BLCKDGRD

Born Eighty-Five Years Ago Today

Luciano Berio.

I and My Life Will Shut Very Beautifully

I'm three years away from being out from under a mortgage barring complete reaming by the coming mortgage clusterfuck, but I'm about to go half-a-mortgage under soon when Planet picks an elitist Liberal Arts school, one of which might be Bowdoin or Connecticut College; we're flying this afternoon to Boston then driving to Brunswick ME for an official interview at Bowdoin Friday morning, then driving to New London CT to interview Saturday morning. (We land at Logan Thursday at 7:00PM, probably get out with the rental by nine, then drive into New Hampshire, get a room, sleep a few hours, get up at six and drive north to Brunswick, interview, turnaround and immediately drive south to New London. Montag, I'll wave hi to and from from the 295 overpass over 309.)

I know this sounds callous and complicitous, but my generation of mes probably won't lack for catfood, it's my daughter's generation that will begin hording catfood, it's my grand-childrens' world that need survive the catfood famines, both natural and man-made, but my only child wants to go to Bowdoin or Hamilton or Carleton or any of seven others, we can afford to send her to a school which will credential her to be in a class of Americans who'll risk exposure to tainted catfood almost next to last, and so would you.

I'm still distraught with the certainty I'm leaving my daughter a world shittier than my parents left me, but I fear I've underestimated with my puny hive-mind how many zeroes are multiplying zeroes in cascades of kazillions of totalitarian square-root signs, that my house may be repossessed by square root even after I've paid it off, that my timeline of catfoodery is too optimistic by at least one generation.

REMEMBER! - I've moved HERE. Please adjust your bookmarks and blogrolls and readers. I understand it's a pain in the ass, so many thanks!

Links - I know I promised links here for a week, but I discovered/remembered that some blogs list other blogs linking to a particular post and was mortified (as much as I can be mortified) to see both the typepad and blooger links, and while I thought I was an unabashable blogwhore, apparently there is a threshold beyond which is abashedness.

So, links, poem, music are HERE. Thanks.

Consider the Abundance of Such Resource as Illuminates the Glow-Blue Bodies and Gold-Skeined Wings of Flies Swarming the Dumped Guts of a Natural Slaughter

I hadn't given Axelrod's statement that he was "hoping that with more seats, the Republicans will feel a greater sense of responsibility to work with us to solve some of these problems," much thought, dismissing it as his obamalamely attempt to establish a meme for the 2012 elections, which is the only election that matters to Obamaxelrod, don't you know.

But think why Obamaxelrod lift the moratorium of deepwater oil drilling yesterday when they didn't have to until after the election, have a knee to the nuts, eco-progressives, and you know what? Axelrod may be right: having followed corporate mandate and disabused America's Left that America will ever move Left again, corporate will rein in the hyenas (though not as easily as they think they can) post-election. Obama has done his job. There is a center-right model of middle-American consumer-citizens corporate likes; corporate thinks there's 20 more years of coal in that middle-American center-right consumer-citizen, needs to keep you and me breathing until we motherfuckers can be top-mined for scrap.

REMEMBER! - I've moved HERE. Please adjust your bookmarks and blogrolls and readers. I understand it's a pain in the ass, so many thanks!

 

• Will post links here for the next week or two - though not updated links through the day, which will only appear at THE NEW PLACE.
• Enemies list.
• Sweet denial.
• NEW PLACE.
• Malaise, with no end in sight. 
• Clusterfuck nation.
• NEW PLACE.
• Punch a strawman.
• The cop.
• NEW PLACE.
• Ruth Marcus isn't as mendacious as the other YFWP columnists, but she is the stupidest.
• The education of Pam Geller. 
• Paladino: I'm very sorry I called you the disgusting fudge-packers and carpet-munchers you are.
• Have more catnip: Every November, all five of The Dobbs Group’s show-jumping horses must be transported from their summer stables in Vermont to their winter stables in Wellington, Florida. The workers are transported to the tropics too, returning to New England with the horses in April. They ride in trucks each way alongside their expensive equestrian charges, tending to the horses’ needs throughout the thirty-two-hour journey. Their return to Vermont marks the start of a new annual circuit of horse shows—an exhausting schedule during the spring, summer and fall months that entails constant travel between their Vermont base and horse shows around the country. At these shows, it is not unusual for the grooms who care for Dobbs’s horses to rise in the middle of the night or in the predawn hours to clean, brush and prepare the horses for a training session or early morning competition. For years, undocumented immigrants from Mexico have been relied upon to meet these labor demands.
• NEW PLACE.
• State of the Kitty Address. 
• Rhee!
• NEW PLACE.
• Yesterday's abandonment of a Euro Cup Qualifier in Genoa between Italy and Serbia because of Serbian hooligans reminded me of when Elric (whose father is a Serbian) was stationed in Belgrade within the past two years and was strongly recommended to stay away from any bar where Serbian soccer fans drank much less attend matches. Elric, send me the links from your archives, please.
• NEW PLACE.
• Booker.
• Funny old Booker. I have the Jacobson on my desk. It keeps Hey Sailoring me, and I pick it up and then put it down. It's not so much I don't want to read it, it's that other books keep butting in front of the line.
• NEW PLACE.
• Hejinian.
• On C, part four.
• Who cares if you read?
• NEW PLACE.
• Bookshelves.
• Bad music, worse politics.
• Try it before you buy it.

Poems and birthday songs are at THE NEW PLACE.

Lucky for Us They Don't Know What They're Doing, These Puny Anonymous Creatures of Dark and Damp Who Eat Simply to Live, with No More Sense of Mission Than Nature Feels in Providing for Our Survival

Alright, I think I've successfully blogrolled everyone at THE NEW PLACE who is still alive and who was on the blogroll at the this old place. If you don't see yourself at THE NEW PLACE in the right-hand column under BECAUSE you're in the left-hand column BECAUSE because it makes things easier from a me organizational point-of-view. If you are on the old blogrolls but don't see yourself on the blogrolls at THE NEW PLACE, please send me an email (blckdgrd ampersand gmail dot com), or if you are being Kind to me and I'm not reciprocating, and/or you want to Hey Sailor me, send an email too.

I realize that moving to THE NEW PLACE at a time when I'm getting more hits than ever smacks of self-destructive stupidity, but getting angry at motherfucking typepad was motherfucking unfun and I can find unfun by the motherfucking bucketful without motherfucking typepad's help, and the look there is better and Ba'al bless the updating blogrolls, they're both boon to you bloggers I pimp and a lazy man's dream.

I recognize the inconvenience. Sincere and flattered thanks to friends who've already rewired their bumps to THE NEW PLACE, advance thanks to everyone who will move their bumps and eyes to THE NEW PLACE too.

Links and music will be posted here for at least another week (though not updates and link updates in posts), though no promises.

UPDATE! Though to be a pest, if you want to hear the new Fever Ray cover of Gabriel's Mercy Street that I literally just heard for the first time, go here.

• The law is an ass... armed with rockets.
• Imperial collapse. What if Obama is was a progressive and this is the honest best he could do?
• Daily obamapostasy.
• Obama's achievement.
• Yup.
• Streaking.
• Pig self-righteously (and correctly) calls hypocrisy on Democrats. 
• Bought and sold. 
• Cult indoctrination.
• And no one's mind was changed.
• Not Elric, not Ehrlich, Elrich.
• More on Carla Cohen once, twice. 
• Go on, get a United shirt tattoo.
• Debating MFAs.
• On C, part three.
• Left of the dial.
• Bohemian Rhapsody flow-chart. 
• Wahwah. Just spend the long weekend with All Things Must Pass.
• Awaiting on you all.
• What a great album. Let it roll.

But not the poem, because motherfucking typepad fucks up the line-breaks every goddamn time, and I don't need the arrgh to deal with it. The poem from which the post's title is taken is at THE NEW PLACE.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

Volitionless, from Different Heights, and in the One Direction

Well, here's yesterday's obamapostasy. Today's Columbus Day, so it might not be until tomorrow Obama scolds me for my shallow fealty and selfishness, my blindness at his obamawesomeness, my traitorously irresponsible threats to not vote this cycle.

Speaking of threats: It's happening (go on, look), but it's still in the very early exploratory stage. I haven't yet discovered all the ways blooger sucks, but tell me, old bloogers, is there a way to set links so they open in a new window? That's one thing typepad does that, as far as I can tell, blooger doesn't. That's not a deal-breaker, and I love the self-updating blogrolls (and if I move I'll be pinging some of you less - though reading new content, of course - because I've been using your self-updating blogrolls as a shortcut) (though the work and aargh of creating those blogrolls, both as a conscientious effort of Kind and as pain-in-the-ass time-wise is both mighty incentive and, subsequently, mighty disincentive). I like I can make photos and youtubes bigger and need break long lines in poems less often. I love that if I can find the poem I'm looking for online (so I don't have to type it) it formats in blooger with none of the grief formatting in typepad causes. I dig the url.

I haven't written about tablets here in a while which by no means means I've stopped writing about tablets. I'm a rube for a new tablet, as if it will make better what I scribble in it. I don't think I've ever gone as long between reformating BLCKDGRD's appearance since I switched to this template three years at least ago. Typepad doesn't allow archiving in an old formats when switching to a new format - if I widened the middle column every Fleabus photo fit for the old format will be too small, line breaks in poems will be fucked. I worry about shit like this. But mostly I'm bored and I have a new tablet.

I'll will cross-post both places for at least a couple of months, but if you're inclined to be Kind, those of you who've blogrolled me, bookmarked me, subscribed to me, I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you in advance for your taking the trouble to move with me.

• Radical pessimist's view of the next ten years.
• See, here's the thing: if Obama had been doing this a year ago instead of a month before an election it wouldn't look like a bullshit election pose.
• Whores, sluts, cunts, bitches.
• I knew this would produce this would produce this.
• Glossy Karl.
• The man with no name.
• Krugman's obamapostasy, stage one.
• Rahmoron.
• I am shocked to learn that Politico has a political agenda.
• What's the difference between Linda McMahon and Larry Flint?
• How to think about Lou Dobbs.
• ICC from the sky.
• Good spot for a soccer stadium.
• I have never been able to finish a Peter Carey novel, though I stopped trying long ago.
• On poetry anthologies. I love American Hybrid.
• Sad news. Good bookstore.
• Coetzee reviews latest Roth.
• What you can buy me for Giftmas.
• What's wrong with this picture?
• Nothing to get pissy about.
• Bad moon rising.

PORCELAIN

Carl Phillips

As when a long forgetfulness lifts suddenly, and what
we'd forgotten—as we look at it squarely, then again
refuse to look—is our own
                                            inconsequence, yes, it was
mostly like that, sex as both an act of defacement and—
as if the two were the same thing—votive offering,
insofar as the leaves
                                     also were a kind of offering, or could
at least be said to be, as they kept falling the way leaves
do: volitionless, from different heights, and in the one direction.

Elric moved his stuff out of our basement yesterday and I found three CD racks I hadn't seen the four years and remembered a bunch of bands I hadn't thought of in a while, like this one:

Born Seventy Years Ago Today

If I can't remember the last time I played any Beatle albums except for side one of Yellow Submarine

(though to be honest, it's George's great two songs that bring me back over and over) and side four of the White Album

it's because I can retrieve any Beatle's song I want to hear in my head upon command. Still, I remember like it was a minute ago where I was and who I was with and what it felt like when I heard John Lennon was shot.

Beatles were #2 in KEXP's silly-ass voter countdown during Fall Drive of the best ever; here's the top 30:

• 1 - Radiohead
• 2 - Beatles
• 3 - Clash
• 4 - Pixies
• 5 - Dylan
• 6 - Zeppelin
• 7 - Arcade Fire
• 8 - Bowie
• 9 - Nirvana
• 10 - Smiths
• 11 - Johnny Cash
• 12 - Bob Marley
• 13 - Cure
• 14 - Stones
• 15 - Wilco
• 16 - Neil Young
• 17 - REM
• 18 - U2
• 19 - Modest Mouse
• 20 - Pink Floyd
• 21 - Elliott Smith
• 22 - Pearl Jam
• 23 - Hendrix
• 24 - Beck
• 25 - Talking Heads
• 26 - Tom Waits
• 27 - Joy Division
• 28 - Velvet Walmart Employees
• 29 - Beastie Boys
• 30 - White Stripes

Pere Ubu didn't make it and Arcade Fucking Fire wasn't top three, so as always I hope for GAH! and end up served meh, and truly, there's nothing surprising or particularly outrageous beyond the list's utter predictability. I'm curious what the core demographic of KEXP listeners is; I'm sure it's older and wealthier than even I'd guess, but I mentioned this earlier this week: the college kids I know, who I hear talk, the music they play in the coffeehouses they run, are listening to classic rock, classic pop, and that Top 30? is overwhelmingly your grandfather's Top 30, it's... draw your own conclusions why...

And Arcade Fire, since a few of you have asked: it's not that I hate their music (I don't like their music, but hate is far too strong a term), I don't get why their music gets the adoration thrown its way. I never got Nirvana either in exactly the same proportion. I assume there's a generational disconnect, that I didn't (and couldn't) know what Nirvana meant to those of its age, that I can't (and don't) understand what Arcade Fire means to fucking hipsters those of its age, and that's probably true but this too: it's not so much Nirvana and Arcade Fire I dislike as the hundreds of shitty bands that Nirvana and Arcade Fire's success bred. It's Hemingway and Raymond Carver in pop music: Nirvana's, Arcade Fire's goodness is dwarfed by the oceams of suckitude their goodness spawned.

Anyway:

I think that theory also explains a great deal of the virtiolic hate some have towards the Beatles, too.

As Long as the Fish Are Female Saleswomen in Tropical Fish Stores Are Allowed to Go Topless

So I log onto motherfucking typepad this morning and there's a new editing platform and it sucks unto blow and blows unto suck. Compare the space between the above Fleabus photo and the text of this post with the space between the Fleabus photo and text in this post. An eighth of an inch of motherfucking aargh, and there's no fucking fixing it.

Motherfucking typepad has always sucked, dropping colors, dropping fonts, dropping links, dropping margins, dropping formatting, eating text, eating posts, and now it sucks more with a motherfucking upgraded editor? I'm paying $150 a year for this motherfucking suck? Fuckity, I can get all the motherfucking suck I want in this world for free (though if we want the 5% discount on next year's United season tickets we need to get it in by November, though I'm buying that motherfucking suck one way or the other).

Well, this is the last year I'm paying motherfucking typepad for the suck unless it's not. If I migrate I'll migrate slowly (I have eleven months of paid-for suck remaining), and once I figure out and format Blooger (which I'm told is still suckful though far less suckful than when it pissed me off in 2006, plus it has those cool self-updating blogrolls) or Wordpress, I'll cross-post both here and there for the first couple of months as I hassle you to update your bookmarks and blogrolls, though, knowing me, I'll probably spare you and me and just stay here and pay for and eat and spit my aargh for my daily aargh.

• Notice how the above is properly spaced from the text but is slightly off-center. Motherfucking typepad allows me one or the other. Oh, and they have no live-chat or phone help.
• Your country: operating procedures.
• Alternatives?
• World's Shittiest Human wetfarts, giggles.
• This guy is mighty shitty himself. (h/t)
• Spending priorities.
• On the Nobel in medicine.
• Shocking sensible.
• Duke winces! 
• Wordpress v Blooger? Thoughts?
• Purple Line, O'Malley, Ehrlich.
• Fuck Old Angler's Inn, which I've driven by literally hundreds, if not thousands of times, and never eaten once.
• Dredging Needwood.
• BLCKDGRD translated into Greek by someone in Athens googling images of eformeday eoplepay.
• You do know blogging is a metaphor for everything, yes?
• I never got the fuss over Ted Hughes' poetry.
• Pigs are pleased Vargas Llosa won Nobel.
• Albini v Sonic Youth, con't.
• Red Arc/Blue Veil.

LAWLESS PANTOUM

Denise Duhamel

Men are legally allowed to have sex with animals,
as long as the animals are female.
Having sexual relations with a male animal
is taboo and punishable by death.

As long as the fish are female
saleswomen in tropical fish stores are allowed to go topless.
Adultery is punishable by death
as long as the betrayed woman uses her bare hands to kill 
    her husband.

Saleswomen in tropical fish stores are allowed to go topless,
but the gynecologist must only look at a woman’s genitals 
    in a mirror.
The woman uses her bare hands to kill her husband,
then his dead genitals must be covered with a brick.   

The gynecologist must only look at a woman’s genitals 
    in a mirror
and never look at the genitals of a corpse—
these genitals must be covered with a brick.
The penalty for masturbation is decapitation.

A look at the genitals of a corpse
will confirm that not much happens in that region after death.
The penalty for masturbation is decapitation.
It is illegal to have sex with a mother and her daughter at 
    the same time.

To confirm what happens during sex,
a woman’s mother must be in the room to witness her daughter’s 
    deflowering,
though it is illegal to have sex with a mother and her daughter 
    at the same time.
It is legal to sell condoms from vending machines as long as

a woman’s mother is in the room to witness her daughter’s 
    deflowering.
Men are legally allowed to have sex with animals—
why it’s even legal to sell condoms from vending machines, 
    as long as
everyone’s having sexual relations with a male animal.

The number 41 greatest music act according to KEXP's silly-ass fund-drive gimmick list happens to have made another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

He Seems Torn Between Tearing Out a Sinner's Bowels and Bestowing Eyeballs on the Eyeball-Less

Hah! Stereolab was #164 Kate Bush was #165 and Peter Gabriel was #166 in KEXP's stupid-ass voter countdown of the "greatest artists of all time" as a gimmick for their Fall 2010 Drive (which, fuck it, give to), and I had nothing to do with it, I didn't vote! Hah! The odds they'd be in a row! (I'll post the list if and when KEXP posts it after the countdown, but for now, if you don't believe me, you'll have to go to their playlist and scroll through days and hours....)

As I type this they're down to #128 and still no Peru Ubu. To spare myself an emotional aneurysm when Arcade Fucking Fire is either one, two or three and Pere Ubu doesn't make the list:

Busy, have a few links....

• damp work.
• How to fight.
• Daily obamapostasy.
• Double-daily obamapostasy.
• I'm going to sulk, fucker.
• UPDATE! How bad for the fucker?
• UPDATE! On the above.
• Fire department, take one, take two.
• Obamafucker campaigns for Fucker O'Malley.
• Doublefucker Ehrlich.
• First sentence of a Frederick Post article on the president of the Frederick County Maryland Islamic Society: Counter to stereotype, Mudusar Raza, president of the Islamic Society of Frederick, speaks perfect English. Devious bastard.
• UPDATE! For teachers, especially my loved ones.
• Vargas Llosa wins Nobel. I've read Conversation in the Cathedral and Feast of the Goat and War of the End of the World, all for classes, and they didn't change my world but OK, no complaints.
• Stupid shit that makes him hate.
• Another mention of Coetzee's Dostoyevsky.
• UPDATE! MOE TUCKER, TEA-PARTIER!?! Bwahahaha! Worlds tilt! (As long as it's not Cale in front of that microphone my paradigms are fine, yo.)
• It's not just busy, but Blegsylvania seems to be dying, Kind is still wonderful Kind but unKind wins too often, I'm in conversations of sorts with three friends who've bouts of blogangst, and I'm fighting off another case of bleggalgazing. Hope this cures it. Doubt it.

AUTONOMIANISM,

my ass!
Breaking the law of man - say, reasonable sanctions
against murder - is OK
as long a God approves it?
Problem is, which means: a man
interprets God, unpacks God's book,
a man insists
other men accept this interpretation.
This happens because
God's expository writing lacks lucidity
and He or His scribes often write sloppily.
He seems torn between tearing
out a sinner's bowels
and bestowing eyeballs
on the eyeball-less. We all know His job
is irksome, ceaseless, everybody knows
His subjects are unprincipled imbeciles,
all of His subjects this way,
all be the ones
who say God says
they are not.

        - Thomas Lux

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:

What To Do with a 102 Degree Fever

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