Serendipity be blessed, one of the five novels I'm currently working on which I need to finish one before buying anything new (in regards to the comments about not buying or reading *Schattenfroh* in the gridofanger below) is a reread of Stanley Elkin's *The Franchiser* (reread seven or eight), just now, Tuesday Sept 9th, like I do every morning, I checked the day's birthdays (one of this shitty blogs oldest shitty gags), Colonel Sanders born 135 years ago today, here, from the famous (among Elkin readers) fake Colonel Sanders scene
"Ben Flesh," Ben Flesh said, extending his hand.
"Colonel Sanders," the man said grudgingly.
Ben pushed his hand out farther. The man took it finally and Flesh grabbed the chicken king's hand in both his own and pulled it towards his face. Before Colonel Sanders knew what was happening Flesh opened his jaws wide as he could and shoved as much of the man's hand inside his mouth as possible. He sucked the startled man's knuckles, ran his tongue along his lifeline, chewed his nails, the heel of his hand, tasted his pinky. The Colonel made a fist and fought for his hand, which Ben still held to his mouth.
"Lemme be. What's wrong with you?"
And Ben could not have told him, couldn't have said that he'd pulled his first stunt, an engram of character and aggression. He stood before the Colonel with the man's hand still at his lips. "Finger-lickin' good," Flesh said. "It's true. What they say. About Dixie," he added lamely....
...Ben looked at him. The man had removed his glasses. He touched a corner of his mustache like a villain in melodrama and, as they all watched, began to peel it back like a Band-Aid of hair.
"What?" Ben said. "What's this?"
"I ain't him. I'm not he. I'm Roger Foster of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and I own airport limousine services in three states."
"You're not the chicken prince?"
"I'm Roger Foster of Cedar Rapids, Iowa," Roger Foster said.
"Then what - But why - You look - "
"Certainly, I look. There's a basic resemblance. I enhance it. I'm a Doppelganger."
"Does this mean you can't get the franchise, Ben?" Gus-Ira asked.
Been at least a dozen years since I posted that excerpt I'm guessing, I could look but that would be research. I'm 3/4s through a first reread of *Absalom, Absalom,* 1/2 through a first read of *Praiseworthy,* 1/3 through a first read of *Felix Holt,* 1/4 of a fifth reread of *Fathers and Crows,* almost done (but stuck) of a third reread of *Barley Patch.* Part of me thinks it's a victory I now permit myself to pick up and put down and pick up and put down novels, once I had a hard rule that once page one finished I could not read anything else until I finished the novel regardless I enjoyed it or not, part of me concedes it's surrender to my eyes, to my age, to my shitlord reprogrammed and daily scrambled brain under clusterfuck, partly because I finally realized life is too short to read something I don't want to. If I had to be right now I think *Praiseworthy* will be first finished, which means nothing, yesterday I would have bet on *Fathers and Crows* which I deliberately took out of my backpack this morning after reading it for the last week and don't want to touch again for the foreseeable future until I do. Hey, new GBV, my favorite power pop song of theirs in a few years, LOUD! please
"The administration plans to attack public festivities in Chicago around Mexican Independence Day (which may include this weekend's parade in Pilsen or related activities) because they want to attack folks in settings where people will try to protect and hold onto community members"
How Should We Respond to the MAGA Right's Embrace of the Cult of Cruelty?
"Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That Fundamental Interests Of United States Of America Would Be Irreparably Harmed If It Race-Based Harassment And Detention By Masked Thugs Were Even Temporarily Halted"
Report shows top 400 richest Americans now taxed less than general population
One of the last, best hopes for saving the open web and a free press is dead
U.S. Nonprofit Fundraising to Buy Drones for Israeli Military in Gaza Genocide
"The degree to which Western countries are willing to humiliate their own citizens - and themselves - simply to enable Israel to continue to commit genocide, is beyond belief..."
"Too many educated American were demanding far more rights for the common people than the ruling elite were willing to give us. This made the top 0.1% panic. Hiking the rate of tuition and shackling young people with ridiculous amounts of debt is a form of social control"
No, I have not bought Schattenfroh when once I would have automatically and immediately attempted a read, I need finish at least one book I already own before I guy another, a rule I've honored for at least three years, it's saved me hundreds of dollars, I'm somewhere between just starting to almost finishing four novels and two books of poetry, I'll either finish something or not
The most-hyped cinderblock novel since the last most-hyped cinderblock novel, I'm staying out of bookstores though I'd love to just hold it as an object if not read it as a book lauded for its use of the German language in English translation (my issues w translations remain and increase) but I have no desire, not even an inclination to read it, and it occurs to me I did buy one novel before finishing one, Pynchon's new one, which I'll start as soon as it arrives and not by another book until I finish that
☟
Michael Lentz’s novel Schattenfroh portrays a dystopia in which consciousness itself is just another commodity
Whereas the moon, the sun, indifferent, do less than us dream, whereas the troubled store is looted and fired, whereas there is continuous taxes and rent and friend elected, hell swarms on him or his, whereas one is tired,
whereas is people so kind he near’ weep (furtiving a napkin) and suffer jazz; the jerk. Whereas he blows white and is lucky to do; sleep at this closed hour many enemies; whereas ever he hated work:
could not he be replaced in Paradise, with the Serpent, here now 35 feet long which can not sting? —Well, how we work it out? Don’t. Mr Bones, Ise prepared to come on heavy and strong on your side. Only: sing.
Still wet but already dying when photographed last night, the corpse this morning sucks, fine metaphors steer my head
Working in mediums that always dull and often die while drying very me. Busy weekend then driving to Michigan on Monday, might be bit before more appears here or there, there are no plans to not post from Michigan and no obligations to not not post from Michigan. Only settled plan is to disc when daughter working weekdays and spend time with daughter when she's available and drive/hike when she's not. Still TBD whether I take paint and glue and watercolor blocks with me, take them with me but leave them in the car, take them with me move them into the house and not use them, take them into the house from the car and use once, feel silly, and quit, take them with me move them into the house from the car and use once, feel silly, and get over it and paint. Reiterating my plan to not wear my tshirts with hammer and sickle on front and Crackers Are Weird on back. Honestly hoping to find the vibe fascinating, I'll let you know the vibe unless I don't. First vacation in 38 years without L, she's staying home to care for our elderly and sick cats. I don't know about here but tablets will be busy. I'm manic and a hot mess though not sideways or dark, strange. The new Basic album is terrific, who's not going to DC9 in December to see them with me?
"if her losing won’t change how the democratic party operates and her winning certainly will not, it sounds like this is a party that is irredeemably stuck in its ways and for anyone who wants something different should do just whatever they want cause nothing matters clearly :)"
You know, it's improbable but entirely possible Netanyahu wants the war to stop but has been told Fuck you, keep going, by his American handlers
"Kamala is asked to distinguish her policy on Israel from that of Trump. Blows right past the question and goes on an extended soliloquy about Hitler, Kim Jong Un, Putin, "hate," and Jan 6. Absolute parody of cloistered elite liberalism"
☝
I didn't think it possible for a Democrat to run a shittier campaign than Hillary but as always I underestimated the shittiness of Democrats
Worrying your family will be obliterated by a bomb and worrying your kid will see a person wearing a keffiyeh chanting Stop the Genocide are EXACTLY the same level of existential horror
Between 1970 and 2019, the American public shelled out the brain-bending sum of $32.5 billion for professional sports facilities. But what have they gotten in return?
I can't stop re-running in my head Trump's slump when Bibi refused payment on bill, kayfabe-breaker realizing his kayfabe's done broke, finished Nicholson Baker's *The Anthologist*, part one of Paul Chowder, it's weird about Baker and me, he's me - a more talented me - on the obsessively insistently seeking humor in a tube of toothpaste side, he finds funny what I do, it's like Murnane and me, it's that I already sorta write like Baker while thinking like he does but I don't write like Murnane (unless I'm reading Murnane at the time) though I think like *he* does, here's Fleabus two nights ago
Roxy Music's *Siren* released 45 years ago yesterday
DREAM SONG 133
John Berryman
As he grew famous - ah, but what is fame? - he lost his old obsession with his name, things seemed to matter less, including the fame - a television team came from another country to make a film of him which did not him distress:
he enjoyed the hard work & he was good at that, so they all said - the charming Englishmen among the camera & the lights mathematically wandered in his pub & livingroom doing their duty, as too he did it, but where are the delights
of long-for fame, unless fame makes him feel easy? I am cold & weary, said Henry, fame makes me feel lazy, yet I must do my best. It doesn't matter, truly. It doesn't matter truly. It seems to be solely a matter of continuing Henry voicing & obsessed.
DREAM SONG 29
John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odor, a chime.
And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.
But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.
DREAM SONG 105
John Berryman
As a kid I believed in democracy: I 'saw no alternative' - teaching at Big Place I ah put it in practice: we'd time for one long novel: to a vote - Gone With the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No" and we sat down with War & Peace. As a man I believed in democracy (nobody ever learns anything): only one lazy day my assistant, called James Dow, & I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds, and I said curious, 'What are your real politics?' 'Oh, I'm a monarchist.' Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science. I resign. The universal contempt for Mr. Nixon, whom I never liked but who alert & gutsy served us years under a dope, since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King maybe, before a few mindless votes.
Now in our rotation even though I saw or heard no ghosts (though crossing Ten Mile Creek ford on Old Baltimore (where we never parked to party) I heard Park Mrebilic scream fuck me when his car got stuck in ice a February night in 1978)
Operation Berniesmear kicked into high gear by motherfucking professional Democrats, do you know Sanders had the gall to point out Joe Biden voted vociferously for Bush's Iraq War, it's outrageous
Also the gall to point out Biden betrayed, betrays, and will betray African-Americans
Who motherfucking professional Democrats hate most second
As he grew famous - ah, but what is fame? - he lost his old obsession with his name, things seemed to matter less, including the fame - a television team came from another country to make a film of him which did not him distress:
he enjoyed the hard work & he was good at that, so they all said - the charming Englishmen among the camera & the lights mathematically wandered in his pub & livingroom doing their duty, as too he did it, but where are the delights
of long-for fame, unless fame makes him feel easy? I am cold & weary, said Henry, fame makes me feel lazy, yet I must do my best. It doesn't matter, truly. It doesn't matter truly. It seems to be solely a matter of continuing Henry voicing & obsessed.
DREAM SONG 29
John Berryman
There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart
só heavy, if he had a hundred years
& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time
Henry could not make good.
Starts again always in Henry’s ears
the little cough somewhere, an odor, a chime.
And there is another thing he has in mind
like a grave Sienese face a thousand years
would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,
with open eyes, he attends, blind.
All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;
thinking.
But never did Henry, as he thought he did,
end anyone and hacks her body up
and hide the pieces, where they may be found.
He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.
Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.
DREAM SONG 105
John Berryman
As a kid I believed in democracy: I 'saw no alternative' - teaching at Big Place I ah put it in practice: we'd time for one long novel: to a vote - Gone With the Wind they voted: I crunched 'No" and we sat down with War & Peace. As a man I believed in democracy (nobody ever learns anything): only one lazy day my assistant, called James Dow, & I were chatting, in a failure of meeting of minds, and I said curious, 'What are your real politics?' 'Oh, I'm a monarchist.' Finishing his dissertation, in Political Science. I resign. The universal contempt for Mr. Nixon, whom I never liked but who alert & gutsy served us years under a dope, since dynasty K swarmed in. Let's have a King maybe, before a few mindless votes.
