BLCKDGRD

Hummed Itself Inside My Head Like an Abracadabra

Uh-oh, I'm accused of hosting a bleg with "legit comment box discourse." Time to lower the discourse (and publish this to get it out of my feedback loops):

I've admitted I'm a bigot. I wish I could dispassionately observe as a historical phenomenon the embittered and angry crackers pledging allegiance to an America circa Father Knows Best* that never was - that's the honor they want to restore, yo - but I can't. I'm intolerant, etc and yadda, and by the way, here's their imaginary friend, White Jesus, who tells them they're acting in his name. I'm small this way, etc and yadda.

I'm a tool, I'm a fool, etc and yadda, but please do not tell me these motherfucking crackers are honorable libertarians when they daydream of using the full weight of federal and state governments to roll back civil liberties and minority rights and women's rights and immigrants' rights and workers' rights and consumer rights, who cheer the expansion of all wars against brown and (coming soon!) yellow people, and who pray for Sharia law as long as it's White Jesus' instead of Mohammed's.

Just because they are tools and fools etc and yadda too doesn't mean I should dismiss as irrelevant how they would rule if our overlords decide Crackers will lead the puppet government.

• Cartoon by Mr Fish.
• *There's a reason that's been a BDR avatar for years.
• Ryan is a nicer guy than me, though I respectfully think the ratio of tribalism: economics is higher than he does.
• Glenn Beck is a... liar?
• Hankering for a daddy.
• Missing the dead bodies.
• What does Obama want?
• Made for Obama.
• They do hate Obama.
• Democrats are fucking lame.
• Paypal is the worst company in the world.
• Turning Trinidad around. I've a friend who lives near Gallaudet, says things are getting better.
• Flying into National? The name of the airport is "National."
• The neighborhood I grew up in.
• Fuck Fobin Ricker.
• Ehrlich in MOCO.
• Don't buy me dinner in Redland:

• Behold the man.
• Arguing for poetry during a recession.
• New Richard Thompson!

 

• Reviewed here: This is gloriously vicious, bitter, sad and bleak, even by Richard Thompson's standards. 
• Hear a new song here. I've eased off seeing him solo, but he's going on tour with the band. Tuesday 10/19 @ 930. I'm buying tickets Friday. Who's in?
• Chuck Prophet and Alejandro Escovedo!
• Want to download the new Sufjan Stevens for $5?

(ETYMOLOGICALLY) "WORK WORK"

Albert Goldbarth

        4 Easy Enough

In his book explaining quantum physics John Gribbin
writes, "It is easy enough for me to say 'Anderson measured
the curvature of the particle trails and found positrons':
it was much harder for him to do the work." All week
that mundane phrase has hummed itself inside my head
like an abracadabra, conjuring up my father, alive
again, and in the makeshift basement workroom
each night totaling those colossal rows of figures in his war
against an enemy alliance: Rent and Food and Clothes.
It's easy enough for me to wring the sweet rag of nostalgia,
now that he's cold dark particle trails himself.
It's easy enough to ennoble him down there: adding,
juggling, adding, with the same bit lip
his granddaughter later inherited. To do the work.

Sixty-five today:

There was a time in my life, twenty-five, thirty years ago, when, after the windowpane lifted-off, after the blurs and pops and peaks at parties, I was finally by myself for my favorite gliding home of the trip, I'd sit in my room and read poetry and listen to Van Morrison.

Caked into the Fester by Noon

Two takes on yesterday's Frank Rich column on the crackers and their billionaire puppeteers by people I read regularly: Cole says YAY!, IOZ says BOO!

Lookit, fuck the either/or. Just because I'm no longer a fool for Democrats doesn't mean I'm not still a fool for the bullshit Democrats fed me for breakfast. The crackers are angry they were fools for Republicans. Both are demands for better propaganda and more wins from their coaches. There's a reason the SEC is the preeminent conference in all of professional football.

Of course this is tribal (I think calling any committee that studies any possible change to Social Security a "Catfood Commission" is not nearly as hyperbolic as calling all inheritance taxes "Death Taxes", but...), and since no one - not pissed-off ex-Democrats, not pissed-off ex-Republicans, especially not happy as piss Tribes of Arch (the club I keep applying to) who mock the tribalism that gives them their identity - has any interest (we make it easy on our overlords) in stopping mocking the other tribes.

• Here is my disconnect: yes, Obama is serving his overlords, but he's not serving them fast enough. Obama doesn't see immediately dismantling the past 80 years of liberal gains as in the overlords' long-term interest. He is an incrementalist; he doesn't understand that his overlords want him to fuck the littles hard and fast and, most importantly, NOW!
• Status intoxication.
• The non-crazy Left.
• Science versus Religion.
• Beck is a mor(m)on.
• Money.
• Dionne offers me bullshit for breakfast: (Obama) and his party are often defensive when it comes to saying what they really believe: that government, well-executed, is a positive good; that too much economic inequality is both dysfunctional and unjust; that capitalism has never worked without regulation and a strong dose of social insurance. They no longer dare talk about public enterprise, a phrase my friend Chris Matthews reminded me of recently, visible in our great state universities, our best public schools, our road and transit systems, and in the research and development that government finances in areas where there is no immediate profit to be made.
• UPDATE! Please please please.
• Tipping point.
• Gentrification and the DC mayoral race. It'd be in DC United's interest for Fenty to lose, not because they'd necessarily be able to work with Gray but because they know they can't work with Fenty. Go Gray!
• Why Fenty is losing.
• Where I went for first grade (before lines were redrawn and I went to Washington Grove).
• Crisis in Burtonsville!
• Freedom, Art, and the Infernal Machine.
• Piri' Miri Muli'
• I gotta tell you, I'm struggling to get to page 20 in C. I'm assuming it's me.
• McCarthy interview.
• UPDATE! Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• We do what we want to.
• UPDATE! OK, if this is going to be in my head it's going to be in yours.

(ETYMOLOGICALLY) "WORK WORK"

Albert Goldbarth

        3. Elementary

They weren't handed masks, no one knows why.
We're a pile of elements. No one knows why
they weren't handed masks: they were handed
their slop-poles, though. They were handed the poles
and ordered up the inside catwalk, three stories high.
We're a pile of dirt-cheap elements. They
we're ordered up the catwalk, they were told to skim
the floating layer of fester off the top of this
three-story drum of byproducts animal blood.
They weren't handed masks. The drum was 103 degrees.
And one was found face-up and one face-down,
caked into the fester by noon.
We're a pile of dirt-cheap elements, bought,
and toyed with, then tossed with the rest of the shit.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

Chivas USA 1, United 0

Watched the first half, knew there was no chance in hell this team was going to score - they'd miss an open net from an inch - went to sleep.

I applaud Benny for prioritizing this Wednesday's USOC semifinal v Yellow. I feel no guilt for doing so too.

O! Barry Rice sucks, but not as much as Troy Perkins. I can't get mad at Kasper Payne for wasting money and a draft pick (and, um, Fredsux) on Perkins last winter considering the clownage at keeper the previous two years, but holyfuck, what a waste of money and a draft pick (and, um, Fredsux).

Born Eighty-One Years Ago Today

MOLY

Thom Gunn

Nightmare of beasthood, snorting, how to wake.

I woke. What beasthood skin she made me take?

Leathery toad that ruts for days on end,

Or cringing dribbling dog, man’s servile friend,

Or cat that prettily pounces on its meat,

Tortures it hours, then does not care to eat:

Parrot, moth, shark, wolf, crocodile, ass, flea.

What germs, what jostling mobs there were in me.

    These seem like bristles, and the hide is tough.

No claw or web here: each foot ends in hoof.

Into what bulk has method disappeared?

Like ham, streaked. I am gross—grey, gross, flap-eared.

The pale-lashed eyes my only human feature.

My teeth tear, tear. I am the snouted creature

That bites through anything, root, wire, or can.

If I was not afraid I’d eat a man.

Oh a man’s flesh already is in mine.

Hand and foot poised for risk. Buried in swine.

    I root and root, you think that it is greed,

It is, but I seek out a plant I need.

Direct me gods, whose changes are all holy,

To where it flickers deep in grass, the moly:

Cool flesh of magic in each leaf and shoot,

From milky flower to the black forked root.

From this fat dungeon I could rise to skin

And human title, putting pig within.

I push my big grey wet snout through the green,

Dreaming the flower I have never seen.

Eight Two Eight Two Zero One Zero

 

Ben Gazzara is not the biggest name who shares a birthday with this guy that I could find, but if I posted this guy

it wouldn't have caught your eye so hooked.

(I loved the The Deptford Trilogy. I cannot emphasize enough how important to my still hot love affair with novels it is that thirty-four years ago when I was seventeen a girl I loved made me read The Deptford Trilogy.)

This guy (well, on the old calendar)

and this guy

share the day too, though I've read much of only the Russian.

O!!! sad news for the three of you who read here who need to know (though you might know already): Michael R died Thursday. I saw him in June, he looked good, said he was better, then the cancer got fast and serious. Good guy.

He's Polishing My Shahzutt as if It's the Milktooth of a Saint

When marveling at how political realities have so changed that Democrats no longer bother to pretend to represent their supposed constituencies, my current nostalgic kick be damned, I'm finding it harder and harder to remember when I did believe Democrats bothered to pretend to represent their supposed constituencies, or rather, I'm finding it harder and harder to remember when their supposed constituencies needed to be pretended to.

It's not that Democrats suck more than they used to - the capability was always there - it just wasn't in the elites' interest that Democrats suck this much in the past.

• UPDATE! Questions. Here's one: does perfection require authoritarianism?
• Barack Obama versus The World.
• Billionaires versus Obama.
• The World's Shittiest Human gloats.
• Repercussions.
• Repercussions.
• Repercussions.
• Repercussions.
• Repercussions.
• Crackerstan.
• UPDATE! Vote for the scariest candidate.
• For goodness' sake.
• Christian? Muslim? Whatever.
• Democrats will never get another dime, another vote.
• Ken Mehlman totally nude....
• Double-whammy.
• Excellent linkages.
• What Your Fucking Washington Post calls an act of defiance.
• America's 50 worse colleges?
• America's Top 50 MFA programs? Suckers.
• Some New New Toys over at the left. As always, if you've bluug-rulled me and me not you, send me an email.
• New MOCO speed camera sites.
• The local helmetball team will be wearing burgundy at home all season, might bring back the gold pants?
• ReadysetDC.
• Paul Weller.
• Read Seb on 90s music, making sure to click all the links.
• Including Top 50 Videos of 90s (number one is below).
• Vapour Trail.
• Feel it.
• We float.
• Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus.

(ETYMOLOGICALLY) "WORK WORK"

Albert Goldbarth

        2. SHAHZZUT & TYUPAT

Eno's fingers seem as fat as those Red Hot Mama sausages
suspended in brine in a gallon jar, but under my hood
they tweeze out various ailing gobs with the finicky quickness
of surgical pincers. He lifts some oily puzzle-piece into
    the equally
oily light of the shop, as if it might explain
gravity or antimatter. "Shahzzut," he explains to me, "tyupat,"
in the secret fraternal language of auto mechanics. He
sings to himself; no one has ever been so happy. He's
fixing my engine, he sings, he's polishing my shahzutt
as if it's the milktooth of a saint. "Man's work,
whatever its ostensible purpose, is, at any given time,
to sustain the universe." Tribals, "asked the reason
for ceremony X, say that if they missed one year,
cosmos, the world, would collapse." (Richard Grossinger)

Out of Equal Amounts of Concentration and Crayon

I tell you, serendipity abounds in clusterfucks! I don't know which I'm addicted to more, which is the lesser enabler.

First, Tuesday I hear a Sonic Youth song and post it as an update. Early Wednesday afternoon I go to my youtube account to see if I wanted to use this

for this post (in which I was going to - and did! - write about what I always write about which you either like reading over and over or wonder why people you like reading like reading me) instead of the photo above I decided to use; while at my youtubes I watched this bit I made over a year ago May:

which is trippy considering CFO's comment about Sonic Youth, which came in long after all the above yesterday afternoon.

I'm, uh, almost always in a better mood than I allow myself to enjoy, mostly because I'm a rube who takes himself (and you) too seriously, but also because I don't want to god-taunt the serendipity or the clusterfuck, so chinging the chiming.

• Tweakistan versus Fiddleburg.
• A gentleman's guide.
• Jeffrey Goldberg as basset hound.
• War without end, amen.
• First as tragedy, then as arse.
• No fool like an Old Tool.
• Pastor Sanctimonious fears for his position in The Village.
• Fears of regime change.
• How reason imperils our fake libertarian heritage.
• How important is principle?
• Your daily duh.
• Your daily heh.
• Either Democrats are sincere idiots on purpose and deploy sincere idiots to appear on TV or our overlords deploy skilled actors on TV to portray sincere idiots.
• Democrats are also pussies.
• About that free market.
• UPDATE! Customer service, part one.
• The first breakfast.
• UPDATE! Library work.
• Real housewives of Bethesda.
• Post-Weast?
• Who's running against Van Hollen?
• UPDATE! Drogma's analysis of the Champions League Draw.
• UPDATE! Heh.
• On Franzen's new novel: So what is it about Jonathan Franzen and poo? In 2001, his wonderful breakthrough novel, "The Corrections," was momentarily stunk up by a scene in which a senile old man imagines his feces talking back to him. A decade later, Franzen's more staid, more mature, but all around less exciting "Freedom" reaches its comic zenith when a young man searches through his own excrement with a fork. What seemed like a sophomoric indulgence in that earlier tour de force now smells stale.
• Franzen versus Stark.
• The poem below is part one of a fourteen part poem, and while I have five minutes a day to type out a poem, I don't have seventy minutes in one day to type out the entire poem, so get ready for two weeks of Goldbarth. Yay!
• Well, look what I got my hands on:

• Motherfucking copyright.
• Who's pushing the classical envelope?
• This week's new releases w/MP3 (w/new Les Savy Fav!)
• Nothing is worth losing that.
• Why can't I touch it?
• Young splendor.
• Come undone.
• Dirge.

(ETYMOLOGICALLY) "WORK WORK"

Albert Goldbarth

1. GO-PART

Somebody's stuffing excelsior into the penis
of the museum's model aurochs. Somebody's snapping
hundreds of plastic halos into the ruffs of hundreds
of plastic Infants of Prague. Somebody's grading exams.
Somebody's sleeping with the Senator. And
the Senator's promising even more jobs,
more automobile assembly lines, and everything
that means to an edgy electorate. In the kitchen,
tonight, my niece is putting a car together,
out of equal amounts of concentration and crayon.
"This is the go-part here" - the steering wheel,
obviously. Green by black by red, it takes shape.
And orange hubcaps. She's chewing her lip.
She's driven all night by this labor.

Looking for yesterday's Debussy, I serendipitously found this, which I had been looking for about a month ago:

Break into Blossom

I hadn't mowed our yard since we got back from vacation two weeks ago. The days it was nice I was busy, the days I wasn't busy it rained. The grass was knee length, long gone to seed, and weed vines had woven themselves into the grass. Took it on last night, took it on with all the aargh in my legs and arms and spleen and stomach and spine and brain. Beat the fuck out of the grass. Fuck you, grass.

After, we go out to dinner. We were going to go to the vegetarian Chinese restaurant we've patronized for ten years, but the owner has semi-retired to attend to her ill mother and the quality of the food has suffered in her absence, so, on the way, when we saw and remembered a newish restaurant whose signage advertised tofu dishes that we'd talked about trying, we thought why not. Went in, sat down, ordered a coke and two club sodas, then noticed the menu was Korean. I love Korean, Planet had never had Korean, Earthgirl swore two decades ago after trying Korean once to never eat it again. Best restaurant meal we've had in recent memory. Earthgirl wants to go back next week.

Went to sleep last night feeling strange, light, unencumbered, bright, woke up this morning with this in my head:

It took me a shower, the drive to work, an hour at my desk before the first phone call from an asshole before I realized that for fourteen hours I hadn't been angry first, angry always, felt obligated to be angry.

Don't worry. It couldn't last, I wouldn't let it last, but before the happy bruise of a half a day of not being angry fades, the most beautiful poem in the world, posted here for the kazillionth time:

A BLESSING

James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness   

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.   

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.   

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me   

And nuzzled my left hand.   

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl’s wrist.

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

The Trojan War Is Over Now; I Don't Recall Who Won It. The Greeks, No Doubt, for Only They Would Leave So Many Dead So Far from Their Own Homeland

Have contributions begun flowing again into DNC bank accounts in the two weeks orgy of islamobashing? What if this was Obama's strategy all along (before you laugh, I used to eat this theory) to provoke the motherfucking crackers, christers, grifters, and assholes into such a convulsion of crackerchristergrifterassholosity the motherfucking crackers, christers, grifters, and assholes will be rendered unto electoral insignificance forever and a day, amen? Laugh now.

Yes they are bigots (but so am I), and this mosque bullshit is both a reinforcement of the Red Ant v Black Ant family feud both ant sides love and a training and indoctrination session for the new paradigms of behavior our overlords are installing for the coming oil wars (China ain't getting that Mideast oil) and horrific economic cataclysms our overlords will impose on us so they survive ensconced and fatter.

I serve our overlords when hating the motherfucking crackers, christers, grifters, and assholes with all consuming passion. I'm playing motherfucking George C Scott playing George S Patton observing the dead on a battlefield and wistfully whispering, God, I love it so. Just as I'm supposed to.

• Shitting on political romanticism is fun!
• UPDATE! Too much is real.
• The conservative counter-revolution.
• Five reasons Obama is not like Reagan.
• UPDATE! Boom! I have never been happier to only have four years left on my mortgage, happier to know this is the house I'm going to die in.
• The argument against intellectual property.
• Winning hearts and minds.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• UPDATE! Heh! Atrios and Boehner agree!
• On Dr Laura or, Wallace Stevens allusion!
• 53 things to know, do or not do at a small Liberal Arts college.
• UPDATE! On housing and education.
• One dangerous and ambitious motherfucking pig.
• UPDATE! Hey, anyone interested to hear Jerry Weast is retiring?
• Ambulance-fee FAIL!
• UPDATE! Cracker tourist guide to DC!
  
• Circles and non-circles.
• UPDATE! What I've been saying.
• Horizon of the sentence.
• I hadn't thought about Jerzy Kosinski in fifteen years.
• Franzen review. I'm not planning on reading it, I'm not planning on not reading it.
• Picoult versus the patriarchy.
• Silliman's always generous weekly linkages post.
• Fillmore Silver Spring souring.
• UPDATE! Silver Rocket in my head, be in yours.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• New Eno in October!

ODYSSEUS TO TELEMACHUS

Joseph Brodsky

My dear Telemachus,
 The Trojan War 
is over now; I don't recall who won it. 
The Greeks, no doubt, for only they would leave
so many dead so far from their own homeland. 
But still, my homeward way has proved too long. 
While we were wasting time there, old Poseidon, 
it almost seems, stretched and extended space.

I don't know where I am or what this place 
can be. It would appear some filthy island, 
with bushes, buildings, and great grunting pigs. 
A garden choked with weeds; some queen or other. 
Grass and huge stones . . . Telemachus, my son! 
To a wanderer the faces of all islands 
resemble one another. And the mind 
trips, numbering waves; eyes, sore from sea horizons, 
run; and the flesh of water stuffs the ears. 
I can't remember how the war came out; 
even how old you are--I can't remember.

Grow up, then, my Telemachus, grow strong. 
Only the gods know if we'll see each other 
again. You've long since ceased to be that babe 
before whom I reined in the plowing bullocks. 
Had it not been for Palamedes' trick 
we two would still be living in one household. 
But maybe he was right; away from me 
you are quite safe from all Oedipal passions, 
and your dreams, my Telemachus, are blameless.

Eno?

United 2, Phunion 0

Sweetness, I never forget what a rush a pretty goal and the crowd's BWARG! gives me until the next one surprises me again.

But this was a game between two shitty teams, one building for the future with young but inexperienced talent, the other trying to rescue a lost past with retreads and castaways. One has a brand new stadium and an excited and burgeoning fan base, the other will play next year in RFK to diminishing attendance in quite possibly United's last season in DC.

Vamos United sure and yadda, but which franchise, if you were neutral and picking a team to rube for, would you?

Few bullets:

• I like Pablo Hernandez. I'm curious why MLS referees let opponents beat the fuck out of him without sanction. He took a kidney punch in the 73rd that was straight red and the referee either ignored it or ignored it.
• UPDATE! One friend whose opinion I trust says Hernandez is a tall Frank O'Neill, another says referees hate him cause he dives and then expects fucking Americans to respect the integrity of an Argentine footballer. Heh - that would also explain why he's getting punched in his kidneys.
• He was offside on his not-goal.
• Jakovic's best game since the last game his partner in the middle wasn't Carey Talley.
• Which doesn't mean he wasn't next to Julius James, who, no.
• A photo of the top of my hat and some of Landru's head with the traveling Phunion fans in the background. Click, yo.

• Thanks, Bromark.
• The shot was taken before the downpours. I left my United rain-jacket in the car, bought myself a dry new t-shirt at halftime. Your host is a dumbfuck.
• Jaime in around the 81st to meek applause, he almost scored on a bender either just before or after the 90th.
• Dying franchise, yo.
• Benny did come 2/3rds over after his TV interview to thank us. Thank you, Benny.
• I want to say Hi! to whomever reads me at MacFarlane Partners! Please tell who you report to that United should let us bring a liter of water in on mid-summer midday games like they've let us for years until today, OK?
• UPDATE! Posted for no greater or lesser reason than it's in my head and needs to be in yours.

An excellent time as always. Next home game Wednesday August 31 September 1 against Columbus in USOC semifinal. I'm told I might have access to two tickets, which would then cost you nothing. Will know by this Tuesday. I'm hoping I don't, but I'm looking at the usual suspects if I do.

Updates, edits, links, later. Or not.