Or Cat That Prettily Pounces on Its Meat, Tortures It Hours, then Does Not Care to Eat

What would you sacrifice, you eights that read me? My life is good: I'm glad I live in MOCO, not Republic, Pennsylvania.

We all agree the game is gamed, that we game it when we cash our paychecks, buy on credit, bleg our compliance and complicity. We don't imagine ourselves Iranians rebelling, we're not daydreaming revolution like a cracker on his ATV.

Imagine us hippies burning buses in America, throwing rocks through CitiBank's office windows (after stopping at the ATM), charging into police batons. We aspire to archness, the saddest, highest rank we avid gamers can achieve.

• So it is written.
• UPDATE! What I've been saying.
• Your Fucking Washington Post rings in the New Year with Michael Chertoff urging Obama to abandon civil liberties, Bill Nepotism accusing Obama of abandoning Iran's Dirty Fucking Hippies, and the World's Shittiest Human doing what he does shittiest.
• One day we'll all be terrorists.
• Ten good stories from the Muslim world you never heard about.
• Under-appreciated victories?
• One-eighth of a presidency.
• Wobbly Baby Steps Forward.
• Sad clown to angry clown.
• Roy calls bullshit.
• Craziest Shit of the Decade.
• It's shopping time in Britain!
• Kokoo koko kokko kokoon!

• My future hell.
• Kensington clownishness.
• The Year in East MOCO.
• Feral cats in MOCO.
• Ours? Happy. Nap is now spending hours in the house. Gray and Frankie are fine.
• I don't follow the NBA because it's unwatchable, but even I know this cannot be a good thing.

I have no idea who does these:

But I find them - and lots of giggles - at Soup, which you should bookmark. It's not the show on E! (though that's good too) and it's NSFW, yo.

• RIP David Levine. More here, including a link to this story which will make me view the NYRB differently from now on.
• Bleggalgazing!
• A year in reading.
• A year in books.
• Did the Surrealists get it right?
• Mitchelmore's novel of the year, for multiple reasons. I'll try again once the paperback is released at the end of January. Not only does that give me time to finish what I'm in, but for whatever reason I read cinderblock paperbacks better than cinderblock hardbacks. What makes me a roob is nine-tenths of the time I end up buying both.
• I missed Belew's 60 birthday last week. Don Durito didn't.
• OK, go here, type in 1/1/10, 7:09 AM and, serendipitously, you'll first hear a song I posted a couple of days ago before hearing a couple of songs from bands we saw at 930 in the 80s courtesy of DJ El Toro, who played one at my request and then played Urban Verbs to be nice. Not only is El Toro the best DJ at KEXP, not only does he vaguely look like Elric, but he was at many of the shows in the 80s I was at (though we didn't know it).
• Fuck 2009.
• Without a doubt.
• Guardian's Readers' Music Pool 2009. I agree with almost everything.
• KEXP's Listener 2009 poll has no surprises.
• That's really super, Supergirl.
• One DJs Top Ten Videos of 2009!
• Quick Canal.
• Ten NSFW videos of 2009!
• 12 Best Late Night TV Performances of 2009!

MOLY

Thom Gunn

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.
I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,
Or cringing dribbling dog, man’s servile friend,

Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat,
Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat:

Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea.
What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me.

    These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.
No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Into what bulk has method disappeared?
Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared.

The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature.
My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature

That bites through anything, root, wire, or can.
If I was not afraid I’d eat a man.

Oh a man’s flesh already is in mine.
Hand and foot poised for risk. Buried in swine.

    I root and root, you think that it is greed,
It is, but I seek out a plant I need.

Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy,
To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly:

Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot,
From milky flower to the black forked root.

From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin
And human title, putting pig within.

I push my big grey wet snout through the green,
Dreaming the flower I have never seen.