Friday, August 14, 2026

The Sedate One Is This Month's Skittish One

Not reactivating My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game beyond elevating Lampchop, who may already have a permanent seat, who remembers? from one of the permanent rotating members to an irrevocable permanent seat, Lambchop, the only drug that eases my bouts of dark despair at my dearth of hope for my daughter's life in the clusterfucked world I leave her (and I find myself wishing often for an on/off switch I could flip so I won't be a geriatric burden while she navigates the constantly worsening gruesomeness of the United States of Assholes). How's that for a Blog Days of Summer in a dying Stringtown, Blegsylvania post for you?





Gets better, me, every time I listen to that song. When my daughter is my age it will be 2059, the earth will still be here, will the world? The blog is getting more bot pings than ever, I told a friend, and what's truly weird now is that the latest mass sweep is not coming from the giant AI-shitlord bot farms but from seemingly private citizens on their home's local internet providers


each looking at an archived old post, is creepy, and my friend said, you know every fascist overlord and their shock troops are documenting and hording every nasty thing you say about them and I said yes, I'm counting on it, it's the only on/off switch I can contemplate enabling now even if I'm not the one that will throw *that* switch. More damning evidence of my treasonous opinions in grid below, but first





Trump Protected By Surface-to-Air Missile System While Golfing
"A mercurial, strange, demented grifter president now has near-complete power over the conjugation of two powerful states within the State, each of which has its own bipartisan life — the National Security State, and the Predatory Capitalist State"
Why Peace Would Spell Ruin for the Global Elites
Why the system of death and destruction fears Palestine advocacy
A dying West is eating its children
"The only way to understand about "MAHA" or Trumpism is that these people all believe the fundamental flaw with our society is that we devised too many ways to intervene against the laws of nature to allow The Weak to survive. They're solving the problem that some kids should be dying but aren't"
It’s a Third World After All
Thoughts on atomised society and why atomisation is related to alienation
Normativity from the Standpoint of Its Victims
The Shitlord Networks of America
How an Imperial Project Exploits Data Workers
Monopolies Made Life Unaffordable
Showing how Quickly the American State Can Plan an Economy When Empire Demands It
"I mean, there's really no hiding anymore that the purpose of The Atlantic is to ease centrists into gladly welcoming and accepting the rise of fascism"
"Culturally, this is because we had twenty years of roaring all-channels advocacy for increased racism, harder crackdowns and latterly more deportation and demonstrative cruelty. We had this alongside - at best - total contempt for those opposing austerity, war, racism, police violence and genocide"
"This is how you know we need a wealth tax"
Understanding the Dictatorship of Capital
Atheism, nationalism, and the conductor of the crazy train
"Says a lot about the incentive structure of US politics on the left of center that every single progressive is scrutinized for every little thing while the most rabidly right wing Democratic member of Congress can go talk to Trump's stenographer and call his fellow party members bigots"
"Republicans roll the dice on anti-Muslim bigotry one more time"
"Still thinking about the time my Jordanian pastor friend was on facebook trying to explain to fellow evangelicals that "Allah" is just the word in his language for "God" and everyone needs to stop talking about it being "demonic" or whatever because they saw it on the Internet"
"Republicans are gonna be so normal about this, I can feel it"
The Impunity MachineMedical Censorship and Gaza
ICE plans to give officers gloves that can deliver painful electric shocks
Today's ➥ monologueToo many people do not understand that Dump's Army is double-dipping with immigrants, it thrills the bass and just as importantly trains and gives ICE live target practice for when they're coming at you after the imminent coup
Here's the Manual for ICE's Electric Shock Gloves
Incarcerated for Life in Shitlord’s War on the Left
When will the resistance step it up?
Multiple USS Abraham Lincoln sailors have tried to go overboard amid extended deployment, families say
Shitlords use helmetball to launder money
Ross Douthat Knows the Fascists are On His Side
"If someone in a press relations role is exceedingly helpful and goes out of their way to do something for you it's usually important to figure out what they get out of that interaction"
Review of Eros and Empire: The Transnational Struggle for Sexual Freedom in the United States
How Baltimore Achieved Historically Low Homicides—With Less Police
How Maryland’s Partisan Election System Disenfranchises a Quarter of Voters
MaggieFuck patriotismSend him off
GPS and the Lost Art of Getting Lost
Prehistory from the airFreshman move-in day
All Trees Bear Witness: Colonial Histories, Climate Breakdown, and Sonic Experiments in Silvic Storytelling
The Unrelenting Hoofbeats of the New LiteratureWatergaw
Nonverbalnessmy spasmadvances myapace exblisscusing me
{ feuilleton }Rest in Peace, John Crowley
Where the Meanings Are: on Fairfield Porter's art
From James Schuyler’s Diary (August 5, 1968)
I probably liked REM too much then and probably dislike then too much now and both are on me but this then and now is a great song
The new Lambchop album drops a week from today, may it save me





LAST MONTH

John Ashbery

No changes of support—only
Patches of gray, here where sunlight fell.
The house seems heavier
Now that they have gone away.   
In fact it emptied in record time.   
When the flat table used to result
A match recedes, slowly, into the night.
The academy of the future is   
Opening its doors and willing
The fruitless sunlight streams into domes,   
The chairs piled high with books and papers.

The sedate one is this month’s skittish one   
Confirming the property that,
A timeless value, has changed hands.
And you could have a new automobile
Ping pong set and garage, but the thief   
Stole everything like a miracle.
In his book there was a picture of treason only   
And in the garden, cries and colors.

2 comments:

  1. 1/ were I a practitioner of acceptance and commitment therapy/training/theory - ACT, pronounced as one word - and I am not, although I have earned all the two, three, and four letter combinations which are part of my cybernym - I might say something like - 'I can't argue with you about how dark some things look - but I did listen to the first Lambchop song you linked - the one with the alphanumeric keyboard as part of the associated picture - I enjoyed it and have formed an intention to listen to the other two - once again the wisdom of Kurt Vonnegut's Tralfamadoreans comes to mind - "life is a series of good moments and less-good moments - enjoy the good ones"

    2/this weekend I was discussing via email the metaphor 'asleep in the backseat' - it's one which psychiatrist Arthur Deikman used in one of his books - either Personal Freedom: On Finding Your Way to the Real World [which, amusingly, the health sciences library at SUNY Buffalo refused at first to get for me by ILL because it was "not health related" - I persisted] or The Wrong Way Home: Uncovering the Patterns of Cult Behavior in American Society - Deikman said "we want to think of ourselves as children sleeping in the back seat of the car while there's someone in whom we can place complete trust driving - alas, there isn't" - that would apply to the cult leader, to the President, to the Pope, and to our picture of a God who is "in charge" and cares about us personally - this last message is one Todd Rundgren delivers in "God Said", a 21st century song of his - and is the moral - as I see it - of the not very well received film The Answer Man starring Jeff Daniels - I liked it when I saw it this weekend, unlike most people, it seems

    my cybercorrespondent replied - and this is a paraphrase - the Terror-of-the-Situation is not merely that no one is at the steering wheel; it is our recurrent wish, hope, and belief that a Higher-Authority-Figure—whether Guru, State, or Cosmic-Parent—is keeping the car on the road. Disillusionment is a kind of disappointment - but it is also the point at which one realizes that one's own agency matters, within one's span of control in the sphere within which one lives and moves and has one's being

    3/speaking of how those Marylanders who fail to register as Party members don't get to participate in picking the candidates, my recollection is that it was not always thus - in fact, in 2000 I dropped my party registration so I could participate in the Republican presidential primary - as an unaffiliated person at that time I had the right to choose to participate in either primary - I voted for McCain, which was a vote against W. - at some later time that possibility for nonParty members to choose a primary was removed - I could probably find out when, and what was said then about why, but as Blake once wrote "Enough! or too much"

    ReplyDelete
  2. 1/this morning, while using my fingertips to wander through the wider and wilder world, I came across this stark statement while exploring the concepts of folk epistemology and Epictetus' premise that people are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things:

    At its core, Relational Frame Theory (RFT) and Functional Contextualism offer a radical explanation for why human beings—unlike any other animal—can be sitting in a completely safe, comfortable room and yet feel utterly miserable, anxious, or heartbroken.

    The short answer: Language allows us to bring the pain of the past, the threat of the future, and arbitrary self-judgments into the present moment.


    2/"unlike any other animal" is an overstatement, of course, as anyone who has lived with a dog with separation anxiety knows - this too-stark categorization reflects the fact that are two kinds of people - those who divide things dichotomously, and those who don't

    ReplyDelete