In Which I Try to Grow Up

I learned when Princess Diana died that raging against a global orgasm of beatification towards a subject I deem unworthy is more about self-indulgence and self-congratulation than raging against the tide. This time I’ll stand back and try to learn from the spectacle.

Last night driving around, this morning driving to work, scanning radio stations, I heard Jackson's music and tearful hosts and call-ins crying how they'll always remember where they were when they heard, comparing the experience to 911 and Princess Diana’s death, and as I remember exactly where I was when I heard John Lennon died, regardless my judgment of the relative merits of Lennon's and Jackson's music, the spiritual experience of loss - and demonstrative communal grief - is the same.

Having posted thousands of links to music and literature and a stupid-ass soccer team in all-black kits, to accuse Jackson's mourners of a maudlin ecstasy in their distraught delight in their faith's promised devastation would be hypocrisy; witness that Fuck-Me Jig category over on the left. That I've chosen faiths that I pride myself an intellectual sophistication over people who’d scream at a skinny freak's moon-walking might make me a slightly more sophisticated rube, but I'm a rube to my heart's core, feeding the same impulses the rubes I intolerantly judge stupider feed too.

UPDATE!

Via a comment from Richard, a reading assignment:

UPDATE!

Sky Saxon also died yesterday:

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• I'd written something about Politico's article yesterday suggesting Obama's awesomeness is a growing political problem as lead for this post, but meh.
• UPDATE! Froomkin's last Post post
• Ass the Salatan creams Sanford's sin.
• A solid response to the ass above.
• He kidnapped himself.
• UPDATE! Michael Jackson and the perils of success.
• What would the pussy documented here say about this?
• Zizek on Iran.
• Billy Graham, zealot, lunatic, pussy.
• It will surprise no one that of nine SCOTUS, Clarence Thomas alone supports strip-searching 13 year old girls.
• Anne Arundel piggery.
• New Man Utd home kits.
• Found five of the bastards on me after mowing my lawn.
• The mean streets of King Farm.
• Bought this anthology about a month ago UPDATE! I meant to link to this review of the anthology:

• More Fearing.
• Yim Yames to release EP of Harrison covers.
• One of my favorite George Harrison songs.
• Another one.
• But this is my favorite.
• Someone I won't be seeing at FedEx in August.

• DJ Bonebrake is now a jazz drummer?
• Want some new Dinosaur Jr?
• Today's Listening Assignment.

Updates later. Or not.

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Prospects

Anthony Hecht

We have set out from here for the sublime
Pastures of summer shade and mountain stream;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

Is all the green of that enamelled prime
A snapshot recollection or a dream?
We have set out from here for the sublime

Without provisions, without one thin dime,
And yet, for all our clumsiness, I deem
It certain that we shall arrive in time.

No guidebook tells your if you'll have to climb
Or swim. However foolish we may seem,
We have set out from her for the sublime

And must get past the scene of an old crime
Before we falter and run out of steam,
Riddled by doubt that we'll arrive in time.

Yet even in winter a pale paradigm
Of birdsong utters its obsessive theme.
We have set our from here for the sublime;
I have no doubt we shall arrive on time.

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Yes, again: