The Wildflowers Beneath the Shade of Trees Gone Shivering Have Really Livened Up the Cemetery

Bacevich assumes permanent war is an option, not a feature:

The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly "at" war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe.

What the fuck does Bacevich think the heads of G20 countries are talking about behind closed doors other than using permanent war to alter the "terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities."

FIFA responds to bad refereeing not by embracing video replay but by cutting off future replays of all future bad calls on stadium jumbotrons. Accountability through surveillance is for you, rube, not FIFA.

There are honored and battle-scarred soccer Bacevichs who believe in their honest hearts that FIFA still acts (if misguidedly) in the best interest of soccer, not the best interest of FIFA.

• Postcards from Hell.
• Live from Planet Norte.
• Down to the Gulf in lies.
• Burning sea turtles alive.
• What actually happened at G20 in Toronto.
• Black Bloc.
• Heh, my first thought too.
• Totempwog.
• Sensible Liberalism in the Age of Obama.
• The smartest thing you'll read about the Weigel Affair (and I'd add, blegrelling serves the same function as listserving for exclusivists, yo.)
• I've had the displeasure of actually once meeting Jeffrey Goldberg (a function, I was an obligatory handshake), and he is a bigger asshole than I hope you can imagine.
• Look how labor supports the man's rules for winning.
• In YFWP, a Fat Kagan applauds Obama.
• UPDATE! Speaking of Fat Kagans.
• Grifter.
• Adrian Fenty = Pussy.
• Hey! Freida Bee is back.
• Dead plant spontaneously combusts?
• Glen Echo!

• Dimitar Berbatov is..... The Continental.
• New Seidel poem!
• New Robert Coover story!
• New Armantrout poem!
• On Russo, w/subsequent catfight. I haven't read Russo in years, but I remember liking Straight Man, but then again I'd worked on a college campus for a decade and was working on a graduate English degree when I read it, so the inside jokes worked for me.
• S'funny, I was looking for something else this past weekend and came up my copy of Levine's They Feed They Lion, which I hadn't thought about for at least a decade.
• Bleh.
• Not a coincidence with the above.
• One of the few non-fiction books I've read in the past three years reviewed. I recommend (though not enough at the time to say anything about it apparently.
• Know what? You paid money to see Courtney Love, shut the fuck up if it sucked you dumb motherfucker.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• UPDATE! This week's new releases w/MP3.
• Montag reminds me of INC.
• Love is the drug.
• 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.

EXCEPTIONS AND MELANCHOLIES

Ralph Angel

Never before
had we been so thin and so clear
and arranged always
and in the same way gazing and listening
over the rooftops
to tin cans of flowers and strange
music. For an hour or more
I turned the same corner
and felt like a criminal farther and farther out to sea
among the racks of shoes and old clothes
but now looking
back I should never have
unpacked. A street
crowned with chestnut trees
ends at a sewer. You go to a theater
and find yourself a house
outside the city
and walk the shore
forever. I don't have much
talent for poetry. When I see a wrecking ball
dangling from a crane I mean it
literally. I mean
I don't mean the world's fallen apart
or that a wrecking ball
symbolizes the eye my world-weary sister
couldn't know to turn away
from. The hospital's
exhausted. The little church is boarded up.
We leaned against the limestone
and liked the fact that tea
sweetens gradually
and that the wildflowers
beneath the shade of trees gone shivering
have really livened up the cemetery
and that the tall grass and the garbage
and especially the piled-up
newspapers and the rooftop pool
fit right in among
these windowless buildings
having gathered
as we are in the flesh again
and leading another life
altogether.

Dreamed about the movie last night, woke up with this in my head:

More Young is showing up in my CD player. S'funny, I almost don't remember putting the disc in, or rather, strange days.

Roxy Music did a cover:

What a great song.

Roxy has never not been regularly in my CD player.