I'll wait until after home v Seattle next Wednesday and Dallas next Saturday before death knelling, but last night's clusterfuck combined with the news that Branko Boskovic may miss the rest of the season (and have played his last game with United) with a torn ACL has me betting I'm gonging.
“This is a job, and I don’t know if some of our guys understand the seriousness of what we’re trying to do. If it continues, we’ll have to make changes, real drastic change,” warbled St Benny of Olsen. If St Benny of Olsen thinks (a) the issue is lack of effort not lack of talent and (b) other teams haven't made book on what United wants to do and game plans to stop it and Benny doesn't need to adjust and (c) there's better talent on the bench than who's been starting and on the transfer market that Kasper Payne can identify, then St Benny of Olsen is motherfucking nuts.
United is short and slow. Name one player besides Najar and Pontius (who should be up top receiving the crosses he can't make) who is as good a soccer player and athlete as his opponent last night. Jeff Cameron or Nodax? Choose. Bobby Boswell, for fuck's sake, or Dejan Jakovic? Even if United was organized against set pieces, Houston was six inches taller, half a second faster, ten pounds stronger. That's on Kasper Payne. And United isn't organized. That's on Benny Olsen.
I just deleted three paragraphs of death knelling because I promised to wait until a week from tomorrow. Here's an angry Fullback in the meantime. I'll post others if and when I see them.
And two last thoughts about Boskovic - I don't want to suggest that even had Boskovic continued rounding into form that would have propelled United to a higher level much less a playoff worthy team: teams would have doubled and butchered him, just like Ningland did, and the players surrounding a neutralized Boskovic would still suck. MLS blows. I know, expand more!
When Benny talks about lack of effort, he's talking about United not being dirty enough bitches. This is MLS. Think how many reckless stud's-up tackles United misses, Clyde Simms sliding by Brad Davis as Davis races to a corner to make a beautiful cross. Benny wanted United to cripple Davis like Ningland crippled Boskovic. They tried. It wasn't lack of effort: United's small, slow.
And yes, the noxzema bottle blue, as threatened. Um, there's a reason it was this shitty blog's original color. I said only a day, but, what say you all, especially you, honored K? Because, um, I kinda love it.
Did you know Dan Snider's fight against the embodiment of evil that is Dave McKenna is braver than you think?
Later in the discussion, Wyllie said City Paper writer Dave McKenna had been “evil and mean” toward Snyder, and that “at some point you have to throw your hands in the air and say enough is enough.” Wyllie also compared Snyder to truth-seeking Egyptian protestors.
Holyfuck, I love this, the puny fuck that keeps on giving. Fine metaphors abound.
Hey! Did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?
It's true! and tonight they play in Houston where they never win, and if Nodax is starting then Branko Boskovic better be too, so tune in tomorrow when I drive more newer readers away with a post-game wrap-up! O! I might toggle over to noxzema bottle blue for just a day, this blog's original color and my favorite color that a dedicated reader told me gives her headaches, but fuck it, I'm feeling nostalgic, and (lucky for you, sad for me) this phase of manic whatthefuckness is beginning to ebb.
UPDATE!
Well, doublefuck me and my awesome god-taunting capabilities:
D.C. United midfielder Branko Boskovic will not play Friday night against the Houston Dynamo at Robertson Stadium (8:30 p.m. ET, Fox Soccer Channel), the club announced. He suffered a knee contusion late in the U.S. Open Cup match Tuesday, and despite an MRI exam showing no damage, he was scratched from the travel roster and will prepare for a pair of league games next week.
To be fair, the two home games in four days next week (sweet!) are far more important than a road game tonight on artificial turf on a narrow field where United never plays well and would probably lose with or without Branko, but fuck.
There is some good news!
Midfielder Kurt Morsink (concussion) is also out, but defender Jed Zayner, sidelined since the season opener with a hamstring injury, and goalkeeper Steve Cronin (wrist) are available.
Purple Line! Chevy Chase residents laughed at the sketches of tall buildings with a rail line 20 feet above ground and spherical shrubs scattered throughout the scene, making clear the dominant opinion in the community of Chevy Chase Land Company's vision for development around a proposed light rail station in Chevy Chase.
Purple Line! He praised a recent Board of Regents decision to support a Purple Line Metro station in College Park and promised that the community would benefit from a new town center on east campus.
It isn't how we look up closeso much as in dreams.
Our giant is not so tall,our lizard boy merely flauntscrusty skin- not his fault they keep him in a crateand bathe him maybe once a week.When folks scream or clutch their hairand poke at us and glare and speakof how we slithered up from Hell,
it is themselves they see:the preacher with the farmer's girls(his bulging eyes, their chicken legs)or the mother lurching towards the sink,
a baby quivering in her gnarled hands. Horror is the companyyou keep when shades are drawn.Evil does not reside in cages.
I can't describe how lucky we moconovadcers are to live in the same community as Dan Snider. I begging you, you puny fuck, PLEASE trade all your draft picks tonight to take Cam Newton number one, you ignorant motherfucker.
Perhaps Snyder should call up his op-ed (written for him apparently by Lanny Davis, who once represented Bill Clinton and has now officially reached the nadir of his career by going to work for Snyder) and read the comments about a piece that carries HIS byline. I only read about the first 100 posts but public opinion, after Davis stated his case for Snyder as eloquently as he could, was running about 100-to-1 against Snyder. My guess is the next 900 didn’t get much better.
Snider is as Pig-American as can be, Lanny Davis is as whorish as a professional Democrat can be, see them gravitate towards the other like the Corporate motherfuckers they are and together take a shitty situation of their own making and make it shittier.
It's nice to catch my bearings. I kept thinking about SCOTUS, my friend's repeated assertion that it was idea that SCOTUS, with it's impending retirements post-election 2008, was the cinching argument (not that my decision needed cinching) in defeating John McCain. The issue, I say, is that Sotomayor and Kagan were easy like-for-likes, that it took zero political courage and cost Obama zero political capital to nominate them and kabuki the confirmation.
I'd like to test my friend's hypothesis though, that until Obama picks a SCOTUS nominee to replace one of the pigs we don't know his heart. I'd love to play. Today's though experiment: Scalia resigns suddenly in January 2012, Obama must nominate a replacement and navigate the confirmation in the middle of a circus of a presidential campaign year even stoopider and roobier than the last one.
Past performance is not indicative of future results, though I'd bet on a mini-Scalia sold as John Paul Stevens, but holyfuck, wouldn't it be great to make Obama have to make that choice at the height of his final campaign rather than being told we need to vote for him because he'll need to make that choice after his reelection?
Also, gifs. I like them, though in retrospect I don't like yesterday's either, but I'm stoopid, roobish even, about blegethics, so I can't remove yesterday's because I said so. However, someone sent an email asking me how I created it, but I didn't create it - I didn't create any of them - and I can't attribute it, so I'm no longer going to post them (unless I can attribute them). Besides, there's a clamor of three of you who want Fleabus back more, and I make four.
Future blegethical masochist knots! When Planet goes to college, can I take photos of Fleabus and post them? (Sshh. There was one sub-par Fleabus photo published within the last week. That was me!) And then there's that whole DRGDKCLB thing itching to come here. With luck, the manic phase of breaking out of a reading slump will burn off soon, though I'm always thankful for a resurgence of whatthefuckness.
Like the cat he scratches the flea camping in fur.
Unlike the cat he delights in water up to his ears.
He frolics. He catches a crooked stick –
On his back he naps with legs straight up in the air.
Nelson shudders awake. He responds to love
From head to tail. In happiness
His front legs march in place
And his back legs spark when they push off.
On a leash he knows his geography.
For your sake he looks both ways before crossing,
He sniffs at the sight of a poodle trimmed like a hedge,
And he trots the street with you second in command.
In the park, he ponders a squirrel attached to a tree
And he shovels a paper cup on his nose.
He sweeps after himself with his tail,
And there is no hand that doesn't deserve a lick.
Note this now, my friends:
Nelson can account the heritage of heroic dogs:
One, canines lead the blind,
Two, they enter fire to rescue the child and the child's toy,
Three, they swim for the drowning,
Four, they spring at the thief,
Five, they paddle ponds for the ball that got away,
Six, for the elderly they walk side by side to the very end,
Seven, they search for bones but stop when called,
Eight, they bring mud to all parties,
Nine, they poke among the ruins of a burnt house,
Ten, they forgive what you dish out on a plate.
Nelson is a companion, this much we know,
And if he were a movie star, he would do his own stunts –
O, how he would fly, climb the pant legs of a scoundrel
And stand tall rafting on white-water rivers!
He has befriended the kingdom of animals:
He once ran with wolves but admittedly not very far,
He stepped two paces into a cave and peeked at the bear,
He sheltered a kitten,
He righted the turtle pedaling its stumps on its back,
Under the wheeling stars he caravanned with the mule,
He steered sheep over a hill,
He wisely let the skunk pass,
He growled at the long-bearded miser,
He joined ducks quacking with laughter,
Once he leaped at a pheasant but later whined from guilt.
Nelson's black nose is a compass in the wilds.
He knows nature. He has spied spires of summer smoke,
He circled cold campfires,
He howled at a gopher and scratched at the moon,
He doctored his wounds with his tongue,
He has pawed a star of blood left in snow.
He regards the fireplace, the embers like blinking cats,
This too we know about Nelson.
True, he is sometimes tied to parking meters
And sometimes wears the cone of shame from the vet's office.
But again, he is happiness.
He presents his belly for a friendly scratch.
If you call him, he will drop his tennis ball,
Look up, and come running,
This muddy friend for life. When you bring your nose
To his nose for something like a kiss,
You can find yourself in his eyes.
President Obama is expected this week to name Leon E. Panetta, the director of central intelligence, as defense secretary and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top American commander in Afghanistan, as director of the C.I.A., administration officials said Wednesday.
But Mr. Gates’s role is the most critical. He often allied with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — who has said that she intends to leave the administration when this term ends — including persuading Mr. Obama to start the military buildup in Afghanistan in 2009. Together they won many other battles, but they visibly split last month on the military intervention in Libya.
So much for the argument that HRC would have ruled more progressively than Obama, but when did she say she was leaving at the end of Obama's first term (assuming she made this statement on the assumption Obama would have two)? I still see rumors she's gonna bump Biden off the ticket.
But that does not mean that the justices are free to interpret the abstract clauses of the Constitution to match their own political convictions, whatever these are. In the last few years they have overruled a long series of recent and important precedent decisions and they have reversed several long-standing constitutional traditions. They have flatly prohibited even obviously sensible race-conscious social and educational policies, bolstered government’s support for religion, and progressively narrowed the scope of abortion rights. They have changed the American electoral system to make the election of Republican candidates more likely, for example by guaranteeing corporations a constitutional right to spend as much as they wish denouncing candidates they dislike. As I have argued, these various decisions cannot be justified by any set of principles that offer even a respectable account of our past constitutional history.
Roberts’s declaration in the new case suggests a malign sleight of hand: that an act passed by popular referendum to promote electoral equality will now be condemned by that motive even if there is no other constitutional objection to it. The enthusiasm with which at least three of the conservatives toyed with the idea that equality is just in itself a forbidden goal gives further evidence that they are driven by political convictions wholly alien to the Constitution—convictions that a genuine jurisprudence of principle must reject.
The one Thursday Night Pinter who still grasps at obamagasms cites Kagan and Sotomayor, says don't fully judge Obama until one of the pigs quits or dies. Maybe, and I'd point out that Kagan and Sotomayor are centrists, not liberals, but that's the argument - and probably the most effective - we're gonna hear starting soon and running through October 2012 for holding our noses and pulling the lever for Obama.
Is it possible that spring could be
once more approaching? We forget each time
what a mindless business it is, porous like sleep,
adrift on the horizon, refusing to take sides, "mugwump
of the final hour," lest an agenda—horrors!—be imputed to it,
and the whole point of its being spring collapse
like a hole dug in sand. It's breathy, though,
you have to say that for it.
And should further seasons coagulate
into years, like spilled, dried paint, why,
who's to say we weren't provident? We indeed
looked out for others as though they mattered, and they,
catching the spirit, came home with us, spent the night
in an alcove from which their breathing could be heard clearly.
But it's not over yet. Terrible incidents happen
daily. That's how we get around obstacles.
That's Branko Boskovic, who after striking a free kick that hit a post, a free kick that required a great save, scoring two wonderful goals, and personally leading a remarkable comeback by United, was deliberately crippled, no doubt on orders from Ningland's coach Steve Nicol. During the game I said to this guy, Jesusfuck, Nicol is a filthy bastard, but I wouldn't mind if he was my coach. I hereby withdraw that statement. Fuck Steve Nicol and his fucking soccer team, the dirtiest motherfuckers, year in and year out, in a dirty MLS.
Our coach? This, um, is the second game this year they were unprepared to play.
Our coach? The defense can't clear a ball, gives up a one-on-four goal on rebounds?
Our coach? The competition is between Nodax and Simms, not Nodax and Boskovic. If Boskovic isn't crippled and doesn't start Friday night in Houston, I'm prepared to proceed beyond mild griping about our coach (though no doubt, if he doesn't start, the injury will be cited even if it's not the cause).
O! The obligatory SoccerPlex stanchion and sunset photo:
United might not have played in Germantown again this year even if they had won - the next game USOC game would have been in Kansas City, and if they'd won that and got another USOC home game this year it may or not have been at RFK. Still, any game in Germantown is a special event. Where the fuck was everybody?
My apostasy works back in only one direction: just because my disgust and anger at motherfucking Democrats makes me loathe them more daily, that doesn't raise my esteem for motherfucking Republicans. I am small this way.
Last night was last Thursday's pint night. I proposed yesterday's thought experiment. I said, for argument's sake, we agree that management of both Corporate's legacy divisions are 100% on board re: strategy re: stiffing the middle class, re: perpetual war and empire, and we agree their flinging ethical herrings roobs like me gurp like Good and Plenty are diversionary tactics in the battle of which division gets to run the spigot, and we agree that the state of American empire's decline will be .06% + or - in 2016 regardless who wins POTUS in 2012, but if we also agree that if Republicans win POTUS and House and Senate and governorships and state houses ethical herrings like women's reproductive rights and gay rights etc will be rolled back decades, does that justify hating motherfucking Republicans and crackers more than motherfucking Democrats and complicit motherfucking pwoggles like me?
I'd hate you either way, said Leona. She won a scotch of ridiculous price.
Now we sit and play with a tiny toyelephant that travels a taut string.Now we are used and use in turneach other. Our hats unraveland that in itself is tragic.To be lost. To have lost. Verbslike veritable engines pulling the trainof thought forward. The hat is over-turned and out comes a rabbit. Out comes a manwith a monocle. Out comes a Kaiser.Yikes, it's history, that ceilingcomprised of recessed squares, each leg a lifeline,
each lie a wife's leg. A pulled velvet cordrings a bell and everyone comes runningto watch while a year plummetsinto the countdown of an open mouth. A loop of razor wirecloses around the circumference of a shaken globeof snow. Yellowed newsprint with its watery text,
a latticework of shadow thrownonto the clear screen of the prison wall.From a mere idea comes the twinethat gives totality its name. What is a theorybut a tentacle reaching for a wafer of reason.The inevitable gap tragic. Sure, tragic.
I won't begin to describe the serendipitous alignment of bleggal coincidences that weight bear this post, but I was going write about this Ian Walsh post before an email from a (first impression? Kind) stranger:
(W)hat happened is that Obama bailed out the rich and the financial industry, who were bankrupt, then refused to prosecute them for systemic fraud. He did so in a way which left, by and large, the exact same class of people in charge of the financial industry, made the remaining banks bigger and more powerful, restored the wealth of the rich to pre-crisis levels and restored their profits. Meanwhile employment has still not recovered (ignore the unemployment rate, it is a lie), wages are flat or declining, real inflation is through the roof, the price of oil is skyrocketing and the current discussion in DC is how much the poor and middle class should get screwed out of their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, in order to keep the rich filthy rich. Oh, and how much tax cuts the rich should get....
Remember, the question is not “if” this will happen, it is when. The sooner you get it over with, the sooner you have another chance to get it right, and the less decline the US will have suffered. If President Teabag gets in after 4 years of Obama, the US will be in better shape at the start of his wrecking than it will be if he gets in after 8 years of Obama. Obama is a disaster, who is making things worse, not better. He’s just making it worse more slowly than a Republican. [emphasis mine]
This is the fourth time I've heard and now read this argument in the past half-week.
Thought experiment! President Frothy Mix of Lube and Fecal Matter is sworn in January 2013, with strong pig majorities in the House, Senate, a majority of governorships and state houses in solid pig hands. 2014 midterms? 2016 general election? Left revival?
I don't agree that that's the best case scenario of ever reviving a potent American Left - I don't think there is a potent American Left (and even if there were, Corporate wouldn't permit it), and I don't think Ian Walsh thinks there's a potent American Left, much less a way to halt America's terminal decline. The question is, is this the best case scenario for the .06% less-shittitarians to revive and prolong the .06% less shittiness, to suffer four years of .06% more shittiness? Which is worse, four more years of Obama laying the groundwork before the Republicans take over or four years of Republican excess before the lesser-Republicans regain control of the spigot?
Was thinking of writing more about Billy Don, but I pleased to give drip the last word for now: I looked and looked for a clip of Willy Don, standing in front of his rowhouse in the snow, tears streaming down his cheeks as he expressed his thoughts about the Colts doing the inconceivable. I failed to find one. He was a man who lived without spectacle, but was of it. He lived in complicity, but never gave into it. He loved his little house and his little city and his little state, and weird as he was, he made us love those things, too. The Sun piece was good, which is really hard to believe. YFWaPo spewed its usual drivel. Peace to Willy Don.
One reason I gave up helmetball is that when motherfucking billionaires steal teams in the middle of the night, they shouldn't be allowed to steal the colors and the name. Los Angeles Raiders Chargers Jaguars Vikings.
This june 3
would be different
Time to draw lines
I've grown into the family pores
and the bronchitis
Even up east
I get by saying goddamnit
Who was that masked man
I left for dead
in the shadow of mt. shadow
Who crumbles thereNot touching anything
but satin and dandelions
Not laid his eyes
on the likes of you
Because the unconnected life
is not worth living
Thorntrees overtake the spotHands appear to push back pain
Because no poet's death
Can be the sole author
of another poet's life
What will my new instrument be
Just this water glass
this untunable spoon
Something else is out there
goddamnit
And I want to hear it
Holiday weekends when only kin and Kind read remind me who I bleg for, which is all the bleggalgazing, a holiday tradition, I feel like. It's a time for extending Kind; only one two of you has asked for Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks so far, so hurry up! And it's always time to celebrate serendipity, as I came upon these paragraphs from Harington's novel this past Friday and just saw notice of BAT 2011 yesterday:
Isaac's wife Salina "caught religion" when the Presbyterian produced an eclipse of the sun, and although she was mostly partial to the Baptist, she attended all the church services in Stay More, and Isaac sometimes accompanied her out of curiosity, which is the bottom rung on the ladder of motives for going to church, the other rungs being, in ascending hierarchy: 2, being too timid to refuse, 3, a sense of duty, 4, a desire to mingle with others, 5, a desire to learn the means of salvation, 6, a desire to be saved, 7, lust for paradise in the hereafter, 8, schizophrenic need to need, 9, insanity, 10, sainthood. There were very few Stay Morons who ascended to the top of this ladder. Isaac remained on the bottom rung, and Salina got about as far as the sixth. As far as anybody could tell, she never asked him what he thought about the sermons, or never asked him anything about religion, although she talked to him freely, for hours on end, expressing her own views and opinions. One of the preachers had gone so far as to hint that sexual intercourse, even between lawfully wed husband and wife, was not in the best interests of attaining heaven, and once again Salina ceased climbing Isaac, even though it was dark and no one could see them, and once again Isaac turned to strong beverages for solace.
Nearly all the preachers, in particular the Methodist, abhorred alcohol, and preached frequently against it, and consequently Seth Chism had "caught religion" and given up the making of his superior sour mash, so Isaac was required to patronize Caleb Duckworth's inferior brand of rotgut. This stuff was just as capable of reducing the world to half its size, but it also reduced time to half its length, which was terribly confusing to Isaac, who in compensation for it began to double everything: each day was forty-eight hours, or rather Monday came twice a week, and the Second Tuesday of the Month was also the third; spring and summer came twice a year, and so did autumn, which wasn't so bad, but two winters in one year was awful.
Unless you've read the preceeding 184 pages you have no idea of how much is packed into those two paragraphs. Email me by midnight tonight, EDT, if you've done me a Kind and want a copy (or email me later and say please).
I'm honor bound to say that Harington is not anti-religious, just anti-Religion. His novels breathe with a generosity and Kindness and fairness that... well, I'll stop now.
I am not so large that while I fully support Blogs Against Theocracy I can't help noting that one of its organizers purged me from her blogroll years ago. I am small this way.
Today's poem uses the word myrmidon. See you Tuesday! I, um, haven't bought tickets. Oops. They only take cash walk-up, and I won't know until Monday if I'm getting there just at kick-off, so maybe will-call, maybe not. No Planet, probably, first day of school after Spring break.
A fly like an envoy for the Lost Boys or a delegate sent to dicker with the dead.
Buzz wants out or in? Does it descend from one who grazed the face
of Dickinson and whispered in her ear the middle octave key of F?
Does it want nectar or the dead, and which am I? Vectors for fugue
and spontaneous bruising. Vectors for pestilence and gods who call
for sacrifice. Shit seraph, heaven worm, world eye, scholar bent over
the heated pages of the Coptic translating the words matter and heaven
in its three-week paradiso. Fly worries everything. Fly walks on the ceiling.
Fly works its rosary, a discalced nun of doubt, our intercessionary,
while we are free to be evermore certain about our God and the war.
Fly buzzes in the blown-open pages of the tiny novellas everyone carries
scattered like dreams in which we were all the characters. Fly already at it,
its story, a secondhand story, before smoke and a steel-blue wash
over everything. Looking up the way the myrmidons looked up
at the sun, skeptical, sweaty while they killed the ram and ewe,
strung the bow, lifted timbers. It was their job to fight
for someone's love and rage, someone's beauty worth dying for.
I'm finishing up Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks for the umpteenth time, the backbone of Donald Harington's Stay More novels. They are charming and Kind and gallopitous and wise. They not only reveal themselves to be smarter than they appear, they reveal you, to your grateful surprise, to be smarter than you appear.
Slumpbreakers, all of them (and I needed a slump broken), poetic, magical, I keep saying this, wise. Sly. Funny. Uncanny. Kind. Where do you think I got that? I've yodeled this before cubed. Want Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks? (One blogbud tried and mehhed, but OK.) If we've been Kind, I'll buy you one. Email me.
On DFW: Wallace made a shrewd deal with his audience when he talked of the “hard labor” involved in reading Infinite Jest. We tend to value most what costs us most, and the investment of time and work required to finish the 1,079 pages of the book is close to exorbitant, with Wallace doing everything he can to slow his readers down and prevent them from consuming the novel as a work of passive entertainment. You find yourself performing a parody of scholarship as you shuttle between the text and the endnotes, and reach for the dictionary to look up “imbricate,” “annulation,” or whether “amonymous” is a misprint or a word in its own right. (It is, I think, the former—unless it’s a coinage deriving from Amon, the goetic demon and a marquis of Hell.) If you try to speed-read the long sentences, you’re lost; you have to listen to them in your head, clause by clause, at speaking pace. The diligent reader, obedient to Wallace’s cues and commands, who takes a month or more to reach the end is entitled to feel that he’s not just read Infinite Jest but passed a graduate course in it.
I read twenty pages of The Pale King, opened at random at page 152, at the crappy Borders at National while waiting to pick up Earthgirl and Planet yesterday, and I'm just not devout enough for scrap-book DFW.
In a joke three of you will get, the tenth word in the title of the poem below is pronounced DORF. It's not why I picked that poem for this post, but still, the joke never dindles.
Morrissey autobiography? (You're correct. You've never seen a Smiths song here. Not a hater, just mehful.)
AFTER READING TU FU, I GO OUTSIDE TO THE DWARF ORCHARD
Charles Wright
East of me, west of me, full summer.How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.Birds fly back and forth across the lawn looking for homeAs night drifts up like a little boat.
Day after day, I become of less use to myself.Like this mockingbird, I flit from one thing to the next.What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?Tomorrow is dark. Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.
The sky dogs are whimpering.Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening up from the damp grass.Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,Go quietly, quietly.
All right then, I need first note that Randal was off by one. Hah! Oh.
Yes, a reality check. (How shitty must Toronto be?) I was reminded of games against the top Mexican clubs back when United was unfortunate enough (according to Kevin Payne) to play meaningful international games and suffer from the must-be-avoided fixture clusterfuck (the one thing Kevin Payne has succeeded amazingly at as GM in recent years), reminded of friendlies against major European sides: Metros were bigger, leaner, faster, are a different and superior class of athlete and soccer player than United's players.
Rather than reiterate what Fullback said in the above link, what Landru says, what Saturday says, what Mania says, what Shatzer says, I want to note this: when United is again capable of competing evenly against a side as talented as Metros, nobody who started last night for United with the possible exception of Korb and Kitchen, who were undressed and exposed as the rookies they are, and the awful last night Hamid will be on the field. Pontius, meh; Davies will be back in Yurp, Jakovic is as good as he'll be which isn't much, Simms has lots of miles, Wolff is old... United is better than last year; hopefully next year they'll be better than this year, and if they make that progression they'll have advanced to middle of the pack. They are at least two years and several athletes away from being dangerous.
This year: Nodax blows. Unbelievable suck. Shockingly suckful. If Benny's half-time benching of Nodax and introduction of Boskovic is a permanent move than good came out of the game. Boskovic is an athlete and soccer player of a higher class (though I can't imagine him being here if and when United gets good again). Fredsux reverted to mean (his excellent game against Toronto being, as Seat Six called it, an outlier); he is an injury fill-in. I'm interested in seeing Boskovic work with Najar (whose stock I'm selling). I'm hoping Benny finds minutes for Ethan White - might as well let him get his rookie spankings too.
This isn't an autopsy, this isn't despair. Metros are loaded: they should compete for Supporters Shield and be favored to win MLS' shitty post-season tournament. This season for United is about next season as next season is about the season after. They are that far away, that's how far they had fallen. It's not a pleasant thing to be reminded, though it's necessary to be reminded.
HEY! United management! Why are my only choices for beer Mexican swill and Corporate American swill? There is one stand I could find that sells Guinness (swill) and Harp (swill) that advertised Bass (better than swill) that I stood in line for fifteen minutes to be told they don't actually sell Bass. I mean, I'll drink swill if I must, but what the fuck is the problem? (The answer being, of course, I'll drink swill if I must.)
Fallopian, estranged somehow,
forgetless against a backdrop of plain
sky, the limbs of the trees
fail, and rally. Everywhere
the kinds of patterns that
should be breakable, but by now it's
been this way, it seems, forever. The wind
strikes. The wind dies down. To amplify
what's true past recognition—never mind
the cost ... Hard to believe, though I
do believe it, that that's all
pleasure meant, once. Why not? Why
not be totally changed
into fire, as they used to say, I say
to no one. Cargo; rift; nostalgia; gold. I
fairly sway with my own aloneness, the only
half-blinding after all and, therefore,
not so unbearable flash of it, and the years
of my life, reducible to a shuddering
scant reflection in a body
of water nowhere visible, stir,
stir back.
I've seen Iggy roll in glass and slurp fans' spit off his arm, but his appearance on American Idol is really creeping me out.
Earthgirl and Planet are visiting mominlaw in Florida. Three needy cats scream and one needy (and stoopid) dog paces and stares at me, they won't let me read, so for the first time in months? years? I turn on the teevee during prime time and surf. Every third commercial is a minute spot for some new prescription drug, the majority for depression, and fifty of the sixty seconds in the commercial is devoted to a recitation of the disclaimers on how that particular drug can motherfucking kill you. Happy, recovering depressives work in their garden or fly a kite with a grandchild on the beach on the screen beneath the voiceover.
The programming networks run to fill time between prescription drug commercials blows. Forensic this, forensic that. Tortured bodies, corpses still shackled in woods; on something called NCIS, in a morgue, after the actor who was the sidekick in Man from Uncle (who's called Ducky in NCIS and is apparently a world-class autopsy specialist) steps out to take a phone call, over the table where a torture victim lies with her sternum cracked open so we see all the organs, two special agents flirt.
I'm not offended, I'm bored, bored as only training sessions can make me. After the soft porn and graphic violence, I'm told I need to stop taking Cymbalta for my depression if it increases the suicidal thoughts I'm taking it to prevent. Will do.
It would forfeit what little remains of my bleggal integrity if I didn't ask you, How's that shithouse of an Eastern Shore?
Rest in Peace, William Donald Schaefer, my favorite politician ever, who I would vote for today. Here's begging Hamster to comment.
Now, because I woke up with this song in my head and was going to post it solo as a second April theme song and not because it has anything to do with William Donald Schaefer:
I had a blueprintof historyin my head —
it was a history of the martyrsof love, the foolsof tyrants, the tyrantsthemselves weepingat the fate of their own soldiers —
a sentimental blueprint,lacking depth —a ruled axis X and Ywhose illusionswere bearable . . .
then unbearable . . .
In that blueprint, I wanted to speakin a languageutterly other, in wordsthat mimickedhow one of Homer's warriorsplunges through breastplatea spear pastbreastbone, the spearpoint searchingthrough the chestlike a ray of light searchinga darkened roomfor the soulunhoused, infantile,raging —but my figure of speech,my "ray of light" —it was really a spearpointpiercing the lungof great-hearted Zwho feels death loosenhis knees, the menosin his thumosflying out of him —
the fate of his own soulto confront mebeyond the frame:
no room, no X, no Y, no "ray of light,"no menos, no thumos, no Z —
only sketched-in planeafter plane after planecantilevering upward and forever throughout space.
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.
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.
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.
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.
