For the Listener, Who Listens in the Snow, and, Nothing Himself, Beholds Nothing That Is Not There and The Nothing That Is.

It's true, my support for Obama over HRC in the Democratic primaries and my dollars for Obama in the general election were invested not in belief that Obama would affect change significant enough to alter America's downward trajectory (beyond possibly affecting a .06% less-shitty crash and burn) but because I fully believed the half-nigger with the Muslim name would make the greatest number of Pig-American heads explode, which made me lust and giggle, and which I daydreamed (as an afterthought) might create Obama's political potential to affect the .06%.

Silly me. I apologize for the maudlin, self-pitying tone of late. I confused disappointment in Obama's entertainment value (Has a pig fertilizer-bombed a Federal building yet? Has Alabamastan seceded yet?) with Obama's political objectives of stopping Pig-Americans from blowing up Federal buildings and keeping Alabamastan from seceding.

Lincolnesque, yes? preserving the Union. Duane Ellison, history professor at Harvard on The Pike, taught Landru and me the causes of the Civil War were disputes over (1) National Bank, (2) Internal Improvements, (3) Sale and Distribution of Western Lands and, (4) Protective Tariffs, with Northeast, South, and West two-of-threeing each other in every dispute. Lincoln, who wanted to keep the country together solely for capitalism's sake, only propagandized freeing the slaves as a desperate move after McClellan fucked up squashing Lee at Antietam, when the Northeast was like, fuck this, fuck Alabamastan, we can renegotiate even more favorable contracts with the dumb motherfuckers once their backwater country goes bankrupt.

I paraphrase, but I can picture Duane, impeccable three-piece suit, tie-knot loosened and tugged askew, feet up on the desk, laughing at me and my recent angst as he pours the last martini out of his Thermos. Obama, sheeyit, I finally had a guilt-free laugh at the some pwoggle's pwonouncments that Obama'd found his stride in Baltimore calling House Republicans stupid ignorant crackers (redundant, I know) just one week after the Democrats lost their Senate "super-majority" to a stupid ignorant cracker from Massachusetts. 

(Duane assigned us a book - I'd love to remember the name - that speculated, in a chapter about the Salem Witch Hunts, that the execution of the women was sparked by hallucinogenic mold on the bread of a misogynistic society already primed for a sadistically violent catharsis.)

Anyway, I'm not so stupid to think I've abolished (or can abolish or should abolish) my roobity, but I hope I've rediscovered my self-mockery.

• Elric says Belgrade is grungy (w/pics).
• Obamapostasy.
• UPDATE! Credit?
• "Poor judgment."
• Where are the young radicals?
• Beating children and talking their candy.
• Bow and Scrape.
• On banality.
• Time for a populist revolt?
• Irrational fears and the status quo.
• Blood is his argument.
• Alphabet of ethnic cleansing.
• Zinn's major theme.
• Zinn: A Remembrance.
• Your moment of Zinn.
• Zinn: a polite dissent.
• Feminism as a political sequence.
• Crackerstan!
• Telling Democrats from Republicans by their faces?
• Manifesto!
• Fred Hiatt calls Mitch McConnell a pussy?
• Speaking of HRC, I don't dispute that her being a woman was a huge factor in her defeat in the primaries, though her underestimating Obama (or, her assumption that the nomination was hers) played a large role too. (See Coakley and Massachusetts.)
• Who would I like to brain with a shovel? Alito!
• Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Soccer Cities.
• Top Ten healthiest fastfood restaurants.
• Europe's Alcohol Belts.
• Twenty-five people kicked in the nuts. (h/t)

 

• Elric's father was the head of the math department for 25 years at Churchill, though he retired long before there were computers to be hacked.
• My future hell.
• Inside Baseball - when I heard the Post advertise an article about the benefits of haggling, I immediately thought of Meff Jichaels.
• I would enjoy watching O'Malley kick Ehrlich's ass again.
• Cold cancels polar bear plunge?
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• Benny!

• Sunday Morning.
• Terminal Art.
• Thyraphobia: Coda.
• Ashbery.
• Lit mags and public discourse.
• Bunch of phonies mourn J.D. Salinger.
• Patti Smith autobiography reviewed.
• Patti Smith autobiography reviewed.
• Decade highlights.
• Useless.
• We're seeing Magnetic Fields this coming Thursday night at Lisner, and uh-oh, I've given Realism a good five painful listens, and lordy - I never would have thought I'd say this - lordy does it suck.
• Good Magnetic Fields.
• I haven't posted any Polly Jean lately.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Style Council.
• Someone other than me loves Kate Bush too.
• Shearwater.

THE SNOW MAN

Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

Fifty-four yesterday: