When I Tell You That Cultural Ritual Is an Artifice Composed of Simultaneous Social-Dynamic Complexity Vectors Acting in Anthropometric Units, I’m Thinking of Sex

Because I'm compelled to drive the point home, because no one asks me anymore how I separate my soccer and politics, but mostly because I can't emphasize enough how you'd better treat each home game as if there are a finite number left:

Asked on a media conference call about D.C. United's inability to reach a deal on a new stadium, MLS Commissioner Don Garber assigned blame on area political leaders and reiterated his concern about the club's long-term future in the D.C. area.

"I am tired of going down [to Washington] for meetings and getting back-slapped and [attending] faux press conferences with mayors and local city officials to have them back-track because they can't get out of their own way. Quite frankly, it is frustrating, and at some point, we are going to have to do something about it."

There are no accidents. MLS has five new years of labor peace, Houston's getting a stadium, San Jose's getting a stadium, New York has a new stadium, United's not getting a new stadium here. Fuck-Me-Jig.

I don't know if a high school kid from Alexandria is as good as a washed-up Christian Gomez, but I do know he's a boatload cheaper, which isn't a shot at Najar but a nod at what United's bought with the salary money they've saved.

I trust Chang wants to DC United to remain in DC, and I've said I understand he cannot lose money on United endlessly (or rather, perhaps he can, but he's under no obligation to do so), and if I was an owner looking at other teams moving into revenue-streaming venues while I keep negotiating with the fucking District government, I'd be cutting payroll, I'd be delighted the commissioner of MLS angrily says to DC, PG, NOVA, fucking put up or shut up.

Why is Ben Olsen at the top of this post?

Najar will wear No. 14 -- Ben Olsen's revered jersey.

"I think it was Andy's idea, but he was so shy, he had his agent pester me," said Olsen, now an assistant coach. "I made him sweat a little bit. [smiling] But I don't care about that stuff. He's a great kid. Might as well someone better than me at soccer wear the 14."

That's why.

• A carefully crafted F**k You: Those explanations that try to locate all the inertia outside of Obama don’t take into account his own unwillingness to speak and act in face of certain urgent issues. His inability to condemn the onslaught against Gaza was not a matter of some external constraint upon him. No one coerced him into escalating the war in Afghanistan, nor was it a matter of externally situated inertia when he abandoned stronger versions of universal healthcare.
• A historic confirmation of corporate power.
• Pussydom.
• Yes, in it's boiled-down essence.
• Beachhead?
• Your sentence of the day: Confederate Yankee may be sui generis, but polling suggests there are plenty more like him back home, and some of them may yet learn to read and write.
• One motherfucking ambitious fucking cracker.
• Grifter. More.
• England has crackers too.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Unsung heroes of healthcare reform.
• Who the fuck uses sillyass Star Trek allusions?

• One sentence, three lies.
• Just like 2008.
• No.
• RIP, Social Media.
• One last tribute for Jon Swift. I think it appropriately ironic and serendipitous and funny that on the same day zencomix honors the collegiality and generosity of Al Weisel I get an email from a friend in Seattle asking me why Gurldoggie purged me from her blegrell. Dude. It's because I suck.

• My future hell.
• Puppy robbery in Montgomery Village!
• Puppy recovered!
• Jesus fucking cracker.
• The big winner in the MLS labor deal is ME! but here's a breakdown of plus/minus for labor/ownership.
• United's new kit has a back-bra! Ack.
• Jaime Moreno (clap clap clap-clap-clap).
• Dimitar Berbatov is..... The Continental.
• UPDATE! Football used to be an easy game. The big lads played at centre-half and centre-forward, the hard lads played at full-back, the bright lads played at inside forward, the hard lads who were a bit bright and the bright lads who were a bit hard played at wing-half, and the little, quick lads played on the wing. Left-footers played on the left and right-footers played on the right. And the one with no mates went in goal.
• UPDATE! Courtesy of Bromark, DCU's 2010 schedule can be your computer's wallpaper.
  

UPDATE! Well, this was just put in my head, and you know damn well I'm going to put it in yours:

• I've been seeing the name Larry Eigner a lot lately. I confess I'm thoroughly unfamiliar with his work.
• James Wood and DFW.
• For my friends who love Josipovici.
• For my friends who love Josipovici.
• Quantifying what makes a book "bad."
• Hipster t-shirts.
• Hamster, look at this.
• Moka's Top 200, part two.
• Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• This is the Ice Age.
• Girl in trouble is a temporary thing.
• Swimming.
• Lots of new releases, with MP3.

IF WE WERE HONEST

Albert Goldbarth

When I tell you that cultural ritual is an artifice

composed of simultaneous social-dynamic complexity vectors acting in anthropometric units,

I’m thinking of sex. I mean it.

We all are. It isn’t just me. Or when I say

the war, or the god, or the list with the juice and the cereal...

sex. What is it the psycho-experts are claiming?—every ten seconds?

When I tell you that I’m thinking of sex,

I’m thinking of death. Its worm is always

in my eye, its sour and dirt-blown web is always

a catch in my throat. It was always a wen

releasing a small electrical jolt to the brain

of Napoleon, Alexander, Attila. It was funereally

in the black, black ink of the Brontes;

why should I be any different? Why can’t we

be honest?—every poem is “Sex.” (Or “Death.”)

If we were honest, half of our poems would be about

the making of poems, the conference on the making of poems,

the resume of poems successfully made...you know, the way

that half of the time is actually spent. And did

ten seconds pass just now? If so, then

sex. (If so, then death.) Not too long after

the Dolphin first made port in Tahiti, it was discovered

the crew were trading its nails

for dalliances with the pliant and welcoming

women of that island—“to such a great extent, the ship

was in danger of being pulled apart.”

Inside the cradling waves of moonlight

on those waters...smiling...consummating...human

nails into smooth, bamboo-brown human grain...

how did they know, how could they foresee, that

my mother would die from her own lungs

shaping hundreds of obstinate fists in her chest,

my father would die with his own blood turning

into a useless negative of itself?

And yet they must have known, they must have seen the lesson,

they were trying to deny it with the drive of such

combustive, zealous engines! This is my topic

tonight, and how the craft of poetry and the role

of the postmodern in a society of gender-defined relationship roles is yes a bare knee like a beacon,

like a skull beneath the face-skin, and a question

from the audience on a quasi-political sense is yes in my mind, yes in yours, yes

sex and death—the one thing.

Another one  of dozens of my five favorite songs ever: