BLCKDGRD

Theme Song November 2009

It Is a Spar in a Far Mine

I suggest that HOLYFUCKINGFUCK! isn't tomorrow, that my placing posts about Planet's college visits next to posts proclaiming each day's tomorrow is HOLYFUCKINGFUCK! based on each day's yesterday's OMFG! is not only logically incoherent (though a proven if overplayed gambit to maintain if not increase pings), it demonstrates a level of calculated dishonesty by all of us digitally competing to be the bestest diagnostician of HOLYFUCKINGFUCK! ever. Asses.

This past Friday I sent in my deposits for next year's United full-season plan. I'll be back with another HOLYFUCKINGFUCK! post by Thursday at the latest. Click Fleabus, yo.

• More on this.
• Endless lies, endless sucker-plays.
• If Obama had turned down the Nobel as this fucking asshat says he should have, the same fucking asshat's column Monday would attack Obama for his narcissism in turning down Nobel.
• Here's a guy I used to read writing about the asshat in above link. Been blegpondering, remembered this guy, nothing more. Or there is, but meh.
• UPDATE! Vietnam and Afghanistan as Dada-ist Installations.
• The cost of Corporate Capitalism.
• UPDATE! Marx was an excellent diagnostician.
• What is/to be done.
• On Zombies. I'm paraphrasing (and perhaps misunderstanding), but insatiable but not hungry sounds right.
• When pressed, he acknowledged....
• In which Montag concern trolls confused Liberals.
• Confused Liberals.
• OBAMAVATAR!
• What I've been saying for years, said better.
• On that dumbass George Will column from last Sunday.
• UPDATE! Major blegpondering. Best of everything, Frieda.
• Your photoshop of the day, with extra gravy.
• Is Helmetball any different than dog-fighting?
• Sharpton and Jackson should STFU!
• Inside MOCO: when someone says North Potomac, they mean Rockville. (When someone says North Bethesda, they mean Rockville.) Fuckers.
• This post told me this bus route is the busiest in MOCO, but I've been thinking a lot about how MOCO is actually composed of dozens of distinct countries, and Veirs Mill Road, spelled Viers Mill Road on certain public street signs, between Wheaton and Rockville, is one of the oddest roads in MOCO. I'm blegpondering about writing about MOCO. I'll get over it, but nothing has made me more aware of how small is as infinite as large as thinking about MOCO.
• UPDATE! Veirs Mill goes by Aspen Hill.
• UPDATE! I support the ACLU even when they defend a fuck like Fucking Fobin Ricker.
• Thyraphobia, part thirteen.
• Reviewing a book of essays that advise aspiring fiction writers, Dan finds only two essays of special worth, one by poet D.A. Powell.
• State of American poetry. (h/t this and next link)
• My current favorite poetry anthology reviewed.
• UPDATE! Wowee! Ed's sitemeter's a-popping. (And who the hell posts clips of old KITH skits? Oh.)
• Acocella reviews Wolf Hall: But now the excellent novelist Hilary Mantel has joined the tournament, with “Wolf Hall,” a five-hundred-and-thirty-two-page novel portraying Cromwell as a wise minister and a decent man. Mantel is not new to revisionist projects. In her 1992 novel “A Place of Greater Safety,” about the French Revolution, she performed the amazing feat of making Robespierre a sympathetic man. Her interest is in the question of good and evil as it applies to people who wield great power. That means anguish, exultation, deals, spies, decapitations, and fabulous clothes. Mantel recently told an interviewer that she had long planned to write about the Tudors: “Almost all the stories you might want to tell are lurking behind the arras.” Some are quite bawdy, which, if we can judge from the Tudor playwright Shakespeare, is true to the period. A waiter at an inn advises Cromwell not to order the pottage: “It looks like what’s left when a whore’s washed her shift.” A Place of Greater Safety is terrific.
• This past Saturday was Monk's birthday.
• Born 54 years ago yesterday. Let me into your Temple.
• New Sea Wolf! (h/t)
• Mood Tuesday.
• UPDATE! This made me think about this.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! Boatload of new release MP3. You did give to KEXP, yes?
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• New FLAMING LIPS! I've always loved the Lips.

UPDATE!

• One of the new songs is called Silver Trembling Hands, which of course makes me think of Trembling Blue Stars.
  

democrac

D.A. Powell

does god discriminate, slashing some flags, amendments

ever farther about the chapels, pale heaven expires

morter the mosque means build not bomb - the moral center gives

only an honest fellow [please provide] might renounce

christ, this machinery of helmets, prosthetic limbs, human skin

refusing, louder than the drone above the disputed zones

all ages are difficult ages: flight, the bits of metal raining down

clarity never arrives, it is a spar in a far mine, it costs us dearly

Another one of dozens of my five favorites songs ever:

Know what? Theme Song October 2009

Theme Song September 2009

IASAFR, or: Autoblogography, or: Theme Song July 2009

I'm a good third through and absorbed by Infinite Jest, I'm gleefully rereading Jack Spicer's collected (!!!), I've completed a first draft of a story that makes me giggle, and a new scheme of poetry has been remarkably liberating, I'm remembering Tony Hecht tell me over and over that Formal is liberating, it forces associations free verse would never discover. My poems are making me giggle. I haven't read or written as well as I have the past three weeks in at least five years.

I got an email today from Amazon that my preordered copy of Vollmann's Imperial has shipped, and next Tuesday Pynchon's Inherent Vice drops (and think about the similarity in look and sound between Inherent Vice and Infinite Jest, yo), plus I've ordered Norman Dubie's and Howard Nemerov's collected (I can't find the Nemerov I know I own), so when I picked up Infinite Jest today instead of thinking about Infinite Jest I was thinking about Vollmann and Pynchon, when I picked up Spicer I was thinking about Dubie and Nemerov.

This new poetry format, depending on the number of beats per number of voices, the lines are too long for my moleskin notebook, I was writing something last night in my car at RFK, I started choosing words for their scrunchiness rather than their worth. This morning I retrieved my still shrink-sealed Boorum & Peace 10" x 8" quad ruled tablet, am currently anguishing on whether I can stop 3/4s into a moleskin or must finish the moleskin before moving to a larger tablet, and what the fuck kind of tablet rules are going to apply there?

Meaning my celebration of the best reading and writing I've done in years is the sabotaging of the best reading and writing I've done in years. It won't surprise you this isn't the first time this has happened.

UPDATE!

Profile of Vollmann and Imperial in NYT.

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• UPDATE: Our goddamn overlords.
  
• Political unrest in Kensington.
• Political resistance in Bethesda.
• UPDATE! Rucking Fobin Ricker.
• This is true: I drove by this house two hours earlier.
• The re-wiring of history (via the always incredibly generous wood-s-lot).
• This is true: I found this (via the always incredibly generous Silliman) after I ordered the Nemerov, after I wrote the above.
• Read this. Credit Dan for fighting either/or-ism.
• Infinite shipwreck.
• UPDATE! Booker long list. Obviously I choose Hilary Mantel (and at the link there's an excerpt) not only because hers is the only novel listed that I read but mostly because she is the second best novelist now writing in English you haven't read. And I find myself thinking more about Wolf Hall than I thought I would when I finished it, and this is true: looking at the new book shelves at work three hours ago, a new biography on Cardinal Wolsey. Threes.
• UPDATE! The serendipity continues: in latest London Review of Books, Mantel reviews a new biography of Danton, one of the three protagonists of her terrific novel A Place of Greater Safety.
• Ozick, Roth, hobbyhorses, novels.
• UPDATE! Jim and his editors.
• Gurldoggie. 
• UPDATE! Another Inherent Vice review.
• Moka's latest is Delicate.
• First time I've seen The Mekons referenced in ages.
  
• Depeche Mode? *!hEh!*
• The Misfits. (h/t)
• More Monkees.
• Noah and the Whale.
• Seb's new song. Will. Make. You. Smile.

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SEESAWS

Samuel Hazo

The bigger the tomb, the smaller the man.
The weaker the case, the thicker the brief.
The deeper the pain, the older the wound.
The graver the loss, the drier the tears.

The truer the shot, the slower the aim.
The quicker the kiss, the sweeter the taste.
The viler the crime, the vaguer the guilt.
The louder the price, the cheaper the ring.

The higher the climb, the sheerer the slide.
The steeper the odds, the shrewder the bet.
The rarer the chance, the brasher the risk.
The colder the snow, the greener the spring.

The braver the bull, the wiser the cape.
The shorter the joke, the surer the laugh.
The sadder the tale, the dearer the joy.
The longer the life, the briefer the years.

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THEME SONG JULY 2009

Theme Song June 2009

Theme Song May 2009

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Theme Song April 2009

Theme Song March 2009

Theme Song February 2009

Theme Song January 2009