My carnivorous black cats, I won't pay for tortured then slaughtered sentient animals for me to eat but I give Chewy, with guaranteed next day fossil fuel powered delivery, money for tortured then slaughtered sentient animals for my cats to eat. The Gulf of Mexico is on fire while I walk my empty cans of club soda to the recycle bin. My bosses through some benign but mostly malign incompetence (everyone's mileage varies) and general contempt and disrespect (everyone's mileage the same) have driven half my colleagues away, everyone remaining (but me) actively seeking to get out. This is the motherfucker Democrats will nominate to run for governor of Maryland. This historian of American Crackerism writes: "What Democrats have been slow to understand is that this is an insurgency against democracy with parliamentary and paramilitary wings," and honestly seems to believe Democrats are stupid not complicit. The electricity powering my laptop is generated by coal strip-mined in West Virginia. Hank Dietles is reopening. Seven of seven cats were sick of the turkey pate wet catfood so I ordered shredded chicken in gravy wet catfood, six of seven adore the shredded chicken in gravy wet catfood, Napoleon hating, getting the remaining cans of turkey pate. The Gulf of Mexico is on fire. The Supreme Court just signaled states can manipulate voting results anyway they choose. British Columbia got to 121 degrees this week. I spend more time on holiday weekend posts than on any others, and I remembered to post a 575 at the other place (575 related to this dialogue) for the holiday weekend. I will get in my fossil fuel powered car and drive to PetSmart to buy various flavors of tortured then slaughtered sentient animals for Napoleon to sample before I order cases of untested tortured then slaughtered sentient animals from Chewy. The new Evan Dara sucks, I bought it at Amazon. The Democratic president of the United States brags that ketchup is eighteen cents cheaper this year than last. There's a new posthumous Ashbery, I will drive in my fossil fuel powered car to a local bookstore rather than order from a shitlord, revolution, fuckers. Per usual I woke up with Pollard in my head, this new:
THE OTHER TRADITION
John Ashbery
They all came, some wore sentiments
Emblazoned on T-shirts, proclaiming the lateness
Of the hour, and indeed the sun slanted its rays
Through branches of Norfolk Island pine as though
Politely clearing its throat, and all ideas settled
In a fizz of dust under trees when it’s drizzling:
The endless games of Scrabble, the boosters,
The celebrated omelette au Cantal, and through it
The roar of time plunging unchecked through the sluices
Of the days, dragging every sexual moment of it
Past the lenses: the end of something.
Only then did you glance up from your book,
Unable to comprehend what had been taking place, or
Say what you had been reading. More chairs
Were brought, and lamps were lit, but it tells
Nothing of how all this proceeded to materialize
Before you and the people waiting outside and in the next
Street, repeating its name over and over, until silence
Moved halfway up the darkened trunks,
And the meeting was called to order.
I still remember
How they found you, after a dream, in your thimble hat,
Studious as a butterfly in a parking lot.
The road home was nicer then. Dispersing, each of the
Troubadours had something to say about how charity
Had run its race and won, leaving you the ex-president
Of the event, and how, though many of those present
Had wished something to come of it, if only a distant
Wisp of smoke, yet none was so deceived as to hanker
After that cool non-being of just a few minutes before,
Now that the idea of a forest had clamped itself
Over the minutiae of the scene. You found this
Charming, but turned your face fully toward night,
Speaking into it like a megaphone, not hearing
Or caring, although these still live and are generous
And all ways contained, allowed to come and go
Indefinitely in and out of the stockade
They have so much trouble remembering, when your forgetting
Rescues them at last, as a star absorbs the night.
You know, I just didn't go out. Every time I did there was something going on, a recognition of [yes here it comes] Complicity and that simply through the fact of birth we're causing suffering and will suffer too, and the only things which make it less than excruciating are the tenuous connections we make with others, as Complicit as we are in their suffering, to suffer a little less and cause a little less suffering also. Happy Freedom Day (Hey! D'ja hear? We're Free! I guess that means Our Owners don't have to pay anything for us any longer, ha ha).
ReplyDelete1/on the fourth of july missus charley and i watched a movie starring liam neeson set in canada - 'the ice road' - one of the lead characters was played by Amber Midthunder
ReplyDeletewho is a Native New Mexican actress who uncovered a deep love of acting at a young age. Growing up with an actor father and casting director mother, she began her own on-screen career early in life. Her first speaking role was at the age of 9 opposite Oscar winner Alan Arkin in the indie hit Sunshine Cleaning.
Since that time she has continued her work as an actress with series regular roles on Marvel/FX's "Legion", and The CW's "Roswell, New Mexico"; as well as appearing in feature films such as "Hell Or High Water" (Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine) and "The Ice Road" (Liam Neeson, Laurence Fishburne).
Midthunder is of multiple mixed ethnicities including Native American, European, Spanish, and Asian.
Outside of acting she has a passion for animal rights and environmental activism.
[end of quote from imdb.com bio]
early in the film her character is being released from jail after being arrested at an environmental protest - the desk cop says to her 'you protest and throw rocks again, we'll arrest you again' - she replies 'we'll keep doing it until you get off our land' - the cop says 'the city owns that parking lot' - she replies 'i was referring to north america'
2/on july 1 i observed my first canada day after receiving my canadian citizenship certificate - i thought about what john ralston saul wrote in 2015, and just recently reaffirmed as still true -
There are good and bad things in our society, successes and failures. But there is only one fundamental reality that remains unaddressed. That is the situation of indigenous peoples.
This is the single most important issue before us, whether we are recently arrived in Canada or have been here for centuries. This is the prime issue on which we should be judging governments and potential governments.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/truth-and-reconciliation-is-canadas-last-chance-to-get-it-right/article24826036/
3/and speaking of north america, and the author of a poem/song lyrics about it, the library of congress tells us
Bates, who eventually became a full professor of English literature at Wellesley College, made a lecture trip to Colorado in 1893 and there she wrote the words to "America the Beautiful." As she told it, "We strangers celebrated the close of the session by a merry expedition to the top of Pike's Peak, making the ascent by the only method then available for people not vigorous enough to achieve the climb on foot nor adventurous enough for burro-riding. Prairie wagons, their tail-boards emblazoned with the traditional slogan, "Pike's Peak or Bust," were pulled by horses up to the half-way house, where the horses were relieved by mules. We were hoping for half and hour on the summit, but two of our party became so faint in the rarified air that we were bundled into the wagons again and started on our downward plunge so speedily that our sojourn on the peak remains in memory hardly more than one ecstatic gaze. It was then and there, as I was looking out over the sea-like expanse of fertile country spreading away so far under those ample skies, that the opening lines of the hymn floated into my mind."
On July 4, 1895, Bates' poem first appeared in The Congregationalist, a weekly newspaper. Bates revised her lyrics in 1904, a version published that year in The Boston Evening Transcript, and made some final additions to the poem in 1913.
https://loc.gov/item/ihas.200000001
lines from this poem worth considering are
America! America!
God mend thine ev'ry flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law.