BLCKDGRD

Birthdays, Ferals, New Place

Two new posts at the new place:

Today is two of my favorite musicians birthdays.

Today is National Feral Cat Day.

I know it's a pain in the ass, but please change your bookmarks, blogrolls, and readers to go to the new place.

Thank you very much.

As Always, Neglecting to Drown

On my neighborhood's listserv:

Dan is going to put Charlie to sleep if I cant find him a home. DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY IDEAS?? Please write or call whomever you can that might be able to help -- Charlie's days are numbered. his new family -- with two small kids -- dont like charlie and charlie doesnt like them. the kids are too young and loud noises and loud commotion bother him.

I would take him but he doesnt like me. He wont come out of his kennel when around me. AND He hates my neighbors and their kids so they cant help me walk him when I am not home. so I dont know what to do.

Anyway -- let me know ASAP if you can think of an idea yourself. this dog has major mental problems from being negected and abused by his last house. But, with training, he might be able to be socialized. I found a trainer that would take him in but it would cost approx $1200 a month. he is used to living around other dogs, cats and parrots.

Ideas? Anyone has Ideas?

Yes, no-kill rescues, and I sent her links. And fuck motherfucking puppy mills and the motherfucking crackers that support them because they hate the Humane Society.

An acquaintance told me he and his wife have found a new apartment, one where they can have pets, they're getting a purebred terrier and a bluepoint cat from reputable breeders, and no, I didn't ask had they considered rescues because what would asking have served beyond satisfying the scold in me.

Whoa, on Obama's mendacity of hope:

I’m not sure Gibbs has a coherent idea of what he means by the “left,” but if opposition to permanent war, extrajudicial assassination of American citizens, boundless state secrecy, and unlimited corporate bailouts constitutes “leftism,” then so be it. True to their Clintonian principles, President Obama and his advisors have spurned the Democratic Party’s liberal base and have sought to govern by appropriating the policies of the Republican right. Just as Bill Clinton enacted NAFTA and destroyed welfare, Barack Obama has pushed through a health-care program that was inspired by the Heritage Foundation and largely written by the insurance lobby—and he shows every sign of being willing to vandalize Social Security in the name of deficit reduction even though the program has nothing to do with the federal budget deficit. Obama has embraced the Bushite war on terror and has refused to roll back the unconstitutional executive usurpations that so outraged his supporters. And yet Democrats expect liberals to toe the line and shut the hell up lest the Republicans take advantage of their dissent. In fact, for the most part, the “professional left” of policy intellectuals, public interest advocates, and opinion journalists have done just that.

All good and fine, but then he adds:

What’s fascinating about the Democrats is how consistently they have squandered enormous political advantages. The party’s leaders have apparently internalized Republican propaganda to the point that they feel they do not deserve to rule; consequently, when Democrats come to power, they always negotiate with themselves prior to meeting their opponents, make the tough-minded decision to betray their most loyal supporters, and profess shock and anger when the GOP—which never makes the mistake of publicly spurning its base—refuses to accept the purported bipartisan compromise. What results, of course, is that the Democratic Party, over and over again, enacts some version of the Republican agenda.

And that sums up the rube I try but fail to finally shed, the rube who gets screamed at because I don't quite want to shed it enough, the rube who gets lectured to by my dearest mentors who remember when progress (defined in their case by the civil and labor rights won post-Depression) was not only demanded and expected but achievable, the happy, fat, and domesticated rube who likes to play at being feral.

• Napoleon is a wonder cat, Frankie the funniest cat I've know.
• Give to a rescue. Get your next pet from a rescue. Please.
• As the world burns.
• Bigot-whisperers.
• Republicans are shitty, and no amount of Democratic shittiness changes that essential truth.
• No fucking duh.
• Chasing Fox.
• UPDATE! The poverty of partisans.
• Comic genius of Yggie Wiggles.
• On the above.
• Behavioral conditioning.
• Perhaps Pastor Sanctimonious' most bullshit column ever.
• Blankfein blackmail.
• Economic subversions.
• Ireland is our future.
• Three balls, two strikes.
• Breakfast Club, part 6.
• Treehouse of Love.
• Oops.
• UPDATE! Debating Obama's mendacity.
• Obama unveils -.06% less-shitty argument.
• Daily obamapostasy.
• On the above.
• Pervasive.
• Joementum, 2010-style!
• UPDATE! This will happen if he's far enough behind in the polls in January 2012, and who knows, it might work.
• Howie Fucking Kurtz leaving Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Last week's news.
• National digital library?
• On college majors.
• Hey! thanks! for the Kind.
• If not Earthgirl's favorite artist, top three:

• Fat New Jersey pig to endorse Maryland pig.
• Gray appeals to whites!
• BRAC, or: My Future Hell.
• Clarksburg!
• Ambulance fees and repercussions.
• Slots.
• Hirshhorn redo.
• UPDATE! This? is awesome.

• Ngugi wa Thiong'o now odds-on-favorite to win Nobel. I read and liked a lot but promptly stopped thinking about Wizard of the Crow. (Cormac McCarthy is now second favorite.)
• C, con't.
• The greatest novelist the 1950s has to offer.
• UPDATE! Lawrence Durrell, who I hadn't thought about in years.
• Roth whines about technology. Roth is for the old.
• Obscure Sound's Best of September w/MP3.
• This week's new releases, w/MP3.
• It's Fall Drive week at KEXP. If you listen, throw them some tribute. This drive's gimmick? They asked listeners to vote for their top music acts, solo or band, ever. Who will be number one, Beatles, Radiohead or Arcade Fire?
• The messenger who shoots back: Albini v Sonic Youth.

SUCCESS COMES TO COW CREEK

James Tate

I sit on the tracks, 
a hundred feet from
earth, fifty from the
water. Gerald is
inching toward me
as grim, slow, and
determined as a
season, because he
has no trade and wants 
none. It's been nine months 
since I last listened 
to his fate, but I
know what he will say:
he's the fire hydrant
of the underdog.

When he reaches my
point above the creek,
he sits down without
salutation, and
spits profoundly out
past the edge, and peeks
for meaning in the
ripple it brings. He
scowls. He speaks: when you 
walk down any street 
you see nothing but
coagulations
of shit and vomit,
and I'm sick of it.
I suggest suicide;
he prefers murder, 
and spits again for 
the sake of all the 
great devout losers.

A conductor's horn 
concerto breaks the 
air, and we, two doomed 
pennies on the track, 
shove off and somersault 
like anesthetized 
fleas, ruffling the 
ideal locomotive 
poised on the water 
with our light, dry bodies. 
Gerald shouts 
terrifically as
he sails downstream like 
a young man with a 
destination. I 
swim toward shore as 
fast as my boots will 
allow; as always, 
neglecting to drown.

This was in my head yesterday afternoon as the 102 degree fever was crashing. counterstream has been playing a lot of contemporary choral music lately, so you are forewarned, though I've listened to Monk for years and this is one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

You Are Subsubsubstantial, I Say to You of the Fluctuating Essence of Unevenness

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.
• Where are the Left's anti-war protests?
• 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.
• Clusterfucked.
• More Jensen.
• Krugman's obamapostasy is going to be awesome.
• Sheepskin bubble.
• 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.
• Hehful!
• We are so fucked.
• We are so fucked.

• 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.
• Metro.
• Death sentence for the fuckers. I'll do it.
• Wheaton!
• Josipovici slams Rushdie, McEwan, Barnes, and...Roth.
• Simply awesome.
• Bookertime.
• Essay on novels.
• UPDATE! Holyfuck, ear-candy!
• Host of Seraphim.
• UPDATE! Sad eyes.

FAUX SELF-PORTRAIT OF YOU

Dana Wier

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.

Chuck Prophet:

The Bruise Will Stop By Later

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.?

• Breaking the Goddamned Rules (I).
• Catch a falling empire.
• Fog of War, Rediva.
• Fucking Democrats.
• Henochowicz.
• UPDATE! Absence and presence.
• I was going to spit at vanden Heuval, but Ioz did it for me.
• An empathic civilization.
• UPDATE! Skip your facts.
• Not crushed, merely ignored.
• Despised and rejected.
• Bad behavior.
• The main difference between Europe and the USA.
• My future hell.
• All he ever wanted to do. Fucking humans.
• Happy story for when I'm despairing over fucking humans.
• George "The Animal" Steele in Frederick tonight!
• Of course it's a scam.
• Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror.
• Booker long list.
• Daffy Duck in Hollywood.
• News for my friends who dig Josipovici.
• Forget fiction.
• This week's new releases w/MP3.

ANTICIPATED STRANGER,

John Ashbery

the bruise will stop by later.

For now, the pain pauses in its round,

notes the time of day, the patient’s temperature,

leaves a memo for the surrogate: What the hell

did you think you were doing? I mean . . .

Oh well, less said the better, they all say.

I’ll post this at the desk.

God will find the pattern and break it.

As promised:

As for the Farmers, They Are, for the Most Part, Indistinguishable

I've been cleaning closets, burning, shredding, smashing, erasing evidence. That I'm deliberately loud while insisting on my invisibility is why I'm stupidly angry at being ignored.

Yodel, I get cleaning jags so infrequently, I've done some blegrell pruning; long-abandoned blegs, blegs always tertiary (and never reciprocal), a couple whose advertising freezes my Dell Dinosaur 1999 at home, one guy who reads me daily, doesn't reciprocate links or rells or Kind, rips me off. It was like watching Fleabus watch the raccoons eat the ferals' food.

Just kidding! I only purged that one guy. I needed to write this so I'd stop thinking about writing it. There are some new pingworthies over to the left under New New, though.

Cleaning out my closets I rediscovered different theories and models of tablets, including the Moleskin journalist model with 5x5 quad, excellent for prose-poems, sluts that they are, excellent for the long lines I've been experimenting with, kinda successfully, actually,

but I'm in love again with this tablet for no greater reason than I've no mechanism for publishing content to eyes beyond mine. Let me drink this candle.

That's this month's bleggalgazing - I allow myself twelve per year; otherwise it'd be everyday. Thanks everyone for the Kind. As always, if you're Kinding me and I'm not Kinding you back, drop me a email. And click Fleabus up top, yo.

• Terminus of delightful nihilism.
• UPDATE! On the new Zizek: Slavoj Zizek has identified the four horsemen of this coming apocalypse: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. Good thing I have access to a university library.
• If things were going well.
• UPDATE! Leading by example.
• The hunters.
• The more you repress it, the more you do it.
• UPDATE! Bokonanism.
• Paulson, Geithner, and Summers walk into a bar....
• Brought on themselves.
• He's trying to scare the base, asswipe.
• UPDATE! The case for Obama.
• I hate me motherfucking christers.
• Teabaggers are morons.

 

• UPDATE! They're also pussies. I said they're morons; I didn't say they should have to take the billboard down.
• How bullshit works.
• No, you're not Spartacus. (But Spasticus? Yes!)
• UPDATE! No, not that Spartacus.
• Kensington! Doesn't impact me, but Kensington used to pride itself on being a dry town. Once that crappy sports bar got a liquor license, I suppose carry-out was inevitable.
• Metro sucks.
• Worm girl!
• German national team? Gay! Michael Ballack is a pussy.
• UPDATE! Worse kits of 10/11 (with blasts from past!).
• What next for the 4-4-2?
• Silliman's always generous linkages.
• Two old Ashbery poems.
• I want Planet's piano teacher to give her Schumann.
• But I really want her to assign Planet some Poulenc.
• UPDATE! Heartbeat.
• McCartney sucks, but not as much as PBS.
• UPDATE! Let's Active.
• Swoon.
• UPDATE! Memory box.
• This week's new releases w/MP3.
• UPDATE! Kite.

THE PROSE POEM

Campbell McGrath

On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust. To the left a cornfield carries into the distance, dips and rises to the blue sky, a rolling plain of green and healthy plants aligned in close order, row upon row upon row. To the right, a field of wheat, a field of hay, young grasses breaking the soil, filling their allotted land with the rich, slow-waving spectacle of their grain. As for the farmers, they are, for the most part, indistinguishable: here the tractor is red, there yellow; here a pair of dirty hands, there a pair of dirty hands. They are cultivators of the soil. They grow crops by pattern, by acre, by foresight, by habit. What corn is to one, wheat is to the other, and though to some eyes the similarities outweigh the differences it would be as unthinkable for the second to commence planting corn as for the first to switch over to wheat. What happens in the gully between them is no concern of theirs, they say, so long as the plough stays out, the weeds stay in the ditch where they belong, though anyone would notice the wind-sewn cornstalks poking up their shaggy ears like young lovers run off into the bushes, and the kinship of these wild grasses with those the farmer cultivates is too obvious to mention, sage and dun-colored stalks hanging their noble heads, hoarding exotic burrs and seeds, and yet it is neither corn nor wheat that truly flourishes there, nor some jackalopian hybrid of the two. What grows in that place is possessed of a beauty all its own, ramshackle and unexpected, even in winter, when the wind hangs icicles from the skeletons of briars and small tracks cross the snow in search of forgotten grain; in the spring the little trickle of water swells to welcome frogs and minnows, a muskrat, a family of turtles, nesting doves in the verdant grass; in summer it is a thoroughfare for raccoons and opossums, field mice, swallows and black birds, migrating egrets, a passing fox; in autumn the geese avoid its abundance, seeking out windrows of toppled stalks, fatter grain more quickly discerned, more easily digested. Of those that travel the local road, few pay that fertile hollow any mind, even those with an eye for what blossoms, vetch and timothy, early forsythia, the fatted calf in the fallow field, the rabbit running for cover, the hawk's descent from the lightning-struck tree. You've passed this way yourself many times, and can tell me, if you would, do the formal fields end where the valley begins, or does everything that surrounds us emerge from its embrace?

Dr Leo reminds me of this plus a personal theme song:

At Night, When All the Colours Die, They Hide in Pairs and Read About Themselves -- In Colour, with Their Eyelids Shut

That's Jess, our third indoor cat, dumb, jealous, and mean, which I post instead of the ten carefully argued paragraphs I've worked on the past week on reconciling my disgust with this country with my passionate rooting interest in this country's men's soccer team, because fuck that, I promised myself I wouldn't do carefully argued paragraphs at this shuuty bloog.

I asked what would the world's reaction be if USMNT won WC10, but a more important question is what would this country's reaction be, and the more pertinent question being what would my reaction be to this country's reaction if USMNT won?

Surely, motherfucking crackers, who now call soccer fans faggot liberal speed-walkers, parading their pick-up trucks up and down main streets, honking their horns, their drunken buddies in the flat-bed waving flags, chanting U-S-A, U-S-A, would ruin my relationship with the USMNT forever.

Beyond loving soccer, beyond knowing and being invested in the USMNT players, having seen many if not most play in front of my eyes (Clint Dempsey missing the PK in MLS Eastern Conference Championship at RFK six - jeebus, six - freaking years ago, Landon Donovan racing over to taunt LOUD SIDE! whenever he scores for Gax v United), rooting for an American team that isn't a World Asshole, in a sport held in disdain by America's most jingoistic assholes, is an essential aspect of my rooting for USMNT.

The USMNT winning the World Cup? I'm rooting for the end of my rooting. No one asks me anymore how I separate my soccer and my politics.

Meanwhile, here's Gray Cat, one of our ferals, with a blue jay in her mouth she killed yesterday:

She likes jumping on my lap, rolling over, sleeping as I pet her chest and belly. Click, yo.

Any WC updates during the day will be posted here, though don't expect much about USMNT v England until tomorrow.

UPDATE!

1005 EDT - I did say Argentina would either explode or implode. KABOOM!

UPDATE!

Argentina wins but doesn't score again. This was the first of the four games where I saw how fucked the ball really is: it doesn't bounce right. A half-dozen, a dozen times, for both sides, simple passes in the air bounced six inches higher than the balls used in club soccer this past year bounced.And there hasn't been a free kick from 30 yards in that any player didn't sky ten yards high.

I don't say Fuck Adidas enough.

A MARTIAN SENDS A POSTCARD HOME

Craig Raine

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings--

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch on the hand.

Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on the ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper.

Rain is when the earth is television.
It has the properites of making colours darker.

Model T is a room with the lock inside --
a key is turned to free the world

for movement, so quick there is a film
to watch for anything missed.

But time is tied to the wrist
or kept in a box, ticking with impatience.

In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps,
that snores when you pick it up.

If the ghost cries, they carry it
to their lips and soothe it to sleep

with sounds. And yet, they wake it up
deliberately, by tickling with a finger.

Only the young are allowed to suffer
openly. Adults go to a punishment room

with water but nothing to eat.
They lock the door and suffer the noises

alone. No one is exempt
and everyone's pain has a different smell.

At night, when all the colours die,
they hide in pairs

and read about themselves --
in colour, with their eyelids shut.

Sorry, no links today: haven't had time to read, and besides, we be solidly in the Blog Days of Summer: there isn't much being posted anywhere anyway. Meanwhile:

I Am the Snouted Creature That Bites Through Anything

How are the ferals? you didn't ask. (If you are interested, go to the last post at the end and read up to get backstory.)

Napoleon's fine, thanks, he was sleeping in our birdbath yesterday, sorry to wake him up. One of the five best cats I've - I can't say own, let me say known. When Earthgirl takes Rudy for his morning shit around the neighborhood, Napoleon comes yelling from wherever he is when he hears them and walks all the way back to the house with them then waits on the our back porch for breakfast.

I'd forgot how big and powerful young active male cats can be, and have scars to prove it.

The others survived the winter just fine. Gray Cat is sweet, Frankie's a funny coward (while the best birdkiller of the bunch), mom's less skittish than before though we'll never pet her.

Meanwhile, read this:

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.

Yes, yes I have posted that before. This song too:

Jeebusfuck, I'm in the vilest mood since the last vilest mood until the next vilest mood, so here, I try bribing myself out of it by not posting what I want while wanting credit for starving.

Or Cat That Prettily Pounces on Its Meat, Tortures It Hours, then Does Not Care to Eat

What would you sacrifice, you eights that read me? My life is good: I'm glad I live in MOCO, not Republic, Pennsylvania.

We all agree the game is gamed, that we game it when we cash our paychecks, buy on credit, bleg our compliance and complicity. We don't imagine ourselves Iranians rebelling, we're not daydreaming revolution like a cracker on his ATV.

Imagine us hippies burning buses in America, throwing rocks through CitiBank's office windows (after stopping at the ATM), charging into police batons. We aspire to archness, the saddest, highest rank we avid gamers can achieve.

• So it is written.
• UPDATE! What I've been saying.
• Your Fucking Washington Post rings in the New Year with Michael Chertoff urging Obama to abandon civil liberties, Bill Nepotism accusing Obama of abandoning Iran's Dirty Fucking Hippies, and the World's Shittiest Human doing what he does shittiest.
• One day we'll all be terrorists.
• Ten good stories from the Muslim world you never heard about.
• Under-appreciated victories?
• One-eighth of a presidency.
• Wobbly Baby Steps Forward.
• Sad clown to angry clown.
• Roy calls bullshit.
• Craziest Shit of the Decade.
• It's shopping time in Britain!
• Kokoo koko kokko kokoon!

• My future hell.
• Kensington clownishness.
• The Year in East MOCO.
• Feral cats in MOCO.
• Ours? Happy. Nap is now spending hours in the house. Gray and Frankie are fine.
• I don't follow the NBA because it's unwatchable, but even I know this cannot be a good thing.

I have no idea who does these:

But I find them - and lots of giggles - at Soup, which you should bookmark. It's not the show on E! (though that's good too) and it's NSFW, yo.

• RIP David Levine. More here, including a link to this story which will make me view the NYRB differently from now on.
• Bleggalgazing!
• A year in reading.
• A year in books.
• Did the Surrealists get it right?
• Mitchelmore's novel of the year, for multiple reasons. I'll try again once the paperback is released at the end of January. Not only does that give me time to finish what I'm in, but for whatever reason I read cinderblock paperbacks better than cinderblock hardbacks. What makes me a roob is nine-tenths of the time I end up buying both.
• I missed Belew's 60 birthday last week. Don Durito didn't.
• OK, go here, type in 1/1/10, 7:09 AM and, serendipitously, you'll first hear a song I posted a couple of days ago before hearing a couple of songs from bands we saw at 930 in the 80s courtesy of DJ El Toro, who played one at my request and then played Urban Verbs to be nice. Not only is El Toro the best DJ at KEXP, not only does he vaguely look like Elric, but he was at many of the shows in the 80s I was at (though we didn't know it).
• Fuck 2009.
• Without a doubt.
• Guardian's Readers' Music Pool 2009. I agree with almost everything.
• KEXP's Listener 2009 poll has no surprises.
• That's really super, Supergirl.
• One DJs Top Ten Videos of 2009!
• Quick Canal.
• Ten NSFW videos of 2009!
• 12 Best Late Night TV Performances of 2009!

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.

Looking for the Transparent, the Colorless Essential, the Unbeginning and Unending of Consommé

Maybe you remember that tomorrow is a year since Barack Obama stomped Sarah Palin to win POTUS, and what good has he done beyond not being President Sarah Palin?

Obama drives the shittiest batshittier. That's all I really asked. See me urge Obama to bait crackers November 3 last year. He's succeeded.

Obama needs drive the shittiest batshittier faster if you ask me, but I never take a long view when a spastic view is funner, and I still bet pints Obama (if alive) will stomp The Whomeverpig in 2012 (and yes, by moving to the shittier as the shittiest get shittier, which is the plan, yo).

Oldsters here can vouch: I never bet on Obama the man, I bet on Obama the gamesplayer.

And while he's not as good a gamesplayer I thought he'd be, that's more a reflection on what I want him to be as a man, so all obamapostasies are roobish and mine alone.

*

• True Heh.
• I'm not saying Obama doesn't serve me bankster's shit and call it nourishment.
• But he's still a better gamesplayer than anyone on the other side.
• Your Fucking Washington Post's next Shit-for-Brains! ten columnist nominees! Ezra Klein had nominated blegfriend Henley, and since Jim didn't make the cut, so much for Ezra Klein's schway.
• Cole sums up the ten columns: They’re about what you’d expect: three full-tilt concern trollings, a couple MoDo/Double X style gender pieces, a pointless piece about that college kid who’s hiring a personal assistant, a snoozer about good government (which does make a good point), a predictable rant about cable news, and one thoughtful piece about health care.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Good opportunity to dust off a classic.
• Poop in the Water.
• prOnstache offer Obama advice.
• Dear Anonymous Shaker.
• 400,000 on The List!
• Thoughts on The List!
• Hoarding.
• Artist-Critic. This paragraph:  Under market capitalism, critics and producers are engaged in a curious dance. Each is basically addressing the other at all times and acting as big Other for the other, whilst constantly pretending otherwise. The artist claims to be working for some reified and mystified entity called the Audience, secretly aware that it is the critics' judgment that will more decisively shape their future, and the critic claims to speak for the consumer, the man on the street (this obscure beast, the Audience again), but really longs for recognition by practitioners and prays that their barbed comments will strike the artist to their very marrow, perhaps even encourage them to work differently. For some reason, however, full assumption of this dance - for the dancers to actually look each other in the eye, perhaps even kiss - is strictly taboo, has multiple applications.

• Rave review of Mantel's Wolf Hall in NYTBR.
• I love House of Leaves, feel wussy I can't crack Only Revolutions, as beautiful an object to hold in my hands, if not more, than House of Leaves. It's on my bookstand - I tried - true this - again two weeks ago.
• New Pamuk reviewed, which is good news, but what it better news is that it's reviewed by Maureen Howard, and bioblurb says Maureen Howard’s new book, “The Rags of Time,” will be published this month, completing her cycle of novels based on the four seasons,  which means I've got more rereading to do.
• Pamuk's Museum.
• Bleg Hiatus.
• List time suckitude.
• Shoot me now.
• Remembering The Connells.
• The Foghorns.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• UPDATE! Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.

*

ANXIETY'S PROSODY

A.R. Ammons

Anxiety clears meat chunks out of the stew, carrots, takes
the skimmer to floats of greasy globules and with cheesecloth

filters the broth, looking for the transparent, the colorless
essential, the unbeginning and unending of consommé: the

open anxiety breezes through high conceits, surface congestions
(it likes metaphors deep-lying, out of sight, their airs misting

up into, lighting up consciousness, unidentifiable presences),
it distills consonance and assonance, glottal thickets, brush

clusters, it thins the rhythms, rushing into longish gaits, more
distance in less material time: it hates clots, its stump-fires

level fields: patience and calm define borders and boundaries,
hedgerows, and sharp whirls: anxiety burns instrumentation

matterless, assimilates music into motion, sketches the high
suasive turnings, mild natures tangled still in knotted clumps.

*

The Connells?

No Bet?

So, predictions for United v Jabloteh tonight?

An email stream from Tuesday night:

Me: Hamster will be using Marc's ticket. Hope you can work work to join us.

Landru: Yeah, I think I'm good.

Me: Excellent. There's a 10% chance we'll witness something remarkable in the Train Wreck category, 100% chance we'll have a good time.

Landru: The train's already wrecked, dood. We're just watching the zombies stagger out of the flaming wreckage.

Me: Let me rephrase: there's a 10% chance we'll see the zombies turn on each other in an entertaining display.

Landru: I'd be much more confident in that happy possibility if the Angry Underbite was between the pipes. I think our best shot is Szetela choking out Pops.

Me: My bet is Gomez saying fuck it around 65, peel off the armband and throw it on the ground, and Benny kovalenkos him. Please please please please please.

Landru: Most excellent. No bet.

Wuss.

Meanwhile, here's Napoleon on my front steps this morning, begging me not to go to work, to stay home and play with him, all while diminishing the value of my home.

Varför detta bara flög i mitt huvud som vet, vara i din:

Shittybusy day. Some links later. Or not.

UPDATE!

More.