What is there to say other than I am as hot a mess as I am dark as are these the hottest, messiest, darkest, strangest days of my life. I've not had the opportunity to be shot in the face yet by the magagestapo, the bastards are ignoring Moco, I'd have bet they'd be working east of Georgia Avenue by now, I'll be there with a whistle and a camera when they do. Time for the traditional Hot Dark Mess song; this is the first time since Fleabus died that I've posted this, she's on guitar and drums
. . Hey, I pruned the blegrells (or started to then got bored of it and angry at myself for (giving a fuck about this) (thinking it would help dull the hot dark mess) being bored and angry), if you're not where you used to be you haven't posted in six months meaning you probably haven't been here in at least six months and in most cases were never here once anyway. If your blog was dead (all the typepad blogs, typepad died) you were purged, if your blog still exists but has been abandoned you were moved to one of the two moribund purgatories at bottom of blagralls. I'll finish the job or not, hope not, not today. Here, have an angry and apt Robinson Jeffers poem:
BE ANGRY AT THE SUN
Robinson Jeffers
That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and turn, They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors. This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating, Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know, To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame, And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped. Yours is not theirs.
☝
The traditional Hot Dark Mess gif, deployed for the first time in at least a decade
☝
"I know I’m harping on this but it’s important to remember that when pundits/politicians are talking about “the norms” on stuff like this they are talking about the period when the president of the United States was bombing seven different countries but it’s okay because he told Congress first sorta"
A second thorough, but necessary, Duh: we are the assholes
A third thorough, but necessary, Duh: America Is a Gangster State
"Very important thread on why Trump is targeting places like Venezuela. It makes no sense under a model of Trump as head of a nation-state, but makes complete sense under a model of "neo-royalism" where the primary driver is not national interest but interests of "elite cliques and sovereign rulers."
Meet Paul Singer, the shitlord Trump Megadonor Set to Make a Killing on Venezuela Oil
"Barack Obama’s decision to hold no one in the Bush administration to account for their war crimes because they wanted to be able to commit their own was the hinge point that decided the future of warfare worldwide for the worse"
ICE Plans $100 Million “Wartime Recruitment” Campaign Targeting Military and Firearms Enthusiasts
"Now the seedy interior of what lies within so many structures of power in our country has been revealed. It is not pretty. The weakness, the perfidy, the greed, the racism, the anti-semitism and Islamaphobia, the hatred of women, the perversion and indecency, the disregard for the intellectual, physical and spiritual safety of our children; the choice of nihilism over accountability, the absolute disinterest in the values of democracy"
"The US has couped Venezuela for its oil and for capitalism. The invasion is bipartisan. Obama set the stage with an emergency powers declaration against Venezuela a decade ago. This is what the US empire is. This is what it does"
To stop myself thinking about it I bought an Arches 12 x 12 hot-press watercolor block which, if I'd thought about it instead of thinking I needed to buy it, is too big for the bed of the scanner I use so I can post the squares here and there and too big for the laminator I use so that the squares can be handled without fountain pen ink staining fingers, the below is the 12 x 12 cropped to 11 x 11, fine metaphors abound
I've stopped exactly halfway through Fosse's *Septology.* I forced myself to pick it up once, not twice, I sin for not reading it end to end like I once told myself I sinned if I didn't but promise to read after I finish, laugh, McCarthy's *The Passenger,* let me say this about that, I've ordered *Stella Maris* which I'll read after I finish the second half of Fosse's *Septology.* Fosse's Asle has a dog, McCarthy's Bobby has a cat, John Cale has a new song:
Many echoes between the two novels, many probably just me reaching, shared themes, standard novel info-striptease. *The Passenger* is often funny and on two occasions so far laugh out loud funny. I'm open to it and I don't know if I hope I'm wrong or not but lay heavy odds that not *once* will I laugh out loud reading *Septology,* which I will finish though now I like the guy whose move is short verb-less sentences versus this 824 page one sentence novel, another fucking one sentence novel, now, more often than not squeezed into a single paragraph sausage if you're lucky, a too common and now irritating gimmick, it's old, motherfuckers. Old, though below is a new Yo La Tengo song
The people in the elevator all Face front, they all keep still, they all Look up with the rapt and stupid look of saints In paintings at the numbers that light up By turn and turn to tell them where they are. They are doing the dance, they are playing the game.
To get here they have gone by avenue And street, by ordinate and abscissa, and now By this new coordinate, up. They are three- dimensional characters, taken from real life; They have their fates, whether to rise or fall, And when their numbers come up they get out.
My manic peaking, crash on my radar but not yet in sight. I surrender, won't try to pretend I don't choose if can't help to enflame panic over our shared clusterfuckful future, as imminent a crash as my manic down. I like what I make lately, your mileage may vary, though I'm tonguing my digital presence like a tooth I know will be sore tomorrow
The first names of the Ologies I needed to know in grad school I forget but still remember each's trajectory. What was the highlight of my forty-eighth year? When I dailyology with ising glass and stained glass deleted nightly in frank evaluation before waking to morning daymares of who what where when why ology's first names and especially what am I gonna do about it's, I ising glass and stain glass today what I'll dismiss tomorrow as another self-indulgent manic and futile diving expedition into relentless meology
Reminder: Democrats have been ordered to lose the midterms, and they are remarkably effective at losing elections (see them underfunding Ryan in Ohio senate race against Turdly Vance), they are NOT incompetent, they're good at their job
MONOLOGUE: I know professional Democrats have been ordered to lose both the House and the Senate this midterm and professional Democrats are good at their job, but thought experiment: what happens next Wednesday if the Democrats keep the House and gain two seats in the Senate and win state houses and gubernatorial races and not one of the defeated Republicans concedes?
MONOLOGUE: If our shitlords didn't want Crackerchristerfstan (what's more ear friendly, crackerchristerstan or christercrackerstan?) we soon wouldn't live in Crackerchristerstan
The tanks from the Past rolled in this morning. Our neighbors crowded the curbs to cheer though only yesterday, they were snitching: A has prior tendencies, B has backward dreams...
Already the old flag flies over the armory, the cathedral, the courthouse, Mercy, Parliament, Beaux Arts, a kindergarten.
Already we tell ourselves, “The Past rules, but if we hold our breath we’ll emerge safe in the present, vindicated, knowing we’re steadfast, we passed the test of our lives.”
Troops file by, numberless as ears of wheat, gray with ash, so tired they give off light, eyes locked, forward, forward, never a glance for our linden-shaded side streets; and we watch, we force ourselves to peek, or not peek, we part the curtain a hand’s breadth, a thumbnail.
At nightfall, gunshots in a distant suburb, dry, faint, adamant as a cat’s cough. For every twelve firing squad volunteers, rumor claims, one is issued blank ammo: so even in the Past, there must be shame.
Nothing happens fast. Rain of decrees. But you can still get salt and whiskey if you pay with a necklace, a deed, or boots.
Butter is rationed, then shoelaces, then spoons. Lice return, roaches and rats: raccoons rummage unchecked in a brimming dumpster. We tell ourselves, “Vermin: this story is familiar.”
When the snow falls in its own silence, spilling forwards, like blood in bath water, and there is no heating oil, we think “childhood.”
Alone in the privacy of our triple-bolted room we open our fingers and peek: yes, yes, the soldiers, still advancing, bowlegged mountain boys bearing the insignia of the Interior, tranced in cadence: sometimes one stumbles, careens, topples forward, but the boots march over him, the drum never pauses.
