Tuesday, August 4, 2026

The Color of Stepped on Gum Is the Color of Our Times

I contemplated not honoring all four birthdays of the Great Run of BLCKDGRD Holy Days that I have every year (minus a forgetful oops or two) for more than two decades here and the prior iterations of this current shitty blog and then decided to for more than just the sake of Fuck It, which sake I'll keep mum. I may read the copy of Melville's *Redburn* I found in a Michigan used books store last month sometime in the next year though reading the first ten pages the night after I found the copy did not inspire me. I can't imagine summoning the determined concentration necessary to reread Gass' *The Tunnel* (though rereading it as the clusterfuck worsens and assholes and assholedom are celebrated as heroes and morality of the clusterfuck is probably a good idea) but I might do *Omensetter's Luck* in the next year, and I didn't binge on Kate Bush or the Grateful Dead for Jerry because I can hear any song in my head by both any time I want. I have been Hüsker Dü bingeing of late




A fine metaphors abounding work email chain today:

Dear Jeff,

I hope you are doing well! I am writing with a question and I realize you might not be the right person - or maybe there is no right person - but is it possible to have a course packet made up, for purchase by students? I am assigning several texts (short stories) in PDF format and I don't want students staring at a computer in class, so I'd like to make a hard-copy course packet. Is this something I would talk to you about, or someone at the bookstore? I would provide the PDFs. Thank you very much,

Sincerely,
Susanna

Hi Susanna, the Library hasn't done course packets for well over 25 years because of copyright (and the department that did them doesn't exist anymore). I don't think even FedEx will do them any longer. I'd be surprised if the bookstore will, though it doesn't hurt to ask. 

Jeff

Hi Jeff,

OK, now I feel like an absolute dinosaur. No seriously, thank you for the response. I will figure out something else!

Sincerely,
Susanna

Hi Susanna, 

Laugh, welcome to the club




Today's ➥ monologueMay Abdul El-Sayed win by twenty today so we can watch corporate Democrats melt the fuck down tomorrow and begin tacitly campaigning for the crackerchrister motherfucker running against him in the general. This link once upon a time would have been typed I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. That will always be true, but I'm now typing out more than I. Hate. Motherfucking. Democrats. You're welcome
So it goes, but when does it stop?
Headline News 2026Don Corleone Trump
Nearly 60,000 children orphaned in Gaza as Israel's genocide destroys families and care systems
Frenzy of cruel and unusual ICE flights shows Trump’s ethnic cleansing campaign is escalating – again
"Always remember they destroy or hobble the genuinely useful functions of govt because they want citizens to stop expecting anything from them, and be reduced to learned helplessness"
The House of Ellison is on the Brink
"Level of blatant corruption is breathtaking"
How to be an empire propagandist
World's richest man subsidized by public, again
Billionaires are a public health hazard: Follow the money behind the diarrhea outbreak
Shell Profits More Than Double as Iran War Pushes Up Gas Prices
Enshittification Relies on Broken Economic Math
Brain Rot Fuels the Trillion-dollar AI Economy
Corporate landlords found a new way to raise prices
The Bezos Post editorial board wants you to thank private equity, you chittering ungrateful serf"Oh look, the Commerce Department quietly announced 7 new equity stakes in private companies. Brought to you by the people fighting "communism."
Sports Betting Giants Join Unprecedented Corporate Efforts to Buy 2026 Midterms
Today's ➥ monologueThe twelve+ links above would've all been labeled We Are Ruled By Motherfucking Sociopaths previously, this is better, yes?
The Obama Presidential Center monumentalizes a liberalism still incapable of seeing its flaws
Your worst fears about cultural collapse might be true – here’s what you can do about it (h/t Charley)
"Few things are more revealing about the Democratic Party than how they act in cities, large and small, where they have a lock on electoral power: openly cozy with the far-right, vindictively anti-worker and happy to team up with fash police who hate them to crush anyone who ain't gentry"
"Will never stop being wild to me that establishment Dems saw these enthusiastic, insurgent DSA folks and instead of saying "you guys are a lil weird but the enemy of my enemy is my friend so LFG" they threw a crashout tantrum & had to be dragged away like a toddler in a McDonald's"
All You Fascist Liberals
"The threat of fascism whips the electorate into line behind austerian liberals, while the resulting social misery and anomie provides the emotional mulch for rising fascism. Both prefer it if the left is excluded from the picture"
"Getting elected the new fascism"
ICE’s New Detention Center Contracts Declare State Laws ‘Shall Not Apply
Colorado GOP Gov candidate Victor Marx says God has given him a "gift" to uncover people's demons and rid them of evil spirits through a specialized prayer. Marx says you, too, can learn how to do it. The eight-part course is $99
"this is actually the wife-beatingest reply possible. this is the platonic ideal of how a guy who beat his wife would respond to a question about beating his wife"
"There’s almost a mob movie aspect to it. Trump was literally at Miller’s wedding. He was a made man. This isn’t a story of gotchas, this is a story of yet again our elected officials belonging to a cabal that believes abusing women is a perk of the job"
How rogue officers turned a nationwide camera network into a tool for stalking
Ban Human Fetuses in Food, Lawmaker Says
"Ralph Shortey, the freshman Republican who introduced the legislation, acknowledges he is not aware of any company in Oklahoma or elsewhere that is attempting to sell food that contains fetuses, but he said, "There is a potential that there are companies that are using aborted human babies in their research and development of basically enhancing flavor for artificial flavors."
God, the original counterinsurgency guy
The Men Who Made Theory French
How to suppress women's writing
What Would It Mean to See a New Color?
{ feuilleton }Obstupefacting Excrescences
Today's ➥ monologueI did finish Henry James' *The Ambassadors* but only because I felt morally obligated to keep my promise to Leona and Dennis and I'll NOT be reading another James, the fucker does muddle for motherfucking muddle's sake
*Punching the Clown*, the new Lambchop album, drops in seventeen days, of the three songs released so far this one slays me most, slays me, yes I already posted it before the BLCKDGRD Holy Day posts, the album won't save me soul but it will salve is a little





Tom Clark

THE COLOR OF STEPPED ON GUM

is the color of our times.
The light of our times is
the light in the 14th St.
subway at 2 A.M. The air
of our times is the air of the
Greyhound depot, Market
& 6th. It is prime time. A passed
out sailor sits pitched
forward like a sack of laundry
in a plastic bucket seat
his forehead resting on
the movie of the week. The Long Goodbye

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