I Sense a Heaviness in Your Light Play, a Wish to Stand Out, Admired, From the Throng

A help-wanted ad for the Department of Homeland Security, fascist much? And my apologies, I, who underestimate Dump's survival instincts less than most, underestimated him this time, shitlords told him to focus on their shitlord business first, his gauche business second, threatened him (and will continue to threaten him, as will ossadmay) with Epstein (remember that? it was big news a week ago, hot and heavy), and Dump complied, skated, his usefulness to shitlords understandably keeping Dumpty on the wall (rimshot). As I type this sentence Sunday evening August 10th rumor is rampant he will militarize DC tomorrow. As I type this sentence Monday evening August 11th, yup. The shitlord business linked above requires, for now, a broken populace, starting the breakdown in the bluest (and black) city and capital of Magamerica is the sound business decision to start. Chicago's next. Let me say this about that:

This does not and never did exist in real life. The second after I photographed it it died a second ahead of second after second dying to dull muted flat half-colors by Monday late afternoon. I work water on paper, color dying the millisecond applied. This is natural. The bricks have been moved to another project

Besides, I cheat. The photo I took rotated 180 degrees from how I made it (like always, laugh, all these I make, my favorite uncanny me) and cropped to a rough square, and I juggled and enhanced exposure, contrast, and saturation with my chromebook's photothingee so what you are looking at is not what I made except it is

This is true of everything I post at the blog with the title that this blog just had for the last five days in its latest stupidass gag. This the periodical full disclosure, I think it must have been a year at least since the last, probably yesterday. The whatever they are called displayed here exist but not as they appear here. I have not been reading Murnane though I still write like him (I hear it, at least) at times from when I was devout. A few have even dried better than the altered ones displayed here. I give them to my wife and daughter who both, professionals, make art teacher noises of praise. In one of the oldest stupidass gags, almost as old as the stupidass gag where I proudly honor stupidass gags by relentless repeating, fine metaphors abound. Vital reminder:





The lead story as I type this this morning at 830am EDT in the New York Times is headlined FOR TRUMP, CITIES LIKE WASHINGTON ARE REAL ESTATE IN NEED OF FIXING UP because, sure, that's Trump's primary motive for militarizing DC, when my house needed a new roof five years ago I called in the Marines. Not that any major Democrat will bark at the clusterfuck but if one did we'd never know it. There's a link in the grid to an article that applies Kübler-Ross' Five Stages of Grief to you and me and the clusterfuck, that's how irreversible, just like death, your inevitable clusterfuckization and enshittification and immiseration are, don't take it personally, it's just a real estate transaction. One of my oldest gags here: shitlords' actuaries and accountants have run the numbers, shitlords are on the clock in the fucking of you up and they know it and billeting soldiers in your head a key early component. No one is going to fight for us, we need to fight like Bobby. E-A-B, E-A-B-A. We don't have a wah-wah pedal

Speaking reassurance to power
From Collapse Awareness to Collapse Acceptance
"Civilisation is no longer the norm"
Doctors Without Frontiers: This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing.
"Deadly “humanitarian aid” theater. There is no reason for air drops. The governments of Western savagery and their shameless Arab vassals could compel the holocaust regime to open the gates to the thousands of aid trucks. But they are all willfully complicit in the genocide"
Israel Assassinates More Journalists To Hide Its Planned War Crimes
The Brainrot of a Nazified Society
Israel killing all the journalists is just like the mafia killing all the eye witnesses
As Sisi Accuses Israel of Genocide, Egypt Signs Record $35 Billion Gas Deal with Israel
Israel plans final liquidation of Gaza, murdering final witnesses
"The British regime has been arresting grannies all day for declaring their support for an antiwar group, Palestine Action, which London proscribed as a terrorist group even though it has never engaged in violence"
The Rise of Liberals’ One Bad Man Theory to Explain Away Gaza Genocide
"There is no policy arena in which Democrats have a unified belief that can be communicated to voters. Not on a $15 minimum wage, not on universal healthcare, not on student loan debt, etc. Even as some are signing onto legislation to ban weapons to Israel, another group is on an AIPAC sponsored tour"
I have been screaming that motherfucking crackerchristers are evil motherfucking psychopathic shitstains since I was thirteen motherfucking 53 years ago (in two weeks or so), now a drunk one is Secretary of Defense
The Aryan Freedom Network is riding high in Trump era
➥	"You know, for the first time in my decades of life I've actually thought about buying a gun to protect myself from these crackerfucks - not seriously thought about it, as in I still can't imagine doing so, but it is now not beyond the realm of possibility"
Democrats agree with this cracker being booed off the stage because Democrats are paid by the same people as the cracker
"very easy slam dunk issue for Dems that will be ignored because their consultants are scared of trans athlete polling"
"Total 🦗 from the “socialism” crowd that spent the last 50 years accusing <checks notes> the Democrats of not respecting private property, free markets, limited government, the Marketplace Of Ideas, & the very sacred institution of Capitalism"
"The CEO of a a multi-trillion dollar company went to the White House, openly handed the US president a gift made of gold, and his company got a special exemption to tariffs the president has illegally imposed"
"At this point, it doesn't matter what the fascist reaction would've been to similar behaviour by Obama. The only thing that matters now is destroying the MAGA movement by any means necessary and confiscating the wealth of its leaders and backers"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
Millionaire on billionaire violence
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
Taking seriously the threat to organized labor
Shitlords want to, and will, steal your retirement money
The Misuse of René Girard by Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance and the American Right
The Secret Cost of Data Centers
How Baltimore became a rising star in America’s worker cooperative movement
Three acts of thought				Yellowjackets		Maggie
As someone who grew up in Gaithersburg I feel obligated to say Fuck Montgomery Village, fucking-A you're not Gaithersburg
pottery requests			AI and The Modern Tower Of Babel
A List of 1,065 Medieval Dog Names
How the Poet James Schuyler Wrung Sense from Sensibility					{ feuilleton }
➥	Dining Out With Doug and Frank

[I do not always understand what you say]

James Schuyler

I do not always understand what you say.
Once, when you said, across, you meant along.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

Words' meanings count, aside from what they weigh:
poetry, like music, is not just song.
I do not always understand what you say.

You would hate, when with me, to meet by day
What at night you met and did not think wrong.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

I sense a heaviness in your light play,
a wish to stand out, admired, from the throng.
I do not always understand what you say.

I am as shy as you. Try as we may,
only by practice will our talks prolong.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

We talk together in a common way.
Art, like death, is brief: life and friendship long.
I do not always understand what you say.
What is, is by its nature, on display.

The Ideas Are Still the Same, and They Expand to Fill Vast Antique Cubes

Crocus Behemoth's birthday is the day after tomorrow, Friday the 14th, he'll be seventy, today is Danny Husk's 65th birthday

Now NOT an ongoinggag, or at least now now-and-then and NOT an obsessive always as once, Pere Ubu, Two Pale Boys, and all David Thomas projects were and are one of two permanent members of My Silly-Ass Deserted Island Five Game for music, and if I don't deliberately play Pere Ubu now (as I don't Kate Bush, the other of two) it's not divorce but not needing to play, not boredom with the music, I can play any song I want in my head when I want to hear one, and ones begin playing in my head without my putting quarters in my mind's jukebox. But choose an album and put it on and listen end-to-end, no, no no no

This is true also of some of the innermost circle of musicians and bands that shuffle in and out of the three rotating seats in MSADI5G - I don't need to play Lindsay Buckingham or Grateful Dead or George Harrison or Roxy Music or the first five Peter Gabriel solo albums or New Order or The Fall or Swans or PJ Harvey or This Heat or Morton Feldman or Shostakovich or Richard Thompson or XTC of any of the dozens I'm forgetting, and I'm getting close to never needing to play Destroyer and Lambchop, at least the older albums, ever again. I have no idea who the three members of the rotating seats are now and have no interest in thinking about it and less than zero interest in naming the current three





Was at that show in Harrisburg. I hadn't planned on making a standalone birthday post of Thomas on Friday - that's another ongoinggag, the birthday standalones, I've ceased honoring the obligatory - though if there IS a post on Friday I'll play more Pere Ubu or a Two Pale Boys song, but I doubt there will be a post since my daughter will be in town and I'm spending time with her tomorrow through Saturday, I'm almost 65 myself, am I finally weening myself from the ongoinggag that is this shitty blog (while insisting still that every post IS a poem)? I tell myself I'd like to kill the clusterfucklust that relentlessly drives my mind and imagine a year of me and mine homesteading digitalessly and know I'd last a week. Bleggalgazing remains an ongoinggag and the reason this shitty blog won't shut the fuck up. Scott Thompson has one of five permanent seats in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game for favorite Kids in the Hall members, and Buddy Cole is 65 today

"Obscure Jewish heretic whose execution by occupying empire creates new religion that spends 1500 years killing Jews then helps them found nation state in order to hasten their conversion to new religion thanked by Jewish citizen of nation state for backing their own occupation"
Biden Admin Endorses Trump’s Saudi Foreign Policy
⬆	When I yodel about how hinky the Gazan War is a key component is (a) how much the Saudis are driving the bus and (b) how in a world of shitlord blabbermouths the uniformity of silence about the Saudi role is hinky as fuck						⬆
"The collapse of a global hegemon is always an extremely dangerous time"
Israel and the Misjudgement of Reality
"Every Democrat taking AIPAC donations is a right-wing sociopath disrupting US democracy"
Democrats when Trump is doing something bad VS Democrats when Biden is doing the same thing
"It reveals something deeply disturbing about our Christianity when we demand the government enforce the most literal and harsh interpretations of the few Bible verses about human sexuality, yet oppose the government carrying out any of the +3,000 verses about caring for the poor"
➡	Read the comments and see how many are angry and genuinely resent caring for the poor of a different hue than themselves
"No longer trying to ‘avoid World War III,’ Biden floats nuclear arms race"
Counterpoint: Hillary Clinton FULLY grasps the moral power of this turning tide
"Blinken Going Around Saying Bibi Invented This Ceasefire Proposal While Bibi Says He Would Never Accept It Is Some Serious Weird Shit"
ISRAEL'S DESCENT				Euphemizing Genocide
"When Israel Burned Refugees Alive, Establishment Media Called It a ‘Tragic Accident’"
SHITTIEST COMEDY TEAM EVER!
Today in ACAB: ABUSED BY THE BADGE
⬆	Anyone even slightly surprised by this is complicit in the crimes						⬆
"The FBI will bring felony charges against a doctor accused of leaking the private health data of transgender youth to Chris Rufo. Dr. Eithan Haim has admitted to leaking partially redacted medical records he accessed while working as a resident at Texas Children’s Hospital"
On professional wrestling and American politics
Reason infinity times twenty to hate CVS and reminder to NEVER shop there
Maggie'sweekly		The US numbered highway system in numerical order
THE ART OF INTERESTING CONVERSATION IS NOT DEAD
African elephants address one another with individually specific name-like calls
Mixing (or ignoring) metaphors					{ feuilleton }'s
The history of Maryland's lost city
Yes, Ashbery is one of two or three permanent members of my poets' MSADI5G and I *am* still constantly and compulsively and happily rereading them poems over-and-over (even if I haven't yet got my "It hurts this wanting to give a dimension to life when life is precisely that dimension tattoo")
Remembering Françoise Hardy
Actually, I can name one of the current three rotating members of MSADI5G and I do play his albums end-to-end often:

NO LONGER VERY CLEAR

John Ashbery

It is true that I can no longer remember very well
the time when we first began to know each other.
However, I do remember very well
the time we first met. You walked in sunlight,
holding a daisy. You said, "Children make unreliable witnesses."

Now, so long after that time,
I keep the spirit of it throbbing still.
The ideas are still the same, and they expand
to fill vast, antique cubes.

My daughter was reading one just the other day.
She said, "How like the pellucid statues, Daddy. Or like a...
an engine"

In this house of blues the cold creeps stealthily upon us.
I do not do what I fantasize doing.
With time the blue congeals into roomlike purple
that takes the shape of alcoves, landings...
Everything is like something else.
I should have waited before I learned this.

This Bloody Episode of Four Who I Could Understand Better Dead

I think this why, when I use my complicit access to Kids in the Hall Season Six (as they call it), though the nostalgia rushes pop and who am I to complain about about recurring gags, the times, they've out run Kids in the Hall (though Motormouth and Melanie I thought A+)
NO WAY OUT BUT WAR!
⇪	"The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon."						⇪
American Times, Roman Morals
Shitlords preparing for your anger at your worsening precarity
Misinformation on misinformation
Selling the story on disinformation
⇪	Like other pathological reactions to trauma						⇪
Destroying Florida's ecology for profit
The direct correlation between white supremacy (and patriarchy) and American/Western shitlord warlordism, you're soaking in it (who am I to complain about old gags?)
Did the Democrats fuck it up?
Destroying public education the neverending fuck you
Yinz really don't like it when I rag you about helmetball and your complicit addiction to it, he types into free shitlord blogging platform obsessively
Capitalism's self-preservation society
Ranking the GOP 2024 Potus field
⇪	Virginia's Youngkin already cracker-branded a rino forever because he didn't order state police to beat the shit out of protesters outside a scotus house, and my governor, Larry Hogan, a popular Republican in a reliable Blue State with presidential aspirations as The Sane Republican didn't break the Top Ten						⇪
FRESH HELL				Maggie's weekly
I have been asked to serve on *Library Staff Excellence Awards Selection Committee,* it's as horribly uncomfortably judgy as it sounds, the email went out to ten of us, the chair needs three (disclaimer: I like the chair), I wrote back, E, laugh, surely three of the nine will leap to join you but if no then yes, I know that would delight you, I trust you not to deny a third to make me
Local radio news anchor versus Ric Flair
The principle of assholsity must stand		Mike Davis interview				25th Amendment problem
Stone Age Brain				{ feuilleton }'s weekly
I Am Small, Season 62, Episode Whatever: The Nationals suck, the Lerners must be bleeding out, while Dave on local pxp still gives a professional fuck, Charlie mailing it in, here's rooting for the Lerner's to bleed out
Someone has been reading Elkin and wrote about it
The local helmetball team relocating to Prince William County will save me in Maryland one-hundreth of a penny on the dollar, bye! it's my smallness, Season 62, Episode Whatever
Mark Ford reviews the Collected Letters of Thom Gunn

THE ENTERTAINMENT OF WAR

Roy Fisher

I saw the garden where my aunt had died

And her two children and a woman from next door;

It was like a burst pod filled with clay.

 

A mile away in the night I had heard the bombs

Sing and then burst themselves between cramped houses

With bright soft flashes and sounds like banging doors;

 

The last of them crushed the four bodies into the ground,

Scattered the shelter, and blasted my uncle’s corpse

Over the housetop and into the street beyond.

 

Now the garden lay stripped and stale; the iron shelter

Spread out its separate petals around a smooth clay saucer.

Small, and so tidy it seemed nobody had ever been there.

 

When I saw it, the house was blown clean by blast and care.

Relations had already torn out the new fireplaces;

My cousin’s pencils lasted me several years.

 

And in his office notepad that was given me

I found solemn drawings in crayon of blondes without dresses.

In his lifetime I had not known him well.

 

These were the things I noticed at ten years of age:

Those, and the four hearses outside our house,

The chocolate cakes, and my classmates’ half-shocked envy.

 

But my grandfather went home from the mortuary

And for five years tried to share the noises in his skull,

Then he walked out and lay under a furze-bush to die.

 

When my father came back from identifying the daughter

He asked us to remind him of her mouth.

We tried. He said ‘I think it was the one’.

 

These were marginal people I had met only rarely

And the end of the whole household meant that no grief was seen;

Never have people seemed so absent from their own deaths.

 

This bloody episode of four whom I could understand better dead

Gave me something I needed to keep a long story moving;

I had no pain of it; can find no scar even now.

 

But had my belief in the fiction not been thus buoyed up

I might, in the sigh and strike of the next night’s bombs

Have realized a little what they meant, and for the first time been afraid.

We Must Reach the Shallows Before God Cuts Us Free

• Riding the bus to Manhattan with Earthgirl this Sunday
• her afternoon fun w cousin
• my afternoon walking below Houston
• anything you wouldn't miss if there please say
• Might slice McElroy's
• bookloaf
• salami
• thin
• want a sandwich on the bus
• not yoke loaf over Manhattan
• blade
• clean
• chapter
• cut like a catfood drugged captured feral 
• I have first edition hardback
• buy another paperback
• guilty killing sentient bookloafs
• I've never done this o am I gonna

• Or I could fretclusterfuck, butfuckit
• Happy Birthday, Elric! (re: the
• above you
• tube)  What time will it be
• after Capitalism?
• WHAT IS THIS! Swans news!
• The Necks on two of the songs my heart

A WORLDLY COUNTRY

John Ashbery

Not the smoothness, not the insane clocks on the square,

the scent of manure in the municipal parterre,

not the fabrics, the sullen mockery of Tweety Bird,

not the fresh troops that needed freshening up. If it occurred

in real time, it was OK, and if it was time in a novel

that was OK too. From palace and hovel

the great parade flooded avenue and byway

and turnip fields became just another highway.

Leftover bonbons were thrown to the chickens

and geese, who squawked like the very dickens.

There was no peace in the bathroom, none in the china closet

or the banks, where no one came to make a deposit.

In short all hell broke loose that wide afternoon.

By evening all was calm again. A crescent moon

hung in the sky like a parrot on its perch.

Departing guests smiled and called, "See you in church!"

For night, as usual, knew what it was doing,

providing sleep to offset the great ungluing

that tomorrow again would surely bring.

As I gazed at the quiet rubble, one thing

puzzled me: What had happened, and why?

One minute we were up to our necks in rebelliousness,

and the next, peace had subdued the ranks of hellishness.

  

So often it happens that the time we turn around in

soon becomes the shoal our pathetic skiff will run aground in.

And just as waves are anchored to the bottom of the sea

we must reach the shallows before God cuts us free.