The best Traveling Wilburys song is a George song:
The most listened-to album of my life is a George album:
My favorite song ever is a George song:
I've always I loved George most, people can vouch:
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
To the Fountain of Perpetual Mirth, Let It Roll for All It's Worth, or: Born Eighty-Three Years Ago Today
The best Beatles song is a George song:
Monday, February 23, 2026
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:
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?
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:
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?
Saturday, February 21, 2026
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.
Tuesday, February 17, 2026
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
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.
Monday, February 9, 2026
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?
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.
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