BLCKDGRD

I Would Have You Know That All Is Not Well with a Man Dead Set to Ignore the Endless Repetitions of His Own Murmurous Blood

Garry Wills, polishing the roob, pleads to and for Obama in latest NYRB:

I am told by people I respect that Barack Obama cannot pull out of both Iraq and Afghanistan without becoming a one-term president. I think that may be true. The charges from various quarters would be toxic—that he was weak, unpatriotic, sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, betraying our dead, throwing away all former investments in lives and treasure. All that would indeed be brought against him, and he could have little defense in the quarters where such charges would originate.

America's dickheads and assholes would call Obama weak and unpatriotic, call him guilty of sacrificing the sacrifices that have been made, of betraying the service dead, of appeasing the enemy, if Obama decreed tomorrow that every Muslim on the planet must die and started lobbing nukes on Tehran and Damascus and that mosque in Potomac.

I love the NYRB, have been a subscriber for thirty years, it's arguably the preeminent journal of America's Left intelligentisia (or of the New York and Ivy League Left intelligentsia), but Wills pathetic plea is embarrassing: Wills assumes that either Obama can't leave Afghanistan because of pressure from the Right or won't because of concern for his reelection when it's simply a matter that Obama doesn't want to: he believes in the mission.

*

• Let's get the Dolchstosslegend going!
• UPDATE! American priorities.
• The Communist Manifesto in Cartoon (which I post as much as a flashback - cartoon-wise - for farts my age as any reason else).  (h/t)
• Defective Comics.
• Lacan and E-Mail.
• Comedy's Charcoal Age.
• Simplicity.
• American Democracy.
• I do hope Greenwald has bodyguards and never drinks from a glass he walks away from in company.
• Yup.
• Google pigoons and Atwood before reading today's Rich.
• The Palin Effect.
• Grifter.
• Conservative curve ball.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.

• Moron and fatfuck Shales, reviewing the new Prisoners remake: Strikingly photographed in starkest black and white, the '67 "Prisoner" was a curious and rather tantalizing melange of counterculture imagery, traditional paranoid fantasy and even a bit of Cold War spy thriller, with the spy stuff mostly expunged from what AMC calls its "reinterpretation" of the story.
• It's a couple of days late, but Trisketdekaphobia.
• More Elric in Nigeria. Since he's there, he might be interested in this.
• UPDATE! Even more Elric in Nigeria.
• The ad Typepad is running on its dashboard:

• Think: if blegs were a professional soccer shirt, that statement would be true, and think how weird soccer shirts look when teams are forced to play minus the logo.
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• Viers v Veirs: the story.
• Political activism in Kensington!
• ICC side-effects.
• Joe's Record Paradise! in Post because Joe smokes pot. Joe's Record Paradise was the best headshop in MOCO when MOCO had headshops. Or so I'm told.
• UPDATE! Sex in Fredneck.
• The worse uniform ever contest declares a winner.
• Union's new home shirt.
• Clowns wear all-black when their colors are red and white:

• An pox forever on Little Danny Helmetball, though wearing colors at home is a surprise and a plus:

• Barking Dog's Writer's Journal.
• More on the ascendancy of memoirs over fiction. You know, it's true on TV too.
• UPDATE! The review of but what interests me in UM's review of a book by Jonah Raskin is in the author photo, behind Raskin's left jowl, is M31 by Steven Wright.
• An American minimalist.
• Excellent bleggal-gazing: Sojourns in Meatspace.
• Here we are, stuck by this river.
• Beards per minute. UPDATE! More!
• Into you like a train.
• UPDATE! !wOOt! Plus Planet just called and said they're playing Lisner Auditorium on February 14, so Landru, Ilse, Hamster, Bromark, Elric, you want tickets, let me know, I might be able to take care of all my Giftmas shopping at once!
• Cartographic Study of Musical Incest.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Touch me, I'm going to scream.
• Spiral Cliff.
• It's not alright.
• UPDATE! It's not up to you.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• What's important.

*

A LETTER

Anthony Hecht

                I have been wondering
    What you are thinking about, and by now suppose
                It is certainly not me.
    But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering
                Blood knows what it knows.
It talks to itself all night, like a sliding, moonlit sea.

                Of course, it is talking of you.
    At dawn, when the ocean has netted its catch of lights,
                The sun plants one lithe foot
    On that spill of mirrors, but the blood goes worming through
                Its warm Arabian nights
Naming your pounding name again in the dark heartroot.

                Who shall, of course, be nameless.
    Anyway, I should want you to know I have done my best,
                As I'm sure you have, too.
    Others are bound to us, the gentle and blameless
                Whose names are not confessed
In the ceaseless palaver. My dearest, the clear and bottomless
    blue

                Of those depths is all but blinding.
    You may remember that once you bought my boys
                Two little woolly birds.
    Yesterday the older one asked for you upon finding
                Your thrush among his toys.
And tides welled about me, and I could find no words.

                There is not much else to tell.
    One tries one's best to continue as before,
                Doing some little good.
    But I would have you know that all is not well
                With a man dead set to ignore
The endless repetitions of his own murmurous blood.

*

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever, in hopes of changing my mood:

Offering the Desk Puppy Biscuits

Meaning I'm stymied. Meaning it's a reading-slump, and reading-stumps are either a symptom of autoblogography or autoblogography a symptom of reading-slumps.

I've a reading-slump and a blegissue: How many more ways to duh Duh are there? Meaning there are zillions if I ever embraced by half the what-the-fuck of a half-darer.

Meaning I'm antsy, meaning I'm not sure how to route the antsy, meaning there may or not be more or less of this or that, but I need entertain myself if not tongue-fuck the what-the-fuck.

Meaning nothing more than thanks as always for the Kind.

• I chide Greenwald for stating the obvious (though the obvious often needs stating): assholes unite out of fear of assholes.
• The Seduction of Proximity to Power.
• American Exceptionalism: Epidemic Edition.
• Hofstadter revisited.
• Zizek (in NYT?) on the 20 years since collapse of Berlin Wall.
• On Zizek envy.
• On the 20 years since collapse of Berlin Wall.
• Maintaining Masculinity. I'm guilty of flagrant (and joyful!) use of the word "pussy," and while I do not deny its misogynist connotations, and I solicit suggestions for an alternative, gender-neutral term, I do not know of another word in English that more succinctly captures the essence of grandiose cowardice and whinging self-pity and exaggerated self-importance than "pussy," as in, John Boehner is such a pussy.
• Speaking of: Obama.
• Bravest Guy in the House.
• Af-Pak gak.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• 1000 Monkeys, Typewriters, One Friedman Column.
• Six months behind me on the calender, a year in front of me in ageangst.
• Think about this next time you step on Metro.
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• The Further Adventures of Little Danny Helmetball.
• Lessing continued. My two: I always liked and deeply admired the Lessing I read. I don't remember ever loving it.
• How to Write a Novel.
• I'm mildly optimistic my ritual of closing my eyes and reaching onto a bookshelf and starting whichever book I grab might work: the first fifty pages of this have got me going. If you haven't read Thomson's Divided Kingdom, do yourself a favor.
• Grateful Dead archivist job opening.
• Roll away the dew.
• Johnny Cash, protest singer.
• Obscure Sound's October MP3 Wrap-Up.
• Boston Spaceships is pollardized.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Elliott Carter.
• See the Leaves.
• Dominos.
• Sun Kill Moon.
• Sun Kill Moon.
• Sun Kill Moon.
• Sun Kill Moon.

Born eighty-one years ago today:

THE ROOM OF MY LIFE

Anne Sexton

Here,
in the room of my life
the objects keep changing.
Ashtrays to cry into,
the suffering brother of the wood walls,
the forty-eight keys of the typewriter
each an eyeball that is never shut,
the books, each a contestant in a beauty contest,
the black chair, a dog coffin made of Naugahyde,
the sockets on the wall
waiting like a cave of bees,
the gold rug
a conversation of heels and toes,
the fireplace
a knife waiting for someone to pick it up,
the sofa, exhausted with the exertion of a whore,
the phone
two flowers taking root in its crotch,
the doors
opening and closing like sea clams,
the lights
poking at me,
lighting up both the soil and the laugh.
The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart.
Each day I feed the world out there
although birds explode
right and left.
I feed the world in here too,
offering the desk puppy biscuits.
However, nothing is just what it seems to be.
My objects dream and wear new costumes,
compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands
and the sea that bangs in my throat.

 

 

 

Reap What You Have Soehn

This pisses me off:

"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.

I'm Raising My Child to Know that the Cobras that Shiver in the Sky at Night Are Mistakes and Not Responsible for Us

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.

*

• American Culture.
• America.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• America.
• American Yadda.
• Pussy Hatch.
• Obamapostasy.
• Obamapostasy.
• Something to think about.
• Your pwoggle spin on today's election results.
• Your asshole pig spin on today's election results.
• A fatuous referendum.
• Still the person I'd most like to brain w/a shovel.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Not American enough.
• Work:

• ICC's true purpose!
• No one could have predicted Smart Growth would lead to Clarksburgs.
• Clarksburg.
• On bleggal hiatusing.
• One aspect why black-and-white TV pings my pitchfork.
• The president of the University of Tulsa makes more than $1M per?
• Levi-Strauss has died. More.
• 24-Hours of Air Traffic.

UPDATE! Soehn "resigns". Post later. Or not.
Here's DCU Curmudgeon. Here's Fullback.

• 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."
• Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• Barra Barra.
• Worst sports kits!
• Vote for the Worst Uniform Ever!
• Work:

• 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)
• Andrew addresses my Lessing problem.
• Oofdah: a takedown of Ashbery.
• New Ashbery.
• Remembering Conrad Aiken, whose poetry one girlfriend adored and one mentor despised.
• Wait until Ilse and Sasha see who's number one.
• Above three links courtesy Silliman's always generous blog.
• I'm not sure why there's a need for a new "selected" Wallace Stevens. (sub rqrd)
• Not why I'm not, but the point is to make you.
• Work

• 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.
• A Place to Bury Strangers.
• Witches want David Bowie's semen.
• You can't stay all day under the covers.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• We're made of blood and rust.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! Love for The Feelies!
• UPDATE! Does anyone remember The Softies?
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• The laws have changed.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• (I'm crazy for you) but not that crazy.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• The prettiest song you'll listen to today.

*

SONG OF AMERICA

Rob Cook

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.

*

So what I posted this before?

This Was Before The Internet Made These Sad and Surreptitious Purchases Unnecessary

Welcome to 2025's premise is the end of American economic and military pre-eminence has long been predicted by America's staunchest and most professional hawks but wasn't supposed to occur for another fifteen years.

I can't stop thinking about the major fuckwit at the deli, not my not confronting him, in imagining what he'd say if I had. Saaay, you're right, I do advocate for a status quo that's brought me fame and fortune and a life style you'd swap with me in a nanosecond, you fucking peasant, I should stop and re-examine my conscience.

The people in charge - not the fuckwits but the fuckwads - know the clock is ticking, and the goal isn't saving America, it's wringing the most out of America before America's worth shit, and they know the deadline's rushing forward exponentially faster than even the fuckwadyish of fuckwads presumed. As for the fuckwits, the fuckwads throw them coin and access and stroke the fuckwits' insecure chinlessness in exchange for beneficial propaganda.

I admit, turning fifty has been more reverberative than all the other big tens combined and multiplied by X. When I turned forty, Planet was six, when I turned thirty, I'd only been married two years, when I turned twenty I was having too much fun, and at none of these milestones did I stop to examine my assumptions that (a) I wasn't going to die and (b) my belief in progress is roobish, a belief that a majority of humans would come to a tacit understanding that cooperation trumps coercion through an increasingly integrated world that made cooperation, rather than coercion, the self-interested choice.

What a fucking roob. Nobody shares more than they have to, and everything's negotiation. Here's truth: black-and-white TV shows, black-and-white movies, black-and-white news footage, KABONG! my pitchfork. The reason I'm sure I'm a weathervane: I came of awareness right when the world toggled from black-and-white to color for their daily spectacle.

I just turned fifty, I can see the future, in black-and-white footage, narrated by Laurence Olivier.

What a fucking roob, polishing my cranky old bastard's apocalyptic prophecies, forgetting again that humans are too resiliently shitty to properly exterminate themselves.

*

• 2025.
• Renouncing Libertarianism, part one.
• Renouncing Libertarianism, part two.
• UPDATE! Subsistence Politics.
• Least Surprising Headline of the Day!
• Unless Obamalame IS goading Fox (and I don't think they are, the fuckwits), this is the best argument that launching a war against Fox is counterproductive.
• OK, Obamalame comes out and says, calling something bullshit isn't banning the bullshit, and I'll never ban bullshit as long as I'm president, how isn't that a win/win?
• Fox is not news: a proof.
• OMFG! No president has ever done this before! Summoning Sean Inanity!
• UPDATE! Second Least Surprising Headline of the Day!
• Heh, it'd been driving me nuts, but I finally figured out who Valerie Jarrett reminds me of: Worf's student.
• David Brooks fearlessly defends the filthiest rich.
• Today's Person I'd Most Like to Brain w/a Shovel.
• The filthiest rich, Russian edition.
• YFWP.
• Police State.
• Atlas Sucked. Great political novels? Aren't all novels political novels?
• Con-Air.
• Look.
• Manhattan Street Corners. (h/t)
• Stop spitting.
• The False Nine.
• There are some new links on the blegrell over in New Toys and Reads. Check them out. Consider this a minor threat regarding the rearrangement of the blegrell to make my browsing easier that can be ignored.
• Needless Difficulty uses Mantel's Wolf Hall to make a broader point, prompted by Roth's comment in an interview in WSJ on writers v entertainers.
• Stoner. Sigh, another reread I may or may not get to.
• Which reminds me of Wolf Solent (which you can read right here), another reread I may or may not get to.
• I was born with a missing Millhauser gene because I know Millhauser is doing interesting stuff that just eludes me.
• Oldest Debate.
• Moby Dick to be rewritten in emoticons.
• New Tom Sleigh poem.
• On Cal Bedient's "Days of Unwilling," my favorite book of poetry this year.
• Disturbance at the heron house?
• Guilty pleasure.
• Listen.
• Guilty pleasure.
• Guilty pleasure.
• GOODNESS! Listen to all these new releases (including new Echo and the Bunnymen?).
• Guilty pleasure.
• Belong.
• Guilty pleasure.
• UPDATE! Already wondering what to buy me for Giftmas?
• Again: the cover. The original.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! Houses in Motion.
• These Are Foolish Things.
• UPDATE! Guilty pleasure.
• Yim Yames beautifully covers George Harrison. It's time for a new MMJ, yes?

*

Clean, Clean, Clean

Linh Dinh

Belonging to the lower class, you’re expected
To cater to the upper class’ lower bodily functions,
Not to engage their minds but to wipe their asses,
Kiss their cunts on demand, suck cocks for tips,
Unless, of course, you’re an artist, in which case,
You’re an aristocrat of the servant class, to quote
That grand maestro among slaves, Jasper Johns.

I used to clean apartments and houses.
Showing up for a new job, I was greeted
By the mistress, “I have the most respect
For new immigrants. You work so hard!”
Down low, you’ll get a disproportionate
Low down on all things funky and nasty,
Nothing unusual, really, just shit and stuff.
I cleaned toilets and fridges, folded panties,
Got on all fours, dipped into the suspicious.
A young woman confided, “I moved to Philly
Because California women were so beautiful.”
She was usually home when I came. The spine
Of her soft porn book turned to the wall. They all
Had some smut in the house. This was before
The Internet made these sad and surreptitious
Purchases unnecessary. I found a teen-aged
Madonna in a closet, so I knelt and sighed.

A fat one lived alone, but once she said, “Sorry,
The house is so messy today. I had company
Last night,” and her face brightened angelically.

*

MMJ

Manassas United

Or Dale City United?

D.C. United has engaged in serious talks with a Virginia jurisdiction about a new stadium, club president  Kevin Payne told the Insider. He declined to identify the city or county but said -- no surprise -- that the  stadium site would be outside the Capital Beltway. "Where are we going to find [affordable and available] land inside the Beltway?" he said.

Fuck that.

LOTS more on this and other stuff coming out of RFK today below the fold (updated 4PM 10/27/09):

To Hope They're Not as Stranded in What They Are as the Blue Flowers in the Yard at the Corner Which Seem to Be Shouting Only One Name

So I was getting a sandwich at Wagshals Saturday, and standing next to me waiting for his sandwich was a major Villager fuckwit, holding a phone to his head with his left hand while scrolling a blackberry with his right.

Apparently I was staring contemptously, imagining what I should say - Are you really a fuckwit or just play one for pay, and could you explain the moral distinction? Do you believe what you say or are you just a fucking monkey reciting your lines, and do you believe they are one and the same? I realize the mortgages on the mansion in Foxhall and the multiple vacation homes need paying, but how do you sleep? - when he turned away from me with annoyance, saying into his cell, I can't decide between the black Mercedes E-Class and the silver Lexus ISF.

I see these fuckwits all the time and never say a word. Despite this bleg's fucking language, I'm civil and polite in society, believe in respecting people's personal space: I daydream (and bleg) my insults.

And what would it serve but to confirm the justness of societal order in the Villagers' fuckwit minds to be challenged to defend their morality by a fucking peasant in a delicatessen? I'm going to change their minds? Long live the revolution.

*

• Clarity of American Strategic Thought, 2009.
• Strategic priorities, via Your Fucking Washington Post.
• The Empty Establishment.
• Next time someone speaks well of David Frum (O! he's such a reasonable conservative), remember this.
• It's only appropriate that on the same day Friedman the Fatuous writes this, Baghdad kabooms.
• Games.
• Frank Rich embraces the spectacle.
• George Will gets a petite chubby.
• Your Fucking Washington Post stands proudly with the insurance companies.
• Twice. (And the second fuckwit w/prOnstache in this post.)
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post's Fuckface Hiatt.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Good news about Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your Fucking British Press.
• Christer Fuckwit. UPDATE! Heh.
• The answer is No.
• The GOP Speaks, and So Does the Unconscious.
• Obamapostasy. He really does believe his own bullshit.
• Obamillard Fillmore.
• Fredneckian Party!
• Untaxed revenue.
• *!hEh!*
• Berbatov is...... The Continental.
• Awesome Leona's awesome Children's Literature course's syllabus was heavy with Norma Fox (as she was known then).
• Denise Levertov.
• Wait until you're 40 to read Moby Dick?
• Sometimes Percival Everett works for me, sometimes he doesn't.
• Should I? This is true: I put the link to that review in this post around 7AM Sunday morning. Later that morning, in the White Flint Borders, waiting for a jewelry store to open to get my watch battery changed, I held the Lethem in my hand, read the first three pages, found them fine enough, and meh. I also held in my hands Best American Poetry of 2009 (chosen by David Wagoner? David Wagoner is still alive?), the latest Mary Jo Bang, and Against the Day and Vineland, and I'm utterly at sea in slump. Jeebus, I'm going to have to read it, even as Beyond Black is wonderful but isn't being remagical.
• What was serendipitous was after getting my watch battery changed I did a quick grocery run to the new Harris Teeter off Nebel, where I ran into Sasha. We both agreed this guy and this guy need call a dinner and feed us. Maybe a night when we can "unleash" the Red. (Hockey fans are lame.)
• All Hardcore Fiends Will Die By...
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.

*

INFIDEL

Carl Dennis

If I chew these sesame seed slowly,
As the book advises, and do my rhythmic breathing,
I may end up the year comparing myself to Buddha,
Thinking of myself as his companion.

No more wasting my energy on my will,
The will afraid if it ever stopped wanting
I'd disappear. Head forward,
Shoulders stopped under its sack of ambitions,
It butts its way through the crowd.
It halts in clearings to count its losses.

Now I can turn to meditation and vision
If I chew theses sesame seeds slowly,
Walking behind myself at a saving distance,
Glancing around at a world not seen before.

Soon I'll be free to play, to leave my projects behind
And wonder what it's like to be a stone,
Or a tree, or the dog asleep by the lawn chair,
Or the woman in the chair, gray-haired and frail,
Knitting a sweater for her daughter's baby.

To be them, and then to leave them.
To hope they're not as stranded in what they are
As the blue flowers in the yard at the corner
Which seem to be shouting only one name,
Blue Flower, Blue Flower.

Just a mouthful of sesame seeds and salt
To neutralize the acidity of the blood
And maybe in a week or two the fretful yin child
Will be a contemplative, joyful yang.

And if I can change, my friends can follow
If they're willing to be more flexible
And don't insist, as they have till now,
On their own vivid, unchastened perspectives.

Strange to love those who resist me,
Who block the sidewalk when I go exploring
And won't give ground, who force me
To step aside with my ears ringing,
My eyes watering, and move on

Under the awnings that flap their colors
As awnings do, under lindens
Shaking their leaves as lindens will
When they want to refresh themselves
In gusts from the mountains, gusts from the sea.

*

In response to my begging for a Queequeg and Starbuck to go die in a whale hunt with me, Ilse wrote "Hrm. Would I be getting paid to read _The Dick?_ Otherwise, why bother? I already know I like penises. (Yes, I'm an English teacher. So?):

Thanks, Frederick! for the (I don't flatter myself it was intentional) serendipity!

Kansas City 2, United 2

Well hell, that aptly - and justly - captured the season's essence.

I'll mull the obituary before (and if) I write it, but here's the gist: United isn't good enough to compete for silver as currently constructed and coached.

Here's Tenorio's player ratings:

Cronin 7, James 7, Jakovic 6, Burch 6; Wallace 6, Gomez 6, Szetela 5, Simms 6, Fred 6; Emilio 5, Pontius 5.5. SUBS: Moreno 6, Olsen 6, Khumalo 5.5

One last Soehn bashing: After doghousing Szetela since Kevin Payne wasted a player allocation on him, Soehn starts Szetela over Benny in the most crucial game of the year, GUARANTEEING at least one substitute. Yes, James headed in the second goal, but he headed it in WHEN HE SHOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ON THE FIELD because he was playing on one leg and Soehn didn't have a substitute in his pocket. The one fracking time this season Soehn NEEDED to bunker and bring in an extra defender HE COULDN'T, and in the most important five minutes of the season United essentially played with only two defenders, which led to Fred's handball on a poor clearance off a corner.

Last we've seen of Gomez, bandaged and limping. He's the symbol, not only of this year but the last two when he was banished for Veron nee Gallardo. I'll always wonder if Chang had been the sole owner, if MacFarlane hadn't been pushing for a big signing as part of his plan for his Poplar Point development ambitions, whether United could have banged out a fair deal with Gomez and got one more useful year out of him.

(I don't think it can be overestimated the damage MacFarlane did to this franchise, from on the field product to toxic relationships between the team and local jurisdictions. Thank Ba'al that greedy fucker is off fucking up his other businesses.)

Last we've seen of Emilio, who I don't accuse of dogging it, just say he's lost a step-and-a-half and all of his turn.

Last we've seen of Fred, who earned both PKs, though only the Kansas City one fairly. He must be the best practice player ever. I wonder what he thinks of Soehn.

Last we may have seen of Namoff, the irreplaceable player, who may have been worth one or two points in the games he missed.

Not the last we've seen of Benny and Jaime, though we have seen the last of their better days as players. One or both of them will be a coach, if not the head coach, next season.

UPDATE!

While I concede that "Fred dived for your sins" is indeed the line of the season, remember, while reading this guy's Season Obituary, that he will be giggling to himself for the rest of his life every time he thinks about that line.

Here's Curmudgeon, here's Fullback. Updates, links, edits, obit, later. Or not.

Their Existence as an Awareness of Losing Their Sense of Existence

I was driving last night and, confession, listening to the Redskin-owned local sports station, and I heard one of the co-hosts, a guy one year older than me who grew up five miles from me who now lives six miles from me and who broadcasts from a building three miles from me, emotionally and forcefully defend himself against a listener's accusations that he wasn't a "true fan" because of his abject and vitriolic and passionate disgust with the shittiness of the object of his faith's adoration.

(Confession: my first team love was the Washington Redskins. I remember Elric's parents driving us around the backroads of MOCO on Sunday afternoons in Elric's father's blue Pontiac convertible listening to Steve Gilmartin and Mel Campbell on WMAL, the only way to get live home games in the mid-to-late 1960s. Sonny Jurgensen and Chris Hanburger. That I'm delighting in the clusterfuck that is Little Danny Helmetball proves devotion can be dammed and redirected but never completely unbaptized.)

For all my bitchandmoan, I'm nowhere near abandoning Uonbiatmead, which doesn't boast an Peterangelostic Snydermonster to help me past my roobity (though Praayhnme is getting there), and my stoopidity as a negotiator - and everything is a negotiation - remains: I still always settle for a handjob called better-than-shittier.

Then bitchandmoaning and the defiant defense of bitchandmoaning, the highest, most privileged reward of the happily disappointed devout. Winning isn't the prize of faith.

*

• Well, of course. The question is, when Obama is murdered, how soon before prominent rightwingers accuse Obama of assassinating himself for political gain.
• Ruth Marcus, fracking moron at Your Fucking Washington Post, is defending herself when she attacks Obamalame for attacking Fox. (She's also dimly aware that if Fox is doing nothing but "opinion," they're encroaching on her turf, so there's that self-interest she too self-denies.) (Digby points out another obvious motive.)
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• UPDATE! Your Fucking Washington Post, as I type this at 1545 Wednesday 10/21/09, has this as the sublede to that linked story: Move signals determination by Democrats to punish insurers for criticism of Obama's agenda. Sen. Reid also plans repeal as part of Senate bill.
• This is not an untrue statement from their perspective.
• When Niall Ferguson says U.S. empire is over, you'd think someone on the Right would notice, but be wrong like me.
• It'll be long and slow, though.
• Squishy Totalitarianism, or, I like to think, an illustration of foreign policy by I-Know-You-Are-But-What-Am-I-ism.
• Capitalism.
• Oy, IOZ saves me yet again responding to the world's smuggest half-wit.
• Fox Pornstache.
• On lesser-evilism.
• As succinct and clear a definition of grey vampires I've read.
• Zombies, again.
• Pope invites Anglican misogynists, homophobes, to join Catholic Church!
• UPDATE! Montag on the last link.
• The Spectacle always wins.
• Blegangst!
• Blegangst!
• BLCKDGRD, translated into Czech. Who is doing this?
• Elric? He found a disc golf course in Toronto.
• Fulham and Red Sox strike marketing deal?
• This is excellent news when you remember that during WC06 Dave "The Shittiest Soccer Announcer Ever" O'Brien was ESPN's lead caller.
• Thyraphobia, part fourteen.
• Thyraphobia, part fifteen, fin.
• Burtonsville! We live ten? miles from Burtonsville as the crow flies, thirteen? maybe by road, different continent, visit-wise.
• ICC fees!
• I didn't know the Trolley Museum was being upgraded.
• Took this picture 6:45 Tuesday night: Earthgirl grew up half a mile from here, we live four miles from here:

• Keith Waldrop page.
• Frederick Seidel on his motorcycles. (sub rqrd).
• A confession: I've never read On the Road (nor feel compelled to).
• Glam for Dollars.
• Am I wrong to love The Raveonettes?
• Confession: still my favorite single of the year.
• Unless it's this.
• New Sufjan Stevens (negatively) reviewed (with sound). I confess, I thought Illinois terrific when it came out, put it on last week, and BLEH! has it aged like spam left on a sidewalk in August.
• Why the fuck is Jack White in my newspaper?
• Why the fuck is Band of Horses on my radio?
• Best XTC cover ever.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

*

POORLY GROUNDED NATIONS

Keith Waldrop

And an inability to comprehend the
flow of time. We need only think of statements
by everybody. I cannot call my-
self myself. Up to this point, the dreamer
is dreaming, but now his dream
begins. Unities of recollection, separate
from one another. Thus is this present
world, there are different injuries.

I never hear them. The come
uninvited. Silver tissue. Garlands
between them. Any activity may produce
music. Aware of their existence as an
awareness of losing their sense of ex-
istence: vague, general, nameless, like
a nothing or the absolute. I am dead. I am
not alive, a music of exceeding shrillness.

May be pleasantly illustrated in the
following way. Light on the head. Felicitous,
contains some fabrication. I am
forced to shout out, trace failure to the stage
when plans are construed. I see a table
before me. I am reminded of another
table. I place table besides table. Separate
worlds. In what sense are we talking?

*

The original:

Toluca 1, United 1

Hey there, play that determined on Saturday in Kansas City, United might make it to first round of MLS playoffs (other game results pending) to lose to Columbus after all .

Here's the obligatory paragraph in which I mention Toluca had nothing to play for, rested many of their regulars, hit crossbars and rocketed shots just over the crossbar, credit Steve Cronin with remarkable saves, and say, Toluca could have - should have - won easily 4-1.

But... United fought. Pontius' wonder goal gave them hope and energy early. We'll never know how United would have reacted had Toluca scored ten minutes in, and I expected Toluca to score ten minutes in.... but, United fought. I'll grasp at that.

And TEN points in CONCACAF is about six points more than I would have guessed United would accrue when the competition started. If United earned 1.66 PPG in MLS, they'd be sitting on 47 going into Kansas City and still have a chance for Supporter's Shield.

And this is what sucks about United's MLS season (and gacking the US Cup Final v Seattle): rather than a meaningful game in October in Mexico next year, rather than a meaningful game against a Mexican team at RFK next October - we're going to get, as our extra season ticket package, meaningless exhibition games v Everton next July.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Cronin 7; Vaughn 5, James 7, McTavish 6, John 7; Fred 5, DiRaimondo 6, Szetela 6.5, Khumalo 5; Pontius 8, Emilio 5. Subs: Wallace 6, Gomez 5, Jakovic 6.

OK, my Boyzz crush is crushed. If he was 18 and a fool who won't defend, he might evolve and develop, but he's 28, and there's a reason he was a Riverhound when he was 26. As a 70th minute sub to run at a tired defense he's useful, but if he was half as good as he thinks he is his antics would still be annoying.

Speaking of evolving and developing, has anyone suggested to Rodney Wallace that well taken shots on the ground against a flailing keeper have a better chance of scoring than punting pointblank shots over the crossbar?

Julius James is useful, more so than Lawson Vaughn or Avery James or Devon McTavish.

Here's Fullback, who's tired of Tommy's 70s prOnstar silk shirts, bitches at Boyzz. Shatz praises McTavish, James, FRED!, bitches at Boyzz. Curmudgeon commends the team's spirit.

UPDATE!

I honestly don't know if this is significant:

Will Chang now controls 100 percent of D.C. United after purchasing the very small remaining share held by a group led by Brian Davis and Christian Laettner , former Duke basketball players who are involved in real estate development these days. The company name (MacFarlane-Chang, LLC) still includes former partner Victor MacFarlane, but that will change at some point.

And Benny does an online chat:

Ben, when you beamed that guy in the head were you surprised by how accurate your shot was? Do you plan on have any surgeries in the off-season?

I was a little surprised. It was the most accurate shot I’ve had all year. No surgery plans as of now.

Is coaching something you see in your future? Do you have any coaching licenses? Do you think it's stupid that a professional soccer player should need a coaching license?

Yes, yes and… yes...

Thanks for being the heart and soul of the team ... we, the fans, love your grit! Even though the '09 season hasn't wrapped up yet, have you given any thoughts to your plans for '10?

I’m looking forward to being on the pitch next year.

would u think united moving to baltimore would add to the fan base or diminish it? thanks lionheart!

I want D.C. United to stay in DC.

Favorite United player ever.