Report Card

 

Obama's first semester is in the books, and Wankerstan's preeminent wankers, solicited to grade Obama's awesomeness v evil, wank. As all bleggers are wenkers, how do I wenk Obama's first hundred years days?

THE FERALS: Frankie

still walks up to within two feet of me, rolls on his back, meowing for me to pet him, and when I stretch out my arm he runs chicken-shittedly away. OBAMA GRADE = F.

UNITED: Fuck-Me Jig. OBAMA GRADE = F.

WORK: Sucks, slow and steady. OBAMA GRADE = F.

MY CAR: Fan belt is squealing. OBAMA GRADE = F.

BILL KRISTOL: still in Washington Post, not summarily executed by paper-shredder during an Obama primetime presser. OBAMA GRADE = F.

MY READING SLUMP: I'm halfway through The Kindly Ones, halfway through JR, halfway through Malloy, halfway through Life and Fate, stalled. Am thoroughly engaged with this:

which I didn't get my hands on until long after Obama's inauguration. OBAMA GRADE = C-.

MY .06% LESS-SHITTY THAN THEORY: driven relentlessly down to a desperately pathetic .006%. MY GRADE = Fuck Me.

BLEGGING: In a cluster of brain-cells deep in the left hemisphere where self-respect is generated, a faint and fading but still clear at three in the morning distress signal is pinging. MY GRADE = Incomplete.

PLANET AND FLEABUS:

GRADE = AWESOME. Click, yo.

*

• Silber (who could use your help) argues persuasively against torture prosecutions once, twice.
• Specter spectercle. One of my new colleagues on Specter.
• Swine flu and industrial meat.
• My parents moved us out of the Mon Valley 46 years ago because it was dying.
• Snowe job.
• Interpassivity.
• Another new colleague's wing-nut of the day.
• Bitch set him up.
• Elric is pleased at local team's success.
• No comment.
• Jim Reports, You Decide.
• John Ashbery interview.
• Two new Hudgins's poems.
• Don't forget to visit Moka. 
• Today's listening assignment.
• Today's listening assignment.

Update later. Or not.

*

This guy, who's AARP eligible this Saturday

wants you to remember whose birthday today is, DC's own:

*

"HISTOIRE"

Harry Mathews

Tina and Seth met in the midst of an overcrowded militarism.
"Like a drink," he asked her. "They make great Alexanders over at
    the Marxism-Leninism."
She agreed. They shared cocktails. They behaved cautiously, as in a
    period of pre-fascism.
Afterwards he suggested dinner at a restaurant renowned for it's
     Maoism.
"OK," she said, but first she had to phone a friend about her ailing
    Afghan, whose name was Racism.
The she followed Seth across town past twilit alleys of sexism.

The waiter brought menus and announced the day's specials. He
    treated them with condescending sexism.
So they had another drink. Tina started her meal with a dish of
    militarism,
While Seth, who was hungrier, had a half portion of stuffed baked
    racism.
Their main dishes were roast duck for Seth, and for Tina broiled
    Marxism-Leninism.
Tina had pecan pie a la for dessert, Seth a compote of stewed
    Maoism.
They lingered. Seth proposed a liqueur. They rejected sambuca and
    agreed on fascism.

During the meal, Seth took the initiative. He inquired into Tina's
     fascism,
About which she was reserved, not out of reticence but because
    Seth's sexism
Had aroused in her a desire she felt she should hide - as though her
     Maoism
Would willy-nilly betray her feelings for him. She was right. Even her
    deliberate militarism
Couldn't keep Seth from realizing that his attraction was
    reciprocated. His own Marxism-Leninism
Became manifest, in a compulsive was that piled the Ossa of
    confusion on the Peleion of racism.

Next, what? Food finished, drinks drunk, bills paid - what racism
Might now swamp their yearning in an even greater confusion of
    fascism?
But women are wiser than words. Tina rested her hand on his thigh
    and, a-twinkle with Marxism-Leninism,
Asked him, "My place?" Clarity at once abounded under the
    flood-lights of sexism,
They rose from the table, strode out, and he with the impetuousness
    of young militarism
Hailed a cab to transport them to her lair, heaven-haven of Maoism.

In the taxi he soon kissed her. She let him unbutton her Maoism
And stroke her resilient skin, which was quivering with shudders of
     racism.
When beneath her jeans he sensed the superior Lycra of her
     militarism,
His longing almost strangled him. Her little tongue was as potent as
     fascism
In its elusive certainty. He felt like then and there tearing off her
     sexism
But he reminded himself: "Pleasure lies in patience, not in the greedy
    violence of Marxism-Leninism."

Once home, she took over. She created a hungering aura
     of Marxism-Leninism
As she slowly undressed him where he sat on her over-stuffed
     art-deco Maoism,
Making him keep still, so that she could indulge in caresses, in
     sexism,
In the pursuit of knowing him. He groaned under the exactness of
     her racism
- Fingertip sliding up his nape, nails incising her soles, teeth
     nibbling his fascism.
At last she guided him to bed, and they lay down on a patchwork
    of Old American militarism.

Biting his lips, he plunged his militarism into the popular context of
    her Marxism-Leninism,
Easing one thumb into her fascism, with his free hand coddling the
    tip of her Maoism,
Until, gasping with appreciative racism, both together sink into the
    revealed glory of sexism.

*

Why yes, I am still on my Archers of Loaf binge: