killing refuckingdux

We yes live nine blocks from this unlovely new bit of business, yes. What the hell is going on with the Hill of late? Or is this its true face, the inturning desparate anger on every Broadway corner now uncoiling?

Latter-Day Raskolnikov?

I found this photograph in a copy of Crime and Punishment at the Capitol Hill Library. The bone, the watch, the dreads, the Dostoevsky . . . a tacit confession to something? Confess further in the comments if you come upon this, thou Seattle rascal!

That Sounds Like Howard, All Right

. . . and by extension Bush, Blair, the PM of Estonia and so on. Concerning Australian troops being sent to the Solomon Islands in response to rioting,

Australian Prime Minister John Howard says those who oppose the election of Prime Minister Snyder Rini need to respect the democratic process.

He says his country will not stand idly by and let that happen.

link

They do not move.

A miserable, wretched, futile, tedious—anything but happy!—100th would-be birthday to the shade of Samuel Beckett, the age's arch-disquieter, curer of comforts, cragfaced clawer after perfect tersity. Let us remember, when trying to fail better:

"Better on your arse than on your feet,
Flat on your back than either, dead than the lot."

Drinkin' & Bloggin'

I'm just back from toasting the thirtieth birthday of a friend at a joint called Barça, a bimbo-beleaguered yuppiefuck joint on the Hill I've scrupulously avoided for years. I graciously put in at least half an hour before The Fear overtook me and jackbooted my jackass out into the rain, past the crowd of Voguegoths smoking (now juridically disallowed in bars everywhere in Washington State). Got a good look in passing at what used to be the Bad Juju Lounge, a former fine dive fulla punx and rivetheads where au hazard one could cop for earsplitting speedmetal, young drunk beauties of every gender race & orientation, and a nice solitary experience all at the same time. Now sadly this has reverted to its former self, an anonymous sparsely-attended gay bar whose name then and now I can't recall. Such is the course of all nostalgia, yes.

But see: before arriving, while strolling in fuzzy hat down Denny between 14th & 13th, I looked up & saw directly over my head a small rat on a lowhanging telephone wire, still and whiskery, tail barely twitching in barely a breeze, in rain's lull, afraid maybe with no forward or backward to get to in no hurry. I couldn't believe it'd died in such a position, so clapped my hands and stamped my feet till it twitched its ears and nose enough to convince me. And then, christ yes, I sang to it a little, in lieu of prayer I guess, some modified Leonard Cohen: "Like a rat on a wire, like a predicted drunk in a pre-midnight choir of one," and so on, trying in my plagiarized way to be free. Coming back the same way less than an hour later I found it gone so believed the best, whatever it is that can be best to a rat in the rain on a wire, right.

Then later rescued a nightcrawler from the sidewalk, then later still heard the wretched crunch of a snailshell under my foot. Who doesn't hate to be a killer of anything? Let those remorseful of tiny tragedy be the majority, and let me be numbered among them. Yes.