BLCKDGRD

Looking for the Transparent, the Colorless Essential, the Unbeginning and Unending of Consommé

Maybe you remember that tomorrow is a year since Barack Obama stomped Sarah Palin to win POTUS, and what good has he done beyond not being President Sarah Palin?

Obama drives the shittiest batshittier. That's all I really asked. See me urge Obama to bait crackers November 3 last year. He's succeeded.

Obama needs drive the shittiest batshittier faster if you ask me, but I never take a long view when a spastic view is funner, and I still bet pints Obama (if alive) will stomp The Whomeverpig in 2012 (and yes, by moving to the shittier as the shittiest get shittier, which is the plan, yo).

Oldsters here can vouch: I never bet on Obama the man, I bet on Obama the gamesplayer.

And while he's not as good a gamesplayer I thought he'd be, that's more a reflection on what I want him to be as a man, so all obamapostasies are roobish and mine alone.

*

• True Heh.
• I'm not saying Obama doesn't serve me bankster's shit and call it nourishment.
• But he's still a better gamesplayer than anyone on the other side.
• Your Fucking Washington Post's next Shit-for-Brains! ten columnist nominees! Ezra Klein had nominated blegfriend Henley, and since Jim didn't make the cut, so much for Ezra Klein's schway.
• Cole sums up the ten columns: They’re about what you’d expect: three full-tilt concern trollings, a couple MoDo/Double X style gender pieces, a pointless piece about that college kid who’s hiring a personal assistant, a snoozer about good government (which does make a good point), a predictable rant about cable news, and one thoughtful piece about health care.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Good opportunity to dust off a classic.
• Poop in the Water.
• prOnstache offer Obama advice.
• Dear Anonymous Shaker.
• 400,000 on The List!
• Thoughts on The List!
• Hoarding.
• Artist-Critic. This paragraph:  Under market capitalism, critics and producers are engaged in a curious dance. Each is basically addressing the other at all times and acting as big Other for the other, whilst constantly pretending otherwise. The artist claims to be working for some reified and mystified entity called the Audience, secretly aware that it is the critics' judgment that will more decisively shape their future, and the critic claims to speak for the consumer, the man on the street (this obscure beast, the Audience again), but really longs for recognition by practitioners and prays that their barbed comments will strike the artist to their very marrow, perhaps even encourage them to work differently. For some reason, however, full assumption of this dance - for the dancers to actually look each other in the eye, perhaps even kiss - is strictly taboo, has multiple applications.

• Rave review of Mantel's Wolf Hall in NYTBR.
• I love House of Leaves, feel wussy I can't crack Only Revolutions, as beautiful an object to hold in my hands, if not more, than House of Leaves. It's on my bookstand - I tried - true this - again two weeks ago.
• New Pamuk reviewed, which is good news, but what it better news is that it's reviewed by Maureen Howard, and bioblurb says Maureen Howard’s new book, “The Rags of Time,” will be published this month, completing her cycle of novels based on the four seasons,  which means I've got more rereading to do.
• Pamuk's Museum.
• Bleg Hiatus.
• List time suckitude.
• Shoot me now.
• Remembering The Connells.
• The Foghorns.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• UPDATE! Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.

*

ANXIETY'S PROSODY

A.R. Ammons

Anxiety clears meat chunks out of the stew, carrots, takes
the skimmer to floats of greasy globules and with cheesecloth

filters the broth, looking for the transparent, the colorless
essential, the unbeginning and unending of consommé: the

open anxiety breezes through high conceits, surface congestions
(it likes metaphors deep-lying, out of sight, their airs misting

up into, lighting up consciousness, unidentifiable presences),
it distills consonance and assonance, glottal thickets, brush

clusters, it thins the rhythms, rushing into longish gaits, more
distance in less material time: it hates clots, its stump-fires

level fields: patience and calm define borders and boundaries,
hedgerows, and sharp whirls: anxiety burns instrumentation

matterless, assimilates music into motion, sketches the high
suasive turnings, mild natures tangled still in knotted clumps.

*

The Connells?

No Bet?

So, predictions for United v Jabloteh tonight?

An email stream from Tuesday night:

Me: Hamster will be using Marc's ticket. Hope you can work work to join us.

Landru: Yeah, I think I'm good.

Me: Excellent. There's a 10% chance we'll witness something remarkable in the Train Wreck category, 100% chance we'll have a good time.

Landru: The train's already wrecked, dood. We're just watching the zombies stagger out of the flaming wreckage.

Me: Let me rephrase: there's a 10% chance we'll see the zombies turn on each other in an entertaining display.

Landru: I'd be much more confident in that happy possibility if the Angry Underbite was between the pipes. I think our best shot is Szetela choking out Pops.

Me: My bet is Gomez saying fuck it around 65, peel off the armband and throw it on the ground, and Benny kovalenkos him. Please please please please please.

Landru: Most excellent. No bet.

Wuss.

Meanwhile, here's Napoleon on my front steps this morning, begging me not to go to work, to stay home and play with him, all while diminishing the value of my home.

Varför detta bara flög i mitt huvud som vet, vara i din:

Shittybusy day. Some links later. Or not.

UPDATE!

More.

Relaxing Like a Sunday Roast in My Juices, My Puddles of Blood.

Updated links below.

Perhaps reading a dys(u)topic novel on the (un)intended consequences of a (hyper)capitalistic Pro(re)gress I once (un)assumed while settling into my role of a cranky old fart with multiple cats and garden statuary meant (mostly) to piss off the neighbors is an (un)wise accelerant, but (un)feh:

"Axiom: that illness isn't productive. In itself, it generates no commodities and therefore no money. Although it's an excuse for a lot of activity, all it really does moneywise is cause wealth to flow from the sick to the well. From patients to doctors, from clients to cure-peddlers. Money osmosis, you might call it....

"The best diseases, from a business point of view," said Crake, " would be those that cause lingering illnesses. Ideally - that is, for maximum profit - the patient should either get well or die just before all of his or her money runs out. It's a fine calculation."

That's Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Same with infofood?

Yes, it’s true, but I’m still shocked at how that’s underreported in the Cheney story, because he’s just been allowed too much time to carry on trying to sell his own version of it: that torture saved us from some attack that we’re not allowed to find out about, that nobody can seem to find any evidence for, but maybe the more it goes on — I mean, he really does seem like a crazy man. He had the chance to relax and he doesn’t know how to do it.

It’s our media. Our media loves to keep it going. They love to throw him out there and, you know, stoke the fires. I asked a couple of people fairly high up in our media world, “Why in the world do you continue to give him and Limbaugh an audience? Why? Why do you even put them on the same plane as the president of the United States? Why do you have these dueling speeches? You guys made them dueling speeches, not the two principals.” Well, you know, they’re running out of business. People are canceling their newspaper subscriptions every day. They want news.

READ THAT INTERVIEW (w/these two argxact lines: I become exasperated. There’s just no courage, there’s no moral courage whatsoever in the Democratic Party).

Sartwell argues:

know what? i agree with glenn beck just so far and on just those matters where i agree with him. if he thinks that the national debt will swallow the economy or something, then i say: good point. if it's some conspiracy crap or whatever, then i'm not there. i don't have to love the whole idea of the obama admin to distance myself from glenn beck, and all things considered i so far am basically liking the form of the right-wing backlash: the libertarian tone is precisely right. many conservatives have been improved and sharpened by the obama administration. this is the only moment in american politics that i can recal - with the exception of ronnie's 1980 campaign - where anti-statism actually seems to be a viable stance (and it's quite a bit more radical at the moment than it was in ronnie's time). this is the best development in american politics in a long while, in my view.

i do think that for a certain segment of the pop, obama arrived as an avatar of the future, an embodiment of the dream etc etc, and any criticism is intolerable or evil.

and I commented:

You know, for a certain segment of the pop, Obama arrived as an avatar of the future, an embodiment of the nightmare etc etc, and any praise for Obama is intolerable and evil.

Both sides can call me back when Obama stops spending trillions blowing up Afghan wedding parties.

I still haven't got my birthday gazing ball for the front flower garden, there's a new tabby kitten trying to be friends with my ferals, the asshole neighbors didn't move: the husband is a coach for Maryland helmetball, living in the dorms with his players in August and the wife was at her mother's; she came screaming out of her house Sunday morning chasing away Napoleon; here's Napoleon ten minutes later in our birdbath diminishing the value of my house:

Meanwhile, I've discommodated Emiliano Heskey ^TM:

(I)t fucking took you long enough to stand with your compadres and spontaneously scream, spittle-flecked, at Mr. Em 2.0, "You're fucking dead to me!"

Unconstrained rage in service of our beloved club is beautiful and perfectly healthy. I've never loved you more.

Backatya, and as I commented, best five minutes of my past two weeks.

No one asks me anymore how I separate my politics and soccer. By the time I'm 55, parents in the neighbor will tell their kids to go around the block to avoid my house.

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• UPDATE! No longer aspiring to civility.
• UPDATE! Last night I saw a commercial for Absolut Vodka using this as background music.
• Frank Rich calls Obama a pussy.
• IOZ takes care of Friedman so I don't have to.
• UPDATE! Who's suffering according to the Fuckington Post.
• An alternative take on American conservatism.
• Lordy, this is just the last I saw, but zombiology everywhere.
• UPDATE! The Idiotic Period. (h/t)
• Crackerstan.
• Dudefight!
• How normal is WEIRD?
• UPDATE! Elric's Uzbek roadtrip.
• Dogs: Smells tell time.
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• UPDATE! Thyraphobia, part seven.
• I've never got Drabble (or her sister) but I've friends who have.
• Ishiguro's Nocturnes reviewed. Will be released in US on Sept 22. I bought it from amazon.uk last spring and wrote about it here. I am still haunted daily by The Unconsoled.
• Spicer poem.
• I'm not familiar w/James Lasdun.
• Another one of dozens of my favorite songs ever.
• UPDATE! Today's Listening Assignment.

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THE OVEN MAN

Robin Robertson

The house re-inflates
it's skin of heat:

tightens it up
to the screen door,

frames creaking
like a boat at anchor.

The burners cut off
before the roof lifts.

The house rustles
and ticks, and clicks off.

During all this commotion
I am inside, in expansive mood,

relaxing
like a Sunday roast

in my juices,
my puddles of blood.

*

Jim Carroll, Rest in Peace: UPDATE! More:

Ferals v Assholes

Here's Nap luxuriating on my freshly mowed lawn yesterday, reducing the value of my home.

Since K asked, the ferals are great. I don't think any but mom is still truly feral. Nap isn't: he's a cuddlewhore, comes in and out of the house; he and Fleabus have bumped noses without hissing! Grey Cat's becoming a cuddlewhore, looks in the house like she wants to come in, then runs away when we open the door. Frankie begs to be pet and runs when I try, the dumbfuck, and always comes and sits near us when we're on the back porch, purring and kneading the grass. Mom will actually now walk to within ten feet and then sit until we leave so she can eat. They love them a fresh mowed lawn.

The asshole neighbors? They finally got back from vacation around early August. I saw the husband out cutting his front lawn and walked down and gave him the two motion detectors I bought (@ $50 each), told him they were theirs as long as they lived in the house (they've been trying to sell it) but we'd like them back when they move (in case and because). He made sorry-my-wife-is-a-bitch noises, shook my hand, and we haven't seen him or his wife or their cars since.

The for sale sign has been taken down. The neighbor between the assholes' house and ours is parking one of their cars in front of the assholes' house, in part to make it look like someone's there, in part because they brought back from whatever cracker campground they'd been housing their cracker camper and parked it in front of their house. It's awesome. Feral cats? Home values diminish. Cracker campers parked in the street? Home values skyrocket!

So, to recap: neighbor calls animal control because Napoleon slept on their sun-baked concrete front stoop, threatens to have the ferals trapped and killed, then goes on vacation. The day I'm contacted by animal control I contact my friend at Metro Ferals who recommends motion detectors. I go to the web and order two and wait three weeks for the neighbors to return from vacation. I deliver the motion detectors. They move the next day. Assholes.

Feral Cats Reduce House Values

I was IMing w/dead blegger Jay Dirty 101 Arra Old Paleo Bastard, I typed, This one has legs, this outrageous and racist assault on white police officers by the President of Kenya might be the totemic trope pigs have hornied, they've thrown everything against the wall nothing has stuck and stunk until this, it's a matter of time before they find black men to denounce the Kenyan imposteur, it's a matter of time before Jeremiah Wright's goddamning America again in endless loops, this is all they're gonna talk about from now until armaged....

AWOO!

MEWL!

Sounders FC did well by its fans despite its unsuccessful bid to host the U.S. Open Cup championship game, general manager Adrian Hanauer said Wednesday.

Hanauer implied there could be a problem with the secret bidding process in which U.S. Soccer awarded the Sept. 2 game to D.C. United and RFK Stadium.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was frustrated and somewhat skeptical of the process,” Hanauer said. “I don’t think D.C. has played a game in the Open Cup on the road in two years. They had a road through all lower-division teams to get to the Open Cup Final. I’m not in the know … enough to be able to raise any real issues, but I’m frustrated and I wish U.S. Soccer would explain why one bid wins over another.”

BITCHSLAP!

I was surprised and disappointed and offended. Adrian uses the word 'skepticism' to describe the process, which seems to be implying that it wasn't on the up-and-up. Which is really an outrageous implication. He is implying that we somehow are receiving favorable treatment. We bid aggressively at every level this year and last year. We did so because we didn't want to travel if we could possibly avoid it, given the demands of our schedule [Champions League]. Seattle doesn't have those same demands because this is their first year. Adrian has no knowledge of what we bid or didn't bid; my guess is that we bid more aggressively than they did.

*!hEh!* A Seattle Face-Mullet responds!

Really? Seriously? The club NO ONE in Maryland seems to want is getting all huffy? Has Payne been reduced to smoking the blue prints to all the failed stadium plans? Is the varnish of those four MLS Cups creating fumes in Sir Payne's plush office? Did some Eagle mascot get out of the wrong side of the nest this morning? How in the hell can an expansion team (with a 35-year history...take that 14-year-old DC) be any threat at all to the league's all-time championship leaders? Yet, there is Payne responding like an offended, shocked child when he's held up to scrutiny. "Who DARES to question UNITED?"

Dagger, a photoshop of Payne!

Hey, Face-Mullet, who the fuck you talking to? My shoes cost more than your house:



Call me back after your tenth piece of silverware, Face-Mullet.

Lordy, having a new team to loathe is one of Ba'al's greatest blessings. Please, Face-Mullet, keep mewling.

UPDATE! Just in my mailbox:

Dear D.C. United Planholder,

On September 2, D.C. United is set to host Seattle Sounders FC in the 2009 U.S. Open Cup Final.  Your 'Special Game D' ticket will allow access to this very important match.  We are excited to host the game and hope that you'll plan well in advance to be in attendance.  Winning championship matches are what this club is all about and this game is an ideal chance to be a part of United's tradition of excellence.

In the coming weeks, you'll receive a limited edition D.C. United t-shirt in honor of the team's trip to the final.  This is a 'thank you' to our most fervent and loyal supporters.  Enjoy, wear it often and encourage others to join you at the match.

Tickets to the U.S. Open Cup final are on sale as of today.  With a tip of the cap to our first U.S. Open Cup championship side, United will sell individual tickets to the September 2 title match at 1996 prices.  As planholders, you may purchase additional seats through your account representative in preferred areas at any time.  General public may purchase tickets at www.dcunited.com or at any TicketMaster outlet.

Here's to joining, in unison, behind the Black-and-Red as the team fights for a 13th major title. 

That'd be 13th major title, Face-Mullet.

O! Fuck Me Jig, on the 7:25 AM 7/24/09 WTOP 103.5 Business Report, guy says DC United and the District have quietly begun again negotiations over a split cost soccer stadium at Poplar Point.

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• Look, this doesn't invalidate the morality of anyone who'd vote for the guy, it justifies it just by his failing it and the consequences. Plus he's of The Body - the most sinful conservative is still better than the holiest liberal.
• The most trusted newsman in America.
• True.
• Healthcare: Refresher Course.
• Aesthetics of Civil Enforcement.
• Denise Brennan, anti-feminist.
• Great black/white photos of soccer in Baltimore.
• Lit links.
• DFW as militant grammarian.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

Updates later. Or not.

*

AMERICAN

Frederick Seidel

My face had been sliced off
And lay there on the ground like a washcloth
With my testicles and penis
Next to it.

The car had Wyoming plates.
I'd been to Colorado but not Wyoming.
Which I gather is beautiful.
The other one I hadn't seen was Utah.

Someone had carefully cut under it and lifted it off,
I suppose to obliterate the identity,
Except had left it out in the open.
It looked like a latex glove but also someone's face.

She told me she had always loved me.
I was the happy ending of a fairy tale.
She would recognize my penis anywhere,
Even on the ground.

*

Well, this is on the radio as I type this, so Yes, again, one of my five favorite songs ever:

I think I, the publisher of BLCKDGRD, have made a mistake and a visible one, an embarrassing one, that now makes me qualified to be publisher of BLCKDGRD

Wednesday night about 10 pm I pull up to my house and there's a Montgomery County Humane Society white van parked in front of the woman's house who's complained about our ferals. I run and get Earthgirl, we hurry to the house, my heart racing so fast it never occurred to me to take a photo of the van.

All the houses' lights are on. Through the bay window we can see two black shirted/hatted Humane Society employees. The screen door is shut but the front door is open. The women hears someone walking up, looks out the screen door, and says, "Shit." Looks in the house, says, "Shit, come on in."

"It's not about your goddamn cats," she said, moderating her voice not for us but because there's an elderly couple sitting around the dining room table with an embarrassed and emasculated male trying to disappear. "It's not your cats, there's a bat in the house," she said. The humane society workers smile and nod.

"We were just afraid....  they're lovely animals.... they're spayed and neutered and up to date w/shots... we've bought motion detectors for you...  you've been on vacation...."

"I'm not going to kill your cats," said with a petulant fwump that we'd think she'd kill our cats, "though it's incredibly inconsiderate of you to let your cats outside while a neighbor's trying to sell her house." Mad flapping and thumping noises come from the kitchen. "I just wanna move out of this fucking house."

I tried to deliver the motion detectors since, but no one's been home. It's difficult to find assassin bats at 900 pm on a Wednesday on the mean streets of Bethesda, but worth the extra effort and exorbitant price.

*

Read this short Politico bullet, linger on the last sentence, marvel at that sentence's honest summation of the worldview of America's elite.

Cannot be my age and not mention Walter Cronkite. Video.

By comparison, frame the convo.

*

A MESSAGE

Elizabeth Bishop

Discreet, not cryptic. I write to you from the garden
in tawny, provoking August; summer is just
on the turn. The lawn is hayseeds and grassy dust.

There are brilliant yellow daisies, though, a fuchsia
(you'll know why) and that mauve and silvery-grey
creeper under the apple tree where we lay.

There have been storms. The apples are few, but heavy,
heavy. And where the blossom was, the tree
surges with bright pink flowers - the sweet pea

has taken it over again. Things operate
oddly here. Remember how I found
the buddleia dead, and cut it back to the ground?

That was April. Now it's ten feet high:
thick straight branches - they've never been so strong -
leaves like a new species, half a yard long,

and spikes of flowers, airily late for their season
but gigantic. A mutation, is it? Well,
summers to come will test it. Let time tell.

Gardens are rift with sermon-fodder. I delve
among blossoming accidents for their designs
but make no statement. Read between the lines.

*

Myrrwhyrr

Palin was chosen out of obscurity by men whose attacks on Hillary Clinton over the years dwarfed any vile vomit Liberals threw at Palin (or Obamacons threw at Clinton). Palin was chosen by the piggiest men to be Hillary Clinton to women they thought as shallowly tribal as they, women alienated and wounded by Obama's victory over Clinton and lovingly scratching the scars that intra-tribal civil war produced. It's obvious to say every side's choice of a vice-presidential candidate is cynical (Joe Biden brought in to guarantee Pennsylvania, for instance), but the choice of Palin, in its disdain towards women, is why the simple fact she's a diva and moron can't be accepted.

My favorite current TV show is E!'s The Soup, which profits by mocking the moronic inanity of E!'s programming:



This is exactly the strategy of the pigs who brought you Palin.

Myrrwhyrr, I need tell you Fleabus is The Best Cat Ever, and I've news of The Ferals:

I contacted Officer Niceperson at MCP Animal Services and asked if she'd talked to the neighbors, and Officer Niceperson said she talked to them right after I had talked to her a week ago Wednesday.

The neighbors are concerned that cats in their yard while they're trying to sell their house (so it is who we thought) brings down their house's value.

(Here's Napolean and Frankie on our backporch ten minutes ago diminishing the value of my house)

Officer Niceperson also said that the neighbors said that the cats set off the motion detectors of their house's security system, which I think is utter bullshit, but what can I do?

Officer Niceperson said that the neighbors would be glad to accept any cat deterrent attempts I would purchase, so after some research on Teh Google, I ordered two of these

 

They should get here tomorrow, though the neighbors have been on vacation (they left the day after they called in their complaint, the chickenshits). We'll see.

Officer Niceperson assured me that if the neighbors do call in to have the cats trapped she will contact us first. The neighbors aren't obliged to call MCP to have the cats trapped, but since they are the only organization that will trap the cats for free, and it's fairly expensive to pay to have the cats trapped, the neighbors are likely to go that route. She also said she didn't think the neighbors want to have the cats trapped, just out of their yard.

Meanwhile, Dick Cheney was running death squads, but you duh that already. Obama hopes to soothe your pwoggle conscience by assuring you Eric Holder is "weighing" investigations into Bush-era torture programs.

Have another Phleabusphoto:

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• Grifter's Escape.
• Michael Palin on laughing at people in charge.
• Will what we don't know (or care to know) hurt us? (h/t)
• Free to those who can afford it.
• Self-blegoscopy.
• Excerpt from next Coetzee novel.
• McElroy revisited, the pomo I never got.
• Powell's Chronic reviewed.
• A mid-year music review.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Remembering Aphex Twin.

Updates later, probably, but right now I'm going to Seneca to throw plastic at metal baskets.

UPDATE! 28-33-32, most pins in B or C, which is a suck score for most but is !!! for me.

*

POEM

Forrest Gander

Some
we say we
know go
like a window
dark.
Pathetic
any remark
then.
They leave
us, what
we call
them.

*

Yes, again:

Julyworthy Autoblogography, Or: Fireless and Vacant as any hat

*

The kind woman who's helped us with The Ferals called me back, and she says a collar and tags makes no difference at all legally if an asshole is determined to be an asshole and say what can and can't be on her property, and though that sucks in this case, that is how it should be, yo. I don't want my neighbor's fuckface on my property.

The kind woman said we could buy a motion-detector that squirts water at an unwanted cat, and I said a neighbor turning a hose on the cat when she sees him would be even better, but we both know the issue is that this woman's complaint is that she shouldn't have to do anything.

The kind woman said whatever we do, let Animal Services act as arbitrator, assholes can sometimes be placated by uniformed authority figures.

The kind woman said that converting Napoleon to an indoor cat is FAR less traumatic that moving him to a farm with lots of land and vermin to hunt, the dream-life both Planet and I were constructing as emotional safety-net if we had to give Napoleon up.

She's dotty, our kind friend, with an unflappable dotty kindness that drives mean people to violence, the very same kind of kind dotty woman our neighbor fears lives two doors down from her house, and if I point out the mother feral squatted uninvited in our shed, we're not collecting ferals like our kind dotty friend, I hope that our neighbor never loses her fear.

*

New Eels! UPDATE! Nope. Wads.

*

• Need's noting.
• Compare and contrast.
• Conservative contortions.

 

Excellence via Vagabond Scholar.

 

• Hard-hitting analysis on vital issues.
• Last time (I hope/doubt) I type the name Michael Jackson.
  
• Autoblogography.
• The Backstory.

UPDATE!

Vasily Aksyonov has died. A quick appreciation. I read The Burn and The New Sweet Style and liked them, but I loved Generations of Winter, reading it three times - one scene in the novel I think about often: when Nikita Gradov, a Red Army officer sent to the gulag's during Stalin's purge of the Red Army, is brought out of the gulag to help fight the advancing Nazi's, one of the soldiers picking Gradov off gives him too much food, which the starving Gradov wolves down, almost killing him.

Normally I love the uncanny - I held New Sweet Style in my hands two, three weeks ago looking for something else on my shelves, and thought, wonder why he hadn't written anything since 1999, wondering if he was still alive, wondering if he still lived in Fairfax.

• Book Reporting.
• Is disjunction dead?
• Travis Morrison, retired?

Travis Morrison?

• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! A favorite song.

Updates later. Or not.

*

THE DRUNK IN THE FURNACE

W.S.Merwin

        For a good decade
The furnace stood in the naked gully, fireless
And vacant as any hat. Then when it was
No more to them than a hulking black fossil
To erode unnoticed with the rest of the junk-hill
By the poisonous creek, and rapidly to be added
        to their ignorance.

        They were afterwards astonished
To confirm, one morning, a twist of smoke like a pale
Resurrection, staggering out of its chewed hole,
And to remark then other tokens that someone,
Cosily bolted behind the eye-holed iron
Door of the drafty burner, had there established
        His bad castle.

        Where he gets his spirits
It's a mystery. But the stuff keeps him musical:
Hammer-and-anvilling with poker and bottle
To his jugged bellowings, till the last groaning clang
As he collapses onto the rioting
Springs of a litter of car-seats ranged on the grates,
        To sleep like an iron pig.

        In their tar-paper church
On a text about stoke-holes that are sated never
Their Reverend lingers. They not and hate trespassers.
When the furnace wakes, though, all afternoon
Their witless offspring flock like piped rats to its siren
Crescendo, and agape on the crumbling ridge
        Stand in a row and learn.

*

Flegging Barrels

It's 2:50 Thursday afternoon, I'm rereading the resume of a young woman about to interview for an entry level position here at Zrtzmwah, and my cell phone vibrates, it's a Moco number I don't recognize, and a voice says, Mr Dogred, I say yes, and the voice says, This is Office Whatever with the Montgomery County Police.

Since posting this about the (say it derisively) Park Police's attempt to foster a riot last Tuesday generated some hits that came from addresses that may or not have been from police but were certainly from moco government domains, my first thought was that this phone call was to ask me questions about the event, but no: a neighbor has called in an official complaint against one of my ferals because the feral - gasp at the cat's evil - sleeps on her front stoop in the sun all day.

The complainant says we're harboring wild animals, and they're breeding. I quickly tell the officer the story: Yes, there are four cats, a mother and three children. The mother moved into our shed, had the kittens, it never occurred to us to consider them pests and have them killed like they were possum or raccoons, we trapped them and, with the help of Metro Ferals, paid to have them all spayed or neutered, we have the documentation, their ears are clipped, here's the name and phone number of our Metro Ferals contact, we can verify all of this. Except for the mother, none of them are feral now, they're our outdoor cats, though still feral enough they can't - and don't want to - come inside.

We're sure but the policewoman wouldn't confirm that it's the same bitch who started yelling at Earthgirl back in late April. The officer was very sympathetic, though was clear that homeowners have the right to have unwanted animals, including cats, trapped and removed from their yards, and that the homeowner in question is determined that whichever of our cats this is (it was Grey Cat back in April, though I always see Napoleon run from that direction when I call him - and he always comes running - Napoleon is a special cat), it be trapped and killed if necessary.

Why doesn't she just stomp her feet and shout Shoo! The officer doesn't know. The officer says, there are cat deterrent sprays and methods, and I tell the officer we will certainly pay for them if the neighbor applies them. I've a phone call into our Metro Ferals contact for advice. The officer says the phone represents a first complaint, not imminent trapping, but we should take this seriously. Any suggestions would be welcome (beyond slapping silly the bitch who called in the complaint - that's already occurred to me, quite swiftly in fact).

Frankie will sit within two feet of me, roll on his back, meow, and then run if I try to pet him. Grey Cat lets me pet her and hold her, though she doesn't yet have full confidence and still keeps her flee instinct tightly triggered. Napoleon - jeebus, I love that cat: he plays, he cuddles, he initiates conversations, he trusts us completely. We could probably bring him inside, thoroughly ruining his happy and terrific life and possibly thoroughly ruining our indoor cats' lives too.

Taken this morning, that's Grey Cat and Frankie, both of whom knocked at the door because it was time for breakfast:

 

Here's Fleabus, watching:

Here's the kicker: the bitch's family is trying to sell their house, wanna be out of the neighborhood within two months. Is it maturity or complicity that's kept me from confronting them? The law is a bitch.

UPDATE!

Photo taken literally two minutes ago, Napoleon and Grey Cat and Frankie on our back porch proving what nuisance wild animals they are.

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• Thankfully, this guy saves me the necessary effort (but wait, there's more: check out Whispers in comments).
• Another obamapostate.
• Now the flegging: Blogosphere 2.0, or, why all blegs are shetty and getting shettier (h/t).
• A generous philosophy of blegging.
• Poetry is not dead yet? No, but searching pathetically for pulses is lame.
• Terrific review of Seidel's collected. (sub rqrd)
• Daily Listening Assignment.

Updates later. Or not.

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AMERICAN

Frederick Seidel

My face had been sliced off
And lay there on the ground like a washcloth
With my testicles and penis
Next to it.

The car had Wyoming plates.
I'd been to Colorado but not Wyoming.
Which I gather is beautiful.
The other one I hadn't seen was Utah.

Someone had carefully cut under it and lifted it off,
I suppose to obliterate the identity,
Except had left it out in the open.
It looked like a latex glove but also someone's face.

She told me she had always loved me.
I was the happy ending of a fairy tale.
She would recognize my penis anywhere,
Even on the ground.

*

Pay no attention to what the two ditzes or the ditzy chryon say, though it's apt metaphor for something:

There's a Frankie Feral Cat, Then There's A Napoleon Feral Cat

Napoleon has us completely trained, and many of our neighbors, except one, who got into a yelling confrontation with - you who know her will like this - Earthgirl. !hEh!

The woman yells, Are these your cats? and Earthgirl says, Well, I guess so, we feed them, they live in our shed, we had them fixed, but they're feral, they really don't belong to anybody, what's the problem? They're in my yard, yelled the neighbor. Well, Earthgirl said, I'll talk to them and ask them to stay out of your yard, but I don't think they'll listen. The woman screamed, My husband is allergic to cats. Tell him not to pet them, Earthgirl says. 21 years this July.

A new orange-and-white has been visiting the commune. Hasn't let us get close enough to see whether a he or she, but the ear hasn't been clipped. (Look at Nap's squared ear - when we had the ferals fixed, the vets sliced off the tip of one ear - it's the international symbol (so we were told) for fixed ferals.) Since we are credentialed Junior Trappers

we'll get him or her fixed if he or she becomes a permanent resident.

*

• From the Pope of Hope Files.
  
• Farewell, American Century.
• The Daily Duh.
• Marx is Icky.
• Terry Nichols is constipated. (h/t)
• The word most associated w/Fred Hiatt is pussy.
• Republican rebranding: Grumpy Old Pussies.
• Shadows are the best disinfectant.
• How's going Galt going?
• David Broder, reamed again.
• He's her backdough man.
• Football in Lebanon.

• Geek like me? (Unfortunately, Steve's Gas and Oil on PA 166 in Republic is not represented.)
• Cute overdose.
• Springbrook?
• Springbrook.
• American Idol sings Apples in Stereo?
• !Too! !many! !fucking! !!!s!
• Today's listening assignment.
• Today's listening assignment.
• MANDATORY! LISTEN! MANDATORY!
• For a friend

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FUTURE TENSE

Charles Wright

All things in the end are bittersweet -
An empty gaze, a little way station just beyond silence.

If you can't delight in the everyday,
                                                            you have no future here.
And if you can, no future either.

And time, black dog, will sniff you out,
                                                                 and lick your lean cheeks,
And lie down beside you - warm, real close - and will not move.

*

My head, your head