Three years ago yesterday Nap died. I was Nap's human. Not a day goes by I don't think of him, I think of him every time I climb up or down the steps from my house to the road, he'd sit in my lap when I sat on the top step. Since then, two more cats who considered me their human have died, Momcat and Fleabus. I know few greater joys than being a cat's chosen human. We have three cats still, down from eight four years ago, and I like Stanley and love Rosie and love Olive but my wife is Stanley and Rosie's human and my daughter Olive's, they like me but
Every animal we've housed in the 39 years L & I have been together, cat and dog, found us and saved us, not us them, but no cat or dog has found us now in over a decade. I thought one had in Michigan earlier this April, a black kitten playing on the side of Tophith Rd near Munith, I stopped my car three straight days, it ran to me each day and purred in my arms, on the third day I took a box, on the third day it wore a collar and a tag. I still need rescuing. I'm a hot-mess. Iggy won't save me, not even today on his 78th birthday
Sideways too, I'm soaking in it, Madge. Will I be eating catfood in Magamerica before I can feed it to a cat that adopted me? Will I ever be able to go to a shelter and rescue an animal but have nightmares for years thinking of all the animals I did not take home, who plead with me with their eyes to save them? That won't save me. Neither will The Cure, but today is Robert Smith's 66 birthday, he's four months and a week older than me
"If the cultural landscape is nurtured and defined by the marketplace, the academy, and the web of monied foundations and institutions that make up the professionalized cultural economy, then there will always be a degree of inescapable dissonance for the leftist artist, and for the leftist writer and poet, like myself. But that dissonance is instructive or, at least, it should be. The coercive and conditional nature of the market, the academic institution, the prestigious foundation is designed to discipline the left-wing artist, and persuade them to construct a creative self that is ultimately conducive to and dependent on that capitalist, careerist terrain. At best, it simply tames or otherwise neutralizes any such dissonance. At worst, it enlists the leftist artist to construct a bastardized, supervised dissonance that instead survives, reinforces, and stabilizes the very structures that should be troubled. A dissonance that is decorative, observational, permanently underdeveloped, and loudly commodified."
"For this to have been a deliberate act — which it plainly was — consider what that means. A person within the IDF saw the news that Fatma’s film was accepted into Cannes. He/she/they then proposed assassinating her. Other people reviewed the suggestion and approved it. Then other people carried it out"
My daughter threw me a bowl and painted Fleabus twice and Napoleon once before glazing and baking and gave it to me yesterday for Giftmas, she couldn't wait, here's the first Fleabus:
and here's Napoleon (my apologies for cell phone quality cell phone photos):
and the inside of the bowl, Fleabus again
Best gift ever, it's already next to the other best gift evers she's baked me. She gets my stuff (in both senses of the phrase)
I'd like to think the ratio of Links of Fury (fewer) versus Links of Fun (more) below in today's grid a positive effort by me to reduce the fury but realize it's (not giftmas which should be replaced by each of us individually pulling a day in the year out of a hat with 365 slips and on the date you draw you gift people that day instead of motherfucking giftmas) merely our shitlords have turned down their psyops shitblasters for giftmas week, what better broth to reduce in than celebrating the birth of Jesus in whatever flavor you eat him. Enforced amnesia and dysphoria deepens condensing. Adrian Belew turned 75 on the day before yesterday
Re: the monologue above, about forced amnesia and dysphoria - youngsters, you may not remember this, but once Donald Trump, as in Emperor Trump, Conquerer of Greenland and Panama and Canada, nominated, get this, Matt Gaetz to run DOJ
"IF MARY TRAVELLED FROM NAZARETH TO BETHLEHEM TODAY SHE WOULD BE STOPPED AT 7 CHECKPOINTS"
☝
That's assuming, of course, IDF soldiers dont' stop, rape, then kill her first
☝
"If Jesus was in Gaza, Israel would burn him alive in a tent and US tax dollars would subsidize the flames that incinerated his flesh. Merry Christmas"
"The Guardian here - much like all US media - is trying to make sure we don’t think about the corruption and fatal crimes of the U.S. healthcare system, of health insurance companies"
"One interesting thing about Richard T. Burke, the founder of UnitedHealth Group, is he then went on to be the main shareholder in the pawnshop chain FirstCash. So once UnitedHealth bankrupted you and you were sick and desperate, you could sell all your stuff to him for $20
Rest in Peace Rickey Henderson, best leadoff hitter in baseball history and the best player I watched live in my devote baseball years in the 80s up to mid-90s at Memorial when I'd see a bare minimum of 15 games a year, Henderson tormented the Orioles, first as an A, then a Yankee, then an A again
"Already grieving, Oakland fans mourn the loss of Rickey Henderson, their hometown hero"
The Baltimore Beltway is the scariest, angriest, racingest, road rageiest, most dangerous road I've ever driven. 29 through Howard County a close second
I no longer can read like I could when young - you wait, youngsters, it's more physical than mental and the mental gets old too - and I lost my If I Start a Novel I Must Finish It Rule thirty years ago so if I start a fat, challenging novel and it doesn't work, bye, of the five above I've tried and quit *Lies and Sorceries* and *Miss McIntosh,* I've tried for decades and thought I'd stopped but Dalkey reissued and PLEASE SUPPORT DALKEY and tried again, no
YO LA TENGO AND SUN RA ARKESTRA HOWARD THEATER DC MARCH 22 2025! Just scored tickets for me and L, it's general admission COME JOIN US!
