Like a Streetlamp in a Forest When I'm Lost

I am 9/10ths of the way through Henry James' *The Ambassadors* and will finish it tomorrow if I don't today so the burden of honoring a promise to living and dead former English professors and current and past friends will be honored, and get this, I will read another, though James' misuse of pronouns (any *she* referred to is not necessary the one I was taught it should be - I can only think this is intentionally muddying) is annoying as fuck. More signs of our coming apocalypse - it's closer and coming faster than most of yinz think, yo - embedded, along with the rest of the monologue (whether this gag is temporary or permanent until it isn't TBD) in the grid. Tropical Storm Bertha? Sweet, this will be in my head the next few days





Also too, three days from today is this shitty blog's domain renewal date, nothing has changed payment-wise at my end and though the blogging platform continues self-enshittification apace I expect them to take my money and renew me another year, but if I'm not here Saturday.... Hey! Lambchop has released a third song from upcoming album *Punching the Clown,* full album drops a month from yesterday

When the government starts making lists, nothin good ever comes
Today's ➥ monologue	Strange world that my yodels haven't changed but more colleagues and friends and family members no longer think I'm so batshit crazy. Required gag: when my daughter is my age it will be 2059, what world?
US police now armed with Israeli spy vans simulating mobile phone towers
"The United States is stuck in a war it started, cannot end, and may further escalate to no avail, having dismantled its diplomatic apparatus, depleted its military stockpile, and destroyed its credibility"
Today's ➥ monologue	Shitlords are happy to waste trillions of dollars on the Iran War if it helps speed up the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare and every fucking thing in the safety net plus the theft of every peasants retirement funds, I said to my ex-polisci professor and friendly acquaintance and for the third time in a row after calling me smart but batshit crazy for decades he said I'm probably right
☞	Faced With Piles of New Paperwork, People Are Losing Food Stamps
Today's ➥ monologue	If shitlords didn't want Trump fucking up everything he touches they wouldn't be letting him touch everything
☞	They Didn't Just Buy Politicians: They Bought Your Food, Your Health, Your Future, and They're Coming for What's Left
☞	Welcome to your Christian Nationalist diarrhea salad
Trump Didn’t Create America’s Authoritarianism—He Exposed It
"So the U.S. has gotten itself into a situation where the State Department is now warning Americans about traveling...anywhere"
And it goes on		Nested machine		Eight tribes?		Everyone Is a Foreign Agent Now
A Communiqué from an Author of Harmful and Undesirable Literature
They are building data centers on top of enslaved people in Stafford County VA
"If you have watched even ten minutes of this Maine candidate debate and still don't understand why Graham Platner was compelling to a vast majority of Maine voters regardless of his red flags you are actively trying to pretend not to. This is legitimately painful to watch."
Today's ➥ monologue	Psst! The "red flags," yes red-red & flaggy, are not the main reason Graham Platner was executed by top Democrats
Soon It Will Be Illegal To Oppose Imperialism
No One Is Taking John Roberts Seriously Anymore
Today's ➥ monologue	No, question is not whether Democratic politicians are listening, the question is when will a majority of people understand that Democrats are just fine with this SCOTUS, it's their job
United States of Assholes				Becoming the stranger
Gaza is ours,' says Ben Gvir as he joins Israeli ministers in march demanding return of settlements
"When Spain defeated Argentina 1-0 in extra time to claim the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Global South did not simply celebrate a sporting triumph. It executed a coordinated geopolitical signal—an improvised, transnational act of anti-colonial resistance that exposed Western double standards, punished Argentina’s embrace of Israel, and elevated an unlikely European nation as a moral proxy for Palestinian solidarity"
Democrats Fail Because They Won’t Name The Villains
Today's ➥ monologue	Democrats fail because it's their job to fail
Today's ➥ monologue	"Funny how “stories diverging” is a regular feature on the Democrat side of the Maine Senate race, isn’t it? Note that the Bangor Daily News either pulls its punches or CNN is misreporting. It’s almost as if the national Democrats would rather lose the race (and the Senate), because for them, “winning” means keeping access to the money flow that defines their party"
Spectacles of Fascism in an Age of Exhaustion
"Good morning to everyone but Chair Comer, who is presiding over the markup of H.R. 9720 today, the WORST attack on Home Rule by this Congress so far. Free DC and friends are in the House"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
Little Red Scare 2.0				Trump's Big Myth
Maggie		Suing Stephen Miller				Quality
The Mummification of the AFL-CIO
Climbing & Capitalism: The Death of Climbing Culture
Fewer libraries & more surveillance is a helluva sales pitch to potential students / families
There are Coney Islands everywhere in Michigan
Sometimes God, sometimes nothing					{ feuilleton }
Adversaria		Hope and Defeat: on John Berger on his centennial
Franz Wright's final poems
➥	Me the dumbfuck left the new book at home, the Franz Wright poem below is from *God's Silence
Starveling Rabblement - James Joyce: A Political Life
The Situation of Writing Itself					Six correlations
I was fifteen, the first sign my relationship w Jeannie R wasn't going to make it out of tenth grade is when she declared this her favorite song and played the 45 over and over
Fractal Meat On A Spongy Bone
Is ambient music evil?					Big Blood!

TO LARRY LEVIS

Franz Wright

Among the dead I cannot find you.
Let me rest here a minute
beneath these six leaves, crippled
tree slightly taller than I am
in a Manhattan sidewalk like a streetlamp
in a forest where I'm lost.