Non-frantic self-portraits with a gouache-return to church stain-glass windows, not posting here in ten days (which is why there are two Maggies and two { feuilleton }s in the grid), a shorter, less-angry grid considering the length of time since that last mostly angry one, not writing in tablets for the same length of time, the fuck is right with me?
I’m down to my last bottle of fountain pen ink left over from my brief affair with fountain pens and tablets a decade ago before returning to my (currently, temporarily for now at least, and voluntarily if not deliberately abandoned) pencil spouse, the gorgeous brick red ink above infused in clear elmer’s glue, grated chalk blazes better on fountain pen ink than acrylic ink: fountain pen ink > acrylic ink, yo. I have an online ink-store’s cart filled with options, I’m just waiting for this weird, strangely pleasant and surprising and barely worrisome bout of calm and – get this – itchy but unscratchable optimism, about what I don’t know, to fade before purchasing, much less committing to use, the ink
Not being anxious about not being anxious over the ever-enshittifying clusterfuck, shit getting worse exponentially by the day, and I've a vague unscratchably itchy and thoroughly unplanned for optimism, this is new, it will fade. Doesn't feel like resignation, capitulation, surrender, much. A week before this started I gave myself permission to admit that I'm old and will probably die and I apologized to my knees and ankles for their belly-aching after another weekend of hiking and disc golf and asked knees and ankles to forgive me not only for the tens of thousands of miles I've asked of them over the decades but also to forgive me for blaming them for their aching. Rosie dying is a variable too. I was reminded too that I love Modest Mouse, they've been on the daily sound track for the last two and a half weeks, I recommend you try. While I have no plans and will keep my brain off this itchy optimism as best I can and let it run it's course with this sentence I've no doubt jinxed this and fucked it up and unappeasable anger at my futility before the clusterfuck returns soon
"Real American supervillains embed themselves in the economy and threaten to cause a depression unless you subsidize their sex robots and the weird chatbots they use to avoid humans"
This says far more about me than about the books, but on the NYT 2025 notable novels and poetry I've heard of only one title - Shadow Ticket - and one of the novelists - Pynchon, and zero of the poets
Those tiny bright bursts of optimism on the periphery of your pessimism that something is genuinely sparking spectrum-wide pushback against shitlordism are just weary sparklers of gloom before the shitlord regime's full implementation. Nice if foolish to remember what even a glimpse of hope feels like
It doesn't have to be Trump. I bet you infinite digital pints shitlords are currently in the planning stages of offing Trump now, he's toggling if not already toggled from sloppy asset to sloppier anchor: you think Vance won't itlerhay? One can hope Trump slumps over today but nothing would change gameplan-wise
Regardless what crackerchristers think of dirty fucking hippies visa versa both angry as fuck hungry to bark voracious to eat the epstein files and sacrifice their pedoheroes and discover what both know is true, we have a common enemy and both so fucked. I've not seen shitlords this bedwetting in my lifetime, the pissbabies. The haiku and fine metaphors abound that go with the below are here
Finally enjoying the clusterfuck, not as much as I thought I but more than I have. Can't call it optimism, it's a chippier, less oppressively muggy pessimism. Get this: after decades of trying I finally can read Henry James beyond 40 pages, the fuck? Two of the (unfortunately gone) friends/former professors of long ago's Thursday Night Pints here, D and L (not the L who is my wife) adored James and badgered me to keep trying, saying once I got it I'd read every novel, I failed and failed infinity, three attempts a year since their urging, until yet another try this past weekend, I'm in Paris with Lambert and Maria, it's funny (though no doubt I just jinxed it, dumbfuck). Signifies something, will be number one read when I'm in Maine for two weeks starting next Monday. Strangest days of my life: I'm angry but not dire, weird. Hey, Roky born 78 years ago today:
I was saying this 50 year ago, I can get a vouch if necessary
"It's hard for people who don't swim in MAGA information currents to grasp, but Ron DeSantis' photo op with Trump at "Alligator Alcatraz" is an enormous coup for him. The brains behind the idea, Florida AG James Uthmeier, is showing that this is a route to MAGA superstardom"
What Does the US’ Increasing Emulation of Israel Augur for the Country’s Future?
Wait till you hear about Gaza, whose destruction you fund and support
"There is no longer any doubt that Israel has set up a fake humanitarian organisation so it can kettle Gazans into a kill box and murder them en masse"
"Funny how I can't find "minimum wage" or "union" in this article about Democrats who allege the need for a more economic focus. But I can find "Lis Smith" and "Tesla executive" in it"
The men & women sang & played they sleep by singing, what shall I say of the most poignant on earth the most glamorous loneliest sought after people those poets wholly beautiful desolate aureate, death is a powerful instinctive emotion— but who would be released from a silver skeleton? gems & drinking cups—This skull is Helen—who would not be released from the Book of Knowledge? Why should a maiden lie on a moor for seven nights & a day? And he is a maiden, he is & she on the grass the flower the spray where they lie eating primroses grown crazy with sorrow & all the beauties of old—oh each poet’s a beautiful human girl who must die.
Posting 50+ links, all but a few clusterfuckful, on the last Saturday of June in the middle of the Blog Days of Summer a massive Fuck Me in futility, earnestly desired and justly deserved. This is how I process, and to process more I need dump what I've processed. It's not the pings: 999 of 1000 pings I currently get are bots, dozens of bots, thousands of pings a day - I hope you're still here but I'm not scrolling the logs to see if yes and if yes who - it's readying myself for in increasingly inevitable and rapidly approaching moment when I may need to protest with more of my body than my typing fingers (though a few continually warn me my typing fingers are sufficient to get the rest of my body punished). Here, this is for the surveillance bots: yes, Kate Bush has one of two permanent seats in My Sillyass Deserted Island Five Game and the single *Babooshka* of her brilliant third album *Never for Ever* was released 45 years ago yesterday
The Israeli genocide of Palestinians continues, yo
"Thus, the bankruptcy of the European ‘West’ was compounded, and the industrial mass murder of the Jews ‘repaired’, through an impossible political arrangement: Israel. Shlomo Sand offers the brutal summary: ‘Europe vomited us, the Jews, onto the Arabs of Palestine.’"
What Zohran Mamdani Means for the Anti-Monopoly Movement
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"Most elections are conflicts over who will run an existing system, with the candidates offering tweaks to what is essentially a stable political order. But a few elections are what I will call “system defining,” where a rising coalition, reflecting a new set of political demands, contests with an old order, seeking to re-gear the basics of how our institutions operate"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani (Motherfucking New York Democratic Senator edition)
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"Mamdani won a higher % of votes from Jewish NYers than from many other ethnic or religious demographics, won the endorsement of Lander & Nadler. It seems the bourgeois press will not stop until Jews conform to their Zionist, Islamophobic narrative. This shit is tired"
That Democrats en masse aren't screaming about masked goons refusing to show badge or give name and disappearing people to South Sudan is all you need know about Democrats, including Zohran Mamdani, who is not going to save you
"When he decided to inflict his presence on New York City again, centrist Democrats lined up to support him. Democrats who’d called for his resignation a few years earlier told voters he would be a great mayor. The logic was transparent: Give the bastard a second chance so the left doesn’t get one at all"
"Between the expulsion of Hogg and the freakout over Mamdani, it seems Dems are responding to their problem with young men by saying "fuck you, we don't need your votes." Which is really an interesting strategy. We'll see how it works out"
"one of the projects of the court is to expand the ability of states to pursue reactionary ends and constrain the ability of the federal government to set minimum standards *or* of democratic-led states to expand upon existing rights"
"Clinton made Summers his Russia viceroy overseeing Yeltsin's catastrophic neoliberal reforms—resulting in rise of Putinism. Then Obama put Summers in charge of the US economy—giving us Trumpism. Nothing is more destructive than Larry Summers' advice"
Inside The Secretive Network that Shaped the Right-Wing Media Machine
"The guy who authored the majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC and opened the floodgates for infinite dark money in politics wants us all to know that "freedom is at risk." No shit Sherlock. You're the one to blame."
