The Braincase Was Loose and the Rest Saw Pie Melting

Day after tomorrow is another personal holy day and I'd never forgive myself if I remembered and didn't post (and I didn't remember Auden's birthday and wouldn't have posted if I hadn't been reminded, fuck me). The last February 25 post will be the last February 25 this shitty blog is still alive. Here's a hint





Since I plan to leave it up top through the weekend (and may well fail) a grid below before the links go stale, plus this: Pash Katel celebrating in the US gold-winning ice-soccer team's dressing room (on your dime) as the overtime goal-scoring hero cracker-speechifies Stephen Miller's dream psyop hit. Dump is the idiot savant of lucky, though imagine how much fun it'd've been if Canada had won on a controversial goal in which America clearly was cheated, troops would be crossing the border as I type this. (On ice-soccer: I've been in Michigan motels when a state peewee ice-soccer tournament is a within 50 mile radius of the town, I guarantee you the ice-soccer dads are magafucks to a one, and their eagerly cracker-groomed kids the next generation). Here is my not-a-team's new crest

O, and Dump posted an AI video of *HIM* scoring the overtime goal, imagine how much more dumpmeltdown tomorrow night's SOTU would be if Canada had won, it still feels like a trainwreck a-coming, L wants me to watch it with her, I said yes. Reminder: Dump won with a US victory, he would have won more if if Canada had won on a controversial goal in which America clearly was cheated (and imagine if it was an African-Canadian who'd cheated America's white-to-a-man (do *not* underestimate how significant that is to too many American white men) ice-soccer team). The American Equation, sponsored by Shitlordco. Also too. There's new Hen Ogledd and it's gorgeous and angry and necessary:

Did you know that there is still genocide and ethnic cleansing continuing in Gaza and the West Bank?
"This same tactic to funnel outrage over intentional, lawless police violence into **more resources for police** was used in response to Bloody Sunday"
Crypto Chokehold			What is academic labor now?
"Every one of these guys is stupid. Every one. We may look back w disdain on the culture of the 50s and 60s but at least those buzzcuts & long skirts got us to the fucking moon"
Trump is destroying a public park so that he can build a luxury golf course for himself					The Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping Spectacle
The Supreme Court and the cordon sanitaire against the left
Some More Efforts, Comrades, If We Would Be Revolutionaries
Today in *I Will Be a Catholic Again Before I'm Ever a Democrat Again*
⮩	and I promise I will never be a Catholic again
Import the War, Export the Border						Maggie
AI Is Destroying Grocery Supply Chains
Knotweed Factor			Hospitality and the Political
The de Sades Among Us					Danger Zone
Bodily Mutilation, and End of the Masculine West
Cult of the Bully				Trump’s FCC Chair Wants Networks to Run Nationalistic Content and Pledge Loyalty for America’s Big Bday
Something weird for the weekend					New Bill Callahan
Hollering From The Bottom Of A Wishing Well
Dumb waiter		Dumb waiter		At the movies w John Ashbery
More mysterious barricades					{ feuilleton }
The ravenous, radiant, Jim Harrison
Hear what happens when explorers of the ethereal collaborate
Forgotten Words: The Raincoats’ Three Lives
Power Pop Retrospectors (1974 – 1984)
Hen Ogledd was Friday's Bandcamp Daily story

A SPOT OF FRAZZLE AND THEN

Clark Coolidge

The braincase was loose and the rest saw pie melting
we'd have to come home to the lineaments of fire
a lot of squatting included with the sleeping
I imagine pennants with the clothing closing in
dimity fudge due to silence in the breccias
partial poinsettias they lived on Olive Street
inclined toward wicked pencils we stayed
us jamokes quite worn through and bundled
to blow things up beyond all proportion
and crow in wacky dingle a portion of cheek
dried in detonator the telemetry theater
now the cheese quarry its more than human wails
present time now added it's long past time
to get the gargoyles to descend a history of pokers
then someone up near the ceiling he turns and
silence in the Vanguard silence to bring things to
then someone blew it or is this the copper time?

Private Rites of Magic Send the Temple Prostitutes to Sleep; All the Literati Keep an Imaginary Friend

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

The Traditional High Egoslavian Holy Day Auden's Birthday Post. Born 119 years ago today. I always post that photo, then Musee Des Beaux Arts (it still gets better with each rereading) and then some version of these paragraphs:

Some personal history: besides taking classes from Anthony Hecht, I did basic research grunt work for him on his final two books of criticism in exchange for his company, On the Laws of the Poetic Arts and The Hidden Law, a book specifically about Auden's poetry, which Hecht respected deeply. In the process of the research for and conversations with Hecht over years I must have read the majority of Auden's poems at least once, some countless times, some, like the above and below, literally dozens of dozens of times.

I've told some version of this story countless times: I was hired by Georgetown University mid-August, I sought Hecht out immediately and asked to audit his Fall semester grad poetry class, telling him not only was I only a Georgetown staffer but I hadn't an undergraduate degree and asking please let me audit the class. It focused on five main poets - Frost, Eliot, Auden, Bishop, and Wilbur - but we spent more than half the semester on Auden alone. I've probably spent more time with Auden than with any other poet, and if I only read him now on his birthday, I can pull up countless poems in my head whenever I want.

EPITAPH ON A TYRANT

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.







THE FALL OF ROME

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extol the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.







THE MORE LOVING ONE

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

Those Dutiful Dogtrots Down Airport Corridors

Sitting in the Detroit airport for the flight home as I type this, all flights from Baltimore into Detroit are delayed and all flights to Baltimore possibly but not yet delayed, no explanations offered, so hear: the most shocking development of a happy trip to see my daughter: I expected, anticipated, and prepared for this to be an immersive Modest Mouse vacation, but the reverse happen, I must have already overdosed during the recent binge when hoping to overdose on them this trip, and Destroyer, who I overdose on every Maine vacation, every Michigan vacation, and who I had every intention of avoiding this trip to not deepen my Destoyer slump, came on on Bandcamp shuffle, and I'm addicted again

I provoked no one - it was baseball hat weather, too warm to wear the red hat of last post, which is the only provocation I would have attempted - we LUCKED OUT February in Michigan weather-wise - and despite my son-in-law's cousin's best attempts to bait the big family dinner into political debate (from a centrist Democrat's point of view), no one took the hook. All dirt roads started in packed snow and melted into mud over the five days, Jeep-Americans think they are invincible so they're recklessly dangerous, more hubris than politics I'd bet. No pro-maga signage, no Eff Ice signage, people in stores and restaurants perfunctorily Midwest polite, always a jolt for an East Coaster (and they can identify an East Coaster within two sentences a East Coaster speaks). It's one of the reasons my daughter lives in the Midwest. Too muddy to disc golf though I did explore and found three courses I will play next time I'm here in not-Winter, this one first
 




Yes, the big font is back and it's solely for my eyes. Yes, this a filler post against the rest of this week awaiting me at work. Smaller grid than usual below, partly because I was not online as much, mostly because we seem to have hit a lull in the clusterfuck as I suspect reassessment and replanning on next steps in our immiseration and elimination frantically continuing at Shitlordco. I suspect Dump's dumping himself in an Oval Office press conference and his panicked staff ordering all cameras turned off and all journalists kicked out getting zero mention in major spew-organs opens up vast scenarios for more of Dump's shit, and that ginormous Middle East war all the worse people in the world have boners for. Clusterfuck? Perfectly at home with this dread, dark leaves form a thread

If ICE Pulls You Over, Say These 4 Words Immediately
The Upcoming American Holocaust: Connecting Billionaires, AI, ICE & Trump’s Concentration Camps
Insiders Poised To Profit From Trump’s Deportation Boom
Comply or die			Warehouseification of detention
State of the Apology, 2026					Contempt of Court
The Unreliability of the White Proletariat
The Plot Against American Women
"The regime is now dictating what political views are acceptable to air on television and paramount/cbs are collaborating in that censorship"
The Increasing Attacks on Francesca Albanese Presage a New Dark Age
The Making of the Deportation Machine
What to know about the disastrous Potomac sewage spill
{ feuilleton }			Maggie		You need weirdness
A Landscape Artist in Winter: Andy Goldsworthy
Updike reconsidered >				"It’s one thing to fall out of fashion, another to fall out of favour, and Updike seems to have fallen out of both while still being suspended mid-air, cushioned by the thermals while posterity figures out what to do with him"
This was not only a Destroyer vacation, it was a Clientele vacation

ON THE ROAD

John Updike

Those dutiful dogtrots down airport corridors

while gnawing at a Dunkin' Donuts cruller,

those hotel rooms where the TV remote

waits by the bed like a suicide pistol,

those hours in the air amid white shirts

whose wearers sleep-read through thick staid thrillers,

those breakfast buffets in prairie Marriotts—

such venues of transit grow dearer than home.

The tricycle in the hall, the wife's hasty kiss,

the dripping faucet and uncut lawn—this is life?

No, vita thrives via the road, in the laptop

whose silky screen shimmers like a dark queen's mirror,

in the polished shoe that signifies killer intent,

and in the solitary mission, a bumpy glide

down through the cloud cover to a single runway

at whose end a man just like you guards the Grail.

Kings & Criminals Who Are Extinct, Who Disdain This World, & Who Rot, Corrupt & Shallow, as Fields I Disced

Got my first middle-finger for wearing my red anti-nazi hat that L knit me, dude in a big-ass Dodge Ram with those yellow Virginia don't-tread-on-me license plates flipped me off on 270 between Wootten and Montrose southbound through lanes, pulled in front of me, hit his breaks, when I moved over a lane to the slower and, at the 55 mph speed limit, passed him, he slowed up in the faster lane to move behind me in the slower lane, flashed his lights, then sped past me flipping me another bird (I did get one thumbs-up and one I-need-to-get-one comment in MOMs, the local organic grocery store). I have a PDF of the knitting instructions, let me know if you want one

Of course I'm enjoying the magamerican meltdown over the Woke Assault on Helmetball that was yesterday's halftime show by Bad Bunny (which I did not see, nor the game, though I know that if the New England Patriots were playing they were wearing the fugliest uniforms of any sporting team anywhere at any time in sport history, and it's not close). Helmetball is magachoads', not yours (and they can have it), and this halftime all in Spanish but the sign in English that said LOVE > HATE is, to them, an attack as tauntingly insulting as blaspheming White Jesus Cracker by pointing out WJC was brown and spoke Aramaic. Coupled with American athletes at the Winter Olympics making traitorous statements against King Dump, Michigan this Friday through Tuesday visiting our daughter and son-in-law, wearing this red hat while driving a car with Maryland plates, I will count the one-fingered salutes. There's one party store on Seymour Road near Portage Lake I'll avoid, but I'm wearing the hat. Revolution, mofos. Every post but two a year tagged my complicity

Yes, one size smaller font, test-driving cause why, I'm not THIS blind yet (UPDATE! apparently I am this blind from more than three feet in anything less than screaming bright light! screaming big font will return) Rest of monologue is the grid. Yes, the Larry Levis and Cindy Lee tags are new, first new ones in years. Have I ever mentioned that *Flesh and Blood* is one of my favorite songs?

Look at what we allow
Vital reminder >	"The last Democratic presidential candidate was a pro-fracking, pro-genocide, pro-ICE, pro-military industrial complex, anti-Muslim, anti-Medicare for All, anti-living wage corporate tool"
The mendacity of cowardice of the billionaire class
"It's a little deranging to feel on the cusp of something important when the people in charge think it's Wednesday and they're busy still trying to strike two-party bargains in a room with one occupant"
⮩	Hope, I remember hope, no one in power has changed, things will get worse before they get better if they ever do, but hope in the humanity of at least some other humans, I'd forgotten
Homeland Security Spying on Reddit Users
"Officials in authoritarian regimes frequently make absurd false statements in public to signal their loyalty"
How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism
"hard to think of a better example of "you may not believe in class war, but billionaires know they're in one" than this"
NIMBY, but for concentration camps
Concentration Camps				Concentration Camps
Reflections on recent literature on the destruction of Gaza
"Only a lying center-right genocide apologist would get mad at leftists for correctly pointing out that an AIPAC-funded, pro-ICE, pro-cop, pro-Wall St, pro-fracking and anti Medicare for All politician calling themselves a progressive is laughably ridiculous"
Never Forget Gaza And What It Means About Everything
How Jeff Bezos and Amazon became instruments of authoritarianism
AI becomes Washington’s newest weapon of hegemony
DOGE Lives On Through Russell Vought
The Actual Gavin Newsom Is Much Worse Than You Think
The criminal elite exposed in the Epstein files are burying the truth
"I didn’t have “the Atlantic running cover for a bunch of pedophiles” on my bingo card except what’s this oh noooo see I did have it on my bingo card ohhhhhh sorry…."
The Epstein Files Are Hazing You Into The Pedo Gang
Epstein and the end of alloparental civilization
You’re Paying Taxes to Billionaire Pedophiles Who Bomb and Maybe Eat Children
"you know it's bad when they would rather us think that a rando staffer has unfettered access to the social media accounts of the President of the United States, where we also now know that world leaders direct message him"
American Imperialism and the End of Sovereignty
The world heard JD Vance being booed at the Olympics. Except for viewers in the US					Early Capitalism
Extreme Inequality Presages The Revolt Against It
WARNING FROM THE PAST - REPORT FROM TODAY			Bezos Post editorial page blasts uppity Tidewater Virginia negress
Uppity Tidewater Virginia negress tells Ted Cruz to fuck off							⮨
Shitty fuck-up gets shittier					American violence
Two Titanic Structures Hidden Deep Within the Earth Have Altered the Magnetic Field for Millions of Years
Transfiguring the immanent domain
Maggie		The spectator, at this point, is certain to wonder whether he must now endure a football game in print
Helmetball is the single greatest metaphor for the United States of Assholes, period
⮩	Since I slag on the NFL constantly I need to say that their Bad Bunny choice was solely a business decision and had zero intent as a Fuck You, Dump, but credit, if that's the correct word, the shitlords that run the NFL for signaling, if only for their own bottom line, there are dwindling profits in Dump
Facing a pandemic of slop					{ feuilleton }
Have I ever mentioned that *Flesh and Blood* is one of my favorite songs?

THE POET AT SEVENTEEN

Larry Levis

My youth? I hear it mostly in the long, volleying   

Echoes of billiards in the pool halls where   

I spent it all, extravagantly, believing

My delicate touch on a cue would last for years.

Outside the vineyards vanished under rain,

And the trees held still or seemed to hold their breath   

When the men I worked with, pruning orchards, sang   

Their lost songs: Amapola; La Paloma;

Jalisco, No Te Rajes—the corny tunes

Their sons would just as soon forget, at recess,

Where they lounged apart in small groups of their own.   

Still, even when they laughed, they laughed in Spanish.

I hated high school then, & on weekends drove

A tractor through the widowed fields. It was so boring   

I memorized poems above the engine’s monotone.   

Sometimes whole days slipped past without my noticing,

And birds of all kinds flew in front of me then.

I learned to tell them apart by their empty squabblings,   

The slightest change in plumage, or the inflection   

Of a call. And why not admit it? I was happy

Then. I believed in no one. I had the kind   

Of solitude the world usually allows   

Only to kings & criminals who are extinct,

Who disdain this world, & who rot, corrupt & shallow

As fields I disced: I turned up the same gray

Earth for years. Still, the land made a glum raisin   

Each autumn, & made that little hell of days—

The vines must have seemed like cages to the Mexicans

Who were paid seven cents a tray for the grapes

They picked. Inside the vines it was hot, & spiders   

Strummed their emptiness. Black Widow, Daddy Longlegs.   

The vine canes whipped our faces. None of us cared.

And the girls I tried to talk to after class

Sailed by, then each night lay enthroned in my bed,   

With nothing on but the jewels of their embarrassment.   

Eyes, lips, dreams. No one. The sky & the road.

A life like that? It seemed to go on forever—

Reading poems in school, then driving a stuttering tractor   

Warm afternoons, then billiards on blue October   

Nights. The thick stars. But mostly now I remember

The trees, wearing their mysterious yellow sullenness   

Like party dresses. And parties I didn’t attend.   

And then the first ice hung like spider lattices   

Or the embroideries of Great Aunt No One,

And then the first dark entering the trees—

And inside, the adults with their cocktails before dinner,   

The way they always seemed afraid of something,   

And sat so rigidly, although the land was theirs.