You Might Have Been a Vowel on a Typewriter or a Number on a Telephone Dial or a Consonant in Books. You Could Have Been a Dot on a Die in a Child's Monopoly Set

 

Julius Finsberg, on his death bed, tells his godson Ben Flesh:

It's incredible really. Amazing. Who could believe it? You weren't aborted, you didn't end up in a scum bag. You survived the infant mortality stuff. You made it past measles, polio, mumps. You outwitted whooping cough, typhoid, VD. God bless you, boy, you're a testament to the impossible! And not just that, but you aren't broken or damaged, there are no birth defects; you've your full complement of fingers, your fair share of toes. You're literate, you do sums. The Dean's List at Wharton. I know, I know. And even without parents you've got clothes, shelter, sex, what to eat - you know, the drives , the hydramatics of being, four on the floor and more where that came from. Yes, and you get the point of jokes and have a favorite movie and maybe even the room where you stay is done up in your favorite color. My God, lad, you're a fucking celebration...

Ben, everything there is is against your being here! Think of get-togethers, family stuff, golden anniversaries in rented halls, fire regulation celebrated more in the breach than the observance, the baked Alaska up in flames, everybody wiped out - all the cousins in from coasts, wiped out. Rare, yes - who says not - certainly rare, but it could happen, has happened. And once is enough if you've been invited. All the people picked off by plagues and folks eaten by earthquakes and drowned in the tidal waves, all the people already dead that you might have been or who might have begat the girl who married the guy who fathered the fellow who might have been your ancestor - all the showers of sperm that dried on his Kleenex or spilled on his sheets or fell on the ground or dirtied his hands when he jerked off or came in his p.j.'s or no, maybe he was actually screwing and the spermatozoon had your number written on it and it was lost at sea because that's what happens, you see - there's low motility and torn tails - that's what happens to all but a handful out of all the googols and gallons of come, more sperm finally than even the grains of sand I was talking about, more even than the degrees. Well - am I making the picture for you? Am I connecting the dots? Ben, Ben, Nick the Greek wouldn't lay a fart against a trillion bucks that you'd ever make it to this planet!

- Stanley Elkin, The Franchiser.

UPDATE! My favorite paragraph ever.

 

Got home Monday night and saw this sign in my front yard, got an email Tuesday morning from a good friend re: bleggalgazing, thus this, a post I will spend more time on and invest more mmwah in than any other post since the last and until the next, deliberately posted for the two slowest bleg days of the year.

This bleg is where I spend whatever creative mmwah I have in the time I have to mmwah. There's a reason I want this bleg to be different than the blegs I read, not to be better but different. I'll not deny I'm competitive, that I want to be recognized as smart by people I think are smart - and I am, thank you - and I'll not deny there are bleggers who (and this isn't aimed at anyone who'd be reading this) are almost as smart as they think they are, who appropriate others' work and call it their own and....

Meh. It's Thanksgiving, the one civic holiday I genuinely like (that whole celebration of the successful genocide of the aboriginal population of North America aside), so, Kind.

I could be the Number Two stenciled on a pencil, says Julius Finsberg. I'm lucky to be a blegging Ben Flesh.

• UPDATE! Elric sends Thanksgiving best wishes from a Sheraton in Frankfurt, Deutschland, along with last thoughts and pictures from Lagos, Nigeria. And while we too wish could join us in Kensington, we're actually gonna be at his parents' house in Gophershole because someone (the mother of my child) jammed up the garbage disposal with onions and green beans and we can't get a plumber out her until Friday. We're still doing all the cooking.
• Obamapostasy.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• UPDATE! The idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• It's almost as if the idiot doesn't want to be reelected.
• UPDATE! The Moral Face of Our Country.
• UPDATE! Greenwald most excellently calls Bolton a pussy.
• Cole makes a funny: How about the liberals and Democrats who appear on CNN do something about it. Call (Castellano) him out every time you are on- make sure every chance you get you point out that CNN’s political commentator is an official GOP hack. Heh, Democrats calling out Republicans!
• Every man an anchor of the Goodship Palin.
• The Association of Rightwing Bedwetters.
• Please please please please please.
• Please please please please please.
• Like Hell I'm going to let some black President help me pay for my dialysis.
• Children of the grave.
• Jim (who made me think of the Elkin by sending me this) starts a hugely ambitious project on Western values by considering truth.
• Efficiencies of Death.
• Fucking Christers.
• UPDATE! In case someone insists you say grace on Thnxgvng.
• Giftmas shilling this year? Cheap and cheerful!

• CONGRATULATIONS, AGI! She's beautiful.

UPDATE! Meet Julia.

• One can't have lived in DC area for forty-five years and not note the passing of Abe Pollin. I find the NBA unwatchable and don't give a sliver of fuck about the hockey team (which he sold x-years ago), but for his part in revitalizing downtown, he did good. See Sasha for more. And lordy, the concerts at this place:

• The Tombs sucks. And what good is a gardenburger if it's fried in the grease of a beef-burger?
• Maryland, beets, molasses, and snow on roads.
• MOCO furloughs?
• My tax dollars to fire Ralph Fucking Friedgen? I think I've told this story already, but wtf: two years ago, my next door neighbor's kid was an All-Met offensive lineman at Good Council (the school Bromark was sent to after Elric's parents had had enough of him and me at Gophershole High). The kid was recruited by Maryland and others, and, long story short, the competing schools talked about what an overbearing asshole Friedgen is, and upon meeting Friedgen, the kid found out it was true.
• On Little Danny Helmetball's team's business decline.
• Tears of a Cheater. Quit the national team, then I'll believe you.
• The eleven protected: Defenders Marc Burch, Dejan Jakovic, Julius James and Bryan Namoff; midfielders Fred, Clyde Simms, Danny Szetela and Rodney Wallace; midfielder-forwards Chris Pontius and Santino Quaranta; and forward Jaime Moreno. No surprises except perhaps Fred, though I think United fears he'll go elsewhere and be all he was supposed to be here.
• UPDATE! Strike!
• Benny officially retired Tuesday UPDATE!:

• The didactic embodiment of the physical book.
• Woods reviews Auster. I don't remember precisely why I lost complete interest in Auster, though I never understood the buzz about the New York Trilogy, and come to think about it, only Moon Palace wowed me.
• The Onion's AV Club reviews the latest Auster.
• Poetry recommendations. I can vouch for the Linh Dinh (I've posted his poems here a few times).
• The End of Music. Is? Dumb.
• KEXP's generous MP3s of this week's releases.
• Don't forget counterstream, yo.
• Facts don't prove my point of view.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Check out Mr. Businessman.
• UPDATE! This argument is excellent cud, which is why I post it (and will comment on it further, or not), but what I really wanted to post from Poetix is this John Martyn, who I confess I hadn't thought about in a year or so.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• You can walk, you can talk just like me.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• She could hear the highway breathing.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Here we stand like an Adam and an Eve.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

 

FROM THE MANIFESTO OF THE SELFISH

Stephen Dunn

Because altruists are the least sexy
    people on earth, unable
to say "I Want" without embarrassment,

we need to take from them everything
    they give,
then ask for more,

this is how to excite them, and because
    it's exciting
to see them the least bit excited

once again we'll be doing something
    for ourselves,
who have no problem taking pleasure,

always desirous and so pleased to be
    pleased, we who above all
can be trusted to keep the balance.