BLCKDGRD

It Remains for Us to Come to Terms with Our Commonality and in so Doing Deprive Time of Further Hostages

My biggest problem with reading non-fiction is after ten minutes I'm thinking about the novel I could be reading, like The Sot-Weed Factor, which HOLYFUCK! turned 50! this year. All schtick aside, it is one of the five most influential novels (Giles Goat-boy is in the second ten) on how I read and write and think.

It's about nothing less than the battle between naive but noble innocence and cynical but profitable experience, how naivety is pounded out, then innocence, then nobility, with casual whisks of experience's hand. We are all Ebenezor Cookes with our own Joan Toasts. An astonishingly funny novel.

Which is to say, yesterday I briefly contemplated suggesting a group reading of the Jensen that generated a good comment thread, but after ten minutes of reading the Jensen - I'm experienced enough to at least try the non-fiction book before committing to reading it - I was thinking about Frolic's Oscar Crease, then after finding the Sotweed link thinking of no one but Henry Burlingame.

For forty-five seconds late yesterday afternoon I contemplated suggesting a group reading of The Sot-Weed Factor, but don't worry, mofos, fuck that too.

• Manifesto of the Garden Party.
• The fall of Obama.
• Defending the indefensible.
• Myth of American democracy.
• Deficits of mass destruction.
• On Krugman's pitchforks.
• And the Democrats and Obama will deserve all of it.
• Pigs.
• On religion and goat-fucking.
• On straight, white, fat-assed men.
• Social media and the architecture of anomie.
• Time, history, power.
• What she knows.
• Teacher for a day. I know teachers. Pay them more, hassle them less.
• Letter to a daughter.
• Don't forget who capital gave the weapons to:

• Washington earthquake destruction.
• Kensington! I've told this before, but though my mailing address is Kensington, I don't actually live in incorporated Kensington. The other side of the street I live on has Bethesda as its mailing address, meaning my house, if on the other side of the road, would be worth $25K more than it is on my side.
• Purple Line!
• Tactical mistake.
• FIFA's foul play.

• Tolstoy leaves home.
• Three Bettie Serveert songs.
• I'm still in love with this song.
• Can't exist.
• Nothing is better than this.
• Slide away.
• Woke up down.
• Even though.
• Psychopharmocology.
• Dissolve.
• Honey and the moon.

HOTEL LAUTRÉAMONT

John Ashbery

1.

Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of
    society

working as a team. They didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.

The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

We see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well.”

Working as a team, they didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.

The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds

we see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well,”

or, on a more modern note, in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds

the world, as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passé,

or in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

Not to worry, many hands are making work light again.

The world, as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passé.

In any case the ruling was long overdue.

Not to worry, many hands are making work light again,

so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure.

   2.

In any case, the ruling was long overdue.

The people are beside themselves with rapture
so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure

and the solution problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

The people are beside themselves with rapture

yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria,

and the solution: problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained.

Yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria.

In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.

The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained,

and night like black swansdown settles on the city.

In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.

Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward,

and night like black swansdown settles on the city.

If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

   3.

Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward.

Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside.

If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside,

when all we think of is how much we can carry with us.

And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

When all we think of is how much we can carry with us

small wonder that those at home sit, nervous, by the unlit grate.

All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

It remains for us to come to terms with our commonality.

Small wonder that those at home sit nervous by the unlit grate.

It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.

It remains for us to come to terms with our commonality

and in so doing deprive time of further hostages.

   4.

It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.

Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open

and in so doing deprive time of further hostages,

to end the standoff that history long ago began.

Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open

but it is shrouded, veiled: We must have made some ghastly error.

To end the standoff that history long ago began

must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

But it is shrouded, veiled: We must have made some ghastly error.

You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.

Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?
Only night knows for sure; the secret is safe with her.

You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.
Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of
    society;
only night knows for sure. The secret is safe with her:
The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

Aoodom5fse:

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:

There Existed Poverty Before Intelligence or Accountants

That the fake apocalypse won yesterday - today the streets lined with flag-wavers - feels old tomorrow, the prospect of defending what was just won already enervating, wearying, is why future apocalypses are scheduled at regular intervals.

A friend tells me the question ending paragraph two isn't self-obviously self-scathing enough, those new to the bleg not having time yet to grow sick of the gag, and noted.

I'm aware of and unwilling to disconnect myself from the bennies I'm allotted for the labor I provide, I've four DCU home games in two weeks and then go on vacation to scout more elite colleges for my daughter. My aargh is compromised, yo.

Shit, I'm spider as you, happy not to be squashed while I'm toyed with, hoping to be old and fat when finally squashed.

• Neo-liberal newspeak and digital capitalism in crisis.
• Reading this reminded me to remind you to check Hatherley daily.
• They live.
• On complexity.
• On systems.
• The difference between propaganda and probability.
• Cyber-war! Be scared and obey!
• Declare victory and go home.
• Never leaving.
• The role of the press.
• Obamoron.
• UPDATE! Obamalame.
• Please please please please.
• Media moral standards.
• Diaperman! (See above link if you don't get it.)
• Horrible human beings.
• Don't forget to mock christer-pigs.
• Another reason I'm able to resist buying an iPod.
• Don't forget Shorpy daily too.
• No, fuck you.
• Ehrlichmentum! Heh.
• Glenmont!
• UPDATE! Silver Spring! 3 miles from my house, never go.
• World Cup anti-climax.
• Last link on the game unless something shocking breaks.
• We live in Moronistan.
• Is prose-poetry a slut?
• I've read 29 of them, all the Dickens for school, at least half for school.
• Free Jane Siberry! Sfunny, I'm too lazy to go find it, but I wrote about Siberry fairly recently and have been listening a lot lately.
• Hah! My thought exactly when I saw the NYT article about Gordon Fucking Sumner.
• UPDATE! Torture.
• Airport has some Fever Ray.
• UPDATE! Have I ever mentioned I love Archers of Loaf?
• The way he sings.
• UPDATE! Is this on me?

EMPTY PITCHFORKS

Thomas Lux

    “There was poverty before money.”

There was debtors’ prison before inmates,   

there was hunger prefossil,

there was pain before a nervous system   

to convey it to the brain, there existed

poverty before intelligence, or accountants,   

before narration; there was bankruptcy aswirl

in nowhere, it was palpable
where nothing was palpable, there was repossession

in the gasses forming so many billion ... ;
there was poverty—it had a tongue—in cooling

ash, in marl, and coming loam,
thirst in the few strands of hay slipping

between a pitchfork’s wide tines,   

in the reptile and the first birds,

poverty aloof and no mystery like God   

its maker; there was surely want

in one steamed and sagging onion,   

there was poverty in the shard of bread

sopped in the final drop of gravy
you snatched from your brother’s mouth.

Aoodom5fse:

Sometimes I Wish I Were Still Out on the Back Porch Drinking Jet Fuel with the Boys

The better team won, maybe ushering in an era of horrible football as copy-cat coaching brings real turgidity to the system: Keep away then dive and roll as if your achilles tendon is ruptured when the opponent kicks you in frustration 50 yards from goal for your pussiness, pussies playing to win 1-0.

How effing anticlimactic was that game, the whole effing tournament? I acknowledge I've never separated my politics and my soccer, I concede I'm seething in my politics, am disgusted with my soccer team (what...? Brankoball?), so watching a game so cynical, so cowardly, so unimaginative, so lacking quality when luck dropped the ball on a diving pussy's foot, I admit my opinion this World Cup was disappointing is on me to any and all percent, but mofos, why did the World Cup have to feel like the real fucking world?

2014? I've got DCU-Seattle Thursday night, DCU-LAG Sunday night, DCU- Harrisburg (in Boydsgerman) Wednesday night, DCU - The Corpse of Pompey Saturday night. A week ago Saturday I picked up Planet in Indiana, fifty dreary years ago.

• Demand for obedience.
• Paradox.
• Corexit rain.
• Marxist review of the Obama administration.
• Fucking Democrats worry fucking Obama not mean enough to fucking brown people.
• Obamapussy.
• Category mistakes.
• It's not cowardice, it's avarice by design.
• Flower of civilization.
• Kensington!
• Kensington! Not me!I've got a bleg!
• No, the Netherlands didn't get screwed and no, Howard Webb isn't responsible for for Spain winning (though he sucketh unto suck), Arjen Robben for vomiting on his shoes is responsible if you insist on picking ONE THING responsible for a clusterfuck.

• Ten things to hope for in 2014.
• Missing links.
• Miéville as Dickens? I post the link (a) because I read and admired one Miéville but have unable to read another and (b) typing the word Dickens usually causes two people to spit in comments.
• Difficult books.
• Radio and re-education.
• Straight to you.
• Lotsa Flaming Lips (and Spoon and Tokyo Police Club).
• UPDATE! Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• Natural selection.
• UPDATE! Dissolve.
• New theory.
• Learning.

JET

Tony Hoagland

Sometimes I wish I were still out 
on the back porch, drinking jet fuel 
with the boys, getting louder and louder 
as the empty cans drop out of our paws 
like booster rockets falling back to Earth

and we soar up into the summer stars. 
Summer. The big sky river rushes overhead, 
bearing asteroids and mist, blind fish 
and old space suits with skeletons inside. 
On Earth, men celebrate their hairiness,

and it is good, a way of letting life 
out of the box, uncapping the bottle 
to let the effervescence gush 
through the narrow, usually constricted neck.

And now the crickets plug in their appliances 
in unison, and then the fireflies flash 
dots and dashes in the grass, like punctuation 
for the labyrinthine, untrue tales of sex 
someone is telling in the dark, though

no one really hears. We gaze into the night 
as if remembering the bright unbroken planet 
we once came from, 
to which we will never 
be permitted to return. 
We are amazed how hurt we are.
We would give anything for what we have.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

We Are Back in Reality Out of Cigarettes Dying Gorgeously for an Unknown Principle

LeBron said, reading off cue cards, this entire process, in which I held hostage the hopes of loyal fans in my native Cleveland for a year (even though I had no intention of playing in this shithole one minute longer than I needed to) and in which I turned an entire cable network into my personal bitch, especially that fat fucking whore fucking Michael fucking Wilbon, has been humbling.

Run with the metaphors as far as you wish. This is as much as I'll die for this unknown principle.

UPDATE!

I can't resist re: metaphors - burning LeBron shirts, burning the masters' police cars, achieving the same ends.

UPDATE!

Yes, the fuckers ESPN/Disney/ABC censored/claimed copyright (same thing) the video. Apt. Fuckers.

• Down to the last arrows.
• I hollared at Bacevich ten days ago. IOZ does yesterday.
• Next Afghanistan.
• Parsing progressive prospectives on power's abuses.
• Thought experiment.
• Thought experiment.
• Then and now.
• A vulgar rejection.
• UPDATE! The neo-con method.
• This calls for making more poor people suffer more!
• UPDATE! This was my reaction when I saw the headline too.
• The Mickle Truth rings true to this parent of a rising high school senior.
• Dear Someone. I can vouch: hearing the gruff and serious grandpa voice over "Our troops deserve better," on this - and all advocacy ads run in DC, all run on WTOP on the sevens as we wait for the eights to get traffic, piss me off.
• Quick one.
• BLCKDGRD translated into Hungarian by someone googling eformeday eoplepay.
• My future hell.
• Maryland versus pig.
• United's weakness, USMNT's weakness = holding mids. Which I've been yodeling, yo.
• UPDATE! 4-2-3-1.
• Why England's national team sucks.
• More Robben meme!
• Rock stars grow old.
• New Sun Kill Moon!
• 1971. (h/t)
• I love Tindersticks.

KEIN TRAUM

Frank O'Hara

Awakening, now, the war has broken out
everything is vicious and cruel
as it really is
we are back in reality
out of cigarettes
dying gorgeously
for an unknown principle
as persons we are abstract
and certain
the smoldering snow is falling
as it did when Liszt died
and the Austro-Hungarian empire
was initiating trouble
a lot of trouble
there was a germ of outrageous desire
it lodged in our hearts
it will never succumb it is within us
it will never die
be we shall die
and awaken from our torment
in a storm of anguish
which is just
octaves of war
pound through my willing brain
and everything is right again
we are deciduous
like a dead tree
across this vile street
an old lady in a wig is plucking her eyebrows
in the window
death

Nursing Long Beers in Tiltonsville

Look what contest I was encouraged to enter yesterday!

Look what novel is being advertised, the one I bought two weeks ago two hours after reading the review; I can't get past page 20 if it's either page 21 or a stomach virus.

The entire shelf, superfluous! Which has nothing to do with anything but serendipity, as does the email inviting me, by way of some mailing list, to a poetry contest the same day as drinks with my mentor/friend GOB, he who made me promise back in 2004 when this shetty bleg started to never post my poetry. I've honored that promise - O, I know you say you released me, but that's shabby begging shabby*, yo. If any want to see some, you can find some.

GOB's obamapostasy is six months behind mine but closing rapidly. His sense of relief that his retirement is soon, our employer eager to buy him out, that he'll beat the true effects of simmering clusterfuck when it finally and fully clusterfucks, shocks him in its callousness. He listened to things I said - what I yodel here - and for the first time in our fifteen, sixteen years of relationship, he ceded me the steering wheel without shouting I drive too recklessly.

My not driving recklessly got him, surprised him. My fuck it, I'll walk impressed more than years of wheelies. He was thinking about his portfolio of wheelies more than mine.

$20, the poetry contest. Who's in?

AUTUMN BEGINS IN MARTINS FERRY, OHIO

James Wright

In the Shreve High football stadium,
I think of Polacks nursing long beers in Tiltonsville,
And gray faces of Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood,
And the ruptured night watchman of Wheeling Steel,
Dreaming of heroes.

All the proud fathers are ashamed to go home.
Their women cluck like starved pullets,
Dying for love.

Therefore,
Their sons grow suicidally beautiful
At the beginning of October,
And gallop terribly against each other's bodies.

Another....

*Spanish midfield. Come on, work w/me.

All the Dark Sweet Dens of the Foxes Are Full of Stink and Safety

Has LeBron James signed yet? He bores me, I need the next Big Story to distract me from the catastrophic environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that is not only not fixed, they're now barely pretending they're trying to fix it.

• h/t Ethan.
• UPDATE! Gambling on starvation.

• Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball.
• The variable humanity of women.
• Football/capitalist realism/utopia.
• Afghan sunset.
• Oopsy!

• Heh, Krugman bitchslaps Brooks.
• UPDATE! Dean Baker bitchslaps Brooks.
• War economics.
• The war is stimulus spending to some minds.
• Manhattan's welfare farmers.
• I was looking for something else and found this:

• Does anyone read or cite Polanyi anymore? I can't remember the last time I saw his name.
• Career progressive idiocy.
• Shills are forever.
• No shit.
• Well, wasf Obama.
• Asshole calls Obama a pussy, is correct!
• UPDATE! YFWP.
• Politics of noise in a loud society.
• On owning a cell-phone.

• On education.
• On education.
• UPDATE! Why I don't post links to Froomkin (except this once).
• Just Die! Motherfucker! already.
• Petraeus and Max Boot?

• HAH! two of this bleg's avatars in a row makes me grin.
• What fart of a damn I had for MOCO politics is gone, but if you still are curious, Maryland Politics.
• Bunch of interesting metromofo links.
• Purple Line! Fuck Roger Berliner, and every rich Bethesda fucker who wants to make it as onerous as possible for their gardeners and maids to get to work.
• Not voting in November.
• Who hates soccer?
• UPDATE! The metaphysics of the World Cup.
• Soccer purists are wankers.
• Awesome home shirt.
• Arjen Robben, internet meme.

• New Ashbery.
• UPDATE! Weird (mis-)conceptions about poetry.
• Prose poems part their hair in the middle?
• UPDATE! On adjectival poetry.
• Anticipated books of Fall 2009?
• I'll try this.
• Interesting syllabus.
• Anyone read this guy anymore?

• Short can't be ambitious?
• This week's new releases w/mp3 includes an excellent new Robert Pollard song.
• Please by me a ticket to Vegas and a ticket to these shows for my birthday.
• I'm old. Ringo is OK w/me. Luckiest mofo on the planet.
• Generous playlist, w/MP3.
• Eau d'Bedroom.
• Obscure Sound's Best of June, w/MP3.
• Pliable is back from holiday.
• Yuri-G.

THE HUNT

Anthony Hecht

I

A call, a call. Ringbolt clinks at dusk. Shadows wax. Sesame. Here are the earthworms, and the dry needles of pine. I am hidden. Gems in their harness might be stars, picked out. Lovely to see, trust me. And the stone is protection, wouldn't you say? This is my stone, gentle as snow, trust me. Darkness helps. Let us eat. The air, promise-crammed. And so the poor dog had none. I saw three in sunlight. One had a pearwood bow, like Cupid's upper lip. I whisper my love to this rock. I have always loved it. Sesame. A caul, a caul. Where is Lady Luck in the forest? Well, there's no moon. Once I had apples. Let us pray. They have great weight, the bronze fittings of Magyar kings. Their trumpets are muted. But the tall trees gather here, friendly. What is that fluttering, there? I can't make out. All the dark sweet dens of the foxes are full of stink and safety. That was a tasty one. Just to go down, there with pale roots and hidden waters. O hidden. Is anyone hungry? He laughed, you know, and shook my hand. I must not say that. O the dear stone. Owls are out; mice, take warning. All those little squeaks must be death-cries. You're welcome. Trust me, trust me. But didn't he laugh? So help me.

II

I am much too tired now to do anything
But look at the molding along the top of the wall.
Those orchid shadows and pearl highlights bring
My childhood back so oddly. The recall

Two weeks of scarlet fever, when I lay
Gazing at grooves and bevels, oyster whites
Clouding to ringdove feathers, gathering lights
Like snow on railings towards the middle of day.

Just to lie there and watch, astonished when
That subtle show gave way to electric light,
That's what I think of, lying here tonight.
Tonight the interrogations begin again.

Another one of dozens....

Planet Rescue

Off to Indiana at noon to rescue Planet (an incredibly brave kid) tomorrow. After picking her up Saturday morning we drive halfway back the way we would have anyway and stop for the Gah in Uniontown, an important family reunion on Elric's father's side, Saturday night. That's all I'm going to write about that other than I'm told repeatedly and emphatically I cannot wear shorts. In play are photos of Republic and Fellsburg if we get a chance to see the ancestral homes.

And I will say this: I didn't think to book a room in Uniontown until this past Monday, and every hotel in Uniontown that doesn't offer hour rates is booked. Holiday Inns, Hamptons, Motel 6s, all the chains booked. What the fuck?

I might see Brazil v Netherlands this morning, won't Uruguay v Ghana this afternoon, won't Argentina v Germany Saturday morning. I might catch a few minutes of Paraguay v Spain. 

We don't have Sirius in this rental, not by choice but because on this car it wasn't an option, so I won't get to listen while driving, so for the quarters I'm WC10 useless. I will get to see my daughter. Win!

This rental (a Nissan Altima) comes with a push button starter. Two middle-aged middle-class farts with seven cats and garden statuary freaked at first.

The Wildflowers Beneath the Shade of Trees Gone Shivering Have Really Livened Up the Cemetery

Bacevich assumes permanent war is an option, not a feature:

The responsibility facing the American people is clear. They need to reclaim ownership of their army. They need to give their soldiers respite, by insisting that Washington abandon its de facto policy of perpetual war. Or, alternatively, the United States should become a nation truly "at" war, with all that implies in terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities. Should the people choose neither course -- and thereby subject their troops to continuing abuse -- the damage to the army and to American democracy will be severe.

What the fuck does Bacevich think the heads of G20 countries are talking about behind closed doors other than using permanent war to alter the "terms of civic obligation, fiscal policies and domestic priorities."

FIFA responds to bad refereeing not by embracing video replay but by cutting off future replays of all future bad calls on stadium jumbotrons. Accountability through surveillance is for you, rube, not FIFA.

There are honored and battle-scarred soccer Bacevichs who believe in their honest hearts that FIFA still acts (if misguidedly) in the best interest of soccer, not the best interest of FIFA.

• Postcards from Hell.
• Live from Planet Norte.
• Down to the Gulf in lies.
• Burning sea turtles alive.
• What actually happened at G20 in Toronto.
• Black Bloc.
• Heh, my first thought too.
• Totempwog.
• Sensible Liberalism in the Age of Obama.
• The smartest thing you'll read about the Weigel Affair (and I'd add, blegrelling serves the same function as listserving for exclusivists, yo.)
• I've had the displeasure of actually once meeting Jeffrey Goldberg (a function, I was an obligatory handshake), and he is a bigger asshole than I hope you can imagine.
• Look how labor supports the man's rules for winning.
• In YFWP, a Fat Kagan applauds Obama.
• UPDATE! Speaking of Fat Kagans.
• Grifter.
• Adrian Fenty = Pussy.
• Hey! Freida Bee is back.
• Dead plant spontaneously combusts?
• Glen Echo!

• Dimitar Berbatov is..... The Continental.
• New Seidel poem!
• New Robert Coover story!
• New Armantrout poem!
• On Russo, w/subsequent catfight. I haven't read Russo in years, but I remember liking Straight Man, but then again I'd worked on a college campus for a decade and was working on a graduate English degree when I read it, so the inside jokes worked for me.
• S'funny, I was looking for something else this past weekend and came up my copy of Levine's They Feed They Lion, which I hadn't thought about for at least a decade.
• Bleh.
• Not a coincidence with the above.
• One of the few non-fiction books I've read in the past three years reviewed. I recommend (though not enough at the time to say anything about it apparently.
• Know what? You paid money to see Courtney Love, shut the fuck up if it sucked you dumb motherfucker.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• UPDATE! This week's new releases w/MP3.
• Montag reminds me of INC.
• Love is the drug.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

EXCEPTIONS AND MELANCHOLIES

Ralph Angel

Never before
had we been so thin and so clear
and arranged always
and in the same way gazing and listening
over the rooftops
to tin cans of flowers and strange
music. For an hour or more
I turned the same corner
and felt like a criminal farther and farther out to sea
among the racks of shoes and old clothes
but now looking
back I should never have
unpacked. A street
crowned with chestnut trees
ends at a sewer. You go to a theater
and find yourself a house
outside the city
and walk the shore
forever. I don't have much
talent for poetry. When I see a wrecking ball
dangling from a crane I mean it
literally. I mean
I don't mean the world's fallen apart
or that a wrecking ball
symbolizes the eye my world-weary sister
couldn't know to turn away
from. The hospital's
exhausted. The little church is boarded up.
We leaned against the limestone
and liked the fact that tea
sweetens gradually
and that the wildflowers
beneath the shade of trees gone shivering
have really livened up the cemetery
and that the tall grass and the garbage
and especially the piled-up
newspapers and the rooftop pool
fit right in among
these windowless buildings
having gathered
as we are in the flesh again
and leading another life
altogether.

Dreamed about the movie last night, woke up with this in my head:

More Young is showing up in my CD player. S'funny, I almost don't remember putting the disc in, or rather, strange days.

Roxy Music did a cover:

What a great song.

Roxy has never not been regularly in my CD player.

USA 1, Ghana 2: Blarg the Second

There are many fascinating issues this World Cup raises which I may or not get to, including one prompted by Jack and documented by Bromark in the comments of yesterday's lame United post, but I want to first finish with USMNT and Bob Bradley before the games get too far away from me.

Does anyone think Germany wouldn't have sliced apart USMNT's defense as deftly as they disemboweled England? (Yes, one of the fascinating issues is the debate about video replay, and certainly England's wasn't-goal was a goal, but isn't it interesting we insist on more surveillance?)

Bob Bradley was not primarily responsible for Ghana's victory over USMNT, Ghana was primarily responsible: Ghana was big, fast, fit, technically skilled, and better coached, and the result was just. I'd be surprised if they don't beat Uruguay.

But Bradley is responsible for personnel and tactical decisions which made it easier for Ghana to win, and he must be held accountable for all the early goals - I've no doubt he can defense what he thinks the opponent's offense will do, but he can't conceive they might do something different than what he's scouted so he's not prepared when they do.

Falling behind early isn't because the players are flat and indifferent, it's because the other team is employing tactics that Bradley didn't scheme his team for just in case. The players look lost for the first twenty minutes, and that's on the coach. And it works against the offense because opposing coaches don't spend hours worrying what swerves Bradley's going to put into his attacking game plan.

I don't think Bob Bradley is the difference between crashing out at sixteen and winning a World Cup, but do I think a Guus Hiddink, with these players in this draw, could have got USMNT to the semis? Maybe.

Maybe not: it wasn't Bob Bradley's fault Bocanegra and DeMerit clusterfucked themselves in the third minute of overtime.

Don't talk to me about Gold Cup, the next meaningful game won't be until WC14 qualifying begins in 2013 (unless USMNT can get itself invited to Copa America - update below). Tell me, who on this roster will still be important, if on the team at all:

Forwards
• Jozy Altidore, Villareal (Spain) - Maybe
• Edson Buddle, Los Angeles Galaxy - No
• Robbie Findley, Real Salt Lake - No
• Herculez Gomez, Pachuca (Mexico) - Maybe

Midfielders
• DaMarcus Beasley, Rangers (Scotland) - No
• M Bradley, Mgladbach (Germany) - Probably
• Ricardo Clark, Frankfurt (Germany) - No
• Clint Dempsey, Fulham (England) - Probably
• Landon Donovan, Los Angeles Galaxy - Probably
• Maurice Edu, Rangers (Scotland) - Maybe
• Benny Feilhaber, Aarhus (Denmark) - No
• Stuart Holden, Bolton (England) - Maybe
• Jose Torres, Pachuca (Mexico)- Maybe

Defenders
• Carlos Bocanegra, Rennes (France) - No
• Jonathan Bornstein, Chivas USA - No
• Steve Cherundolo, Hannover (Germany) - No
• Jay DeMerit, Watford (England) - No
• Clarence Goodson, IK Start (Norway) - No
• Oguchi Onyewu, AC Milan (Italy) - No
• Jonathan Spector, West Ham (England) - No

Goaltenders
• Brad Guzan, Aston Villa (England) - No
• Marcus Hahnemann, Wolves (England) - No
• Tim Howard, Everton (England)- Maybe

The entire defense is old and suckful (except when it's young and suckful). The midfielders, Dempsey and Donovan (and Bradley), will have four more years of mileage on their knees. Altidore could make himself some decent money in Europe if he wasn't a punkassbitch, and I doubt he'll decide he doesn't want to be a punkassbitch. Guzan isn't particularly good, Hahnemann is 74, and Howard had a shitty World Cup, yo: it's not Bradley's fault Howard didn't get a hand to both Ghana goals, to Gerrard's goal, to at least one of them.

I think the talent level of this squad at this moment is quarterfinal level given breaks, good coaching, a good draw. I think the coaching level is never getting out of group. Crashing out at sixteen strikes me as a just grade.

O!

I do feel cheated of the game I might have seen if Lampard's not-goal had been allowed, but England wasn't going to win that game (and the same is true of Tevez's allowed goal that shouldn't have been - Mexico wasn't going to win that game).

I can't wait to watch Argentina-Germany (which hopefully I can see in a hotel room before the Gah in Uniontown), even better than a possible Netherlands-Brazil quarterfinals.

UPDATE!

"Gulati said the USA has no plans to participate in the 2011 Copa America in Argentina."

Why the fuck not? Is he out of his fucking mind? Send a young team and let them get schooled as part of building for qualifying for WC14.

Fuckityfuck, fire Sunil Fucking Gulati too.

UPDATE!

Dear Slovakia,

Arjen Robben is going to go to the left.

xoxo