It Would Seem Not Smart to Create a Color Scheme in a Motel Room That's Likely to Cause Impotence in Men and Open Sores in Women

Nick Cave is 53 today, which is serendipitously related to this post because all it takes is reading someone bleggalgaze to create a bleggalgazing cascade in my head that increases in intensity until I need release it and that Nick Cave song is this bleg's official Bleggalgazing Anthem.

I'm always wondering if I've stopped wondering about thinking about blegstopping because I clearly can't blegstop, but I can't stop wondering whether I could stop wondering if I'm thinking about wondering about thinking about blegstopping. Oddest days of my life; if everything's a metaphor for everything else... There's always this: Thanks for the Kind.

• Our overlords suck.
• UPDATE! Murderers, Cowards, Morons, and Thieves.
• Rich American fuckers fucking-up English football.
• UPDATE! Police and thieves.
• Should we kill and eat the rich?
• UPDATE! Even the kleptocracy has rules.
• The whining rich.
• UPDATE! Are catastrophes virtual?
• One and a half cheers for American decline!
• If Krugman's obamapostasy ever arrives it might be awesome, but he still thinks Obama's a fool, not a tool.
• Black Reagan Redux.
• UPDATE! Mutually-assured destruction.
• Obama and Palin in Archie.
• UPDATE! Kyrie Elision.
• *!hEh!* (h/t)
• Holy smokes.
• Same as it ever was.
• MattY.
• Look what I just got my hands on:

• Speaking of bleggalgazing, there is an odd vibe in Blegsylvania. September, January, June are always weird months as people's work/school/life cycles change and with it their viewing/posting routines, but I sense a weary withdrawal setting in, a withdrawing weariness.
• Speaking of bleggalg(r)azing, some new links over in New New Toys, and suggestions for new places are solicited.

• MOCOpolitics!
• Kiss and make nice.
• MPT pissed at O'Malley!
• Purple Line!
• Olde Towne!
• Wheaton!
• Virginia is for crackers.
• Yay!
• One could fit a soccer stadium into 39 acres.
• UPDATE! Eskandarian.
• What not to eat.
• Armed robber targeting shitty chain restaurants.
• Fight over present tense.
• Lots of Blanchot for those of you who Blanchot. I'll try again: where to start for best chance to stick?
• DJ El Toro's new book!
• UPDATE! Neocolonialism, Authenticity, and the Ethics of World Music.
• This week's new releases w/MP3.
• Cloudbusting.
• Pavement on Colbert.
• UPDATE! M emailed to say Joan Jett is 50 today and ask me to post this. Call me when you're in DC in October, please.
• Paco!
• UPDATE! Guilty pleasure.
• Mind you own business.
• UPDATE! Well well well.
• A&E.
• More Bill Nelson.
• Woke up with this in my head. Be in yours.

MOTEL SEEDY

Thomas Lux

The artisans of this room, who designed the lamp base
(a huge red slug with a hole
where its heart should be) or chose this print
of a butterscotch sunset,
must have been abused in art class
as children, forced to fingerpaint
with a nose, or a tongue. To put this color
green--exhausted grave grass--to cinder blocks
takes an understanding of loneliness
and/or institutions that terrifies.
It would seem not smart to create
a color scheme in a motel room
that's likely to cause impotence in men
and open sores in women,
but that's what this puce bedspread
with its warty, ratty tufts could do. It complements
the towels, torn and holding awful secrets
like the sail on a life raft
loaded with blackened, half-eaten corpses . . .
I think I owned this desk once, I think
this chair is where I sat
with the Help Wanted ads spread and wobbling
before me as I looked for jobs
to lead me upward: to rooms
like this, in America, where I dreamed
I lived . . . Do I deprive tonight
the beautician and her lover,
a shower-head salesman, of this room?
He is so seldom in town.
I felt by their glance in the hallway
that my room, no. 17, means
something (don't ask me to explain this) special
to them. Maybe they fell fiercely
into each other here for the first time,
maybe there was a passion preternatural. I'm glad
this room, so ugly, has known some love
at $19.00 double occupancy--
though not tonight, for a dollar fifty less.