The Creature Hath a Purpose and Its Eyes Are Bright with It

A friend and I were emailing about sundry (including, prompted by my comment I'm reading Vollmann's Imperial, a quick conversation re: Vollmann's brutally incredible Royal Family, of which I said, "Domino was the young whore who constantly confronted the Queen's authority (and who eventually becomes queen at the end). Though Henry Tyler was the novel's protagonist, I read Domino as the novel's engine," and meant that as a high complement), but mostly yapping about Circus America and our daughters' futures (mine sixteen, his just one) and the fuckawful world we'll leave them.

I wrote, "You know, I firmly believe that the world into which I was born was better than the world in which my parents were born. I believed until 2003 and 2004 that the world my daughter was born in was better than the world I was born in. I've become convinced since January 2009 that the world I gave my daughter has a darker, more dangerous future than anything I could have imagined."

I wrote, "I used to buy the argument that liberalism, especially in this country, had advanced as far as it could, and that Dems main concern should be preserving the advances. Maybe I still would if Democrats would act to preserve the advances," and waah, what a fucking roob.

Everything is negotiation. Interests are baited and bribed and ignored and disdained as needed. If Democrats need the vote of a lower-upper-middle class roob with a romantic image of himself as academic revolutionary (while carrying a mortgage and budgeting for a daughter who wants to go to an obscenely expensive college for a degree in a subject with zero market value), they'd play upon his horror at crackerstani stoopid unleashed. Rule by moron Christers or.... us? Choose.

We do. Everything is negotiation, and I have no leverage, and I'm incapable of abandoning my romantic self-image as academic revolutionary a wise and funny irony-fiend with a heart of Kind who still bwrtz self-deprecating damns because Kind can still save America, regardless my bone-knowledge how roobily feeble that belief is. 

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• UPDATE! Fucking Democrats.
• Red Herring.
• Republican Gomorrah.
• But what about Kanye?
• This Week in White People Saying Stupid Shit.
• On the other hand, this is good. Paging John Bolton to Fox News studios, STAT!
• UPDATE!UPDATE! More.
• UPDATE! That didn't take long.
• UPDATE! Learned Helplessness.
• Cracker assclownery. UPDATE! *!hEh!* Assclowns.
• unKind.
• Your overlords, ranked.
• My future hell.
• UPDATE! Oh my.
• Our red maple has been dying for two years. Yesterday, Moco treepeople spray-painted the orange sign of execution on its trunk.

• UPDATE! One decision I don't regret.
• When I was twenty, reading Nevil Shute's On the Beach was a sign of a sophisticated reading sensibility. I hadn't thought about it since I was thirty.
• On James Wright. 
• Frederick Seidel as meat-slicer.
• UPDATE! Hilary Mantel reviews a book on Mary Tudor.
• Big Star box-set.
• An even bigger mystery than why the fuck is Ely Allen on my soccer team is why the fuckityfuck is fucking Jack White always on my radio.
• Anxiety of Influence? Harold Bloom's theory and someone name Jay-Z? Who the fuck is Jay-Z?
• Feelies re-released.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

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UPDATE!

What about the voice of Geddy Lee, how did it get so high, I wonder if he speaks like an ordinary guy.

Pavement reuniting.

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CASANOVA GETTING OLDER

Frederick Seidel

Do they think they are being original when they say
This is a new thing for me to ask, and ask
Do you love me?
Everyone these days keeps asking
Do you love me?
Everyone says
This is a new thing for me to ask.
The answer is yes.
This is a new thing for me to ask.

The answer is yes I don't.
Do you love me?
The answer is yes.
The eyes glisten with feeling.
The creature hath a purpose and its eyes are bright with it.
The sudden pecking of asking, of being asked, is this.
The answer is yes I don't.
The heart got shot but got the flu anyway,
And the body aches, and fever and chills, and can't sleep.

The forest shivers with fever.
Their mother pulls their covers up.
The whippoorwill keeps calling whippoorwill whippoorwill.
Do you love me? Do you love me? I don't love you.
Not everyone is afraid.
Not everyone feels vulnerable.
Everyone is afraid of the terrible joy. I do.
Each other is Mecca,
The hajj to the other.

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Another one of dozens of my favorite five songs ever: