The Kinds of Selfishness I Could Freely Adopt as My Own

Landru and Jim have takes on the crackers (and takes on the takes of the crackers), and yes, I'm not so horrified at images of dead Afghani children killed by American ordinance that I no longer think my selfish little stake in this fucked-up country is threatened more by empowered crackerchristers (who believe one problem with this country is we're not bombing enough brown people, yo) than by what complicit tossers of arch would justly argue, but yadda, why anguish over that again when today I can anguish over.....

Blegstuff! I haven't nibbled myself lately but hits have gone up, almost exclusively because spambots in the Philippines and China have been pounding this bleg and within seconds sending me offers on discount prescriptions - boner-meds; how do these spambots know? - at what was this bleg's live email link, and down bleg I'm getting more and more spambotted comments like: "Hi, your post made my day! You're so funny! Blogs like yours are why I love reading blogs! Perhaps you'd be interested in my elephant dung hair-restorative...." Though those of you new here, thanks.

Anyway, that old email isn't dead (those who've booked it, please continue using) but it's bleg link has been severed from The Collective, and the new email for those who wish is (at)(dot)ted just below my photo.

As for the comments, I was talking to a systems guy and blegfriend, and when he asked me how's the bleg and I related all this, he assured me I'm a stonecold moron to not enable the comment verification fields. I knew typepad enabled a verification field, but when I looked today typepad recommends against its own verification program and trust instead their anti-spam filtering. I'm torn: if I can't trust typepad when they tell me something doesn't suck, can I trust them when they tell me a product of theirs does suck? In any case, you're not squiggle-burdened yet.

And, O! in monkeying around in typepad to change the bleg's email I finally took the three minutes needed to figure out typepad's newest blegrell functionality, so I might do some small rearranging to help me work my way through bookmarks but also truly create a space where new additions can be highlighted before I banish the sites to a categorization of my choosing. Or not.

• International Language of Police Power.
• Lethal hypocrisy.
• UPDATE! Death state.
• Illiterate or indifferent. Yes.
• On digital power and its discontents.
• Chomsky is worried about Joe Stacks.
• DIY Distraction.
• Perspective.
• Have you read "Sein und Zeit?"
• The most powerful man in the world?
• UPDATE! Sycophant to the Stars.
• diehipster.com
• Duh, but necessary to repeat.
• When we were in Philly I bitched about the poor horses. Repeat after me: if you hire a horseless carriage for a tourist jaunt, you are an asshole.

• Upper MOCO hospital fight!
• Clarksburg!
• Wheaton!
• Sleeping giant.
• Babs!

• Shit.
• Told you I didn't do it.

• Bill Vollmann becomes a woman.
• Foundations of the 21st C.
• Inherent Vice should be on this list.
• The typewriter and the poem.
• Lionel Shriver, America's best novelist? I tried The Post-Birthday World, I tried We Need to Talk About Kevin, finished neither. Which neither proves nor disproves anything.
• One of Earthgirl's favorite novels. I read it 20 years ago, enjoyed it, think of it now and then, though I was born with a weak fantasy-reading gene.
• This week's new releases w/MP3.
• The way that he sings.
• UPDATE! I wanna destroy you.
• Why the fuck is Fleet Foxes on my radio?
• UPDATE! Destroy everything you touch.
• In on the kill taker.
• A week late, a tax-day playlist.
• UPDATE! My forgotten favorite.

STILL

A.R. Ammons

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I'll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in 
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

In addition to the song being one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever, I saw this band at 930 on F: