Kool-Aid and Cocktails

Got daughter to bed, came up and turned on the debate to hear McCain arguing that his experience with Keating made him best-qualified to deal with the current mess. Bah-dum!

I think I'll just watch this Nick Cave video BA sent my way today. I could listen to this song go forever, and it practically does. Very purgatorial.

The other day the Post Style section asked "Where have all the protests gone?" and answered its question on the next page in the GOSSIP column, where it told of the PEN/Faulkner awards speakers:

"The annual PEN/Faulkner Award gala at the Folger Shakespeare Library -- typically a genteel literary affair -- turned into a mudfest Monday night when two authors launched into denunciations of John McCain and Sarah Palin.

"Like most cult leaders, they really think the public is stupid enough to drink this Kool-Aid," best-selling novelist Terry McMillan said. "I am not taking a sip."...

Poet Amiri Baraka railed that the choice is between Barack Obama or that "patient from the Vietnam War." But it was McMillan ("Waiting to Exhale," "How Stella Got Her Groove Back") who eviscerated the GOP ticket with deadpan sarcasm:

"Now a senior citizen dying to dress up as the new sheriff of this land of opportunity and opportunists, John McCain, alongside . . . his charming VP running mate (who has finally gotten a chance to wear that tiara, even though this is not a beauty nor personality contest), Sarah Tall-and-Pretty Palin, have -- as self-ordained mavericks and reformers -- been making empty . . . promises about how they want to clean up Washington." All McCain really wants, she went on, is to "find a new war to fight"; Palin and her "uneducated snowmobiling husband just want to fly first class."

The crowd laughed a bit; mostly people whispered, "Did she really say that?" Oh, yes, she did -- and more....

We asked local novelist Alan Cheuse, another reader at the gala, if politics had spoiled the party. "Stendhal said, 'Politics in a novel is like a pistol shot in the theater,' " he told us yesterday. "Terry's a very passionate woman and speaks her mind." He called Baraka "a poet and a bit of a propagandist -- his problem these days is that he doesn't know the difference."

Decorum returned for the post-performance dinner in the Folger's Reading Room, where the 250 guests and the authors effortlessly switched from campaigns to cocktails."

Thank heaven things got so quickly back to normal.

Yep, their comments were rough. But ruder than war profiteering? That's, um, debatable. I'd rather have a poet confused about propaganda than a president. Where is the "decorum" in a death toll?

But hell, they're just angry black people, and one of them a poet besides. Marginalize them on the gossip page.

This is where the protests are--everywhere.

I'm thinking about multiple PEN/Faulkner winner E.L. Doctorow and my favorite of his novels, The Waterworks. It's a love poem to the newspaper business and scary and readable as anything by Stephen King. But it's also a look at the riches of the last part of the last century, conspicuous consumption and moral hypocrisy, the North's role in slave trading and war profiteering, and the cynical, damaged, despairing generation that came after these profiteers.

It's about a cabal of old men who want to live and control everything forever.

I'm not one of those who wants to be my child's best friend. But I would like to live now in a manner that my daughter's generation won't despise me later.

Down in the River to Pray

Dearest Annwyn has completed an amazing, enormous work of magic: kayaking 444 miles of the Susquehanna River to the Bay. Here is one of her dispatches:

"I'd like not to present it as some huge pageant - but rather small intimate details...like petals and feathers which float upon the water and I gather as I move on the water - or like the flowers beginning to rise from ravaged waters - soft yellow blossoms moving toward the light - water so polluted no life may try...as I paddle with determination - and rain falls and
strokes the surface and the wind challenges or covers one's back....and all the while your fingers are freezing...your butt is wet...but there is a place to be...a place to find shelter ...paddling..paddling...crying over the devastation... pollution flowing into the already destroyed waters.... heavy with PH change from the acid...complete disregard but to profit...holes which breeched her depths ... and moving on you paddle... having known Her first as a Darling - a lovely charm born from gathering waters... so narrow but winding and taunting and visiting and embracing...then in to places where civilization
cornered Her and she simply took her place...not dissuaded by province...circling sometimes you think you've been here before...

"There were man-made challenges - the Goodyear Dam that was SO boldly challenging - causing not only incredible physical determination - but the weather -20' and raining ... yet so brilliantly part of the beauty...several hundred facing this 70 mi. part as a "regatta" folks from Canada come to face this winter's edge of river...

"I faced hypothermia and exhaustion - later in our travels the standing stone I sat with was worth every effort...

"As it all comes together - my heart is blessed; and each singular drop that ever fell upon my head, ran down the brim of my hat to my nose and I licked with my tongue....

"There is not piece of what is human for which I do not hold compassion; there is no "one" I would NOT look in the eye.

"But I still challenge - that the waters run free. We secure the health of our waters. And we secure the health and truth of our human rivers.... our blessed selves which hold this water holy.

"With love, from the free state of Avalon
In Peace, Annwyn
The Roving Fool"

Her intention is entirely and harmoniously made manifest. Blessed be.

Photo: Paul Nevin, from the Friends of the Susquehanna Rock Art site. Educational uses permitted--figure this counts?

It's Kind of Like the Chorus to 'Venus in Furs'

I am weary of people proclaiming, as if it's something to be praised, that they admire someone for "getting it done" or constantly trumpet that "she's just like me! She's gettin' it done!" without once asking what "it" is or whether "it" is worth gettin' done (the dropped 'g' being totemic in this campaign).

Bill Clinton would have asked what "it" is, dagit!

And I am weary of hearing people say they support Sarah Palin because "she's just like me!" Are 51 percent of America's white women solipsists? I want someone as little like me as possible running this country, and believe me, dear, so do you. How about an engineer, maybe, or someone who can at least read a balance sheet or fix a computer glitch?

It's family reading time in the Cougar household, which means the prescribed 30 minutes of Magic Treehouse for DD while mommy reads, works, blogs, does a horoscope chart, and cooks pasta. Tonight, it's the New Yorker, only been ripening about three days before I peeked inside. Observations:

Spike Lee looks old. But good.

He gets up at 5 a.m. I'm going to have to start setting my alarm another half-hour earlier.

Elsewhere, Anthony Lane attempts to redeem himself from his recent savaging by Jezebel and assorted gals with this review of The Women--and I'm ready to forgive. I head to the online version to copy this, here:

"According to Sylvie, “Nobody. Hates. Saks.” Such is the moral of this film, run a close second by “Don’t give a shit about anybody—be selfish,” as delivered by Leah (Bette Midler), a trumpet-voiced movie agent. In short, we are back in the land of “Sex and the City,” and thus with the lurking suggestion that greed—emotional greed, not just the material ravenings of the shopper—is the only alternative to the humiliation that comes from subservience to men. No middle way is permitted.

"Compare this with the split-and-try-again comedies of Hollywood’s heyday, like “The Awful Truth” or “The Lady Eve,” and you can’t help recalling the satisfaction of watching the heroine come out on top, not because she had mooched around reflecting on her self-worth, or invested that self in handbags, but because she had fought like blazes to get there. Real women like Barbara Stanwyck, Irene Dunne, and Katharine Hepburn scrapped for their power, against a society that had no wish to give it up, or against hapless, dithery males who had no clue what to do with it, whereas “The Women” of 2008 gives empowerment a bad name....

"Taken together, “Sex and the City,” “Mamma Mia!,” and “The Women” add up to a spectacular trilogy of the inane, and to point that out is not the prerogative of the misogynist or the killjoy. It’s the view of someone who thinks that women deserve better from the movies, and who sees no joys to kill."

Word. I am weary of being told that I love shoes and handbags and care what labels they once bore (bore being the operative word). I actually dislike shopping, quite a bit. I love sexy heels, lingerie, the art of fashion, most of all the art of perfume, but the day my goddamn life revolves around all that you can just go ahead and shoot me. With a crossbow, please.

Photo: Nola Darling from "She's Gotta Have It." Don't make em like that anymore. Didn't you love that bed? No, it's not at Saks. Used without any permission whatsoever. Just another in the long list of reasons why I don't want anyone like me in higher office.

Lookin' Good, Cannonball Run

Trail running, distance running, in some ways all running come out of a human ability that evolved for a reason. Running for long distances over varying surfaces was necessary for food (to track game), for communicating (or spying on those strange people on the mountain next door), and for protection (to outrun predators).

Though I have spurred myself into some speed by imagining I'm being chased, it's frankly a tactic that's hard on the body (and I have this little device my weapons-loving cousin turned me on to, if that kind of protection is really necessary). For communications, we've got those Internets. But tracking game on foot is still an honorable pursuit. I think it's hardwired. That's why I like trying new trails. Even though I'm only looking to spot rectangles of paint on tree trunks and rocks, not spoor or nests, I imagine it's much the same feeling.

We're made to run, to swim, to climb trees, to use our brains and facility for planning in the pursuit of game. We're even made to use weapons to kill game when we're hungry, if we have to.

A bow hunter in a tree aiming for deer is an intelligent wildlife management device, especially when the meat and skin are donated. It's fairly even competition. In fact, I wish there were some way it could be done in the DC city limits, especially with Lyme disease so bad; it's making the deer and other animals suffer because the weak ones aren't being picked off by any kinds of predators anymore, so they live to spread it and breed all kinds of other parasites and viruses, and sooner or later, their weakened immune systems may brew up something that will get other animals, including the human ones, worse than anything we've seen so far. I don't hunt; I live in the city, for god's sake. But it's not evil to kill an animal to thin a herd and to eat. One of the best eco-witches I know of is a former champion bow hunter.

A fat fart hunting with an automatic weapon in a helicopter is just a fat fart with an automatic weapon in a helicopter. It throws off the balance. Too many predators gone, too much game gone, you're as bad off as when you started. No problems solved.

There are some who say that the human animal is entitled to use that big brain in whatever ways we want; who say that the automatic weapon and the helicopter are just natural extensions of the technology of the sling and the bow.

But there's another great facility of our big brains, one we don't use nearly often enough, and I ought to know: It's the ability to know when enough is enough and to make ourselves stop.


Why do I keep looking up David Foster Wallace eulogies in random moments? I never read but some magazine pieces; never was a big fan; I'm too old-fashioned, not smart enough. Because he was a suicide, which carries too many triggers; because he was just my age; because you're not supposed to do that if you're a genius, and fucking big and hot on top of that. But I will stop, because projecting your own crap onto the occasion of death is how ghosts are made. It burdens the spirits, who don't deserve it.

Photo: Marilyn Monroe at Black Rock, rehearsing for The Misfits. Photographer Eve Arnold; I doubt I have permission.

Freedom Is Scary

Happy Birthday, DH Lawrence. If we find any of your books on the shelves, the librarian gets taken out.

Because on a day like this, we all have to show how we support our free freedoms being free.

Photo: From the latest Lady Chatterley. Adults doing things adults do--ewww, scary.

Closer to Kurtz

Thanks for the headline, Backstretch. You can always tell a pro.

New Beck is really groovy, except for two tracks with this stupid shuffly beat, bleh. The rest is like what would have happened if Ian Curtis had just run off with that photographer and moved to LA and made it past 40.

Tomorrow: Back into the woods to find out how many trees have fallen.

UPDATE: An oak with a branch spread of about 15 feet was down barely a half-mile into my usual trail, taking out a holly and assorted other saplings. I stopped to pay respects and gather a couple of tiny fragments of wood for magic and heard the branches rustle. A tall, lovely young Nordic-looking woman was making a careful scramble over the whole mess from the other side. "That was fun," she said, dripping with sweat and sarcasm. "I'm not even gonna try," I said, turned around, and took the AU hill as pennance.

Say "Hi" to Your Knee

My trail half-marathon today was canceled due to Hurricane Hannah. Instead, I took a gig covering AARP events (but I don't get to go to the Chicago concert) and did the convention hotel 5K. There's got to be a limerick in there somewhere. Give me til the end of this entry to think of one.

So the other day, I see a teaser in the Post about Sarah Palin's health care policy work. So I'm thinking, well, let's not judge, maybe she has some good ideas. Turns out she has had but one idea, about a pretty obscure policy issue, and her take on that is kind of, well, mavericky. She pushed very hard for radiologists (imaging) to be able to open their own shops freely, separate from hospitals and as independent businesses. In Alaska, it's hard to open your own freestanding healthcare shop, probably because of legislation designed to protect hospitals. See, in the past 10 years or so, doctors, surgeons, all kinds of health care folks, have been opening up their own places where they can ply their trade--anything from the surgeon who did my daughter's adenoids (one of the best in DC--she wanted to go out and play two hours after it was done) to the guy who'll Botox your cock--and not have to give over the money to hospitals. But hospitals don't want the competition. In-and-out surgery and mammograms and the like are really good clean moneymakers for them, and help pick up the losses caused by uninsured homeless GSWs in the emergency room.

Seems pretty simple to solve that one--don't have any more uninsured homeless GSWs. At least address ONE of those problems, right?

Instead, the for-profit hospital lobby has worked to stifle competition, as probably happened in Alaska, where a doctor or similar has to obtain a "certificate of need" to open a business. Here's where it gets funny. The for-profit hospital lobby is majorly Republican, big McCain supporters, and a huge source of Republican K street revolving door lobbying "talent." It's loaded with lawyers who pop back and forth between advisor positions and lobbyist positions without even having to put down their steak knives.

So why has Palin been pushing to make things so hard on the poor widdle for-profit hospitals in Alaska (where there are probably more than their share of uninsured homeless GSWs, what with all that wild moose shooting going on out of helicopters and all)?

Her one idea on health care policy is obscure, parochial, and contrary to the party she says she stands behind. So OK, I gave her a chance, she fails, and now it's open season. Thanks for the link, BA.

Oh and, um, Dear Police of St. Paul: What part of "he's not resisting" do you not understand?

OK, so it's not up to the one in The American Wife. But here's a try:
There once was a lady named Hannah
Who choked on a great big banana
Her teeth couldn't stop it
Nor the epiglottis
But it stopped when it hit vox humana.

Just Like Evelyn "Champagne" King and Shirley and Company Sing

If politicians want journalists to stay out of their bedrooms, I guess they'd better learn to stay out of journalists' bedrooms. But nooooo. Instead, they've ordered the cops to camp out in front of vegan eco group houses just in CASE someone inside is THINKING of throwing a soy-whip pie at a state delegate sometime in the year 2525.

So, if preemptive arrests of journalists is OK, I guess journalists should have been allowed to preempt Miss Cristal or Bristol or Britneee or whatever the hell her name is's pregnancy.

My conspiracy theory: The hurricanes and the VP choice and the pregnancy alike are all out there to divert attention from the fact that journalists and activists are being targeted, harassed, arrested, beaten, jailed, silenced, prosecuted, persecuted, all without cause.

Time out for a little ray of light, as Madonna sings: The rock n roll poet is back to taking care of business, every day, in honor of National Poetry Month.

Now for my own shame--and this one's just the tip of the iceberg--last week I went ahead and did a job I know was damned dead wrong. My boss gives us the chance to bow out of doing marketing we disagree with morally, and I didn't take it. It was for a product that's environmentally damaging, without a doubt. They needed a damage control, image rebranding campaign. And here's why I did it--not for the money, not out of indifference, but because I saw the samples and the ideas they'd come up with, and I knew I could do it so very much better. So it was out of pride in my work.

This week I took myself off the account. I'm not patting myself on the back. I'm still whacking myself upside the head for doing it in the first place.

I feel like comparisons, even twice removed, to evils such as the Holocaust and American slavery are by nature invidious and at the very least grandiose; there's simply nothing that compares. But as long as I'm covered in sackcloth and ashes anyway, let's make it worse: There's this scene in Schindler's List where this woman prisoner tries to pull Rafe Fiennes aside and tell him the plans for the bunkhouses they're constructing at the concentration camp are all wrong; she's an architect, she explains, she knows these things. Sir. And he says "hmm," and he shoots her. It's a big ugly metaphor for the teeny tiny small-scale cockeyed compromises I'm stuck with too often. But if you aren't aware that the teeny ones can take you by the hand and lead you right into the bigger ones, well...

So, this time they came for the vegans with video cameras, and next time they'll be coming for Keith Olberman, unless you write a poem or grab a camera or donate.

Image: Cover of Shirley Goodman's comeback hit, "Shame Shame Shame," which contains the awesome lyric referencing the great William DeVaughn: "I've got my sunroof top, I've got my diamond in the back." She also sang backup on Exile. I bet she doesn't have anything to be ashamed of.

Walk of Shame

Exhibit A: "Starting salaries for day-care teachers hover around $25,000; classroom assistants who don't have college degrees make $10,000 less than that, not much more than minimum wage...High turnover is a problem at many day-care centers, experts say, and child-care workers are among the lowest paid of any profession."--Washington Post, 8/26/08

Exhibit B: "This press has a history of unethical dealings with its authors. The only reason why I didn't know this is because last year's winner had to agree to a gag order as part of the settlement with the press. At their insistence, she is not allowed to tell her story, or warn other poets about what happened. So I submitted to a press that I NEVER would have submitted to if I had known..." Here's what happened next.

Exhibit C: "So very often, the face of wrongdoing turns out to be not evil but ignorance. Under a classic surgical cross-examination by James Esseks, Litigation Director at the ACLU’s LGBT Project, Preece basically confirmed Ms. Schroer’s story. Schroer had the best qualifications and performed best in the interview. Schroer was the best person for the job. Schroer had the job; had it, that is, until she told Preece she was transgender."

Note on Exhibit B: It's interesting, but every poetry contest I've entered so far in my short career has had a fee. None of the erotica contests I've entered has had an entry fee. And the erotica editors have been without fail respectful and professional. And I've won two out of three contests entered. So who's more ethical: Poetry presses or erotic publishers?

Can You Feel the Love Tonight? That's Cool, Neither Can I.

Everyone's going to Burning Man, and I'm stuck tending home fires. Which I really don't mind. It's putting out the work fires that's making me ill. Toxic fumes an'all'at shit.

Dear BA alerted me to the impending Led Zep tribute in the closing ceremonies of the Olympics, and I couldn't even watch because I had a wretched headache from a training run on the Billy Goat Trail followed by taking the kids to see Lion King (Julie Taymor sets, costumes and puppets made me cry, late-stage Elton John music made my head pound) and not enough water breaks in between. Hey, I'm sharing part of the Burning Man experience--dehydration!

I also got bit next to the eye by a spider during a run Friday morning and by Saturday I looked like the Phantom of the Opera. It's revenge for running through so many hard-built webs. Verily, I'm like trailing clouds of chiffon some mornings, the webs are so thick and numerous across the trails.

Stupid races I will lose humiliatingly are cause for love and thanks--they are an excuse to be out there, dragonflies hovering just ahead of my pace, sweet annie scenting the air. Just like officious, arrogant clients strengthen my resolve to do whatever it takes to get myself out of the position of being their servant.

The principal at my daughter's school sent home a welcome letter saying their goal was that "children will learn, whatever it takes." "Whatever It Takes" was also the slogan for Casablanca records, and what it took was usually at least an eight-ball.

Daughter's report from the first day back at school: "Today we talked about armpits at lunchtime." Seven years, and I'm still so blindlngly in love with her.

Well, there's always next year for Burning Man. Of course, by THEN it won't be COOL anymore, WILL IT. Ha ha ha ha bah-dum!

Fruit Cocktail

Happy Birthday, Dorothy Parker. I played oracle with the Complete Works, and after the pages fell open to a few short stories I'd rather not think about, on the third try this appropriate one came up:

Indian Summer
In youth, it was a way I had
To do my best to please,
And change, with every passing lad,
To suit his theories.

But now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!

And Prince can do the honors:

Dorothy was a waitress on the promenade
She worked the night shift
Dishwater blonde, tall and fine
She got a lot of tips
Well, earlier I'd been talkin' stuff
In a violent room
Fighting with lovers past
I needed someone with a quicker wit than mine
Dorothy was fast
Well, I ordered - "Yeah, let me get a fruit cocktail, I ain't 2 hungry"
Dorothy laughed
She said "Sounds like a real man 2 me"
Kinda cute, U wanna take a bath?
I said "Cool, but I'm leaving my pants on"
"Cuz I'm kind of going with someone"
She said "Sounds like a real man 2 me"
"Mind if I turn on the radio?"
"Oh, my favorite song" she said
And it was Joni singing "Help me I think I'm falling"
The phone rang and she said
"Whoever's calling can't be as cute as U"
Right then I knew I was through
(Dorothy Parker was cool)

So Veddy Veddy Effed.

Found out the race I'm stuck in two weeks from now goes for three of its 13 miles along rocks high above the Potomac. Scenic!

Been out of town and out of inspiration. Not out of work, though. Almost called a client an a-hole today, but didn't fall over that cliff.

Anyone got a more pleasurable cliff to fall over?

Worthy of a Follow-Up Article in the Metro Section

Wrote this last year as part of the disaster poem series. There was indeed a follow-up article on the Brentwood anthrax deaths the other day, in the Metro section--on the front, not in the inside rail. The Postal Service denied the request of the wife of one of the victims, also a postal worker, to transfer to a different facility after the incident.

The Deaths of Two Workers at the Brentwood Postal Facility, Washington, DC

It’s not the first time white powder
Shut things down around here.
Or the first time it killed, either.
From horse to green to rock it went;
The dealers circled this island
For decades. A postal job
Is supposed to be one way out.
You do your best to steer clear,
Just like they tell you, keep your
Head down, hold your head up,
Keep your nose clean, but damned
If they didn’t find a way to bring that poison
Right in the front door.
And they even got us to carry it.

Try telling anyone around here
That it wasn’t made by the government.
Try telling us that a conservative
Treatment policy was wise.
We know some of them got the cure
Before they even got the disease.
Everyone knows there are plenty
Of pills in the White House. All colors.

Anthrax is one of the ancient ones,
Like rabies, tuberculosis, and
Syphilis.
Of course.
You should have known we’d bring that up.
The anthrax spores wait in the ground
Where an animal has died, and wait,
Until someone tries to plant, to build,
And then they jump out at the living.
The spores survive in Egyptian tombs;
An effective weapon of defense
To get our kings through to the afterlife
With their riches intact.

How long before they answer our question:
How long were they planning to wait?
For six days, the particles floated around us as we worked,
Worked their way into the folds of lungs, into
The clean line of a paper cut, into our laughter
And our greetings and our side-mouth comments,
Yes, and they came home with us to greet our children.
The spores survive so much that we can’t.
Spores have the advantages of being a lower life form—
No stress, no coughing, no bills to pay,
No fool for a boss. But all are equal underground.

The Future of News Media

Yeah, I know, but a poem post doesn't really count, does it?

Let's shut down our OBSCURE bureaus (Bogota, Jakarta, Nairobi ... Does anyone really CARE?) and embed a reporter in "The Amazing Race." That way we can write about "real" foreign news as part of a blog about THE SHOW. Give readers what they "need" by giving them what they WANT, like how you sneak medicine to a dog by hiding his pills inside a chunk of hamburger.

Remember the day Lee Abrams parodies became a bona fide genre.

I Think That I Shall Never See.

I wanted to write a poem about Colony Collapse Disorder, but there's just too much there, got to do some research. So whatever.

It's my favorite place to stop in New Jersey. There are also all these signs along some roads up there that warn people that the trees have been sprayed. I'm not sure why. Do they have a problem with people digging up trees and stealing them? Trying to eat them? Pulling over and possessed of a compulsion to climb them?

Maintenance

It's getting so you can tell the trails not so much
By the blazes but by
Whether the trees fallen
Across them have been cut and cleared.

The violence of the storms increases
Each summer, and this season has pounded
A harvest of timber onto the floors of the city's
Stream bed parks. Piles of cut limbs

Show up trailside, and then there are the
New gateways, chainsaw-sliced
Out of the thickest trunks. The neat core
Is rolled aside and set stumplike,

A future stage for a stretch. The other day in the woods,
Running, I smelled something strange, something
That carried a vague air of alarm. I came up to
Two newly fallen and realized: Char.

Lightning did it. Most just loose their roots
From weeks on end of mud, and topple. It used to be
A fallen tree might lie for weeks waiting for clearance,
An obstacle to climb or bound

Over. Now there are so many falling
They have to get them right away, get ready for more,
Or be overwhelmed. One morning run, two years ago,
On my birthday, I leapt a fallen trunk in smug pride,

Only five paces later to slam my toe against an iron root
And go sprawling. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK,"
I screamed, then "I'M OK, I'm OK, I'm OK, it's OK,"
At the yard worker in the orange vest, tossing raked leaves

Into the edge of the woods from the embassy
Far up the hill, who had made a run of crunching, sliding
Strides in my voice's direction--to stop when he saw me wave--
Fearing another unspeakable attack.

Photo: Vishwin60, Creative Commons public domain license.

I Want to Believe...

...that someday I'll have a threesome with Sculder and Mully. There it is I said it.

...that the Fannie Mae bailout will help stabilize the markets. Though that won't happen until they either publicize or privatize those guys. The current fence-straddling is breaking our balls. I felt a little like a Republican the other day when I read a heartwarming story about people getting loan assistance. "This is great," one woman said. "Now I can go to grad school and really save some money." Hey, wait a minute--I want to go to grad school, too! Except when people tried to get me to use my condo as an ATM, I just said no! And got me a fixed-rate with a solvent institution! So where's my assistance?

...that the people helped out won't just cycle right back to the same old shit, because the real problem isn't solved. I guess I must be a compassionate conservative, because when I read the NYT Sunday piece about the woman who racked up the credit card bills on the home shopping network while in bed after a hysterectomy, my heart hurt for her. Especially seeing the photo--she's way overweight and smoking. We're so terribly, sickeningly, tragically addicted to so much; we must be in such terrible pain to go to such lengths, destroying our health, our lives, our relationships, just to feel a little bit better. Even Republicans do it--look at poor Bob Novak with his penis-extender Corvette convertible. Ooops, forgot, that wasn't purchased out of an addictive urge to shore up identity--it's an investment. You can use it to run down old men and decrease the surplus population.

Words of wisdom from my August horoscope, by astrologer Eric Francis:
"...the whole notion of "difference" as it is projected onto social (so-called) reality is a farce, the job of which is to perpetuate alienation (mainly to sell things). You don't need that, and neither do the rest of us."

Priceless.

Photo: The Last Judgment altarpiece from St. Cecilia cathedral, Albi, from Sacred Destinations Travel Guide. The horrifyingly huge cathedral and its horrifying and also huge last judgment were made over the course of about 200 years to smack down the Cathar heresy. Just a couple of highlights: 400 "heretics" burned; the Pope's bagman memorably coined the phrase "Kill Em All, Let God Sort Em Out." ("Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.") The Last Judgment and the cathedral were the medieval version of "this is what will happen to you if you don't buy what we're selling." Nearly every artist involved in its creation is anonymous. Hope they got paid, at least!

"Death, Race, Sex, Death, Race, Sex, Death, Traffic, Sex"

My daughter is standing at the bathroom sink, sculpting in tissue, soap and water. "I am the great inventor of toilet paper art!" she declares. And: "Water is the enemy of toilet paper."

All of which is no comment on the following, except to say I think she's moving toward a world where separate literary anthologies from men and from women may not be needed, but for now...

Launch party at P&P Friday 7/25, 7 p.m., for Stress City: A Big Book of Fiction by 51 DC Guys. Dudes discussing the work include R. R. Angell, Juan H. Gaddis, Brian Gilmore, Dave Housley, Charles R. Larson, Alex MacLennan, Richard McCann, and David Nicholson.

Here's a chunk of a review: “Stress City is a core sample of the D.C. male psyche, a tube that comes out striated with the compacted layers of what's on these guys' minds: death, race, sex, death, race, sex, death, traffic, sex.... makes me feel like I never left. Recommended for Washingtonians past and present." – Jordan Ellenberg, author of The Grasshopper King.

Wish I could go; believe I will be beaching.

Photo: Mural by G. Byron Peck, who did the Stress City cover art; photo by AudeVivere, Creative Commons 2.5.

Son of a Window Dresser!

There's Obama graffiti all over France. Outside the Cluny. On the road to Hautacom, in chalk, for the Tour riders to roll over. He's bigger than David Hasselhof in Germany.

And I've heard he's huge in Japan.

Gotta Love Those Little Visitors

OK, had to post this chunk from the website of the place where we're staying:

"Our village of Lézignan provides wonderful strolling walks for those who are looking for the peaceful traditional French village. Lézignan has a beautiful 17th Century church. The church spire is unique to the Barony of Angles.

There is also plenty of wild life, with deer roaming the woods behind Chez Passet, and birds of prey circling above in the blue skies. We also have the little visitors too, with Doves, the Nut-hatch and of course the Robins and Great Tits."

Of course.

Photo: Weekend

A Lawn Savant Who'll Lop a Tree--Oh!*

I'm off to France to taste of the healing waters of Lourdes, y'all. Won't be doing none of that there bloggin for two weeks.

Food of the Gods.

Song of the Season.

Oh, can you believe this, it's all over the Internets! CNN correspondent Michael Ware has been sleeping around. It's all over the news, because, of course, it's really big, big news when a man sleeps around like this, OMG!! (There's this woman correspondent who's been fooling around, too, but who cares, I mean, that's not news, when a consenting adult woman has sex with other consenting adults, who would ever care about that or think it's news? Silly me.)

A Hillary Clinton supporter in a "Well Behaved Women Rarely Make History" t-shirt would have tried to have my child taken away if she knew I write erotica and take my clothes off in front of strangers. Even though neither of those things are ever done in a way that my child would ever know about, care about, or be affected by.

Countless Obama supporters speak of their contempt for Hillary Clinton for letting her husband "get away with it" when none of them know anything about that couple's private arrangements. And neither do I.

Perhaps the sacred waters and hikes in the fresh air of the Pyrenees will improve my disposition. I have been feeling a little Sade. If all else fails, Armagnac.

Photo: Two or Three Things I Know About Her.
*: Pynchon.