Their Existence as an Awareness of Losing Their Sense of Existence

I was driving last night and, confession, listening to the Redskin-owned local sports station, and I heard one of the co-hosts, a guy one year older than me who grew up five miles from me who now lives six miles from me and who broadcasts from a building three miles from me, emotionally and forcefully defend himself against a listener's accusations that he wasn't a "true fan" because of his abject and vitriolic and passionate disgust with the shittiness of the object of his faith's adoration.

(Confession: my first team love was the Washington Redskins. I remember Elric's parents driving us around the backroads of MOCO on Sunday afternoons in Elric's father's blue Pontiac convertible listening to Steve Gilmartin and Mel Campbell on WMAL, the only way to get live home games in the mid-to-late 1960s. Sonny Jurgensen and Chris Hanburger. That I'm delighting in the clusterfuck that is Little Danny Helmetball proves devotion can be dammed and redirected but never completely unbaptized.)

For all my bitchandmoan, I'm nowhere near abandoning Uonbiatmead, which doesn't boast an Peterangelostic Snydermonster to help me past my roobity (though Praayhnme is getting there), and my stoopidity as a negotiator - and everything is a negotiation - remains: I still always settle for a handjob called better-than-shittier.

Then bitchandmoaning and the defiant defense of bitchandmoaning, the highest, most privileged reward of the happily disappointed devout. Winning isn't the prize of faith.

*

• Well, of course. The question is, when Obama is murdered, how soon before prominent rightwingers accuse Obama of assassinating himself for political gain.
• Ruth Marcus, fracking moron at Your Fucking Washington Post, is defending herself when she attacks Obamalame for attacking Fox. (She's also dimly aware that if Fox is doing nothing but "opinion," they're encroaching on her turf, so there's that self-interest she too self-denies.) (Digby points out another obvious motive.)
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post, as I type this at 1545 Wednesday 10/21/09, has this as the sublede to that linked story: Move signals determination by Democrats to punish insurers for criticism of Obama's agenda. Sen. Reid also plans repeal as part of Senate bill.
• This is not an untrue statement from their perspective.
• When Niall Ferguson says U.S. empire is over, you'd think someone on the Right would notice, but be wrong like me.
• It'll be long and slow, though.
• Squishy Totalitarianism, or, I like to think, an illustration of foreign policy by I-Know-You-Are-But-What-Am-I-ism.
• Capitalism.
• Oy, IOZ saves me yet again responding to the world's smuggest half-wit.
• Fox Pornstache.
• On lesser-evilism.
• As succinct and clear a definition of grey vampires I've read.
• Zombies, again.
• Pope invites Anglican misogynists, homophobes, to join Catholic Church!
• UPDATE! Montag on the last link.
• The Spectacle always wins.
• Blegangst!
• Blegangst!
• BLCKDGRD, translated into Czech. Who is doing this?
• Elric? He found a disc golf course in Toronto.
• Fulham and Red Sox strike marketing deal?
• This is excellent news when you remember that during WC06 Dave "The Shittiest Soccer Announcer Ever" O'Brien was ESPN's lead caller.
• Thyraphobia, part fourteen.
• Thyraphobia, part fifteen, fin.
• Burtonsville! We live ten? miles from Burtonsville as the crow flies, thirteen? maybe by road, different continent, visit-wise.
• ICC fees!
• I didn't know the Trolley Museum was being upgraded.
• Took this picture 6:45 Tuesday night: Earthgirl grew up half a mile from here, we live four miles from here:

• Keith Waldrop page.
• Frederick Seidel on his motorcycles. (sub rqrd).
• A confession: I've never read On the Road (nor feel compelled to).
• Glam for Dollars.
• Am I wrong to love The Raveonettes?
• Confession: still my favorite single of the year.
• Unless it's this.
• New Sufjan Stevens (negatively) reviewed (with sound). I confess, I thought Illinois terrific when it came out, put it on last week, and BLEH! has it aged like spam left on a sidewalk in August.
• Why the fuck is Jack White in my newspaper?
• Why the fuck is Band of Horses on my radio?
• Best XTC cover ever.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

*

POORLY GROUNDED NATIONS

Keith Waldrop

And an inability to comprehend the
flow of time. We need only think of statements
by everybody. I cannot call my-
self myself. Up to this point, the dreamer
is dreaming, but now his dream
begins. Unities of recollection, separate
from one another. Thus is this present
world, there are different injuries.

I never hear them. The come
uninvited. Silver tissue. Garlands
between them. Any activity may produce
music. Aware of their existence as an
awareness of losing their sense of ex-
istence: vague, general, nameless, like
a nothing or the absolute. I am dead. I am
not alive, a music of exceeding shrillness.

May be pleasantly illustrated in the
following way. Light on the head. Felicitous,
contains some fabrication. I am
forced to shout out, trace failure to the stage
when plans are construed. I see a table
before me. I am reminded of another
table. I place table besides table. Separate
worlds. In what sense are we talking?

*

The original: