Bleggalgazing

This is the slowest week in Blegsylvania (at least by my experience), and ennui is spreading like Giftmas dread across Blegsylvania, so what better time to bleggalgaze.

Overlords Atrios and Cole (and even Sub-Overlord Henley) have endorsed the Twetter, an advanced communication technology activated when you jab the pin of a triangular broach into your chest just above the left nipple:

 

Blegs be dying, yo, but don't worry, no twooting for me, and don't worry, this isn't to say any more than you needn't worry: I'm not changing the color-scheme, I'm not fucking with the blegrell except to add new noises, I'm not sweating reciprocity, I'm not gnawing the stats.

I'm having fun. I'll always try to be Kind. I promise to remain true to the engine that drives a bleggers heart.

• Your Fucking Washington Post: Iran's army and Revolutionary Guard staged large-scale air defense war games on Sunday in an effort to show off the country's deterrence capabilities amid rising pressure from the West over its nuclear program, state television reported. Really, that's really how, word for word, Iran's state television reported the wargames? Commence pig-squeals. (1745 EST 11/22/09 when linked.)
• Hey! Let's put on a show trial!
• Zombie Politics.
• UPDATE! Dick Cheney lifts up the right haunch of his assface to mouthfart, and a simpleton in line to meet Sarah Palin sums up Cheney's worldview: "I see a decline in our might," Chuck Heath said. "People used to be afraid of us and respect us, (but) they're not afraid of us and don't respect us anymore."
• Red Scare, Black Scare.
• Definition of an Imperial Liberal.
• Next time I see this fuckwit in a deli, I will tell him he's a fuckwit.

UPDATE! Dennis Moore retiring?

• Fuckwittery.
• Palin as blueprint for the next demagogue.
• Ten reasons Palin could be Republican nominee in 2012.
• Palin as WWE star. Taibbi gets this right: Sarah Palin is on an endless crusade against assholes. I keep saying this: she gives people who hate people like you and me a team to root for.
• UPDATE! Axe on the Taibbi.
• Signs of things to come.
• A political manifesto went begging.
• UPDATE! Uh-oh, there's that word again.
• Old is new.
• Fucking Cracker-Christers.
• Asshole bishop bars politician from ritual cannibalism!
• Sunday's Hike!

• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• I work in a Brutalist building. I like it; few do.
• $1K? Excellent.
• Giftmas crisis in MOCO! (A block away from my house, a neighbor has already fully deployed his Giftmas lights, and a fully decorated tree glows in his front bay window. Ass.)
• Fenty v Dixon.
• Metro trend.
• Screener.

• Zadie Smith on novelists, essays, nausea-novels, artificiality.....
• A response. I find it's harder for me to in-habit a novel (read your Harington) than it used to, and I don't think it's just me, though I'll take the majority of the blame.
• I think Raymond Carver the single most over-hyped and overrated author in my lifetime, but beyond whether he was or wasn't, he was an asshole.
• Bad awards.
• On poetry prizes.
• Ishiguro spent 2009 reading Bolaño.
• UPDATE! Excerpts of last Bolaño interview: M.M.: Have you shed one tear about the widespread criticism you’ve drawn from your enemies? R.B.: Lots and lots. Every time I read that someone has spoken badly of me I begin to cry, I drag myself across the floor, I scratch myself, I stop writing indefinitely, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I engage in sport, I go for walks on the edge of the sea, which by the way is less than 30 meters from my house and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish who ate Ulysses: Why me? Why? I’ve done you no harm.
• Noveller? Maybe!
• UPDATE! New DeLillo short story.
• The Political Fictions Project? You can play!
• UPDATE! Bill Bissett? Never heard of, looks worth seeing if it's worth a see, and you should be looking at wood s lot every day.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Kite!
• Souvlaki Space Station.
• Alison.
• Lucy doesn't love you.
• When the sun hits.
• Undertow.
• UPDATE! It's not the Velvet Underground if John Cale isn't there. Lou Reed was, is, and always will be an ass.
• The river man.
• While we're in love.
• Dagger.
• Let's stay inside.
• Shine.
• Hideaway.

POEM

Frank O'Hara

Hate is only one of many responses
true, hurt and hate go hand in hand
but why be afraid of hate, it is only there

think of filth, it is really awesome
neither is hate
don't be shy of unkindness, either
it's cleansing and allows you to be direct
like an arrow that feels something

out and out meanness, too, lets love breathe
you don't have to fight off getting in too deep
you can always get out if you're not too scared

an ounce of prevention
enough to poison the heart
don't think of others
until you have thought of yourself, are true

all of these things, if you feel them
will be graced by a certain reluctance
and turn into gold

if felt by me, will be smilingly deflected
by your mysterious concern

Preparing for Giftmas: