Let Darkness Lap at Your Sides. Give Darkness an Inch

Last night I attended Walter Johnson High School's 2011 Awards Ceremony (Planet walked across stage to receive the award for Excellence in Three-Dimensional Art - she sculpts). The ceremony took two and a half hours; there were dozens of special awards, plus the awards for each department, then the reading of National Merit Scholars. The principal (who's leaving to take a job up the ladder and received standing ovations and whoops), apologized for the length, saying, consider the cause for the length, the remarkable number of remarkable students. A wonderful evening.

This morning:

Under the plan, the council would cut $25 million from the $1.4 billion it contributed to the public school system this year. It would also take more control over the way the schools, and other county agencies, save to cover retiree health insurance.

The council would largely direct the school cuts to an account covering employee benefits, said Ervin, a former Board of Education member. The goal, she said, is to keep the cuts from affecting classrooms, while making sure that school employees share in countywide budget cuts.

Fuck you. I've said this before: my wife is a public school teacher, one of my best friends is a public school teacher, both my parents were public school teachers as were two of my favorite aunts and two of my favorite uncles, so I plead FULL DISCLOSURE AND SELF-INTEREST AND BLIND SPOT when I say.... when I say.... when I say twelve hours ago I was glowing and now I'm heartsick again. It was a nice four days pretending I wasn't anguishing the clusterfuck.

• Honoring the particular.
• Politics of revenge and submission.
• Police state. Well, not quite yet, there's work still to be done, which is why Corporate will ensure motherfucking Obama is reelected.
• On the above. You know, I've never denied my complicity, but at least I'm not wiring the panopticon for a living, I'm just helping Corporate train the next generation of neo-cons and Chicago economists (who order and control the panopticon).
• Disobedience? Really?
• The way things aren't.
• Matty and Megan.
• Insupportable policy versus overambitious force.
• Wheaton!
• Vote for your favorite Metro map redesign!
• Fresh episodes of heartsickness make me listen to Will Oldham:

• The Stockholm Syndrome Theory of Long Novels.
• Kertzer. Though I gave up on KEXP, your fucking Fleet Foxes, Arcade Fucking Fire, Fucking Hipster Top 40 station, I still tuned into the weekly archives of Best Ambience.
• Rudy Foolish.
• 2/15.
• The sounds are always begging.
• I am drinking again.
• Raining in darling.
• Your will miss me when I burn.

THE SCIENCES SING A LULLBYE

Albert Goldbarth

Physics says: go to sleep. Of course
you're tired. Every atom in you
has been dancing the shimmy in silver shoes
nonstop from mitosis to now.
Quit tapping your feet. They'll dance
inside themselves without you. Go to sleep.

Geology says: it will be all right. Slow inch
by inch America is giving itself
to the ocean. Go to sleep. Let darkness
lap at your sides. Give darkness an inch.
You aren't alone. All of the continents used to be
one body. You aren't alone. Go to sleep.

Astronomy says: the sun will rise tomorrow,
Zoology says: on rainbow-fish and lithe gazelle,
Psychology says: but first it has to be night, so
Biology says: the body-clocks are stopped all over town
and
History says: here are the blankets, layer on layer, down and down.