Yesterday's doke

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Provided yesterday courtesy of John Cole's brother:

“Fox News. You know what that is? Nickelodeon for people with dementia.”

Please make a note of it.

Today's doke

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The Invisible Army has been ratfucking my DSL router for several weeks. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Sunday after hours

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There is only one reason I'd ever post such a thing to this blog. See if you can guess what it is.



A Walk In The Black Forest, Horst Jankowski (1965, Mercury Records [catalog information unavailable]), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note: some wags might consider this tune 1965's answer to Kyu Sakamoto's 1963 hit, "Sukiyaki," and also to the eternal question "Who won World War II, you so smart?"

Friday Evening After Hours

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This balls-heavy power trio track from Frank Zappa's Apostrophe(') album has always been linked in my mind to the approach of a certain monstrous, torrential chain-lightning storm as heralded by gorgeously hideous thunderheads the color of lead and a curiously refreshing 20 mph wind out of the west.



I'm certain that this tune would make a terrific soundtrack for the approach of Hurricane Irene assuming that (1) you and yours are personally safe, (2) all irreplaceable valuables are secured in a watertight fortress, (3) you are fully insured, and (4) you don't live within reach of the storm surge. Lotta ifs, I know. But what else can a Simple Country Editor offer other than best wishes and exciting incidental music?

Seriously, this is one of the most interesting power trio jams I've ever heard, with Jack Bruce strangling a dramatic fuzz-bass fanfare-style solo from his instrument right out of the gate. Then, once Bruce's hyperactive "preliminaries" are concluded, Zappa slips in from rhythm to an aggressive, precision solo that reminds me of a serpent's tongue made out of piano wire. It slashes its way through or around all obstacles popping out of the rhythm bed, where Bruce is still strumming away like Oedipus plucking at his own optic nerves. This is one of those tracks (and albums) that you have to own on high-quality physical media and pump hard through a nice set of real headphones at 11. Even on a simple track like this one, Zappa had a lot of things going on deeper in the mix that are lost in MP3 files and computer headphones.

I hope anyone in the hurricane path who might be listening and reading along comes through it all with nothing worse than a wet bird, as Sinatra used to say.

Apostrophe', Frank Zappa (1974, from "Apostrophe(')," DiscReet DS 2175), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

The wealthy elites "smash and grab," too

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I know we're all supposed to dutifully wind down our attention to the Steve Jobs resignation and join around the national hearth to watch Hurricane Irene lash East Coast homosexuals and liberals with the beastly righteousness only nature can dispense. Also that our Federal Reserve chairman thinks our economy will continue to grow over time even though he sees some "clouds on the horizon" because unemployment is still over 9%.

But the fallout from global austerity economics has not abated just because the Brits have swept up the broken glass from their mid-month wave of rioting. In a comment from an August 13 post, Marginalia of London noted that the looting was a political act despite the fact that the rioters may not have realized it. I agree.

Everybody knows that rioting, looting, and arson are heinous acts that punish the innocent much more than any legitimate object of political opprobrium. Pundits on both sides of the Atlantic responded with scolding in high dudgeon: shame on the nihilistic children; shame on their useless parents; the problem is that nobody knows how good they really have it any more; et cetera.

But most of us are still waiting for celebrity pundits to tut-tut the misbehavior of the elite global financiers who have been "looting with the lights on" for a decade or more:

[England's] riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn't theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behaviour.

This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G8 and G20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable.

Click through to read the entire Guardian piece by Naomi Klein---it's a pippin. I copped the link from Anne Laurie on Balloon Juice, who also notes that PM David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson were both members of the obscenely wealthy and destructive Bullingdon Club during college years.

Klein's most interesting point, in my opinion, is another one of those truths that are hidden right in front of our noses: that Western media are quick to laud the high political ideals of rioters, looters, and insurrectionists in Bad Countries like Iraq, for example, because

this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam Hussein and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves.

As the article says, though, London isn't Baghdad. Maybe not (fewer minarets, for one thing), but maybe turning London into Baghdad is part of Premier Cameron's and Chairman Murdoch's 10-year Great-Leap-Ahead Plan. It's almost as if Western nations are deliberately avoiding the tested, straightforward solutions to depression economics (i.e., stimulus and employment programs) in order to do some social engineering through the magic of Disaster Capitalism. If corporatists love anything more than tax cuts for themselves, it's political crackdowns.

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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Nothin' new, sound of breaking glass



A peppy little number about real anarchy, not the Disney version that Libertarians pretend can save the world. Our British cousins had an ugly taste of it last week. The conscious agenda of the rioters was "smash and grab"; nothing overtly political motivating it, and nothing sympathetic to say about it. But both of those remarks are beside the point, I think: riotous anarchy is an emergent phenomenon that explodes forth when a certain set of social, political, and economic conditions is satisfied. It has root causes that can either be mitigated or aggravated. In Western democracies we have sparks that are being fanned into flames by an international nest of motherfuckers. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if I have more to say on the subject sometime. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass, Nick Lowe (1978, from "Pure Pop For Now People," Columbia 35329), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Editor's note:  The UK release of this album was called "Jesus of Cool," but Lowe's US label wouldn't stand for such heretical cheekery in the title, so my original purchase of this music was called Pure Pop. But Lowe reissued "Jesus" on CD a few years ago, which I also own and highly recommend for the bonus tracks.

Meanwhile, under the radar

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I saw this post by David Dayen linked to Heather Digby Parton's Hullaballo blog. It illustrates the other major crime of professional malpractice committed by the corporation-directed media that provide most of what most Americans accept in good faith as news.

The gist of it is that Republican lawmakers are being confronted at their August "town hall meetings" by ordinary people who are firmly demanding to know why legislators (John McCain, for example) believe that reducing taxes on corporations or wealthy people will help the economy in the absence of evidence. But there's not a peep about it on CNN, Fox, or NPR. Dayen's point is that last summer the media were all eyes and ears as "tea partiers" disrupted these town hall meetings last August, even brandishing or carrying concealed weapons in some cases. And why not? I leave this question as an exercise for the reader.

Dayen highlights examples published in the hometown press of conservative strongholds such as North Dakota, Tucson, Wilkes-Barre, PA, and Lincoln, NE. Dayen also claims that someone has compiled more than 100 such stories from around the nation, but unfortunately he doesn't provide a link to document that. But that's what the New York Times and the CNN national news desks are for, I'd think. Not a peep, though.

To me, the interesting thing is that these appear to be examples of everyday people who, without any help from the national media or national political leaders of either party are piecing together the story for themselves... the story being that the conventional wisdom we're being force-fed about deficits, debt ceilings, and "job-creating" rich people may be starting to wear thin.

In front of their own noses, too

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Adding onto yesterday's observations on Krugman's blog post about media malpractice in reporting on the impact of the S&P downgrade, I'll point to another Krugman piece from today. This one addresses the same phenomenon---straightforward lying about the reality right in front of everybody's noses---but pertains to elite economists who lie about their data in very transparent ways.

So this one on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, a guy named "Narayana Kocherlakota," argues that the Fed should tighten the money supply---raise interest rates, that is---because he wants us to believe that taking money out of the economy will reduce unemployment. But, always the good-natured wag, Krugman points out that:

The Fed dissenters are obviously looking for excuses to pursue tight policies; they’re looking at the facts only in search of support for their prejudices. As the old line goes, they’re using evidence the way a drunk uses a lamppost: for support, not illumination.

Economists do it as much as the media, whether famous neoliberal intellectuals or Federal Reserve policymakers (usually the same guys, anyway). I enjoy reading about Krugman peeing on their lamppost.

In front of our noses

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This Krugman blog post highlights a virtually unreported detail about the past week of financial-world turmoil on the heels of the S&P downgrade of US debt:

A week ago, before the S&P downgrade, the interest rate on US 10-year bonds was 2.56 percent. As I write this, it’s 2.24 percent, with the yield on inflation-protected bonds actually negative.

You would think this would amount to strong evidence that the downgrade totally failed to shake confidence in US debt.

Yet people who listen to radio and TV reporting tell me that most stories attribute the stock plunge to the downgrade, and are telling listeners that the case for immediate spending cuts has gotten even stronger.

Get it? This is how the corporate narrative works. The Situationists figured it out more than 40 years ago:

[They] argued in 1967 that spectacular features like mass media and advertising have a central role in an advanced capitalist society, which is to show a fake reality in order to mask the real capitalist degradation of human life.

Their term for the narrative and its associated creations and fabrications was The Spectacle. Sounds correct to me.

Be that as it may, I call it criminal malpractice by the news media. Ordinary people who consider themselves to be very well informed because they follow the "nice" media CNN, MSNBC, Newsweek, The New York Times, and NPR are being deliberately misled. I call it deliberate deception because I know what a fucking news editor is really supposed to do for a paycheck.

One might think that our very own President North Star would have been hammering this point home for the past day or two, or maybe that he'll get around to it next week. But in order to do that, he would have to be a leader of sorts, with a few guts inside his skin. Where have you gone, Huey Long? Our nation turns its longing eyes to you. Goo goo goo joob.

Lemme ask you this:

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What the fuck am I supposed to do with six cucumbers?!?

Friday Evening Prayer Meeting

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Hey, whattaya know---we have an actual, bona fide prayer meeting tonight! Hurry: step right up!



Somewhat prescient, eh? The only somewhat false note is Zappa's use of the word "friendly" to describe Jesus Freaks. In my experience at a nominally Presbyterian college during most of the 1970s, that term was rarely applicable (mostly only in the early years of the decade). And today? They long ago joined a club that coheres solely by expressing its collective disapproval of, and superiority to, America's undesirables (i.e., everyone who doesn't belong to the club). This makes them feel so good about themselves, at least until they get home, that they give the preacher bales of money to run lucrative, tax-exempt business enterprises so he can live the lifestyle of a Renaissance-era Cardinal.

And, seriously, we ain't Number 3, either. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

The Meek Shall Inherit Nothing, Frank Zappa (October 1978, Saturday Night Live, NBC), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

Won't need to search in Pakistan this time

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So Vice President Biden made news today by telling House Democrats today that the teabaggers have "acted like terrorists" during the debt ceiling standoff. President North Star will probably give him a scolding for saying so, but what he really should be doing is setting up a secure conference call with SEAL Team 6. Maybe a nice black-helicopter tour of the Potomac for a few properly selected chiefs of think tanks and cable news operations would be just the thing to lower the temperature in the glistening swamp on a hill. JK LULZ!!!

Meanwhile,at the bottom of the TPM piece linked above, we learn that Republican National Committee (RNC) chair "Reince Priebus" has "tweeted" that VP Biden has "more than crossed a line today when he called fiscal conservatives 'terrorists'. I demand an apology." Haha! I hope Biden gives "Priebus" an apology by way of his posterior annular ring.

By the way, I never make fun of a person's name, but I'll make an exception here. What the fuck kind of name is "Reince Priebus" supposed to be? I mean, really? And I'll add to that rhetorical question the amusing discovery made awhile back by some unnamed wag: if you remove all the vowels from his name, you're left with RNC PR BS. If that's not evidence that witty time travelers from the future have modified our current timeline, then I'm a monkey's uncle and so are you.

Stockholm, DC

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Paul Krugman, paraphrasing Jonathan Chait in The New Republic (and himself on many other occasions), boils the so-called deficit crisis into its irreducible essence:

As Chait says, the first thing you need to understand is that modern Republicans don’t care about deficits. They only pretend to care when they believe that deficit hawkery can be used to dismantle social programs; as soon as the conversation turns to taxes, or anything else that would require them and their friends to make even the smallest sacrifice, deficits don’t matter at all.

In the Stockholm Syndrome world of Washington, DC, and the corporate media that sustain America's political withdrawal from consensual reality, this kind of talk from a liberal is condemned as "partisan bickering" or "uncivil."

Putting that childish, dishonest perspective aside for later discussion, preferably on someone else's blog, I simply suggest that a skeptical reader simply  at the evidence that has been right in front our our noses from the moment we learned about Grover Norquist's quest to drown the federal government in the bathtub. Use Occam's razor. Is there a simpler, more direct statement that explains the state of our political discourse today?

Saturday Night Fish Fry

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During the so-called Summer of Love, this peculiar composition was "in the tube," chartwise, for The Beach Boys. I never understood the song at the time, but it's grown on me after 40-odd years. I still don't understand it, though. And just to make matters a little more inscrutable, here's an alternate version that didn't make it out of the studio until a few decades later. But it's the one Brian Wilson originally intended for you and me to hear.



This track was supposed to be part of Wilson's "psychedelic" masterpiece album, Smile. But his well documented crackup overtook him before he could get the whole thing right to his ears and ego. The completed pieces---the releasable ones, at least---were issued on a disc called Smiley Smile. Yes, "Good Vibrations" and "Heroes and Villains" were basically salvage material from the Smile project. The version of Smiley Smile that I own, a 1990 reissue that also includes the Wild Honey album, includes the present track.

Wilson, morbidly depressed over the whole matter, claimed to have destroyed all the 1966 - 67 Smile masters. He "reconstructed" the project in 2004, unwisely in my opinion. I've unintentionally heard snips from it, and prefer not to hear any more.

So here's a summer song for you, simmered in vinegar by Brian Wilson 44 years ago, presented to commemorate both our current brain-denaturing heat wave and the slide of much of our populace into a state of desperate mental illness. Brian was far ahead of his time on that score, as well.

Heroes and Villains (Alternate Take), The Beach Boys (issued 1990, Capitol C2 93696), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

The Little Theater Screen

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OK, this is for Saturday morning. But pipe down when you watch it---Dad's still sleeping!



I think this is one of Fleischer Studios' best and most diabolical cartoons ever. I can't think of another with so much nonstop visual invention. The only breaks in the action are there to inject suspense or move the anti-plot in a new direction. And the surreal thread that these scenes are strung upon writhes like something that the coroner might have tweezed out of Edgar Allen Poe's brain through a nostril. Except for the appearance of our special canine guest star and the awesome, fetishistic Radio City Music Hall finale.

Yes, they really did show these cartoons on TV in the 1950s, when there was a scarcity of made-for-TV animation. As I've mentioned before, though, Fleischer cartoons were not produced for Depression-era tots... at least not until Hollywood set up the Hayes censorship office and they put a dumpy housefrock on Betty Boop.

As a point of semi-interest, this short was released to theaters 80 years ago last Sunday (24 July).

Bimbo's Initiation, Dave Fleischer, Director (1931, A Fleischer Studios Talkartoon; Grim Natwick, Animator), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.

"The Little Theater Screen" was invented by Frazier Thomas.

Ennui in the 22nd century

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At home in the early 1990s, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a favorite of two of the three men of my house. Big Rock Head sort of pretended to like the show, but he confessed in much later days that it bored shit out of him and made him fall asleep. But Beer-D was fascinated by the bald-headed Shakespearean captain, the animalistic-looking Klingon security chief, the bozoistic first officer, and all the Industrial Light & Magic infrastructure. Over several recent years we revisited all seven seasons over biweekly dinners, episodes in order, as we affectionately decomposed all the instances of internally inconsistent logic, bullshit motivations, bogus technology as judged by 15 years of hindsight, and so on... not diminishing our enjoyment one iota. And since that time, we have also revisited every episode of that show's successor, Deep Space 9.

Despite the undeniable lack of "gravitas" reeking from the entire Star Trek enterprise (LULZORS!!!), as TV adventure fare goes, these shows generally achieved a reasonably high level of production value, attention to detail, and philosophical speculation. Owing to these attractions, I think, Beer-D had to be coaxed a bit to plunge into the original Shatner series, and I myself had not followed it closely as as a youth, and wasn't sure about the ultimate entertainment value.

I hunted down the original DVD release from an Amazon affiliate in order to get the undoctored Star Trek experience, without new special effects or any embellishments other than a clean transfer from the masters to a high-res medium. I did not want any of the "fakiness" sanitized away, both for aesthetic and historical reasons. I hereby declare that my purchase has amounted to a major entertainment score. The show is a true laff riot from bottom to top.

Tonight I won't offer any reviews or critiques of Gene Roddenberry's universe, but will help you dip a toe into the water of Trek context. The catalyst for all this exposition is a Tumblr photo site I saw mentioned on BoingBoing, which you can view directly here. The "Space Trek" site presents the enterprise in the full glory of its 22nd century banality. Behold: the Sick Bay!

Note the clean, modern architectural lines, painted in county-jail green. The rippled medicine cabinet glass elegantly secures the contents of the meds locker. We are viewing a workstation where the curvy space nurse can pose in a vinyl office chair while sterilizing the formica surfaces. Note the highly advanced, Space-Walmart-type sanitation devices. At least there's no danger of running out of Space Lysol on this tub, because our leggy nurse has two backup bottles at the ready... just in case. No need for labels, though. If she forgets what's inside, she can just summon Mr. Spock to logically infer the contents.

The S&P coup

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I want to add a little to my previous post on S&P's implicit threat to blackmail the federal government into adopting a specific piece of legislation (i.e., $4 trillion spending reduction over the next 10 years).

Paul Krugman seems a little skeptical that an S&P downgrade of US debt would be huge deal because, basically, bond traders already know that ratings agencies don't know what they're doing:

The point is that when S&P or Moody’s speaks, that’s not the voice of “the market”. It’s just some guys with an agenda, and a very poor track record. And we have no idea how much effect their actions will have.

I don't doubt that. But to me the important point is not so much what financial traders do with an S&P intervention of this nature, but what the media and politicians will do with it. A ratings agency downgrade of US debt will be presented as something like scientific evidence that we need to finish drowning the federal government in the bathtub now! now! now! It's hard for me to see how our disinformation economy could get any worse---how it could further accelerate America's decline. But my intuition tells me we haven't reached terminal velocity yet. We'll be even closer when the press, the Congress, and the President anoint Wall Street as the new fourth branch of government.

Fourth branch, Third World

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I think that Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, like the few other reports I've seen about the Standard and Poors threat to downgrade US debt to Third World status, just misses the point.

Yes, insane Republican ideology and The Conceder In Chief have done a swell job creating an existential economic threat by tying approval of the debt ceiling to the politics of government spending and taxation. This is the "Worst. Congress. Ever." Blah blah blah.

In journalism lingo, there's a "buried lede" in Klein's piece:

And having upset S&P, appeasing them might not be so simple. Beers repeatedly emphasized that he wasn’t just looking for a number. He was looking for something “credible.” And credible, in his view, was something that both parties had embraced. After all, he argued, deficit-reduction plans have to be continuously implemented over a decade or more, and if there’s not “buy-in from both parties,” there’s no reason to believe that the plan will survive the inevitable changes in political control.

On the one hand, the S&P view is a reasonable analysis. But on the other, sinister hand:

You might ask whether all this matters. S&P got the financial crisis almost entirely wrong — in fact, their analytical errors, alongside those of other agencies, substantially contributed to it — so why should we listen to them now?

But the question isn’t whether S&P should be listened to. It’s whether the market will listen to them.

Yes, that's right. The once-respectable financial rating agency, which is as tarnished by the 2008 economic implosion as any Wall Street investment bank, has made federal legislative politics an evaluative criterion for assessing the full faith and credit of the US government and the debt it issues.

And as a small digression, it's probably worth inserting here that there really is no deficit crisis. The deficit is high-ish in relation to conventional yardsticks, but interest rates are so low (near zero as applicable to government borrowing, in fact), that there is no problem servicing this debt... unless the ceiling isn't raised promptly. The "deficit crisis" is an invention of right-wing politicians, corporate media, and as a johnny-come-lately, President North Star.

But back to the libretto: There is nothing benign whatsoever about what S&P is up to here. They aren't trying to serve as a voice of reason: they're emphatically inserting itself into the political fray with the power of a fourth branch of government, but one outside of federal checks and balances. "You motherfuckers attend to the 'deficit crisis' ," S&P seems to be saying, "or else we'll sic The Market on you." With "you," of course, meaning both politicians and voters. It is an aggressive, unconscionable lobbying assault on behalf of The Corporation---a protection racket that the federal government must now subscribe to with an initial payment of $4 trillion extracted from middle-class taxpayers, the poor, and the elderly. If they pull this off, there will be no end to the racket until we're all living in sheet metal shacks on dirt lots.

The S&P threat gives every politician in Washington enough cover, or terror, to cave in to the demands of the Republican legislative caucus and The Conceder in Chief for "the good of the nation." Once this smelly, syphilitic Wall Street camel has its nose all the way into the tent, S&P might conceivably become as powerful as the Federal Reserve in dictating the grim economic future of America. No accountability; just the perpetual threat to shit everybody else's nest if some warty bankers and corporate chieftains don't like the drift of public policy.

Cavalcade of marsupials

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It turns out I was correct about the massing of the terror prowling the night kitchen here in my private domain, The United State Of Moronica. Not a mouse. And happily, not a rat. Fifty50 reader Carlos Magnus was kind enough to lend me a small steel live trap, which I deployed Monday night somewhat arbitrarily in front of the basement door against the breakfast nook wall. I loaded the bait tray with a nice Japanese rice cracker thinly coated with peanut butter on each side (for good adhesion to the tray).

At about 0330, around the corner from the head of my bed, I heard something fairly large but sluggish rattling around in the cage. Since I hadn't set the catches on the trap correctly, my prey almost worked himself out before I got him out the front door. Not a raccoon, either: a possum that was almost too large for the cage! Since this drill interrupted a sleep cycle I could barely navigate or perceive what was happening, but felt satisfied with my high-level trapping achievement and quickly drifted off as soon as I hit the mattress.

On a whim, "just in case," I reset the trap again the next night. And I'll be a suck-egg mule if I didn't hear the goddam cage rattling around at the crack of 0230! Luckily, this coincided with the conclusion of a sleep cycle, apparently, and I had the presence of mind to grab the Nikon D80 and take a mugshot of this guy.

Not the same prisoner I took the previous night. Significantly smaller. For reference, the baseboard behind him is about 3 inches high. I was pleased that the creature remained calm and also well behaved, elimination-wise. Having set the trap latches correctly this night, I carried the trap onto the porch and gave him early parole. Of course, on the third night, when I caught another motherfucking possum (same trap, same place, at about 0130 this time), it occurred to me that the specimen pictured above might have found his way back into the crib from the staging area of my porch. He seemed a bit smaller than Two of 4, though (that's right---four!), so it may have been another sibling. Anyway, with great cunning I released the latest addition to my collection all of 15 feet away from the porch, and he made a beeline across the street to hopefully break into a neighbor's house.

Last night, I deployed two live traps (one in the basement) and came up with No. 4 at about 0230; possibly even a bit smaller than No 3. This time I let my captive chill in the cage on the porch for the duration and took him into work with me. While tempted to release him in the foyer of Rudy's apartment building or inside of Walmart on Prospect, I found an unkempt field for the release. Understandably, Four of 4 was showing some teeth to reflect his poor attitude after a noisy, bumpy ride in in the back compartment of the station wagon, but still behaved well enough.

So tonight, in a few minutes I'll swallow a handful of pills and wash 'em down with 8 oz of gin in preparation for bedtime. But again with double-barrel traps baited with a succulent midnight snack for the herd of marsupials in the basement.

Saturday After Hours

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About 40 minutes ago I sent the manuscript of the book I'm editing to the author. It's a monster job, and there will be plenty more editorial work to do after author revisions, but it should be much less intensive than what I've just completed. The immediate significance of this milestone should be a big drop in subliminal stress, a possible moderation of blood pressure, and a general boost to my quality of life. Also, slightly less-lazy blogging behavior.

Speaking of monsters, last night while trying to sleep I heard something very ungainly-sounding that was ratfucking the dirty dishes on my kitchen countertop. It sounded more massive than a mouse, and got into things that mice haven't gotten into before. Coming downstairs just now to call it an evening, I heard some more sounds, this time apparently coming from the basement. As I started to descend the stairwell to investigate, I heard some very peculiar sounds that may have been vocalizations---low and suppressed, short impulses mostly, that could have come from a bird (crow, grackle, or starling), a squirrel that is unhappy, or even a raccoon. I shut the basement door and won't think about it any more until the motherfucker has starved to death.

Enough. Nighty night.