Thursday, October 22, 2026

Like One Who Scrawls a Listless Testament of Gold Quirks

I doom scroll and document the clusterfuck to help me focus my nourishing fury through futile action but understand those who reasonably don't doom scroll don't want to and won't click the links in my grids, I said to a friend who tells me he no longer can. My daughter can't, won't, my wife, who concedes that while I'm angry I'm not mad, can't, won't. I have a another friend who can't, won't, who tells me she just wants the midterms to be over, thinks a resounding repudiation of Trump and magamericans will slow rather than, like I think, dramatically accelerate infuriated shitlords into enacting and brutally enforcing the United States of Assholes into the fascist shithole Shitlords desire, and tells me she doesn't want to hear what I think will happen if voters deliver a resounding repudiation of Trump and magamericans on November 3 because I'm fucking nuts and too often right

Making these headshots disperses my soothing seething fury far more effectively than the grids but people want to see them even less than the grids and I have stats to prove it and reassure me. I said to a chaired professor renowned as a leading historian on American shitliberalism who still believes a revival of New Deal and Great Society in Shitlordistan is possible, you *don't?* believe that shitlords are weaponizing Trump's descent into madness as the trigger for kabooming what remains of America's false democracy forever? you actually believe that after corruptly gaining all this power they will peacefully relinquish it in a world they are willfully and profitably destroying in their efforts to subsidize their survival of their own deliberate wreckage? He would never look at this blog, but he did say I'm fucking nuts. Julian Cope turned 69 yesterday, if this is not one of this shitty blog's theme songs, only a few of which I can remember now, it's certainly one of mine





The riots in Europe are about shitlords not immigrants
Epidemic of ShitlordsTheir gestapo agents
Shitlords are evil - what sustains them?
The Hidden Looting by the Rich leads to the Physical Looting by Those Who've Been Looted
The shitlord plot to delete democracy
A shitlord Wanted a Trump Pardon. His Family Gave Alina Habba a $50 Million Deal94 Year-Old Electronics shitlord Accused of Hiring Goons to Infest Chicago With Huge Rat Swarm
Shitlords and the quiet reshaping of America's public lands
Palestinian Youth Helped Save WaPo Journalist Attacked by Israeli Settlers
Israel using US-made electroshock weapons on Palestinian detainees
UK Announces It Will Officially Brainwash Children To Be Hateful Zionists
The hunting of Ilhan OmarRep. Ilhan Omar says she will move out of her Washington, DC, home after federal search
Since I've been barking about Obama not denouncing Trump's searching of Omar's house I now need give credit where due
If this is true and the Democrats don't run commercials on it in every competitive campaign down to the state house level, they don't want to win
➥That was added to this grid three days ago - Democrats DON'T want to win
How Trump’s FBI Purge Saved Lindsey Graham and James Clyburn From a Bribery Investigation
Artificial intelligence is capitalism’s final destination
Why OpenAI Hired Chuck Schumer’s Daughter Away From Amazon
"I chose to say slurs in return for no health insurance and still not get laid and now I'm angry at how I was treated"
➥"People are rightfully dunking on these guys, but as somebody who’s had to deal with so many of them in so many aspects of their life, good. Let them fuck off. If you’re useless, the only thing you can do is cause more harm. Fucking off and doing nothing is literally the best possibility here"
Her fiancé and caretaker was murdered by a far-right extremist. Then Texas Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned the killer
Nothing will come of nothingThe hidden history of how Big Oil invented the American Dream
A GREAT MORAL BLIND SPOT
Nearly 1.6 Million Pounds Of Hot Dogs, Bacon And Deli Meats Recalled After Cooler Failure
And stop watching helmetball too, ffs
I'm going with men are pangingly insecure assholes who find their only pleasure in dominating lesser pangingly insecure assholes and who measure their worth in power and profit
Why So Many Pet Owners Can’t Afford a Veterinarian
The Bilberry Riots >"Why have homelessness when we have the land and the resources to house everyone? Why have food poverty when we could cultivate everything we need sustainably? Beyond the moral consideration, it was, frankly, illogical. Our advancement as a species can’t happen if we artificially create poverty"
Your prices are being riggedCometh the Man
MaggieLives of the poetSWANSSWANS
To feel the possibility that we could if we wanted to
{ feuilleton }
Let me share a bit of business with you
Tom LeClair on China Mieville's new novel *Rouse*
In Her Life as a Visiting Lecturer I Meet Various and Sundry People or, Another Way to Think of This, Here Are All the Novels I Never Wrote and You Are Welcome to Them2026 October 21
The Unexpected Literary History of the Dildo
Swans help, and this is a personal theme song⬇




INVECTIVE AGAINST SWANS

John Ashbery

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks
And far beyond the discords of the wind.
 
A bronze rain from the sun descending marks
The death of summer, which that time endures
 
Like one who scrawls a listless testament
Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,
 
Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon
And giving your bland motions to the air.
 
Behold, already on the long parades
The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.
 
And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies
Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.

Friday, October 16, 2026

What is so ecstatic unknowable cutthroat glad as the walls of the flesh of the voice of betrayal —yet all the while lapped in talk more dull than the tick of a clock. A puppy learns to listen this way

L, formerly known here as Earthgirl (that's new Shakey), asked me to again go to No Kings with her tomorrow and of course I said yes. Unlike the previous two, the nearest one won't be on the Strathmore Music Hall campus - they refused to allow it - No Kings is from 11am to 1pm - since the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra is performing a treacly motherfucking Tchaikovsky (today in redundancy) symphony at 8pm, the fuck? Tchaikovsky? Kill me. Will be at the White Flint metro station - locals know the anger embedded in that naming. The fuck is this dope posting on a Friday afternoon, he asks himself. Hey, remember when Bardo Pond covered Brian Eno? I did this morning out of nowhere





Home from Michigan. In the drive-around sampling, I saw 16 Al-Sayed yard signs, the majority in Washtenaw County, 13 Rogers yards signs, the majority in Jackson and Ingham counties, both as expected. Did not see a single bumper-sticker for any candidate. Voters of both parties, I was told by my son-in-law's father at the family dinner I am required to attend every trip, are united in wanting the election over and all hate their party just less than they hate their shitty candidate's opponent. Nothing has changed. Hey, there was a rare Airborne Event this past Tuesday evening, Dan played this from one of my trinity of musical Richards:





I did see plenty of signage offering, for example, Train Like a Navy Seal businesses. A local, Justin, I disc with when I'm in Michigan who is certainly not maga tells me local militias are recruiting and thriving and preparing for both election day at the polls and for the days after. He told me to listen late at night for a sudden explosion of squeal-outs and speeding as local white male pick-up truck Americans practice deployment and encirclement, and last Saturday around one in the morning yes, with gun shots. I said, too many people think if the midterms are the bloodbath for Trump and magamerica in the voters booth some are predicting then everything will be rebooted and crackers and christers (and Trump, his henchman, his shitlords) will passively accept and respect the results. People, Justin said, better get ready, which put Eva Cassidy's cover of the Curtis Mayfield song in my head where it's been to this moment, L & I were at this show at Blues Alley in Georgetown





Snuff Capitalist Acceleration
Federal agents search Representative Ilhan Omar's home as part of a criminal investigation, screams the headline
Justice Beyond American Exceptionalism
Either pass wealth taxes or learn to love digital feudalism
The fascist spectacle of streamed executions
The above and below were added before Trump canceled the live stream, he didn't do it for moral but for electoral reasons of course. The cancelation does not lessen the evil motives of those who wanted the killing streamed
The Spectacle, The Message, The Disgrace Of A Public Execution
What’s at Stake in the Omar Case
They Are Punching America In The Face And Laughing
Israel’s Destruction of Southern Lebanon Intensified After the Cease-Fire
Israel’s Violence Against Palestine Survives The Ceasefire
J Street Is Trying To Rescue Zionism In The Battle Over Israel’s Future In The Democratic Party
Masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers on Friday, setting olive groves on fire and slinging rocks
➥"Settlers"➟Which of course is the term all American history books use to describe the white Europeans who genocided indigenous Americans and stole their land
How the BBC sets a trap to make sure leftwing politicians never get a fair hearing
Borders as Capitalist MachineryThey infiltrated a Police Union Convention in Las Vegas
Introduction to Capitalism 1996–2026
Truth of WarCrypto's favorite Democrat
MaggieWho Knows Where the Sun Goes?Snarge
The Secret Superpowers of Amphibians and Reptiles
AUTUMNAL POTFUCKINGPOURRI (AND A HIGH FIVE OR THREE)2026 Oct 15
Fredric Jameson as ReaderNothing is true
{ feuilleton }The Ecstasies of Anne Carson
On Anne Carson's *Nox* ☞
I can't take a photo of it this moment because I am in Michigan, but my copy of *Nox* is (a brilliant work of poetry) one of my cherished objects, it's, simply as an object to hold, gorgeous
☟
Here's another one or my trinity of musical Richards, he's the flutist and singer
☟






Here Is My Propaganda One One One One Oneing On Your Forehead Like Droplets of Luminous Sin

Anne Carson

Like many a wife I boosted the husband up to Godhood and held him there.
What is strength?
Opposition of friends or family merely toughens it.
I recall my mother’s first encounter with him.
Glancing

at a book I’d brought home from school with his name inscribed on the flyleaf
she said
I wouldn’t trust anyone who calls himself X—and
something exposed itself in her voice,
a Babel

thrust between us at that instant which we would never
learn to construe—
taste of iron.
Prophetic. Her prophecies all came true although she didn’t
mean them to.

Well it’s his name I said and put the book away. That was the first night
(I was fifteen)
I raised my bedroom window creak by creak and went out to meet him
in the ravine, traipsing till dawn in the drenched things
and avowals

of the language that is “alone and first in mind.” I stood stupid
before it,
watched its old golds and lieblicher blues abandon themselves
like peacocks stepping out of cages into an empty kitchen of God.
God

or some blessed royal personage. Napoleon. Hirohito. You know
how novelist Ōe
describes the day Hirohito went on air and spoke
as a mortal man. “The adults sat around the radio
and cried.

Children gathered in the dusty road and whispered bewilderment.
Astonished
and disappointed that their emperor had spoken in a voice.
Looked at one another in silence. How to believe God had
become human

on a designated summer day?” Less than a year after our marriage
my husband
began to receive calls from [a woman] late at night.
If I answered [she]
hung up. My ears grew hoarse.

How are you.
—
No.
—
Maybe. Eight. Can you.
—
The white oh yes.
—
Yes.

What is so ecstatic unknowable cutthroat glad as the walls
of the flesh
of the voice of betrayal —yet all the while lapped in talk more dull
than the tick of a clock.
A puppy

learns to listen this way. Sting in the silver.
Ōe says
many children were told and some believed that when the war was over
the emperor would wipe away their tears
with his own hand.

Friday, October 9, 2026

To Play a Stringless Harp Requires Only the Thumbs

 Anne Carson

9.4. They put stones in their eye sockets. Upper-class people put precious stones.

16.2. Prior to the movement and following the movement, stillness.

8.0. Not sleeping made the Cycladic people gradually more and more brittle. Their legs broke off.

1.0. The Cycladic was a neolithic culture based on emmer wheat, wild barley, sheep, pigs and tuna speared from small boats.

11.4. Left hand on Tuesdays, right hand on Wednesdays.

10.1. She plied the ferryboat back and forth, island to island, navigating by means of her inner eye.

9.0. When their faces wore smooth they painted them back on with azurite and iron ore.

12.1. All this expertise just disappears when a people die out.

2.0. They wore their faces smooth with trying to sleep, they ground their lips and nipples off in the distress of pillows.

4.4. How you spear it, how you sheer it, how you flense it, how you grind it, how you get it to look so strangely relaxed.

4.0. Mirrors led the Cycladic people to think about the soul and to wish to quiet it.

1.1. The boats had up to fifty oars and small attachments at the bow for lamps. Tuna was fished at night.

16.0. As far as the experience of stirring is concerned, small stillness produces small stirring and great stillness great stirring.

3.3. A final theory is that you could fill the pan with water and use it as a mirror.

2.1. It was no use. They’d lost the knack. Sleep was a stranger.

14.1. There it was plunging up and down in its shallow holes.

6.1. The handbag, that artefact which freed human beings from having to eat food wherever they found it.

3.0. While staying up at night the Cycladic people invented the frying pan.

11.0. Three times a day she put the boat on autopilot and went down below to the cool silent pantry.

7.1. Abstention from grain is helpful.

9.3. Their eyes fell out.

11.3. The food was tastier that way.

11.5. This may sound to you like a mere boyish stunt.

11.1. The pantry, what a relief after the splash and glare of the helm.

4.1. To uncontrive.

6.0. To the Cycladic people is ascribed the invention of the handbag,

3.1. Quite a number of frying pans have been found by archaeologists. The frying pans are small. No one was very hungry at night.

9.1. Did I mention the marble pillows, I think I did.

2.3. This became a Cycladic proverb.

5.2. Proust liked a good jolt.

7.2. Abstention from grain is the same for men and women. You put your lungs in an extraordinary state of clear coolness.

13.0. One night there was a snowfall, solitary, absurd.

6.3. And after dinner, harps.

1.2. The Cycladic was an entirely insomniac culture.

2.2. Well, they said, these are the pies we have. It was a proverb.

4.2. My point of view is admittedly faulty. My nose is always breathing. I am worn out with breathing. I suspect you have days when you choose not to breathe at all.

14.0. That was the night she looked to her soul.

3.2. Or they may have been prestige frying pans.

9.2. They painted wonderful widow’s peaks on themselves or extra breasts.

5.1. Possibly because of his blanket refusal to listen to another person’s dreams at the breakfast table, for Proust dismissed this type of recollection as ‘mere anamnesia’.

16.1. There it lay, the foredeck in the moonlight, more silver than the sea.

9.5. Perhaps now they were glad after all that they did not sleep.

5.3. That moment when everyone sees exactly what is on the end of their fork, as William S. Burroughs said of celebrity.

15.1. See me leaving you better hang your head and cry, she liked songs like that. Honkytonk influence.

16.3. All of her leapt before her eyes.

8.1. They worried about this and kept their arms close to the body, clasping the torso right arm below left, like a cummerbund.

11.6. She thought it a good idea to silence mental conversation.

12.0. Clouds every one of them smell different, so do ocean currents. So do rocky reefs.

10.2. Her inner eye grew sharp enough to slaughter goats.

15.0. She’d been a pretty good harpist before the die-off.

6.2. So began the dinner parties.

10.0. Eventually the Cycladic people died out all except one, a ferryboat captain.

8.2. Left arm below right was considered uncouth.

7.0. To play a stringless harp requires only the thumbs.

5.0. The Cycladic people were very fond of Proust.

4.3. Is it because you don’t want the impact.

11.2. In the pantry she sat at the counter and ate with her hands.

16.0. As far as the experience of stirring is concerned, small stillness produces small stirring and great stillness great stirring.