BLCKDGRD

Autoblogography, or: It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way

Obvious answer to a stupid question:

Today, Mrs. Nichols speaks about her blog as if it were a diet or half-finished novel. “I’m going to get back to it,” she swears. Her last entry, in December of last year, was curt and none too profound. “Books make great gifts,” she began, breaking a silence of nearly a month.

Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?

Because most aren't so roobish to invest kidneys of self-esteem in such roobish self-aggrandizement without profit, my self-esteem fweeing like tea kettles, the scream of living with my genius unrecognized driving me to typing....

Richard Jalichandra, chief executive of Technorati, said that at any given time there are 7 million to 10 million active blogs on the Internet, but “it’s probably between 50,000 and 100,000 blogs that are generating most of the page views.” He added, “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.”

And the money shot:

That’s a serious letdown from the hype that greeted blogs when they first became popular. No longer would writers toil in anonymity or suffer the indignities of the publishing industry, we were told. Finally the world of ideas would be democratized! This was the catnip that intoxicated Mrs. Nichols.

Here's where the article goes errant: Democratized?

I link to people like me I like, I like them to like me too. I bleg to tell you what is is, then drink of your marveling at my wisdom.

UPDATE! Culture Ghost read the same article.

*

• Was going to write this, but beaten to it.
  
• On pseudonymity. The word you're looking for is pussy.
  
• On academic identity politics.
• Prison problems.
• What was on the other teleprompter.
• UPDATE! Read this.
• UPDATE! Read this and this.
  
• The hand of history.
• You're one microscopic cog.
• !wOOt! Pagans 'R Us!
• So I don't have to.
• UPDATE! Future vomit.
• Nut Sac?
• 09-10 home Chelsea shirts come with franklampardian bra. Fuck Chelsea.
• Lookee what I just bought:

• DeLillo's The Names and the death of meaning.
  
• On canonisation.
• Read this: infra-interesting. (I can't speak to the movies - o! - but the concept is trans-o!)
• Another Seidel review.
• Dan's got a bunch of good lit links.
• So does The Millions.
• So does Silliman.
• RIP Jeff Hanson. Songs.
• Lotsa good MP3s.
• Here too. (Bardo Pond? I thought I was the only person who remembered Bardo Pond.)

UPDATE! Seb's comment re: Bardo Pond referenced Pelt and triggered a cascade of band associations in my head, including, as I commented, Long Fin Killie (Lamberton Lamplighter!), so:

• Here too.
• UPDATE! Lotsa MP3 here too!
• This was the second song this past Friday night.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! Sweetness, new YACHT!
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• One more time, my favorite CD of the year so far.
  

*

Not Waving but Drowning

Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

*

Why I Lost the Face Mullet, Or: Hunch and Luck and Telepathy

I didn't want to turn into "Cape Man."

I admit, we have seven cats, three indoor, four ferals, plus statuary accumulating in Earthgirl's gardens by one every Mother's Day to piss off the neighbors

(the big shiny red ball on pedestal next year, I guarantee),

but since shaving off my face mullet, I have not hoarded guns nor told a Utah bank manager I was gonna kill Barack Obama.

Shave. Save yourself.

*

• True.
• On the Cairo speech.
• I was gonna flip Fred Hiatt off for Friday's World's Shittiest and Pastor Knob and especially a wank from a AEI wank, and thought why? and it's Sunday now and Day 3 of not linking to Fred Hiatt's posse of pussies!
• And?
• On false equivalences.
• How do you strike a totality?
• Plum Rain and yang mei.
• Excellent bleg something. It's not sure what it's about, but has both Alejandro Escovedo and MST3K videos is some kind of epic.
• David Carradine remembered, not mocked.
• Son of When Mates Release Records.
• T-Rexes threaten world football!
• Fire Bill Bradley.

*

Always read anything by Hilary Mantel. This is from the latest London Review of Books; she's writing about her time working as a social worker in Britain in the 70s:

My patient there, Mr M, was not yet 70. But in those days, and in the industrial north, 70 was old. He had a complex of diseases, none good enough to kill him; he hacked, gasped, wheezed, and re-lit a cigarette. The hospital rooms had half-doors, and the upper halves could be folded back, so the patients were like horses in stalls. There were deep verandas where, in former times, TB patients lay wrapped in blankets on wheeled pallets, breathing in the mild air. Sitting in a wheelchair on one of these verandas, Mr M told me he had one relative living, his sister Mrs B, older than himself and a long-time widow. She would visit, he said, if somebody would find her and bring her.

I'm halfway through Wolf Hall, and !!!! No one writes better about the complicities of even our best motives.

*

Too Here

Albert Goldbarth

Maybe the gods do walk among us, swaggering,
consoling, pitying, lusting for our warmth and inexperience
that must be a kind of sexual veal to them
-- whatever, maybe they are here, always, invisibly.
Maybe we do exist in fields of psychic interconnection,
and the way electromagnetism or gravity is a grain
that patterns space-time, so are waves
-- although we'll never be aware of them -- of hunch
and luck or telepathy. As for neutrinos:
it isn't maybe. They're showering through this page
and your hand and your heart right now. The moth
beats in a frenzy around the candle flame, as if trying
to whip the light itself into a cream. It can't refuse
the bulb in the bedside lamp, the headlight in the car.
And yet it doesn't even seem to see the sun
-- the sun is too here for that.

*

Woo-hoo in Danish is woo-hoo.

What Hamster Gave Me For My Birthday (Which isn't until august, but she was in DC last night)

At the Warner Theater! Lordy, the memories. I even saw a ghost. Best concert I ever saw, Peter Gabriel, 1983's Security tour, Warner Theater.

Harvey/Parish's band incredibly tight.

They opened with this (PJ, barefoot, wearing this dress, that color lipstick):

Thanks and love, Hamster, and thanks and love from Planet and Earthgirl too.

United 2, Metros 0

While I can't believe Angel didn't bury that sitter - and who didn't predict a 1-1 tie at half? - credit to Wicks for getting to Angel's shot, and it's nice not have a keeper controversy (even if I've not decided yet to buy the current product). A good, not terrific, save that perhaps, should United go on a run, we will look back on as a pivotal moment in the season.

And I really like Soehn's strategy of saving the old men for the second half - why run old and slow against young and fast when he can run old and slow against young and tired, especially on a wet field? Gomez looked terrific.

But still, one goal in run of play in a game United dominated, a game United was one better-than-average but not spectacular Wicks save from ending up tied again.

Here's Tenorio's player ratings:

Wicks 8; Namoff 7, Jakovic 6, Burch 6; Fred 7, Pontius 6, Simms 6, Wallace 6; Emilio 5, N'Silu 4.5, Quaranta 6 Subs: Gomez 7, Moreno 7, McTavish NR.

I turned to this guy repeatedly last night singing praise of Jakovic, even saying - get this - "He's United's best centerback since Ryan Nelsen." Well, he is (though the competition isn't and hasn't been steep). Credit Payne and Kasper on that signing.

We stopped assessing pluses and minuses for Burch about the tenth minute, the Burch match at +5/-8. He's the weak link.

Simms was excellent, and Wallace did OK at holding once he got used to the position.

Emilio won't play v Chicago because of the red for his petulance, though I'd like to think he wouldn't have played v Chicago because Soehn benched his sorry ass for his petulance. He's a one trick poacher - and he's very good at his one trick - but he limits Soehn's options, and if Emilio's gonna go bonkers every time Soehn wants to change attack, Soehn's gonna start others and save Emilio as the change. (UPDATE: to be fair, having watched a replay of Quaranta's goal, it was Emilio's perfectly placed header to Fred that was the key assist.)

This guy is "seriously thinking of Fred for Man of the Match," and my quibble is more I'd say Wicks or probably Q (

  

Separated at birth?

  

) who, not discommodated, is the engine of this team.

But Fred: when he's interested and involved he can be dangerous and useful, and perhaps Soehn takes that into account as part of his rationale for bringing Gomez off the bench in the second half: if Fred doesn't get his touches early, he often takes to disinterested running in circles (while kicking other players). Starting him at ten seems to energize Fred, so again, credit Soehn.

So, week from Saturday, home v Chicago, biggest game of year. United's been damned with bad luck for attendance - if there's not a Cap's playoff game, the weather's awful or it's a Saturday in a three day holiday weekend. Wouldn't it be sweet for it to be a gorgeous night and 25K turn out to see perhaps the best two teams in the league?

Here's Fullback. Links, edits, updates, later. Or not.

Oh! DeMarcus Beasley sucks, but he's not alone. And fire Bob Bradley. Now. Just saying.

Repaid Diaper, Or: Autoblogography

Emails asking who the hell is Ann Margaret and why is she in baked beans can only mean I'm old. I'm AARP eligible this August, which makes this blegging thing even more roobishly pathetic, yes?

I got three emails this week asking me to exchange links to their blegs, and I'm flattered, !ThAnKs! didn't you check Technorati or BlogRocket or any of the stat services to check my lameness? I wrote this before, I'm too old and lazy to go find it, but I will be younger and hipper than blegs about the time I'm eligible for AARP benefits.

I'm gonna monkey around w/blegrells since I use them as bookmarks and it'd be easier if they were arranged differently, so there. Some of you who read and honor back are gonna get moved to Daily - or should it be Me and Mine, yo? - and people who I no longer follow (and visa versa) are gonna go away (with sincere best wishes), and what to do with all the dessicated but respected corpses of favorite blegs past? Should I build a cemetary, as to knock on their tombstones now and then?

!hEh! I'm mildly curious to see if itchtinker trumps faux rejection of lamey roobitude.

BTW, via Sadly, No! got to this plegbig with a poll, I shit you not:

What ancient form of execution would you LEAST prefer?

Buried alive, crucifixion, flayed alive, scourged to death, itchtinker, stung/bitten to death by insects, slow disembowelment, faux rejection of lamey roobitude, roasted on a grill, dragged from chariot, torn apart by wild animals, autoblogography, rolled downhill in a spiked barrel, death of a thousand cuts.

For him? Let me prove I'm old: Ooh! Ooh! Mr Kot-tair!

*

• Reminder.
  
• Murder, not terrorism.
• About that T word.
• 1008 Terrorist Attacks in which Gordon Brown was an arms supplier.
• Death of the Republic, Part Etc.
• Asshole v Assclown: which is which?
• Because she's not a liberal.
• There's a cruel fascination watching Kathleen Parker disavow the embarrassing clowns in the bowels of her movement.
• Is it my imagination or is Firefox suddenly shittier?
• Seen this morning at Safeway, so it must be true:

• I feel like writing but don't have anything to say. (Best pop song you'll hear today is there, yo.)
• My commute just got shittier.
• Hospital in Clarksburg?
• UPDATE! I'm so lucky, I grew up half a mile from the winner (WHICH IS IN GAITHERSBLEG, NOT THE DERWOOD SECTION OF ROCKVILLE, DUMBFUCKS!) and the second, a half mile from where I live now, I go through at least once a day. !uN!wOOt!
• Will make a fart's difference.
• UPDATE! Poolesville man releases poisonous snake that bit him.
• End of an era comix.
• Silliman is a remarkably generous aggregator of important links.
• A defense of JAMC, who are not one of 20 bands on my five band desert island stupid-ass game list, though I'm not a hater.
• New Iggy Pop anyone? It's party time and he's got the slime. (And Iggy reads Michel Houellebecq?)
• It's KEXP's summer drive, so throw them so love. KEXP is utterly unlistenable during the drive, especially when John and Cheryl are slap and tickling, so after you donate, go here, chose Wednesday May 27, type in 1:00 AM, and listen to five hours of DJ El Toro, the best DJ they've got* (and I don't say this just because I'm positive he and I were at 930 for same shows in the 80s). *Stevie too, who, last time we emailed, was hoping to make it to 232 for the Seattle game.
• Sad news: Exene Cervenka has MS.

Updates later. Or not.

*

Six of Ox Is

Lydia Tomkiw

O, no iron, no Rio, no
Red rum murder:
in moon: no omni
devil-lived
derision; no I sired
Otto
a
drab bard,
Bob,
but no repaid diaper on tub.
O grab me, ala embargo
emit time,
Re-Wop me, empower
Eros' Sore
sinus and DNA sun is
fine, drags as garden if
sad as samara, ruff of fur, a ram; as sad as
Warsaw was raw.

*

Herewego

This will insert the abortion debate into the Sotomoyor jello-pit, yes? Think what it means that abortion rights haven't been part of the right's coordinated megaphoning, think what it means if this doesn't either, that hating on spic bitches raises way more $$$ than hating baby-killers.

Besides, Obama ordered the assassination of the baby-killer to tar pro-life martyrs and divert attention from his spic bitch's brown and vaginaful evil and YOWZA! a pint to the first of you who finds me an oinker speculating Obama ordered the hit.

*

• Humans suck.
  
• Badiou interviewed.
• Articles of Faith.
• UPDATE: Read this.
• Read this.
• Dear God, Lesbos' Revenge.
• Mustache Pussy.
• Obamapostasy.
• STNG on acid.
• Remember when Letterman was edgy?
• Grunge's Long Shadow.
• Manchester Music.
• Don't forget Moka.
• Don't forget counterstream.
• Don't forget Obscure Sound.

Updates later. Or not.

*

LESSON

Bill Knott

Our love has chosen its appropriate gesture
Which when viewed in the midst of all the gestures
It didn't choose seems almost insignificant.

The gesture our love has chosen is appropriate
We both agree not that we have any choice but
Amidst all those others does seem insignificant.

It is incumbent on us thus to therefore obliterate
All of the gestures except this insignificant one
Chosen by our love for its own no doubt reasons.

It is up to us to obliterate all other gestures
Though they cluster round thick as presentations
Of war and sacrifice in a gradeschool classroom.

Use of our love's chosen gesture for the obliteration
of all those foreign gestures is forbidden however
We must find something else to erase them with.

Our love has chose its appropriate gesture
Which when viewed in the absence of all other gestures
Seems to spell the opposite of insignificant.

*

My head, your head