& now the strident are strident about all the stridency

Pasteboard Masks	I make myself read out loud the whale-killing and especially the whale-harvesting chapters of that effingingly American biblical whale novel	My brother-in-law *yesterday* gave Earthgirl for her birthday last Tuesday mega-million tickets for last Tuesday, surprisingly there were no matching numbers	I love my anger but building silos for them harder than building tunnels for them unless and until I figure out how to set font sizes for them not provided by motherfucking google sheets, I need sixteen for this silo and only have 14 or 18, fine metaphors for my complicity abound, so today this cathole	Eff me, I keep going back to your Frownland
My wife and daughter are both public school art teachers, Earthgirl elementary, Planet senior high. Both want to be back in classrooms, parents want children back in classrooms, outrageous as it where teachers rank on the Save Me chart, if there *is* available vaccine, which there *isn't*, why can't shitlords get it into arms? today in motherfucking rhetorical questions regarding our motherfucking shitlords ignoring you to death as they extract your motherfucking rents				I make myself read out loud the whale-killing (I don't mind the people dying) of the effingly American biblical whale novel and force myself to read the gruesomest parts out loud twice

 

The planet dying faster than we thought	Liberalism's war on the internet	<<<< To make curated pluralism credible as genuine pluralism, the state must not be seen to enforce the curation. The curation must appear to be the natural consequence of reasonable, mature arguments winning out over unreasonable, immature arguments.	Better off w/o Trump on twitter, worse off w twitter in charge	What would Jesus coup?
Signal is not your friend	Two faces of US empire	Fascism, fascisation, anti-fascism	<< ^^^>> If only someone kept yodeling *it's never policy, it's always decorum*	Neoliberalism is fascism with better manners
Hideous strength	<<<< The Democrats have always been extraordinarily complacent about the affective pull of such inchoate fascism (let alone their own role in creating the conditions for its rise). In 2016, as Trump delivered his vatic jeremiad of America’s decline, victimisation by other countries, economic devastation at the hands of globalists and of China, immersion in violence and chaos brought by immigrants, and descent into Third World conditions, Obama intervened with cheerful bemusement, insisting that all was not so bad. The ‘birds were chirping and the sun was out’, he said the day after a Trump speech. People were watching their kids play in sports teams and getting ready for the weekend. What could be more innocent, less suggestive of End Times? That Trump’s paranoid and hateful messaging was far more efficiently wired into the emotional world of masses of voters, that it articulated and gave form to real experiences of injury and loss, would shortly become apparent. The birds chirped, the sun came out, the rustbelt died, the wildfires raged, Flint’s water was poisoned, migrants were detained and deported at record levels, real wages continued to flatline, unions were demolished. And Trump was elected.
The rabble and the door	Misinformation v Disinformation	Motherfucking Democrats	Motherfucking Democrats	Political science is bullshit, say political scientists
The $ is dead	Baseless	Maggie's weekly links	My future hell	My future hell
The problem with common nouns	{ feuilleton }'s weekly links	Among the contemplatives	Henri Cole interview	Throbbing Gristle reflect on Throbbing Gristle!

SUBURBAN PASTORAL; REJOINDER; ANNIVERSARY; prayer for the young

Rebecca Foust

& now the strident are strident about all the stridency
meta-screeds acid-etching each earthly beauty
into carnal indulgence      even the toyon berries
diploid with raindrops     even the sweet pudding pulp
of the ripest persimmon     even the tang
of eucalyptus in rain     yes there is cancer
caused by factory runoff     & war     & ever
more cancer & war     yes in our rich land
the same people get shot & deported & stay poor
& the earth endlessly burns     yes we have killed
cecil the lion     & wiped out entire species of fish
with the micro-beads in the paste that polishes our teeth
yes the years once lay before us like a banquet
of tulip-shaped glasses stroked to resonance
& singing their million crystalline promises     kept
for one or two nights before the shards got carted away
but may I say     you need not foreswear     everything
need not take up our lament     tear your hair
flail the poor bleeding backs born decades too late
to have caused any of this     somewhere war
followed peace     & will be followed by peace again
somewhere a sad clown-faced lion still paces the veldt
& you will be loved with all the tenderness you crave
a life is a line containing an infinity of points like this one
but none with any specific gravity     the liars
will say this does not apply     O do not listen to them
& their naysaying     may you live long     you young bitter ones
may you live long     & learn to cherish even the blighted hours

Ruddy Liturgically Sacrificial Hue

• Lazyass and Futile Weekend Blogging for the Blog Days of Summer in Dead Blegsylvania. 
• Going outside today and tomorrow though tomorrow is one of the Holiest Days in Egoslavia. 
• Hint: one of our rescue Maine Coons is named after the birthday celebrant.
• The Selfish Individual. On Sontag essays.
• Desert theory, rehashed.
• The compartmentalization of injustice.
• Three plateaus on noise aesthetics.
• America as Ahab though speaking as Ishmail.
• Did a major tune-up on blogrolls, purged bleggicides, migrated hibernating blogs to Moribund, added some new joints, please check them out when they float to the top. Only bleggicides were purged; if you are not where you were and you haven't posted in at least three months you've been moved to Moribund so that when you wake up I can see the pleasant surprise.
• Prunella's latest playlist.
• Guess what I fell asleep to, woke up with in head. Cause yes, it occurred to me this past Wednesday to open this post for Lazyass and Futile Weekend Blogging for the Blog Days of Summer in Dead Blegsylvania with the song at the top.

SUNT LEONES

Stevie Smith

The lions who ate the Christians on the sands of the arena

By indulging native appetites played what has now been seen a   

Not entirely negligible part

In consolidating at the very start

The position of the Early Christian Church.

Initiatory rites are always bloody

And the lions, it appears

From contemporary art, made a study

Of dyeing Coliseum sands a ruddy

Liturgically sacrificial hue

And if the Christians felt a little blue—

Well people being eaten often do.

Theirs was the death, and theirs the crown undying,

A state of things which must be satisfying.

My point which up to this has been obscured

is that it was the lions who procured

By chewing up blood gristle flesh and bone

The martyrdoms on which the Church has grown.

I only write this poem because I thought it rather looked   

As if the part the lions played was being overlooked.

By lions’ jaws great benefits and blessings were begotten   

And so our debt to Lionhood must never be forgotten.

Press Deeper, Touch the Little Bundle of Nerves Buried There, Buried in the Gristle, the Nerves that Make You Blink When the Light Bewilders You

• Activating the Napoleon Alert System. Saw him Saturday, I normally wait a week without seeing him before alerting the signal but it's zero outside as I type this. Saw Momcat and Frankie this morning, they are in the shelter of straw, cardboard, and blankets we built on the back porch, but no Napoleon.
• UPDATE! Works every time. As of 11:27 he's inside with Planet.
• Wonderful dinner last night with Planet and Landru, the most fun thing I've done in what seems like weeks, so limited link-fishing for that, plus the death of two friends in the past week or so (both of liver cancer, fuck) occupy my mind so limited link-fishing for that, plus the hardest weeks of my work year put me in a vile mood so limited link-fishing for that too, plus a serious dose of blegitus so limited link-fishing for that too.
• What boggles the image-nation?
• From the above's homepage I see that Rob Payne is alive.
• Snowden, Greenwald, journalism, progressive tone-police.
• Taking inventory at the sex-shop.
• Hagerstown.
• Laughing place.
• The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of 2014. Richard Powers! Sebald! Coover! Vollmann! Murakami! Only goes through August. Still no new Ishiguro.
• :-P's 2013 songs.
• Fell asleep, unsurprisingly to me in review considering the first and second bullets of this shitty post (minus the dinner with Planet and Landru), listening to Throbbing Gristle.

self-exam (my body is a cage)

Nick Flynn

Do this: take two fingers, place them on

the spot behind your ear, either

ear, the spot where your skull drops off

into that valley of muscle

& nerve—that is the muscle that holds up

the skull, that turns the dumb bone

this way & that, that nods your face up &

down when you think you

get it—press deeper, touch the little bundle of

nerves buried there, buried in

the gristle—the nerves that make you blink

when the light bewilders you, that make your tongue

slide in & out when you think you’re in

love, when you think you need a drink, touch

that spot as if you have an itch, close your eyes &

listen, please, close

your eyes—can you hear it? We think our souls live

in boxes, we think someone sits behind our eyes,

lording in his little throne, steering the fork to

the mouth, the mouth to the tit, we think

hungry children live in our bellies & run out with their

empty bowls as the food rains

down, we sometimes think we are those

hungry children, we think

we can think anything & it won’t

matter, we think we can think cut out her tongue,

& then ask her to sing.

Raise One Eyebrow

Woke up with Throbbing Gristle in my head. Have spam from Poland

piecznie spośród budynku. Pagina personale esterna dell'autore... Trzymając się cienia zszedł po pochyłości podwórza. W pobliżu kostnicy zachował się tudzież rozejrzał dokoła, otworzył http://www.polskieslicznotki.waw.pl kolosalne, drewniane przejścia i wszedł wewnątrz.

Stosownie aż do charakteru pokoje panowała tędy głucha ani mru mru!. Saracen zapalił przestrzeń niezadrukowana. Przy bitwy poruszył luźno osadzonym w ścianie wyłącznikiem tudzież na podłogę posypały się kawałki tynku. W najsampierw.

Unfortunately my Polish colleague started her vacation today so I've no idea how I'm being praised or what's being sold (I've killed the link so if you copy/paste it and get a blue screen it's on you). In any case, that takes care of my required Labor Day Weekend bleggalgazing. Yes, Coil cascade up next.

• Once upon a time (2007, actually) Joe Biden's case that waging war without consent of congress is an impeachable act: Absolutely. I want to stand by that comment I made. The reason I made the comment was as a warning. I don't say those things lightly, Chris. you've known me for a long time. I was Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for 17 years. I teach separation of powers in Constitutional law. This is something I know. So I brought a group of Constitutional scholars together to write a piece that I'm going to deliver to the whole United States Senate pointing out that the president HAS NO CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY to take this country to war against a country of 70 million people unless we're attacked or unless there is proof that we are about to be attacked. And if he does, I would move to impeach him. The House obviously has to do that, but I would lead an effort to impeach him. The reason for my doing that -- and I don't say it lightly, I don't say it lightly.
• Nancy Pelosi urges bombing Syria.
• Jonathan Chait stamps foot, says Obama better not be lying this time or else.
• Miley Cyrus, Syria, war as consumer item.

• On Kindness.
• New to me: Marzanna Bogumila Kielar.
• On the Thomas Pynchon trail: Let’s get a few things straight. First of all, it’s pronounced “Pynch-ON.” Second, the great and bewildering and, yes, very private novelist is not exactly a recluse. In select company, he’s intensely social and charismatic, and, in spite of those famously shaming Bugs Bunny teeth, he was rarely without a girlfriend for the 30 years he spent wandering and couch-surfing before getting married in 1990. Today, he’s a yuppie—self-confessed, if you read his new novel, Bleeding Edge, as a key to the present life of a man whose travels led one critic to reflect: “Salinger hides; Pynchon runs.” Now Pynchon hides in plain sight, on the Upper West Side, with a family and a history of contradictions: a child of the postwar Establishment determined to reject it; a postmodernist master who’s called himself a “classicist”; a workaholic stoner; a polymath who revels in dirty puns; a literary outsider who’s married to a literary agent; a scourge of capitalism who sent his son to private school and lives in a $1.7 million prewar classic six.
• Laziest literary link ever?
• Cyberpunk, for those of you who do.
• A distinction between scifi and fantasy, for those of you who do one or the other or both.
• RIP Seamus Heaney. I confess he never sang to me, which reminds me to speculate again (elsewhere, don't worry) why by and large contemporary non-American/Canadian English poetry, especially non-American/Canadian English poetry by men (Les Murray and Robin Robertson are the only two currently working poets whose new volumes I immediately seek out) doesn't sing to me. Suggestions on who to read pleaded for.
• New York lit circle Royal Rumble.

HOW TO BE A LAWYER

Jordan Davis

My father taught me how to play the beer bottle. It was Schlitz, and I was three or four. " You tuck your lower lip under, then blow air over the top of the bottle." I produced a tone, and we laughed. He paused. "You can make a different sound if there's less in the bottle," he said, motioning for me to take a sip. I did, then blew another note. We laughed again.

"Do you want to learn something else? Here's how to be a lawyer. Raise one eyebrow." I did so. "Good. Now hold it for a few seconds, turn to the jury, and say 'I see.'"