BLCKDGRD

Onalfo Lot of Bullshit

Onalfo snaps at Goff!

Are you getting concerned about the mood and morale of the team?

Onalfo: No. It's not even a concern. We are going through a tough stretch and we have got to find a way to get ourselves through it. You guys in the press are going to make it out to be the absolute worst and it's only going to have to make us be stronger.

Goff talks to Perkins!

Troy, do you think you are putting too much pressure on yourself?

Goalkeeper Troy Perkins: Yeah, my wife is all over me about this too, taking things too personally. But for me, losing is personal. I am the one that takes the blame for everything if a goal is let in, no matter if I have a chance or not, it's still my fault.

Goff talks to Kasper!

Do you think you have the right personnel to turn it around or do you feel like you are going to have to make some moves soon?

We are always looking to get better. We will look to strengthen the side, but at the same time, we believe in the players who are here. We've got to get some injured players back and we have got to get more out of the players that we have.

That's Floribert N'Galula in the photo above, signed to a bit of immodest fanfare this past January; he didn't even last as long as Franco Niell! Goff must not have asked Kasper what the fuck's w/that.

The injured inventory, now that news Jakovic is out for a month with a broken collarbone:

D.C. United's dire injury situation worsened late today as the club announced that central defender Dejan Jakovic will be sidelined four to six weeks with a fractured clavicle. Earlier in the day, forward-midfielder Chris Pontius was ruled out for four to six weeks as well with a hamstring strain.

Meantime, midfielder Clyde Simms and defender Juan Manuel Peña are gradually recovering from hamstring injuries, and defenders Marc Burch (foot) and Bryan Namoff (post-concussion) remain sidelined.

Absolutely the back line would be better with Namoff and Jakovic and the midfield better with Simms instead of Morsink and the attack with a healthy Pontius, but that still doesn't solve the problem that while Gomez and Emilio deserved to be let go, they simultaneously needed replacing. An MVP-form Gomez or Andy Najar? An MVP-form Emilio or Chris Allsopp?

Look, Kasper's not going admit his recent track-record of signings blows, Onalfo's not going to admit morale sucks and he hasn't a fuckwit's clue what to do, but then there's Troy Perkins - I'm not anti-Perkins, I just think they spent too much of their future on a dismal present - taking responsibility.

People are angry about the 0-4 start not because of just this season but because it feels like the spiral from flagship to bottom-dweller to leaving town is accelerating beyond control and the best the brain trust can do is schedule friendlies against celebrities and consider that the season highlight.

Oh, and skirt accountability by whining about hamstrings and picking fights with a beat reporter.

Heh, Fullback reacts to Kasper and Onalfo's comments too.

What To Do with a 102 Degree Fever

Brand new. Stream the album here.

Great song. Fucking cold.

The Ants on the Kitchen Counter Stampede Toward Ecstasy

Here's what I think: the tipping point has tipped.

We're ants, but ants driven by power, not survival.

Yes a bad mood, a bad cold, a bad soccer team bring out the apocalyptic in me, but you don't think that capital's suits know how fucked-up their sandcastles are and are developing schemes to maximize profits in the fucking crumbling of their fucking crumbling sandcastles?

Yes, they would rather incinerate the planet than not buy that fourth Hublot Black Caviar Bang. Yawn.

• The environment, tipped?
• The global economy?
• The modern anti-world.
• They are fucking nuts.
• And yes, many are racists, though tarring them all as racists for political gain is an ugly game and a bit unfair: if HRC had won, the noise would be almost as loud.
• Secede, fuckers.
• "I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower," the former Alaska governor said. "I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful." Which is, at least, honest.
• You say treason, I say sedition.....
• Why hasn't Obama set foot in an American mosque?
• The question is asked, answered.
• Good comment thread.
• Capitalism.
• Capitalism.
• Your Fucking Washington Post.

• An entire NYTBR devoted to novels, not a single one I want to read, and you couldn't pay me to read the new McEwan.
• Explain yourself.
• Not just nostalgia.
• 930. I've been to the new one only a few times. The old one? I don't know if I was at that particular Minor Threat show in 1983, but odds are good.
• Tiny Desk Unit.
• My sweet lord.
• UPDATE! Why the fuck is DeVotchka on my radio?
• Rabbit Heart.
• Love will tear us apart.
• Blind my mind.
• Wrong.

TO DIE FOR

Frederick Seidel

The ants on the kitchen counter stampede toward ecstasy.
The finger chases them down while the herd runs this way and
    that way.
They are alive while they are alive in their little way.
They burst through their little ant outfits, which tear apart rather
    easily.

The little black specks were shipped to Brazil in ships.
The Portugese whipped the little black specks to bits.
The sugar plantations on the horrible tropical coast where the soil
    was rich
Were a most productive ant Auschwitz.

The sugar bowl on the counter is a D-cup, containing one large
    white breast.
The breast in the bowl is covered by excited specks
That as so beyond, and running around, they are wrecks.
They like things that are sweet. That's what they like to eat.

The day outside is blue and good.
God is in the neighborhood.
The nearby ocean puts liquid lure in each trap in the set of six,
Paving the way to the new world with salt and sweet.

They sell them at the hardware store on Main Street.
Inside each trap is a tray that gives them a little to eat
And sends them back.
There is light in Africa, and it is black.

I was looking for something to try for.
I was looking for someone to cry for.
I was looking for something to die for.
There isn't.

What to do with a (still) 101 degree fever:

United 0, Chicago 2

I'd rather have Fred, whatever body became the 7th pick, the cash AND the allocation spot than Troy Perkins, and that's in full acknowledgment that Fred does indeed suck, but not as much as 2010 United. Think on this: put Fred on the field, he'd be United's best player. Kabong.

Kasper Payne could have looked at last year's roster, the downward arc of the team with that core group since 2004, and reasonably said it's time to rebuild. No one disputes Gomez and Emilio (and Moreno) were spent; no one disputes how damaging the (probably permanent) loss of Brian Namoff is; the loyal fans wouldn't begrudge United a restructuring/rebuilding year if it was presented to us as a restructuring/rebuilding year and a strategy was enacted to actually restructure and rebuild.

I'm honestly confounded on where this organization thinks the team is. Did Kasper Payne really think Troy Perkins was the one component separating United from playoff success? I suppose after watching the Crayton and Wicks clown shows one can yield to that temptation, but the problem was never primarily the keepers but the players in front of them. You know what a seventh round pick might have provided? A young central defenseman, a young holding midfielder. Who knows what players will come to MLS in the August window and who could have been nabbed with a high allocation pick.

I apologize to those who want a rant, but my overwhelming emotion isn't rage, it's sadness. The team on the field is short on talent, the coach is a hack (witness the stunted development of Pontius and Wallace), Kasper Payne has reigned - without apparent accountability - over six successive years of downward spiral, and the team's literal future in DC is in doubt. Even with the suck, you still are treating each home game as if there are a finite number, yes?

But at least we have a fucking friendly against AC Fucking Milan. Though after next Wednesday v Dallas in USOC, we won't have any games this year in Germantown.

Here's Shatz, Curmudgeon is speechless, Goff wonders is United is potentially historically bad.

Updates, links, edits, later. Or not.

What to Do With a Breaking Fever

Better, I think. Great freaky dreams last night. Everyone kept yodeling about anarchy!

Hey, I've got a couple of tickets available for tonight's DCU v Chicago game - L & I need to attend the last Capitals' home game of the year. Call the cell if you know the number, send an email by 3:00 to any of the dogmail addresses, I can meet you at the stadium approx 715 (or leave at will call).

What To Do With a 102 Degree Fever

Walloped. Earthgirl had it, Planet had it. My turn.

S'funny, in an email to a dear one re: shittiest mood ever I said bad moods are like bad colds - the worst ever is the one you're currently nursing.

Wanna stream the new Roky Erickson/Okkervil River album? Start w/Goodbye Sweet Dreams.

Another Jealous Dog Would Tumble the Bones Apart, Angry, the Shining Crumble of a Great Body Gleaming in the Air

I got to tell you, this not-giving-a-fuck bullshit, after 48 fucking hours of it, is pissing me off.

I've never developed - I hadn't really tried until day-before-yesterday - the ability to disengage my boner's ratchets.

I feed my crisis-addiction vicariously, hysterically barking about armed lunatic right-wingers, hysterically barking those armed lunatic right-wingers deserve full protection of the law, hysterically barking about a soccer team that would be relegated out of League Two, hysterically barking about Jack Fucking White being on my motherfucking radio all the motherfucking time.

I avoid crises in real life as best I'm able (and haven't been able to recently, the true sand in my gears, though things are better), but I LOVE LOVE LOVE barking hysterically at crises I not only cannot control, my slutty lusts sniff hydrants for the next and next and next crisis!

This is the root of my roobity: I know I'm being sold these crises to keep me an idiot addict and jones to bark hysterically at them anyway.

Yes, I know it's duh, but it's the complicity that keeps me in the fenceless yard.

• Slavery, Marx, history.
• Architectural tour of Warsaw.
• Free market of fear: the short list.
• America's leading intellectual pornstache: As I have said before, friends don’t let friends drive drunk — especially when we’re still in the back seat alongside an infant named Democracy. Jeebus, we are so fucked.
• Jeebusfuck, look who hearts Obama.
• John Yoo for SCOTUS!
• More on fucking cursing.
• UPDATE! Obamapplause.
• UPDATE! Obamapostasy.
• UPDATE! There are no accidents round here.
• Let fucking Mississippi secede.
• Foto Funnies.
• ESPN's enduring failure.
• The disappearance of Ronald McDonald?

• Facebook fans valued at $3.60 each.
• Cilantro sucks.
• We were talking about Waffle House on the drive to Philly. Big-C said at the stadium his gut hurt because he had eaten at a Waffle House that morning.

• MOCO is the 2nd most liberal-friendly county in America! Hat tip KIAV, who lives in number 13.
• MOCO Crackers!
• UPDATE! Do Caps fans veer Republican?
• Ehrlich says no to Palin (because of the the first bullet above, not the second).
• Eastern Shore squirrel-lynching.
• Wheaton!
• Is Virginia's governor a pussy-cracker or a cracker-pussy?
• Ten things to NOT do in DC.
• Planet's teacher's obit.

• UPDATE! In praise of Fredric Jameson. Four different courses over two degrees, this text, or some portion of it, was required reading.
• I mentioned a week or so ago that I've never got Jim Crace, but lots of smart people have, so here, an interview.
• The internet is "toxic to fiction." I'm not making this up.
• UPDATE! How to draw time.
• Fiction in the age of e-books.
• Titus Andronicus.
• UPDATE! Well, this was just put in my head and will be for the rest of the day. Your head too.
• Fader makes me wish I was twenty, single, and dancing.
• UPDATE! Ear Candy.
• Damaged.
• What's it in for?
• UPDATE! Wanna hear the new LCD Soundsystem?
• Time's the Revelator.
• Today's Listening Assignment.

ON THE SKELETON OF A HOUND

James Wright

Nightfall, that saw the morning-glories float
Tendril and string against the crumbling wall,
Nurses him now, his skeleton for grief,
His locks for comfort curled among the leaf.
Shuttles of moonlight weave his shadow tall,
Milkweed and dew flow upward to his throat.
Now catbird feathers plume the apple mound,
And starlings drowse to winter up the ground.
thickened away from speech by fear, I move 
Around the body. Over his forepaws, steep
Declivities darken down the moonlight now,
And the long throat that bayed a year ago
Declines from summer. Flies would love to leap
Between his eyes and hum away the space
Between the ears, the hollow where a hare
Could hide; another jealous dog would tumble
The bones apart, angry, the shining crumble
Of a great body gleaming in the air;
Quivering pigeons foul his broken face.
I can imagine men who search the earth
For handy resurrections, overturn
The body of a beetle in its grave;
Whispering men digging for gods might delve
A pocket for these bones, then slowly burn
Twigs in the leaves, pray for another birth.
But I will turn my face away from this
Ruin of summer, collapse of fur and bone.
For once a white hare huddled up the grass,
The sparrows flocked away to see the race.
I stood on darkness, clinging to a stone,
I saw the two leaping alive on ice,
On earth, on leaf, humus and withered vine:
The rabbit splendid in a shroud of shade,
The dog carved on the sunlight, on the air,
Fierce and magnificent his rippled hair,
The cockleburs shaking around his head.
Then, suddenly, the hare leaped beyond pain
Out of the open meadow, and the hound
Followed the voiceless dancer to the moon,
To dark, to death, to other meadows where
Singing young women dance around a fire,
Where love reveres the living.

				I alone
Scatter this hulk about the dampened ground;
And while the moon rises beyond me, throw
The ribs and spine out of their perfect shape.
For a last charm to the dead, I lift the skull
And toss it over the maples like a ball.
Strewn to the woods, now may that spirit sleep
That flamed over the ground a year ago.
I know the mole will heave a shinbone over,
The earthworm snuggle for a nap on paws,
The honest bees build honey in the head;
The earth knows how to handle the great dead
Who lived the body out, and broke its laws,
Knocked down a fence, tore up a field of clover.

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

Did You Know Washington DC Has A Professional Soccer Team?

Saturday's home game v Chicago is indisputably the most important game ever since the last and until the next, Amen.

How's the health of the team?

Starting center backs Dejan Jakovic (red card) and Juan Manuel Peña (hamstring injury) are unavailable, leaving Carey Talley, Julius James and Devon McTavish to join left back Rodney Wallace. Though each has filled central and outside roles in their careers, the most likely combination is Talley and James in the middle and McTavish on the right corner.

Sheesh. Actually, the next paragraph has good news:

Santino Quaranta's move to the right wing from the middle in the second half Saturday will probably carry over and Jaime Moreno, who didn't start in Philadelphia, seems set to pair with Danny Allsopp on the frontline. With Brandon Barklage uncertain because of a minor concussion, a midfield slot opens for Chris Pontius, who has been ineffective at forward. So who plays in the middle? Kurt Morsink in support of Andy Najar is an option.

I'm skeptical, but I applaud the recognition of the problem and the adjustments to try and fix it; I'm glad Kasper Payne and Fire Curt Onalfo understand the urgency of the moment.

Did you see Houston's new stadium is a done deal?

I'm told the Capitals have a home playoff game at the same time Saturday as 0-3 United's home game. Hundreds will be @ RFK!

Landru and Ilse reek of bandwagon are lucky enough to have tickets for the Caps,

so I've calls out to the inner circle, but I may have one, maybe two tickets available. Use the dog addresses and say yo.

O! To reiterate: I don't think Chang is trying to sabotage the product, though I do think he's ordered fiscal caution and is perfectly justified to do so. I say again: he is under no moral obligation to lose money forever on a soccer team in Washington DC.

But if he is trying to sabotage the product, he's got his men in Kasper Payne and Fire Curt Onalfo.

Meanwhile, a theory about the steaming pile of pooh at DC United. Hint: it's Goff's fault?

By Insisting on Love We Spoil It

I was in the longest, broadest, widest, deepest, most comprehensively dire black mood I've experienced, building since 1959, and then I went to work Monday morning.

At 5:45 PM April 12, 2010 in the staff lounge of Gauinger Library, Leorgetown, I come upon this:

In one of Scouffas's classes [at the University of Illinois in 1950], Stanley met a writer who hadn't changed his mind about becoming a journalist. Robert Novak, a syndicated columnist and one of two member of the class of 1952 to be later awarded an honorary doctorate by the university (the other was Elkin), recalls something special about his classmate during their first creative writing seminar. Because Scouffas encouraged workshop practices, there was intense interaction among the students, and Novak found Elkin's writing challenging, often brilliant. As they critiqued each other's original compositions and those of their classmates, it became clear that this was an "interesting fellow' and during the next few months "we became friendly."

    - Shouting Down the Silence: A Biography of Stanley Elkin, p 24.

Stanley Elkin - my favorite novelist - and Robert Novak - a pioneer TV pig, a kingpig among pigs - college buddies.

My apologies to the two of you who took the brunt of this. I think I've caught my balance, snapped back my perspective.

O! Dougherty in the intro says Elkin was considered liberal voted Democratic in as little as he gave a shit. Hmmm....

O! Yes, the entire biography is as poorly written as the excerpted paragraph above. I mean, thanks for the bio, but you couldn't afford an editor?

• Cult of Killing.
• One solution to no more Gitmos.
• On Capitalist Realism. You know, analyzing the problem is fine, suggesting solutions is fine, expecting them to work? Not so much.
• The fabulous life of ravenous vultures.
• Looting Main Street.
• Timed recovery?
• Capitalism as intelligent design.
• Oops!
• Your Fucking Washington Post.
• All you need to know about the world in which you live and why you're nobody: Kathleen Parker wins a Pulitzer.
• More here.
• An errant critique of Pastor Sanctimonious. Here's the correct critique: He should be brained with a shovel.
• UPDATE! What the fuck is this fucking shit?
• Yawn.
• Problems and non-problems.
• Ironically, most ironies aren't ironic.
• Making jesters into kings.
• Good for?
• Survival of the oppressive fittest.
• A successful grifter, but a grifter nonetheless.

• Ehrlich targets.... MOCO?
• MOCO blegger panel? 
• Why not shut down M St on weekends?
• Fucking police.
• I can vouch for the Flying Dog.
• Frostburg State!
• Not as bad as JMU.

• On bones and libraries.
• Turning pages. Digital wins. To pretend this is a distinction worth a difference is to disavow analog beliefs. Now, sales? That's another issue.
• Jack Gilbert, part three.
• What publishers want.
• UPDATE! New Broken Social Scene!
  
• Why the fuck is Jack White on my radio?
• UPDATE! New Broken Social Scene!
• Obscure Sound's Best of March.
• O! Heard three cuts off new LCD Soundsystem, coming in May, and I will be (in the privacy of my living room) dancing.
• Tallest Man on Earth.
• Moka's Best of 2000s. (Does not include any Jack White.)

UPDATE! I am reminded!

Today's Listening Assignment.
    Today's Listening Assignment.
        Today's Listening Assignment.
            Today's Listening Assignment.
                Today's Listening Assignment.
                    Today's Listening Assignment.
                        Today's Listening Assignment.
                            Today's Listening Assignment.
                                Today's Listening Assignment.
                                    Today's Listening Assignment.
                                         Today's Listening Assignment.
                                             Today's Listening Assignment.
                                                  Today's Listening Assignment.

TEAR IT DOWN

Jack Gilbert

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of raccoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

Phunion 3, United 2

Long, fun day, of which the most important, though not most pleasant, point to note is that United's midfield, at least the one the started and played what had to be the worst first half of football that I can ever remember United playing, is a disgrace. (That's the view from where we were banished; more about that after the jump - including the story of Tino and Chesapeake House).

Kurt Morsink, Brandon Barklage, Franco Niell, Christian Castillo, and an out-of-position Tino Quaranta is fucking unacceptable. It is impossible to grade the strikers as they get no service. It's impossible to grade the defense as it gets no support. It's even a bit unfair to judge Fire Curt Onalfo because the midfield Kasper Payne has given him sucks sucks sucks unto suck. Sucks.

That's the last kind word from me for Fire Curt Onalfo. Here's what worries me about Onalfo: he was hired because Kasper Payne, I assume on directions of Chang, decided, whether for financial reasons and/or because there was no talent to spend the money on, to change United's strategy and identity from fast and clever and elegant to slow and dull and ugly, and who better to implement that new plan than Fire Curt Onalfo?

Brandon Barklage. Really? Kurt Morsink. Really? I know bringing Salvadorans back to RFK is a solid business decision, but Christian Castillo? All three would be struggling for minutes in USL-2. Take your best, most dynamic player, Tino Quaranta, and play him out of position, neutralizing his natural instincts and talents? That's a plan?

That first half was disgraceful. The one advantage to an upper-endzone seat was the opportunity to see just how disorganized, disjointed, and dispirited United was. Bad passes out of the back, defenders chasing balls in hordes like 4th graders at recess, utter lack of imagination, total inability to build through the midfield.

Of course the second was better: Moreno at ten is better than any other option, but Moreno can't ten for ninety minutes a game for seven months worth of games. And I assume embarrassment brought out a better effort. And though Terry Fucking Vaughn was his terryfuckingvaughniest, Terry Fucking Vaughn, the shittiest, most assholish referee in the fucking world, Terry Fucking Vaughn isn't the reason United lost.

United lost because it sucks.

Here's Shatz, who sees more in Morsink than I do. Here's Curmudgeon, who plunges the Apocalypse Button (and who in his previous post posts one of my favorite covers of one of my favorite songs).

UPDATE! What's this? And Fullback speaks.

Below the fold: The Trip.