BLCKDGRD

My Face Had Been Sliced Off and Lay There on the Ground Like a Washcloth With My Testicles and Penis Next to It

Every post is bleggalgazing about my motives for shetty blegging. I want to be deified and inconsequential. I obsess about collegiality and want to be invisible. I'm a fucking mess, but for all my addiction to pings I'll not be applying for this:

In September, The Post will introduce a new reader-driven blog for fans, by fans, focused solely on Washington sports. To fill out our roster of fan bloggers, we're looking for one of our best, most diehard D.C. United fans to weigh in on whatever's happening in the world of United. While we'll ask all bloggers to occasionally weigh in on all Washington's pro teams, we're particularly interested in having an established D.C. United voice as part of the project.

Meantime, Roger Clemons, who I bet you any number of pints believes Obama is a Muslim, will be a shiny example that the rich and gifted don't get away with lying under oath to Congress in America, right, Mr Blankfein?

• Of course Glenn Beck is an asshole - it's just as "inappropriate" for him to hold his Cracker March on August 28 at the Lincoln Memorial as it is for a Muslim community center to be built two blocks from Ground Zero - but he's well within his "rights."
• World's Shittiest Human farts, giggles.
• UPDATE! I confess I'm surprised YFWP allows Sargent to consistently call The World's Shittiest Human on his bullshit.
• Jeffrey Goldberg wants to be the next World's Shittiest Human once the World's Shittiest Human does the world a favor and fucking dies.
• Obamapologist!
• Austerity works if.....
• Not going Galt.
• Hell is other producers.
• Private property is cool if you're Amish.
• Ten shameless Right-Wing tributes to Ayn Rand.
• I'm voting Teaparty!
• Schlock and yawn.
• UPDATE! Ethan calls bullshit on pwoggly wankery (and IOZ follows up).
• unpanoramanic.
• America is..... VOTE!
• BLCKDGRD translated into Dutch.
• UPDATE! BLCKDGRD translated into German. "Kevin Fucking Payne" in German? "Kevin Fucking Payne."
• How are the ferals doing?

• Excellently, thanks.
• UPDATE! Execute the motherfuckers.
• I'm tired of being accosted by fireman every time I go to Safeway to sign their petition, though I did sign once.
• UPDATE! Mission accomplished! I actually didn't sign the petition but didn't feel like typing out why, knowing someone else would, in angry and profane detail, if baited.
• Maryland crackers angry at Ehrlich?
• Note to self: if robbing the same place twice in three days, cover up my tattoos.
• Poetry? There's an app for that.
• RIP Bernard Knox.
• Frog feels about The National the way I feel about Elbow.
• Gah! Why the fuck is Fleet Foxes on my radio? SUCK!
• The first item is incredibly bad news, the last item incredibly sad news.
• RIP Michael Been of The Call.

AMERICAN

Frederick Seidel

My face had been sliced off
And lay there on the ground like a washcloth
With my testicles and penis
Next to it.

The car had Wyoming plates.
I'd been to Colorado but not Wyoming,
Which I gather is beautiful.
The other one I hadn't seen was Utah.

Someone had carefully cut under it and lifted it off,
I suppose to obliterate the identity,
Except had left it out in the open.
It looked like a latex glove but also someone's face.

She told me she had always loved me.
I was the happy ending of a fairy tale.
She would recognize my penis anywhere,
Even on the ground.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

The Miracle Beast Deserved Such Ritual that to Care for Him Properly Meant Ruin

It's not direct cause yet but it is a contributing factor that within months after SCOTUS thumbed-up corporate campaign spending the Republicans are winning on wetback-trapping and Muslim-baiting. I bet in-house DNC polls project utter disaster this November and the next one and the next one. I bet Howard Fucking Dean looks at the success of the current Republican messaging campaign and realizes the Republicans have only begun tapping into the spigot of unlimited corporate money (and unlimited American crackerosity to be exploited) and Dean decided to try and save his shitty party's ass at the price of its sorry and soon obsolete ass.

My de-roobing required me admit Democrats are far bigger, wider, deeper pussies, cowards, and whores than I thought them when I was giving them time, money, and votes, so it is with amused fascination rather than impotent fury that I watch them stare at their extinction as a viable alternative mafia to the Republicans in a terminally ill empire and try to out-oink, or at least keep oinking-pace with, the oinkers.

• Public opinion does not exist.
• UPDATE! Howard Fucking Dean responds to the reaction to his being a cynical and cowardly motherfucker, the fucker.
• While I agree with the sentiment, I doubt America is going to grow the f*ck up now or ever.
• UPDATE! Teabagger organizing versus Left organizing.
• Satisfaction.
• UPDATE! Never.
• David Broder calls Democrats pussies. He's not wrong.
• UPDATE! Yay for Franken.
• It's the economy, stupid! (And who the hell uses Fish Called Wanda allusions anyway?)
• UPDATE! Part Tinker Bell, part predator drone.
• Tables, turned (right link this time).
• Faggot: A Reevaluation.
• This article, on rich fuckers spending six figures on fish aquariums for their condos, is the second lead story on the NYT webpage as I type this.
• Glenmont!
• Markson: A Primer. I reread

• after Markson's death earlier this year, which I deeply admired without particularly liking, the history of my relationship with Markson.
• Weird-word quiz.
• On Jack Gilbert.
• A Kermode obit.
• Melodia AM.

IN DISPRAISE OF POETRY

Jack Gilbert

When the King of Siam disliked a courtier,
he gave him a beautiful white elephant.
The miracle beast deserved such ritual
that to care for him properly meant ruin.
Yet to care for him improperly was worse.
It appears the gift could not be refused.

Starts Again Always in Henry’s Ears the Little Cough Somewhere, an Odour, a Chime

Now it's just rained five inches in three hours. Weirdest weather year of my life. Weirdest work year of my life. Weirdest married year of my life. Weirdest year as a father of my life. Weirdest soccer year of my life. Weirdest cat year of my life. Weirdest reading year of my life. Weirdest listening year of my life. Weirdest political year of my life. 

Weirdest year of my life. Little of it bad, most of it good, some of it wonderful, all of it weird. There are certain sounds I keep finding in the poetry I'm reading, in my CD players.

• Your daily obamapostasy.
• UPDATE! Howard Fucking Dean.  More tomorrow, or not.
• Mosque Shmosque. Almost. The establishment sees mega-profits - think of the savings if the US can stop pretending it gives a flying fuck about bringing potable water and sewage plants to the motherfucking Muslims, they're living on top of our oil and that's their fucking infidel desserts, for instance -but the establishment damn right fears the rage of crackerstanis - they don't fear you, they don't fear me - fears them so much they gorge the crackers on the meat that makes them more dangerously cracker. (You and me are meat, but more appetizer than meal.)
• I knew someone would obliterate Beinart's self-serving bullshit, saving me from having to do it.
• Eden is a place we leave.
• UPDATE! Liberalism, power, and the state.
• It's astonishing how much it pisses off crackers that niggers can call each other niggers but crackers can't.
• Your future cracker propagandists.
• Good bigotry is a product of good leadership.
• Against Christ (I).
• UPDATE! Two-legged dog.
• The Web is Dead:

• But you knew that, whether you're Kind or unKind.
• UPDATE! Speaking of detritus.
• United's Number 16! But only because there's no 17.
• UPDATE! Hey, I know public school teachers.
• QWERTY and you.
• Comment monster (II) and (III).
• Subjects for poetry.
• RIP, Frank Kermode.
• Mercury 2010 nominees.

DREAM SONG 29

John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart   

só heavy, if he had a hundred years

& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time   

Henry could not make good.

Starts again always in Henry’s ears

the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind   

like a grave Sienese face a thousand years

would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,   

with open eyes, he attends, blind.

All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;   

thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,

end anyone and hacks her body up

and hide the pieces, where they may be found.

He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.   

Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

The Plastic Snake Offers

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming re: Obama's mosque announcement - What if Obama suddenly realized all he has left is feeding the Left, so clusterfuckedly he's clusterfucked The Clusterfuck he's no rump left but the Left?

Although not unexpected, the news flow is about to take a more negative tone starting with the existing home sales report on August 23rd. We've been discussing this for some time ... and I'd like to highlight just a few pieces of forthcoming data:

• The existing home sales report will show that sales collapsed in July (this is showing up in all the regional reports).
• The existing home months-of-supply will jump to double digits.
• House prices are probably falling again, although this might not show up in the repeat sales indexes until September or October (this data is released with a lag).
• On August 27th, the second estimate of Q2 GDP will be released. This will probably show a significant downward revision from the preliminary estimate of 2.4% annualized growth. The downward revision is due to lower construction spending than the BEA initially estimated, less contribution from inventory adjustments, and the June surge in exports.
• The unemployment rate will probably start ticking up again soon (or the participation rate will fall further).

Don't call me stupid (the first movie I've watched in a year), but I say the gift-offering (after the bitchslapping) to the hopelessly rump Left was nothing more or less than Obama's desperate rattling of the traditional benwaballs, chiming to lube our loyalties and prejudices.

Then again, I thought Aristotle was Belgian.

• Obama was right, dammit.
• Karl Rove calls you a pussy.
• Leadership and the other thing.
• War pimps.
• Grand farce.
• Economy cooking.
• Wandering outside the gate.
• The Walrus is worried about civility.
• Why is Limbaugh the only one called a hypocrite?
• This time Owen is in Belgium.
• BLCKDGRD translated into (I think) Arabic.
• On the other hand, Moreno is fat, washed-up, and ungrateful United gave him a contract for this season.
• Twenty best kits of 2010/2011?
• The uniform the local helmetball team should wear at home.
• DC domes.
• Crisis in Georgetown!
• Crisis at Needwood!
• The Blog of Intellectual Gimmicks. (h/t)
• The Categorical Imperative of Blogging.
• Silliman, the comment controversy, general bleggalgazing.
• UPDATE! Speaking of Silliman, Articulating a Poetics.
• More bleggalgazing.
• Tom McCarthy interview.
• The Franzen Cover and a brief history of Time.
• Kakutani likes the new Franzen, calls it "galvanic." Shoot me. O! do note the cheap shot at Pynchon and DeLillo.
• UPDATE! On Kakutani.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• UPDATE! Dead sound.
• Closedown.
• UPDATE! What is music for?

DEFINITELY

Mary Jo Bang

What is desire
But the hard wire argument given
To the mind's unstoppable mouth.

Inside the braincase, it's I
Want that fills every blank. And then the hand
Reaches for the pleasure

The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes,
It will all be fine in some future soon.
Definitely. I've conjured a body

In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it.
Here memory makes you
Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.

That beautiful face.
That tragic beautiful mind.
That mind's ravenous mouth

That told you, This isn't poison
At all but just what the machine needs. And then,
The mouth closes on its hunger.

The heart stops.

Have I even mentioned I love Archers of Loaf?

Obamagasm?

No no no, but credit where due:

President Obama delivered a strong defense on Friday night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in Manhattan, using a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan to proclaim that "as a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country" . . . .

"I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground," the president said in remarks prepared for the annual White House iftar, the sunset meal breaking the day’s fast.

But, he continued: "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are" . . . .

I didn't think Obama had it in him. Every Democrat up for reelection is cursing Obama this morning. He may have just guaranteed a Republican majority in the House, dramatically reduced the Democratic majority in the Senate.

I'm sure he's his cynical reasons that if I wasn't on a bet I'd trouble to elaborate, but for today it's enough that pigs' heads are exploding because for at least one Friday evening Obama was .06% less-shitty than his normal shittiness.

• America enters a new time.
• The limits to Žižek.
• Gah!
• Shorter Ross Douthat.
• David Broder

 

• has a new love.
• Dog ftw.
• Tolls as growth boundaries?
• It has to be at least thirty years since I've been....
• I've not got China Miéville, but I know some of you do.
• New Hilary Mantel short-story!
• Goin' against your mind.
• Virginia Reel Around the Fountain.
• Virginia Plain.

YES AND NO

Laura Riding

Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet--
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas--

Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.

Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?

Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.

Aoodom5fse:

Shall We Seem to Disappear Until the Dogs Stop Barking?

I call a moratorium on maudlin moroseness on this shotty blag from post-this-post through this Monday morning midnight, though I've only coercive power over me, which makes me maudlin in the coming and morose in the going.

I watch little new TV beyond soccer and The Soup, I only watch TV when I'm traveling with my family and in a hotel room at night, and I'm always shocked at the start of each vacation at how much nastier Humiliation-TV gets in each six month gap between trips.

Where I'm stupid re: Obama and the .06% Less-Shitty Theory is that I always forget how much we live in a mob democracy as designed and implemented by our elite. People I love and adore giggle like Caligula at some fame-whore's ritualistic humiliation. Nobodies compete to be fame-whores, fame-whores compete for the chance to be humiliated in exchange for a few minutes of air-time on TV. The media is tuned to 24-7 shame and humiliation by people who have no shame, who shamelessly manipulate shame and humiliation for shamefully successful crowd control.

Obamamerica: The Reality Show! Can I resist playing from now until Monday? Who knows what United will do Saturday night to piss me off for Sunday morning's recap. (UPDATE! Fuck Kevin Payne.)

Anyway, pint bets. I'm an honest man, I think you an honest reader: Can I go through Sunday August 15, 2010, 23:59:59 EST without posting an typically overheated morose post?

I say no, but for Caligula giggles I'll bet yes.

• Timebends.
• How propagandists function.
• UPDATE! The answer is NO. (And you can scratch James Fallows off as being the only semi-honorable fuckwit on the Atlantic's page of blogsuck.)
• UPDATE! On Wikileaks side.
• He is, without peer, The World's Shittiest Human.
• UPDATE! On TWSH.
• He'll be putting in a call to Fred Hiatt complaining that Fred but this Liberal turd next to TWSH on the online op-ed page.
• UPDATE! If Liberal media bias truly existed.
• Something I never thought I'd type: Good for Fred Hiatt.
• UPDATE! Whew! Still safe to hate YFWP.
• Back to Kansas.
• UPDATE! Exploring complexity once, twice, three times.
• We are not serious.
• UPDATE! The world is scary.
• Search terms.
• UPDATE! Someone else's fault.
• I had no idea this person was still on the radio.
• UPDATE! Homicide on K Street.
• WTF is wrong with people? Execute this motherfucker.
• Metro!
• Rockville's hidden charms?
• BLCKDGRD translated into Portuguese (from Brazil).
• Stuck in the middle(brow).
• UPDATE! More on the above.
• UPDATE! Underrated writers? Anthony Hecht? YES! Milan Kundera? Fuck to the fuckityfuck NO!
• Heh! Each one of you send that link to Rick Lazio's office, huffing in outrage, and we'll see how long before a pig calls for the banning of Béla Bartók on American soil.

• Serendipitous I read Pliable's link today while reading a novel with a protagonist who pays a pianist two floors below him to play at his command 24-7, deliberately badly at first but after fake practicing made perfect (though Rachmaninoff, but), yes?

• New Superchunk song!
• I confess I don't get the fuss over Elliott Smith, but I know some of you do.
• Birthday DJing.
• UPDATE! The DJ is telling me Bossanova (w/aoodom5fse Dig for Fire) was released twenty years ago today, which is not to be confused w/aoodom5fse Digging in the Dirt.
• I dig everything.
• Feargal Sharkey is 52 today! Quick, real name, yes or no?
• What Arcade Fire's success says about music. What I've heard of the new one doesn't suck as much as the last one, which isn't to say it doesn't suck.

CURE OF IGNORANCE

Laura Riding

The dogs still bark,
and something is not clear.
From ignorance dogs barked always.

How to enlighten them?
There are no dogs now -
They do but bark.

What it not clear is what is clear.
Dogs have the scent,
Yet nothing runs like prey.

Shall we seem to disappear
Until the dogs stop barking?
There is no other way to explain.

Hamilton, or: I Want to Thank Two Citizens from Baldwinsville NY for Giving Me Some Perspective

Hamilton's fine, bigger than Earlham, smaller than Oberlin, as pretty as Kenyon in its own different way - it's on top of hill with a dominating view of the Mohawk Valley - but meh, I'm growing bored with this.

No, it's not my wrestling with complicity (though I'm tired of that too), which I'd be pushing through regardless of these trips and my plans for my daughter's college education - I feel zero guilt for providing my child the education she wants no matter how many Afghan children Obama bombs into freedom tomorrow.

Our student tour guide today said he grew up in Gaithersburg MD.Gaithersburg MD? I blurted. Where? I grew up in Gaithersburg MD. O, wow, he shrugged. I don't live there now. When twenty minutes later another parent asked him what other schools he'd applied to, and he said he really wanted to get into Georgetown but Georgetown turned him down. I didn't blurt, Hey, I've got two degrees from Georgetown.

The admissions officer's speech - Why You Should Choose Hamilton and Why Hamilton Will Only Choose 28% of You - was delivered by someone who physically looked and had all the mannerisms of TV's Frank with none of TV's Frank sense of humor (for all he tried).

After Hamilton we stopped for the night at a hotel west of Syracuse. As I checked in I asked the desk clerk for dining options, and she said there was a list in the room, but the best in the area was just across the field behind the motel, the Quaker Steak and Lube, which now, as I type this, is filled with at least a hundred Harley-Davidson's. The house band, as you can imagine, is covering Skynyrd.

We drove to find the restaurants on the hotel brochure list, not to eat at any of them - Dinosaur BBQ, Outback Steak House, Daniella's Steak House - all in Baldwinsville NY, three miles up the road. We figured there would be something we could all agree upon, but nope - other than two more meat purveyors, there were two seedy pubs and a gruesome looking diner. Oh well.

We'd seen a Pizza Hut just off the interstate coming into town, thought, fuck, walked in, and stood for five minutes as the waitress argued with her boyfriend while wiping down tables. She finally sat us, but both Planet and I jumped up as she'd washed down the seats too. What's wrong, she said. The seats are wet, Planet said. What, you want me to dry them too, the waitress asked. No, I said, we'll just wait a minute for them to dry while we look at the menu. What, you want me to dry them too, cause I'm real busy, said the waitress. No, thanks, I said. We left. Fuck you, said the waitress.

We walked across the lot to the grocery store. It had a service deli with a big sign that said Deli/Subs. I asked the guy behind the counter, who was wiping down the sandwich-making area as if readying for closing, Are you still making subs? He said, I've only got two sub rolls left. I asked, Is that a yes or a no? I've only got two sub rolls left. So that's a no, I said, and then the  deli manager hurried over and said, Of course we're still making subs, and the guy said, But those two sub rolls are mine. I said, Thanks, that's OK, and when the manager turned her back he gave me the finger.

I don't tell this story for any point other than we're all miserable fucking bastards. The fuck-waitress and fuck-meat slicer making $9.50 an hour didn't know I'm a middle-upper-middle class elitist bastard from the boutiques of Moco on a trip to visit top-tier boutique liberal colleges - they'd have been just as shitty to anybody. Maybe we've always been miserable fucking bastards, but we're more miserable, more fucking, more bastards than at any other point in my lifetime.

Everybody I know (including and especially me) - in real life, in Blegsylvania, those who find me worthy, those who don't - are angrier, most miserable and nastier around the edges in search of petty little fits of empty triumph. What sucks about the clusterfuck isn't its apocalyptic ZOMG! but its leaching of common decency as it slowly reveals a pathetic and base commonality it pisses us off to acknowledge.

Stuff below the fold. (Updates)

Practice Losing Farther

Who punked whom, Obama or McCrystal, is today's media sherbet.

Maybe Obama punked McCrystal, but what a fucking slinky Obamalame is, chucking bones into the news vacuum hoping to win today's Gallop.

Absolutely McCrystal punked Obama. He gets out of Dodge while the getting is good while making himself a hero (with all the money that will come of it) to Crackerstanis. How soon until a major pigblog floats McCrystal 2012!

Who the fuck cares? Deck chairs, Titanic. What's important is this: fucking Americans, who until 11:50 AM 6/23/10 didn't give a fuck of a flying fuck about soccer, are going to fuck it up for me so fucking thoroughly that by Saturday I'll not be distraught if fucking Ghana wins.

UPDATE! The true McCrystal scandal.

UPDATE! I've just been invited to a Saturday viewing party by someone at work who two weeks ago chided me for wasting my time watching soccer. Bwrtz.

• Murder with malice aforethought.
• Five questions.
• A quick reminder about revolutions.
• On the Marxist theory of money.
• The bloody obviousness of most good predictions.
• We're not worthy of Obama.
• UPDATE! The upcoming coup.
• Israel might kill you.
• Crapman!
• UPDATE! *!wOOt!*

• MOCO priorities. Why not increase the property taxes on fucking McMansionists who send their fucking spawn to fucking Bullis?
• MOCO panhandlers. Every stoplight on Rockville Pike has a beggar. Some will take the apple I offer, others will tell me to shove that apple up my ass.
• Wheaton!
• Wheaton!
• Ten worse roads in DC? No Kenilworth Avenue?
• Because the Gulf oil spill can't get to Virginia fast enough.

• Fiction not dead, today.
• Slapping Siegel.
• New precisionist.
• Tom Clark: Eleven poems. (h/t)
• Bring the noise: the theological analog of noise music was atheism.
• UPDATE! Prayer for the paranoid.
• Upper East Side.
• UPDATE! Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• Obscure Sound's Best of May (w/MP3).
• UPDATE! Women who love men who love drugs.

ONE ART

Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant 
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Seb's post reminded me of another one of dozens of my....

There Came a Moment That You Couldn’t Tell. And Then They Clearly Flew Instead of Fell.

Now that my soccer team might not be the shittiest professional soccer team in the world vis a vis salaries v return-on-investment, I've discovered, in my lightening mood, how thoroughly my loyalty to Team Democrat has bottomed.

Gah, I hope Obama doesn't go out and do something encouraging, win a friendly against a disinterested superpower, win a league game against a shitty side via PK in stoppage, win a Cup game in overtime when Andy Najar

lookalike Rahm Emanuel

scores a brilliant goal in overtime, cause I don't want to mainline stoopid twice today.

BWRTZ! All right, they don't look alike, and United is still a crappy soccer team (with tomorrow's Salt Lake game, the last at home before four straight road games, the most important game ever since the last most important game ever until the next most important game ever), but I'm gonna double-down emotionally on a silly ass professional soccer team in a silly ass American professional soccer league to feed my addiction to tribal loyalty in lieu of rejecting one of the tribes that fed me.

• On the spectacle.
• UPDATE! Slander.
• Turkey's to blame, because demonizing Iran isn't enough.
• UPDATE! The World's Shittiest Human writes the column you could exactly predict, complete with this ending paragraph: The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.
• UPDATE! Fuck Democrats, double-fuck Steny Hoyer.
• UPDATE! Just because I've given up hoping Democrats aren't fuckers too doesn't mean I've given up hating motherfucking crackers.
• Another bad penny.
• Crises of consumerism, part three, part four.
• Haha.
• What if....?
• UPDATE! A surrealist program of demands on the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. (h/t)
• Coming to a beach near you!
• UPDATE! A question of priorities.
• Apex of shamelessness? Lots of competition.
• Sponsored by America!
• Against the blood-dimmed tide.
• Visually guestimating.
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post.
• It Out-Herods Herod, Pray You Avoid It.

• Mirant v MOCO, all the way to SCOTUS!
• MCPS pinkslips. Fuckers, why not increase the fucking property taxes on the fucking McMansionists who send their fucking children to fucking Landon?
• Gray and streetcars.
• It's true! GAH!

• Landru-lookalike Rafa leaves Liverpool!
• Altidore has a boo-boo.
• 10 reasons to support NZ at WC10. Ryan Nelsen (C,C, CCC).
• UPDATE! Drogba breaks elbow, out of WC10!
• The evolution of the WC ball.
• UPDATE! Ferdinand hurts knee, out of WC10!
• I spent a lot of time here during the 80s. I was flipping stations in the car a couple of nights ago and came across a Natinals (sic) game and caught myself listening for ten minutes. Don't worry.
• Top Ten in DC sports radio. Beatrice isn't first? Jeebusfuck, I'll be honest with you, I don't eat the curly fries, but I'm told they're very good. But do try the Jamocha shakes.

• Ishiguro defends writers using cliches (and if you read Ishiguro you'd understand how he uses them to create a tone of familiar uncanny). Unfortunately, no mention is made of any new novel in the near future. (h/t)
• I loved Darconville's Cat when I read it twenty years ago, and I bought Laura Warholic when we were in San Francisco two years ago and misplaced it when I got home and forgot about it (and will look for it this weekend), but I'd read Alexander Theroux before I'd read his brother Paul.
• UPDATE! Found it!

• Paris Review has started a bleg.
• I'm thoroughly engrossed in Silliman's Age of Huts. Here's a new poem.
• And here's Silliman's always incredibly generous list of links.
• Proof of three of my opinions.
• Good morning, captain.
• UPDATE! Final solution.
• My kingdom.
• What's it in for (I am hopelessly addicted to this song).
• Jumpers.
• Lost in the plot.
• All downhill from here. I have that CD somewhere, hopefully I find it when looking for Laura Warholic or Laura Warholic when looking for that CD.

BECAUSE YOU ASKED ABOUT THE LINE BETWEEN PROSE AND POETRY

Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow 
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.

Yes again, this one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

I Am Not a Painter, I Am a Poet. Why? I Think I Would Rather Be a Painter, But I Am Not.

It's like knowing I'm getting my wisdow teeth yanked three weeks from tomorrow, when everyone who loves me delights to blurt in a hush, I'm sorry it's going to suck so much, sure hope you don't get dry sockets.

• Mechanisms of power in the Age of Terrorism.
• New American way of war.
• Life in the shadow of death.
• UPDATE! Capitalism.
• If it's Tuesday, it must be Obama.
• The limits of Liberalism.
• Prosopopoeia.
• Apocalyptic.
• Compare and contrast.
• Between Kagan and Savage.
• Thomas Sowell, moron.
• Obamapostate.
• Pwoggie fatwa.
• Nothing new under the sun.
• This is but one reason I don't read Reason.
• I lost a couple of regular fuckinghipster readers a while back when I said what pisses me off about bicyclists is that they want all the privileges of the road while refusing to obey basic traffic laws. Red light, motherfucker.
• The strange case of the ghosting footballer. (h/t - and thanks for Kind!)
• BLCKDGRD translated into Thai. Thanks!

• Political drama in Kensington!
• Wheaton!
• New MOCO taxes do not include more taxes on fucking McMansionists who send their self-entitled lacrosse-playing asshole children to Landon.
• Brunswick!
• Maryland to Big Ten?

• I've never quite got James Schuyler, though friends whose opinion I respect rave.
• I've never quite got Geoffrey Hill, though friends whose opinion I respect rave.
• As opposed to Robert Hass, whose new New and Selected is reviewed.
• New C.K. Williams poem.
• Drive that fast!
• LCD Soundsystem's homage to Eno. GREAT ALBUM!
• Heartbeats.
• India.
• Sister pain.
• Mr. Jones.
• September Zappadan in Baltimore.
• Into you like a train.
• Letter to you.
• Run and run.

WHY I AM NOT A PAINTER

Frank O'Hara

I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,

for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is 
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.

But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a 
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever: