BLCKDGRD

Columbus 1, United 1

I'm sick of this movie:

On the surface, a tie against Columbus -- the reigning MLS champion on a 5-1-5 run and unbeaten at home since June 2008 -- while Emilio, Moreno, Quaranta and Jakovic were missing isn't a bad result. (Rogers and Marshall were absent for the Crew, too.) However, United knows all too well it let three points on the road slip away. D.C. was much better on this night, but the finishing wasn't up to par and one breakdown resulted in a Columbus goal.

Defensive breakdown? You mean the defensive breakdown that was inevitable the moment Tom Soehn subbed Fracking Fred in for Khumalo, that happened within minutes of Fred's introduction, when Fred allowed the man Khumalo had shut down for 54 minutes to get off a clean cross to the box, that defensive breakdown?

Fracking Fred, the sooner he's off this team the sooner whatever magical spell he has on Soehn and Kasper and Payne - the illusion he's an exciting and useful soccer player - can be dispelled.

Let KO = Khumalo's offensive suck, KD = Khumalo's defensive plus, KE = Khumalo's effort and damn. Let FO = the illusion of Fred's offensive prowess, FD = Fred's defensive suck, FE = Fred's lack of effort and damn.

Is FO-KO > (KD+KE) - (FD+ FE) and the answer is NO!¹⁰⁰ .

Frack Fred. ADD! that Fred cannot play with Gomez, that Gomez was having a terrific game, especially in combinations with Pontius, and frack Tom Soehn for bringing Fred in. Even with Quaranta and Moreno and Emilio away, even with N'Silu a whisker above useless, keep Fred's ass on the bench.

Aaarg, here's Goff's player ratings:

Wicks 6; Namoff 7, Janicki 7, Burch 7; Khumalo 6, Olsen 7.5, Simms 6, Gomez 8, Wallace 5; Pontius 6, N'Silu 6. Subs: Fred 6, Barklage 6.

I'm not a Goff-hater; I like and value Goff, but he's got a bad case of frackingfreditus, a 6? A fracking 6? Repeat after me, Fred sux.

Janicki did well, Simms was strong, Wallace was invisible in the first half, better in the second, and Gomez was magnificent and Ba'al bless Benny Olsen, my favorite United player ever.

Here's Shatz. Here's DCU Curmudgeon.

Updates, edits, links, later. Or not.

O! Who didn't think of this every time either Harkes or Dellacamera said Andy Iro?

Flegging Barrels

It's 2:50 Thursday afternoon, I'm rereading the resume of a young woman about to interview for an entry level position here at Zrtzmwah, and my cell phone vibrates, it's a Moco number I don't recognize, and a voice says, Mr Dogred, I say yes, and the voice says, This is Office Whatever with the Montgomery County Police.

Since posting this about the (say it derisively) Park Police's attempt to foster a riot last Tuesday generated some hits that came from addresses that may or not have been from police but were certainly from moco government domains, my first thought was that this phone call was to ask me questions about the event, but no: a neighbor has called in an official complaint against one of my ferals because the feral - gasp at the cat's evil - sleeps on her front stoop in the sun all day.

The complainant says we're harboring wild animals, and they're breeding. I quickly tell the officer the story: Yes, there are four cats, a mother and three children. The mother moved into our shed, had the kittens, it never occurred to us to consider them pests and have them killed like they were possum or raccoons, we trapped them and, with the help of Metro Ferals, paid to have them all spayed or neutered, we have the documentation, their ears are clipped, here's the name and phone number of our Metro Ferals contact, we can verify all of this. Except for the mother, none of them are feral now, they're our outdoor cats, though still feral enough they can't - and don't want to - come inside.

We're sure but the policewoman wouldn't confirm that it's the same bitch who started yelling at Earthgirl back in late April. The officer was very sympathetic, though was clear that homeowners have the right to have unwanted animals, including cats, trapped and removed from their yards, and that the homeowner in question is determined that whichever of our cats this is (it was Grey Cat back in April, though I always see Napoleon run from that direction when I call him - and he always comes running - Napoleon is a special cat), it be trapped and killed if necessary.

Why doesn't she just stomp her feet and shout Shoo! The officer doesn't know. The officer says, there are cat deterrent sprays and methods, and I tell the officer we will certainly pay for them if the neighbor applies them. I've a phone call into our Metro Ferals contact for advice. The officer says the phone represents a first complaint, not imminent trapping, but we should take this seriously. Any suggestions would be welcome (beyond slapping silly the bitch who called in the complaint - that's already occurred to me, quite swiftly in fact).

Frankie will sit within two feet of me, roll on his back, meow, and then run if I try to pet him. Grey Cat lets me pet her and hold her, though she doesn't yet have full confidence and still keeps her flee instinct tightly triggered. Napoleon - jeebus, I love that cat: he plays, he cuddles, he initiates conversations, he trusts us completely. We could probably bring him inside, thoroughly ruining his happy and terrific life and possibly thoroughly ruining our indoor cats' lives too.

Taken this morning, that's Grey Cat and Frankie, both of whom knocked at the door because it was time for breakfast:

 

Here's Fleabus, watching:

Here's the kicker: the bitch's family is trying to sell their house, wanna be out of the neighborhood within two months. Is it maturity or complicity that's kept me from confronting them? The law is a bitch.

UPDATE!

Photo taken literally two minutes ago, Napoleon and Grey Cat and Frankie on our back porch proving what nuisance wild animals they are.

*

• Thankfully, this guy saves me the necessary effort (but wait, there's more: check out Whispers in comments).
• Another obamapostate.
• Now the flegging: Blogosphere 2.0, or, why all blegs are shetty and getting shettier (h/t).
• A generous philosophy of blegging.
• Poetry is not dead yet? No, but searching pathetically for pulses is lame.
• Terrific review of Seidel's collected. (sub rqrd)
• Daily Listening Assignment.

Updates later. Or not.

*

AMERICAN

Frederick Seidel

My face had been sliced off
And lay there on the ground like a washcloth
With my testicles and penis
Next to it.

The car had Wyoming plates.
I'd been to Colorado but not Wyoming.
Which I gather is beautiful.
The other one I hadn't seen was Utah.

Someone had carefully cut under it and lifted it off,
I suppose to obliterate the identity,
Except had left it out in the open.
It looked like a latex glove but also someone's face.

She told me she had always loved me.
I was the happy ending of a fairy tale.
She would recognize my penis anywhere,
Even on the ground.

*

Pay no attention to what the two ditzes or the ditzy chryon say, though it's apt metaphor for something:

I still can't figure out how to get from the post office to those swings in the park

Chris Hedges asks:

How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?

What was lost? It was ever else?

The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham.

Only recently revealed as sham?

Our bankrupt liberalism, which naively believes that Barack Obama is the antidote to our permanent war economy and Wall Street fraud, will either rise from its coma or be rolled over by an organized corporate elite and their right-wing lap dogs. The corporate domination of the airwaves, of most print publications and an increasing number of Internet sites means we will have to search, and search quickly, for alternative forms of communication to thwart the rise of totalitarian capitalism.

Such as?

(And) facts alone will be powerless to thwart the mendacity spun out through billions of dollars in corporate advertising, lobbying and control of traditional sources of information. We will have to descend into the world of the forgotten, to write, photograph, paint, sing, act, blog, video and film with anger and honesty that have been blunted by the parameters of traditional journalism. The lines between artists, social activists and journalists have to be erased. These lines diminish the power of reform, justice and an understanding of the truth. And it is for this purpose that these lines are there.

Alternatively:

Oh, thank God, it's nonpartisan. It doesn't matter your background, your demographics, your race, your political affiliation—it's such a uniting, healthy, fun, awesome activity. It cracks me up going to some running event and seeing some dude who campaigned so hard against me, or a lady who's been blogging some mean comments about me. But we're all there together and we're smiling and we're having a good time because we're going to do something healthy and active. We need more of that. That's what sports are able to do. It's a wonderful kind of diversion from the divisiveness that is politics or that is life. And my parents, they've got so many friends from so many different political bents because of all their years participating in races and organizing races. I was lucky enough to have been brought up in that atmosphere where I see the value in that.

Good luck with that manifesto, Chris.

Meanwhile, Dr Z tempts me to disc on Friday with this invitation:

You could meet Sally, my genetically similar unit.  She's genetically similar to you, but not so much, so you will only like her a little or you will have ambivalent feelings toward her.

That's a worldview I understand.

*

• Yup.
• UPDATE! Yup.
• UPDATE! Yup.
  
• Chasing torture is shadow boxing.

UPDATE! Greenwald, yapping about NPR, taIks of this institution of higher education, from which I have two degrees:

There are several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday about the refusal of NPR's Ombdusman, Alica Shepard, to be interviewed by me about NPR's ban on using the word "torture" to describe the Bush administration's interrogation tactics.  Given the utter vapidity of her rationale ("there are two sides to the issue. And I'm not sure, why is it so important to call something torture?"), I was momentarily amazed to learn that she actually teaches "Media Ethics" to graduate students at Georgetown University (my amazement quickly dissipated once I recalled that this is the same institution that, until last year, paid Doug Feith -- Doug Feith -- to teach students "national security policy" and that Berkeley Law School has John Yoo "teaching law" to its students; next semester at Georgetown:  Karl Rove teaches Civility in a Post-Partisan Age, Bill Kristol lectures on Accountability in Punditry, while David Gregory examines The Role of Intellect in Adversarial Questioning).

• Abu Biden.
• Your Washington Post editorial page.
• On Iranian John Boltons.
• A Moco giant. More.
• Dead in Fairfax?
• Here's a guy reevaluating his blegology.
• Here's a guy reevaluating his blegology.
• Did anyone notice the new subblegsig? Just curious.
• Firpo?

UPDATE! I'm reading Uncle Fiver:

It's not as if these articles about sports are particularly incisive. Take this month's issue, in which an extract from Grant Wahl's book The Beckham Experiment sensationally reveals that David Beckham may not have had the best interests of LA Galaxy at heart when he retired from football to hang around with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes while occasionally playing soccerball in the MLS for $800m-per-year back in 2007, and that USA! USA! USA! star Landon Donovan got the hump when it was decided that he be stripped of the team's captaincy so that Becks could be given the armband. A cynic might say that one over-rated blue-eyed poster-boy with a glamourous celebrity wife was jealous at being replaced by another. Not that Donovan's ever been good enough to be considered over-rated, although he does win the celebrity wives:

Whoa whoa whoa, Donovan plays heroically at Confederations Cup, blasts the whore Beckham, and is married to a professional actress and model that looks like that?

Phbrtz, aargocalypse.

• Jim suggests possible Infinite Jest urs. (Python-based, yo.) Adding, my reading not slumping, being eaten by need-to, I forget how different summer's schedule is. I still owe you - and want to owe you - CG.
• UPDATE! Read this.
• Is homage imitation seems to be the question, though I confess to never heard of Jim Thompson or the guy that's either paying homage or imitating Thompson.
• UPDATE! Books and the internet.
• My theory is that Hemingway sucks.
• On Sad Music. For me, Chopin's Nocturnes.

*

THE PROBLEM OF ANXIETY

John Ashbery

Fifty years have passed
since I started living in those dark towns
I was telling you about.
Well, not much has changed. I still can't figure out
how to get from the post office to those swings in the park.
Apple trees blossom in the cold, not from conviction,
and my hair is the color of dandelion fuzz.

Suppose this poem were about you - would you
put in the things I've carefully left out:
descriptions of pain, and sex, and how shiftily
people behave toward each other? Naw, that's
all in some book it seems. For you
I've saved the descriptions of finger sandwiches,
and the glass eye that stares at me in amazement
from the bronze mantel, and will never be appeased.

*

My head, your head, here in Status Symbol Land:

United 2, Ocean City Barons 0

Mocorubemofos, there is no better soccer experience than United games in Germantown. They'll be playing Harrisburg next Tuesday. Be there.

It poured during the best sunset of the year:

Credit the Barons and their fans, whose numbers were equal - or pretty damn close to equal - those of Uniteds', and WTF's up with that, yo.

O! that Ocean City goal ruled not a goal looked like a goal to me, though I haven't seen a replay.

UPDATE!

!hEh! watch and listen to this, in which the Ocean City not-goal looks like a goal to me, plus a South Jersey reporter praises Ocean City fans for MOCKING! United fans. !hEh!

It wasn't lack of effort by United, which is the first assumption when low-tiers take top-tiers late, though arguably it's a worse thing that a low-tier take a working top-tier late. Many United players' long-term value will be reevaluated and down-graded by Payne and Kasper and Soehn today.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Kocic 7; McTavish 5, Janicki 6, Burch 5; Barklage 5, DiRaimondo 5, Olsen 6, Jacobson 4, Wallace 5; Khumalo 3, N'Silu 4. Subs: Pontius 7, Gomez 7, Simms 5.

Boyzz = FAIL! In the second half alone I counted at least nine times United swung the ball to the right wing to a wide open Khumalo who proceeded to let loose all of one semi-decent cross. This was a game Khumalo should have dominated - the game plan was devised for him to dominate - and he thoroughly sucked. Soehn said postgame: "Boyzzz gives you a lot of energy. The great thing about Boyzzz is that he gives you energy, and the bad thing sometimes is Boyzzz gives you energy and you're not sure what to do off him," so maybe Khumalo was too hyper or maybe he had too much space and too much time to think over the ball rather than react to the ball, none of which cancels FAIL!

Also failing auditions: Barklage, DiRaimondo, Jacobson, and N'Silu.

Chris Pontius was so demonstrably the best player on the field after he came on for Benny at the start of the second half it was startling. For a while I thought Wallace almost as inspired a draft pick, but Pontius is light years ahead of Wallace, who labored invisibly most of the game. I turned to this guy and bet him dinner that, barring injury, Pontius will be on the USMNT WC10 squad. Too stoopid probably, but Pontius has skills the USMNT needs, and if he keeps progressing at the rate he's developing, maybe.

Ba'al Bless Benny Olsen. Here's hoping his not starting the second half was just a precautionary move to keep him off the wet grass after the downpour at halftime.

O! Know who else was there? The jackbooted (no, really) Montgomery County Police rejects known as the Maryland National Capital Parks and Planning Commission Police, and they were itching for confrontations.

Now, the same drunken Barra lout that picks a fight every game in Germantown did so again, and since there were at least twenty Park Police (and you must say "Park Police" as derisively as you're capable), every single one of them horny to play rough cop, they broke that up with excessive force, then began hassling the Ocean City fans to get out of the stadium as if their postgame lingering was itself an act of provocation. The Ocean City players stayed on the field near their fans because they worried about possible arrests of and violence to their fans from the (say it derisively) Park Police. 

(Here's a thought: Don't put traveling fans on the same side of the field as Barra if you're all that concerned about fights; in the past, the traveling fans had been on the opposite side of the field.)

(And somebody near me was shouting, I got this on youtube, I got this on youtube, assholes, and if I find it or someone finds it and sends me the link, I'll post it.)

In the parking lot we had to walk through there must have been at least ten cruisers. As we walked by the three buses carrying the Ocean City fans, one shirtless, tattooed Ocean City fan lit up a cigarette and was quickly and violently pushed up against a car by a (say it derisively) Park Policeman. See, you can't smoke anywhere on MNCPPC property, so clearly he needed to be forcibly arrested.

And O! the joy of the (say it derisively) fat Park Police sprinting at a full waddle to escort the Ocean City coach off the field after his ejection was ecstatic!

In the 54th minute, Barons Coach Neil Holloway was ejected for dissent. After Holloway repeatedly defied referee Jeff Gontarek's orders to leave the field, a police officer approached from behind and tried to escort him away. Not realizing law enforcement had gotten involved, Holloway continued to resist. Upon turning and seeing the uniform, he climbed over a railing and marched through the stands.

Come next week! For the soccer! For the sunset! For the clown show! Just don't smoke.

Here's DCU Curmudgeon with a Anti-Soehn rant. Here's Fullback. Here's Shatz.

UPDATE!

Here's the Ocean City coach (and Atlantic City newspaper article):

UPDATE

Another reason not go to the Madrid game - you want to give money to these fucks?

!Yowoot! !Wootyo!

HEY! someone dopey (robarkmay, just saying) got his dates mixed up so I have a FREE!ticket to this tonight in Germantown:

versus

I'll probably be away from my email after 4pm, but use the secret dogcellphone number, yo, and we'll hook up. You'll have to get yourself there, but I can either leave ticket at will call or meet you outside the gate.