS HOUSE

Heather McHugh

Everything obeyed our laws and
we just went on self-improving
till a window gave us pause and
there the outside world was, moving.

Five apartment blocks swept by,
the trees and ironwork and headstones
of the next town's cemetery.
Auto lots. Golf courses. Rest homes.
Blue-green fields and perishable vistas
wars had underscored in red
were sweeping past,
with cloudscapes, just

as if the living room were dead.
Which way to look? Nonnegative?
Nonplussed? (Unkilled? Unkissed?)
Look out, you said; the sight's on us:

If we don't move, we can't be missed.

Eighty-Nine Today

Hey Youngsters, Chuck Barris is eighty-nine today, and once upon a time, for admittedly only a very short time, Gong Show was something new and ground-breaking on television, and Barris' birthday is celebrated every year here.







Not as ground-breaking or as important as All in the Family. I still haven't seen mention of Jean Stapleton's death on any of my blogrolls and I assume since I haven't I probably won't now, but here's the scene I went looking for when I heard she had died which I only found now while looking for the Gong Show clips:

Chicago 2, United 0, or: _________It, I Don't ______________, the _________________ !

                 
Yes, posted that last night as soon as I saw it, inside baseball required its immediate posting, it was up before I'd even thought about it, thirty seconds, copy, paste, publish. Found it here, a post on my shitty-ass soccer team's latest loss, a game I could have watched with a little bit of scheduling contortion, but fuck that, I've seen this show before. I have nothing but speculation what's in the heart of ownership, I have no proof that it was a short-sided optimism based on last year's end-of-season successful mirage with a mediocre team that led ownership to believe United could lose Andy Najar and Branko Boskovic without suitable replacements and still succeed nor do I have proof that ownership are cheap motherfucking carpetbaggers who couldn't give a flying fuck about the product or the team's fans and will let the team suck until it has a new stadium here, there, anywhere, but I'm betting on the latter.                                                                                   That space represents a deleted rant on United                                                                        that space a deleted rant on                                          and this one                                                  a deleted explanation, or lack thereof, for the                               mood, but it is a                                      mood, quite possibly the                          est ever since the last until the next.

He Wore It to Assert, with Fierce Devotion, Complicity and Nothing More

So, Bleggal Year 2013-2014. Look at those blogrolls - even by past standards of Blog Days of Summer slowdown, Blegsylvania is dead. Oh well, this is my preferred method of self-aggrandizement: I use twitter, I don't want to be twitter; I tried tumblr, if I can't count how much I'm ignored, fuck that. I am also, apparently, the oldest dope in Blegsylvania, yes, it's a weekend during the Blog Days of Summer but NOBODY I've seen has mentioned the death of Jean Stapleton, All in the Family and Edith Bunker major cultural touchstones once upon a time, youngsters. Dealing with information overload? Peeping Thomism. Maggie's weekly links. Overlay. Why we should care about Occupy Gezi. Hey, I was watching footage Turkish riots & police response, was reminded me how bigoted I am to once have believed that Turkish cops act more barbarian than US cops. New Inquiry's Sunday links. Don't demonize me, bro. Poetry trading cards? Sylvia Plath reads fifteen of her poems. { feuilleton }'s weekly links. A PDF of Muriel Spark's Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. Iconography. Crime fiction and capitalist society. How word verification works. The library and its uses. Stephin Merritt interview, talks Future Bible Heroes. And study them one afternoon before they wilted.






BLACK JACKETS

Thom Gunn

     In the silence that prolongs the span
Rawly of music when the record ends,
     The red-haired boy who drove a van
In weekday overalls but, like his friends,

     Wore cycle boots and jacket here
To suit the Sunday hangout he was in,
     Heard, as he stretched back from his beer,
Leather creak softly round his neck and chin.

     Before him, on a coal-black sleeve
Remote exertion had lined, scratched, and burned
     Insignia that could not revive
The heroic fall or climb where they were earned.

     On the other drinkers bent together,
Concocting selves for their impervious kit,
     He saw it as no more than leather
Which, taut across the shoulders grown to it,

     Sent through the dimness of a bar
As sudden and anonymous hints of light
     As those that shipping give, that are
Now flickers in the Bay, now lost in night.

     He stretched out like a cat, and rolled
The bitterish taste of beer upon his tongue,
     And listened to a joke being told:
The present was the things he stayed among.

     If it was only loss he wore,
He wore it to assert, with fierce devotion,
     Complicity and nothing more.
He recollected his initiation,

     And one especially of the rites.
For on his shoulders they had put tattoos:
     The group's name on the left, The Knights,
And on the right the slogan Born To Lose.