You're a 35 year old college coach who just took a team called the
Zips to the NCAA finals, you're returning the core of your team, you've just been given a healthy raise, you're
guaranteed not only a job for as long as you want, you're guaranteed
sillyass money from those bullshit summer camps, and if you
continue to succeed with the Zips you're guaranteed whatever college
and/or MLS job you want, why the fuck would you leave to come coach the future St Louis United where, if United starts 0-6, you're thumb's up your ass and fuck out of luck? And 0-6 is much more likely than 6-0, no?
As
for why United got the chubby for this guy in the first place, why they will now turn to the same Onolfo that turned Kansas City into such a perennial MLS juggernaut, the word "rinkydink" comes to mind.
I'm not surprised Porter said no (I'd have been shocked if he'd said yes), but Shatz is. Curmudgeon is more circumspect, though his despondent faith in United's front office is close to mine.
Roob that I am, even I'm shocked how swiftly A-List Washington has conferred membership on Barack Obama since he endorsed their war, though I'm not shocked that the same bellicose fuckwits that slammed the awarding of Obama's Nobel Prize when it was announced now hosannah Obama for using his acceptance speech to justify the very wars his Peace Prize was prematurely awarded for ending.
In a tone that might best be called manly, Obama confronted the
tensions of the moment right up front. His achievements, he recognized,
were “slight” compared to other winners – a disarming modesty. And he
offered no hint of apology, while accepting an award dedicated to “the abolition or reduction of standing armies,”
for his escalation of the war in Afghanistan. To the contrary, he made
an extended case that use of force can be necessary and just, that
“evil does exist,” and that the United States military has been, and
remains, a force for good in the world.
Wow. what a shift of emphasis. Something about this Afghan decision,
coupled perhaps with events in Iran, has really affected his approach.
I don't know what to say about an "Obama doctrine," because based on
this speech, I think we are witnessing a substantial shift, back in the
direction of a more muscular moralism, a la, Truman, Reagan. the
emphasis on military power, war for just causes, and moral principles
recalls Theoedore Roosevelt's phrase, "the just man armed." There is
something much more quintessentially American and traditional about
this speech, compared to most of his rhetorical approach throughout the
year.
The conservative talk radio host has questioned McConnell’s strategy a
few times on his program this week, joining a chorus of growing critics
who say the Senate GOP leader is aiding Democrats by allowing the
chamber to debate and vote on amendments.
Limbaugh took another shot at Senate Republicans on his show Wednesday.
“The
Senate Republican leadership strategy here was flawed because it
allowed the Democrats to take the offensive, buy time to work out a
deal,” Limbaugh said. “I know a disaster when I see it. And I know that
it’s gotta be stopped, and whatever parliamentary steps are available
to people ... should have been taken.”
DeMint, in an interview with the Christian Broadcast Network, also said that he is trying to recruit a new crop of GOP lawmakers to challenge the party establishment.
“The problem in the Republican Party is that the leadership has gone to the left,” he said. “I need some new Republicans.”
DeMint’s
comments come as party leaders such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell (R-Ky.), National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC)
chairman John Cornyn (R-Texas), and RNC chairman Michael Steele have come under fire from several conservative bloggers and conservative grassroots activists.
Obama, Villager bulwark against peasants left, peasants right.
Jeebus, the next seven years, the fucking apocalypse of the not-apocalypse.
Calm amidst the crystal clinks of toasts at this year's Embassy and Georgetown holiday parties. Those whose interests are assumed paramount have been reassured their interests are still paramount.
My pint bet Obama wins reelection still stands, yo. I was wrong on why, but right on the bet.
Instead of giving money to the Democrats, give to ACLU.
I could have run this little fucker down a week ago Sunday when he jaywalked on Wisconsin to run into the Glover Park Whole Foods, but I can't feed my child from a jail cell. My complicity always lurks.
That Burmese restaurant that was once Pappy's Pizza we won't eat at again because Planet and Earthgirl thought it sucked, but here's another reason, which is right next door, and felt skeevy even at 6:00 on a Sunday night.
Rolling Stone's Top 100 of Decade. While I personally don't worship Radiohead, I get why some do, but what the fuck is with the reverence for the fucking White Stripes? And fucking Wilco for that matter.
"YOU COULD BE THE SUBJECT OF WILD ADMIRATION IN TEN DAYS"
Cal Bedient
You could be terribly well put together. The land has an eye to you. You're the very spirit of geography. Don't fidget. Don't go striding about me, air spider. Sit and talk away the evening. It's so hot.
You're the very spirit of occasions do skateboard about me. Brilliant. Intensely desirable. Are you listening? Your lipstick like watermelon split open on the rocks. Don't fidget. Say what you feel. You'll like it.
Sustained notes, however, are out: their age, size, hunting dogs, And code locations all dropped down Like the hanged, whose many friends Run to tug on their legs, they're that kind. Go
With feathers in the mouth, like the cat. It's called Making it funky. (No, no, it is not for the lute to repeat.) As I was saying, you're the understated darling of distances. Eve. Evening. Evocative. Sit here with the bucket in your lap.
Hork if you must, but hush your sobbing - Your chair throbs like a vibrator. If my breath stinks of a hired gun, love me for it, I could clear the prairie of hostiles.
What, you wander off? After all I've said? I've met up with your kind before. I attract it, even. Anyway, earth colors don't look good on you,
Do you know? And death, that fetishist, brings a dew
Slipper the size of your treacherous foot.
And after I had you where you smelled so good.
Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:
Julius Finsberg, on his death bed, tells his godson Ben Flesh:
It's incredible really. Amazing. Who could believe it? You weren't aborted, you didn't end up in a scum bag. You survived the infant mortality stuff. You made it past measles, polio, mumps. You outwitted whooping cough, typhoid, VD. God bless you, boy, you're a testament to the impossible! And not just that, but you aren't broken or damaged, there are no birth defects; you've your full complement of fingers, your fair share of toes. You're literate, you do sums. The Dean's List at Wharton. I know, I know. And even without parents you've got clothes, shelter, sex, what to eat - you know, the drives , the hydramatics of being, four on the floor and more where that came from. Yes, and you get the point of jokes and have a favorite movie and maybe even the room where you stay is done up in your favorite color. My God, lad, you're a fucking celebration...
Ben, everything there is is against your being here! Think of get-togethers, family stuff, golden anniversaries in rented halls, fire regulation celebrated more in the breach than the observance, the baked Alaska up in flames, everybody wiped out - all the cousins in from coasts, wiped out. Rare, yes - who says not - certainly rare, but it could happen, has happened. And once is enough if you've been invited. All the people picked off by plagues and folks eaten by earthquakes and drowned in the tidal waves, all the people already dead that you might have been or who might have begat the girl who married the guy who fathered the fellow who might have been your ancestor - all the showers of sperm that dried on his Kleenex or spilled on his sheets or fell on the ground or dirtied his hands when he jerked off or came in his p.j.'s or no, maybe he was actually screwing and the spermatozoon had your number written on it and it was lost at sea because that's what happens, you see - there's low motility and torn tails - that's what happens to all but a handful out of all the googols and gallons of come, more sperm finally than even the grains of sand I was talking about, more even than the degrees. Well - am I making the picture for you? Am I connecting the dots? Ben, Ben, Nick the Greek wouldn't lay a fart against a trillion bucks that you'd ever make it to this planet!
Got home Monday night and saw this sign in my front yard, got an email Tuesday morning from a good friend re: bleggalgazing, thus this, a post I will spend more time on and invest more mmwah in than any other post since the last and until the next, deliberately posted for the two slowest bleg days of the year.
This bleg is where I spend whatever creative mmwah I have in the time I have to mmwah. There's a reason I want this bleg to be different than the blegs I read, not to be better but different. I'll not deny I'm competitive, that I want to be recognized as smart by people I think are smart - and I am, thank you - and I'll not deny there are bleggers who (and this isn't aimed at anyone who'd be reading this) are almost as smart as they think they are, who appropriate others' work and call it their own and....
Meh. It's Thanksgiving, the one civic holiday I genuinely like (that whole celebration of thesuccessfulgenocide of the aboriginal population of North America aside), so, Kind.
I could be the Number Two stenciled on a pencil, says Julius Finsberg. I'm lucky to be a blegging Ben Flesh.
UPDATE!Elric sends Thanksgiving best wishes from a Sheraton in Frankfurt, Deutschland, along with last thoughts and pictures from Lagos, Nigeria. And while we too wish could join us in Kensington, we're actually gonna be at his parents' house in Gophershole because someone (the mother of my child) jammed up the garbage disposal with onions and green beans and we can't get a plumber out her until Friday. We're still doing all the cooking.
UPDATE!Greenwald most excellently calls Bolton a pussy.
Cole makes a funny: How about the liberals and Democrats who appear on CNN do something about it. Call (Castellano) him out every time you are on- make sure every chance you get you point out that CNN’s political commentator is an official GOP hack. Heh, Democrats calling out Republicans!
One can't have lived in DC area for forty-five years and not note the passing of Abe Pollin. I find the NBA unwatchable and don't give a sliver of fuck about the hockey team (which he sold x-years ago), but for his part in revitalizing downtown, he did good. See Sasha for more. And lordy, the concerts at this place:
The Tombs sucks. And what good is a gardenburger if it's fried in the grease of a beef-burger?
My tax dollars to fire Ralph Fucking Friedgen? I think I've told this story already, but wtf: two years ago, my next door neighbor's kid was an All-Met offensive lineman at Good Council (the school Bromark was sent to after Elric's parents had had enough of him and me at Gophershole High). The kid was recruited by Maryland and others, and, long story short, the competing schools talked about what an overbearing asshole Friedgen is, and upon meeting Friedgen, the kid found out it was true.
The eleven protected: Defenders Marc Burch, Dejan Jakovic, Julius James and Bryan Namoff; midfielders
Fred, Clyde Simms, Danny Szetela and Rodney Wallace;
midfielder-forwards Chris Pontius and Santino Quaranta; and forward
Jaime Moreno. No surprises except perhaps Fred, though I think United fears he'll go elsewhere and be all he was supposed to be here.
Woods reviews Auster. I don't remember precisely why I lost complete interest in Auster, though I never understood the buzz about the New York Trilogy, and come to think about it, only Moon Palace wowed me.
UPDATE!This argument is excellent cud, which is why I post it (and will comment on it further, or not), but what I really wanted to post from Poetix is this John Martyn, who I confess I hadn't thought about in a year or so.
Ben Olsen, D.C. United's gritty midfielder who overcame severe ankle injuries to
resurrect his career this season, has decided to retire, several
sources told the Insider. A formal announcement is expected next week.
Beyond his contributions on the field -- second in team history in
games played and starts and third in assists -- Olsen was the face of
the club and a visible presence in the community since leaving the
University of Virginia a year early and signing with United in 1998. He
won two MLS Cups (1999 and 2004) and played for the U.S. national team
at the 2006 World Cup in Germany.
Olsen: "You know, I just don't understand it. I
really don't. These people here, they're just so supportive. I mean,
all I do, I play hard, but it's not because I have this great heart. I
just like to play soccer, I like to play for this team and I guess they
appreciate it."
Quaranta: "It's amazing what he brings to this
team....He works as hard if not harder than anyone in this league, and
he's more important that he really realizes to this team."
Olsen: "It's emotional. You know, a lot of this
stuff, you act like 'Oh, it's not a big deal,' but I like to play
soccer. This is my living. I want to come back, but again, it's going
to be a long road back. But I'd like to thank the fans for helping me
through this and giving me the benefit of the doubt. I'm getting choked
up just thinking about it."
Definitive
proof of my congenital and incurable roobitus: beyond the daily
pigfarts and Democratic sniffing of pigfarts, beyond the children killed by
American ordinance in senseless wars, the fucking crackers, the media's giddy coronation of the Grifter Queen, beyond the daily etc, nothing has pissed me off more in months than this:
In
the act of controlling the ball before providing Gallas with a perfect
cross, France's captain had handled it. Not once, but twice. The first
time might
have been almost inadvertent, a pardonable reflex action as it was
about to go out of play. The second, in which he scooped the ball with
his left hand, redirecting it to drop nicely on to his right foot, was
clearly intentional.
Even there, it could be argued that an
element of reflex was involved. But in the few seconds that followed,
Henry had two options. He could pretend that he had not broken the most
basic law of outfield play. Or he could take the opportunity to
neutralise the effect of his reflexes. To erase an error. To right a
wrong. To be a man.
We all know which way Henry decided to go. With a broad, exultant
beam on his face, he raced away from the scene of the crime to join
Gallas and their team-mates in celebration of a goal that all knew was
likely to be decisive in the battle for a place in next summer's World
Cup finals.
For this was no ordinary piece of cheating. National pride and tens of millions of euros were at stake.
So much greater, then, would have been the admiration of a decision to
own up. Instead Henry chose to go down a path which exposed not just
his own human frailty but the paranoid fear of failure running through
a French squad (and their manager) haunted by comparisons with the
glories of the recent past.
I
had no interest in Ireland advancing other than France not, because
handball aside, where is the outrage that FIFA changed the rules of the world's most important sporting event IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOURNAMENT, fearing that Portugal and France (and at the time the decision was made, perhaps
Germany) might need to advance through play-ins and might get matched
against each other, allowing a Bosnia or Ireland to advance instead?
Robbie Keanewas correct when he said Sepp Blattner and Michael Platini would be "probably
clapping hands, Platini sitting up there on the phone to Sepp Blatter,
probably texting each other, delighted with the result."
Let me get this straight: a powerful multinational conglomerate too big to be held accountable changes the rules in the middle of a
competition to guarantee itself maximum profit by rewarding its biggest
money-makers at the expense of the weak and powerless and then
approvingly winks when one of its preeminent show-ponies blatantly
cheats to get through, and I'm surprised, shocked, and morally outraged?
What a fucking roob. No one asks me anymore how I separate my politics and soccer.
UPDATE!World's Shittiest Human, still and always, but of particular note, this last sentence: Holder himself told The Post that the coming New York trial will be "the trial of the century." The last such was the trial of O.J. Simpson. This is at least the third time I've seen a pigoon compare this to the O.J. trial, and draw your own conclusions, yo.
UPDATE!Grandpa Tool thinks of Palin, gazes at his lap, remembers when his crotch worked.
UPDATE! I do remember when Beatrice was disgraced - it was a big story in DC. I don't remember Kornheiser's part or his personal delight in taking Beatrice down, though.
UPDATE!Benny: D.C. United midfielder Ben Olsen, the heart and soul
of the club who has endured numerous ankle operations and medical
setbacks during a standout career spanning 11 years, is mulling
retirement, the Insider has learned. A decision is expected within a
week. First, Benny is making the decision before United puts out its expansion protection list. Second, speculating, I wonder if this means United is leaning towards Richie Williams as head coach and Benny assistant under Williams.
Cormac McCarthy interviewed: "I’m not interested in writing short stories. Anything that doesn’t take
years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems worth doing."
UPDATE! I read his novel Zoli, didn't suck, wasn't wowed.
RC emailed me this review (the sixth down) for it's penultimate sentence: To put it another way: If Arcade Fire had lived up to ¼ of their
INITIAL hype/promise, before anyone had actually heard the band,
instead of becoming an excuse to over-intellectualize The Hooters, it
might’ve hinted at the accomplishments found on Songbread/Another Ocean.
UPDATE!AV's 50 Best of Decade, which strikes me as better than NME's (by better, I mean I agree with more), though AV's #1 I just adamantly disagree with.
It looked a lot like a poem; it had lines that preached enjambment; it had rhymes, or sorts, both approximate and exact. It stopped on dimes. It started up again. It had cohorts -
metaphor and imagery and such - and like to keep time by beating on its chest, though some might have said it walked with a crutch and took more liberties than most of its fellow sonnets.
But it wasn't a poem, or at least said it wasn't. For who would want to be a thing so small? It wanted to be a novel, and who doesn't?
It hid its horsy face, it's tail, it's wing, under a cloak of prose. It stopped prancing. But try as it might, it could not not sing.
Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever, and a designated Theme Song Unto Perpetuity:
"Over the past three seasons, Tommy has faced greater challenges than
any other MLS coach," United President Kevin Payne said, referring to a
schedule that included annual international tournaments.
Wait a fucking minute. United doesn't want to be in annual international tournaments? Kevin Payne is saying he doesn't want United to face "greater challenges" than any other MLS team? What the fuck?
Good thing United sucked this past season then, yes? No trips this coming season to Mexico and Honduras and El Salvador, just home exhibitions against better league's B-Squads, thank fucking god.
By Payne's standard, Soehn succeeded! The next coach will have a pussy schedule by comparison. Well done!
Schedule! Waah! We're fucked by our success! By this logic, the goal of the new coach next season is to suck just enough to avoid fixture congestion in 2011.
Oh, and this by The Irreplaceable Man needs noting:
"I'm a little
surprised. ... It's a difficult transition for the players when you
bring in a new coach. You have to re-prove yourself. You're on trial in
a way and you don't know whether you fit into the new coach's plans. I
hope they don't try to break up this team."
Boofuckinghoo. Suddenly, Namoff seems replaceable to me.
When I was sixteen and a first semester junior in Aviday Ampsellesay's English class at Gaithersburg High School, it was two years out from Nixon's resignation and one year out from the fall of Saigon and Moscow was on the march and Jimmy Carter had just been kinged. Holyfuck, the number one song in America was Rod Stewart's fucking Tonight's the Night: how's that for perspective on toxic futures.
I had a blast my junior year in high school, couldn't give a shit about shit as long as Rod Goddamn Stewart wasn't on the stereo. I've survived all End Times since to bring you my daily End Times predictions.
I teach my sixteen year old too little cynicism, too little selfishness, too little self-interest, I teach her nothing beyond what she concludes herself about the nature and motives of others, I teach her to be nicer, more understanding and forgiving, to be Kinder than me.
Despite me, it's working. All Fleabus photos by Planet.
Excellent HATING! on Little Danny Helmetball: "He looks like a cross between Mitt Romney and a male nurse, with a
spray-helmeted cube of black mannequin hair atop the pinched, entitled
face of a guy [complaining to] a Howard Johnson's waitress about his
curly fries not being curly enough."
Who would purposely distance themselves from the fiction he's reading? ME! who opened up the daily random Moby Dick to a horrifically brutal (and beautifully written) scene of whales in agony, so I've called a time out on both daily random readings much less front to back for now, which isn't the distance meant at the link. Which is why I need read the novel again.
Another review of the new Pamuk, which I will be reading, just when I'm not sure - I'm in Mexico City in 1976 chasing visceral realists right now.
I'm not sure why the New York Review of Books feels a need to review each and every new William Trevor novel, nor why each review of each new William Trevor isn't required to use the JCO/Updike required word "prolific." (sub rqrd)
This doesn't make my heart race, but I've friends that it will.
Not only does Sting's music suck unto suck (I promise you you'll never suffer a crappy Police song on this bleg, I love you that much), Sting's a fracking asshole too. But you knew that.
I'm raising my child to become the end of rotting, and to expose the lushness of the cemetery moth. I'm raising my child to know the difference between the two sunsets: one purple with thermonuclear iodine, the other the charred insides of rain. I'm raising my child to find the stones his brothers fed each other. I'm raising my child to fall behind the apricot blossoms and to trust only others who've fallen behind. I'm raising my child to listen: there is so much noise only silence will be remembered. I'm raising my child to fill in the spaces between wars and the spaces between people where everything grows even after the last space is gone. I'm raising my child to bring into the world books that suffer with words detention-kids make over and over. I'm raising my child to follow the scatter of flesh across the sky, birds and their wingprint trails to Alaska. I'm raising my child to predict the sicknesses left of summer by the number of shadows he sweats. I'm raising my child to plant pennies where he'll find rest and good fingerpaint for one night. I'm raising my child to chop down the televisions of peasants and their machine that picks thunderstorms from a leaf. I'm raising my child to write a treaty for his own smells, the ones that hurt the self and the ones that hurt others, and a treaty for the poison sumac whose only emotion is hunger. I'm raising my child to dress like a long line of near-humans if he wants to be recognized and to show kindness to the roadkill that sneaks into his bed. I'm raising my child to know which part of a hamburger is still afraid. I'm raising my child to be captain of the abandoned mail trucks and to lead the grasses across the Midwestern sleep. I'm raising my child to leave New York. I'm raising my child to add letters and numbers to his name and chameleons and hellbenders behind his name. I'm raising my child to drown and to drop dead and to carry buildings on his back. I'm raising my child to listen to his face breaking when it's cold. I'm raising my child to seduce only photographs of women. I'm raising my child to know that the cobras that shiver in the sky at night are mistakes and not responsible for us. I'm raising my child to leave bread for the voices that come after dark. I'm raising my child to keep his eyes closed. I'm raising my child to tell the truth by having no sound at all.
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