We Fear He Will Never Return to the Dishevelment of His Ambiguity.

Who's to blame? Someone's to blame! Tell me!

The now-famous yearly Candlebrow Conferences, like the institution itself, were subsidized out of the vast fortune of of Mr Gideon Candlebrow of Grossdale, Illinois, who had made his bundle back during the great Lard Scandal of the 80s, in which, before Congress put an end to the practice, countless adulterated tons of that comestible were exported to Great Britain, compromising further an already debased national cuisine, giving rise throughout the island, for example, to a Christmas-pudding controversy over which to this day families remain divided, often violently so. In the consequent scramble to develop more legal sources of profit, one of Mr Candlebrow's labratory hands happened to invent "Smegmo," an artificial substitute for everything in the edible-fat category, including margarine, which many felt wasn't that real to begin with. An eminent Rabbi of world hog capital Cincinnati, Ohio, was moved to declare the product kosher, adding that, " the Hebrew people have been waiting four thousand years for this. Smegmo is the Messiah of kitchen fats." With astonishing rapidity, Smegmo had come to account for the majority of Candlebrow Ventures' annual profits.

Smegmo?

"Goes with everything!" advised a student at a nearby table. "Stir it in your soup, spread it on your bread, mash it into your turnips! My dorm-mates comb their hair with it! There's a million uses for Smegmo."

 - Pynchon, Against the Day

Smegmo, yo. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, your pudding.

• Lieberman is Obama's beard. Whether they are working in concert or Obama is riffing off Lieberman's petulant assholity, Lieberman is Obama's beard.
• UPDATE! Joe Lieberman in sixteen seconds!
• Obama, Smegmo salesman. Establishment Democrats ALWAYS hated Dean, especially after his electoral successes in 2008. After leading the Democrats to victories in states establishment Democrats ridiculed Dean for even putting into play, his marginalization was required.
• UPDATE! Smegmobama! Yes?
• Daily Obamapostasy.

UPDATE!

• Dean speaks!
• Villager fuckwit calls him crazy!
• Villager fuckwad throws fit!
• You're a tea-bagger, says Villager Milbank.
• The pragmatic counter-argument.
• I realize it's a sign of how small I am that even if Lieberman is Obama's beard, I'd still like to brain Joe Lieberman with a shovel. 
• Your America.
• UPDATE! Reconsider that donation to the ACLU?
• Here, let Richard Cohen explain human sexuality. I forget where it was, but someone wrote an ask the editor question to someone asking, Why does Tiger only date attractive blondes? and the editor answered, Because he can.
• All that is solid melts into air.
• Headline of the Day!
• Best Giftmas present ever.

• Purple Line!
• ICC! Lexus tolls to be approved!
• Weast War!
• Montrose Hell!
• UPDATE! Crisis in Kensington! Dig this opening paragraph: Residents of Kensington's Byeford neighborhood are petitioning against a T-Mobile cell phone tower the Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church is considering installing on its property, citing concerns of possible negative effects on public health and property values. I'm sure when they were furiously calling each other on their cell phones to complain about their property values they spent equal time discussing the health risks of cell phone towers.
• MOCO/PG divorce?
• UPDATE! Crisis in Darnestown!
• Deskunkification!
• UPDATE! Decision time for Clarksburg!
• Crisis is Laytonsville!
• Bethesda OMFG!

• 25 Best Books of Poetry of the Decade.
• Chaos in fourteen lines.
• Best American Poetry for and by old farts.
• All three of the above lifted from Silliman's always generous blog.
• I really liked Mating, but have tried and failed to get thirty pages into Mortals at least five times. I'm not sure if my tastes changed that dramatically of Rush got that much more dramatically sucky, but it fascinates me.
• Lots of, lots on, Muriel Rukeyser.

• Slow week of new releases.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Obscure Sounds' #50 - #41, with MP3. I was disappointed in this Camera Obscura, truth be told.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Obscure Sounds' #40 - #31, with MP3. I dig Atlas Sound and the xx.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Obscure Sounds #30 - #21, with MP3. YYYs, plus Royksopp, plus Cymbals Eat Guitars.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Obscure Sound's #20 - #11, with MP3. Fever Ray, yo.
• The Pitchforkening (h/t) Top 100 songs of year.
• Heh.
• UPDATE! KEXP DJs Top Tens. John's has the most I'd agree with, though I think that BlakRoc wildly overhyped and overrated (though not on a Jack White scale of overhyped and overrated), and I can live a full and happy life without hearing Bon Iver ever again.
• Heh.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

THE YELLOW LETTER

Cal Bedient

He was battered out from his stay in the infantry.
Ran his knife through the ear of a walkie-talkie, called it
"Getting the President's Attention." We fear he will never return

to the dishevelment of his ambiguity. It's like watching Ted Koppel's
mother combing his hair on Nightline. All the Iraqi
POWs wanted to talk about, someone said, was bananas.

We may never again be cracked up to be.
I'm so afraid to losing you, who don't give a shit no more.
I miss something to go crazy about. I wish I had

a bowl of sparrows to feed to. I wish I could speed
somebody's beauty around. The tush of George W.
Bush is singing from our cabana: he called this one

"Singing Full-Throated from the Oval Room."
And now for you my imitation of waving wands of corn
in the land you loved so well, back in the eventide

letting darkness down easy.

Still one of my favorite songs of 2009. Forgive me.