BLCKDGRD

IASAFR, or: Autoblogography, or: Theme Song July 2009

I'm a good third through and absorbed by Infinite Jest, I'm gleefully rereading Jack Spicer's collected (!!!), I've completed a first draft of a story that makes me giggle, and a new scheme of poetry has been remarkably liberating, I'm remembering Tony Hecht tell me over and over that Formal is liberating, it forces associations free verse would never discover. My poems are making me giggle. I haven't read or written as well as I have the past three weeks in at least five years.

I got an email today from Amazon that my preordered copy of Vollmann's Imperial has shipped, and next Tuesday Pynchon's Inherent Vice drops (and think about the similarity in look and sound between Inherent Vice and Infinite Jest, yo), plus I've ordered Norman Dubie's and Howard Nemerov's collected (I can't find the Nemerov I know I own), so when I picked up Infinite Jest today instead of thinking about Infinite Jest I was thinking about Vollmann and Pynchon, when I picked up Spicer I was thinking about Dubie and Nemerov.

This new poetry format, depending on the number of beats per number of voices, the lines are too long for my moleskin notebook, I was writing something last night in my car at RFK, I started choosing words for their scrunchiness rather than their worth. This morning I retrieved my still shrink-sealed Boorum & Peace 10" x 8" quad ruled tablet, am currently anguishing on whether I can stop 3/4s into a moleskin or must finish the moleskin before moving to a larger tablet, and what the fuck kind of tablet rules are going to apply there?

Meaning my celebration of the best reading and writing I've done in years is the sabotaging of the best reading and writing I've done in years. It won't surprise you this isn't the first time this has happened.

UPDATE!

Profile of Vollmann and Imperial in NYT.

*

• UPDATE: Our goddamn overlords.
  
• Political unrest in Kensington.
• Political resistance in Bethesda.
• UPDATE! Rucking Fobin Ricker.
• This is true: I drove by this house two hours earlier.
• The re-wiring of history (via the always incredibly generous wood-s-lot).
• This is true: I found this (via the always incredibly generous Silliman) after I ordered the Nemerov, after I wrote the above.
• Read this. Credit Dan for fighting either/or-ism.
• Infinite shipwreck.
• UPDATE! Booker long list. Obviously I choose Hilary Mantel (and at the link there's an excerpt) not only because hers is the only novel listed that I read but mostly because she is the second best novelist now writing in English you haven't read. And I find myself thinking more about Wolf Hall than I thought I would when I finished it, and this is true: looking at the new book shelves at work three hours ago, a new biography on Cardinal Wolsey. Threes.
• UPDATE! The serendipity continues: in latest London Review of Books, Mantel reviews a new biography of Danton, one of the three protagonists of her terrific novel A Place of Greater Safety.
• Ozick, Roth, hobbyhorses, novels.
• UPDATE! Jim and his editors.
• Gurldoggie. 
• UPDATE! Another Inherent Vice review.
• Moka's latest is Delicate.
• First time I've seen The Mekons referenced in ages.
  
• Depeche Mode? *!hEh!*
• The Misfits. (h/t)
• More Monkees.
• Noah and the Whale.
• Seb's new song. Will. Make. You. Smile.

*

SEESAWS

Samuel Hazo

The bigger the tomb, the smaller the man.
The weaker the case, the thicker the brief.
The deeper the pain, the older the wound.
The graver the loss, the drier the tears.

The truer the shot, the slower the aim.
The quicker the kiss, the sweeter the taste.
The viler the crime, the vaguer the guilt.
The louder the price, the cheaper the ring.

The higher the climb, the sheerer the slide.
The steeper the odds, the shrewder the bet.
The rarer the chance, the brasher the risk.
The colder the snow, the greener the spring.

The braver the bull, the wiser the cape.
The shorter the joke, the surer the laugh.
The sadder the tale, the dearer the joy.
The longer the life, the briefer the years.

*

THEME SONG JULY 2009

United 1, Firpo 1

If United starts a full strength squad v Madrid, quintuple-fuck them.

Gah!

As much as Soehn would have liked to play his best players for 90 minutes, there were prevailing factors. The club had played a league match Saturday night at San Jose, flown cross-country Sunday, and with an MLS game at Western Conference leader Houston approaching this weekend, he decided to blend regulars and reserves.

The lineup was a surprise to Firpo Coach Agustin Castillo, who said through an interpreter, "We were prepared for a totally different team."

Added defender Manuel Salazar: "When we saw the lineup and saw there were players that we hadn't prepared for, it was motivating for us to go out and play a good game."

Firpo clearly hadn't scouted United and known what a pussified group of gah United's become.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Kocic 5; Jakovic 5, Janicki 3, John 5; McTavish 5, Jacobson 4.5, DiRaimondo 5, Szetela 5, Wallace 5.5; Moreno 6, N'Silu 4. Subs: Emilio 5, Gomez 4, Pontius 6.

That's John Avery according to the PA announcer, though he shouldn't have been on the field either.

Goff says Quaranta was redded from last year and couldn't play, not that Soehn would have played him had he been eligible.

I'm thoroughly pissed off, but I am a fucking rube.

Which doesn't mean this season isn't going to end badly.

Here's Curmudgeon, Shatz, Fullback.

Here, three photos from last night:

Lot 4 twenty minutes before kickoff:

The lower bowel of RFK ten minutes before kickoff:

The seats in front of me just before kickoff:

It's not just United who took the game indifferently.

This franchise is in trouble.

My Most Awesomely Pathetic Attempt at Reverse Ba'al-Taunting Since My Last Most Awesomely Pathetic Attempt and Until My Next, or: The Sedative Present

I'm sensing a collapse. Give me a recent decent United August and September. I can't stop thinking about the San Jose game, the signs. I sense an implosion, ugly, with recriminations.

Next year, yes or no, bang, don't stop and think, is he on the opening day 2010 roster: Jaime Moreno? Luciano Emilio? Fred? Christian Gomez? Ely Allen?

This team as currently constructed has a window of three months, even with the return of Quaranta. I see Emilio sulking b/c Gomez takes the PK, I see Jaime moving slower than my mother-in-law who's lost both her big toes, I see Fred worse than useless, I see an exhausted defense, I see the two rooks cooked for trying to cover ground for the old farts, I see United knocked out by Firpo, losing USOC to Seattle, missing the playoffs.

O! and then there's this about tonight (where I'll be wearing my white

We Are United 2005 season-ticket holder shirt for reverse ju-ju):

Santino Quaranta is just returning to the club after a month of U.S. national team duty at the Gold Cup. Quaranta seems unlikely to play against Firpo.

Why, all that time on the bench for USMNT C Squad tucker Tino out?

Rookie goalkeeper Milos Kocic, who started in last Tuesday's U.S. Open Cup semifinal, might get the nod over starter Josh Wicks. Defenders Avery John and Greg Janicki, and midfielders Devon McTavish, John DiRaimondo and Danny Szetela are among the other prime candidates to fill in.

That's smart, in the home game of a home/away knock out where AWAY GOALS COUNT, play the defensive scrubs. Maybe Soehn's smarter, but why even consider starting Janicki and/or John?

In selecting his lineup Tuesday, United Coach Tom Soehn will have to determine which regulars have recovered physically, which ones need rest before Saturday's match at Houston and which reserves could have an impact.

Cause United is sooooo gonna win in Houston, yo.

*

I'm told my colors are confusing. I thought I was simplifying the code.

The code works for me, but I sat with a friend who said, it's like you're trying to force people to not only force people to interpret your code, you want them to admit your code is a vastly more sophisticated organizational system than anyone elses. Duh-sn't everyone?

I'll see what I can do. Or not.

*

• There will be ketchup.
  
• IOZ dismantles today's David Brooks' column.
• Typepad is PISSING ME OFF!
• Kids, Grief, Fostering, Naturalness is as good a portal for an interesting discussion as any.
• On dying blegs.
• Dog photos.
• Electric Literature sent me an email. Look at the link.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

*

THE STATE

Jennifer Moxley

However much we wish it so, everything does not change in a moment. The sedative present, tugging, sucking, and many-voiced, timelessly freights the mind. There will be no marking of days. Under your right arm, a memory crutch, under your left, the future, a failure kicked out upon waking. But as punishment you can still dream. A nursing infant, the birds you have killed, a hill so steep your ascent of it leaves your lover struggling beneath you. Each night in houses you can never go back to you leave your promise behind.

*

Woke up with this in my head:

IASAFR

Every week I make a point to go back and read what was on this shetty bleg a year ago. This time last year I was sloppily obamagastic: that sillyass -06% less shitty bullshit of course, but mostly my roobcrush on Obamawesome the Gameplayer.

I suppose I still do, roobcrush the gamer. He defused that Gates flap deftly, calmly, turned the haters' stoopid back on the haters and satisfied the media's gahgah and mwah. Obama's ability to charm in a pigstorm makes the Villagers hot; guess who'll underwrite more pigstorms for ever more gahgah. Obama's gonna landslide in 2012; pint bets are still being taken.

He'll be a W before 911 Republican by then. Here's where I was a rube: I never expected Obama to always tact towards the pigstorm to find the quieting median. I understand he thinks pigstorms distract from - are pig-induced b/c they are a distraction - but I thought he had the political chops to go beyond defusing pigstorms, I thought he had the chops to turn pigstorms back into pigs' faces. I apologize.

You know, it's OK for a President of any hue to say DWB is still a problem for America's darker hues because, like, it is. Should the Elmers of Nebraska band together and declare their indignation that white men in uniform can no longer arrest darker hued citizens in their own homes without cause, Obama's assuring the Elmers Obama's got the white cops' back, that's a signal this rube didn't see coming.

This part I did see coming, though IASAFR, I didn't think it'd be this soon:

*

• One thing Skipgate provides is a prime chance to compare the Right's tizzy that white police are called racist whenever they arrest a black man and the Left's tizzy that Dick Cheney argued early, often, no doubt as an asshole, that the Constitution gave Bush the right to invade Buffalo.
• Here's the sub-lede of this story as of 1130 AM EDT Sunday 7/26/09 on front page of NYT: Christine A. Varney, and some senior lawmakers, are preparing to rein in several major industries but are finding resistance from Obama administration officials.
• Tom Friedman's sub-lede for his Sunday 7/26 column is, without irony, To the extent that the radical Islamists have any energy today, it comes not from the power of their ideas or examples of good governance, but by stoking sectarian feuds.
• For the hottest allies, 800-GET-NATO.
• Part One.
• Part Two.
• UPDATE: On the two above links.
• k-punk goes to Disneyland, finds Michael Jackson.
• UPDATE! In a long article on The News About the Internet in the latest NYRB this shetty bleg is not reviewed.
• Pig reviews movie without seeing it!
• You've probably seen this, but if not....
• UPDATE! *!hEh!*
• Something to consider.
• UPDATE! Read this. (H/T!)
• *!hEh!*, can't give you a link cause this bleg doesn't rell that whey, but 7/25, scroll down, this will make Elric happy: DCRTV hears a rumbling that Tony Kornheiser will return to the local radio airwaves on September 8 via Redskins owner Dan Snyder's WTEM, ESPN 980. More soon.....
• Sorry Elric: same place, 7/27: DCRTV first told you Saturday. Now, we're hearing more rumblings that veteran sports media personality Tony Kornheiser (right) will return to the local radio airwaves on September 8 via Redskins owner Dan Snyder's WTEM, ESPN 980.
  
• UPDATE! Elric misses a chance to go to Fucking.

• The Mean Streets of Bethesda.
• Aarghful!
• Another reason to live in Maryland.
• Another reason to hate fucking Chevy Chase.
• My future hell.
• Cicadas and Hummingbirds.
• Lizard Startles Code Enforcement Officer!
• UPDATE! Fascinating. No, seriously.
• A Taxonomy of Book Bloggers.
• Nicholson Baker on Kindle and the Future of Reading.
• First review I've seen of the new Pynchon: "self-consciously laid-back and funky."
• UPDATE! Here's another: Before the story's end, Pynchon will confront character and reader alike with disintegration, disinheritance, dislocation, dismay; property, security, conservation and conservatism; loss, abandonment, marginalisation, being forgotten or overlooked; the futility of resistance; the pleasures and dangers of popular culture; free will, belief systems, religion and ideology, paranoia and faith; order and chaos, meaning and insignificance.
• Gang of Four remembered.
  
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

Updates probably, but no promises.

*

THE BUTCHER'S SON

Thom Gunn

Mr. Pierce the butcher
Got news his son was missing
About a month before
The closing of the war.
A bald man, tall and careful,
He stood in his shop and found
No bottom to his sadness,
No where for it to stop.
When an aunt came through the door,
Delivering the milk,
He spoke, with his quiet air
Of a considerate teacher,
But words weren't up to it;
He turned back to the meat.

The message was in error.
Later that humid summer,
At a local high-school fete,
I saw, returned, the son
Still in his uniform.
Mr. Pierce was not there
But was as if implied
In the son who looked like him,
Except he had red hair.
For I recall him well,
Encircled by his friends,
Beaming a life charged now
Doubly because restored,
And recall also
Within his hearty smile
His lip's contained his father's,
Like a light within the light
That he turned everywhere.

*

Woke up with this in my head:

San Jose 2, United 2

Soehn is screaming about lack of concentration and I ditto but add, even if concentrating, a team playing Moreno and Gomez and Emilio and Baal Bless Benny and His Two Broken Wheels and Goddamn Fred simultaneously has five defensive liabilities on the field, it's fucking 11 on 6.

"We should have put them away," United Coach Tom Soehn said. "We came out [after intermission] and probably played one of the worst halves I've seen - mental errors, tons of it. We just didn't have it, and that's not a sign of a team that wants to become better."

Or a sign of a not particularly good coach. A good coach would bench Emilio's lazy and petulant and selfish ass once and for all, a good coach would keep Goddamn Fred on the bench until and only until down a goal late against an exhausted defense. Either they can't play defense (Goddamn Fred) or they won't play defense (Goddamn Fred sometimes, Emilio always), and if one is in the game, much less both, that's on the coach. Better McTavish and N'Silu.

"We should have put them away," Soehn says. What Soehn doesn't say is, once we didn't put them away, we quit. He doesn't say, once we didn't put them away, we settled for long balls out of the back to nowhere as offensive strategy, we quit.

Jeebusfuck, I'm tired of Tom Soehn. It's too late to fire him this season, but he's pulled into my office Monday and told performances like this are unacceptable and United better do something exceptional this year if he wants to be back next.

Let's see if Goff has seen the light on Goddamn Fred:

Wicks 5; Namoff 4, Jakovic 5, Burch 4; Fred 3, Jacobson 4, Olsen 4, Gomez 6, Wallace 3; Pontius 4, Emilio 4. Subs: Moreno 4, Szetela 5, McTavish 5.

Thank you.

I for one fully confess I have underappreciated Clyde Simms and all he does to keep together a midfield of defensive sieves. And lordy, are United going to miss Khumalo (who's 28? I thought he was younger) and his relentless engine.

And faint though honest praise to the backline, even Burch who I malign so much. San Jose only had two b/c Namoff and Jakovic and Burch played well, so bad is United's midfield defense. Yes, Burch was beat on the first goal, but the back three had five running at them all night, so shitty the midfield defense.

Gah! This one pisses me off, I bet it pisses off United too, but so what? 29 points out of 19 games, I don't care they've only lost three, they've only won six. The only thing giving hope is the rest of the league sucks too.

Here's D's First Impression. Here's Shatz (who appraises Emilio and Goddamn Fred much higher than me). Here's Fullback.

Updates, edits, links, later. Or not.

Feral Cats Reduce House Values

I was IMing w/dead blegger Jay Dirty 101 Arra Old Paleo Bastard, I typed, This one has legs, this outrageous and racist assault on white police officers by the President of Kenya might be the totemic trope pigs have hornied, they've thrown everything against the wall nothing has stuck and stunk until this, it's a matter of time before they find black men to denounce the Kenyan imposteur, it's a matter of time before Jeremiah Wright's goddamning America again in endless loops, this is all they're gonna talk about from now until armaged....

AWOO!

MEWL!

Sounders FC did well by its fans despite its unsuccessful bid to host the U.S. Open Cup championship game, general manager Adrian Hanauer said Wednesday.

Hanauer implied there could be a problem with the secret bidding process in which U.S. Soccer awarded the Sept. 2 game to D.C. United and RFK Stadium.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was frustrated and somewhat skeptical of the process,” Hanauer said. “I don’t think D.C. has played a game in the Open Cup on the road in two years. They had a road through all lower-division teams to get to the Open Cup Final. I’m not in the know … enough to be able to raise any real issues, but I’m frustrated and I wish U.S. Soccer would explain why one bid wins over another.”

BITCHSLAP!

I was surprised and disappointed and offended. Adrian uses the word 'skepticism' to describe the process, which seems to be implying that it wasn't on the up-and-up. Which is really an outrageous implication. He is implying that we somehow are receiving favorable treatment. We bid aggressively at every level this year and last year. We did so because we didn't want to travel if we could possibly avoid it, given the demands of our schedule [Champions League]. Seattle doesn't have those same demands because this is their first year. Adrian has no knowledge of what we bid or didn't bid; my guess is that we bid more aggressively than they did.

*!hEh!* A Seattle Face-Mullet responds!

Really? Seriously? The club NO ONE in Maryland seems to want is getting all huffy? Has Payne been reduced to smoking the blue prints to all the failed stadium plans? Is the varnish of those four MLS Cups creating fumes in Sir Payne's plush office? Did some Eagle mascot get out of the wrong side of the nest this morning? How in the hell can an expansion team (with a 35-year history...take that 14-year-old DC) be any threat at all to the league's all-time championship leaders? Yet, there is Payne responding like an offended, shocked child when he's held up to scrutiny. "Who DARES to question UNITED?"

Dagger, a photoshop of Payne!

Hey, Face-Mullet, who the fuck you talking to? My shoes cost more than your house:



Call me back after your tenth piece of silverware, Face-Mullet.

Lordy, having a new team to loathe is one of Ba'al's greatest blessings. Please, Face-Mullet, keep mewling.

UPDATE! Just in my mailbox:

Dear D.C. United Planholder,

On September 2, D.C. United is set to host Seattle Sounders FC in the 2009 U.S. Open Cup Final.  Your 'Special Game D' ticket will allow access to this very important match.  We are excited to host the game and hope that you'll plan well in advance to be in attendance.  Winning championship matches are what this club is all about and this game is an ideal chance to be a part of United's tradition of excellence.

In the coming weeks, you'll receive a limited edition D.C. United t-shirt in honor of the team's trip to the final.  This is a 'thank you' to our most fervent and loyal supporters.  Enjoy, wear it often and encourage others to join you at the match.

Tickets to the U.S. Open Cup final are on sale as of today.  With a tip of the cap to our first U.S. Open Cup championship side, United will sell individual tickets to the September 2 title match at 1996 prices.  As planholders, you may purchase additional seats through your account representative in preferred areas at any time.  General public may purchase tickets at www.dcunited.com or at any TicketMaster outlet.

Here's to joining, in unison, behind the Black-and-Red as the team fights for a 13th major title. 

That'd be 13th major title, Face-Mullet.

O! Fuck Me Jig, on the 7:25 AM 7/24/09 WTOP 103.5 Business Report, guy says DC United and the District have quietly begun again negotiations over a split cost soccer stadium at Poplar Point.

*

• Look, this doesn't invalidate the morality of anyone who'd vote for the guy, it justifies it just by his failing it and the consequences. Plus he's of The Body - the most sinful conservative is still better than the holiest liberal.
• The most trusted newsman in America.
• True.
• Healthcare: Refresher Course.
• Aesthetics of Civil Enforcement.
• Denise Brennan, anti-feminist.
• Great black/white photos of soccer in Baltimore.
• Lit links.
• DFW as militant grammarian.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's 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.

*

Well, this is on the radio as I type this, so Yes, again, one of my five favorite songs ever:

Swans Have Been Feasting on the Tainted Snails. The Swans are Sick

Jeebusfuck, their unalienable rights to punish sluts for sluttishly fucking pigs endangered, pigs power up the ATVs and yadda, I've been singing this song longer than this shetty bleg but no less loud than singing my roobity, which exists to feed my pig hate.

I'm watching Obama's presser on health care, and know what? My knowledge of what's in any bill is zippo. I know I'll hate the Democrats for what they settle for knowing who they bargained against and love hating who they bargained against .06% more than I hate Democrats. I'm watching Obama's presser on health care: he feels like an 82 win regular season team winning the World Series.

Mofos, roobity is not accepting human's incremental movement from Total Assholes to Pretty Much Total Asshole is glacial, roobity is belief Pretty Much Total Asshole is remarkable achievement.

I could find leftwing echoes to above rightwing We the Peopling, which is to say midsummer meh is a Lyme Disease of will, aching, enervating, bulls-eyed. You disc golf you get ticks is as predictive as you root you get roobies, the symptoms an increase in my already aching meh and a psychic rash I can't help scratching.

*

• Elric's in Vienna, says he's got some Wien kit.*
• Serial War.
• Shoot to thrill, way to kill.
• Those who resist the end of racial profiling.
• UPDATE! Via a comment from Montag, Frog.
• What the media will focus on.
• UPDATE! Another take.
• UPDATE! While I've given up on Obama ever not siding w/entrenched interests, entrenched interests' requirement that Obama be a good Tom reminds me what Obama would face if he did truly challenge entrenched interests.
• UPDATE!

 

• UPDATE! Jim proves The Birther's theories true!
• UPDATE! *!hEh!*
• Yes.
• Here's Jess, our dumb and pathetically needy cat, who makes me feel fail I don't love her more:

• Look at these.
• Jacques Tati, who a favorite mentor always praises.
• Seidel reviewed yet again.
• Gabriel remembered.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! If this is in my head, be in yours.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• UPDATE! My head, your head.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Good and generous MP3s.

Updates later. Or not.

*

JEREMIAD

Norman Dubie

After a night of opium and alcohol, Edgar Poe
Walks out of a laundry into the harsh sunlight
Of an affluent Baltimore. From behind, as I see him,
He is not
Of experience, and he is without sin -
He waddles in the archetype of Charlie Chaplin
And crosses the street to the park
Where yesterday evening yellow swathes of poison
We dropped on the wind
To kill an unprecedented population
Of ground snails.

Now, Poe is reaching the great lawn of the park
Where swans have been feasting
On the tainted snails. The swans are sick.
Poe, drugged as he is,
Shatters with this vision of vomiting swans. He turns,

And running at him
In a line fifty yards long
Is a pack of stray dogs from everywhere
In Baltimore. They will eat the swans.

Edgar Allan Poe, who stood between them,
Made a judgment -

The hounds of hell were coming for him;
He climbed the statue of a stylish general
On a rearing horse.
He clung to the marble thigh of the stallion.
He watched, in horror, the field below him.
The torn swans were long sylabbles
Over the ground.
By the time he was able to climb down,
A crowd had formed. He told them, wide-eyed,

He told them what he saw - truth and beauty
Fornicating on the public lawn. Everyone frowned

As they sometimes will in Baltimore.

*

*UPDATE!

My scenic route from Hilltop to Soccerplex this past Tuesday:

Foxhall to Canal to Clara Barton to Cabin John to River to Partnership to White's Ferry Rd to West Willard to West Offutt to Edwards Ferry Road to River to Elmer School to White's Ferry Rd to Martinsburg to Dickerson Rd (Rt 28) to Park Mill to Bear Branch to Mt Ephraim to Comus to Sugarloaf Mountain (where I stopped for half an hour to sit on the stone bench at the lower circle where I wrote much of the first draft of my masters thesis, and would have a photo for you if the drunken lout hadn't knocked the camera out of my hand later that evening)

SUB-UPDATE! I fixed my camera: figuring WTF, I slammed the jammed telescopic lens against my desk, and Viola! where I wrote most of the first draft of my masters thesis (and have spent many magical days for over thirty years)

to Comus to Mt Ephraim to Harris to Barnesville to Clopper (Rt 117) to Germantown (Rt 118) to Germantown Park Rd to Soccerplex. Easy.

BONUS YAY! THE CAMERA WORKS UPDATE!

Just before halftime:

*

Hamster emailed and asked if I wanted to go to Neko Case next Tuesday in Bawlmer, but next Tuesday is FIRPODAY!

So no, but damn.

United 2, Rochester 1

Well damn, I finally remember my camera, take no photos with my cell, am taking one last shot of the field from near the Beer Garden, and a drunken lout slams into me, sends the camera flying, and it's fucked. Photos are on chip, and I'll put it in Earthgirl's camera and upload some here later. Or not.

And credit - Soccerplex and Park Police got it right last night. Soccerplex moved Barra a section or two to the left, put Rochester's clubs to the far right, and Park Police maintained a low and unthreatening profile. Thank you.

UPDATE: I'm corrected -

Park Police still waded into the Barra to demand that we stop swearing, and when asked about the First Amendment, he sort of shrugged and told me I was welcome to leave.

This after he crept up behind me, tapped me on the shoulder, and ordered me to make the Barra stop singing Wings of an Eagle. Um, eat shit maybe?

Now that I think about it, I wasn't standing directly behind Barra because they had been moved to the left - I was in the back row of 114 on the midfield line, which would explain how I missed the (say it derisively) Park Police's wading into Barra.

Now, the tackle:

"I don't feel as though we were beaten by D.C. We were beaten by an official," he (Rochester coach Darren Tilley) said. "And certainly when players break ankles like [Kenton] did and there's no yellow cards or [ejections], it really hurts. . . . An absolutely disgraceful challenge, even more disgraceful that nothing was done about it. There was intent to win the ball, granted, but he creamed him."

Uh, no, there was nothing Stoichkovian about the tackle, it was clean, the guy landed badly. Which takes nothing away from how truly awful Abby Okulaja is as a ref, so awful he almost makes Terry Vaughn look competent. Almost.

Now, Boyzz:

Thabiso Khumalo converted a rebound in the 82nd minute before leaving the match in the final moments after a ball kicked by Rochester goalkeeper Tim Melia shattered his right wrist.... when Melia rushed out to disrupt a threat, the ball struck Khumalo's wrist. He was transported to an area hospital for X-rays and further prognosis.

Hopefully he'll be able to wear a gros on his arm, because Boyzz buried it this time, and he's the hardest working player on the field, he demands the ball, he runs to right spots, he defends excellently, he needs to be on the field.

UPDATE! This sucks:

Thabiso "Boyzzz" Khumalo, whose right wrist was fractured by a kicked ball in the final moments of D.C. United's 2-1 U.S. Open Cup victory over Rochester, will have surgery Thursday and be sidelined two to six weeks, the club announced.

His injury is described as a "fractured distal radius and dislocated radial-ulna joint."

Best-case scenario: He will require a cast only up to his elbow.
Worst-case scenario: The cast extends to his biceps.

Dammit. I believe this kid can - I want this kid to - succeed.

Here's Goff's player ratings:

Kocic 7, Namoff 7, Janicki 6, John 6; McTavish 7, Jacobson 6, Wallace 5.5, Khumalo 6, Fred 5.5; Moreno 6.5, N'Silu 5. Subs: Pontius 5, DiRaimondo 5, Gomez 5.

I really don't enjoy post-game Fred bashing, but he was given another chance to 10 and meh, people mistake flashy for good. What's amazing to me is in watching these three Germantown games, division 1, 2, and 3 defenders are far less impressed with Fred than some MLS defenders - they watch him do his samba over the ball, then take it from him. And when Fred does 10, his passes lack commitment, or if commitment's the wrong word, they lack confidence and pace. He's not a distributor, he's the guy balls are distributed to, and he's not very good at that either.

Both Wallace and Pontius look like they've hit rookie walls, though it was Pontius running onto Namoff's long ball that produced the shot that produced the rebound that Khumalo calmly buried.

Jacobson did much better with this audition, showed a willingness to shoot from outside the box, did a good job defensively jamming Rochester's attack. If Simms is out for weeks, regardless of the Szetela acquisition, with the upcoming fixture cluster, good minutes from Jacobson are necessary.

And another good showing for McTavish, neither Janicki or John will be on next year's roster, and Namoff, as always, is the irreplaceable man.

Now, what's with the attendance, less than 7K for the three games? I know Soccerplex is a bitch to get to unless you're a born Moco and know the back roads, but where else can you get such intense intimacy at a soccer game? For the life of me, why would anyone spend $100 bucks to sit in Fed Ex field to watch an exhibition game rather than spend $60 for THREE competitive games where you're literally thirty feet from inbounds? It boggles my mind.

And thanks United for taking this seriously - CONCACAF tournament or shittyass midsummer exhibition game v Everton? Any route to international competition is a route worth taking. United gets it. I've said before we are lucky to root for a team with huge ambition: we're lucky.

callers who even more unconsciously blemish-scanned or nostril-explored looked up to find horrified expressions on the video-faces at the other end.

"Get your urine here!" Pemulis and Trevor Axford become quarterly urine vendors; they wear those papery oval caps ballpark-vendors wear; they spend three months collecting and stashing the urine of sub-ten-year-old players, warm pale innocent childish urine that's produced in needy little streams and the only G/M scan it couldn't pass would be like an Ovaltine scan or something; then every third month Pemulis and Axford work the agnate unsupervised line that snakes across the blue lobby shag, selling little Visine bottles of urine out of an antique vendor's tub for ballpark wieners, snagged for a song from a Fenway Park wienerman fallen on hard off-season times, a big old box of dull dimpled tin with a strap in Sox colors that goes around the back of the neck and keeps the vendor's hands freed to make change. 

IJ, p.152.

Rereading Infinite Jest (but not doing this* ), I remember so much but forgot even more. Amazingly, stunningly prescient. I'd air-write it.

It's renewing my faith in the fun of the absurd. I've been taking the serious way too seriously and the nonsensical far too gravely.

*

• *Which is me, not it; sincere thanks for the push.
  
• Puppycide.
• White pigs are pussies. Old pussies.
• Duh. (UPDATE! This guy noticed too.)
• Narcissistic Bloggers.
• Chris Hedges tilts at Windmill Jackson.

PRE-POST UPDATE!

Sartre writing about Flaubert:

Yet one cannot say that Flaubert did not have, at the very height of his activity, a comprehension of the most obscure origins of his own history. He once wrote a remarkable sentence: ‘You are doubtless like myself, you all have the same terrifying and tedious depths’—les mêmes profondeurs terribles et ennuyeuses. What could be a better formula for the whole world of psychoanalysis, in which one makes terrifying discoveries, yet which always tediously come to the same thing? His awareness of these depths was not an intellectual one. He later wrote that he often had fulgurating intuitions, akin to a dazzling bolt of lightning in which one simultaneously sees nothing and sees everything. Each time they went out, he tried to retrace the paths revealed to him by this blinding light, stumbling and falling in the subsequent darkness.

From here via (h/t).

• I didn't know fulguration is a procedure to destroy tissue using an electric current.
  
• My future hell.
• Ron Paul Singles!
• The conspiratorialist in me says beyond Fuck Virginia! on principle, this isn't about saving money, this is about raising money through (a) speeding tickets or public urination tickets ("Urine Trouble? Urine Luck," IJ, ibid) to people needing to piss (b) increased tax revenues from gas stations and restaurants that will be the piss stops and consequently will sell more taxable product.
• New Premiership kits. Mwhahahaha!

• Albert Goldbarth collects spaceships. (h/t)
• Fall's novels include new Atwood, Baker, Trevor, Doctorow.
• Rereading Rabbit (h/t - other good links there).
• 100 Great American Novels You (Probably) Haven't Read does not include Donald Harington, who is the best American novelist you probably haven't read.
• Brookner reconsidered.
• Death of music journalism?
• fIREHOSE.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Give to Moka.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Reminder: The Decemberists suck unto suck.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Acid on the Radio.
• Today's Listening Assignment.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

*

OF POLITICS, & ART

Norman Dubie

Here, on the farthest point of the penisula
the winter storm
off the Atlantic shook the schoolhouse.
Mrs Whitimore, dying
of tuberculosis, said it would be after dark
before the snowplow and bus would reach us.
She read to us from Melville.

How in an almost calamitous moment
of sea hunting
some men in an open boat suddenly found themselves
at the still and protected center
of a great herd of whales
where all the females floated on their sides
while their young nursed there. The cold frightened whalers
just stared into what they allowed
was the ecstatic lapidary pond of a nursing cow's
one visible eyeball.
And they were at peace with themselves.

Today I listened to a woman say
that Melville might
be taught in the next decade. Another woman asked,
"And why not?"
The first responded, "Because there are
no women in his one novel."

And Mrs Whitimore was not reading from the Psalms.
Coughing into her handkerchief. Snow above the windows.
There was a blue light on her face, breasts, and arms.
Sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
peacefully in one young woman, in a small heated room
with thirty children
rapt, confident and listening to the pure
God-rendering voice of a storm.

*

But far beneath this wondrous world upon the surface, another and still stranger world met out eyes as we gazed over the side. For, suspended in those watery vaults, floated the forms of the nursing mothers of the whales, and those that by their enormous girth seemed shortly to become mothers. The lake, as I have hinted, was to a considerable depth exceedingly transparent; and as human infants while suckling will calmly and fixedly gaze away from the breast, as if leading two different lives at a time; and while yet drawing mortal nourishment, be still spiritually feasting upon some unearthly reminiscence; even so did the young of these whales seem looking up towards us, but not at us, as if we were a but a bit of Gulf-weed in their new-born sight. Floating on their sides, the mothers also seemed quietly eyeing us. One of these little infants, that from certain queer tokens seemed hardly a day old, might have measured some fourteen feet in length, and some six feet in girth. He was a little frisky; though as yet his body seemed scarce yet removed from that irksome position it had so lately occupied in the maternal reticule; where, tail to head, and all ready for the final spring, the unborn whale lies bent like a Tartar's bow. The delicate side-fins, and the palms of his flukes, still freshly retained the plaited crumpled appearance of a baby's ears newly arrived from foreign parts.

The Grand Armada, Moby Dick

*

Seventy-One

My first and still greatest crush, still my favorite show ever.