BLCKDGRD

Ickymeh

We're home. We went back to Wesleyan and for our troubles got a Junior Assistant Dean telling us nothing we hadn't heard and didn't know before. I'm not a Wesleyan fan, and it isn't my decision whether Planet applies or not, but it pissed me off that during what must be one of the busiest tour weeks of the year when many high schools are on Spring Break, a college that considers itself Tip Top of the Tier wouldn't schedule a senior Admissions Officer to try and cinch the deal.

Of the college trips we've done so far, this was the least satisfying in terms on the colleges. The rain certainly didn't help, but both Wesleyan and Conn College were disappointing. I'm not sure how much of that disappointment is with the schools themselves versus how much what was once a vague unease with the schools we're visiting is growing into a smoldering distaste and is threatening to burst into outright disdain for these glorified boarding schools and weigh stations for America's future elites.

At Conn, while waiting for the tour to begin in the waiting room of the Admissions office, I overheard one father say to another that he hoped his daughter would have the sense to fall in love with "a boy whose family doesn't need financial aid," and the other responded, "mine has been told to marry a rich kid or don't get married at all," and both laughed the complicit chuckle of a truthful joke. At Wesleyan, waiting for the information session to begin, I heard one secretary say to another, "why is Kim doing the session," and the other said, "it doesn't matter who does it, these kids will apply one way or the other." True, that.

We're visiting Haverford and Swarthmore this coming Monday and Tuesday. Meh and ick, ick and meh.

Meanwhile, I knew United postings and reports from college visits would drive regular readers away, but never guessed just how thoroughly. Awesome. Regular programming will resume tomorrow. Or not.

There's a Leash Law for Dogs, but What About Goats?

I came prepared to hate Connecticut College: this was a have-to visit. My mother-in-law graduated from Connecticut College sixty years ago and has maintained a strong alum association with the school, and it was not unreasonable for her to want Planet to visit the school while it would have been unreasonable for us to refuse. Plus there's that camel thing.

That's a poncho they had ready for visitors (there were at least 100 of us) who weren't ready for the downpours, and despite all my preconceptions and doubts plus an hour-plus moving in and out of buildings and through a steady cold downpour, if I didn't love the place, I didn't hate it. I liked it better than Planet and Earthgirl.

The minuses: students seem happily, even strangely campus-bound. The campus is a mile up the hill north of New London, and both the tour guide and the admissions officer talked of the self-contained community of the campus - the social scene is on the campus, with multiple student orgs and clubs offering multiple options on every night. There was also NO mention of community service, and a whiter campus I haven't seen. Plus there's the price tag: $51K a year.

The pluses: Free music lessons all four years by tenured professors (Planet's a pianist). Guaranteed single dorm sophomore through senior year. Also, during the summer between junior and senior years each student is guaranteed a paid internship (through Connecticut Colleges network of powerful alums and contributors) paying a minimum of $3K in a student's particular interest as a possible seed for employment upon graduation. If the only internship in a student's field is non-paying, Connecticut pays the student the $3K. All three might help explain the exorbitant tuition.

We're in Worcester as I type this and what a freaking hole. We drove and found Clark and, while the campus itself is charming, it's in the middle of a freaking hole. We have the time tomorrow to either visit Clark or go back to Wesleyan (which made a far better impression on Planet and Earthgirl than me) and get the full info session from a dean (this past Sunday we only got the tour, not the spiel).

It's entirely Planet's call, though when asked my opinion by Planet, I suggested going back to Wesleyan. I said, if you're genuinely excited and interested in Wesleyan we need to ask questions only an admissions dean can answer, plus since when, I asked her, did you want to go to school in a city, and if you want to go to school in a city, do you really want that city - which could be New York or Boston or Chicago - to be Worcester Massachusetts?

• An open letter to his fellow Liberals. I'm going to write about his when I get home unless I don't, but I've been canarying about America's ATVed army of crackers since long before this shetty bleg made We Are the Enemy a category on Day One, but even I can't help wonder why the FBI made these arrests this week. Because it was deemed bad politically to do it while HCR was being fought? Because it's deemed good politics now HCR was won?
• American crazy.
• Defining extremism down.
• American jeremiad.
• Inside the salt pit.
• Obama's not your friend.
• Suddenly a political mastermind?
• Singing Frumbaya.
• Norpod still a chancre of ineffectual evil.
• A moveable sandwich.
• No one saw this coming.
• Montag killed the Carnival of Liberals! But I helped!
• Maryland, fuck yeah.
• Dimitar Berbatov is.... The Continental.
• A bad start for DCU gets worse.

 

IT HAPPENS LIKE THIS

Jame Tate

    I was outside St. Cecelia's Rectory
smoking a cigarette when a goat appeared beside me.
It was mostly black and white, with a little reddish
brown here and there. When I started to walk away,
it followed. I was amused and delighted, but wondered
what the laws were on this kind of thing. There's
a leash law for dogs, but what about goats? People
smiled at me and admired the goat. "It's not my goat,"
I explained. "It's the town's goat. I'm just taking
my turn caring for it." "I didn't know we had a goat,"
one of them said. "I wonder when my turn is." "Soon,"
I said. "Be patient. Your time is coming." The goat
stayed by my side. It stopped when I stopped. It looked
up at me and I stared into its eyes. I felt he knew
everything essential about me. We walked on. A police-
man on his beat looked us over. "That's a mighty
fine goat you got there," he said, stopping to admire.
"It's the town's goat," I said. "His family goes back
three-hundred years with us," I said, "from the beginning."
The officer leaned forward to touch him, then stopped
and looked up at me. "Mind if I pat him?" he asked.
"Touching this goat will change your life," I said.
"It's your decision." He thought real hard for a minute,
and then stood up and said, "What's his name?" "He's
called the Prince of Peace," I said. "God! This town
is like a fairy tale. Everywhere you turn there's mystery
and wonder. And I'm just a child playing cops and robbers
forever. Please forgive me if I cry." "We forgive you,
Officer," I said. "And we understand why you, more than
anybody, should never touch the Prince." The goat and
I walked on. It was getting dark and we were beginning
to wonder where we would spend the night.

Woke up with this in my head, be in yours:

Wesleyan

That's the great Wesleyan student tradition:

Four, five times a year, when they know student tour guides will be showing prospective students through the library, the undergrads take over the reading room and strip down to their underwear. We were there at noon on a Sunday after a heavy kegger Saturday: the library was empty.

Of the ten or so schools we've visited I've been least impressed by Wesleyan, and since I always leave the latest one thinking it the best one until I've a few days distance, I can safely say if I was eighteen and this was my decision, Wesleyan would already be out of sight and mind.

Two cool academic programs though:

First, the College of Social Studies is a concentration of history, political theory, philosophy, and economics, is a variation of a great book curriculum which I would be interested in but Planet? Not so much. The tour guide also said a majority of CSS students end up applying to law school, and ick.

Second, in many departments, including psychology, which is, as I type this, what she wants to study, students can apply at the beginning of the second semester of the junior year, for an accelerated masters AND GET THE FIFTH YEAR FOR FREE, two degrees for the price of one. Um. Ding!

But the campus is boring, Middletown looks skeevy, the dorms look like ratty by-the-hour motels circa 1975, the tour guides were polo-pop-ups with hair super-gelled, and the admission administrators couldn't be bothered to show up for a info session. Not a bad vibe, an absence of vibe.

Planet liked it. It's her call. She can apply where she wants to apply, though I'm guessing this will sink out of competition within a month.

Oh, want to live dangerously? Try driving 70 in a 55 on the Merritt Parkway when everyone else is doing 85.

Today in torrential rain, Connecticut College, then drive to Worcester in torrential rain to see Clark tomorrow, in torrential rain.

Have some linkages:

• An unaccustomed truth.
• Lying Liberals and their Loathsome Lies!
• Party of Cruelty.
• Happiest days of crackers' lives.
• Land of Make-Believe.
• Frank Rich embraces the emerging meme that crackers are raging against the inevitable demographics of 2040. Hop on the Duh Bus, Frank.
• Purple Line!
• My future hell.
• The 500 Worse Passwords.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Old God's Almost Dead.

AFTER THE RAIN

Anthony Hecht

The barbed-wire fences rust

As their cedar uprights blacken   

After a night of rain.

Some early, innocent lust

Gets me outdoors to smell

The teasle, the pelted bracken,   

The cold, mossed-over well,   

Rank with its iron chain,

And takes me off for a stroll.   

Wetness has taken over.

From drain and creeper twine

It’s runnelled and trenched and edged

A pebbled serpentine   

Secretly, as though pledged   

To attain a difficult goal

And join some important river.

The air is a smear of ashes   

With a cool taste of coins.   

Stiff among misty washes,

The trees are as black as wicks,   

Silent, detached and old.   

A pallor undermines

Some damp and swollen sticks.   

The woods are rich with mould.

How even and pure this light!   

All things stand on their own,   

Equal and shadowless,

In a world gone pale and neuter,   

Yet riddled with fresh delight.   

The heart of every stone

Conceals a toad, and the grass   

Shines with a douse of pewter.

Somewhere a branch rustles   

With the life of squirrels or birds,   

Some life that is quick and right.   

This queer, delicious bareness,   

This plain, uniform light,   

In which both elms and thistles,   

Grass, boulders, even words,   

Speak for a Spartan fairness,

Might, as I think it over,   

Speak in a form of signs,   

If only one could know

All of its hidden tricks,

Saying that I must go

With a cool taste of coins

To join some important river,   

Some damp and swollen Styx.

Yet what puzzles me the most   

Is my unwavering taste

For these dim, weathery ghosts,   

And how, from the very first,   

An early, innocent lust

Delighted in such wastes,

Sought with a reckless thirst   

A light so pure and just.

Kansas City 4, United 0

Please tell me what the offensive plan is and why ignoring the wings while running triangles towards your own goal is an innovative strategy.

Both Perkins and Moreno say the kick-in-the-teeth is a good thing, but what the fuck do you expect them to say? Yes, now that United's been humbled, they'll start stringing passes together and hold possession, build through the midfield then out to the wings, defend calmly and coherently, and, most crucially, hustle for 50/50 balls, because now United understands these things are important?

Yes, rainy and cold, road team in opener, crappy minor league field with tiny dimensions and plastic grass, all a perfect storm for a predictable loss - you didn't expect United to win, did you? - but there was nothing in United's performance that suggested that the rain and cold and tiny plastic grass field played a significant role in the debacle, it was Kansas City having significantly better players. Defense, midfield, strikers: Kansas City won all three.

Shatz says: Awful. Disgraceful. Reprehensible. BAD!

Fullback says: My liver weeps for what this year may do to it.

We'll see. I'm willing to wait until at least 9:35pm this coming Saturday night before damning my liver to yellow, but here's my concern: you cannot run an offense through Quaranta; he doesn't have the correct skill set. I am more than pleased to have Tino on a wing, taking the set peaces, free-lancing, but he hasn't the touch and vision needed for a ten, and United doesn't have - at least as evidenced by last night - enough skill players around Tino to create a dynamic offense sans a ten.

Updates later, though later means this evening. Today we visit Wesleyan University, then drive to New London so we can visit Connecticut College tomorrow (they call themselves the Camels, so I think they should be disqualified right now), and we'll probably drive down to Mystic for dinner. On the way to New London, I'm going to try to find the spot where Kim Keese demanded the bus-driver stop so the GHS band could all run into the woods to piss in 1976.

BTW, Goff says he's not doing player-ratings this year, which is of course his right, though he says YFWP is going to implement an online voting system so fans can vote, and boo. Nothing could quite pop a comment from Mr Sydhab faster than Goff's postgame player-ratings.

He was on that bus, Mr Sydhab.

Perkins Simms Talley Jakovic Wallace Najar Morsink Quaranta Castillo Moreno Pontius

Save to compare and contrast with starting roster Game 30.

Shitting on Command, Bred and Bred into More and More of It

Maybe we will get to see if the country turns more moderate and progressive if America's crackers are properly goaded.

These are the happiest days of their gunfucking lives, have I mentioned this lately? Just goad these dumbfuckers screaming about tyranny into violence, say to one, "You know? You can't spell tyranny without tranny." Sure, some innocents will die during The Cracker Insurrection, but I've waited a lifetime for a fucking Cracker Insurrection to reduce the rump right to political insignificance, stigmatized, petrified, dying like a western Pennsylvania coal town.

You know what's as predictable as me reacting to crackerstani violence with glee? Recovering pwoggles (many of them blegfriends) reacting to me reacting to crackerstani violence.

Liberals with guns are scarier than Tea Partiers, I'm told. Sure, know what's shittier?

Max Fucking Boot.

Look, I know when Obama goads crackers his target audience is folk like me, which is just one of multiple flaws in the .06% Theory, though verily, what .06% sacrifice of my complicit comfort will I make for the greater good of the world's suppressed? At least .06% more than fucking crackers.

Jeebusfuck, think how politics works at your job, with your friendships, your marriage, your relationships with your kids, how you negotiate truces with your own shitty self, and call me if your rationalization for any selflessness isn't based on selfishness and your insistence on less-shittiness, even a kibble, isn't evoked out of self-interest.

This isn't an obamapology: while I appreciate him goading the crackers for no more noble a reason than goaded crackers entertain me - I'm not afraid of them, I like laughing at them - I harbor no illusions Obama will use the space that would open if cracker violence escalates dramatically to move the country hard left (and I'm not arguing anyone should stop bitching at him from the left), but he might move it .06% further left, and call me if you'd reject .06% better in your job, your friendships, your marriage, your relationships with your kids, or a .06% better night's sleep with yourself.

UPDATE! A follow-up post by Charles Davis to his post linked above the photo of Max Boot.

• UPDATE! Part of what I was trying to say above said both better and more politely.
• Billmon.
• Pragmatics v Progressives re: HRC.
• Mr Freedom Lover.
• Pussy.
• Fucking pigs fire fucking pig for not being fucking pig enough.
• On the above.
• UPDATE! Oofdah! As a personal aside, here's what pisses me off: there used to be a great hippie commune in Burkittsville, it was called Deva, and it was your one-stop-shop for hippie clothing, hippie food, hippie bliss. Charles Fucking Murray, who I'm sure has written books full of paragraphs as dishonest as the last in that blog post, I didn't know he lived in Burkittsville. Fucker.
• Montag has a bumpersticker for you:

• Debunking subprime's hagiographer.
• Pfew!
• Institutional mandate.
• Yup.
• I love you, Blumpkin.
• Post obit on Stites. He had a good life.

• Lost Man Book shortlist. I haven't read the J.G. Farrell on the list, but his Siege of Krishnapur is worth your time.
• Armantrout.
• New JCO story.
• Plot.
• PBS.
• UPDATE! That Cerphe Colwell is still rated the 3rd best Washington radio personality, even if he was still on local air, is damning on infinite levels.
• It is slow in Blegsylvania this week, perhaps some combination of Spring Breaks and dwindling damn.
• UPDATE! I promise the above was an observation about the net as a whole, not an accusation at my friends (except for Mr Tbydhab), but HEH! linky goodness!

 

METAMORPHOSIS

Lynn Emanual

As for myself—wherever there was a street going indifferently about
    her business,
I was the dog.
At first I wept.
I became its beatings, shitting on command, bred and bred into more
    and more of it.
I crouched behind its bark, still as a stone ax.
I lunged at a greasy picnic on the table of some lawn.
I was dog's belonging, dog told me. We were nothing in and of
    ourselves—
       one fiction abusing another.
I woke up in the cave of its crate, in the kennel of its name, the
    hinges of our jaws
       locked tight by the muzzle.
My nose became an organ of thoughtfulness, my ears were shells
       in which the seas of the voices of the world thrashed and
Night fell, day rose, the old died, the young went on.
One night I lay down and in the morning I was dog and my actions
    were fetched
       by orders: fetch, lie down, lie down here.
Shaggy mat of thought, intellect swarming on a leash of woofs,
    I howled
       at the door of my own mind wanting out of that empty house.
The tide of abstract thought receded. I grew hushed and flat,
    marooned inside
       the odd blessings of appetite.
The voices of the masters perched above us said, you are just a
    gregarious
       piece of furniture.
The war came and went beyond the bars of my life. I was dog.
Then I embraced it.
Then I was undone and replaced by it.

Woke up with this in my head. Be in yours.

I Want To Hang Around Inside Your Greyhound Terminal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why is Ben Olsen at the top of this post?

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

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

That's why.

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

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

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

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

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

IF WE WERE HONEST

Albert Goldbarth

When I tell you that cultural ritual is an artifice

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

I’m thinking of sex. I mean it.

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

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

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

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

I’m thinking of death. Its worm is always

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

a catch in my throat. It was always a wen

releasing a small electrical jolt to the brain

of Napoleon, Alexander, Attila. It was funereally

in the black, black ink of the Brontes;

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

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

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

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

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

that half of the time is actually spent. And did

ten seconds pass just now? If so, then

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

the Dolphin first made port in Tahiti, it was discovered

the crew were trading its nails

for dalliances with the pliant and welcoming

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

was in danger of being pulled apart.”

Inside the cradling waves of moonlight

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

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

how did they know, how could they foresee, that

my mother would die from her own lungs

shaping hundreds of obstinate fists in her chest,

my father would die with his own blood turning

into a useless negative of itself?

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

they were trying to deny it with the drive of such

combustive, zealous engines! This is my topic

tonight, and how the craft of poetry and the role

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

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

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

sex and death—the one thing.

Another one  of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

Jessful Blegworthiness!

That's Jess, would-be Fleabus nemesis if Fleabus gave more than an annoyed fuck. Jess climbs in your lap to cuddle, then starts snurfling your arm - snurfle snurfle snurfle - then starts drooling on you until you shoo her off. She's sweet, stupid.

When blegweariness sets in, I strive to drive readers away, and the short-term and long-term prospects are excellent! This Saturday marks the dual start of intense blegging of NO INTEREST! to ninety-five percent of you! *!wOOt!*

Short-term, we're renting a car and driving - driving? - to Ningland so Planet can visit Wesleyan and Connecticut College and Clark University in Worchester MA, and be assured, I'll be taking photos of all the respective clock towers as well as insulting Connecticunts and Massholes! I've a bunch of regular readers in those two states, so tune in while I piss you off!

(Don't worry midwestern readers: we'll be doing Carleton and Grinnell and Earlham and Oberlin this summer!)

Long-term? United's season starts this coming Saturday. You're lucky to a point: because United achieved  Kevin Payne's goal of suckitude last season, United won't be playing as many games this season, avoiding the hideous fate of fixture-cluster that awaits teams that stupidly win something. Don't sigh in relief - that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop obsessing over left-footed defenders and the lack of a genuine ten.

By the way, no one has yet thanked me for my sillyass Ba'al-taunting, solely responsible for MLS players and ownership reaching a deal and avoiding a strike. You're welcome.

And just because:

MOODMON DAYYAD NOMDOOM