All Day: Arid Hairsplitting, Cheese-Paring

I can always tell when we apostates feel especially impotent; the contests over who's our team's most clear-eyed and clever eunuch turn nastier than normal. I for one still can't decide whether Amy Goodman is a dangerously naive and cancerous cyst who is blithely unaware of the repercussions of the actions she advocates or a bloodthirsty cruise-missile liberal cancerous cyst blithely indifferent to the suffering she knows the actions she advocates will cause. I'm told these are my only two choices. I... I... irresponsibly, I choose irresponsibility, refuse to participate in this particular fucking ladder match. There'll be another one soon enough anyway.

• Pragmatist doubt, dogmatism, and bullshit.
• Pledging open-ended war.
• Mission creep. 
• Bogged down.
• Either/or.
• Born to be mild. 
• The criminalization of the American ruling class.
• Three myths of Israel's insecurity.
• Drones over America.
• Why I support Donald Trump's candidacy: The last time conservatives and Republican-leaning independents became enamored of an unfashionable, slightly weird, cartoonish businessman, Ross Perot took close to 20 percent of the popular vote and handed Bill Clinton the presidency. Which do conservatives value more: self-indulgence or the chance to repeal Obamacare, prevent a huge tax increase and overhaul the welfare state? I’m a little scared to know the answer. But I do know this: Trump must be stopped. Giggles. All I look for in a candidate.
• Metaphor.
• The half-life of disasters. 
• That's so ghetto.
• Your bleggal overlords.
• Blogging and the desire for revenge. 
• Where do tamales come from?
• My future hell.
• Hilltop.
• White's Ferry! Happened to me, Willy Bayne, and Park Mrebelic, thirty or so years ago, though we got out without the police, choosing to risk drowning rather than confiscation and arrest.
• Excellent gratuitous shot at Jonah Goldberg.
• Mogwai covers The Pixies.
• Wishing well.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• What a pleasure.

THE REPUBLIC OF ANESTHESIA

Thomas Lux

I don't feel anything today, my country-
men and - women, I'm numbed by 21 liters
of Novacain, I feel nothing
from my cowlick to the final ridge of my big toe's nail; my tear
ducts dry-walled, not a sob
or the sigh of an ant left in me this autumn,
another autumn
in which the world hates itself so much.
Man ties the severed head of another man
to the tail of a dog.
One frog eats a smaller frog.
Wisdom teeth, instead of being yanked,
evolve to wisdom fangs.
All day: arid hairsplitting, cheese-paring.
One bank buys another bank
and the little rubber thimble
on the teller's thumb - that stays the same.
Certainly my god
can rip the heart from your god's chest
and will, god willing, with my help.
A trillion-milligram hammer,
the arc of its swing
wide as a ring
of Saturn, hits us first
on the right temple,
then on the left. Good night, good night,
lights out! bark the stars.