The Sedate One Is This Month's Skittish One

Comforting in a way that if I stopped blogging today, stopped twooting today, stopped skybluing today, and deleted my accounts, it's already too late. I'm siloed in Shitlord data farms with enough content to set magagestapo (trademark, though feel free to use it for a five syllable haiku line (with accreditation, yo)) on me anytime they want, I don't have to worry about incriminating myself, I already have

If I stop incriminating myself - I've slowed down incriminating myself of late - it's not because I fear reprisal but because I can't be canary or weathervane or Cassandra (though still a fool) now that much of what I screamed for decades (people can vouch) would happen has and is and will continue. Have I told you three times we are being reprogrammed? Was true, is true, will be true

Besides, I'm old and nobody. I spent an hour yesterday in a private equity-owned orthopedic superstore while you who know me in real life can guess who saw the bone doc, old people, lots of old people, limping and wincing, limp stop wince, limp stop wince, old people groaning, one old woman screaming in pain, her just as old and almost as feeble husband unable to comfort her, old people with canes and wheelchairs and electric scooters and hired brown people fearing the magagestapo helping them limp stop wince, wheelchairing them. A line of in pain old people waiting to to be told to fuck off go talk to an AI bot about a bill they didn't expect and can't pay

This getting old shit. Who gets me first, the magagestapo when it finally reaches my tier of insignificance in the coming eradications or extermination by private equity-owned doctor stores and their MRI laundromats and AI denying insurance claims and shitlords cheating me on Medicare and stealing my social security. I know which I'd prefer, I know what I predict. When my daughter is my age it will be 2056, the Earth will be here, will the world? See? Same yodel

The waiting room played the shittiest of shitty giftmas songs and of course I was reminded to remind you that there is only one not-banned giftmas song in BLCKDGRDSTN. Revolution, fellowmofos

Pam Bondi is Coming for Domestic Terrorists. You Might Be One of Them
The Bezos Post Editorial Board applauds advancements in racism but demands more far-reaching racism in the future
SCOTUS poised to expand Trump’s power over independent agencies
"Gregg Phillips, a conspiracy theorist with no emergency management experience who helped produce the election-denying documentary ‘2000 Mules’ with Dinesh D’Souza and has faced numerous legal inquiries, has been named head of FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery"
Your shitlords openly daydream of murdering you
➥	Palantir’s military-industrial plan for America
Just 0.001% hold three times the wealth of poorest half of humanity, report finds
"Between this and previous rulings, U.S. corporations have effectively put a bullet in the head of labor protections, consumer protection, public safety, environmental law, and corporate oversight"
The shitlord billionaire family poised to rewire U.S. media in Israel’s favor
Neoliberalism and the Grift Society
The Derangement of the Conservative Mind (Cont'd)
"The State Department is instructing its staff to reject visa applications from people who worked on fact-checking, content moderation or other activities the Trump administration considers "censorship" of Americans' speech"
Sorry If This Is Antisemitic But I Think It's Wrong To Train Dogs To Rape Prisoners
"Ever notice how you don’t hear about the Proud Boys or the Patriot Front or any of those other right wing fascist white supremacist groups anymore? Because all those Nazi fucks work for ICE now. ICE is a government-run terrorist organization"
DoJ moves to eliminate sexual abuse protections for LGBTQ+ people in prisons
➥	"An unambiguously and unabashedly pro-rape administration"
Trump could call a female journalist on-camera a stupid skankwhore cunt and it'd blasted and tictokked (tictoked?) around the world and there would be zero repercussions
➥	"Not one reporter in the White House press pool chose not to be a sniveling coward and stand up to psychologically damaged, 80-year-old loathsome piece of shit after he attacked ABC's Rachel Scott. NOT FUCKING ONE"
Torture Techniques from CIA Black Sites Were Used at Alligator Alcatraz
Trump’s Enemies List Meets Media Blackout
"The system is built to prevent wages from rising too fast, to prevent workers from gaining leverage, to prevent any restoration of the purchasing power we’ve lost. When wages go up, the machine treats it like a malfunction and corrects. When corporations gouge, it’s just the market at work
"This is exactly what the bosses who put Trump into office were trying to achieve. Crushing the tight labor market from the early Biden years that gave workers - for the first time in my adult lifetime - leverage over their bosses"
"They told us there’d be breadlines and poverty under socialism yet under capitalism we have breadlines, poverty, endless war, and 3 billionaires who hoard more wealth than half of our nation. We need to shift the economy from production for profits to production for social needs"
Three Ways It's World War™ III						Morons march
50 words for snow			Twenty Japanese words for rain
Maggie		Star Death		Undoing Map		Tightrope
The dispersal of domestic cats from North Africa to Europe around 2000 years ago
{ feuilleton }			Henry James, for those of you who do
Krasznahorkai's Nobel Prize lecture, it's very László
Guitarists' Palette			The artist as Boris Badenov
Whole bunch of new music at my bandcamp, go listen, including the KABOOM! song below

LAST MONTH

John Ashbery

No changes of support—only

Patches of gray, here where sunlight fell.

The house seems heavier

Now that they have gone away.   

In fact it emptied in record time.   

When the flat table used to result

A match recedes, slowly, into the night.

The academy of the future is   

Opening its doors and willing

The fruitless sunlight streams into domes,   

The chairs piled high with books and papers.

The sedate one is this month’s skittish one   

Confirming the property that,

A timeless value, has changed hands.

And you could have a new automobile

Ping pong set and garage, but the thief   

Stole everything like a miracle.

In his book there was a picture of treason only   

And in the garden, cries and colors.

“He’s dead,” he said. “No, he’s not. I just saw him move his arm,” I said. He removed his pistol from his holster and fired a shot. “Now he’s dead,” he said, or: Born Eighty-Two Years Ago Today

GOVERNMENT LAKE

James Tate

The way to the toy store was blocked by a fallen tree

in the road. There was a policeman directing traffic down a

side street. I asked him, “What happened?” He said, “Lightning

in the night.” I took the turn and drove down the street

looking for a way to turn back. Other streets were blocked by

fallen trees, and I couldn’t find a way back to the toy store.

I kept driving and soon I was on the outskirts of town. I

got on a highway and drove, soon forgetting the toy store and

what I was supposed to get there. I drove on as if I was hypno-

tized, not noticing the signs for turnoffs. I must have driven

a couple of hours before I woke up, then I took the next exit

and had no idea where I was. I drove down a straight tree-lined

lane with farm houses on either side. There was a lake at the

end of the lane. I pulled over and parked. I got out and

started walking. There were several docks along the shore.

I walked out on one and watched the ducks swimming and diving.

There was something bobbing in the middle of the lake. I stared

at it for a long time before I realized it was a man’s head.

Then, a moment later, it was a coconut. No, it was an old tire

floating right side up. I gave up and started following the

ducks. They would suddenly fly up and circle the lake and

come down and splash land again. It was quite entertaining.

A man walked up behind me and said, “This government lake is

off-limits to the public. You’ll have to leave.” I said,

“I didn’t know it was a government lake. Why should it be

off-limits?” He said, “I’m sorry. You’ll have to leave.”

“I don’t even know where I am,” I said. “You’ll still have

to leave,” he said. “What about that man out there?” I said,

pointing to the tire. “He’s dead,” he said. “No, he’s not.

I just saw him move his arm,” I said. He removed his pistol from

his holster and fired a shot. “Now he’s dead,” he said.

The Recital of the New Optimism Was Oft Interrupted, Rudeness in the Ramparts, an Injured Raven That Needed Attendance, Pre-Op Nudity

Non-frantic self-portraits with a gouache-return to church stain-glass windows, not posting here in ten days (which is why there are two Maggies and two { feuilleton }s in the grid), a shorter, less-angry grid considering the length of time since that last mostly angry one, not writing in tablets for the same length of time, the fuck is right with me?

I’m down to my last bottle of fountain pen ink left over from my brief affair with fountain pens and tablets a decade ago before returning to my (currently, temporarily for now at least, and voluntarily if not deliberately abandoned) pencil spouse, the gorgeous brick red ink above infused in clear elmer’s glue, grated chalk blazes better on fountain pen ink than acrylic ink: fountain pen ink > acrylic ink, yo. I have an online ink-store’s cart filled with options, I’m just waiting for this weird, strangely pleasant and surprising and barely worrisome bout of calm and – get this – itchy but unscratchable optimism, about what I don’t know, to fade before purchasing, much less committing to use, the ink




Not being anxious about not being anxious over the ever-enshittifying clusterfuck, shit getting worse exponentially by the day, and I've a vague unscratchably itchy and thoroughly unplanned for optimism, this is new, it will fade. Doesn't feel like resignation, capitulation, surrender, much. A week before this started I gave myself permission to admit that I'm old and will probably die and I apologized to my knees and ankles for their belly-aching after another weekend of hiking and disc golf and asked knees and ankles to forgive me not only for the tens of thousands of miles I've asked of them over the decades but also to forgive me for blaming them for their aching. Rosie dying is a variable too. I was reminded too that I love Modest Mouse, they've been on the daily sound track for the last two and a half weeks, I recommend you try. While I have no plans and will keep my brain off this itchy optimism as best I can and let it run it's course with this sentence I've no doubt jinxed this and fucked it up and unappeasable anger at my futility before the clusterfuck returns soon

A Hard Truth About the DC Shooting
ICE Wants to Go After Dissenters as well as Immigrants
Palestine and the Politics of Purity
Sarah Hurwitz Profanes the Holocaust
The Terrifying Case of Natalie Strecker
"Western media is now a firewall aimed at preventing what these people say from getting to its audience"
The Seven Richest Billionaires Are All Media Barons
"Real American supervillains embed themselves in the economy and threaten to cause a depression unless you subsidize their sex robots and the weird chatbots they use to avoid humans"
The PayPal Mafia’s “Manhattan Project”
Our keepers are monsters					Poison profits
I see these gotcha-your-maga-hero's-a-megahypocrite articles, don't people understand crackers will always hate you more?
Giving thanks			The paradox of clothing
By the people? For the people?					Callousness First
Game Theory Explains How Algorithms Can Drive Up Prices
Maggie		People are less weird than they used to be?
Meanwhile, on that shithouse of an Eastern Shore
Agamben, for those of you who do					Slop Layer
The Democratic Party’s Disdain for Youth
Maggie		Frameworks All the Way Down
Identity for me but not for thee, or: Fuck Paul
Helmetball is best metaphor for this fucking country, part 572,339
Helmetball is best metaphor for this fucking country, part 572,340
Are we doomed?			The future of literary criticism
The moral authority of animals					Same stream twice
The mystery of wildlife and a world beyond our understanding
Guy Davenport, for those of you who do					{ feuilleton }
{ feuilleton }			The Claims of Close Reading
This says far more about me than about the books, but on the NYT 2025 notable novels and poetry I've heard of only one title - Shadow Ticket - and one of the novelists - Pynchon, and zero of the poets
Ed's read *Shadow Ticket* twice, check out the chapter by chapter
Alice Notley’s Symphonic Everything
Robert Frost's Ugly Feelings						Silken Tent
Reading Finnegans Wake on the Toilet
Steely Dan is in the latest New York Review of Books?

THE NEW OPTIMISM

Dean Young

The recital of the new optimism

was oft interrupted, rudeness

in the ramparts, an injured raven

that needed attendance, pre-op

nudity. The young who knew everything

was new made babies who unforeseeably

would one day present their complaint.

Enough blame to go around but the new

optimism didn’t stop, helped one

pick up a brush, another a spatula

even as the last polar bear sat

on his shrinking berg thinking,

I have been vicious but my soul is pure.

And the new optimism loves the bear’s

soul and makes images of it to sell

at fair-trade craft fairs with laboriously

knotted hunks of rope, photos of cheese,

soaps with odd ingredients, whiskey,

sand, hamburger drippings, lint,

any and everything partaking of the glowing

exfoliating cleanup. And the seal

is sponged of oil spill. And the broken

man is wheeled in a meal. War finally

seems stupid enough. You look an animal

in the eye before eating it and the gloomy

weather makes the lilacs grow. Hello,

oceans of air. Your dead cat loves you

forever and will welcome you forever home.