BLCKDGRD

There's Too Much Lime in the World and Not enough gin, they gasp. The Gentle are Curious, but the curious are not gentle*

I deal with copyright/intellectual property neurotics as part of my day job. They're correct to be neurotic as they are dealing with intellectual property owners who must know in their brain stems that they've lost but won't recognize in their frontal lobes they've lost. They're fighting with the litigious zeal of the desperate. Set aside their justified moral position - artists, writers, creators deserve the profit of their invention - they've lost. They've lost, and no other business model can be conceived until they recognize the one that's lost is obsolete.

America's declining. Argue amongst yourselves whether America as CEO and War-King was a good-bad or bad-good thing, but America as supreme decider is dying and terminal, no matter how many wars America's brave dick-swingers start, no matter how many shitty decades unapologetic militarism delays the body's death.

Lordy, I'm a doorstop, a grim triangular black hard-rubber doorstop wedged under a bedroom door in my grandmother's house in Fellsburg Pennsylvania to keep my cousins out so I can read in peace, that doesn't work.

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• Permanent war.
• Permanent war.
• Permanent war.
• Surveillance state.
• O, Woe.
• If Obama loses.
• If Obama loses.
• Yes, but wake the fuck up to what?
• Five hilarious lies about Obama... that work! on who they're meant to work on.
• Fortunately, my time in PG is limited to the Beltway to the BW Parkway to RFK.

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*Frank O'Hara, who's newly repackaged Selected Poems wondrously dropped free into my hands.

FOR GRACE, AFTER A PARTY

    You do not always know what I am feeling.
Last night in the warm spring air while I was
blazing my tirade against someone who doesn't
interest
    me, it was love for you that set me
afire,
    and isn't it odd? for in rooms full of
strangers my most tender feelings
                                        writhe and
bear the fruit of screaming. Put out your hand,
isn't there
        an ashtray, suddenly, there? beside
the bed? And someone you love enters the room
and says wouldn't
                            you like the eggs a little
different today?
                            And when they arrive they
are just plain scrambled eggs and the warm weather
is holding.

*

In my head. Be in yours.

Hood On Your Blands

Russia-Georgia gives McCain a bounce in the polls? Here's a question: How many innocent lives will be saved in October if McCain is ten points up instead of Obama?

Hah! a rhetorical question. Missiles will be flying - American and/or a proxy's - come October, the number calculated to the level of belligerence necessary to ensure Republican victory. Fewer die if McCain is winning, more die if Obama's winning. Is it complicity to goad Bushco/GOP, who view the military as a propaganda organ AND private security force, to gin up violence against innocent civilians to maintain power?

Some yes but more no, but no only if you understand that if Obama wins despite, the lesson won't be lost, though supposing Obama needs to be taught that lesson is ruby.

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• Can I also point out that Obama had better get the crackers to scream nigger, because if he loses because he's a suckbucket - and Obama, as of this struck ! is a suckbucket, though this is better - think his devoutest won't blame racism? Mofos, if Obama loses because of racism, let's see some racism.
• Saaaaay, this wasn't predictable: David Brooks says it's not John McCain's fault he's running a rovian campaign, he was forced to, the saying of which has the advantage of being both true and dishonest.
• The most willfully stupid and self-serving column Dionne has ever written. Helping the poor. Jeebus.
• Mwa-ha-awfuckit. Though I know a guy who owns twenty-sided dice and used to blog. Oh, and a response to this bullet's catalyst. And another.
• Rightwing bloggers = Italian soccer players?
• Truth in advertising, motherfuckers.
• Advertising? Obama's suckbucketful.
• Russian Bear = The Monkees?
• Mwa-ha-awfuckit.
• More Kafka and porn.
• Realist fiction and propaganda.
• Dan's long rumination on Steven Millhauser. I read Martin Dressler years ago, but he's fallen away. Time to pick up.
• Max's list of novels for vacations. Some John Irving love there.

Updates later. Or not.

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Former lover Jill St John is SIXTY-EIGHT YEARS OLD TODAY:

I was only twelve at the time, mind.

So distraught that I dumped her, she dated Henry Kissinger in self-lacerating despair.

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In my head. Be in yours.

Hamster Advice!

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Looking for om in August, Fleabus? Hamster advice!

August sucks. Damn August and everyone born in August. Especially bloggers born in August.

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• Memo to HRC presupposes she's bigger than she wasn't.
• Tinfoiled?
• The indestructible core of my rubity is my inability to relax and enjoy the stupid.
• Maybe not, but probably so.
• Krugman: it's 1913 all over again.
• Who's just like Hitler today?
• So much for that trial balloon.
• (Right)Wingman, fuck-buddy.
• America as pedophile priest.
• Savage coward.
• God does play dice, or Elect the Pope: The Game.
• Slots. Meh.
• Kafka's Dick.
• Obama's top-ten list is cynical, McCain's is lame.
• 29 instrumentals by bands that sing, w/mp3!

Updates later. Or not.

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Why should we look for comfort in poetry?

MARBLE-SIZED SONG

Albert Goldbarth

Does she love you? She says yes, but really
how do you know unless you undress that easy assertion,
undoing its petals and laminae, and going in
below all trace of consciousness, into the neuroelectrical
coffer where self-understanding is storaged away,
and then lifting its uttermost molecule out, to study
in its nakedness as it spins
in a clinical light?—the way
we all, in our various individual versions
of this common human urge, go in,
and in, and in, the physicist down
to the string-vibration underlying matter, and
the Appalachia fiddler getting so
(as she puts it) "into my music," sound becomes
a flesh for her to intimately ("in"-timately)
enter, "its thick and its sweetbreads."
Is he cheating on you? He says no, and feigns
that he's insulted, but for certainty
you'll need to delicately strip the bark away
and drill, and tweeze, until you can smear a microscope slide
of the pith and can augur the chitterlings
—the way the philosopher can't accept a surface
assumption of truth, but needs to peel back
the fatty sheen of the dermis, soak the cambium layer
into a blow-away foam, and then with pick
and lightbeam helmet, inch by inch begin
spelunking through those splayed-out caverns
under the crust, where gems of cogitation are buried
—the way the diver descends for the pearl,
the miner: in, the archaeologist: in, the therapist: down
the snakier roots of us and in, and in, the way
the lone, leg-pretzeled yogi makes
a glowing bathysphere of worldliness and sends it in,
and further in, tinier and heavier and ever in,
the way the man in the opium den is floating forever,
toward a horizon positioned in the center of the center
of his head.... If we could stand beyond the border
of our species and consider us objectively, it might seem
that our purpose in existing is to be a living agency
that balances, or maybe even slows, the universe's
irreversible expansion out, and out ... and each
of us, a contribution to that task.
My friend John's wife received the news: a "growth,"
a "mass," on her pituitary, marble-sized, mysterious.
And the primary-care physician said: Yes,
we must go in and in. That couldn't be the final word!
And the second-opinion physician said: Yes,
my sweet-and-shivering-one,
my fingerprint-and-irisprint-uniqueness,
someone's-dearest, you
who said the prayers at Juliette's grave, who drove
all night from Switzerland with your daughter, you
on this irreplaceable day in your irreplaceable skin
in the scumbled light as it crosses the bay in Corpus Christi,
yes in the shadows, yes in the radiance,
yes we must go in and in.

Oblahma in Paradise

Here's one example of a liberal blogger overlord mocking Cokie Roberts for attacking Hawaii as Oblahma's vacation destination, complete with rational explanations why it's silly to be attacking Oblahma for vacationing in Hawaii. I'm the rube?

Cokie Roberts can be scolded, mocked, abused, denounced. Her stupid can be proven by logical arguments of least difficulty. Obama vacationing in the state of his birth, where family members still live, may be completely, factually, rebuke-free, which doesn't mean Cokie Roberts is narratively incorrect. When did common sense and truth become factors in American presidential elections?

Cokie suggests Myrtle Beach, and if I agree it would play better in Peoria, what would play better still is NOT TAKING A GODDAMN VACATION IN AUGUST WHILE RUNNING FOR OBAMAGOD!

Jeebus in Crackerstan, either Oblahma doesn't understand the rules of the game or Oblahma believes he floats above the rules of the game (or both), and that makes him one dumb and arrogant obamawannabe, but obamapostasy and meh.

But our internet Liberal overlords, fully aware of the rules of the game, wasting outrage on Cokie Roberts for reporting the Republican narrative, are almost as stupid as Oblahma deciding to finally challenge the Republican meme he's an arrogant elitist by defiantly flying to Hawaii for a vacation before his coronation.

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• The minute I think good thoughts about HRC, mcaullifister!
• Oblahma. This is better.
• Foot-stomping impotence will be countered by slobbering belligerence, and of course Russia v Georgia will be viewed as boon to McCain, allowing pigs to use the holy word Kremlin in the same sentence as Obama, who hasn't been reached for comment because HE'S VACATIONING IN THE MIDDLE OF A CAMPAIGN TO BE OBAMAGOD.
• Georgia v Russia, Georgia v Russia, Georgia v Russia.
• Oblahma. Oblahma.
• Obama Art.
• Suggestion of Carl Levin for vpotus.
• Failing the Chesapeake.
• Next great American beer?
• Ten most memorable uniforms in rock.
• Gaithersburg is #1!
• Keep your dog off my lawn, or else!

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BTW, typepad has upgraded my composer, and it's buggy as dusk, so if fonts and/or link colors look screwy or things don't work, oh well, I'll figure it out eventually. And, maybe you've noticed, I've set up links (when I remember) to open a new window, which should be especially helpful on FridayMusicFridays.

Meanwhile, in vitally important news, here's the new bag, a Revolution "Deluxe" Mini:

It did not come with anything that improves my game, but sweet nonetheless. It appears I'm sideways from design specs.

Pretzelicious? Pretzelitus!

Shee-it, let's hope obamatrophy constipates August until convention, and if Obama survives Obama Fatigue treading even with McCain all will be fine. My friends, insisting my opponent is so much more awesome than me can only distract attention from my own inability to perform for so, um, long (and Teh Obamachub versus impotent sugar-daddy will be a hot! new! series! on Fox!).

I go in Friday afternoon for an ophthalmologist appointment - it's bifocal time, youngsters - but weird is in the last month my eyesight, my reading/writing eyesight, has deteriorated to the point I don't even try reading and can't write in tablets

unless I remove my current glasses. All is fine until I look up, and then I'm not sightless but am stunned by fuzz as if suddenly blind, lost.

Mofos, there isn't anything I can't pretzel into whatever pretzel I'm gnawing into blogable nyah, and since I need to see my tablets' calligraphy as I'm scratching it, my greatest desire is a new pair of grandpa glasses?

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• Thomas Frank's new book. Thomas Frank interviewed. More Frank. I should write more about Frank, but it's fracking August.
• Democrats are assholes too. If the GOP doesn't link this and Obama and American Jews, that doesn't make them less detestable, just off their game. UPDATE.
• Probably a good strategy, though it bores me.
• When Obama does attack, this is one target-rich vein.
• McCain buffoonery = AP buffoonery.
• Guide to the sleaziest obamaslurs.
• A reminder.
• NRA spy? Down the memory hole.
• USWNT = Nike National Team.
• Thunder? How frackenlame.
• Say no to Amazon.
• Revitalize Diamond Avenue?
• Fair food will be three grams less shitty!
• I play here. I know some of these guys.

Updates later. Or not.

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In my head. Be in yours.

And I'd Do It Again

Obamadmiration makes me feel obamasinine, so it's not love when I obamapplaud obamarmy for not just returning fire but opening fire (he says from a completely morally-neutral spectator of game-playing perch, urp).

Obama play the race card? I kinda look like Eisenhower, but a dime's worth shit anyway even if you kept them in your wallet.

If Obama's strategists, my friends, think poking a half-daft ballistically-tempered time bomb is a good idea, I scream POKE! and GOAD! my friends, POKE! and GOAD!

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• Race card? Black man and white skanks is race card? Oh my!
• Pastor Gerson likes Kaine, which disqualifies Kaine in my book.
• The world's second most shitty human (Blanco won) hates Pelosi, which increases Pelosi's points in my book.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• If you haven't read Ed on future of newspapers and litblogs, do.
• Bob Barr will be 44th president?
• Exactly right.
• Ana Popovic?
• Obama's too fit to be elected. No, really.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Today's birthday has chinacat sunflowers on Franklin's Tower.

UPDATES

• Babs signals she's running for re-election.
• Marysurveillanceland.
• Going through the motions.
• Just because Joe Klein is saying things now one agrees with doesn't mean he isn't the same stooge he was when he was saying things you don't.
• Does enjoying Rachel Maddow slap Pat Buchanan to stuttering rage implicate me in any toxic-stank of complicity?
• Clarksburg Historical District?
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Jack? Shit.
• Like you need another reason to hate Wal-Mart.
• Hey, someone writing about Elkin! (h/t Mark)
• Eclectic bunch of downloads.
  

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OK, click on that to see just how good a photograph that is. It's even more astonishing when downloaded to your desktop and set as your wallpaper. Yes, Planet is a genius. Send me an email if you want it and I'll mail it to you.

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In my head. Be in yours.

Pig Morals: A Public Debate

Was offered tickets and made my first trip here two days ago:

Meh, I'll spare me the recital of issues why I transformed from a guy who spent 30 days a year in the upper right-field deck of Memorial Stadium in the 80s to a guy who now finds baseball utterly unwatchable, so I'll just say the new stadium is nice enough (though not nearly as nice as Camden Yards) and Metro sucks and leave that there. (Both Earthgirl and Planet turned to me in the second and third innings respectively and said, Boy, are United games so much better. Yes, yes they are.)

But, on the way home, waiting for a train with Earthgirl and Planet at Gallery Place, we were entertained by three Young Republicans, McCain-button emblazoned, loudly debating what constitutes cheating on girlfriends. After three minutes of arguing whether blowjobs from hookers is cheating (they couldn't reach agreement, two insisting it wasn't as long as the hooker didn't swallow), a limit was clearly defined by the most loutish of the three, who declared, so that everyone in Gallery Place could hear, if you put peanut butter on your balls and let your dog lick it off, that isn't cheating.

Thankfully the train came just as they began debating whether letting a male dog lick the peanut butter off your balls makes you gay.

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• Spite works.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Ignatius spurts his McCain circle jerk.
• Photoshop of the day. Or is it this one?
• The minute I start thinking kind thoughts about Hillary Clinton, Lanny Davis up and dashes them.
• On fucktardness.
• On meaningless polling.
• Long bedtime story.
• An argument against Kaine.
• Pig, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Framing and memetic warfare.
• Box turtles are narcs.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Acid reflections.
• Tuesday morning, White Flint Mall.

UPDATES

• Is it Obammukah yet?
• Chirp, or: Frag Dana Milbank.
• Billmon? Billmon!
• The McCain campaign knows it sucks.
• Another voice against Kaine.
• Elric 7 in Vladivostok.
  

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Broderignatiancohen ballad to McCainlove!

Fifty! Today

Lordy. The self-rummaging.

Seventy!

Diana Rigg, my favorite ex-lover ever!

The private rehearsals for this episode during our secret weekends in my cottage on the Scottish coast were OMFG!

Best show ever.

Blogdays of Summer

I continue not negotiating the terms of my complicity in all things rinkydink and ruby, and must surmount a deliciously convincing case of blooming damnlessness, or so I've been taught.

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• !!wOOt!! Maryland: Old Line Surveillance State!
• Meet your new overlords.
• Torture Triptych, or: Real America.
• And it gets worse.
• Conflicted Leftist on FISA.
• Liberal Imperialism, or: Baiting Greenwald.
• On the many ways Republicans suck.
• Democracy of a new type.
• Are we all fascists now?
• Proud to not be a Democrat.
• Judging a book by its cover.
• A proper smackdown of Brooks.
• Bat Segundo, RIP? Hope not.
• Kay Ryan?
• Click this link, listen to Dog Park. Now, dammit.
• I'm listening to KEXP, and I feel compelled to remind you just how sucktacularfuckawful the new DCFC is.
• Greenbelt United.

Updates later. Or not.

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Why yes, I am revisiting my Cure love.