A good friend asked, why haven't I been posting any Stereolab lately, and I haven't a good answer.
Totally unrelated, while waiting to pick up Planet an hour ago from her driver's license class, three mothers waiting to pick up their kids discussed how awesome it'd be to be at Chelsea Clinton's wedding, but how much more awesome it would be to shop for the dresses, shoes, and accessories they'd wear to Chelsea Clinton's wedding. Two fathers waiting to pick up their kids talked about Angelina Jolie pissing in a Mountain Dew can and giving it to her father's girlfriend to drink. Think about that while reading this.
I used to enjoy what I thought was being angry, but I was playing at being angry, and being angry sucks, and I'm only going to get angrier until I figure out a way to either channel the anger more effectively towards things I know I can't change or learn how to not give a damn.
Programming notes: Another week of college visits, leaving this Sunday to visit Oberlin on Monday, Kenyon on Tuesday, then to middle upstate New York to see Ithaca and Hamilton Wednesday and Thursday (and if possible - it'll be tight, I'm hoping if not hopeful - for a beer or two with blegfriend Frederick, who put these awesome photos in my google reader today) and then Allegheny on Friday.
Don't know what kind or how much blegging there will be (though there will be blegging of course; I'm hopelessly incapable of stopping). I hope to spend driving time thinking about the implications of the contents of that last parenthesis.
UPDATE! Before pwogs piss themselves in glee at Anthony Weiner's take down of supreme asshole Peter King, they should remember Weiner is an pro-Israel superhawk.
We find out the heart only by dismantling what the heart knows. By redefining the morning, we find a morning that comes just after darkness. We can break through marriage into marriage. By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond affection and wade mouth-deep into love. We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars. But going back toward childhood will not help. The village is not better than Pittsburgh. Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh. Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls of the garbage tub is more than the stir of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not enough. We die and are put into the earth forever. We should insist while there is still time. We must eat through the wildness of her sweet body already in our bed to reach the body within the body.
What Garry Wills doesn't understand is that Obama may seek advice but he takes orders.
Garry Wills: what a self-serving and ignoble shitsmear. What an ignorant and sanctimonious shitsmear. After a year of his tortured self-martyrdom biting his tongue (while cravenly waiting for another audience with Obama), the ignorant motherfucker still thinks that if he'd only ratted out Obama a year ago his brave fart would have altered history's trajectory.
Wills is worrying about his legacy. He's shittier than the shittiest autoblegographer, and I should know!
Any questions? The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to
compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet
activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant
to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
Beltway liberalism in 24 words. I've been saying what Yglesias said - that as shitty as the economy is, our overlords believe (or pretend) it would truly crater without permanent war - I just haven't been saying it approvingly.
Perhaps McArdle deserves the constantly increasing pillorying, though I wonder if she was a he people would enjoy it so much.
UPDATE! Re: this comment on the above speculation: Kill that Woman. I'm not saying McArdle isn't awful; I'm wondering why people enjoy bitchslapping her more than equally awful others. I mean, TBogg gets positively twitchy at the prospect.
It's been eight years since the snipers. I pumped gas yesterday at the Shell on the corner of Connecticut and Knowles where one of the first victims was shot. I looked at the pay vacuum where she was shot, thinking there's no plaque, no reminder. Then today the story - serendipity abounds in clusterfucks.
You are a very uneven person. You, on the other hand, the one with not quite five fingers, are a very uneven person. Look me in the eye I say with conviction and say you are a person of complete unevenness. I look away to look for the surface of something whose unevenness is its main attraction. Very uneven person, I address you haphazardly, you are a patchy, jerky lurcher. You are nonuniform. You are subsubsubstantial, I say to you of the fluctuating essence of uneven- ness. No, I say, I am not a triangle, I do not fit in the corner. I am an uneven piece of furn- iture. There is a sirocco in you today. You are a difficult table. Anything that rolls rolls of of you almost immediately. You're not good for a broken string of beads, Is this not so I say uneven person that you are. I look down to watch the beads roll where the floor leans. An odd lullaby passes through my hair.
When Boyzzz Khumalo mishit his 37th consecutive wide-open cross so poorly it fooled the Harrisburg keeper for a goal, Khumalo was dead-walking, and I'm not surprised at this:
Boyzzz Khumalo, a South African attacker who brought
speed, energy and unpredictability to D.C. United's attack but had yet
to score in eight MLS appearances this season, was released today.
The immediate reason is United needs space to sign Fredsux's brother Juniorsux:
Khumalo's departure is another sign that the club plans to add Junior Carreiro,
a crafty flank player who has been training with the club for several
months. Carreiro, 18, is the younger brother of former DCU starter Fred, now with the Philadelphia Union.
Fellowrubes, I don't think United is failing because ownership and management want United to fail, I think United is failing because ownership and management suck because they see no alternatives than doubling down on their suck, and you can't possibly understand the intricacies and complexities of the suck, much less suck better than them:
I understand fans. They want to blame somebody, they want it to be
somebody's fault, and sometimes it is. But when you are in this
position, it is a little self-indulgent to just say, 'Okay, we are going
to blame him and he's going to take the fall for it and then everything
is going to be fine.' What we are more worried about is trying to fix
things right now.
What's Obama gonna do, fire himself? He's management. What's ownership gonna do, forfeit their holdings? You don't think ownership knows how much they suck, how deeply they're fucked, how little control, much less understanding, of the unleashed clusterfuck they have, you think they're going to give up their Swiss bank accounts and private Micronesian islands that don't have extradition treaties with the U.S.?
We're told we won't get power back until Thursday earliest, probably Friday. PEPCO's going to be flayed and rolled in salt, this an election year and bashing utilities sound politics, and GOOD! the greedy motherfuckers. It's a hot house, we're out of hot water. We threw out our refrigerated food this morning because today is trash day and next week we'll be away. I'm eating hummus and Trisketts, my hand-crank flashlight is giving me hand-cramp, I'm reading like shit and sleep like don't, but Heh!
The snow, the heatwave, an earthquake, a once in ten years thunderstorm that reveals me a wuss in my presumption of endless air conditioning when dark, real dark, burning candles not for potpourri but because it's dark, happens, it's..... serendipitous to a fraud who perceives himself a weathervane.
E.J. Dionne teaches a class at Hilltop. I'm told by professors I know who know him that Dionne has said privately what he published yesterday for years but felt a professional/collegial responsibility to wait for Fox to deepfox before declaring moral outrage, and pwoot, the time when old fart's farts would have meant fart have pwooted and gone.
To be honest, not only is The Road bad, I think everything since Blood Meridian pretty awful (and redundant).
UPDATE! What you can buy me for my birthday. When we were in San Francisco two Springs ago and went to the SFMOMA, the entire third floor was given to a Friedlander show; astonishing.
UPDATE! In my post about eating in Gaithersburg, in the comments, I mentioned the PopShop had been torn down, and in one of the rooms above the PopShop my friend Barry Friedlander had his art studio. Too much serendipity is a symptom of clusterfucks, but I love me serendipity.
UPDATE! Guess what I'm looking for tonight in the CD pile.
A LITANY
Gregory Orr
I remember him falling beside me, the dark stain already seeping across his parka hood. I remember screaming and running the half mile to our house. I remember hiding in my room. I remember that it was hard to breathe and that I kept the door shut in terror that someone would enter. I remember pressing my knuckles into my eyes. I remember looking out the window once at where an ambulance had backed up over the lawn to the front door. I remember someone hung from a tree near the barn the deer we'd killed just before I shot my brother. I remember toward evening someone came with soup. I slurped it down, unable to look up. In the bowl, among the vegetable chunks, pale shapes of the alphabet bobbed at random or lay in the shallow spoon.
About the wikileaks: surely it's just a coincidence Bush asswipe Michael Hayden popped up hours before the release of the leaks to say war against Iran is inevitable.
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be One against whom there was no official complaint, And all the reports on his conduct agree That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint, For in everything he did he served the Greater Community. Except for the War till the day he retired He worked in a factory and never got fired, But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc. Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views, For his Union reports that he paid his dues, (Our report on his Union shows it was sound) And our Social Psychology workers found That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink. The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way. Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured, And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured. Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan And had everything necessary to the Modern Man, A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire. Our researchers into Public Opinion are content That he held the proper opinions for the time of year; When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went. He was married and added five children to the population, Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation. And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education. Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd: Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
It's a sillyass video, but this, which was put in my head an hour ago, for a gagillion reasons, really is one of my five favorite songs ever:
Heh, nothing jolts the collar of my complicity faster than weather knocking out the electricity so I can't check my fucking bleg stats!
I'll be fifty-one soon, I acknowledge memory privileges the recent, but 2010 is the most freakishly fuckedupdiest weather year of all my years in MOCO, yo. (Click, yo, too.)
I, um, took this Fleabus photo. Don't penalize Planet, please.
Had lunch in celebration of Elric's father's birthday yesterday in the historic Belt Building in downtown Gaithersburg MD, the town I grew up in. The building's been renovated and turned into a brewpub. The hostess and waiter were pissed seven of us showed up for lunch; they wanted to prepare for Tattoo Night. An awkward conversation around the table followed as we waited for our food. I never want to hear the phrase "tramp stamp" used again in Bromark's mother's presence, nor have to explain what one is again to anybody.
The photo above is a Christian Science Reading Room, catacorner from the Belt Building across both E. Diamond and N. Summit Avenues, though when I think of that building, the one business I remember is when it housed an art supply store, years ago, where I started buying pens and tablets.
I recognize the nostalgic incense this bleg has burned the past (x) month(es). Partly it's the June/July congestion of birthdays and anniversaries, this year especially with the Gah in Uniontown, the lunch in Center City Gaitherburg, but shedding paradigms requires revisiting established but abandoned landmarks, not to confront and disavow them but to recast.
That store across the street once was Center Market, where I once shoplifted two quarts of Wild Irish Rose and, two painful days later, never shoplifted or drank Wild Irish Rose again, a lesson I'm trying, with some tiny but glad successes, to repeat in countless places large and small.
I didn't go (and feel no guilt) which guaranteed it would be eventful. Refereeing is the biggest problem in MLS.
Everything bad is good again. Mark, it's not Sting, it's Gordon Fucking Sumner.
I knew Scalapino's name but not her poetry, but the outpouring of grief of her recent death and the celebration of her work compels me to give her a read. Good thing I have access to a university library's stacks.
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