There are few sights in nature as beautiful as a plump member of the cathartidae family pulling a sinewy string of fetid meat off a week-dead thompsons gazelle

A typical progressive blegger's predictable snap on the corpse of rump Republicans:

If the GOP were a credible and competitive national party, leaving things as-is might be a sensible approach. But given reality, it's hardly a recipe for success.

Gets old, yes, it's my schtick too, eating not only fetid but regurgitated fetid pig meat, but if pigflu goes deadly and pandemic, holy shit, someone who'd buy this license plate (h/t)

 

(btw, true face of Jesus), will be literally ecstatic (and armed).

Which fulfills all our apocalyptic prophecies too, yorubes.

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• What we talk about when we talk about torture.
  
• Scott Horton bitchslaps Broder.
• It's science and American, so kill it.
• I asked when pig's would make pig-flu Obama's fault, and DING! DING! DING!
• Maybe he is an idiot, since we'd go all metonymy on their pigasses, yes?
• So, where's the change?
• Balls out - sound suspiciously like a less-shitty-than theory.
• UPDATE: Sunday I asked why Arlen Specter was in NYRB, and while that's still a good question, THIS might be one reason.
• My birthday is in four months. Wanna buy me a present?
• Something the internet hasn't ruined.
• Google as spider web. READ.
  
• The dirty dirty.
• Read this.
• A defense of James Wood (of sorts).
• W.S Merwin, plus beautiful things.
• Another last modernist.
• So: John Barth. Sot-Weed possibly had more influence on my reading than any other novel.
• UPDATE: William Gass interviewed.(h/t)
• On the uncanny.
• Human Smoke, again.
• Literary sound-tracks.
• Today's listening assignment.
• Today's listening assignment.
• Today's listening assignment.

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NEIGHBORS

James Tate

Will they have children? Will they have more children?
Exactly what is their position on dogs? Large or small?
Chained or running free? Is the wife smarter than the man?
Is she older? Will this cause problems down the line?
Will he be promoted? If not, will this cause marital strife?
Does his family approve of her, and visa versa? How do
they handle the whole in-law situation? Is it causing some
discord already? If she goes back to work, can he fix
his own dinner? Is his endless working about the yard
and puttering with rain gutters really just a pretext
for avoiding the problems inside the house? Do they still
have sex? Do they satisfy one another? Would he like to
have more, would she? Can they talk about their problems?
In their most private fantasies, how would each of them
change their lives? And what do they think of us, as neighbors,
as people? They are certainly cordial to us, painfully
polite when we chance-encounter one another at the roadside
mailboxes - but then, like opposite magnets, we lunge backward,
back into our own deep root systems, darkness and lust
strangling any living thing to quench our thirst and nourish
our helplessly solitary lives. And we love our neighborhood
for giving us this precious opportunity, and we love our dogs,
our children, our husbands and wives. It's just all so damn
difficult.

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In my head, in yours