Germ City, There's No Hope Looking Down Those Fire-Engine Throats

I started reading Eduardo Galeano's Mirrors two years ago and now, my fifth? sixth? seventh? time start-to-ending it, I don't think I'll ever finish. Three or four of these - what to call them? blurbs? capsules? bullets? punches? - between a heavy dinner's Gass of The Tunnel and the binge eating of Potus, perspective delivered. It's nothing more or less than power's width, length, and depth in all its brutal simple history. I bought an eBook version yesterday so I have it on my phone for daily litany, it occurred to me after I bought it I could post some here as photos snapped on the phone. Do you want them? Won't be everyday, won't be start to finish. If you don't I won't.

Also too, remember the radio station I sent email applications to volunteer in the hopes of getting a show? They emailed!

We are looking for volunteers to work the door at a long-running (nearly 30 years!) Halloween benefit in Takoma Park on October 29. Here's the Facebook page for the party with more info. This year, proceeds will go to groups includingTakoma Radio, Partners in Health and Nonviolence International. 

We are looking for energetic people who aren't afraid to ask guests for the $15 - $50 suggested donation at the door.To sign up for a shift, click here. (Volunteers must be 21+.) Volunteers will get to enjoy the party for free when they're not working their shifts!

Sorry to meatloaf you, but I would do anything for a radio show, but I won't do that.

UPDATE! I emailed ten minutes ago:

Hello Tatyana, thank you for the email.

I'll be out of town on Halloween weekend (and I'm not a halloweener anyway), but PLEASE send me email the next time you need volunteers or anything. I am very much interested in helping out at the station.

Is true - Earthgirl and I will be in Shenandoah for three-day weekend hiking. Is true - I am not a halloweener.

Tatiana wrote back immediately!

Will do, thanks Jeff!

I will play Dog Faced Hermans my first show.

• Motherfucking Obama.
• Beyond the Pipeline: a Statement.
• The hidden trillions.
• Truth of propaganda.
• Being a bumpkin - three books on poor white Americans.
• You can't scream fascist (fixed) without consequences.
• The new US way of war.
• The rise of Trump bodes the end of the presidential system, for good or bad.
• Women who hate Trump but aren't with Her.
• Election angst.
• Thank you, Mr Snowden.
• You can't always make yourself happy.
• Knockenstiff.
• Next day.
• Also too, first show

ON THE SUBJECT OF DOCTORS

James Tate

I like to see doctors cough.

What kind of human being

would grab all your money

just when you're down?

I'm not saying they enjoy this:

"Sorry, Mr. Rodriguez, that's it,

no hope! You might as well

hand over your wallet." Hell no,

they'd rather be playing golf

and swapping jokes about our feet.

Some of them smoke marijuana

and are alcoholics, and their moral

turpitude is famous: who gets to see

most sex organs in the world? Not

poets. With the hours they keep

they need drugs more than anyone.

Germ city, there's no hope

looking down those fire-engine throats.

They're bound to get sick themselves

sometime; and I happen to be there

myself in a high fever

taking my plastic medicine seriously

with the doctors, who are dying.

to have the money to buy a simple radio

• Nap last night ▲.
• I'm sorry, Hillary Clinton IS uniquely evil: At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”  
• Neoliberalism in action. 
• J.K. Rowling and The Hillarium. 
• Electra mourns the ashes of her brother.
• What to do if you've been cucked.
• Badiou interview.
• Maggie's weekly links.

• Earthgirl's painting yesterday ▲ during local Plein Air competition.
• Hamster sent me news of WOWD, a tiny mini-watt station in Tacoma Park. Seems to be a bit in the WFMU mode with individual DJs programming, without direction, the music on their once a week shows. The archives aren't playable, though the playlists are available (one of which reminded me of Flunk, listen below). There are volunteer opportunities, and I want a show, so I've sent volunteer request, a small donation, and a link to this blog to see what music I listen to. I will never get a radio gig at WFMU, which just released it's next schedule amidst much bitter bloodletting. Even if I don't get a show I'll volunteer. It's silly, but time spent in the People's Republic of Tacoma Park sounds fun.
• Radio. 
• Radio.
• And that Flunk song makes me think of Bows.
• The breathtaking beauty of our planet's destruction.
• { feuilleton }'s weekly links.
• Reclaiming The Dead.

FAILURES IN INFINITIVES

Bernadette Mayer

why am i doing this? Failure

to keep my work in order so as

to be able to find things

to paint the house

to earn enough money to live on

to reorganize the house so as

to be able to paint the house &

to be able to find things and

earn enough money so as

to be able to put books together

to publish works and books

to have time

to answer mail & phone calls

to wash the windows

to make the kitchen better to work in

to have the money to buy a simple radio

to listen to while working in the kitchen

to know enough to do grownups work in the world

to transcend my attitude

to an enforced poverty

to be able to expect my checks

to arrive on time in the mail

to not always expect that they will not

to forget my mother's attitudes on humility or

to continue

to assume them without suffering

to forget how my mother taunted my father

about money, my sister about i cant say it

failure to forget mother and father enough

to be older, to forget them

to forget my obsessive uncle

to remember them some other way

to remember their bigotry accurately

to cease to dream about lions which always is

to dream about them, I put my hand in the lion's mouth

to assuage its anger, this is not a failure

to notice that's how they were; failure

to repot the plants

to be neat

to create & maintain clear surfaces

to let a couch or a chair be a place for sitting down

and not a table

to let a table be a place for eating & not a desk

to listen to more popular music

to learn the lyrics

to not need money so as

to be able to write all the time

to not have to pay rent, con ed or telephone bills

to forget parents' and uncle's early deaths so as

to be free of expecting care; failure

to love objects

to find them valuable in any way; failure

to preserve objects

to buy them and

to now let them fall by the wayside; failure

to think of poems as objects

to think of the body as an object; failure

to believe; failure

to know nothing; failure

to know everything; failure

to remember how to spell failure; failure

to believe the dictionary & that there is anything

to teach; failure

to teach properly; failure

to believe in teaching

to just think that everybody knows everything

which is not my failure; I know everyone does; failure

to see not everyone believes this knowing and

to think we cannot last till the success of knowing

to wash all the dishes only takes ten minutes

to write a thousand poems in an hour

to do an epic, open the unwashed window

to let in you know who and

to spirit thoughts and poems away from concerns

to just let us know, we will

to paint your ceilings & walls for free