BLCKDGRD

"Hreapha," Her Dog Will Say

Donald Harington died this past Saturday. Longtimers have heard me yodel about Harington for years (the latest is here - use the lijit search function down on the right to see more).

I had planned, knowing that Harington was dying and that Enduring would be the last Stay More novel, to reread all the novels in Harington's Stay More universe, because all the novels are themselves chapters in a much larger project, and Enduring is the final chapter: when Harington's echo-bombs POP! and the universe expands even further into the Kind because a POP! set six novels ago POPS! in Enduring, I want the full and joyous POP!

Because I'm loud, I always think of the infinite in terms of bigger bigger. Harington is interested in the smaller smaller, an entire system as small as the infinite, transparent not opaque, magical, showing the gears, with a generous and uncanny and FUNNY! disdain for deliberate obscurity for complexity's sake: it's not Pynchon, Barth, or Elkin who finally convinced me I wasn't a novelist. And it was Harington that taught me about faith based on Kind.

There's a scene in With when Robin's animals - led by Hreapha the dog (one of the greatest, truest characters ever) - steal bottles of Jack Daniels to... 

That's the obit. I'm starting Architecture, the central cedar pole of the Stay More universe, as soon as I finish what I'm in, and go. When I finish Enduring, I'll yodel. Or not.

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Well, that was interesting. Thanks for comments and emails.

I can't make any promises about what comes out of my mouth when Cuauhtemoc Blanco dives and rolls around in fake agony right in front of me, and I will never fucking promise to stop fucking cursing, but I understand people I like and respect have suggested and/or asked me to stop using that word, and because I like and respect them I will.

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• I do solicit a one-word new term for Ramesh Ponnuru.
• Veteran's Day.
• Gitmo gets worse?
• David Brooks, fuckwit.
• David Brooks, fuckwitted plagiarist.
• The symbiosis between fuckwits and fuckwads.
• What Obama won't investigate next.
• Empire fools.
• Graveyard of Empires.
• Shitwit.
• We can agree Dickarmey is a shitpig, but what do we call Democrats who don't call Dickarmey on his shitpiggery?
• UPDATE! Blue Dogs.
• UPDATE! Something for Kucinich admirers to consider.
• Hirsute abyss of God's little oven, or: the difference between a Conservative and a Republican.
• What's the Frequency, Kravchenko?
• Right there, right then.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your photoshop of the day.
• Can't have lived in MOCO in 2002 and not note this. One of the first shootings was at the Shell in Kensington half-a-mile from my house. We were scared shitless. I remember crouching behind my car during the spree when I absolutely had to put gas in my car. I do not support Muhammad's execution - there's a reason he was sentenced in Virginia.
• Tim Kaine, murderer.
• UPDATE! Potomac River = TOXIC STEW!
• Future MOCO.
• Future MOCO.
• Carl Ballantine, RIP.

• Bolaño Inc.
• New Millhauser story.
• Two new Lauterbach poems.
• Britain's Borders.
• Who should replace Steven Tyler in Aerosmith?
• Bruce McCulloch!
• Because you can't kill rock and roll.
• KEXP's generous MP3s of this week's releases.
• They're never happy less they got a war.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Please to bend down to the one called the Green Man.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• She's a little lighthouse.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Some star sneezed, now they're paging you in Reception.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• There may be no golden fleece, but human riches I'll release.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• But he made too many enemies of the people who would keep us on our knees.

*

THE SILKEN TENT

Robert Frost

She is as in a field a silken tent
At midday when a sunny summer breeze
Has dried the dew and all its ropes relent,
So that in guys it gently sways at ease,
And its supporting central cedar pole,
That is its pinnacle to heavenward
And signifies the sureness of the soul,
Seems to owe naught to any single cord,
But strictly held by none, is loosely bound
By countless silken ties of love and thought
To everything on earth the compass round,
And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

*

Fifty-six today:

Offering the Desk Puppy Biscuits

Meaning I'm stymied. Meaning it's a reading-slump, and reading-stumps are either a symptom of autoblogography or autoblogography a symptom of reading-slumps.

I've a reading-slump and a blegissue: How many more ways to duh Duh are there? Meaning there are zillions if I ever embraced by half the what-the-fuck of a half-darer.

Meaning I'm antsy, meaning I'm not sure how to route the antsy, meaning there may or not be more or less of this or that, but I need entertain myself if not tongue-fuck the what-the-fuck.

Meaning nothing more than thanks as always for the Kind.

• I chide Greenwald for stating the obvious (though the obvious often needs stating): assholes unite out of fear of assholes.
• The Seduction of Proximity to Power.
• American Exceptionalism: Epidemic Edition.
• Hofstadter revisited.
• Zizek (in NYT?) on the 20 years since collapse of Berlin Wall.
• On Zizek envy.
• On the 20 years since collapse of Berlin Wall.
• Maintaining Masculinity. I'm guilty of flagrant (and joyful!) use of the word "pussy," and while I do not deny its misogynist connotations, and I solicit suggestions for an alternative, gender-neutral term, I do not know of another word in English that more succinctly captures the essence of grandiose cowardice and whinging self-pity and exaggerated self-importance than "pussy," as in, John Boehner is such a pussy.
• Speaking of: Obama.
• Bravest Guy in the House.
• Af-Pak gak.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• 1000 Monkeys, Typewriters, One Friedman Column.
• Six months behind me on the calender, a year in front of me in ageangst.
• Think about this next time you step on Metro.
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• The Further Adventures of Little Danny Helmetball.
• Lessing continued. My two: I always liked and deeply admired the Lessing I read. I don't remember ever loving it.
• How to Write a Novel.
• I'm mildly optimistic my ritual of closing my eyes and reaching onto a bookshelf and starting whichever book I grab might work: the first fifty pages of this have got me going. If you haven't read Thomson's Divided Kingdom, do yourself a favor.
• Grateful Dead archivist job opening.
• Roll away the dew.
• Johnny Cash, protest singer.
• Obscure Sound's October MP3 Wrap-Up.
• Boston Spaceships is pollardized.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Elliott Carter.
• See the Leaves.
• Dominos.
• Sun Kill Moon.
• Sun Kill Moon.
• Sun Kill Moon.
• Sun Kill Moon.

Born eighty-one years ago today:

THE ROOM OF MY LIFE

Anne Sexton

Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
the suffering brother of the wood walls,
the forty-eight keys of the typewriter
each an eyeball that is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a dog coffin made of Naugahyde,
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels and toes,
the fireplace
a knife waiting for someone to pick it up,
the sofa, exhausted with the exertion of a whore,
the phone
two flowers taking root in its crotch,
the doors
opening and closing like sea clams,
the lights
poking at me,
lighting up both the soil and the laugh.
The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart.
Each day I feed the world out there
although birds explode
right and left.
I feed the world in here too,
offering the desk puppy biscuits.
However, nothing is just what it seems to be.
My objects dream and wear new costumes,
compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands
and the sea that bangs in my throat.

 

 

 

Once I Peeked Through Your Mail Slot and Caught a Glimpse of Your Quiet Individual Self-formed Taste

I still think it a significant difference that when people like me on the American Left protest a war we believe immoral we hold up horrific photographs of maimed and dead children bombed by our country in that current war, and when people on the American Right protest a health care bill meant to make life marginally better for America's worst off, they hold up images of Dachau.

Useful idiots and yadda. Basing a moral roobrix on being a smarter-than-pigstoopid idiot is as vital a vector in affecting change in late-capital America as winning that senior year Homecoming football game X-decades ago.

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• Yup.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism's exploitation of relentless positivism.
• America as stoned college conversation. (And thanks! for Kind.)
• Eric Cantor might as well give up his dreams of POTUS.
• He might as well dress like an ass and call himself Nancy.
• I give Michelle Bachmann credit for recognizing the Pig-Hottie vacuum and plugging it.
• Free-floating rage.
• The British Obama.
• Excellent Bobo evisceration.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Elric reports in from Nigeria.
• My high school (with video!). Look at those dopes in the marching band, listen to their crappy rendition of the Anthem.
• Yow!
• Purple Line!
• CCT!

• While all Fleabus photos are by Planet, not all photos of Fleabus photos are by Planet. Click, yo.
• Memoir's killed fiction!
• Memoir's killed fiction!
• UPDATE! Deep fried lard with ranch on the side.
• Memoir's killed fiction!
• Why does a new Stephen King novel get top billing in Sunday NYTBR, and why does every review of a new JCO novel legally require the reviewer to use the word "prolific" in the first sentence and a review of a Stephen King novel doesn't?
• Jim's got lit-links and thoughts (and thanks! for Kind).
• I would like a place I could call my own.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• I used to think the day would never come.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Pretending not to see his gun, I said let’s go out and have some fun.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• It seems like I've been here before.

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YOU SMELL OF DIVES WHERE A PRICK LIKE YOU IS HATED

Cal Bedient

Once I peeked through your mail slot and caught a glimpse
of your quiet individual self-formed taste, the thousand pegs and
    pins

I must have wanted you dead to see you like that.

You should always speak the little fires are in you.
I am not diseased with the remark. Love cares to see the blackened
    tongues.

You twitch with a gathering head stir. Yes, free the little speeds are in
    you.
You're a real person when you go crazy like that.

Their felt legs rolled up for carrying, your people stare from your
    pockets.
Stump round and round the world with them, they are your darlings,

they are not sparrows, they are not sparrows running like rats on the
    cloud sleeves.
Open your works-in-progress to them: let them choose their
    mausoleum.

The horses I could eat, if I still hungered for you.
Backcountry beauties farting lush grass.

*

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

The Colorado Looks Up in Awe at the Grand Canyon It Has Made

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• Saying yes to state violence.
• Concision and Chomsky.
• Merit Vomit.
• UPDATE! A pint to the first of you who finds a majorpigblegger saying Obama triggered the Muslim sleeper cell IN THE MILITARY! in order to divert attention from Michelle Bachmann's tribe  of dumbfucks!
• UPDATE! Holyfuck, PIGKABOOMPARADISE!, yo. Happiest days of their lives. A pint for the first link to a majorpigblegger who advocates immediately discharging all Arab-American and Muslim soldiers. (Typed 7:35 PM 11/5.)
• 50M Frenched Men Can't Be Wrong.
• Notes on the Philly Transit Strike.
• There are Rights, and Then There's What's Right.
• Triumph of the Progressives.
• Ayn Rand, whack.
• Beliefs? What beliefs?
• Kos' Drug of Choice.
• The Tired Party Line.
• Newt Gingrich, RINO.
• Armey. Dick.
• Idiots.
• The original woman who went rogue.
• Murderous America.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Fucking shoot me.
• Flesh of Your Flesh.
• Cat gets swine flu. 
• Elric's in Nigeria, where not only is he limited on where he can go but with slow internet: The Nigerians that I have met are really nice, intelligent people.  I would love to get out and see some stuff.  Maybe we can get out and explore on the weekends, but if we do we need an armed escort and an armored car.  We take a boat to work, and I have seen plenty of pollution, but only one dead body so far.  We pass under a bridge on the way to work, and people squat and try to hit us with crap for sport, but so far they have missed us.  The water in the lagoon smells like rotten fish and piss, and if you get splashed you need to get a tetanus shot.  If you get it in your mouth, you're fucked.

• MOCO clusterfuck! I always wonder how many stoplight intersections there are in MOCO (I think about getting a map and counting them off), and while this article says 750, that may be only those that are coordinated. I can't imagine the Beallsville light at 28 and 109 is beehived with lights in Bethesda.
• Weastful!
• Showdown in Kensington!
• Crisis in Garrett Park!
• ICC!
• Purple Line!

• The whale that wouldn't die.
• Intention and poetry.
• UPDATE! Sometime in the past month I wrote that poetry is ahead of fiction re: these days, but twenty-five years? And good question asked there too.
• Serendipity: looking for an online version of the Seidel poem below (to cut and paste rather than need type - and I had to type it) I find an old review of Seidel written by Cal Bedient, whose latest I've been yodeling about the past few weeks.

• Hilda Morley?
• Whole new way.
• Overgrown Path is wonderful. Hey, Pliable!
• Damage.
• More port-royal here.
• This is not a love song.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Good fortune.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Magnetic Fields cover Bowie.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• 150 seconds of pop pleasure.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.

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POL POT

Frederick Seidel

Dawn. Leni Riefenstahl
And her cameras slowly inflate the immense Nuremberg Rally.
The Colorado looks up in awe at the Grand Canyon
It has made. Hitler.

European clouds. 1934. Empty
Thought-balloons high above Lascaux
Without a thought inside. The Führer
Is ice that's fire, physically small.

They all were. Stalin.
Trotsky's little glasses
Disappear behind a cloud
From which he won't emerge alive.

The small plane carrying
The Grail to Nuremberg got Wagnerian clouds
To fly through, enormous, enormous. Mine eyes have seen
    the glory, it
Taxis to a stop. The cabin door swings open.

Leni schussed from motion pictures
To still photography after the war. From the Aryan ideal, climbed out
In Africa to shoot the wild shy people of Kau,
Small heads, tall, the most beautiful animals in the world.

Artistically mounted them into ideal
Riefenstahl. Riefenstahl! Riefenstahl! Riefenstahl! Really,
From blonds in black-and-white to blacks in color.
Now Pol Pot came to power.

Now in London Sylvia Plath
Nailed one foot to the floor;
And with the other walked
And walked and walked through the terrible blood.

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Reap What You Have Soehn

This pisses me off:

"Over the past three seasons, Tommy has faced greater challenges than any other MLS coach," United President Kevin Payne said, referring to a schedule that included annual international tournaments.

Wait a fucking minute. United doesn't want to be in annual international tournaments? Kevin Payne is saying he doesn't want United to face "greater challenges" than any other MLS team? What the fuck?

Good thing United sucked this past season then, yes? No trips this coming season to Mexico and Honduras and El Salvador, just home exhibitions against better league's B-Squads, thank fucking god.

By Payne's standard, Soehn succeeded! The next coach will have a pussy schedule by comparison. Well done!

Schedule! Waah! We're fucked by our success! By this logic, the goal of the new coach next season is to suck just enough to avoid fixture congestion in 2011.

Oh, and this by The Irreplaceable Man needs noting:

"I'm a little surprised. ... It's a difficult transition for the players when you bring in a new coach. You have to re-prove yourself. You're on trial in a way and you don't know whether you fit into the new coach's plans. I hope they don't try to break up this team."

Boofuckinghoo. Suddenly, Namoff seems replaceable to me.