BLCKDGRD

Toronto 0, United 1

I didn't watch, forgive me. There was work to get done and then a social near work and goddamn Comcast, when they're broadcasting the game, won't let me stream games on my computer in these zip codes, plus it's thoroughly unimportant whether United or Toronto is shittier: they could play each other a thousand games and each would end on a thousand points.

I emailed Landru, guessed it was the 65th and a 0-0 score, and I was right then but wrong about the outcome; Julius James scored in the 85th and United won. In the interest of United, I am considering not staying up to watch United play Gax in Beckham's LA return next Saturday night at 10:30.

No one has asked me how I separate my politics and my soccer in years, which is wise because I do catch prisms off micro-fracturing in the mirror and might tell you about them. I don't pretend to disinterest for United like I pretend to disinterest for Democrats. United will get my money next season (if we pay by November 1 we can same $50 per ticket, yo), presuming the team is still in town.*

I pretend to disinterest for Democrats too, off course, but they won't get my beer money for the few games left this season and they won't get my money or votes next season when they'll still be a shitty team, and I like to pretend they'll never get my money or votes even again (while daring them to suck less like I dare me to purify my disinterest). 

*I've had more hits on fuck-me-jig over the past two weeks than all other guugle searches combined (please, speculate why), so that line is a blog-whore's nod to the statcounter...

United 1, Columbus 2

I've been writing this season's obituary since April. Forgive me if I abbreviate it today. Go read this.

Set aside the two bad PK calls, the bad red card, the consistently inconsistent whistles, here's what to take away: in inarguably the most important game United will play in 2010, in which they used the best players they had available, in the 100th minute of a Cup semifinal, United's best striker options were a holding midfielder (Clyde Simms) and a central defender (Dejan Jakovic), and the dividend was Jakovic missing an open net from five yards in the 105th.

What did United's general manager take from the game?

Club president Kevin Payne's postgame theme: "%#@&%$#!," referring to referee Chris Penso for red-carding Pablo Hernandez early in the second half, and to the U.S. Soccer Federation for assigning a secondary official to a consequential match while MLS veteran Jair Marrufo worked a friendly between the Philadelphia Union and Chivas Guadalajara two hours away at PPL Park.

I call %#@&%$#! Najar, maybe Simms, deserve a starting job in Major League Soccer. No one else on the roster would start for a lower mid-table MLS team - and yes, that especially includes Santino Quaranta - and most of United's roster would struggle to start for mid-table USL-2 teams. This would still be true even if Jair Marrufo had refereed last night's game.

Meh. Saturday's game (again against Columbus) could be a bloodbath, more likely to be 0-4. I'll be there.

Holyfuck, I need a power pop song:

UPDATE!

This just appeared in my email box:

Club President & CEO Kevin Payne will be hosting a series of Q&A session for full season ticket members in the Capitol View Club prior to the team's remaining home matches. He'll discuss the club's plans for the future and address your questions and concerns. Please RSVP using the link below if you plan to attend.

Q&A Session with Kevin Payne
RFK Stadium - Capital View Club
5:00 PM

• Please bring your membership card and match ticket. We will scan both your membership card and match ticket at the gate.
• Enter through the Main Gate (next to the Team Store). The gate will open at 4:30 PM for event participants.
• The session will begin at 5:00 PM in the Capital View Club.
• After the session, you may leave the stadium and re-enter later or stay in the stadium.

No, I'll not be attending - what would I ask and what would Payne say to what I would ask - but I applaud the outreach.

Yesterday (Sept 1) United offered full-season ticket holders a one-day chance to renew for next season at a 10% discount, saving roughly $45 per ticket, but I didn't have the lump sum (our desktop finally died last weekend, and we're buying something new this weekend and don't want to do it on a credit card, so....). I get calls from my ticket agent a few times a season asking me how things are - United has been great to deal with.

I'm renewing for next season and every season United is here - I plan on being at Opening Game 2050, my health willing. Rooting for United, going to games, is one of five of my favorite things in the world. There's a reason I need another power pop song today:

Did You Know Washington DC Has a Professional Soccer Team?

And tonight is the migestlmigeutnmige.

I need three, wait.... four primal screams of joy, dammit.

(Becks/Bass beer vendor, 300 level directly behind north goal, halftime, come say hi. I'll be the guy in the black United t-shirt.

Hell, come find us in 232:

Look for the top of Landru's head.)

• A bit of clarification: I don't think our overlords have any intention (yet) of letting a tea-partier (Sarah Palin, e.g.) anywhere near the steering wheel.
• And while I would never discount the effect of the economy, many tea-partiers would still dress up like Williamsburg re-enactors and call Obama a Muslim even if Obama personally handed them each a $100 bill every day.
• UPDATE! Towards a populism of the working class.
• Glenn Beck is not the white Malcolm X.
• UPDATE! Siren call.
• A different perspective on the occupation.
• Weak speech, weak president. (I didn't watch it, btw.)
• Speech defect.
• Dipshit.
• Pastor Sanctimonious calls Obama a pussy.
• Is Obama a pussy if he was just following orders? (Krugman's obamapostasy is going to be awesome.)
• No one could have predicted.
• Coming soon to a civil disobedience near you.
• Asshole's priorities: "The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.
• The blogosphere during the Middle Ages.
• Your MOCO voters guide. I'll vote for whomever two MCPS teachers who are special to me tell me how to vote, but other than that, thwrppppp.
• Metro!
• Execute this motherfucker.
• UPDATE! CONCACAF changing WC qualifying.
• Ugliest uniforms ever (stluueutnuue):

• Wear black at home all the time or never at all.
• Nominate a Not the Booker!
• How to stop worrying and love Frank O'Hara.
• How not to write a poem.
• An obligatory Franzen post.
• Another review of new Richard Thompson.
• Dog Day Listenings.
• To bring you my love.
• UPDATE! Summer babe.
• Goodbye.
• UPDATE! Blind my mind. Found Flunk CDs looking for something else last night. It's love again.

(ETYMOLOGICALLY) "WORK WORK"

Albert Goldbarth

        5. Fred: One

That summer (I was seventeen), the powers of Midwest
    Mercantile
(Roosevelt Road at Jefferson), seeing my reedy body was
    no use
shlepping delivery crates, assigned me to Accounting, where
my reedy mind was more disastrous yet: I doubt if
four consecutive numbers fit true. One day in the wake
of a contretemps (with tire jacks and a boot-knife)
at the loading dock, Koenig was canned. Would I
pitch in? - meant tussling one unbudgeable sumo
of a crate in the unbearable sun and stares out there,
and just as I was believing that death was preferable,
Fred Nelson (The Black Bull everyone called him) moped
on by, in one hand lifted my butt by my belt and
in the other the crate, then carried us both the length
    of the store
and set us like eggs on the top shelf in Wholesale Drapes.

Nick Drake was great for crashing too (and fuck ATT):

Chivas USA 1, United 0

Watched the first half, knew there was no chance in hell this team was going to score - they'd miss an open net from an inch - went to sleep.

I applaud Benny for prioritizing this Wednesday's USOC semifinal v Yellow. I feel no guilt for doing so too.

O! Barry Rice sucks, but not as much as Troy Perkins. I can't get mad at Kasper Payne for wasting money and a draft pick (and, um, Fredsux) on Perkins last winter considering the clownage at keeper the previous two years, but holyfuck, what a waste of money and a draft pick (and, um, Fredsux).

United 2, Phunion 0

Sweetness, I never forget what a rush a pretty goal and the crowd's BWARG! gives me until the next one surprises me again.

But this was a game between two shitty teams, one building for the future with young but inexperienced talent, the other trying to rescue a lost past with retreads and castaways. One has a brand new stadium and an excited and burgeoning fan base, the other will play next year in RFK to diminishing attendance in quite possibly United's last season in DC.

Vamos United sure and yadda, but which franchise, if you were neutral and picking a team to rube for, would you?

Few bullets:

• I like Pablo Hernandez. I'm curious why MLS referees let opponents beat the fuck out of him without sanction. He took a kidney punch in the 73rd that was straight red and the referee either ignored it or ignored it.
• UPDATE! One friend whose opinion I trust says Hernandez is a tall Frank O'Neill, another says referees hate him cause he dives and then expects fucking Americans to respect the integrity of an Argentine footballer. Heh - that would also explain why he's getting punched in his kidneys.
• He was offside on his not-goal.
• Jakovic's best game since the last game his partner in the middle wasn't Carey Talley.
• Which doesn't mean he wasn't next to Julius James, who, no.
• A photo of the top of my hat and some of Landru's head with the traveling Phunion fans in the background. Click, yo.

• Thanks, Bromark.
• The shot was taken before the downpours. I left my United rain-jacket in the car, bought myself a dry new t-shirt at halftime. Your host is a dumbfuck.
• Jaime in around the 81st to meek applause, he almost scored on a bender either just before or after the 90th.
• Dying franchise, yo.
• Benny did come 2/3rds over after his TV interview to thank us. Thank you, Benny.
• I want to say Hi! to whomever reads me at MacFarlane Partners! Please tell who you report to that United should let us bring a liter of water in on mid-summer midday games like they've let us for years until today, OK?
• UPDATE! Posted for no greater or lesser reason than it's in my head and needs to be in yours.

An excellent time as always. Next home game Wednesday August 31 September 1 against Columbus in USOC semifinal. I'm told I might have access to two tickets, which would then cost you nothing. Will know by this Tuesday. I'm hoping I don't, but I'm looking at the usual suspects if I do.

Updates, edits, links, later. Or not.

My Face Had Been Sliced Off and Lay There on the Ground Like a Washcloth With My Testicles and Penis Next to It

Every post is bleggalgazing about my motives for shetty blegging. I want to be deified and inconsequential. I obsess about collegiality and want to be invisible. I'm a fucking mess, but for all my addiction to pings I'll not be applying for this:

In September, The Post will introduce a new reader-driven blog for fans, by fans, focused solely on Washington sports. To fill out our roster of fan bloggers, we're looking for one of our best, most diehard D.C. United fans to weigh in on whatever's happening in the world of United. While we'll ask all bloggers to occasionally weigh in on all Washington's pro teams, we're particularly interested in having an established D.C. United voice as part of the project.

Meantime, Roger Clemons, who I bet you any number of pints believes Obama is a Muslim, will be a shiny example that the rich and gifted don't get away with lying under oath to Congress in America, right, Mr Blankfein?

• Of course Glenn Beck is an asshole - it's just as "inappropriate" for him to hold his Cracker March on August 28 at the Lincoln Memorial as it is for a Muslim community center to be built two blocks from Ground Zero - but he's well within his "rights."
• World's Shittiest Human farts, giggles.
• UPDATE! I confess I'm surprised YFWP allows Sargent to consistently call The World's Shittiest Human on his bullshit.
• Jeffrey Goldberg wants to be the next World's Shittiest Human once the World's Shittiest Human does the world a favor and fucking dies.
• Obamapologist!
• Austerity works if.....
• Not going Galt.
• Hell is other producers.
• Private property is cool if you're Amish.
• Ten shameless Right-Wing tributes to Ayn Rand.
• I'm voting Teaparty!
• Schlock and yawn.
• UPDATE! Ethan calls bullshit on pwoggly wankery (and IOZ follows up).
• unpanoramanic.
• America is..... VOTE!
• BLCKDGRD translated into Dutch.
• UPDATE! BLCKDGRD translated into German. "Kevin Fucking Payne" in German? "Kevin Fucking Payne."
• How are the ferals doing?

• Excellently, thanks.
• UPDATE! Execute the motherfuckers.
• I'm tired of being accosted by fireman every time I go to Safeway to sign their petition, though I did sign once.
• UPDATE! Mission accomplished! I actually didn't sign the petition but didn't feel like typing out why, knowing someone else would, in angry and profane detail, if baited.
• Maryland crackers angry at Ehrlich?
• Note to self: if robbing the same place twice in three days, cover up my tattoos.
• Poetry? There's an app for that.
• RIP Bernard Knox.
• Frog feels about The National the way I feel about Elbow.
• Gah! Why the fuck is Fleet Foxes on my radio? SUCK!
• The first item is incredibly bad news, the last item incredibly sad news.
• RIP Michael Been of The Call.

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.

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

Starts Again Always in Henry’s Ears the Little Cough Somewhere, an Odour, a Chime

Now it's just rained five inches in three hours. Weirdest weather year of my life. Weirdest work year of my life. Weirdest married year of my life. Weirdest year as a father of my life. Weirdest soccer year of my life. Weirdest cat year of my life. Weirdest reading year of my life. Weirdest listening year of my life. Weirdest political year of my life. 

Weirdest year of my life. Little of it bad, most of it good, some of it wonderful, all of it weird. There are certain sounds I keep finding in the poetry I'm reading, in my CD players.

• Your daily obamapostasy.
• UPDATE! Howard Fucking Dean.  More tomorrow, or not.
• Mosque Shmosque. Almost. The establishment sees mega-profits - think of the savings if the US can stop pretending it gives a flying fuck about bringing potable water and sewage plants to the motherfucking Muslims, they're living on top of our oil and that's their fucking infidel desserts, for instance -but the establishment damn right fears the rage of crackerstanis - they don't fear you, they don't fear me - fears them so much they gorge the crackers on the meat that makes them more dangerously cracker. (You and me are meat, but more appetizer than meal.)
• I knew someone would obliterate Beinart's self-serving bullshit, saving me from having to do it.
• Eden is a place we leave.
• UPDATE! Liberalism, power, and the state.
• It's astonishing how much it pisses off crackers that niggers can call each other niggers but crackers can't.
• Your future cracker propagandists.
• Good bigotry is a product of good leadership.
• Against Christ (I).
• UPDATE! Two-legged dog.
• The Web is Dead:

• But you knew that, whether you're Kind or unKind.
• UPDATE! Speaking of detritus.
• United's Number 16! But only because there's no 17.
• UPDATE! Hey, I know public school teachers.
• QWERTY and you.
• Comment monster (II) and (III).
• Subjects for poetry.
• RIP, Frank Kermode.
• Mercury 2010 nominees.

DREAM SONG 29

John Berryman

There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart   

só heavy, if he had a hundred years

& more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time   

Henry could not make good.

Starts again always in Henry’s ears

the little cough somewhere, an odour, a chime.

And there is another thing he has in mind   

like a grave Sienese face a thousand years

would fail to blur the still profiled reproach of. Ghastly,   

with open eyes, he attends, blind.

All the bells say: too late. This is not for tears;   

thinking.

But never did Henry, as he thought he did,

end anyone and hacks her body up

and hide the pieces, where they may be found.

He knows: he went over everyone, & nobody’s missing.   

Often he reckons, in the dawn, them up.
Nobody is ever missing.

The Plastic Snake Offers

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming re: Obama's mosque announcement - What if Obama suddenly realized all he has left is feeding the Left, so clusterfuckedly he's clusterfucked The Clusterfuck he's no rump left but the Left?

Although not unexpected, the news flow is about to take a more negative tone starting with the existing home sales report on August 23rd. We've been discussing this for some time ... and I'd like to highlight just a few pieces of forthcoming data:

• The existing home sales report will show that sales collapsed in July (this is showing up in all the regional reports).
• The existing home months-of-supply will jump to double digits.
• House prices are probably falling again, although this might not show up in the repeat sales indexes until September or October (this data is released with a lag).
• On August 27th, the second estimate of Q2 GDP will be released. This will probably show a significant downward revision from the preliminary estimate of 2.4% annualized growth. The downward revision is due to lower construction spending than the BEA initially estimated, less contribution from inventory adjustments, and the June surge in exports.
• The unemployment rate will probably start ticking up again soon (or the participation rate will fall further).

Don't call me stupid (the first movie I've watched in a year), but I say the gift-offering (after the bitchslapping) to the hopelessly rump Left was nothing more or less than Obama's desperate rattling of the traditional benwaballs, chiming to lube our loyalties and prejudices.

Then again, I thought Aristotle was Belgian.

• Obama was right, dammit.
• Karl Rove calls you a pussy.
• Leadership and the other thing.
• War pimps.
• Grand farce.
• Economy cooking.
• Wandering outside the gate.
• The Walrus is worried about civility.
• Why is Limbaugh the only one called a hypocrite?
• This time Owen is in Belgium.
• BLCKDGRD translated into (I think) Arabic.
• On the other hand, Moreno is fat, washed-up, and ungrateful United gave him a contract for this season.
• Twenty best kits of 2010/2011?
• The uniform the local helmetball team should wear at home.
• DC domes.
• Crisis in Georgetown!
• Crisis at Needwood!
• The Blog of Intellectual Gimmicks. (h/t)
• The Categorical Imperative of Blogging.
• Silliman, the comment controversy, general bleggalgazing.
• UPDATE! Speaking of Silliman, Articulating a Poetics.
• More bleggalgazing.
• Tom McCarthy interview.
• The Franzen Cover and a brief history of Time.
• Kakutani likes the new Franzen, calls it "galvanic." Shoot me. O! do note the cheap shot at Pynchon and DeLillo.
• UPDATE! On Kakutani.
• Darkblack's Sunday Overnight.
• UPDATE! Dead sound.
• Closedown.
• UPDATE! What is music for?

DEFINITELY

Mary Jo Bang

What is desire
But the hard wire argument given
To the mind's unstoppable mouth.

Inside the braincase, it's I
Want that fills every blank. And then the hand
Reaches for the pleasure

The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes,
It will all be fine in some future soon.
Definitely. I've conjured a body

In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it.
Here memory makes you
Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.

That beautiful face.
That tragic beautiful mind.
That mind's ravenous mouth

That told you, This isn't poison
At all but just what the machine needs. And then,
The mouth closes on its hunger.

The heart stops.

Have I even mentioned I love Archers of Loaf?

United 1, Dallas 3

Keven Fucking Payne said:

"These things are never easy. Before the season, we agreed to talk in the summer and decide on the future. We wanted this to come out now so other teams, if they so choose, can recognize him and so our fans can say goodbye. We didn't think it would be appropriate after the season. He's deserving of a longer thank you."

Well, fuck you, me, and Jaime Moreno, who not only didn't start and wasn't the captain, he didn't fucking play. St Benny of Olsen is either an asshole or a coward. Kevin Fucking Payne is a petulant asshole and petty coward. Will Fucking Chang has no intention of keeping this team in DC one second longer than he can sell it or move it. Whether he's ordered the suck and deliberate alienation of the fans is now an open question.

Game summary: Suck. Suck suck suck suck suck, suck suck, suck suck suck. Suck suck suck suck suck suck suck. Suck.

Yes, I owe everyone pints.

Here's Landru. Here's Fullback.

Shall We Seem to Disappear Until the Dogs Stop Barking?

I call a moratorium on maudlin moroseness on this shotty blag from post-this-post through this Monday morning midnight, though I've only coercive power over me, which makes me maudlin in the coming and morose in the going.

I watch little new TV beyond soccer and The Soup, I only watch TV when I'm traveling with my family and in a hotel room at night, and I'm always shocked at the start of each vacation at how much nastier Humiliation-TV gets in each six month gap between trips.

Where I'm stupid re: Obama and the .06% Less-Shitty Theory is that I always forget how much we live in a mob democracy as designed and implemented by our elite. People I love and adore giggle like Caligula at some fame-whore's ritualistic humiliation. Nobodies compete to be fame-whores, fame-whores compete for the chance to be humiliated in exchange for a few minutes of air-time on TV. The media is tuned to 24-7 shame and humiliation by people who have no shame, who shamelessly manipulate shame and humiliation for shamefully successful crowd control.

Obamamerica: The Reality Show! Can I resist playing from now until Monday? Who knows what United will do Saturday night to piss me off for Sunday morning's recap. (UPDATE! Fuck Kevin Payne.)

Anyway, pint bets. I'm an honest man, I think you an honest reader: Can I go through Sunday August 15, 2010, 23:59:59 EST without posting an typically overheated morose post?

I say no, but for Caligula giggles I'll bet yes.

• Timebends.
• How propagandists function.
• UPDATE! The answer is NO. (And you can scratch James Fallows off as being the only semi-honorable fuckwit on the Atlantic's page of blogsuck.)
• UPDATE! On Wikileaks side.
• He is, without peer, The World's Shittiest Human.
• UPDATE! On TWSH.
• He'll be putting in a call to Fred Hiatt complaining that Fred but this Liberal turd next to TWSH on the online op-ed page.
• UPDATE! If Liberal media bias truly existed.
• Something I never thought I'd type: Good for Fred Hiatt.
• UPDATE! Whew! Still safe to hate YFWP.
• Back to Kansas.
• UPDATE! Exploring complexity once, twice, three times.
• We are not serious.
• UPDATE! The world is scary.
• Search terms.
• UPDATE! Someone else's fault.
• I had no idea this person was still on the radio.
• UPDATE! Homicide on K Street.
• WTF is wrong with people? Execute this motherfucker.
• Metro!
• Rockville's hidden charms?
• BLCKDGRD translated into Portuguese (from Brazil).
• Stuck in the middle(brow).
• UPDATE! More on the above.
• UPDATE! Underrated writers? Anthony Hecht? YES! Milan Kundera? Fuck to the fuckityfuck NO!
• Heh! Each one of you send that link to Rick Lazio's office, huffing in outrage, and we'll see how long before a pig calls for the banning of Béla Bartók on American soil.

• Serendipitous I read Pliable's link today while reading a novel with a protagonist who pays a pianist two floors below him to play at his command 24-7, deliberately badly at first but after fake practicing made perfect (though Rachmaninoff, but), yes?

• New Superchunk song!
• I confess I don't get the fuss over Elliott Smith, but I know some of you do.
• Birthday DJing.
• UPDATE! The DJ is telling me Bossanova (w/aoodom5fse Dig for Fire) was released twenty years ago today, which is not to be confused w/aoodom5fse Digging in the Dirt.
• I dig everything.
• Feargal Sharkey is 52 today! Quick, real name, yes or no?
• What Arcade Fire's success says about music. What I've heard of the new one doesn't suck as much as the last one, which isn't to say it doesn't suck.

CURE OF IGNORANCE

Laura Riding

The dogs still bark,
and something is not clear.
From ignorance dogs barked always.

How to enlighten them?
There are no dogs now -
They do but bark.

What it not clear is what is clear.
Dogs have the scent,
Yet nothing runs like prey.

Shall we seem to disappear
Until the dogs stop barking?
There is no other way to explain.