Furnacy End of This Hollow Rope

Read that ▲ out loud.

William Gass describes his tunnel, his project, page 163. Only now is he starting to dig. I know you're too smart to have a clean conscience. Still, let Gass interrogate you. Lordy, when you laugh wince recoil in self-recognition. You will stare at the hole the hole has left.

I wish I'd taken The Tunnel, the punniest, angriest, funniest I've ever to Maine. I could have read it out loud - when Earthgirl was painting on the trail I could have wandered off to a rock, when Earthgirl was painting off in kayak I could have read aloud on porch. Here, I read this out loud, quick, look around, see there are no witnesses, try it:

• Or not. I read better loud than silent.
• Wait. You need a copy?
• Bog-face.
• The coming of the post-Liberal era.
• While you watch torture porn.
• Satan endorses Clinton.
• Full-Panic Mode! It's Politico, so... but one of my Hillaryite Colleagues is happy-dancing, convinced the next two debates will TKO Trump. I said, w the Clintons - how much fair, how much unfair, ymmv - there is always another shoe-to-drop the second it looks like clear sailing. HC said, Trump Trump Trump Trump. It started to rain. Hard. Today was Farmer's Market day in Red Square. I said, in past election years here the Hilltop Student Republicans and the Hilltop Student Democrats would have been tabling Leavey Center, Red Square, Main Gate, everyday in September, October. There would flyers up in the Library of debates, rallies. Signs in dorm windows. There's nothing. HC said, I don't understand, don't they know it's their future? I said, of course they do. Rain amped to pouring. She's gonna win, HC shouted, running off without an umbrella.
• Why no one is talking about SCOTUS.
• Unpacking "alt."
• Did you know there was a prison work strike?
• Old weird and new weird.
• KM4.
• Gravity's Rainbow, page 256.
• Two hours of Trish Keenan (Broadcast) songs.
• 50 best ambient albums of all time? 
• On Fleetwood Mac's Mirage. I don't love all Fleetwood Mac (all versions), but I do love Buckingham's Fleetwood Mac songs. I'm stupid for Buckingham's music. His birthday in four days, lots of his music then.
• UPDATE: copyright killed the Buckingham. I laugh at your copyright.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR / 5

Matthea Harvey

If there were gamebirds in our gables,

shouldn’t we shoot them ourselves?

Thus we went glass-faced into glory.   

We had our hearts set on staying here,

so our steps seemed more hesitation

waltz than straight-ahead tango.   

We danced the hokey pokey on holy days—

put your left arm in heaven, your right leg in hell

and in the hubbub of shake-it-all-about,

we didn’t hear the hoofbeats. The illuminati

spoke to us over the intercom via interpreters.

Meanwhile we had iodine dribbling from

our wounds and itch mites in our blankets.

Ours was not a job to joke about.   

In the lantern-light, the lawn speckled

with lead looked lovely. We would live this

down by living it up. My pile of looseleaf

was getting smaller—I wrote in margins,   

through marmalade stains, on the backs of maps.   

I put a piece of mica in the microwave and before

the explosion it made the mirage I’d imagined.

I was hoping for a noticeable increase in nutmeats

or a one night stand in the oubliette. I outwept

everyone at the pageant, even the children

from the poorhouse playing possum.

We studied the protocol for astronaut removal

the minute we saw his spit hit planet earth

on the spaceship window. But though the scandal

reverberated round-the-clock, we had to let it

slide. He was up there turning somersaults

while we spun ever-so-slowly below.

Wootful Filler

▲ !My this-coming Friday night! ▲

►!Major High Egoslavian Holy Day tomorrow! ◄

▼!My next week! ▼

▼ UPDATE! Alas, today, me, at work.▼

Meanwhile We Had Iodine Dribbling from Our Wounds and Itch Mites in Our Blankets

The traditional Egoslavian Rick Nielsen paragraph:

Rick Nielsen is sixty-eight today. Sixty-eight. Sixty-fucking-eight. My Standard Cheap Trick Disclaimer: I love a third of Cheap Trick songs, meh another third, loathe the remaining third, they were on the daily soundtrack three decades ago, shoot me. That's today's monologue.

• A better way out.
• Giftmas is not about being a crazy sonofabitch.
• Maybe, but it's not that. Processing this shit either takes longer for me now than once or I've never processed this kind of shit before. For instance, this (found here). So much to unpack. Also too: Death to the Either/Or.
• For instance: finally, a Union that proudly fights for its members and receives plaudits of appreciation from those who hate all other Unions. And visa versa.
• For instance this.
• I offer these without snark. That's another difference from before.
• Snark? On the front page of Salon as of 8:45 AM EST 12/22/14:

• I stole this from a tweet I can't find now: Muslim goes on shooting spree, condemn the whole religion; black man goes on shooting spree, condemn the whole race; white man goes on shooting spree, deranged lone gunman. Wait, that's not different than before.
• Also too. Wait, that's not different either.
• Also different now: I have too much faith in the Triskelions, they have realized the game is which Triskelion dies the richest, there's no limit of shittiness they won't use. Wait, all that's different is that they don't pretend to societal beneficence any more.

• When white men love black women on TV.
• Foucault and neoliberalism: the debate continues.
• Constellations: Control/Crisis/Junk: This is an important point to make: beyond the profit motivations of multinational corporations, military operations and the borderless surveillance state, big data plays a fundamental and necessary role in our lives. It contributes to an overall ease of life in every domain, from the bulk data-basing and analysis in healthcare to the massive logistics involved in transportation of people and goods around the globe. Big data is a media construct, and it is through its mediation that we grasp the scope of the world’s messy mesh. Knowledge of climate change itself has only been capable through the existence of big data, careful monitoring, sensor webs, and cybernetic technologies of feedback. All technics, ultimately, are xenotechnics that can help sustain the fleshy shell of the human. Big data technologies are no different.
• About that new Cuba policy.
• The New Inquiry's Sunday readings.
• I am unfamiliar with Janice Lee (and will fix that) but she says smart things about apocalypses, including stuff about Krasznahorkai.
• More on Mason & Dixon.
• Dear Mademoiselle Fi, I unfollowed because I can't take the photos, not because I don't admire what you do. It's the elephants in chains photos - they make my head explode.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR/5

Matthea Harvey

If there were gamebirds in our gables,

shouldn’t we shoot them ourselves?

Thus we went glass-faced into glory.   

We had our hearts set on staying here,

so our steps seemed more hesitation

waltz than straight-ahead tango.   

We danced the hokey pokey on holy days—

put your left arm in heaven, your right leg in hell

and in the hubbub of shake-it-all-about,

we didn’t hear the hoofbeats. The illuminati

spoke to us over the intercom via interpreters.

Meanwhile we had iodine dribbling from

our wounds and itch mites in our blankets.

Ours was not a job to joke about.   

In the lantern-light, the lawn speckled

with lead looked lovely. We would live this

down by living it up. My pile of looseleaf

was getting smaller—I wrote in margins,   

through marmalade stains, on the backs of maps.   

I put a piece of mica in the microwave and before

the explosion it made the mirage I’d imagined.

I was hoping for a noticeable increase in nutmeats

or a one night stand in the oubliette. I outwept

everyone at the pageant, even the children

from the poorhouse playing possum.

We studied the protocol for astronaut removal

the minute we saw his spit hit planet earth

on the spaceship window. But though the scandal

reverberated round-the-clock, we had to let it

slide. He was up there turning somersaults

while we spun ever-so-slowly below.

But If I Didn't Make the Ham Flowers, How Can I Make Him Get Up? or: Born 244 Years Ago Today

• Forgive me, I don't love all Beethoven but what I do I love, think everything with a maximum ensemble of four, three better, two better yet, one best, I love. He was born 244 years ago today.
• Send Arthur and his cats the coins in your pocket, please.
• Salaita revisited.
• A depraved population IS the plan.
• Hoback sighting! See, this is why I recommend keeping a Moribund blogroll! I may have, probably would have caught it in a busy blogroll, but maybe not!
• Whatever happened to Zappadan? I'm not the one to start it - I'm a Beefheart guy - but where are all the Zappa freaks?
• UPDATE! A (not mine) bleggalgaze.
• Foucault and neoliberalism.
• Hell.
• Heavy Weather.
• Thank you who sent Kind the past week. I do recognize the echo - someday I'll merge.
• This week in water.
• How did I miss the World Cup of Arm-Folding?
• Breams of the sea-rabbit fiend.
• Rules of VNTY'SJNKYRD.
• Thanking my mother for piano lessons.
• SeatSix sent me this last night, Every Star Trek Episode Ranked. "Inner Light" is two, "Darmok" is five, they should be one/two. I tweeted out last night - I don't know if that's what prompted SeatSix to send the link - that I had just watched an Original episode, "Requiem for Methuselah," one of the stupidest fucking fifty minutes of television ever. I had forgot. In two hours Kirk falls hopelessly in love with Brahms da Vinci's android sex toy. I've watched a few Original episodes since I finished watching DS9 from start to finish. Christ, it's shitty, mostly, and fat with filler. It's true there was less commercial time in the Original that TNG and DS9 - Originals are 50 minutes, TNG and DS9 45, but that five minutes is all bullshit filler.
• Elegy.
• New Modest Mouse song. New album out soon. Forgive me, I like Modest Mouse.
• Sonata.

IMPLICATIONS FOR MODERN LIFE

Matthea Harvey

The ham flowers have veins and are rimmed in rind, each petal a little meat sunset. I deny all connection with the ham flowers, the barge floating by loaded with lard, the white flagstones like platelets in the blood-red road. I’ll put the calves in coats so the ravens can’t gore them, bandage up the cut gate and when the wind rustles its muscles, I’ll gather the seeds and burn them. But then I see a horse lying on the side of the road and think You are sleeping, you are sleeping, I will make you be sleeping. But if I didn’t make the ham flowers, how can I make him get up? I made the ham flowers. Get up, dear animal. Here is your pasture flecked with pink, your oily river, your bleeding barn. Decide what to look at and how. If you lower your lashes, the blood looks like mud. If you stay, I will find you fresh hay.

We Studied the Protocol for Astronaut Removal the Minute We Saw His Spit Hit Planet Earth on the Spaceship Window

That's new Pere Ubu. >>Standard Pere Ubu/MSADI5G noise<< Rest of monologue on USMNT/Soccer, there are some very good links below the next song, if you don't want the soccer (and the majority of you don't want the soccer) please scroll down, the links are good.

Belgium is better, has better players, it's not even close. The USMNT had a chance to win, zero-zero in stoppage, a ball on Wondolowski's foot in front of an open goal, he gacked the sitter, he will be waking up screaming in the middle of the night the rest of his life. Let me be the zillionth person to note that but for Tim Howard's spectacular goal-keeping the scone would not have been zero-zero in stoppage. Once Belgium scored their second goal in extra-time I resorted to brazen Baal-taunting: I turned off the TV to go out to dinner in order to spark one of the most remarkable extra-time comebacks in World Cup history (people can vouch this is true), and from what Tommy Smith yelled through my car radio speakers it should have happened but Dempsey gacked a sitter. I tried my best.

2016 is the Centennial Copa America, hosted by USA, the first time CONMEBOL has invited CONCACAF to the tournament.* Klinsmann was widely criticized when he said the USMNT could not win this World Cup. I think he thinks - and correctly - that a deep run in Copa 2016 is possible, certainly more probable than a deep run in this World Cup, and I think he thinks - and correctly - that WC 2014 is the beginning of the build to Copa 2016 and World Cup 2018. He learned - I'm sure he knew - that midfield is the problem. I'm not going to make Michael Bradley the scapegoat (though his suck was stunning) - the midfield as a whole was the great USMNT weakness. I am shocked that Graham Zusi performed so miserably, he's one of the five best players in MLS. Jermaine Jones is old, may make the Copa team, won't make WC 2018. Bedoya is as good as he will ever be, is decent on defense, useless on offense. In a knockout game of the World Cup Klinsmann chose a central defender to be holding midfielder (I don't know why: Beckerman had been good, someone speculated on twitter that Klinsmann wanted Beckerman, sitting on a yellow, available for the next round, and, um, fuck that). It's true I don't pay attention to MLS as much as once, but I'm not aware the next generation of American midfielders (or strikers, for that matter) is particularly flush. This may be the USMNT's plateau, and that's fine.

As for what WC 2014 means for US soccer re: fan support, American culture, the Left/Right divide in American political discourse, fuck that, quick, join me, escape with me:

• The 18th Brumaire of Samuel Alito.
• Greenwald's Fireworks Finale postponed.
• Hegelian Aesthetics and the Bronzed Turd: on retrospectives.
• We are each either among the demoralized showing the way to a future of eternal nightmare, or we are losers celebrating our moment in hell.
• What if speech and silence aren't really opposites.
• Eternalization.
• Regeneration seeks amnesia.
• On the dishonest politics of a dust-up in Literary World.
• The Ethics of Being a Fan.
• * I have been yodeling for years that CONCACAF and CONMEBAL should merge into one giant federation, not only is there too much $$$$ to be made for the soccer mafia, it would improve the soccer of all nations involved.
• All the teams that banned sex have been eliminated.
• What you can buy me for my birthday.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR/5

Matthea Harvey

If there were gamebirds in our gables,

shouldn’t we shoot them ourselves?

Thus we went glass-faced into glory.   

We had our hearts set on staying here,

so our steps seemed more hesitation

waltz than straight-ahead tango.   

We danced the hokey pokey on holy days—

put your left arm in heaven, your right leg in hell

and in the hubbub of shake-it-all-about,

we didn’t hear the hoofbeats. The illuminati

spoke to us over the intercom via interpreters.

Meanwhile we had iodine dribbling from

our wounds and itch mites in our blankets.

Ours was not a job to joke about.   

In the lantern-light, the lawn speckled

with lead looked lovely. We would live this

down by living it up. My pile of looseleaf

was getting smaller—I wrote in margins,   

through marmalade stains, on the backs of maps.   

I put a piece of mica in the microwave and before

the explosion it made the mirage I’d imagined.

I was hoping for a noticeable increase in nutmeats

or a one night stand in the oubliette. I outwept

everyone at the pageant, even the children

from the poorhouse playing possum.

We studied the protocol for astronaut removal

the minute we saw his spit hit planet earth

on the spaceship window. But though the scandal

reverberated round-the-clock, we had to let it

slide. He was up there turning somersaults

while we spun ever-so-slowly below.

There Is No Time Like Now That Is Not Like Now

That behemoth was on a new book truck last week. I hadn't thought of Robert Duncan in years. I read some poems in my 20s at friends' recommendations; I liked what I read when it was handed to me or I stumbled upon it in a magazine or journal, and while it didn't sing to me enough to stay in my head it didn't screech at me enough to discourage me from picking up that behemoth off the new book truck last week. I opened it at random and this is the first poem I read:


STRAINS OF SIGHT

Robert Duncan

1

He brought a light so she could see
Adam move nakedly in the lighted room.
It was a window in the tree.
It was a shelter where there was none.

She saw his naked back and thigh
and heard the notes of a melody
where Adam out of his nature came
into four walls, roof, and floor.

He turnd on the light and turnd back,
moving with grace to catch her eye.
She saw his naked loneliness.

Now I shall never rest, she sighd,
until he strips his heart for me.
The body flashes such thoughts of death
so that time leaps up, and a man's hand

seen naked catches upon my breath
the risk we took in Paradise.
The serpent thought before the tomb
laid naked, naked, naked before the eyes,

reflects upon itself in a bare room.


2

In the questioning phrase the voice
-- he raises his eyes from the page --
follows towards some last
curve of the air, suspended above

its sign, that point, that  .
And asks, Who am I then?
Where am I going? There is no time
like now that is not like now.

Who?      turns upon some body where
the hand striving to tune
curves of the first lute whose strings are nerves
sees in the touch the phrase will

rise    .    break
as the voice does? above some moving obscurity

ripples out in the disturbd pool,
shadows and showings where we would read
-- raising his eyes from the body's lure --

what the question is,
where the heart reflects.



So, I know more of what I'll be reading this year. And praise, of course, to Serendipity. Yesterday, reading through Silliman's lastest lit-links, I found Robert Duncan and Jess, and Their Wonderland of Art. I did know that Jack Spicer was Duncan's "rivalrous frenemy," though I confess, rereading Spicer as much as I do it didn't occur to me to pick up Duncan. I did not know that "Duncan’s parents had been committed Theosophists who told him he was a spiritually chosen being, a former citizen of Atlantis, no less."

• I know I'm repeating myself, but this has been and is the weirdest Winter of snot I can remember.
• The DUH! you knew was there.
• Please consider throwing Arthur Silber the coins in your pocket.
• Agamben, for those of you who do: The materialization in space of this zone of indifference is the video surveillance of the streets and the squares of our cities. Here again an apparatus that had been conceived for the prisons  has been extended to public places. But it is evident that a video recorded place is no more an agora and becomes a hybrid of public and private, a zone of indifference between the prison and the forum. This transformation of the political space is certainly a complex phenomenon, that involves a multiplicity of causes, and among them the birth of biopower holds a special place. The primacy of the biological identity over the political identity is certainly linked to the politicization of bare life in modern states. But one should never forget that the leveling of social identity on body identity begun with the attempt to identify the recidivist criminals. We should not be astonished if today the normal relationship between the state and its citizens is defined by suspicion, police filing and control. The unspoken principle which rules our society can be stated like that: every citizen is a potential terrorist. But what is a State which is ruled by such a principle? Can we still define it as democratic State? Can we even consider it as being something political? In which kind of State do we live today?
• Life, satisfaction, help, comfort....
• Being About Aboutness: On the radio this morning, I heard an interview with a novelist. This interview went as interviews with novelists in popular media typically go—there was a little talk about the characters she had created and a very little talk about the way the book had been written, and a great deal of talk about the book’s “subject,” which, in this case, happened to be Zen Buddhism (there was more to it, but the point is, I really don’t care what the book was about). This author was only too happy to talk about Buddhism, since she was—whaddyaknow—a practicing Buddhist! She was all too happy to throw over her novel as a topic for discussion so that she could talk about the research that had preceded the writing of it (she may as well have talked about the Cuban missile crisis, or Care Bears, or Watergate). I mean, really, why talk about fiction when one can talk about Zen Buddhism? Not even a novelist wants to talk about the novel when she can talk about Buddhism.
• Speaking of Serendipity: yesterday I typed in a Matthea Harvey poem, this morning I find this: 

• A word about Hollowtide because three have asked: yes, this is where I write these, they are never finished but abandoned and not necessarily forever. I suspect this may be a passing experiment but as of right now I find the process of editing live in a published medium fascinating. Once a poem has been edited the previous version is not archived. For instance, the latest changed last night. The version from yesterday morning is gone. Sometimes tis is stupid - I've deleted stuff I wish I had back. But no cheating. Not writing lines in tablet. What the fuck is a tablet? Ink? It only matters to me, and I'm the only person I consciously cheat. I reserve the right to reuse any deleted lines in future posts. I'm thinking of...  I'm having fun, forgive me.
• It's making me manic, perhaps you can tell. I like it, forgive me.
• For example, I tweeted. in my manic happiness, a bleggal overlord a link I thought he would like, what a dope I am.
• That won't cause boom fall down, though for each up there's a boom fall down.
• Timeless.
• Food links, anyone?
• Yes yes yes, it occurs to me posting Bastien pieces the day after finding my wife, my father (who I've apparently trained to sing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights), and my brother mocked my musical taste strikes me as sweetly bwahaha, again, it's a happy unintended consequence....
• Yes, I've posted the below piece within the past six months, I like it, forgive me.

CHILDHOOD'S RETREAT

Robert Duncan

It’s in the perilous boughs of the tree   

out of blue sky    the wind   

sings loudest surrounding me.

And solitude,   a wild solitude

’s reveald,   fearfully,   high     I’d climb   

into the shaking uncertainties,

part out of longing,   part     daring my self,

part to see that

widening of the world,   part

to find my own, my secret

hiding sense and place, where from afar   

all voices and scenes come back

—the barking of a dog,   autumnal burnings,

far calls,   close calls—   the boy I was

calls out to me

here the man where I am   “Look!

I’ve been where you

most fear to be.”

Never Mind That We Could Only Grow Gray Things

Nobody claimed the Elkin when it was offered a few days ago, but Dalkey Press sent me an email yesterday saying it had shipped both Part One and Part Two of Marguerite Young's Miss McIntosh, My Darling after an representative emailed me last week saying Dalkey was out of Part Two, was unlikely to get more, did I want another title, and  I asked for a Stanley Elkin The Franchiser with the intention - hence the offer - of giving it away here. (And I ordered, and already received, Part Two through an evil motherfucker's company, I've never denied here my complicity.) So if I get The Franchiser it's still available to claim, if I get Part Two of Miss McIntosh, My Darling, it's yours if you want, why would you want Part Two of a novel I've no idea, I'll no doubt own two until I next bag up books and give to local public library to sell when I'm clearing out shelf space for more books.

UPDATE! Dalkey just sent me a $1.20 refund on my purchase, the exact difference between Elkin's The Franchiser and Part Two of Miss McIntosh, so I assume I'm getting the Elkin, which Jim claimed this morning in comments.

• Chris Watson interview.
• Look who's alive!
• I'd written about the Coke ad during the Helmet Bowl where America the Beautiful was sang in different languages by different ethnic groups and my knee-jerk reaction that it was a transparently bathetic appeal to gross patriotism and others knee-jerk reaction that singing America the Beautiful in any language other than English is a traitorous sin, but I've abbreviated it to this sentence which ends with the two words fuck it.
• It comes back to where it comes back.
• How to begin from the beginning, by his generation's greatest academic fraud, and I say that admiringly.
• Been a while since I did that gag, but then it's been a while since I've seen anything new from Žižek.
• On the Dylan Chrysler ads.
• Map of Georgetown 2028.
• White Oak!
• 2100 words on why DCU should play a diamond 4-4-2.
• I cannot wait until this summer when The Special One quits Chel$ki to take over for The Beloved But Fired Saint Benny. The Special One makes me root for Chel$ki, I cannot emphasize how big a feat that is.
• On reactive football.

• I'm told my father and brother and wife were mocking my music this past Saturday. Finding the Chris Watson interview an hour ago is why there are field recordings here today. The mocking is just a side benefit.

• Silliman's always generous lit-links.
• Joyce's birthday was last Sunday.
• Two days late too, New Inquiry's Sunday Readings.
• Handke, for those of you who do.
• Beckett, for those of you who do.

• I don't begrudge The Cure for continuing to make a living being The Cure, but meh.
• Something I missed three days ago: Destination:Out is closing up shop.
• Why Bach moves us? Not all of us, though I don't think you nuts if he moves you though many I've met in life think I'm crazy I'm not of the body too.
• Morton Feldman, for those of you who do. Those of you who don't should. I don't think I'd heard that piece before. Yes, this will shorten the time between my last Feldman fix and the next, but it's not today, click on the label for more.
• Prunella's latest playlist, for those of you who do. Those of you who don't should.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR/1

Matthea Harvey

The generalissimo’s glands directed him

to and fro. Geronimo! said the über-goon

we called God, and we were off to the races.

Never mind that we could only grow

gray things, that inspecting the horses’ gums

in the gymnasium predicted a jagged

road ahead. We were tired of hard news—

it helped to turn down our hearing aids.

We could already all do impeccable imitations

of the idiot, his insistent incisors working on

a steak as he said there’s an intimacy to invasion.

That much was true. When we got jaded

about joyrides, we could always play games

in the kitchen garden with the prisoners.

Jump the Gun, Fine Kettle of Fish and Kick

the Kidney were our favorites. The laws

the linguists thought up were particularly

lissome, full of magical loopholes that

spit out medals. We had made the big time,

but night still nipped at our heels.   

The navigator’s needle swung strangely,

oscillating between the oilwells

and ask again later. We tried to pull ourselves

together by practicing quarterback sneaks

along the pylons, but the race to the ravine

was starting to feel as real as the R.I.P.’s

and roses carved into rock. Suddenly the sight

of a schoolbag could send us scrambling.

Without Asking, The Assistant Re-Sprays Her w/Glycerine

• Bryce's tribute to Bernard Parmegiani yesterday on wfmu.org. 
• Verily, for both reasons I don't want to share and for reasons I do but can't, I'm in as vile a mood as I'm capable, I was going to give you Vile Mood Theme Songs One and Two (old-timers can vouch), bracketing these bullets. Happily, therapeutically, Parmegiani instead.
• Of the five dead days of the five deadest days of the year in Blegsylvania the Saturday is the deadest of the dead. Which requires a post according to my bleggal teleology.
• A summary and conclusion to Tarzie's leak-keeper series.
• Information monopoly defines the deep state.
• Motherfucking humans and motherfucking Giftmas.
• Not an original observation, but fuck that the day after we are told to sanctimoniously give thanks for all we have we're told we have enough shit, go buy some, and many people do.
• How retail sees it's workers.
• I was going to post a link to the Washington Post and Villager Court Jester Dana Milbank calling today for a return to mandatory military service, but the fucking Washington Post says this was my eleventh look at one of their articles in November so give them money, and fuck that. 
• Here, something not angry, Rachel Blau DuPlessis.
• Also too, Rae Armantrout.
• Kristen Hersh on new Throwing Muses album.

THE OBJECTIFIED MERMAID

Matthea Harvey

The photographer has been treating her like a spork all morning. “Wistful mouth, excited tail! Work it, work it!” He has no idea that even fake smiling spreads to her eyes and her tail and there’s nothing she can do about it short of severing her spine. Without asking, the assistant re-sprays her with glycerine. It’s gonna be hell getting all that grease off her scales tonight but she can’t scum up her tank at the bar—its weekly cleanings seem more like monthly these days, and fewer and fewer patrons have been inviting (read: paying) her for a Tankside Mertini and quick feel of her tail. There’s one regular who lapses in and out of consciousness and he’s the real reason she stays. Every once in a while he seems to have forgotten where he is and he looks at her with the kind of wonder she imagines her grandmother inspired when she first risked coming ashore. After an hour under the studio spotlights, she’s starting to smell pretty fishy. Can’t blame it (as she has before) on her standard seaweed bra because this fool of a photographer has her holding two clear fishbowls in front of her breasts so it looks like goldfish are swimming past her nipples. She’s supposed to pretend it tickles. She wants to ask if he’s heard the phrase "gilding the lily" which she recently learned at Land Berlitz. When asked if she’s tired, she lies. A downward spiral means the opposite up here.

Is It Your Hermeneut's Helmet Not Letting Me Filter Through?

• So I wanted to get the hawk gif from the top of the page and return Momcat to her banner, so that's Reason Two for this post. Reason Three is the promised Stereolab cascade, Reason Four to post another Matthea Harvey poem. Reason Five is to give you these links, Reason Six because what the fuck. Reason One you know, it's the tag (besides My Complicity) that adorns each and every post.
• America's future.
• Foucault on how neoliberalism enters the soul.
• Why he wants to fuck Boris Johnson.
• Krasznahorkai, for those of you who do. I confess, I am not in shape for Seiobo, though I feel as if I'm getting there.
• I had forgot the havoc that cutting and pasting from Word can wreck on my motherfucking free blogging platform.
• We talked about death again at Thanksgiving.
• DT: I have no pastimes on the road. I sit in the van staring straight ahead. I go to the venue and wait until I have to soundcheck. Afterwards I sit in the dressing room and wait for the show. People bring me food. I do the show. After the show I wait to go back to the hotel. At the hotel I wait to go to bed. In the morning I wake up and go to the lobby to wait to get into the van. I don't have a book or magazine or newspaper. I don't watch TV. No radio or other music is allowed in the van. I don't talk to anyone in the van. I wait and I sing. My pastime, then, is waiting.
• Boulez. 
• WFMU's Winter/Spring schedule is out, Blumin and Berger and Ryker return, and other than Sue's Solid Gold Hell (she's taking a break) no one I will miss is gone. 

SAD LITTLE BREATHING MACHINE

Matthea Harvey

Under its glass lid, the square
of cheese is like any other element

of the imagination--cough in the tugboat,
muff summering somewhere in mothballs.

Have a humbug. The world is slow
to dissolve & leave us. Is it your

hermeneut's helmet not letting me
filter through? The submarine sinks

with a purpose: Scientist Inside
Engineering A Shell. & meanwhile

I am not well. Don't know how to go on
Oprah without ya. On t.v, a documentary

about bees--yet another box in a box.
The present is in there somewhere.

The Subject May Hoard His or Her Bubbles

THERE'S A NEW GUIDED BY VOICES SONG? Dang, I can't find how to embed it and dang, when Robert Pollard says: As frontman Robert Pollard told Rolling Stone recently, the song was a metaphor about his lack of desire to compete with other bands. "No competition, no pressure, no rules. The way I do things now is an absolute blast," he said. "I think one earns it when entering one's golden years. It also means that you don't necessarily have to act your age," I mean, he's as full of shit as I am when say I don't care about D-List Bleggal Ladder-Matches, yet another reason Robert Pollard has one of three permanent seats in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game.

• Following up on yesterday, Jorge Bergoglio channeling Karl Polanyi.
• At the closing of an age.
• Beer: street wisdom.
• It's time for year end lists. Earthgirl gave the Messud a Meh +.
• It's time for year end lists. Under Fiction & Poetry the NYTBR lists fifty novels, one book of poetry, Bidart's Metaphysical Dog (which is very good).
• It's time for year end lists, this one authors' choices (includes Josipovici, for those of you who do).
• It's always time for lists! The high school literature zodiac, offered for your amusement only.
• I never heard of Nico Muhly until yesterday. Infrequently but occasionally I like doing research. 
• Matthea Harvey has just been given her own tag here, I'm almost certain her poetry is going to be my next obsession.

PITY THE BATHTUB ITS FORCED EMBRACE OF THE HUMAN FORM

Matthea Harvey

1.   

Pity the bathtub that belongs to the queen its feet

Are bronze casts of the former queen’s feet its sheen

A sign of fretting is that an inferior stone shows through

Where the marble is worn away with industrious

Polishing the tub does not take long it is tiny some say

Because the queen does not want room for splashing

The maid thinks otherwise she knows the king

Does not grip the queen nightly in his arms there are

Others the queen does not have lovers she obeys

Her mother once told her your ancestry is your only

Support then is what she gets in the bathtub she floats

Never holds her nose and goes under not because

She might sink but because she knows to keep her ears

Above water she smiles at the circle of courtiers below

Her feet are kicking against walls which cannot give

Satisfaction at best is to manage to stay clean

2.

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the whims of

One man loves but is not loved in return by the object

Of his affection there is little to tell of his profession

There is more for it is because he works with glass

That he thinks things are clear (he loves) and adjustable

(she does not love) he knows how to take something

Small and hard and hot and make room for

His breath quickens at night as he dreams of her he wants

To create a present unlike any other and because he cannot

Hold her he designs something that can a bathtub of

Glass shimmers red when it is hot he pours it into the mold

In a rush of passion only as it begins to cool does it reflect

His foolishness enrages him he throws off his clothes meaning

To jump in and lie there but it is still too hot and his feet propel

Him forward he runs from one end to the other then falls

To the floor blisters begin to swell on his soft feet he watches

His pain harden into a pretty pattern on the bottom of the bath

3.

Pity the bathtub its forced embrace of the human

Form may define external appearance but there is room

For improvement within try a soap dish that allows for

Slippage is inevitable as is difference in the size of

The subject may hoard his or her bubbles at different

Ends of the bathtub may grasp the sponge tightly or

Loosely it may be assumed that eventually everyone gets in

The bath has a place in our lives and our place is

Within it we have control of how much hot how much cold

What to pour in how long we want to stay when to

Return is inevitable because we need something

To define ourselves against even if we know that

Whenever we want we can pull the plug and get out

Which is not the case with our own tighter confinement

Inside the body oh pity the bathtub but pity us too

The Laws the Linguists Thought Up Were Particularly Lissome, Full of Magical Loopholes that Spit Out Medals

Found my Bevis Frond stash looking for something else. Hey, Wednesday officially begins the five slowest days of the year in Blegsylvania, bar none, something that didn't occur to me until after I'd spent too much time on this post. One of the days, because I promise myself a Stereolab cascade every time I note that I don't play enough Stereolab here (like I did last week) considering how much I like and listen to Stereolab, so tomorrow or Friday, cascade. Requests solicited, I know at least one of you, if you're tuned in over the holiday, dig Stereolab. Requests for other cascades solicited, this being the slowest five days of the year in Blegsylvania.

• My recently deceased Aunt Julia (a run of 97 years, I'd buy that right now), a kind if stern women and the most devout conservative Catholic I've personally known would hate this pope, which means he must be preaching (as in sales-pitching for his Corporation, I know, don't get me wrong) something that pisses off devout conservative Catholics, which I admit I'm still small enough to enjoy.
• Pope Francis or Karl Marx? Posted not only because of the above but because (a) unkind comment about the fellow blogger and blog linked to related to blogging and my edict to myself not to link to her and (b) fucking facebook and (c) what does this say about my priorities between my bleggal principles and my jones for an echo to a point? 
• My jones for an echo to a point: regardless of whether Jorge Bergoglio is sincere and genuinely desires to move the Catholic Church in the direction I would applaud or whether Jorge Bergoglio is a skilled and cynical barker preaching populist biscuits to the world's billions of disenfranchised that comprise the future survival of Catholic Corporation (and of course he is an infinite combination of both, like we all are), wouldn't it be nice if Jorge Bergoglio is enough of an independent rube that Catholic power-brokers are scared the puppet they cast as pope might break kayfabe?
• Obama's new constraint. Hey! yesterday was Kill List Tuesday!
• Obama threw a party! and held an off-the-record meeting with MSNBC hosts and liberal pundits on Thursday, POLITICO has learned. Present at the meeting: MSNBC's Ed Schultz and Lawrence O'Donnell, Washington Post economics blogger Ezra Klein, Mother Jones Washington bureau chief David Corn, Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall, ThinkProgress editor-in-chief Judd Legum, Atlantic senior editor Garance Franke-Ruta, Salon political writer Brian Beutler and Fox News contributor Juan Williams.
• Judd Legum? A peanut in the Beverly Hillbillies?
• A fake slum for luxury tourists?

• There are new sites on many of the blogrolls, please check them out when they rise to the top.
• Literary recipes (quite astonishing).
• One more new project.
• Steven Moore interview.
• I am unfamiliar with Elizabeth Jennings, which I can fix.
• I am unfamiliar with Mary Burger, which I can fix.
• The eight of swords.
• Mervyn Peake. I've a dear friend whose love of Peake has prompted me to try Gormenghast repeatedly, alas, without success.
• Tull, REM, Throwing Muses, and a rumination.
• Sunno))) which I haven't played here in a while, perhaps a cascade this weekend, the slowest five days of the year in Blegsylvania.

THE FUTURE OF TERROR 3

Matthea Harvey

The generalissimo's glands directed him
to and fro. Geronimo! said the über-goon
we called God, and we were off to the races.
Never mind that we could only grow
grey things, that inspecting the horses' gums
in the gymnasium predicted a jagged
road ahead. We were tired of hard news—
it helped to turn down our hearing aids.
We could already all do impeccable imitations
of the idiot, his insistent incisors working on
a steak as he said there's an intimacy to invasion.
That much was true. When we got jaded
about joyrides, we could always play games
in the kitchen garden with the prisoners.
Jump the Gun, Fine Kettle of Fish and Kick
the Kidney were our favorites. The laws
the linguists thought up were particularly
lissome, full of magical loopholes that
spit out medals. When we ran out of room
on our uniforms, we pinned them to
our mourning bands, to our mops.
We had made the big time, but night nipped
at our heels. The navigator's needle swung
strangely, oscillating between the oilwells
and ask again later. We tried to pull ourselves
together by practicing quarterback sneaks
along the pylons, but the race to the ravine
was starting to feel as real as the R.I.P.'s
and roses carved into rock. Suddenly the sight
of a schoolbag could send us scrambling.