BLCKDGRD

Reminder

Judging by all the people who out-clicked on yesterday's Fleabus photo, it's time I again remind everyone that all Fleabus photos are by Planet, whose testimonials by those who know her are true. Click, yo.

Some Untidy Spot Where the Dogs Go on with Their Doggy Life

I hear both the NBA and NFL are in negotiations with their players' unions over their next Collective Bargaining Agreements. Both leagues expect shutdowns; ownership, especially in the NBA, seems eager to shut down for a season to break the union like the NHL broke theirs.

Must be a coincidence, in it a country whose elite whip up racial tensions like morning Mamosas to defuse class anger, whose elite decided a hot fucking July in an off-year election is an excellent time to nigger-bait, that the same corporations which broadcast the NBA and NFL (and Fox and NBC and CBS and ABC and ETC) convened their talking heads to hand-wring that three (African-American) professional basketball players (within their contractual rights) "colluded" to play together against the noble spirit of NBA competition, now to pontificate on the evil of (African-American) unproven NFL draftees accepting tribute before they've earned it.

In case the racism doesn't work re: us, there's also capital's implied threat to labor: Go ahead, strike. We dare you.

• Polanyi on the consequences.
• Infrastructuralism.
• On not wanting.
• Remembering.
• More Jensen.
• Paradise swamped.
• Sometime in the past month I too said they've stopped trying to pretend. They dare you.
• UPDATE! Glenn, bubula, nobody cares except you and me.
• Counterfactuals.
• UPDATE! Barney Frank dares Obama. We know how this will end.
• Qualifications.
• To the surprise of no one:

• Glenmont! Driving to Soccerplex Wednesday night on Great Seneca, the shopping centers in Germantown at Wisteria and the one at Richter Farm look glenmontable!
• Fillmore Silver Spring!
• Sadness.
• Gah. Bromark went to Good Council.
• Metro!
• No mention of a new United stadium here.
• Heh.

• Blogging is dead; long live the blog.
• Blegangst.
• Good morning, Boxer. I went looking for a youtube of Eddy sliding face-first down the steps at her birthday party in Ab-Fab, but nope.

• Libraries are the next cupcakes?
• My favorite Second Story was on Greenmount in Waverly, my second the house on Old Georgetown which is now a gigantic condo next to the Hyatt. Oh, the girl I dated while she worked at the Bethesda store says Stypeck is a cheat and an asshole.
• Here's a truth about me and Next Generation - I cannot watch season one because it sucks, I cannot watch season two because it sucks AND has Barbara  Diana Muldaur.
• Yes, I am rereading Auden, and so should you.
• Midnight tempo.
• Kimberly.
• I confess I'd forgot about Kyuss.
• Friends of P.
• Heaven's on fire.
• You do read Auden (and all poetry) out loud, yes?

MUSEE DES BEAUX ARTS

W.H. Auden

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
    walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the
    torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Well, since I've been going through everything the past week:

United 2, Harrisburg 0

Brankotime! Now, this was Harrisburg he was dissecting, a team aware that it couldn't compete with United and played Holland to United's Spain, but Bošković showed more vision and ability in midfield, for this one game against a sucky USL-2 team, then I'd seen since the one or two games Marcelo Gallardo was interested in back in April of 2008. There did seem to be some connection between Bošković and Allsopp once Allsopp knew not to break off his runs (and he didn't look offside to me on that beautiful thru-ball) and Bošković and Tino Two-Touch. The backline was rarely challenged and looked thin and awful. Boyzz: you know, there's a reason teams let him have so much space. And O! thank Ba'al the Kurt Fucking Morsink era is in its last couple of months.

Bet they beat the Corpse of Pompey this Saturday night (I feel no moral obligation to attend shitty friendlies; I claim no superior fandom should I go - it will be a game day decision). After the road games the following two Saturdays in Salt Lake and New England, we might know better if 2010 might be the bottom of the bad.

Smallest crowd I've ever seen for a United USOC in Bermangoyds. Quietest too. I remember one DC United clap clap clapclapclap, with 30 seconds to go in second half stoppage. No United player walked over to thank us. I was out of Soccerplex within five minutes, home by ten. WTF?

To MNCPPC's credit, they dampened the police presence. Whether they knew it would be a small crowd (via advance ticket sales) and/or learned from last year's over-the-top deployment of armed officers, they got it right last night. To their discredit, there was one booth, with a line of a hundred customers, that served water on a 95 degree day.

Still, United in Bermangoyds, as always, the best soccer experience of each year, and last night the only one this season. United's next USOC game, September 1 v Yellow, will be Special Ticket E of your season ticket package at RFK.

UPDATE!

Highlights! Allsopp was offside; not by much, but by enough. And see if you can see me and Landru and Ilse at 2:15!

When He Laughed, Respectable Senators Burst with Laughter, and When He Cried the Little Children Died in the Streets

Heh, I've asked numerous times over the years of bleg if anyone could recommend a program that would allow me to post my calligraphic scratchings. Consider yourself warned.

I love you, I won't do it to you, though I'd do almost anything to get the taste of America's sherrodgasm out of my mouth.

• Nobody cares.
• The lies that bind.
• Fuck Your Goddamned Optics.
• I can't believe it's not butter.
• On power.
• It works.
• NSA building off 32 and nympho-librarians. One exists.
• I'm on a world serpent.
• UPDATE! No. Sillyass question.
• Steny Fucking Hoyer, Asshole-Maryland.
• Metro!
• Surprisingly, BLCKDGRD did not make WTOP's list.
• Selfish idiots.
• Witz?
• As if by chance.
• The meaning of existence.

EPITAPH ON A TYRANT

W.H. Auden

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Aoodom5fse:

Like the People Who Came Back from Provence (When It Was Provence) and Said It Was Pretty but the Food Was Greasy

Bleg eons ago I was invited to group-blog at Best of the Blogs (which is down as I type this for server maintenance, its Kind owner Jerry, who I still occasionally e-yap with, just told me). I left either a year and a half or two and a half years ago - I didn't want to bleg there what I bleg here and I didn't want to bleg two ways. To be thoroughly fair to Jerry, he never told me I couldn't bleg there like I bleg here, but I was moving away from the readership and thought it time for me to leave.

Serendipitously, two reminders in a week of my time there:

First, yesterday's huge story on Top Secret America in the (to its credit) Washington Post is written by Dana Priest and William Arkin. I'll let Greenwald summarize; I'm sure it will come up again. The BoB connection is that sometime back in 2006, BoB created an award called the Kruggie, given to the reporter who demonstrated journalistic bravery and integrity in the Bush Continuum. It was awarded once, to Priest for her stories on CIA black sites. Since I was the only BoB-guy in DC, I had the honor of contacting her and hand-delivering a very nice, not-cheesy, crystal plaque of a sort. She met me in the lobby of the Washington Post's 15th Street monolith, took me upstairs to her cubicle, and yapped with me for a good hour. Completely nice, completely together.

BoB story two: Jerry, when I started posting music on BoB, asked me to contribute Indie rock reviews to his contemporary classical music blog Sequenza21, which is how I met On an Overgrown Path, a blog you need make mandatory daily reading (and listening, yo), and its extraordinarily Kind and generous and brilliant proprietor Pliable, but I only thought I wanted to grow up like Bob Shingleton.

I sucked as Indie music blogger. I was good for about six months - one post on Pere Ubu got a very excellent comment from Alex Ross, and Bob said very Kind things about the blog at OaOP - but I was writing for professional musicians and music academics - some of my cobloggers wrote symphonies - and I'm not a professional musician or academic; sheeyit, I don't like doing research now in what I am credentialed in. I started posting songs - just songs, songs I liked, songs from new albums - and pinging slowed up then disappeared as I posted less and less, and I was leaving BoB, Jerry was upgrading both sites.... and no sad.

Which makes three bleggalgazings not only in the month of July but within a week. I lied when I said I limit myself to twelve a year.

• Blog Theory.
• Destroying history, one pixel at a time.
• Feminism cannot address sexism?
• Remembering why you are a feminist.
• Ismism.
• UPDATE! The imperialism of market "reason."
• Killing fields of multinational corporations.
• The United States of British Petroleum.
• Get ready for these types of stories.
• Portrait of things to come.
• Excellent linkages.
• More Jensen.
• UPDATE! On the fuss at scienceblogs.
• Demonstration of the rules of surveillance.
• All restaurants are now Taco Bell.
• UPDATE! In case you had any doubts that Obama is a pussy.
• UPDATE! I'm sure I'm not the first to use Vilsack of shit.
• It's pretty fucking remarkable Priest's and Arkin's piece is in Your Fucking Washington Post. It will be fascinating if predictable to watch Fred Hiatt's op-ed page fight back.
• Et viola, Michael Mukasey.
• YFWP.
• ROFL.
• ICYBTD?
• Why you shouldn't read the Daily Beast.
• How the fur trade shaped America?

• Midcounty Highway extension?
• Metro seat hogs!
• This year's EPL homekits. Arsenal's is gorgeous.
• When ugly kits battle.
• Brazilian football fields.
• Sal Zizzo? Zizzo, who represented the U.S. at both U-20 and U-23 levels, saw his contract with Bundesliga side Hannover 96 expire, clearing the way for him to sign in the MLS. His latest destination could be determined as soon as this Wednesday, when he'll be placed in a weighted lottery. The same source indicated that D.C. United and the Kansas City Wizards will have the best chance of landing the former UCLA standout.
• UPDATE! I couldn't give a flying fuck about the hockey team and care even less about the the basketball team, but I wish Ted Leonsis owned my soccer team.
• Bromark sends this:

• Vollmann's Kissing the Mask. I'm waiting for the paperback.
• Mrs Feller's 4th grade Washington Grove class 1969.
• A professor/friend has been urging me to try Olson again.
• I confess, Sandover turned me off Merrill. Ouija board, yo.
• (Ouija is Element 47.) Bless serendipity.
• UPDATE! Serendipity abounds.
• Discovering Seidel.
• Szomorú vasárnap.
• Fables of the Reconstruction is 25. You're old. REM hasn't aged as well for me as I would have guessed 25 years ago.
• Occupational hazards.
• The Depreciation Guild has listened to Cocteau Twins.
• UPDATE! Gordon Fucking Sumners, that cunt. (Thnx, RC!)
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• Wis[s]e Words Metal Mondays.
• UPDATE! Candy! Fey or twee?
• Catching the butterfly.
• Me and the devil.

FAILING AND FLYING

Jack Gilbert

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was 
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars 
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say 
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

I can't stop listening to the new Chemical Brothers:

Seventy-Two Today

My first deepest best and panging to this minute crush.

Diana Rigg's first Emma Peel year, the black-and-white year, before Avengers turned badly campy, my favorite show ever.

United 1, LAG 2

I don't know if Bošković was eligible to practice with United before July 15 - I've sent Goff an email asking - though I hasten to add IT SHOULDN'T MAKE A FUCK'S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE! because United can't suck more with him on the field than they do without. Or can they?

I'm told Pontius broke his foot early in the first half, asked to come off, and Fucking Fire Curt Onawful wouldn't swap him out until halftime and then swapped him for Ba'al Bless Grandpa Jaime.

Here's what I think is a even-money bet: once Bošković got into training, the ink on the contract dry, United discovered Bošković..... wait for it.... is Niell Carvallo Gallardo N'Galula Bošković! If he's not and didn't start, fire fucking Curt Onawful, though Kasper Payne is the bigger problem, yes?

(And yes, yes that was Niell Carvallo Gallardo N'Galula Bošković Hernandez who missed an free header into an open net in the 89th minute.)

Look, there's enough talent on this team that with decent coaching United could be mediocre rather than shitty (and Salt Lake last year proved mediocre can steal the occasional championship), but this is a dying franchise trying to save itself on the cheap. For the umpteenth time, credit Chang with for not abandoning DC yet, he's under no obligation to continue hemorrhaging money (and there's NOT going to be a new stadium, yo), but that means building for the future with washed-up Montenegran midfielders and third division Argentine strikers who flush out of the Uruguayan league.

And fire Curt Fucking Onawful five fucking minutes ago.

Bromark and Elric, call your father today.

UPDATE!

Goff says he's not reconnected into United stuff since just getting back from South Africa (doesn't it feel like a year ago Spain won eight days ago?).

UPDATE!

Both Planet and I forgot she starts driving lessons tonight when she said she wanted to go to Bermangoyds this Wednesday night for USOC quarterfinal v Harrisburg Islanders, so I have an extra ticket. You get yourself to Soccerplex and I'll either pdf you a ticket and email it to you or meet you at the gate. I'm looking at you, Hamster.

Come experience (a) soccer in an amazingly intimate atmosphere and (b) MNCPPC cops!

UPDATE!

Here's Fullback.

And I'm screamed at for finally bursting a blood vessel in my forehead over Onawful for baiting a McTavish-trap. Sucker. See you Wednesday in Bermangoyds, where you know it's gonna thunderstorm and then go to shoot-out.

UPDATE!

Hearts switches home kit from an awesome maroon/claret to white. Pussies. The world is going to hell.

Theme Song July 2010

One of the better nights of my life.

It Remains for Us to Come to Terms with Our Commonality and in so Doing Deprive Time of Further Hostages

My biggest problem with reading non-fiction is after ten minutes I'm thinking about the novel I could be reading, like The Sot-Weed Factor, which HOLYFUCK! turned 50! this year. All schtick aside, it is one of the five most influential novels (Giles Goat-boy is in the second ten) on how I read and write and think.

It's about nothing less than the battle between naive but noble innocence and cynical but profitable experience, how naivety is pounded out, then innocence, then nobility, with casual whisks of experience's hand. We are all Ebenezor Cookes with our own Joan Toasts. An astonishingly funny novel.

Which is to say, yesterday I briefly contemplated suggesting a group reading of the Jensen that generated a good comment thread, but after ten minutes of reading the Jensen - I'm experienced enough to at least try the non-fiction book before committing to reading it - I was thinking about Frolic's Oscar Crease, then after finding the Sotweed link thinking of no one but Henry Burlingame.

For forty-five seconds late yesterday afternoon I contemplated suggesting a group reading of The Sot-Weed Factor, but don't worry, mofos, fuck that too.

• Manifesto of the Garden Party.
• The fall of Obama.
• Defending the indefensible.
• Myth of American democracy.
• Deficits of mass destruction.
• On Krugman's pitchforks.
• And the Democrats and Obama will deserve all of it.
• Pigs.
• On religion and goat-fucking.
• On straight, white, fat-assed men.
• Social media and the architecture of anomie.
• Time, history, power.
• What she knows.
• Teacher for a day. I know teachers. Pay them more, hassle them less.
• Letter to a daughter.
• Don't forget who capital gave the weapons to:

• Washington earthquake destruction.
• Kensington! I've told this before, but though my mailing address is Kensington, I don't actually live in incorporated Kensington. The other side of the street I live on has Bethesda as its mailing address, meaning my house, if on the other side of the road, would be worth $25K more than it is on my side.
• Purple Line!
• Tactical mistake.
• FIFA's foul play.

• Tolstoy leaves home.
• Three Bettie Serveert songs.
• I'm still in love with this song.
• Can't exist.
• Nothing is better than this.
• Slide away.
• Woke up down.
• Even though.
• Psychopharmocology.
• Dissolve.
• Honey and the moon.

HOTEL LAUTRÉAMONT

John Ashbery

1.

Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of
    society

working as a team. They didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.

The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

We see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well.”

Working as a team, they didn’t just happen. There was no guesswork.

The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds

we see the results in works as diverse as “Windsor Forest” and “The Wife of Usher’s Well,”

or, on a more modern note, in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds

the world, as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passé,

or in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

Not to worry, many hands are making work light again.

The world, as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passé.

In any case the ruling was long overdue.

Not to worry, many hands are making work light again,

so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure.

   2.

In any case, the ruling was long overdue.

The people are beside themselves with rapture
so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure

and the solution problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

The people are beside themselves with rapture

yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria,

and the solution: problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained.

Yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria.

In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.

The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained,

and night like black swansdown settles on the city.

In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.

Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward,

and night like black swansdown settles on the city.

If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

   3.

Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward.

Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside.

If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside,

when all we think of is how much we can carry with us.

And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

When all we think of is how much we can carry with us

small wonder that those at home sit, nervous, by the unlit grate.

All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

It remains for us to come to terms with our commonality.

Small wonder that those at home sit nervous by the unlit grate.

It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.

It remains for us to come to terms with our commonality

and in so doing deprive time of further hostages.

   4.

It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.

Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open

and in so doing deprive time of further hostages,

to end the standoff that history long ago began.

Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open

but it is shrouded, veiled: We must have made some ghastly error.

To end the standoff that history long ago began

must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

But it is shrouded, veiled: We must have made some ghastly error.

You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.

Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?
Only night knows for sure; the secret is safe with her.

You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.
Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of
    society;
only night knows for sure. The secret is safe with her:
The people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

Aoodom5fse:

United 0, Seattle 1

Jeebusfuck, I wish United came up with new, more creative ways to lose. Click the DCU10 category down bottom right column and choose any previous 2010 for analysis of last night's game, with these four additional thoughts:

• Ba'al bless Tino Quaranta, he has no first touch, he'd be the perfect 12th man, first off the bench, a burst of energy in the 60th minute, but if he's your number one or two then numbers three and up are not very good.
• United needed six points out of last night v Seattle and day after tomorrow v LAG, not four or three or two or one, and with last night being the easiest three, none now seems the likeliest total.
• Brankotime? I assume he's been training with United even if he couldn't play until yesterday. Underwhelming.
• Ba'al bless Brian Namoff, The Irreplaceable Man, making a difficult but correct decision.

Meanwhile, EARTHQUAKE! Awesome, freaking awesome. I thought I was dreaming.