BLCKDGRD

Only the Willing Are Fated to Receive Death as a Reward

Obama has won the most important fight of the first year of his presidency, convincing The Villagers he is One with Them.

Dana Milbank gleefully, smirkingly, dances on the crushed balls of Progressive's hope:

It was bound to happen eventually. Obama had become to his youthful supporters a vessel for all of their liberal hopes. They saw him as a transformational figure who would end war, save the Earth from global warming, restore the economy -- and still be home for dinner. They lashed out at anybody who dared to suggest that Obama was just another politician, subject to calculation, expediency and vanity like all the rest...

You'd think his supporters might applaud this sort of thoughtful, methodical leadership as a repudiation of the Bush style of government by political theory. Instead, they're using words such as "O'Bomber" to describe the president. MoveOn.org launched a petition drive against the policy. Code Pink, the group that heckled Bush officials for years, heckled Obama advisers on Capitol Hill last week. The liberal Web publisher Arianna Huffington told Charlie Rose that the policy "puts into question his whole leadership.

This is what happens when true believers mistake a mortal for a messiah.

Peter Baker, on the other hand, wants to be to Obama what Bernstein was for Bush:

On the afternoon he held the eighth meeting of his Afghanistan review, President Obama arrived in the White House Situation Room ruminating about war. He had come from Arlington National Cemetery, where he had wandered among the chalky white tombstones of those who had fallen in the rugged mountains of Central Asia....

How much their sacrifice weighed on him that Veterans Day last month, he did not say. But his advisers say he was haunted by the human toll as he wrestled with what to do about the eight-year-old war. Just a month earlier, he had mentioned to them his visits to wounded soldiers at the Army hospital in Washington. “I don’t want to be going to Walter Reed for another eight years,” he said then.

When the history of the Obama presidency is written, that day with the chart may prove to be a turning point, the moment a young commander in chief set in motion a high-stakes gamble to turn around a losing war. By moving the bell curve to the left, Mr. Obama decided to send 30,000 troops mostly in the next six months and then begin pulling them out a year after that, betting that a quick jolt of extra forces could knock the enemy back on its heels enough for the Afghans to take over the fight.

The three month review that led to the escalate-then exit strategy is a case-study in decision making in the Obama White House - intense, methodical, rigorous, earnest and at times deeply frustrating for nearly all involved. It was a virtual seminar on Afghanistan and Pakistan, led by a president described by one participant as something "between a college professor and a gentle cross-examiner."

Mr. Obama devoted so much time to the Afghan issue — nearly 11 hours on the day after Thanksgiving alone — that he joked, “I’ve got more deeply in the weeds than a president should, and now you guys need to solve this.” He invited competing voices to debate in front of him, while guarding his own thoughts. Even David Axelrod, arguably his closest adviser, did not know where Mr. Obama would come out until just before Thanksgiving.

Hagiographer-in-Waiting!

The Pornstache says: President Obama certainly showed leadership mettle in going against his own party’s base and ordering a troop surge into Afghanistan. He is going to have to be even more tough-minded, though, to make sure his policy is properly executed.(IOZ on the column.)

Frank Rich says: You can think the speech failed without questioning Obama’s motives. I don’t buy the criticism that he contrived a cynical political potpourri to pander to every side in the debate over the war.

(And if they needed extra reassurance: The Holder Justice Department’s brief can only be squared with prior DOJ arguments this way: foreign lawyers in foreign Justice Departments have no immunity and can be held accountable, but lawyers who work for us have absolute immunity from any meaningful form of accountability. The path to a renewal of the criminal misconduct of the Bush years is being prepared right now. And Obama Justice Department lawyers are doing the work.)

Thursday night my car battery died outside a deli on MacArthur Blvd when I stopped to buy a cup of coffee. While I waited for AAA to deliver a new battery, I sat in the deli, drinking my coffee, and for the first time in a couple of years listened to The Michael Savage Show, a favorite of the deli's owner.

Savage was away, so the hyper-reactionary Savage-wannabe substitute said:

• Either fight to win or don't fight. America firebombed Germany and firebombed then vaporized Japanese cities. Where is that American fighting spirit, dammit?
• This is Vietnam Redux: the government ships out blood and treasure to fight a noble war the government is too chickenshit to prosecute.
• It is sinful to send soldiers to die in a war you've no intention of winning.
• Nothing in Obama's decision was based on any calculation but his reelection.

He's not entirely wrong. He's not entirely wrong for despicable and barbarous reasons, but he's not entirely wrong.

(The host, after a caller identified himself as a Vietman vet, after the host raved for five minutes on how Liberals lost Vietnam, advocated sending in 150K troops, scrapping the "current rules of engagement," (meaning Fuck the Civilians), and telling the world We're not leaving in five years, we're not leaving in a hundred years.)

Heh, they're as stupid as us progressives wailing for peace. The economy collapses without war. Think how many trillion-trillions of dollars of American Monopoly money, all the way down to your shitty, complicitous IRA, are leveraged by war. Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke are inner-circle in Obama's war cabinet.

The Village collapses without war. The Villagers are One with Obama.

Duh, sure. But duh while sitting in a deli waiting for a new battery to be delivered to my dead car, listening to genocidal bedwetters make some retarded second-cousin of an argument I'd make is.... doubly duhful.

• Death Warrant for the Future.
• Black Hole of Bagram.
• Monty Python in Afghanistan.
• Obama is People.
• Um... Obama fucked up in Honduras too.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalist Realism.
• The compact of a consumer society.
• The Fuck You to Death Act.
• Reclusive Leftish.
• I never called bullshit on a Friday in December and his poll numbers dropping when the Bush administration released a surprisingly upbeat jobs number.
• Arendt. Do.
• Jay Paleo Old Arra Dirty 101 Bama sends this along. Heh.
• It's Zappadan again.
• Look, even Sarah Palin is keeping up with Zappadan!

• Twinbrook's future hell.
• Clarksburg! looks to Poolesville for inspiration!
• Silver Spring's future hell.
• Fare hikes, service cuts.
• Wheaton's future hell.
• Weast! parts three and four.
• Crime in Walnut Hill!

• BLCKDGRD translated into Chinese.
• Must be the Season of C.D. Wright.
• Poetry's Ginger v Marianne is in incredibly bad taste.
• Vermin: A Notebook.
• Nick Cave as misogynist Monarch of Middlbrow.
• Airport through the Trees' 2009 in Music.
• New Beach House.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Alex Ross' Top Ten Classical recordings of 2009.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• What you can buy me for Giftmas! Please!
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Grammy nominations, stupid as always, but Hall and Oates' Sara Smile is up for best duo? We're in fucking 1979? (And what is a Lady Gaga, a Taylor Swift, and a John Legend). MGMT, Silversun Pickups, and Ting Tings up for best new artist.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Serendipitously, 6th or 7th writes about Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. I'm sure I've heard them somewhere in a public place, just wouldn't know (or care) it's them.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Shearwater.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Still my favorite single of 2009. YYYs nominee for Best Alternative Rock Grammy v Byrne/Eno, the horribly shitty DCFC, Depeche Mode (???), and Phoenix (thou shalt spell Phoenix P-H-E-O-N-I-X, not P-H-O-E-N-I-X, no matter what the Oxford English Dictionary says).
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• I never got Depeche Mode, but I was aware they had a cult following.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Alan is a cowboy killer.
• Ten great singers who can't sing.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• múm
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.

HOTEL LAUTREAMONT

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.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever.

England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

I wanted England and an easy draw and SHAZAM!

A

South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France

B

Argentina, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece

C

England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

D

Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana

E

Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon

F

Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

G

Brazil, North Korea, Ivory Coast, Portugal

H

Spain, Honduras, Switzerland, Chile

G is Group of Death. USMNT very very lucky to draw the weakest of African teams in Pot C, very very lucky to draw one of the weakest European teams in Pot D.

Having said that, the USMNT will lose in an ugly 1-0 game to England, tie Algeria in an ugly, boring 0-0 game, get smoked by Slovenia 4-0, leave tied for 29th. Fire Bob Bradley. I wanted an easy draw so we can be rid of Bradley once and for all.

Fuck Mexico, and fuck fucking France, rewarded for cheating with easiest group. England, Spain, and Italy got silly-easy draws, Germany and Netherlands easy draws. Argentina a deceptively tough draw, especially if Maradona is still coach. And just fuck Mexico. And fuck fucking France.

UPDATE! I think it's a tougher group for Netherlands than I did at first blush.

Guardians' odds post-draw: 5-1 Spain, 11-2 Brazil, 6-1 England, 10-1 Argentina, 13-1 Italy, 14-1 Germany, 15-1 Holland, 16-1 France, 29-1 Ivory Coast, 35-1 Portugal, 59-1 Chile, 79-1 Ghana, Paraguay, 95-1 USA, 100-1 bar.

More, and links, later. Or not.

At Closing Time, We Say Our Good-byes, and I Kiss Loretta, Just a Little Peck, Because I Know She Is Married to a Chicken, and I Respect That

I never expected Obama to turn decisively Left because he was progressive at heart and believed progressive ideas in the country's best interest. I expected him to turn decisively Left because it was in his political interest.

Or turn decisively Right. One or the other.

This dumb motherfucker believes his own bullshit, thinks bipartisanship entails alienating everyone equally. In a moment of schismatic national anxiety, he thinks splitting differences wisdom, half-measures strength? We want to be lead, you dumb motherfucker.

I'm not a roob because I thought Obama a progressive, I'm a roob because I thought Obama a smart, canny, gamesplayer.

I never imagined he'd deliberately brand himself a pussy.

He's a cow the size of a schnauzer. My apologies.

• Remember when Obama thought it cleverly symbolic to nominate this fuckwad to his cabinet?
• A well-earned I told you so.
• Garry Wills, whom I bashed for this a couple of weeks ago, obamapostasizes.
• Deciphering Bullshit: Nuance Edition.
• UPDATE! America: Mendacious or Heedless has the added benefit of commenting on the Berube v Proyect spat.
• Yay! Bernie, Yay! Al. Make more noise. And as a silly thought-experiment, it's Franken v Palin 2012. Go.
• UPDATE! Boofuckinghoo. Now, when Obama responds to his wealthiest donors wishes, Your Fucking Washington Post will run a story on how Obama is selling access.
• I wonder if anyone at Your Fucking Washington Post wishes they had kept Froomkin.
• This is true. How soon before the words Tiger and steroids begin appearing in the same sentence?

• Agitprop is shutting down. This was the second group blog I contributed to. I don't miss the first (which is still densely humorless and humorously dense), and I'll not much miss the second because we'd all pretty much stopped contributing to concentrate what time and effort each had to their respective personal blogs. Bookmark Pime (from whom I found that Maury photo from last post) and Stump Lane, yo.
• Quick Study has shuttered too.
• UPDATE! No, it's not. And, um, it's because Proyect has picked another fight.
• And it looks like Ellis is (at the very least) on hiatus.
• I curse a lot. I'm probably not going to stop.

• Crisis in Kensington!
• Germantown Future Hell!
• Crisis in Glen Echo! or: Fucking Villagers.

• Earthgirl grew up just up a two minute walk from Sycamore Store.
• Greivis Future.

• Modernism against Modernity.
• New York Times names it Top Ten Books of 2009, five fiction, five non-fiction. I don't read non-fiction much, I haven't read any of the fiction.
• This is the Book of the Year:

• Two new Gerald Stern poems.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• I could have gone but chose not to. I don't begrudge them. It's not so much me not wanting to see them up there doing back then, it's that I don't want to see me seeing them up there doing back then.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

WAYLON'S WOMAN

James Tate

    Loretta had a rooster that was so fierce
nobody could visit her anymore. Loretta loved
that rooster, and the rooster loved Loretta,
thought she was his wife. So the only time
we got to see Loretta was when she came to town.
We'd meet her at Mike's Westview Cafe and drink
beer with her all night. The rooster's name
was Waylon, and she'd talk about Waylon all
night, and if you didn't know better you'd think
she was talking about her husband. Well, I knew
better, and I still thought she was talking about
her husband. "Waylon wasn't feeling very good
this morning.""Waylon was real sweet to me
last night.""Waylon is so handsome, sometimes
I just can't take me eyes off him." She's still
fun to be with, and she seems completely normal
to me. At closing time, we say our good-byes,
and I kiss Loretta, just a little peck, because
I know she is married to a chicken, and I respect
that. Waylon has made her happy in ways I never
could. The starry sky, the police hiding in the
bushes, God, it's good to be alive, I think, and
pee behind my car in the darkness of my own private
darkness.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

Fireless and Vacant as Any Hat

Updates below.

Perrin writes: I think Obama has already cemented his legacy, and those who believe he'll dramatically shift direction and do "what's in his heart" are beyond help at this point. Those who grumble in liblog threads about ditching Obama and the Dems in 2012 are also blowing steam, for the system is self-correcting, and once the vampirish Repub candidates start baring their fangs, stray libs will be frightened back into the fold, hoping that the next four years will somehow be different.

True that. I'm not betting against that being me, though I'm gonna try to lose that bet.

Sullivan says what I've been saying forever: If (Obama) ramps up Afghanistan and delays Iraq withdrawal, he will lose his base. If he does the full metal neocon as he is being urged to, he should not be deluded in believing the GOP will in any way support him. They will oppose him every step of every initiative. They will call him incompetent if Afghanistan deteriorates, they will call him a terrorist-lover if he withdraws, they will call him a traitor if he does not do everything they want, and they will eventually turn on him and demand withdrawal, just as they did in the Balkans with Clinton. Obama's middle way, I fear, is deeper and deeper into a trap, and the abandonment of a historic opportunity to get out.

True that. I've said over and over Obama could roast Muslims alive on a spit, gouging out their livers with a poker while screaming Fuck You, Allah, and pigs will call him pussy.

Zizek at Birkbeck College. Consider this: Today's lecture, dramatically entitled 'Apocalypse Today' (a promise or a threat, I wonder), kicks off with Zizek identifying the three modern horsemen of the apocalypse: the techno-digital, the New Age, and the Christian fundamentalist, of which the last of the three is both the most dangerous, the most ridiculous, and also the closest to any kind of desirable emancipatory politics.

True that. If you're American power, who do you fear more, Beckian cranks and Christers or fat and complicit fucks like me? The strategy is to make me more afraid of Beckian cranks and Christers than I am disgusted with the oligarchy, that I hold my nose and tolerate them rather than hold my nose and work with the cranks and Christers to challenge the status quo.

Polny pizdets. To challenge the oligarchy's power, there's more likelihood for success if America's Leftists work with America's christiest, crackerist Right than waiting for help from the Democrats (and more likelihood for success if America's christiest, crackerist Right work with the looniest, most marxist Left than wait for help from the Republicans)?

True that. I voted for X-Boxes for Giftmas and instead got shittier reality shows for the Spring season, bitches! I can get the same shittier reality shows without voting, yo.

• UPDATE! A deadly liar and manipulator.
• UPDATE! Dead Parrot.
• A reasoned response to the question, What's Gone Wrong w/Obama? Fuck reasoned responses: what's gone wrong is he had his chance brand himself as new - regardless of whether or not he actually wanted to enact new - and he chose to brand himself old.
• UPDATE! True this: The fact that Obama is following in Bush’s footsteps – talking to an audience of captive individuals who would be ruined for life by a single catcall – is a sign of how archaic hope for change and reform has become.
• UPDATE!

• Ameritocracy.
• Ameritocracy.
• UPDATE! Bankers take up arms in Class War.
• Waiting for the Political Moment.
• What is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracies. A response.
• UPDATE! Mike Huckabee is a gutless sophist!
• Slapping Berube once, twice.
• 100 proofs we are polny pizdets.
• Come on, Haji, let me keep it.
• The difference between Republicans and Democrats.
• UPDATE! Because Republicans don't think Obama means it like Republicans mean it when he kills civilian towelheads and sandmonkeys, which makes Obama a hypocrite posturing for reelection. Um.
• Palinism. When she's elected in 2012, we'll deserve it.
• Politico fuckwits.
• Politico fuckwits interview Darth Fuckwad.
• Politico fuckwits unwittingly reveal the midgets behind the curtain.
• White House fuckwits respond.
• Where fuckwads dine.
• Your Photoshop of the Day! Who uses Star Trek allusions?

• Oh.
• UPDATE! The Straight Cock Express!
• The problem is, even if 99% of humans are wired to be helpful, the 1% who are assholes will rule the world.

• Top Ten missed Metro stations. How about MOCOCOLLEGE in Rocketville?
• UPDATE! What's wrong with this sentence: Using federal stimulus money, the State Highway Administration has begun a $968,000 project to improve the Md. Route 28 and Veirs Mill Road intersection in Gaithersburg.
• ICC!
• Crisis in Potomac!
• UPDATE! Priest Fight!
• Weast! part one.
• Weast! part two.
• UPDATE! All that matters to Weast!

This past Sunday night we had dinner with Elric's parents at that restaurant in Baithersgurgle, a restaurant that iterations and years ago was once Pappy's Pizza where, during a summer break in 1978(?) between his freshman and sophomore years(?) at Kenyon, someone exceptionally dear to me (and familiar to regulars), to the everlasting and glorious head-exploding of his father, John the Daftist, while working in the kitchen fell in love with a waitress and dropped out of school and has had a full and (give or take two ex-wives and a Sinister Bitch of Doom) happy life. xoxo.

• Friedgen returning, which is as it should be, economically - you can't be buying out a $4M contract with state money while furloughing state workers.
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• Do formations have to be symmetrical?
• Thoughts on Friday's draw.
• More thoughts on Friday's draw. Make your predictions on who USMNT draws! Me: Argentina, England, Ivory Coast. Please please please please please England.
• UPDATE! FIFA gave both Argentina and England top seeds (also Germany, Spain, Holland, Brazil, Italy, and home side Bafana Bafana), so they can't be drawn together. USMNT will see one of these eight: France, Portugal, Slovenia, Switzerland, Greece, Serbia, Denmark, Slovakia and one of these eight: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Algeria, Paraguay, Chile, Uruguay.

• I think I did this already, but Silliman marks 2.5M visits. His is one of the irreplaceable blogs.
• HEY! Esposito! decides who gets named, OK?
• Aleksandar Hemon, who edited Dalkey's 2010 European Fiction, interviewed.
• Five Branch Tree has been thinking about C.D. Wright. I confess, keeping up with all the right Wright's (because there are wrong Wright's out there) takes effort.
• New Merwin.
• Morton Feldman.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Animal Collective samples The Dead's Unbroken Chain!
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Bonny Billy sings Death to Everyone!
• KEXP's weekly MP3s of new releases.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment. Yes, again.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment. Yes, again.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment. Yes, again.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

THE DRUNK IN THE FURNACE

W.S. Merwin

                For a good decade
The furnace stood in the naked gully, fireless
And vacant as any hat. Then when it was
No more to them than a hulking black fossil
To erode unnoticed with the rest of the junk-hill
By the poisonous creek, and rapidly to be added
                To their ignorance

                The were afterwards astonished
To confirm, one morning, a twist of smoke like a pale
Resurrection, staggering out of it chewed hole,
And to remark then other tokens that someone,
Cosily bolted behind the eye-holed iron
Door of the drafty burner, had there established
                His bad castle.

                Where he gets his spirits
It's a mystery. But the stuff keeps him musical:
Hammer-and-anvilling with poker and bottle
To his jugged bellowings, till the last groaning clang
As he collapses onto the rioting
Springs of a litter of car-seats ranged on the grates,
                To sleep like an iron pig.

                In their tar-paper church
On a text about stoke-holes that are sated never
Their Reverend lingers. They nod and hate trespassers.
When the furnace wakes, though, all afternnon
Their witless offspring flock like piped rats to its siren
Crescendo, and agape on the crumbling ridge
                Stand in a row and learn.

 

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

So Much for More Experience. What Can Grow Has Grown; What's Small Now Stays Small. No Portion Waits for Those Who Deserve More.

The last bleggalgaze of this, the bleggalgazeworthiest week of the year:

I caught myself writing paragraphs in notebook what I usually say in sentences. I caught myself, after successive days of not-blegging but reading, not just fiction and poetry, reading theory and mirrormirror theory and mirrormirrormirror theory, and then I caught myself writing lectures about theory, and, truly and thusly, fuck that.

So, in a sentence: Humans in general (and Americans in particular) will always be divided between those believing Freedom need be followed with a to and those believing Freedom need be followed with a from, and what guarantees the eternal clusterfuck is that those who worship the to when it comes to economics worship the from when it comes to personal liberties, and visa versa.

I link to others teasing out the duh because they want to tease out the duh. I've done my academic poking around in duh's stomach and intestines.* Once it was fun, up through grad school, it's.... been losing enjoyment since I quit that particular game. I enjoy reading it now - the reason I link to it - but the rigor of writing it is no fun now even if I had the time and was in shape: it's a youngsters' game. Besides, I think I've earned the right to encrypt my deciphered duh as I please, and you ping back or don't.

Which makes me a pussy when I get pissy people chose not to ping back. Proving, like every blogger, like you and you and you - like anyone who pushes a submit button in any format or media - I think there's something I know I think it vital you know, though I don't pity you for not reading me, I pity me for your not reading me. Just like you and you and you do.

*I was going to use Ozzy Froats in the context of this post, but after revisions it didn't fit. Still, a pint of beer to the first of you who, sans google, names that allusion.

• This actually is quite astonishing, not just because crackers are smacking their head at the missed opportunity, but because it shows if you have a film crew, you're granted passage.
• Of course they do.
• Exemplary pornstachery.
• UPDATE! That didn't take long.
• Neurocapitalism.
• Chomsky interviewed.

UPDATE! This seems appropriate today:

• EIASTTYAEMPIW!
• Vandals in Bow Ties.
• Espying a Dirty Rat.
• Duh.
• They don't make presidents like they used to.
• The coming slow-motion car-wreck.
• Dick Biden.
• Well, I for one won't give a penny to the Democratic machine and probably will only vote local issues, though in Maryland my vote doesn't matter much - Van Hollen will roll, so too NSA's own Babs Mikulski.

• It does occur to me - and you too, yes? - that if Obama did do want what we want him to (and he doesn't, yo), to succeed he'd have to increase more of the presidential power accumulated under Bush we bitch he hasn't ceded yet.
• It's almost as if he doesn't want to win reelection. Still, consider this sentence from that Fucking Washington Post article: The revised plan, which faces a war-weary and increasingly skeptical American public, is expected to call for 30,000-35,000 new troops in a phased deployment over the next 12 to 18 months. Can you imagine that sentence being written if John McCain was president?
• Greenwald's Daily Duh. Jeebus, it's easy to see why professional Republicans hold professional Democrats in such contempt.
• On the silliness of The Nation.
• Milking every anti-Obama talking point as if the udders were full of benedictine.
• Take a look at this map about % of people receiving food stamps and draw your own conclusions about the South.
• Consider that some South Carolina crackers consider Lindsey Graham a liberal.
• Your Fucking Washington Post reminds you that christers are moral idiots regardless the hue of the christer.
• James and Marisacat on bleg-hiatus. Lot of that going around.
• Contracts versus Tenure: Heh!
• A decision I'll be making in the next six months.
• This will seem mean, and I've don't know the parents and don't know if the name has familial significance, and maybe they did it on purpose, and perhaps no one younger that 45 gets the allusion, but people named their new daughter Hannah Barbara?

• I don't think this is the Druid Hill Park Cemetery behind and to the right and out-of-bounds of Holes One and Two at the disc golf course, but it might be.
• Possible pig to challenge O'Malley looks like a pig.
• My future hell.
• Humpback endangered! Oh, and please enjoy this paragraph, MOCO property-tax payers: Three months after Montgomery County finished its $450,000 restoration of the East Deer Park Bridge over railroad tracks between Gaithersburg and Washington Grove, the CSX Corporation is mulling whether to raise or raze the historic structure to make room for double-decker freight cars. Heh.

• I like to imagine Randy Hardy is driving that red van.
• Fentyville!
• Crisis in Bethesda! "This will take money out of taxpayers' hands and turn it into a path that leads to nowhere," said Tiffany Audas, whose property abuts the proposed project. "This is going to bump right up to our fence." Hmmm. I wonder which of the two is Tiffany's true concern.
• Clarksburg!
• Clusterfuck!

• Accidental Geography includes Asphalt Maine.
• The Sunday after Thanksgiving is when the NYTBR releases their Notable Books of the Year list.
• The Millions on the list.
• Another response to Smith's essay.
• Another response to Smith's essay.
• A response to the new DeLillo story, Midnight in Dostoyevsky, in New Yorker. I'm going to read it again today, and will comment on it. Or not. (And it's curious I haven't seen more yap about it in all the regular places, Thanksgiving week, granted.)
• UPDATE! Meh. Power of the narratives we create, how maintaining our narratives requires their truths go unexamined, standard yadda. Serendipitous on a day of Friedman's asinine and self-serving column and two days before Obama triples-down in Afghanistan, sure, but meh. Standard DeLillo tricks and tropes. I've always respected DeLillo more than I've enjoyed reading him.
• Is the short story female?
• Hilary Mantel says M.J. Hyland's This is How is her favorite novel of 2009 (luckily I have access to ILL), John Gray sings of Seidel, plus lots of authors on their 2009 favorites.
• The Guardian's Top Ten Albums of the decade is just stoopid unto stoopid. Especially number one, but also, Arctic Fucking Monkeys? What, no Franz Fucking Ferdinand or Kaiser Fucking Chiefs?
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• 25 most anticipated albums of 2010? I agree with most, though I'd rather saw off my left nut with a butter-knife than listen to Vampire Weekend.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Boatloads of Best of Decade lists....
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• What you can buy me for Giftmas.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Boatloads of Best of Year lists....
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Charlotte Hatherley.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Favorite Songs of the Decade....
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• I'm neither pro- or anti- The Strokes, but I know at least one of you who likes Julian Casablancas.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

CHARITY

Carl Dennis

Time to believe that the thin disguise
On the face of the blessing in disguise
Will never be pulled off,

That the truth that's still in hiding
Will stay there, far in the dark.
All that can be revealed is revealed.

All that can be learned from the burning house
Was learned the first time, when the smoke
Blackened the walls in every room.

So much for more experience. What can grow
Has grown; what's small now stays small.
No portion waits for those who deserve more.

The flowers in the yard of the blind and deaf girl
Will never smell any sweeter to her
Than they smell now to any of her visitors.

The music she imagines will never compare to ours.
Her best day will brighten with no joy
That hasn't brightened our day more.

Time to admit that her steady cheer
Is the burden she assumes to keep us here
Touching her fingers for a while.

 

New Paul Weller?