Wednesday, July 22, 2026

Like a Streetlamp in a Forest When I'm Lost

I am 9/10ths of the way through Henry James' *The Ambassadors* and will finish it tomorrow if I don't today so the burden of honoring a promise to living and dead former English professors and current and past friends will be honored, and get this, I will read another, though James' misuse of pronouns (any *she* referred to is not necessary the one I was taught it should be - I can only think this is intentionally muddying) is annoying as fuck. More signs of our coming apocalypse - it's closer and coming faster than most of yinz think, yo - embedded, along with the rest of the monologue (whether this gag is temporary or permanent until it isn't TBD) in the grid. Tropical Storm Bertha? Sweet, this will be in my head the next few days





Also too, three days from today is this shitty blog's domain renewal date, nothing has changed payment-wise at my end and though the blogging platform continues self-enshittification apace I expect them to take my money and renew me another year, but if I'm not here Saturday.... Hey! Lambchop has released a third song from upcoming album *Punching the Clown,* full album drops a month from yesterday





When the government starts making lists, nothin good ever comes
Today's ➥ monologueStrange world that my yodels haven't changed but more colleagues and friends and family members no longer think I'm so batshit crazy. Required gag: when my daughter is my age it will be 2059, what world?
US police now armed with Israeli spy vans simulating mobile phone towers
"The United States is stuck in a war it started, cannot end, and may further escalate to no avail, having dismantled its diplomatic apparatus, depleted its military stockpile, and destroyed its credibility"
Today's ➥ monologueShitlords are happy to waste trillions of dollars on the Iran War if it helps speed up the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare and every fucking thing in the safety net plus the theft of every peasants retirement funds, I said to my ex-polisci professor and friendly acquaintance and for the third time in a row after calling me smart but batshit crazy for decades he said I'm probably right
Faced With Piles of New Paperwork, People Are Losing Food Stamps
Today's ➥ monologueIf shitlords didn't want Trump fucking up everything he touches they wouldn't be letting him touch everything
They Didn't Just Buy Politicians: They Bought Your Food, Your Health, Your Future, and They're Coming for What's Left
Welcome to your Christian Nationalist diarrhea salad
Trump Didn’t Create America’s Authoritarianism—He Exposed It
"So the U.S. has gotten itself into a situation where the State Department is now warning Americans about traveling...anywhere"
And it goes onNested machineEight tribes?Everyone Is a Foreign Agent Now
A Communiqué from an Author of Harmful and Undesirable Literature
They are building data centers on top of enslaved people in Stafford County VA
"If you have watched even ten minutes of this Maine candidate debate and still don't understand why Graham Platner was compelling to a vast majority of Maine voters regardless of his red flags you are actively trying to pretend not to. This is legitimately painful to watch."
Today's ➥ monologuePsst! The "red flags," yes red-red & flaggy, are not the main reason Graham Platner was executed by top Democrats
Soon It Will Be Illegal To Oppose Imperialism
No One Is Taking John Roberts Seriously Anymore
Today's ➥ monologueNo, question is not whether Democratic politicians are listening, the question is when will a majority of people understand that Democrats are just fine with this SCOTUS, it's their job
United States of AssholesBecoming the stranger
Gaza is ours,' says Ben Gvir as he joins Israeli ministers in march demanding return of settlements
"When Spain defeated Argentina 1-0 in extra time to claim the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the Global South did not simply celebrate a sporting triumph. It executed a coordinated geopolitical signal—an improvised, transnational act of anti-colonial resistance that exposed Western double standards, punished Argentina’s embrace of Israel, and elevated an unlikely European nation as a moral proxy for Palestinian solidarity"
Democrats Fail Because They Won’t Name The Villains
Today's ➥ monologueDemocrats fail because it's their job to fail
Today's ➥ monologue"Funny how “stories diverging” is a regular feature on the Democrat side of the Maine Senate race, isn’t it? Note that the Bangor Daily News either pulls its punches or CNN is misreporting. It’s almost as if the national Democrats would rather lose the race (and the Senate), because for them, “winning” means keeping access to the money flow that defines their party"
Spectacles of Fascism in an Age of Exhaustion
"Good morning to everyone but Chair Comer, who is presiding over the markup of H.R. 9720 today, the WORST attack on Home Rule by this Congress so far. Free DC and friends are in the House"
The shittiest people in the world hate and fear Zohran Mamdani
Little Red Scare 2.0Trump's Big Myth
MaggieSuing Stephen MillerQuality
The Mummification of the AFL-CIO
Climbing & Capitalism: The Death of Climbing Culture
Fewer libraries & more surveillance is a helluva sales pitch to potential students / families
There are Coney Islands everywhere in Michigan
Sometimes God, sometimes nothing{ feuilleton }
AdversariaHope and Defeat: on John Berger on his centennial
Franz Wright's final poems
Me the dumbfuck left the new book at home, the Franz Wright poem below is from *God's Silence
Starveling Rabblement - James Joyce: A Political Life
The Situation of Writing ItselfSix correlations
I was fifteen, the first sign my relationship w Jeannie R wasn't going to make it out of tenth grade is when she declared this her favorite song and played the 45 over and over
Fractal Meat On A Spongy Bone
Is ambient music evil?Big Blood!






TO LARRY LEVIS

Franz Wright

Among the dead I cannot find you.
Let me rest here a minute
beneath these six leaves, crippled
tree slightly taller than I am
in a Manhattan sidewalk like a streetlamp
in a forest where I'm lost.

Tuesday, July 14, 2026

hear the click of the cartridge as it slides into its chamber

Explosive diarrhea is not the name of my next band. Since Hispanic migrant farm workers will be blamed for planting the microscopic parasite on the lettuce it only makes sense to pre-blame Taco Bell for the outbreak poisoning patriotic magamericans. I have never in my life eaten at Taco Bell and (assumed it didn't need a parasite to induce explosive diarrhea) was never going to regardless the parasites on lettuce that induce explosive diarrhea, which is not the name of my next band




Rest of the monologue and kicking the corpse of Lindsey Graham in the grid. Too, my free blogging platform's self-enshittification continues apace, now more than half the feeds on the blogrolls are sick or dead with the numbers growing. Too, there are people who still think there will be an election in November and that they won't be gunned down in the streets when they protest after there wasn't. Too, I'd unforgivably forgot Parts & Labor because I don't own a CD player though I own all their CDs but they have a new double album available (as well as all previous albums that I own as a CD) on bandcamp, it's worth the $10, please play it loud




We are ruled by motherfucking sociopaths
Roast in Boiling Piss, Lindsey Graham
Today's ➥ monologueMarvel at how swiftly, at news of Lindsey Graham's death, Trump goons sealed Graham's office in the Capitol, his townhouse on Capitol Hill, his residence in South Carolina, and that they are searching them unto destroying the residence for anything that could harm but more importantly help Trump and more importantly his Shitlord bosses. It's like they knew Graham's ticker would tock, yes? Don't need a Lindsey Epstein, yo, and think what juice he has on Trump, Trump's enemies, but more importantly Trump's allies, which is what Trump wants most
Today's ➥ monologueOn the tee of One at Woodsboro Disc Golf Course this past Sunday Dr Z and I debated who ordered Graham's "heart attack," Dr Z asserting Putin, me insisting Trump, then added Think of the fierce competition in the Republican ranks to replace Graham as Trump Toady Number One on the Sunday morning Meet the Presses and daily on Fox and other cracker cable channels, imagine how much Trump will enjoy the debasement candidates will show him
"every dead senator gets a thoughtful obituary lauding their “courage” and then if you look it up the courage was filibustering the Give Medicine to Cancer Kids act"
The Dead Cannot Rest If They Are Still Useful
Hours after the death of Lindsey Graham, Donald Trump said of Graham’s potential replacement, “I have somebody that I think would be great.”
Lindsey Graham: Opportunist or Fascist?
Lindsey Graham and the rot of modern conservatism
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
We are governed by serial killers
Maine Democrats tell Chuck Schumer to fuck the fuck off
Don't Take Advice From Your Enemies
The Mechanisms of Enshittification
A guide to racism in the criminal justice system
How The Guardian Sells Imperialism To Progressives
What Is Capitalist Exploitation, and Why Is It Wrong?
We are ruled by motherfucking sociopaths
This is, quite literally, a protection racket
A professor of religious studies asks why everyone wants an exorcism
Israel Continues to Shoot Children in the Head During the Gaza Ceasefire
When fascists come for the news outlets that enabled them
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
Trapped in this doom-loop of impotence
I. HATE. MOTHERFUCKING. DEMOCRATS.
We are ruled by motherfucking sociopaths
How the PayPal Mafia Reanimated Apartheid
We are ruled by motherfucking sociopaths
Hysteria as a Moving Cultural Framework
20 things your phone knows about you that you never told it
The most corrupt, polluted tournament in the tournament’s 96-year history
Awaiting the CrashThe four biggest lies they tell about US history
MaggieNew study finds that sometimes cats groom each other specifically to be annoying{ feuilleton }
PEN America Sells out. Again.
What Dinaw Mengestu said, yes
Because of ticks and the diseases they carry I not only deet the hell out of my legs and arms, if I yank a disc into truly deep rough, fuck it, I can replace the disc for $9, I just bought three DX Beasts for the one I left at Rockburn in the weed jungle right of fairway on 16
Monsterpieces: William Vollmann's Volumes
Hockney As He Was, Or Seems To Be
Parts & Labor give a track-by-track breakdown of new album Set of All Sets, their first in 15 years
Parts & Labor Return to Forever





IN A ROW

Stephen Dobyns

The mailman handing me a letter,
he paid a little. My daughter’s

third grade teacher, the electrician
putting a light over my back door:

they paid as well. The woman at the bank
who cashes my check. She paid a part of it.

The typist in my office, the janitor
sweeping the floor—they paid some too.

The movie star paid for it. The nurse,
the nun, the saint, they all paid for it—

a photograph from Central America,
six children lying neatly in a row.

One day I was teaching or I sold
a book review or I gave a lecture

and some of the money came to me
and some rolled off into the world,

but it was still my money, the result
of my labor, each coin still had my name

printed across it, and I went on living,
passing my days in a box with a tight lid.

But elsewhere, skulking through tall grass,
a dozen men approached a village. It was hot;

the men made no noise. See that one’s cap,
see the button on that other man’s shirt,

* * *

hear the click of the cartridge as it slides
into its chamber, see the handkerchief

which that man uses to wipe his brow—
I paid for that one, that one belongs to me.