BLCKDGRD

(Oh Not to Join the Happy Ones, Until Some Tasks Are Done)

It's Declaration Week in Blegsylvania! (It's always Declaration Week in Blegsylvania, just some more than others.) Tiny Revolution's The Just and the Good by Bernard is the latest I've seen. (I've linked this week to multiple others.) (Oopsy - just saw this one.)

MANIFESTOITUS! A pandemic! I've got it!

Old Dirty Bastard zings me good about this:

Nice "duh" moment you had there! You should have been here when I found the Old Fool lecturing the 20-something Game Stop manager about the dangers of Liberalism/Communism/Homoism, etc. I called him an idiot. It felt good. Huzzah!

I do see these fuckwits all the time as a nature of where I work and where I stop to and from work, but I never thought (until ODB's comment) that that might be a subconscious motive in my not calling the fuckwit a fuckwit (I stood there, it occurs to me, in an institution-identifying sweatshirt), and I do know some fuckwits who know they've seen me in some vague serf role and could figure out who I was if I pissed them off enough to want to, and who'd win that fight?

Manifesto: I'm ridiculously complicit. Me and mine's self-interest? American hegemony, baby. I think it's more maintainable by policies of less assholity, but I've no illusions about assholity and assholity's trajectory.

I fighting for the privileges I already have and agitating for more, which, because of my relative comfort, necessitates I indulge in tenth-hearted but fully self-congratulatory advocacy for those who have less than me.

Many should be so lucky. Tell me I'm different than all but the holy fools.

*

• The Iron Cheer of Empire.
• Your country.
• Your country.
• Desperately seeking peacenik pot-smoking hippies.
• Excellent summation.
• Look! A Shiny Balloon!
• Fair or not, if there are mass deaths, this will be Obama's Katrina.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Has the rightwing shitfit over this started yet?
• How about about this?
• UPDATE! Ding!
• Not that this will change policy for the better.
• Just routine business.
• The politics of health care explained.
• Fucking economists.
• Bobo smacked once, twice.
• Flying Pig is funny, but taints the KITH skit forever.
• Domestic extremists.
• UPDATE! A solicitation. I suggest Bleggleb.
• ICC!
• MOCO's skateboader wars (includes photo of Kensington!).
• My current and future hell.
• CCT!
• Wearing white at home is lame.
• Wearing black when your color is red is lame.
• BLEG ADVICE SOUGHT! Last night I saw BLCKDGRD in IE and WTF? why does it look so compressed and shrunken? Why don't the youtubes escape the middle column like it does in firefox? Any suggestions on how to make it look in IE like it does in Firefox? Cause it looks crappy in IE. (I have no idea how it looks on a Mac.) (Lordy, if it's a typepad thing, o fuck and well.)
• Hilary Mantel on nine kinds of hypochondria: I once knew a man, a Jamaican, who when he first came to England always answered truthfully when asked ‘How are you?’ A bit sniffly, he might reply; or he would describe his indigestion, or the twinge in his left knee. One day a woman lost patience: ‘Look,’ she snapped, ‘there’s something you must understand; in England, the answer to “How are you?” is “I’m fine, how are you?”’ So he’d been told, and he didn’t need telling twice: for all the English care, you can die and stiffen on the street.
• New Ashbery.
• Two new Heather McHugh poems.
• Updike not a Pynchon fan (does like Barth). No word on what Pynchon thinks of Updike.
• On writing about bad writing.
• Don Carpenter? Lucky I have access to library stacks:

• Say, who's tacked to the wall behind the books? KABONG! goes my pitchfork.
• Halloween in Japan, plus Halloween mix.
• Halloween?
• Jeebus, radio is playing Fleet Foxes, and I just don't get the fuss, cause they suck unto suck's suck.
• DIY.
• Yes.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Jeebusfuck, now new Vampire Weekend, who suck just less than Fleet Foxes.
• Inside you the time moves and she don't fade.
• Guilty pleasure.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

*

THE HAPPY MAJORITY

Thomas Lux

    ..... before I join the great and, I believe, the happy majority
                                                                    - P.T. Barnum

Before I join the happy majority (though I doubt one member
    happy
or unhappy) I have some plans: to discover several new species
of beetle; to jump from a 100-foot platform
into a pile - big enough
to break my fall - of multicolored lingerie;
to build a little heater
(oh not to join the happy ones,
until some tasks are done)
beside each tulip bulb to speed its bloom;
to read 42,007 books (list available
on request); to learn Sanskrit, petroglyphs,
and English; to catch a bigot
(oh not to join the happy ones,
until some tasks are done)
by the toe; to kiss
the clavicle of (name available
on request); to pay my respects, again,
at the grave of John Keats; to abrogate
my position in God's nihilistic
(oh not to join the happy ones,
until some tasks are done)
dream; to hold my mother's hand as she leaves this world;
to lay my hand upon my father's heart as he does likewise;
and for my daughter to be glad I was her father as I exit, also
(in a hundred years or so), from the conscious to the un-.

*

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

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.

*

• 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?

*

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

Manassas United

Or Dale City United?

D.C. United has engaged in serious talks with a Virginia jurisdiction about a new stadium, club president  Kevin Payne told the Insider. He declined to identify the city or county but said -- no surprise -- that the  stadium site would be outside the Capital Beltway. "Where are we going to find [affordable and available] land inside the Beltway?" he said.

Fuck that.

LOTS more on this and other stuff coming out of RFK today below the fold (updated 4PM 10/27/09):

Seventy Today

To Hope They're Not as Stranded in What They Are as the Blue Flowers in the Yard at the Corner Which Seem to Be Shouting Only One Name

So I was getting a sandwich at Wagshals Saturday, and standing next to me waiting for his sandwich was a major Villager fuckwit, holding a phone to his head with his left hand while scrolling a blackberry with his right.

Apparently I was staring contemptously, imagining what I should say - Are you really a fuckwit or just play one for pay, and could you explain the moral distinction? Do you believe what you say or are you just a fucking monkey reciting your lines, and do you believe they are one and the same? I realize the mortgages on the mansion in Foxhall and the multiple vacation homes need paying, but how do you sleep? - when he turned away from me with annoyance, saying into his cell, I can't decide between the black Mercedes E-Class and the silver Lexus ISF.

I see these fuckwits all the time and never say a word. Despite this bleg's fucking language, I'm civil and polite in society, believe in respecting people's personal space: I daydream (and bleg) my insults.

And what would it serve but to confirm the justness of societal order in the Villagers' fuckwit minds to be challenged to defend their morality by a fucking peasant in a delicatessen? I'm going to change their minds? Long live the revolution.

*

• Clarity of American Strategic Thought, 2009.
• Strategic priorities, via Your Fucking Washington Post.
• The Empty Establishment.
• Next time someone speaks well of David Frum (O! he's such a reasonable conservative), remember this.
• It's only appropriate that on the same day Friedman the Fatuous writes this, Baghdad kabooms.
• Games.
• Frank Rich embraces the spectacle.
• George Will gets a petite chubby.
• Your Fucking Washington Post stands proudly with the insurance companies.
• Twice. (And the second fuckwit w/prOnstache in this post.)
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post's Fuckface Hiatt.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Good news about Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your Fucking British Press.
• Christer Fuckwit. UPDATE! Heh.
• The answer is No.
• The GOP Speaks, and So Does the Unconscious.
• Obamapostasy. He really does believe his own bullshit.
• Obamillard Fillmore.
• Fredneckian Party!
• Untaxed revenue.
• *!hEh!*
• Berbatov is...... The Continental.
• Awesome Leona's awesome Children's Literature course's syllabus was heavy with Norma Fox (as she was known then).
• Denise Levertov.
• Wait until you're 40 to read Moby Dick?
• Sometimes Percival Everett works for me, sometimes he doesn't.
• Should I? This is true: I put the link to that review in this post around 7AM Sunday morning. Later that morning, in the White Flint Borders, waiting for a jewelry store to open to get my watch battery changed, I held the Lethem in my hand, read the first three pages, found them fine enough, and meh. I also held in my hands Best American Poetry of 2009 (chosen by David Wagoner? David Wagoner is still alive?), the latest Mary Jo Bang, and Against the Day and Vineland, and I'm utterly at sea in slump. Jeebus, I'm going to have to read it, even as Beyond Black is wonderful but isn't being remagical.
• What was serendipitous was after getting my watch battery changed I did a quick grocery run to the new Harris Teeter off Nebel, where I ran into Sasha. We both agreed this guy and this guy need call a dinner and feed us. Maybe a night when we can "unleash" the Red. (Hockey fans are lame.)
• All Hardcore Fiends Will Die By...
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.

*

INFIDEL

Carl Dennis

If I chew these sesame seed slowly,
As the book advises, and do my rhythmic breathing,
I may end up the year comparing myself to Buddha,
Thinking of myself as his companion.

No more wasting my energy on my will,
The will afraid if it ever stopped wanting
I'd disappear. Head forward,
Shoulders stopped under its sack of ambitions,
It butts its way through the crowd.
It halts in clearings to count its losses.

Now I can turn to meditation and vision
If I chew theses sesame seeds slowly,
Walking behind myself at a saving distance,
Glancing around at a world not seen before.

Soon I'll be free to play, to leave my projects behind
And wonder what it's like to be a stone,
Or a tree, or the dog asleep by the lawn chair,
Or the woman in the chair, gray-haired and frail,
Knitting a sweater for her daughter's baby.

To be them, and then to leave them.
To hope they're not as stranded in what they are
As the blue flowers in the yard at the corner
Which seem to be shouting only one name,
Blue Flower, Blue Flower.

Just a mouthful of sesame seeds and salt
To neutralize the acidity of the blood
And maybe in a week or two the fretful yin child
Will be a contemplative, joyful yang.

And if I can change, my friends can follow
If they're willing to be more flexible
And don't insist, as they have till now,
On their own vivid, unchastened perspectives.

Strange to love those who resist me,
Who block the sidewalk when I go exploring
And won't give ground, who force me
To step aside with my ears ringing,
My eyes watering, and move on

Under the awnings that flap their colors
As awnings do, under lindens
Shaking their leaves as lindens will
When they want to refresh themselves
In gusts from the mountains, gusts from the sea.

*

In response to my begging for a Queequeg and Starbuck to go die in a whale hunt with me, Ilse wrote "Hrm. Would I be getting paid to read _The Dick?_ Otherwise, why bother? I already know I like penises. (Yes, I'm an English teacher. So?):

Thanks, Frederick! for the (I don't flatter myself it was intentional) serendipity!

Kansas City 2, United 2

Well hell, that aptly - and justly - captured the season's essence.

I'll mull the obituary before (and if) I write it, but here's the gist: United isn't good enough to compete for silver as currently constructed and coached.

Here's Tenorio's player ratings:

Cronin 7, James 7, Jakovic 6, Burch 6; Wallace 6, Gomez 6, Szetela 5, Simms 6, Fred 6; Emilio 5, Pontius 5.5. SUBS: Moreno 6, Olsen 6, Khumalo 5.5

One last Soehn bashing: After doghousing Szetela since Kevin Payne wasted a player allocation on him, Soehn starts Szetela over Benny in the most crucial game of the year, GUARANTEEING at least one substitute. Yes, James headed in the second goal, but he headed it in WHEN HE SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ON THE FIELD because he was playing on one leg and Soehn didn't have a substitute in his pocket. The one fracking time this season Soehn NEEDED to bunker and bring in an extra defender HE COULDN'T, and in the most important five minutes of the season United essentially played with only two defenders, which led to Fred's handball on a poor clearance off a corner.

Last we've seen of Gomez, bandaged and limping. He's the symbol, not only of this year but the last two when he was banished for Veron nee Gallardo. I'll always wonder if Chang had been the sole owner, if MacFarlane hadn't been pushing for a big signing as part of his plan for his Poplar Point development ambitions, whether United could have banged out a fair deal with Gomez and got one more useful year out of him.

(I don't think it can be overestimated the damage MacFarlane did to this franchise, from on the field product to toxic relationships between the team and local jurisdictions. Thank Ba'al that greedy fucker is off fucking up his other businesses.)

Last we've seen of Emilio, who I don't accuse of dogging it, just say he's lost a step-and-a-half and all of his turn.

Last we've seen of Fred, who earned both PKs, though only the Kansas City one fairly. He must be the best practice player ever. I wonder what he thinks of Soehn.

Last we may have seen of Namoff, the irreplaceable player, who may have been worth one or two points in the games he missed.

Not the last we've seen of Benny and Jaime, though we have seen the last of their better days as players. One or both of them will be a coach, if not the head coach, next season.

UPDATE!

While I concede that "Fred dived for your sins" is indeed the line of the season, remember, while reading this guy's Season Obituary, that he will be giggling to himself for the rest of his life every time he thinks about that line.

Here's Curmudgeon, here's Fullback. Updates, links, edits, obit, later. Or not.

And Your Name, Curled Flame, Licks the Matchbook of the Cause, Like a Voice Whose Rome Pisses through Every Little Animal.

Yapped Thursday with good blegfriend Richard, happy funny bleggy stuff to start, then on to novels like we always do.

I got past halfway, maybe 4/7ths the way through Powers' Generosity, and megamehfulness. I just don't give a damn, about the plot, the characters, the authorial voice, the bioethical quandary Powers' poses this time. I admit in email the meh may be as much my fault as Powers, and I mean that to a point, but, c'mon, I don't roll that way: it has to be because the novel sucks. (What's interesting is my favorite Powers' novel is one of Richard's least, and visa versa, but that's another post. Or not.)

I'm rereading Beyond Black, partly and certainly because Richard told me he'd give it a try after all my squawking about it, but primarily because once I started to think about rereading it, I had no way to stop thinking about rereading it except to reread it.

Then there was that MOCO post, the one I'd rewritten countless times in the moleskin, that I needed to post just to be rid of it. Then there was the Redskin post, which I had to post just to be rid of it.

Holy fuck, you know what I'm going to reread next because it's been ten years and I can't stop thinking about rereading it?

Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under the water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began.

GAH! Anyone want to join me?

Someone's writing the novel that needs writing right row about right now (poetry is ahead of fiction right now about right now), and I privilege this right now as the most important right now since the last and until the next, and though it bores with my self-servingness to hear me say it again, I am a weathervane, and as people discover that in their digital powerlessness they have never been freer to contribute to the spectacle, there's never been a greater wave of WTFness now that voyeurism is peak and product can't keep up.

Which is to say I'm officially monitoring this bleg's increasing levels of possibly self-destroying WTFness. I'm trying to stop monitoring this bleg's levels of self-destroying WTFness.

*

• Fatlazyfucker fears Obama is threatening the fatlazyfucker's freedom to be a fatlazyfucker.
• The word Greenwald is looking for is pussies.
• You don't give money to NPR do you (or do you need to be mocked)?
• Rattling the roobcages on both ends is a win for the middle.
• It never occurs to Pastor Fatuous that one way to ease Islamic extremism is to stop bombing wedding parties with predator drones.
• Another reason to hate the rich (or if Islamic extremist, to hate America).
• Your Fucking Washington Post features World's Shittiest Human every Friday.
• Frank Gaffney would like to challenge World's Shittiest Human for that title.
• Shut your piehole.
• Stupid peasants.
• Montag (via JRB) on Warring Wages.
• Capitalism.
• It's the end of the world as we know it.
• Bullet prOn, cont....
• Heh.
• Wet Leaves on Windows.
• Fentyville!
• My future hell. The issue, at least in my neighborhood, is that many people bought in this neighborhood to be in the Walter Johnson High School cluster. We did. Planet will long have graduated by the time redistricting would occur, so it wouldn't affect us, but I understand the concerns of parents with much younger children.
• Kensington's imperialistic ambitions!
• Nice bridge.
• UPDATE! Who the hell blegs about their favorite black-clad football team?
  
• Bleg Anniversary's (of a sort) here and here. Congrats.
• Hilltop! Thank Ba'al Planet doesn't want to go there.
• BLCKDGRD translated into Portuguese. Who is doing this?
• Soupy Sales, RIP.
• At Stirred, Straight Up, With a Twist it's always 1962. Fits the tone around here lately, yes?
• UPDATE! Two new Mary Jo Bang poems.
• Rise of the Neuronovel?
• UPDATE! Twenty, twenty-five, thirty years ago, I went through a huge Iris Murdoch phase. Reread The Sea, The Sea a few years ago and The Book and the Brotherhood a year or two ago, and while the thrill is gone, I remembered why I had the thrill when I was young.
• Kakutani HATES! the new Ishiguro, which means the new Ishiguro must necessarily be GREAT!
• UPDATE! Simic on Seidel.
• Another one of dozens of my favorite five songs ever.
• Don't forget counterstream.
• Another one of dozens of my favorite five songs ever.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Another one of dozens of my favorite five songs ever.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Leonard Cohen fix?
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! This too. This too.
• We party so hard, the planet broke.

*

A THREE-RAVEN FIELD TALKING DIRTY APPLE BLOSSOMS

Cal Bedient

And your name, Blue, crouches like a wrestler's head,

Or a voice whose window dismembers the beetle moon.

And your name, Insatiable, stokes a sunflower bonfire

With a voice whose sea is inside out at feeding time.

And your name, Chemical, has no sweet fold et cetera

Nor a voice whose cliffs are anybody's heart.

And your name, Leaves a Light on in the Void,

Clicks in the all-night stapler of your theater.

And your name, They Had Doubt, slews in a Cloud Magellan

With a voice whose Mary is two blues from origin.

And your name, Halfer, ignora la otra mitad,

Whose voice piles weapons in the pick-up beds of exile.

And your name, Curled Flame, licks the matchbook of the cause,

Like a voice whose Rome pisses through every little animal.

*

New Yo La Tengo?

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:

Toluca 1, United 1

Hey there, play that determined on Saturday in Kansas City, United might make it to first round of MLS playoffs (other game results pending) to lose to Columbus after all .

Here's the obligatory paragraph in which I mention Toluca had nothing to play for, rested many of their regulars, hit crossbars and rocketed shots just over the crossbar, credit Steve Cronin with remarkable saves, and say, Toluca could have - should have - won easily 4-1.

But... United fought. Pontius' wonder goal gave them hope and energy early. We'll never know how United would have reacted had Toluca scored ten minutes in, and I expected Toluca to score ten minutes in.... but, United fought. I'll grasp at that.

And TEN points in CONCACAF is about six points more than I would have guessed United would accrue when the competition started. If United earned 1.66 PPG in MLS, they'd be sitting on 47 going into Kansas City and still have a chance for Supporter's Shield.

And this is what sucks about United's MLS season (and gacking the US Cup Final v Seattle): rather than a meaningful game in October in Mexico next year, rather than a meaningful game against a Mexican team at RFK next October - we're going to get, as our extra season ticket package, meaningless exhibition games v Everton next July.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Cronin 7; Vaughn 5, James 7, McTavish 6, John 7; Fred 5, DiRaimondo 6, Szetela 6.5, Khumalo 5; Pontius 8, Emilio 5. Subs: Wallace 6, Gomez 5, Jakovic 6.

OK, my Boyzz crush is crushed. If he was 18 and a fool who won't defend, he might evolve and develop, but he's 28, and there's a reason he was a Riverhound when he was 26. As a 70th minute sub to run at a tired defense he's useful, but if he was half as good as he thinks he is his antics would still be annoying.

Speaking of evolving and developing, has anyone suggested to Rodney Wallace that well taken shots on the ground against a flailing keeper have a better chance of scoring than punting pointblank shots over the crossbar?

Julius James is useful, more so than Lawson Vaughn or Avery James or Devon McTavish.

Here's Fullback, who's tired of Tommy's 70s prOnstar silk shirts, bitches at Boyzz. Shatz praises McTavish, James, FRED!, bitches at Boyzz. Curmudgeon commends the team's spirit.

UPDATE!

I honestly don't know if this is significant:

Will Chang now controls 100 percent of D.C. United after purchasing the very small remaining share held by a group led by Brian Davis and Christian Laettner , former Duke basketball players who are involved in real estate development these days. The company name (MacFarlane-Chang, LLC) still includes former partner Victor MacFarlane, but that will change at some point.

And Benny does an online chat:

Ben, when you beamed that guy in the head were you surprised by how accurate your shot was? Do you plan on have any surgeries in the off-season?

I was a little surprised. It was the most accurate shot I’ve had all year. No surgery plans as of now.

Is coaching something you see in your future? Do you have any coaching licenses? Do you think it's stupid that a professional soccer player should need a coaching license?

Yes, yes and… yes...

Thanks for being the heart and soul of the team ... we, the fans, love your grit! Even though the '09 season hasn't wrapped up yet, have you given any thoughts to your plans for '10?

I’m looking forward to being on the pitch next year.

would u think united moving to baltimore would add to the fan base or diminish it? thanks lionheart!

I want D.C. United to stay in DC.

Favorite United player ever.

A Mistake Like All Pleas for Forgiveness, but He Persisted Blindly, Obstinately, Each Day, as though in the End It Would Relieve Her to Know the Particulars

Why, yes I do think Obamalame is starting a nasty foodfight with Fox just to distract the base with such luxurious pig-loathing that his inevitable obamalame capitulation on the public option (and banksters, etc) goes not only unpunished, it generates a swell of contributions that will fund further capitulations.

Don't you?

*

• To call each thing by its right name.
• Zizek on Democracy, but really on calling each thing by its right name.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• Plutonomy.
• UPDATE! Zombies, con't.
• Daily Smack of Duh.
• Arguing about Afghanistan.
  
• Current British politics: a summary.
• Current British politics: Gov't of Rats in a Sack.
• Not current British politics, but something for my London blegfriends.
• What would John Brown do? (And why isn't Brown a crackerstani idol? Kidding. I know.) (BTW, Russell Banks Cloudsplitter is an excellent read, if you like historical fiction now and then.)
• Your fucking Washington Post.
• The idiots running your fucking Washington Post.
• What the NYT thinks is vitally important.
• On the communists who run the NFL.
• Crisis in Kensington!
• Chevy Chase Police want tasers!
• Hagerstown might as well quit now.
• Too much fun. You, um, do know that Little Danny and the Redskins is a metaphor for American empire, yes?
• Berbatov is..... The Continental.
• UPDATE! Blegadvice - there's someone or something from googlebot in Mountain View meticulously working its way backwards through all my posts. What's up with that? Automated spammer looking for a way in? The new updated Technorati catching up on all its old version didn't do when it should.
• UPDATE! Speaking of Technorati, I went from an authority (whatever that is) of 58 suddenly down to 8 then, when Technorati upgraded, shot up to 428. What's up with that?
• John Irving, Philip Roth, in the British papers.
• Silliman praises National Book Award poetry selections.

   

   

 

• Lucky for me I've got access to a university library's stacks.
• Vollmann reviews new Caputo, and likes because "the reason I enjoyed “Crossers” as much as I did, is that it hints at how difficult it can be to draw conclusions — about evil, about Ben and above all about the crossers themselves," a sentiment that isn't surprising to anyone who reads Vollmann.
• Obscure Sound reviews (and digs) the new Flaming Lips, provides two songs. Will be buying next payday. Everything I've heard I've like.
• How Pandora works. I never use it (not out of any bias, it just doesn't occur to me), but Earthgirl does all the time.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.

*

PLEA FOR FORGIVENESS

Rodney Jones

The old man William Carlos Williams, who had been famous
    for kindness
And for bringing to out poetry a mannerless speaking,

In the aftermath of a stroke was possessed by guilt
And began to construct for his wife the chronicle

Of his peccadillos, an unforgivable thing, a mistake
Like all pleas for forgiveness, but he persisted

Blindly, obstinately, each day, as though in the end
It would relieve her to know the particulars

Of affairs she must have guessed and tacitly permitted,
For she encouraged his Sunday drives across the river.

His poems suggest as much; anyone can see it.
The thread, the binding of the voice, is a single hair

Spliced from the different hairs of different lovers,
And it clings to his poems, blond and dark,

Tangled and straight, and runs on beyond the page.
I carry it with me, saying, "I have found it so."

It is a world of human blossoming, after all.
But the old woman, sitting there like rust -

For her there would be no more poems of stolen
Plums, of round and firm trunks of young trees,

Only the candor of the bedpan and fouled sheets,
When the could no longer have been any hope

That he would recover, when the thing she desired
Was not his health so much as his speechlessness.

*