It Comes to the Monk in His Cell, or: Born 100 Years Ago Yesterday

• I did remember last night about eight - twitter burst can confirm - but forgot it was his Centennial.
• Assholy hell.
• There is no fucking way in hell Obama and Clinton didn't know.
• Life in the Assholocene: your heroes are assholes. Your would-be saviors are assholes. All serve Assholostan.
• Your heroes and saviors want you to be an asshole, but know your place and role.
• Liberal homophobia.
• Centrists - become Marxists: We must make two distinctions. One is between the Marxian diagnosis and the Marxian remedy. It is, I think, possible to use one but reject the other. The second distinction is between temporarily adopting a perspective for particular purposes and being something. You can adopt a Marxist point of view without becoming a Marxist – just as I often become an orthodox macroeconomist, behavioural or financial economist depending upon the issue I face. One of the most common forms of stupidity is the inability to have more than one point of view. If centrists are to become a serious political force again, they must stop equating who they are with what they believe, and take a Marxian perspective.
• Moral Outrage in the Digital Age.
• Radioactive wild boar. 
• Once again, I'm 25th. Fuck work.
• Monk's birthday always an occasion to post Jane Kenyon's brilliantly heartbreaking poem below.

HAPPINESS

Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

  

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

  

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

  

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

                     It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.