BLCKDGRD

Forty-Nine Today

You Only Thought You Hated Steven G-----d* or: I get all the news i need from the weather report

The Liverpool and England midfielder ­Steven Gerrard was last night charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm and affray following an incident at a Southport bar which left a man needing hospital treatment for facial injuries...

One report suggested Gerrard and a group of his friends were involved in an altercation after the man refused to allow them to choose the songs played on the venue's sound system. Gerrard is a big fan of Phil Collins and counts the singer's greatest hits as his favourite album. He is also partial to Coldplay.

Meanwhile, Karl Rove writes:

Mr. Bush's 2006 reading list shows his literary tastes. The nonfiction ran from biographies of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Babe Ruth, King Leopold, William Jennings Bryan, Huey Long, LBJ and Genghis Khan to Andrew Roberts's "A History of the English Speaking Peoples Since 1900," James L. Swanson's "Manhunt," and Nathaniel Philbrick's "Mayflower." Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others... Each year, the president also read the Bible from cover to cover, along with a daily devotional.

and Richard Cohen writes a column IN WHICH HE BELIEVES ROVE and lauds Bush while psychoanalyzing Bush's "list" for insights on Bush the intellectual.

I know I'm a rube, rooting for uniforms filled with physical freaks of nature and brains of muscle who consider rubes like me shit if they think of me at all, but if Liverpool's propaganda minister told me Stevie Mbe got caught in a fight defending the artistic merit of Elliott Carter, I'd remember who was speaking.

What's easier to believe, that Stevie Mbe picks a fight over his love for Phil Collins or George Bush bombs Arab civilians after reading Camus?

*HOLY FUCK, teh google.

I tried changing the title, but typepad brands a post whatever it's called when first posted, and the first post had Stevie Mbe's name in it, and KABOOM! Want to drive up your statcounters?

*

• Elric asks a question.
• One answer.
• Numbers.
• More.
• Things you won't hear on the BBC. Or CNN.
• UPDATE: Testing weaponry?
• Your Photoshop of the Day!
• Top 15 Right-Wing Blogger Trick of 2008!
• Maybe, probably, but my issue isn't her as a human, it's the tone-deafness.
• wrdwthnwrdwthnwrd has new stuff up.

Updates later. Or not.

*

Bonnie Prince Billy?

Sixty-Two Today

Eargh

Work with me here: most in Rich's Sunday column is true, true, true and so what?

What say Obama not only knew in advance Israel's long-planned attacks in Gaza, he approved and encouraged the attacks happen now, before the start of Obama's term? What if the Israelis said to Obama, sooner or later, you pick?

Just as likely Israel is solidifying it's bargaining position vis a vis Obama, and even more likely Israel doesn't give a flying fuck about America so secure they perceive their oomph as a third-rail, but if Obama will sell out his most loyal loyalists to please everyone who hates his most loyal loyalists, he wouldn't sell out progressives pushing for a more just Middle East truce to keep from pissing on the third rail called Israel?

Sigh. I'm in that vile mood when I can't decide who's more dangerous, the feeble who can't conceive of systems or the deluded who think they can.

*

• Protest.
• Proof Oprah is a dope. And - Animated Treacle.
• I don't know if Samuel Huntington was an evil bastard, but his work provided cover for cheetos-eating chicken-pigs.
• Bob Herbert says he's stupid, Robert Samuelson says he's stupid, which is their way of telling you you're stupid especially if you were saying smart things all along.
• Dunkirk Syndrome.
• Get a speeding ticket in Moco on a road you never drove on?
• Imagine Wheaton.
• Elric and Bromark, see what strikes you as !!! in this.
• UPDATE: That flattering offer I mentioned? is up.
• Today's corpse:

        Actually, this one too

        because it reminds me, Howard once had buzz, yes?

• Dan's got a batch of good links.
• New Wilbur poem.
• 2009 fiction releases of note.
• Bonnie Prince Billy profiled.

*

When was the last time you thought of Cocteau Twins?

Yackcackcackcacack!

I heard a Sigur Ros song selling a video game with swords and djinns and gratuitously eye-candied violence, my favorite Sigur Ros song, a song I'd listen to and daydream a never-was innocence once was...

Look, I don't consider myself a clownish obamapologist (though YMMV), but if Obama gets America back in four years to what Bill Clinton left eight years ago, he's wrought a miracle. I'm more than willing to bitch how much that sucks when it happens.

*

• Meanwhile: Hell in the Holy Land.
• New tools for torture. (Sasha, of particular FYI.)
• Obama's face-mullet problem. Then again.
• Dynastic progress report.
• Richard's obamajourney, part one. Part two.
• Jeebus fuck, there's a reason I stopped reading Drum.
• Election Time at Poor Man continues.
• Passive Houses.
• Blegging, the definition.
• That photo up there? Outside a brick-layers' Union Hall Election Day 2004 Kerry foot-soldiers gathered beneath a giant inflatable rat slung with an anti-Bush banner awaiting dispatching to seamy Harrisburg PA neighborhoods. Yo.
• Keep walking, Buñuel.
• Harold Pinter on American Football.
• There's money in farts.
• Posting John Waters clips (the new rage) is an old rage, so old the ones I've posted no longer work because of cucking fopyright. (Digression: Babs can still clutch and drop, but for weeks after that post I was pinged repeatedly and daily by someone in her office and five or six times over the weeks by what I assumed were Senate cyber-security folk, but alas, for all my silly-ass anger, I was rightly judged a harmless wanker.)
  
• Today's corpse happens to have a new story in New Yorker:

• Anything Hilary Mantel writes is worth reading, and this comes with links, too.
• Wolcott, in dismissing Updike's latest, lists why Updike irritates his critics. It's revealing what pisses people off about Updike.
• Alison Lurie on Updike's latest (sub rqrd - but you sub, yes?). To be honest, my silly-ass reading morals would require me to reread Witches before reading Widows, and I don't want to. Watching the critics react to Updike is what interests me.
  
• New Tom Sleigh poem.
  
• Books of the Year Symposium.
• House Tech.

*

Thought about Throwing Muses lately?

Why My Anti-Giftmas Protestations Are Full of Shit

*

*

*

Thermos, United coffee-thingee, New Order, Latitude 64 Sparkle-Optoline Vision 175g from, respectively, Planet, Bromark, Landru, and me.

My Giftmas Present To You

Your next President of the United States:

Here's a paragraph from the story:

On Sunday, Obama awoke early for a 7:15 a.m. workout at a gymnasium at a sleepy Marine Corps base on the island of Oahu. Michelle Obama, carrying an iPod and headphones, joined her husband for the 45-minute exercise session, according to a media pool report. As they emerged from the gym, Obama, in a gray shirt soaked with sweat, lifted his right hand to give a quick salute to a couple uniformed Marines standing nearby.

A quick salute to a couple of uniformed Marines standing nearby? MILKNOSESNORT!

Merry Giftmas: KABOOMERY! for the Giftmas family dinner, should it be necessary and/or amuse you.

*

I don't care enough to follow closely enough to talk about the team - though it doesn't take a die-hard to know the hometown helmetballers won't win splat as long as Dangelos Snyder owns the team - but at least they're wearing the colors at home.

That is a fine uniform, helmetball-wise. Why the fuck you'd wear white at home unless you've always worn white at home mystifies me.

Now, if the hometeam brought back the real burgundy shirts and real gold pants and get that racist stereotype off their helmets, I might be able to summon more than a passing damn. Assuming television eliminates Coors Light commercials.

Football? Uncle Fiver's Christmas Awards are up.

*

I praise Ba'al this, praise Ba'al that, and then I hear this from a respected Conservative cultural critic and philosopher:

Ritualistic Baal worship, in sum, looked a little like this: Adults would gather around the altar of Baal. Infants would then be burned alive as a sacrificial offering to the deity. Amid horrific screams and the stench of charred human flesh, congregants – men and women alike – would engage in bisexual orgies.

and reiterate how good League One looks from the bottom of League Two in Ba'al's pecking charts, cause while League One probably gets none of that, I know I get none of that.

*

• You must look at THIS and THIS and THIS. Trust me.
  
• Culture War Pornocopia!
• Happiest, most profitable days of their lives.
• Bromark sends this along, and I urge you to let your boss see you using it.
• Watch THIS!
• PURPLE LINE! chevychasebitchez.
• Augie March read for the first time.
• Bolaño and the logic of dispersion.
• UPDATE: More on Bolaño. I agree with the point, adding, I think Bolaño idolizes literature while disdaining those who would idolize their idolatry of literature.
• Today's corpse:

• Gaddis. H/T Dan, who has more. I reread Frolic about two years ago. Considering the financial clusterfuck, considering fights over intellectual property - over what is intellectual property - considering the acceleration of consumerism as religion as embraced by both the priests and the laymen, all of them rubes, I bet JR's giggles will be funnier this time. Next.
• Boomkat's Top 100 includes boatloads I've never heard.
• Luckily for you, the fucking record company killed the embed code, but if this goddamn earwhig is in my head, I dare you to put it in yours.

Updates later. Or not.

*

Thought about Sleater-Kinney lately?

*!*!*

I received a wonderful email last week. A blogger who plays in the Premiership of Blogging asked me - me who plays in League Two, who fights relegation to Conference Premier - to send him my favorite bleg post of mine this year (I chose this one) for a year end post of his favorite bloggers. I am ridiculously flattered and disproportionately delighted.

I told the story - it's been a year or longer ago - of an email I received from someone I linked to repeatedly because she was posting good-fire who told me I might as well stop because she wasn't going to add me to her blogroll. I've linked since; she hasn't added me to her blogroll, nor has she sent an subsequent email asking me to stop sending traffic her way.

I post links because I find them interesting and think you will too. If I've blogrolled you it's because I use my blogroll as bookmarks: blogwhoring is secondary. (I posted an example of awesome blogwhoring below in links as gentle mockery to that particular blogwhore and as harsh self-mockery of my blogwhoring, which if not as audaciously direct is a relentlessly persistent.)

All of which to say, thanks for reading, linking, blogrolling, whatever. Should I earn promotion to League One, I won't forget any of you.

*

• American Politics 101-01, 101-02.
• Did you know Joe Biden is vpotus-elect?
• American Dystopia: The Gameplan.
• Notes on Capitalism as Religion. (h/t wood s lot)
• It's election time at Poor Man!
• Sweet Caroline.
• Just a coincidence (h/t James).
• Ciudad Juarez, the real Santa Teresa of 2666 (with photos).
• Mocomopolis! Speaking of which, PURPLE LINE!
• West Virginia Hotdog Map!
• Check this post's third comment for AWESOME blogwhoring! I suppose pointing it out is a form of blogwhoring also, fwrtz. (UPDATE: Read the post itself - which I linked to previously - if you haven't already: you can see why Richard was blogwhored.)
• Today's corpse:

• The Inaugural Poet (who I'd never heard of), and morons.
• Hadn't heard of Jeffrey Yang either, though this makes it sound as if I should take a look.
• Friday Hope Blogging.
• Happy Zappadan!

*

UPDATE: Frederick remembers 12/22's significance.

*

#7?

Eating too much Brown Acid: Some Much needed Perspective

*

• Obama isn't playing the christers, he's playing the media.
• Sasha anger.
• Mr Fish has a new cartoon.
• Rick Perlestein, Poster-Liberal, deconstructed.
• Shut up and take it with a smile.
• Classic Coke.
• Dude, where's my tiara?
• Fuck patriotism.

*

RIP Majel Barrett Roddenbery.

Most will remember her as Nurse Chapel of course, but for me, she'll always been Lwaxana Troi

not only because she looked like my mother-in-law, Lwaxana was - is - my mother-in-law.

UPDATE:

I need add that I think it a testament to Majel Roddenberry that next to Picard and Data, none of the main characters, none of the minor characters, grew as much over the seasons as Lwaxana.

I'm guessing it was the talent.

UPDATE: Landru's tribute.

*

• Mick Foley (Cactus Jack) reviews The Wrestler. I once started writing a wrestling novel and then Stephen Dobyns did

            and I was just figuring out I'm not a novelist anyway.

• I haven't thought about the Regeneration Trilogy in ages, not so much because I liked it (it was OK, but...) but because a good friend/former professor thinks it's a triumph.
• Today's corpse:

• Silver Spring is awesome!
• Most important news of the day:

• Mourinho v Ferguson? They couldn't rig Inter v Chelsea since they finished the same position in their respective groups, so this must have been deemed second best.
• Nearing the end of Zappadan.
• Scott's last batch (this round) of mp3. (My favorite D of S? She's a Little Lighthouse! - takes about 20 seconds for the music to start - sorry.)
• Largehearted Boy has been compiling year end lists if you need a fix.
• Pitchfork's Top 50 as picked by staff. #1? That, erm, Fleet Foxes album.
• Obscure Sound's #1 is my #6, his #2 my #1, his #4 my ??? and his #8 my ???. And to be honest, I've seen Bon Iver on a bunch of lists but am thoroughly unfamiliar with it, so I've a chore.

*

My #6?

Boning Opostasy Boned

Obamagasm?

Fuck to the fucktillionth, no, but jeebus people, stop clutching your OMFG!s and howling about Rick Fucking Warren as if this surprises you one onanistic dribble of outrage.

Some asshole who believes he's got The Bearded Statutory Rapist on spiritual speed dial is going to give the invocation for the inauguration of a president of a country where an overwhelming majority of citizens pray daily to The Bearded Statutory Rapist and his bastard son born of rape, and a majority of those citizens believe same-sex butt-fucking is a mortal sin (forgiven in their individual pre-saved cases by the subsequent acceptance of the bastard son's thoroughly un-gay love), so chill.

It's a fucking bone, an insulting, deliberately fuck you bone, a brilliantly pragmatic and obvious bone, and every shriek by every megaphoned lefty justifies the bone. Rubes.

*

My favorite book of poems of 2008?

 

LOYALTY OATH

Solemnly do I swear and affirm and affix
many foil seals with arcane symbols
to the lividly carcinogenic spirit
of Senator Joseph Raymond McCarthy
of Wisconsin, a state I like
for letting Matt live there in happiness
with his wife, for being the only place of birth
Karri is likely to have. And further
do I tiresomely swear with my face
made up in moral gravity that in most ways
I am fucking awesome
and not a subversive person interested in
or committed to the overthrow of governments
by violence, disobedience or denial
of gym membership. I swear
upon the many stacks of leather bound Bibles
the Gideons leave in hotel rooms
where I often went with lovers
to roll around entire weekends
in sheets we fouled with ourselves and Chinese takeout.
I swear on your mother's grave
and the fresh one beside her
where your father sleeps beneath new sod.
On my children screaming inside me
to hurry up and create them
with a foolish but lovely woman.
On her body's every curve
by which I know how not to grow lost
when all there is to see by
is the moon tumbling from the sky
and the alarm clock's red math.
I swear this and avow that
and sometime I promise
to promise to never violate
the Geneva Convention in all its charming quaintness.
I depose and declare
and many other verbs
which sound wondrously stern.
I lay down with my heart
and my hands above it
and both are filled with blood
and every breath swears its false oath so help me God.

*

• Holiday in Cambodia.
• Ipecac.
• Minority shame?
• Say anything?
• To boldly blow?

 

• Footy giggles.
• Wyatt Mason captures an essential aspect of Bolaño. (Hey, ALT-164 gives you the tilde!)
• Hey, Waggish is back, and he's thinking about Bolaño too.
• New things to look at are up.
• Scott's latest year-end mp3s twang.
• Make it stop.
• Obscure Sound's 30-21 and 20-11, with mp3.

UPDATE!(h/t Alex)

*

My #5? (More here):