This Was Before The Internet Made These Sad and Surreptitious Purchases Unnecessary

Welcome to 2025's premise is the end of American economic and military pre-eminence has long been predicted by America's staunchest and most professional hawks but wasn't supposed to occur for another fifteen years.

I can't stop thinking about the major fuckwit at the deli, not my not confronting him, in imagining what he'd say if I had. Saaay, you're right, I do advocate for a status quo that's brought me fame and fortune and a life style you'd swap with me in a nanosecond, you fucking peasant, I should stop and re-examine my conscience.

The people in charge - not the fuckwits but the fuckwads - know the clock is ticking, and the goal isn't saving America, it's wringing the most out of America before America's worth shit, and they know the deadline's rushing forward exponentially faster than even the fuckwadyish of fuckwads presumed. As for the fuckwits, the fuckwads throw them coin and access and stroke the fuckwits' insecure chinlessness in exchange for beneficial propaganda.

I admit, turning fifty has been more reverberative than all the other big tens combined and multiplied by X. When I turned forty, Planet was six, when I turned thirty, I'd only been married two years, when I turned twenty I was having too much fun, and at none of these milestones did I stop to examine my assumptions that (a) I wasn't going to die and (b) my belief in progress is roobish, a belief that a majority of humans would come to a tacit understanding that cooperation trumps coercion through an increasingly integrated world that made cooperation, rather than coercion, the self-interested choice.

What a fucking roob. Nobody shares more than they have to, and everything's negotiation. Here's truth: black-and-white TV shows, black-and-white movies, black-and-white news footage, KABONG! my pitchfork. The reason I'm sure I'm a weathervane: I came of awareness right when the world toggled from black-and-white to color for their daily spectacle.

I just turned fifty, I can see the future, in black-and-white footage, narrated by Laurence Olivier.

What a fucking roob, polishing my cranky old bastard's apocalyptic prophecies, forgetting again that humans are too resiliently shitty to properly exterminate themselves.

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• 2025.
• Renouncing Libertarianism, part one.
• Renouncing Libertarianism, part two.
• UPDATE! Subsistence Politics.
• Least Surprising Headline of the Day!
• Unless Obamalame IS goading Fox (and I don't think they are, the fuckwits), this is the best argument that launching a war against Fox is counterproductive.
• OK, Obamalame comes out and says, calling something bullshit isn't banning the bullshit, and I'll never ban bullshit as long as I'm president, how isn't that a win/win?
• Fox is not news: a proof.
• OMFG! No president has ever done this before! Summoning Sean Inanity!
• UPDATE! Second Least Surprising Headline of the Day!
• Heh, it'd been driving me nuts, but I finally figured out who Valerie Jarrett reminds me of: Worf's student.
• David Brooks fearlessly defends the filthiest rich.
• Today's Person I'd Most Like to Brain w/a Shovel.
• The filthiest rich, Russian edition.
• YFWP.
• Police State.
• Atlas Sucked. Great political novels? Aren't all novels political novels?
• Con-Air.
• Look.
• Manhattan Street Corners. (h/t)
• Stop spitting.
• The False Nine.
• There are some new links on the blegrell over in New Toys and Reads. Check them out. Consider this a minor threat regarding the rearrangement of the blegrell to make my browsing easier that can be ignored.
• Needless Difficulty uses Mantel's Wolf Hall to make a broader point, prompted by Roth's comment in an interview in WSJ on writers v entertainers.
• Stoner. Sigh, another reread I may or may not get to.
• Which reminds me of Wolf Solent (which you can read right here), another reread I may or may not get to.
• I was born with a missing Millhauser gene because I know Millhauser is doing interesting stuff that just eludes me.
• Oldest Debate.
• Moby Dick to be rewritten in emoticons.
• New Tom Sleigh poem.
• On Cal Bedient's "Days of Unwilling," my favorite book of poetry this year.
• Disturbance at the heron house?
• Guilty pleasure.
• Listen.
• Guilty pleasure.
• Guilty pleasure.
• GOODNESS! Listen to all these new releases (including new Echo and the Bunnymen?).
• Guilty pleasure.
• Belong.
• Guilty pleasure.
• UPDATE! Already wondering what to buy me for Giftmas?
• Again: the cover. The original.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! Houses in Motion.
• These Are Foolish Things.
• UPDATE! Guilty pleasure.
• Yim Yames beautifully covers George Harrison. It's time for a new MMJ, yes?

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Clean, Clean, Clean

Linh Dinh

Belonging to the lower class, you’re expected
To cater to the upper class’ lower bodily functions,
Not to engage their minds but to wipe their asses,
Kiss their cunts on demand, suck cocks for tips,
Unless, of course, you’re an artist, in which case,
You’re an aristocrat of the servant class, to quote
That grand maestro among slaves, Jasper Johns.

I used to clean apartments and houses.
Showing up for a new job, I was greeted
By the mistress, “I have the most respect
For new immigrants. You work so hard!”
Down low, you’ll get a disproportionate
Low down on all things funky and nasty,
Nothing unusual, really, just shit and stuff.
I cleaned toilets and fridges, folded panties,
Got on all fours, dipped into the suspicious.
A young woman confided, “I moved to Philly
Because California women were so beautiful.”
She was usually home when I came. The spine
Of her soft porn book turned to the wall. They all
Had some smut in the house. This was before
The Internet made these sad and surreptitious
Purchases unnecessary. I found a teen-aged
Madonna in a closet, so I knelt and sighed.

A fat one lived alone, but once she said, “Sorry,
The house is so messy today. I had company
Last night,” and her face brightened angelically.

*

MMJ