BLCKDGRD

We went to the Philly Pizza Company and ordered some hot tea. The waitress said well no, we only have it iced, So we jumped up on the table and shouted anarchy.

I do like being harangued by smart people good at haranguing, but remember: people elected Obama not to end war and torture, they elected him to wage war better and get torture off the news and out of the public consciousness. 

This isn't to damn the moral berserkers. I read the berserkers, post the berserkers, admire the berserkers, aspire to be a berserker, but I think lost in the preemptive Obamabashing in the midst of a bleg recession is that for a majority of Americans, if Obama has a relatively uneventful first administration in which no new public relations disasters further damage Brand America, he'll be a raving success.

  

THE CASTLE IN THE MOUNTAINS

Frederick Seidel

I brought a stomach flu with me on the train.
I spent the night curled up in pain,
Agonizing cold and rather miserable.
I went out for a walk earlier today:
Snow started falling
Like big cotton balls this morning
And the park looks beautiful.
I will try to eat tonight: steamed cauliflower.
You would love it here.
It is quite nice somehow.

You would like the Emperor.
Some days the joy is overpowering.
The last time I was here,
He told a story.
It was Christmas.
Snow kept falling.
The Emperor held his hand up for silence and began.
His fingernails have perfect moons, which is quite rare.
You hardly see it anymore, I wonder why.

The Emperor began:
"Prehistoric insects were
Flying around brainless
To add more glory to the infant Earth.
Instead of horrible they were huge and beautiful,
And, being angels, were invincible.
Say the Name, and the angel begging with its hand would
Instantly expand upward
To be as tall as the building..."

The ruthless raw odor of filth in an enclosed space,
And the slime tentacles with religious suckers,
And the four heads on one neck like the four heads carved on Mt Rushmore,
Hold out a single hand.

Hold out your hand.
Take my hand.

*

• Memoriam.
• India is a travel bargain!
• HRC foodfight!
• Blogoverlord asks, why no DC statehood? Long years ahead, mofos.
• Blogoverlord asks the obvious. Long years ahead, mofos.
• I'm not convinced blegging isn't self-abnegation.
• Silber,provocative always.
• Ben Olsen confirms he does not ready this bleg.
• I. Hate. Christers. With all my soul.
• If Capital One razes every single one of these in Moco

    I'm cool.

• Earthgirl didn't vote to forgo the 5%.
• When reading 2666, think about this article in today's Post about drug violence, some of it about Ciudad Juarez, 2666's Santa Teresa.
• Speaking of 2666 (I vouch!), it's one of NYT's ten best books of year.
• A contemplation on year end lists.
• MacKaye, not McKay, and a Fugazi youtube.
• For whoever mentioned The Mountain Goats wherever I read it. (h/t Rake)
• Air France. Start with Collapse Your Day.

*

Writing about literary journals, Andy at Lit Now says

Or because they’re (lit-journals) funded by a university, which funnels them tuition revenues in exchange for a publication that looks academic-literarish on student lounge coffee tables (”This must be a serious school - my tuition dollars are buying a real education!”) and runs pieces by MFA grads (”Look - MFA grads get published! It makes sense to get an MFA!”), which MFA grads can then cite such publications as quasi-peer-reviewed, enabling them to… get a job teaching in an MFA program. (h/t Dan)

I cannot think of MFA programs without thinking of Raymond Carver and what he's meant to MFA programs everywhere. His family should get half of all MFA tuition money.

I have a friend who teaches MFA badgers, ga-ga-ga and blind, who takes the money and runs. She's not proud but she has a nicer car than me. xoxo.

*

Your daily reads should include Uni-Watch because you like uniforms, O yes you do.

Click to enlarge. That's the Steelers AWESOME uniform in 67-68, deemed so sucky it was abandoned after only one season.

Uniforms? Read this:

Yes, this Paul Fussell, English majors.

*

Hey, gthrsbrgrs

Look at these. (h/t Gaithersblog)

While Your Blogoverlords Consolidate Their Power, Why Is Fleet Foxes on My Radio?

I've been eating KEXP's Rube Chow, streaming the station since at least 2002, happily eating the Rube Chow, never once stopping in mid-chew to think what the hell am I eating, but yesterday, December 1, at 6:34 AM Seattle time, this set:

Fleet Foxes/DeVotchKa/Okkervil River

drove me to counterstream all day, the first time I've grumpily thought, what the fuck is this shit I'm being asked to eat.

Fleet Foxes - gimmick band. DeVotchKa - extreme gimmick band. Okkervil River - gimmick band. Holyfuck do they suck. Assuming - I assume - KEXP is as honorable now as it's been for years, Fleet Foxes, DeVotchKa, and Okkervil River are cutting edge in 2008. Holyfuck. I blame fucking Arcade Fire.

I'll take my share of the blame too - it's been an aarghful year, and I'm old and crotchedy - but 2008 has been a shitty year for new music. There are no new ideas. As I type this KEXP is playing the new Byrne/Eno. Sounds like the old Byrne/Eno.

*

OBAMYFUCKINGGOD! he named who Secretary of State?

Jeebusfuck, which will grind your teeth more the next four years, the howling from the right or the shrieking from the left or the Mwahaharishas who told you so even when you were agreeing with them?

*

• Smart-provoking. 
• Maryland spying, condensed edition. 
• Fucking  Hayek.
  
• Catalog of failures, UK-Edition.
• Black Reagan.
• Atrios on public-funded soccer stadiums. More dissent.
• Savid Dampselle, rated.
• Purple Line article with no mention of Columbia Country Club opposition? Adding, similarities to Georgetown's resistance are accurate, but no mention is made of how the majority of Georgetown businesses and residents regret that resistance. It's STUPID there is no Metro stop in Georgetown.
• Paleo Bastard plays poker online.
• Holyjeebus, Joan Armatrading. One of the best nights of my life, 1980 maybe, Joan Armatrading at Wolftrap, the Me, Myself, I tour, pouring down rain, dancing on the lawn in the pouring down rain with Blondie and Phavid Dillips and Annie - what was her name, Elric? - Hawk? I hadn't thought about Joan Armatrading in years.
• Best headline of the day (for many reasons).
• Holyba'al, look at these. (h/t fellowjeff)
• 2666 reviewed again. I'm guessing it's positive, judging from the title, I don't want to read it. I'm done with the first three parts. Boxing, the softening up of the opponent, the beating, like all Bolano's tropes, are intentional. I won't read the review because I don't want to know how I'm going to die.
• I need to read Blood Meridian again. I suppose I should read Underworld and Beloved again too.

Updates later. Or not.

*

Rubeeburrubeebur!

.

• HRC as SOS? That bitch. That bitch.
• HRC as SOS? That bitch. That bitch.
• HRC as SOS? That bitch. That bitch.
• HRC as SOS? That bitch. That bitch.
• HRC as SOS hyperventilation. That bitch. That bitch.

Jeebus, either Obama puts a bullet in the back of her skull NOW! or he's the shittiest not-president-yet EVAH!

Please rubes, rerube yourself: less shitty doesn't mean things get better, it means things stop getting shittier at the current rate of increasing shittiness.

What, Obama is surrounding himself with people who will help him consolidate his power and ensure his re-election as the most powerful human on the planet? That bastard. That bastard.

*

• Opostasy: The Greatest Disappointments Are Coming.
• Holder gets greenwaldian hug. Counterpoint.
• Still bitter, still clinging, still beaten.
• Scandal as growth industry.
• Kathleen Parker: death-wish or cynical swivel?
• Asshatery.
• al-Q gets talking points from Limbaugh.
• On hunters.
• Is the 3-5-2 dead?
• Presentmas?
• I've never watched an episode, not because of anything other than I haven't. I have watched CI, and not just because I used to be friends with Eric Bogosian's nephew, who was at Earthgirl and my wedding. Hello, David?
• Novels are dying because authors quit using quotation marks? Uh, no.
• Slovenian Poetry?
• Paperback v Digital. Am I soulless to consider a kindle (down in comments)?
• dBs?
• Blip?

Updates later. Or not.

*

Pwoggle Mourning Song!

Heh, while I'm here, let Pete Shelley diagnose the problem with progressive rubes like me:

gnarlmaze: the gnarling

Joe's a turncoat bastard and etc whose influence on the election was precisely zero despite his assholist best, but why would you, if you're Obama, make Joe Fucking Lieberman the first partisan fight (and it would be a partisan fight) of your pre-presidency?  UPDATE: Leahy!

Think about this:

"President-elect Barack Obama is pushing Congress this year to approve as much as $50 billion to save cash-starved U.S. automakers and appoint a czar or board to oversee the companies, a move that would require President George W. Bush's support, people familiar with the matter said."

That's the partisan fight you pick in your pre-presidency.

I keep confusing my disappointment in Obama, who's absolutely shitty as The Guy Who Does Exactly What Pleases Me, with my admiration for Obama, the best goddamn game-player I've ever seen. UPDATE: Best goddamn game-player I've ever seen.

If there was a better game, he'd be better at that too.

*

• There isn't a better game, just a shit-sandwich.
• Babs to run again in 2010. When Van Hollen signed on for another gig with DCCC, it was clear, and this isn't official, but....
• Opostasy: endorsed by Blair.
• Told you: "The gravity of Fomalhaut b is the key reason that the vast dust belt surrounding Fomalhaut is cleanly sculpted into a ring and offset from the star," Kalas said.
• Sfunny, she don't sound Alaskan. Sullivan hyperventilates, but really, after eight years with Monkey Boy after 911 convinced him he was destined and smart, the Republicans would surely surround a March 2009 President Palin with honest puppeteers, bwa, ha, and ha.
• I've always liked Robert Reich.
• GOP blind spot.
• No, fuck you. Deeply.
• What you can buy me for Presentmas. I mean, I own them already, and so? UPDATE: More.
• 2666? If all goes as planned (it won't) I'll start Sunday evening. For the record, I really liked By Night in Chile and really liked Distant Star and really disliked (and abandoned, having given myself the moral licentiousness to quit novels I don't dig) Savage Detectives. Hope for 2666 though:  every novel, before starting, I open randomly and read one page so I can give myself a cheap feeling of deja vu when I come across it in sequence, and the page I randomly turned to, page 403, nabbed me. UPDATE: More.

UPDATES

• Two more responses to Zadie Smith's NYRB article, one from Richard, the other from Wyatt Mason.
• I don't get Auster (or haven't since Moon Palace), but then I don't think Dirda particularly perceptive either.
• I'm 3/4ths through Hemon's latest, and wow. Subscription required, but you subscribe to NYRB anyway so there's no problem. Review itself is interesting beyond the review.

*

Why this is in my head I've no idea, but pull it out of your memory chambers.

Upyoursism!

Sarah Palin makes Jonanism Goldbergs sit up straight on the couch not because of Palin's philosophy on the Unitary Executive, Rich Lowrys come in spurts imagining liberal heads exploding imagining Sarah Palin as president.

I've never voted for a Republican in a presidential election (and never not voted) and am rube enough to believe that if the Democrats nominated for vpotus a mean skank from Hicksburg, Crackerstan to cunt-wink the party to victory (or, conversely, to pig-horror, a nigger with a ay-rab middle name who once sat in a room with an American terrorist) I'd, oh.

Doesn't matter that Obama's rise is as much his chops as his exoticism and charisma (plus our deepest desire to force Obama on Crackerstanis, you know it's true): We are the enemy; Obama is the ultimate Fuck-You candidate to crackerstanis.

That any self-proclaimed progressive feminist isn't terrified and offended Republicans chose the bitchiest girl from high school as their Fuck You missile makes me challenge those feminists' progressive credentials, and that John McCain's choice of Palin was to fuck you his own party because he couldn't have Lieberman is now an irony without importance, but Sarah Palin's sole soul-qualification for both professional pigs and Crackerstanis alike is that Palin's as big a Fuck You to us as Obama is to them.

Apply the .06% less-shitty rule to you own motives and beliefs as needed.

*

• I thought about it, but Ed got there first.
• Your photoshop of the day.
• Something dumber.
• Skydiving.
• Spec-tac-u-lar.
• Economic 9-11.
• The Sidekick Show.
• Why not gibberish?
• The last paragraph is true, but they were also celebrating pissing of folk like me, don't ya know.
• Doggone, she's a fraud? You betcha.
• American Family Values.
• Because to pigs, the opposite of elite is stupid.

Updates later. Or not.

*

Love comes in spurts?

Snargle

Theocracy, tax-free and piggy. You know, the ones who pray first that McCain/Palin win in November and then pray McCain die?

Keep talking about health care, you demdumb motherfuckers.

Whatever you do, don't mention Scalia or Alito or Roberts or Thomas or Kennedy or Souter or Ginsburg or Breyer or Stevens.

Whatever you do, never, ever, say something like this (h/t Axe).

Cracker-Jeebus shooting wolves from an airplane, my team sucks.

(Oh, I'm sorry, does my loathing of people who shoot wolves from airplanes for pleasure make me an elitist? I'm sorry, does my not wanting to give a person who enjoys shooting wolves from an airplane the key-codes to America's nuclear arsenal make me a sexist? Oh my!)

*

• Ed interviews Kos.
• Dahlia Lithwick offer Biden debate advice v Palin.
• I agree with Wolfson, yikes.
• You know what? I do hate - and fear - the religious right, and people who write articles like this that make hating the religious right sound mad and quixotic will have, right beside me, their books burned, their wives and sisters and daughter's reproductive and property rights rights abolished, gleefully, zealously, by devoutly deluded neurotics who literally believe in a profoundly bullshitic mythology.
• Howie Kurtz explores his phantom-balls syndrome.
• The future belongs to We.
• Why is this guy obsessed w/sodomy?
• Tours of the Rustbelt.

*

And as long as I'm in a vile mood and bitching about uniforms and my team's inability to honorably defend theirs, let me bitch at my true team:

Dear United,

The all white away kits suck suckity suck suck, blow blowity blow blow.

Love,

BLCKDGRD, not BLCKDGWHT

UPDATE!

And just to make the day pitch-perfect:

Thabiso "Boyzzz" Khumalo, a 27-year-old South African forward who played for USL2 Pittsburgh, will continue to train with D.C. United this week and could be signed before the Sept. 15 roster deadline.

wOOt! 27 year old at USL2 Pittsburgh. wOOt!

Ttttthhhhbbbbb!

Oblahmapollo!

Greek columns? Greek fucking columns? 

Here's why HRC made the gracious speech last night: she's going to be running for preznit in four years after Obama of Olympus screws up the surest bet of American political history, and it won't even be because he's a nigger with a funny name.

Why would HRC damage her brand by trashing Obama's when Obama can do it all by his dumbmotherfuckingself? Holy fuck in a wheelchair, I even agree with the World's Shittiest Human.

UPDATE:

Here's what bugs the rube out of me. Josh Marshall writes

I don't want to get in the way of reporter colleagues who can't help getting spun by their Republican sources. But we do all know that virtually every American civic building is based on Greek Revival architecture, right? And that the Obama backdrop actually looks like -- whether intended or not, I don't know -- the Lincoln Memorial. (Remember, they're both Illinoisians.) Perhaps because Obama's speech is on the 45th anniversary of King's 'I Have A Dream' speech.

as if shouting enough times that pigs nonsense is pig nonsense and the press are pig-idiots changes one iota of stupid that Obama, knowing one of the most powerful memes used against him is his pretentiousness and vanity and belief in his obamawesomess, holds his coronation in a plywood Parthenon.

UPDATE!

Oh my, George Bush's stage had - gasp! - Greek columns! That'll durn ya!

Facts are simple and facts are straight
Facts are lazy and facts are late
Facts all come with points of view
Facts don't do what I want them to
Facts just twist the truth around
Facts are living turned inside out
Facts are getting the best of them
Facts are nothing on the face of things
Facts don't stain the furniture
Facts go out and slam the door
Facts are written all over your face
Facts continue to change their shape

Follow-up here.

*

• The minute I think good thoughts about HRC, I'm reminded of who she surrounds herself with. Like this turd.
• Dennis destroys HRC and damns Obama for not naming her veep. Awesome!
• Citizen McCain, I Wouldn't Fuck You with Orson Welle's Dick, starring Jean-Paul Sartre, Eartha Kitt, and Samuel Beckett.
• Rustbelt points out the grading curve, but this question is, if the curve is crooked, why insist on playing exactly by the curve's rules?
• Photoshop of the day.
• Or is it this one?
• Martin O'Malley, jetsam.
• Hey, why didn't I get a high school teacher like this?
• Michael Jackson to sing Robert Burns?
  
• I'll buy this as soon as I'm able because I'm constitutionally incapable of waiting for the paperback (and I have almost all his books in hardback first edition), but $55 for the new Vollmann?
• Sasha, there are three women on TEV's syllabus for his course on novel writing.
• Poetry suggested for the end of summer.

Updates later. Or not.

*

Power pop?

BZZZZZ

A few day ago I posted a link to an interview at Harpers with Christopher Lehmann in which, among many number of smart insights, he said: I have friends who have elaborate conspiracy theories about the coverage, and how the media is leaning one way or the other. In my darker moments I find myself wishing the press were cunning enough to do that, and would that only be true of the the rovers and mcauliffisters. It's incomprehensible that Triscallions are commanding pig-lefties and pig-righties to coordinate their attacks to maximalize tribal antagonisms to maintain the Triscallion Dominion, isn't it?

Hah!I made a funny. It takes no coordination for bears to keep whacking bees' nests while fighting over all the stolen honey. Which doesn't mean they, and the bees, don't enjoy the whacking.

Zrtz, nothing like my shitty team holding a team spirit rally to turn me into a cutter.

*

• Crimmins is back in fighting shape.
  
• Yes and yes.
• Faludi on the pumas. Why isn't obamacamp mentioning scotus every other sentence?
• Not that these morons won't sacrifice their daughters' reproductive rights to protect their martyrdom. Maybe there are less of them than the media claims.
• Same box, same lame Democratic response.
• Demver - Day Two.
• Watching the cornholers.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Fillmore Eastmoco, that endless saga.
• Stanley Fish and the free market. No one incited more snark-easy contempt (and professional jealousy) in the English grad dept I was in than Stanley Fish.
• Dan on novels in translation.
• I've been listening and donating to KEXP for years and trust them to play the most interesting new music, and what's new and interesting lately sucks. Listen to this (start with Reservoir Park) or any of the Arcade Fire DeVotcka Fleet Foxes Beirut imitators or any spawn of goddamn Ben Gibbard, and progressive power pop is not only sucking, it's atrophying. UPDATE: They are playing some of the new TV on the Radio, which doesn't sound at all like eastern euro-trash pop or the Postal Service, so subtract one meh from my bitching.

*

Power pop?

Complicity Redux

Time again to reiterate: I have to raise my daughter and pay my mortgage in the immediate, and I cannot get past the ruby reality that as shitty as Democrats are they bribe me better for my complicity than shitty Republicans.

Everything is negotiation. I understand why some condemn smartmarks for their complicity as more morally reprehensible than stonestupid and rote rubes. I play on the line between tool and fool constantly, and if I favor myself tool it's because I mock my complicity while engaging it fully, and congratulate myself for doing so too! Rube.

If America's decline is inevitable and irreversible macro, micro we're voting for who will negotiate my daughter's parachute, and suck just less on Planet Me-Me-Me is better than just suck more. My team sucks just .06% less than Team Pig, and I want that .06% Mr LaForge.

Plus, there's that whole pig's heads exploding thing.

*

• Billmon's still back and he's still sharp and he still beats me to what I was about to say.
  
• Rhetorical snarky question no one will ask: If John McCain wants to assert that his five plus years of POW torture ultimately qualifies him as presidential, what future Muslim leaders are we training at Guantanamo?
• Broder hearts Biden. Dagger.
  
• Biden: Mark Penn approved.
• Biden's second chance.
• Joe Biden as Lewis Black (snarfle!)
• David Ignatius is profoundly toolish.
• But not as toolish as the Post publishing Kathleen Parker.
• Ask a crazy wingnut Christian this.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• Pigs, lesser-evil, yadda.
• If the words don't kill you, the bombs will.
• Deborah Howell is one lame-ass mammajamma.
• HRC can end this Tuesday night. Odds she'll try?
• I'm anti-slot but not rabidly, which doesn't mean Ike Leggett isn't a sack of shit.

Updates later. Or not.

*

In my head, be in yours.

Broccoli!

The Senator from Master Card!

What, you expected Noam Chomsky? Though any pick that pisses off this guy enough to goad him into blogging must have some awesome piquancy of suck, yes?

*

• Silly thing to get pissed over.
• Less silly but still silly thing to get pissed over.
• Obama-Biden as mouth music (w/bonus plagiarism snark).
• Kinsley writes a duh, but a duh worth reiterating.
• The case for cool the above duh references.
• What, you expected Obama to be Marx?
  
• Fukuyourmommying Fukayama.
• PUMAs are morons. Not news, just saying.

*

In my head, be in yours

2:30 minutes, the perfect length for a pop song. This Santogold album is one of my top ten so far this year.