Wipe and Polish, Wipe and Polish, Round and Round You Go

Jeebusfuck:

After a spirited torch relay ignited pride in every corner of the country, the Olympic Games began and quickly galvanized the nation. Flags were everywhere. The country's national symbol hung from windows and was worn on nearly everyone's clothing. Fervent crowds cheered every victory by the host nation. But enough about the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

So says Dallas, Texas fatfucker Gil Lebreton.

I didn't attend the '36 Olympics, but I've seen the pictures. Swastikas everywhere.No political reference is meant, just an Olympic one. What on earth were the Canadians thinking?An Olympic host is supposed to welcome the world. This one was too busy being (their word) "patriotic.""Now you know us, eh?" chief organizer Furlong said.We thought we did two weeks ago. Now, I'm wondering if Canadians can even recognize themselves.Nice party. But so 1936.

As Lowry/Ponneru explain, America, Fuck Yeah:

And yes, it is all about dick-size.

I used to be afraid of Americans, but fuck, fatfucking bacon-huffers want to call Canadians Nazis for sloppy patriotism?

Ok, he's a sports columnist, a pimple, a symptom, his column a turdly attempt at hah-hah. So-bwaha? Think who this fatfuck writes for who'd think his turds funny.

• Badiou interview: On evil. (h/t)
• UPDATE! The future as sci-fi. Kaboom as cleanser. Yawn.
• Just gaming.
• If you haven't yet, check out the links at COTL.
• If only someone would bleg about this in an angry, foul-mouthed manner, excoriating the Jennies.
• Watch Obama nominate another Geithner.
• I see EJ Dionne crossing campus occasionally (Hilltop considers it a coup to get Dionne to teach a class and, I presume, pays him accordingly), and each time I refrain from asking him whether he's a tool or fool; there's nothing to be gained and much to be lost in asking this tool a contentious rhetorical question.

• George Will is one stupid motherfucker.
• Your Fucking Washington Post writes a love letter to Rahm. UPDATE!
• Your Fucking Washington Post gives Orrin Hatch six column inches to lie. UPDATE!
• Your Fucking Washington Post. I dare them to put shit behind a pay-wall. UPDATE!
• Your Fucking Washington Post. Read it for free online for Metro section and giggles, don't buy any product that they fucking pop-up, and dare them to put shit behind a pay-wall.
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Look who says: there's a make-believe quality to modern-American politics:

• YFWP pornstache, that's who.
• Defining deviancy down.
• Party of George Wallace.
• Prayer warriors and Sarah Palin.
• Fucking crackers.

• Fucking crackers.
• The leftist bastard Teddy Roosevelt.
• Piggocrite.
• Stereotyping people by their favorite NYT writer.
• Do yourself a favor and bookmark Et Tu, Mr Destructo.

• Garrett County, 262.5 inches of snow this winter. And it's Maryland 495, not US 495, dumbfucks.
• Yoo-VA. I'd get my DNA checked against Planet's if she showed the slightest interest in going to fucking UVA. No worries. And fuck UVA.
• Bullshit, chickenshit, and the Chesapeake.
• (A) It's Langley Park, dumbfucks and (B) it's the location of the best Indian restaurant ever (in which, before a United game, Bromark made great noise about taking on the chicken vindaloo, and when the waiter said "how spicy," Bromark said, three stars, and hilarity ensued as, after three bites, he turned red, sweat like a heart-attack while the waiters and kitchen staff giggled, and at no point in Bromark's future will he be able to eat in an Indian restaurant with us that Planet or Earthgirl won't bring it up).
• And it is, mocomofos, the best Indian I've ever had, and if you want vegetarian, try their sister restaurant just down the block, Udupi.
• Toothbrush bandits!
• The raccoons of Fort Totten.
• Giffords sold.
• Crisis in Boyds!
• Dimitar Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• When Saturday Comes... bookmark it.
• Soccernet, ahead of WC10, ranks the Top 50 footballers, throws #50 at Donovan.
• UPDATE! D.C. United's Marc Burch, the starting left back last season and a candidate to add depth to a thin central defense corps this year, suffered a foot injury that might sideline him for months, the Insider has learned. No details were available, but he is being evaluated by the team's medical staff to determine a course of action. I mean, Burch, but....
• UPDATE! But wait, there's more: In addition, starting midfielder Clyde Simms might be out for at least three weeks with a knee ailment. Season starts in 26 days. I'm already tonguing the ba'al-taunting preseason post, but I gots me a bad feeling about this season, and I gots me a really bad feeling about the vibes DCU's emitting.

• This review of Coover's magnificent Universal Baseball Association reminds me Coover's new one releases this Thursday. UBA is the perfect one to start if you haven't read Coover (much more so than the more famous Public Burning), though I think John's Wife my favorite.
• Sorrentino's posthumous reviewed.
• Gass on Hamsun. I couldn't care less about Hamsun. I jump at any chance to read Gass.
• Barry Hannah, who I read thirty years ago, hadn't thought about in twenty, has died. UPDATE!
• UPDATE! I remember when Hannah was, within a circle, a big deal. He never was for me, though I vaguely recall thinking him one of the better writers of the rural-chic set.
• David Shields interviewed. I've been able to talk myself into waiting for either the library hardback or the paperback in a year and a half.
• Jim on Coetzee, part two.
• New Merwin poem.
• Music as weapon.
• Three new Thom Yorke youtubes, plus news mash-up.
• UPDATE! Serendipitously, three days after wondering with a friend whatever happened to 10K Maniacs in general and Natalie Merchant in particular (they were once buzzworthy five or six lifetimes ago) I get an email from Nonesuch Records telling me Merchant's first album since 2003 will be released in April. I was never one of her thralls when she was all that, so if I hear a cut on the radio, cool, but I won't be buying it.
• UPDATE! However, in the same email, news that David Byrne's next album, out April 6 is "Here Lies Love, a double-disc song cycle, explores the life of Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos, pairing David Byrne with a who’s who of indie rockers, dancefloor divas, and established stars, including Tori Amos, Steve Earle, Cyndi Lauper, Natalie Merchant, Kate Pierson, Santigold, and St. Vincent. The effervescent disco melodies and tropical rhythms were created in collaboration with iconic deejay-composer Fatboy Slim," sounds silly and fun.
• Memory House.
• Into Dust.

Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.
Today's Listening Assignment. Today's Listening Assignment.

THE LETTER

Mary Ruefle

Beloved, men in thick green coats came crunching
through the snow, the insignia on their shoulders
of uncertain origin, a country I could not be sure of,
a salute so terrifying I heard myself lying to avoid
arrest, and was arrested along with Jocko, whose tear
had snapped off, a tiny icicle he put in his mouth.
We were taken to the ice prison, a palace encrusted
with hoarfrost, its dome lit from within, Jocko admired
the wiring, he kicked the walls to test the strength
of his new boots. A television stood in a block of ice,
its blue image still moving like a liquid center.
You asked for my innermost thoughts. I wonder will I
ever see a grape again? When I think of the vineyard
where we met in October-- when you dropped a cluster
custom insisted you be kissed by a stranger-- how after
the harvest we plunged into a stream so icy our palms
turned pink. It seemed our future was sealed. Everyone
said so. It is quiet here. Not closing our ranks
weakens us hugely. The snowflakes fall in a featureless
bath. I am the stranger who kissed you. On sunny days
each tree is a glittering chandelier. The power of
mindless beauty! Jocko told a joke and has been dead
since May. A bullethole in his forehead the officers
call a third eye. For a month I milked a barnful of
cows. It is a lot like cleansing a chandelier. Wipe
and polish, wipe and polish, round and round you go.
I have lost my spectacles. Is the book I was reading
still open by the side of our bed? Treat it as a bookmark
saving my place in our story.

(here the letter breaks off)

Don't know where the Catherine Wheel revival in my head came from over the past few months, but: