BLCKDGRD

Snarkremindersnark!

Unnoticed surveillance?

Use your Safeway card, they know what you eat. Use your Walgreen's card, they know your medications. Use your credit card, they know what you buy, how much you owe. Use your cell phone, they know where you are. Use your tomtom, they know where your drive.

Use your blog, they know what you think.

Make it easy for them, yo. You happily pay for the panopticon. Just a reminder before you hyperventilate.

  *

• Obamapostasy
• Herbert's obamapostasy.
• Obamapostasy: Neobamacon.
• Giant among midgets.
• If you have a military colossus, the colossus is used.
• Libertarian Party: Racism for Smart People?
• Speaking of Bob Barr.
• Another mcauliffister to Fox. Ur-mcauliffister campaigns for Obama. Questions?
• Red v Blue.
• Hoback has secret info on RNC's new convention plans.
• Remember The Fall.

   *

Hey, John Ashbery is 81 (81!) today.

STILL LIFE WITH STRANGER

Come on, Ulrich, the great octagon
of the sky is passing over us.
Soon the world will have moved on.
Your love affair, what is it
but a tempest in a teapot?

But such storms exude strange
resonance: the power of the Almighty
reduced to its infinitesimal root
hangs like the chant of bees,
the milky drooping leave of the birch
on a windless autumn day --

Call these phenomena or pinpoints,
remote as the glittering trash of heaven,
yet the monstrous frame remains,
filling up with regret, with straw,
or on another level with the quick grace
of the singing, falling snow.

You are good at persuading
them to sing with you.
Above you, horses graze forgettting
daylight inside the barn.

Creeper dangles against rock-face.
Pointed roofs bear witness.
The whole cast of characters is imaginary
now, but up ahead, in the shadow, the past awaits.

nyertz!

This is going to cause this in my head for however long the storm stays in the news:

I was at that show, mofos, in 1978, my one time in Cameron.

So, will the hurricane's remnants hit DC next Tuesday's Atalante game or the Saturday game after v Dynamo?

Stupiders of Aargh To Arms!

.......

Stupid-ass column by hack movie reviewer lazily regurgitates hack movie reviewer's lazy-ass stereotypes and cliches re: politicians and Hollywood icon-making?

In the Post? Shyeah!

I underestimated how unentertaining the entrenched's triple-down on stupid would be.

   *

• An appropriate reflection on Jesse Helms. Here's another. Here's another.
• Rich's obamapostasy is moronically framed but essentially valid.
• Beinart speaks! You ignore!
• Ignatius has an obamagasm. It's icky.
• Uh-oh, the beginning of Earthgirl's obamapostasy.
• A meditation on racism.
• Plazm? (h/t another Fellowjeff)
• Jim uses one of my favorite poets to comment on a J-Lo absurdity? Excellent. (Find The Lamplit Answer. Read it.)
  
• Limbaugh, talented asshole.
• The bestest reason EVAH! to wish for obamagasms! is it will piss off the shittiest human in the world.
• Excellent photoshop, tasty and topical.
• Patriotism is patriotic.
• Maybe if Metro had put stops where they were needed rather than listening to the cocktail elite, this wouldn't be such an issue.
• Who killed Ronnie White? Funny how this has been disappeared.
• Hey, I know this neighborhood. Sure hope I don't see Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around.
• Fracking hell.
• What's in your mulch?

  *

Hey, the last of a three day Fourth of July weekend is a good barren spot to metablog:

Maverick!

Adding, I use my blogroll as bookmarks, and I'm going to do some minor rearranging as soon as I'm not lazy, mostly moving stuff from new toys - which should be for new toys, yes? - around. No one is being purged. 

Fridaymusicfriday early three-day Weekend Edition

   *

• Replacements cover Big Star!
• Kunk.
• Earlimart.
• Hyapatia Lake.
• My Morning Jacket (LIVE! NEW!)
• Kristin Hirsch (!)
• Minutemen (!)
• Golden Animals.
• Joseph Arthur (NEW!)
• The Blows.
• Fleet Foxes.
• Vanilla Swingers.
• Death Vessel.
• French Kicks.
• Apples in Stereo.
• The real Genesis. The real Genesis (bookmark Rising Storm, mofofriends)

In theory, typepad now has - and should have by now given me a "links open in separate window" functionality which I will use as soon as they make it available to a shitty little blogger like me. It'll make listening to these a much less cumbersome experience. In theory.

   *

M83, again. One of my favorites of year so far.

Habits

I've tried to write this anecdote a couple dozen times and was never happy with how it flowed, but here:

I had a girlfriend who, among other feats, chained herself a hundred feet in the air to virgin forest trees to protest against corporate logging, broke into labs to free cats and dogs, and etc.

She told me she did what she did because there is an equal and opposite group of zealots, and only equally matched zealot opponents can save the world from zealotry. She wasn't crazy, she said (and she wasn't), but if being branded a zealot was the necessary fee to balance the true crazies on the Right, so be it.

She made contact w/me a few weeks back; she's now a lawyer for the ACLU: a "corporate and co-opted Leftist" she calls herself now. We talked election of course. "I'll be voting against rather than for, as usual," she said. "I can't remember the last time, if ever, I voted for someone."

Which is the problem. Which is the problem with the problem.

   *

• The most interesting thing you'll read today.
• Give Hitchens a bit of credit.
• Reminder: your vote also ratifies the system. (h/t James)
• On Obamadulation.
• Another pick-vpotus game.
• Ponch loves McCain!
• Today's obamapostasy!
• Today's obamapostasy!
• On American exceptionalism.
• Ed has a long list of lit-blogs he encourages you not to read.
• This, noted by Fellowjeff, apparently, sparked Ed.
• Does this constitute a super-group?
• It's back.
   

   *

In my head. Be in yours:

United 2, Rochester 0

The prettiest, most gorgeous, Summer evening of the year.

The game? had a familiar feeling for about 75 minutes. I'm glad United's calculations worked, but there was little threat of scoring in play. They could have lost - they didn't deserve to lose, but they could have lost. They say they're taking the Cup seriously. Let's see who's on the field next Tuesday against the Fire.

After watching Dyachenko flunk yet another audition, who does United turn to when Gallardo is hurt or yellowed or redded? D introduced a Gallardo debate. I'm obviously in the pro-Gallardo faction, and I think had Gallardo played United would have scored enough in the first half that he could have been given the second half off. He would have found the holes in Rochester's defense that Dyachenko could but couldn't hit. Dyachenko is smarter than his body is able.

Actually, Kirk and Doe flunked too. Kirk had one chance for brilliance, mid-2nd half, a breakaway, tough but doable with a deft touch and burst of speed, and he botched the touch as he was hesitating. Could have earned himself some minutes there. Doe? Besides triggering a stupid-ass song from Sound of Music in my head every time I hear or see his name, I'd rather have Kpene not scoring.

Mark Burch. I turned to this guy after Burch's second goal and said, Burch makes an excellent USL player, which is not to be ungrateful for the goals or for his contributions to United. Burch is a terrific first or second player off the bench for a contending MLS team. I'm glad United has him. He's an asset. On set pieces he's a weapon. But good teams who've scouted United and play tough defense can render him quiet. Don't get crazy.

Fred. Oy.

Goff skips player ratings but adds:

-- Ryan Cordeiro was active and determined on the left flank.
-- Francis Doe didn't do much.
-- Quavas Kirk got up and down the right flank, but didn't show the technical ability to make an impact.
-- Pat Carroll was quite good at right back (and offered strong throw-in ability) and then did well in the middle in the second half.
-- Zach Wells got the shutout, but seemed indecisive on several balls.
-- Rod Dyachenko had some nice moments, but disappeared at times in the middle of the park.

Pat Carroll?

....

Did play well.

Hey, credit to Rochester fans:

That's a freaking long drive.

Had a good talk with this guy:

We were waiting in line for the one bathroom open at the entire facility. To his mocking that even a bottom table USL team's stadium had more than one bathroom, I could only laugh in agreement.

Still, just a quibble. Make it out there next Tuesday, mofos. A totally different, totally fabulous experience.

DCENTERS DEBRIEFING is up with its standard linky goodness and insight.

Obamaargh in the obamagon

OMFG! July 1, 2008! Only 126 days of daily disillusionment left before obamascendancy!

We call the blackmail our overlords use against us negotiation. We pretend to demand the terms that assuage our guilt over our complicity.

Those kids in Appalachia and the inner cities whose free breakfasts will increase by maybe a couple hundred calories a day if Obama is elected rather than McCain? Little hungry hostages held against my obamapostasy. To the ramparts of self-justification, mofos! Your womb is yours to control as long as it maintains your participation in empire.

Remember, as pissed off as Obama makes you while running for president, the minute he's elected he begins his re-election campaign for 2012.

There is some shit I will not eat. Theoretically. Chomp.

   *

• Read this if you haven't already. This too.
• On Obama's apologists.
• Why Obama will not win in the South.
• Cannibal Liberals. We are the enemy, you know.
• Cohen tries to prove he can be tough on McCain, fails.
• Don't run down PG policemen.
• Fauxgressive Theater!
• Truthdig's interview w/Naomi Klein (Shock Doctrine now out in paperback).
• 10 most awesomely bad moments of Bush administration.
• EXCERPT FROM THE NEW HILARY MANTEL!
• Charles Wright evokes James Wright.
• Dan responds to the Steven Moore interview.
• Most anticipated books of second half of 2008?

Updates later. Or not.

   *

The secret weapon in controlling obamapostasy in general and begrudged Democratic votes in particular are assholes like these.

Remember, we serve the same function to control the whacks on the Right, and to our Overlords, we are all whacks, regardless of the relative truth of our whackness, vis a vis our Overlords' comfortable power and our toolery in helping them increase it.

That's the box, mofos. Let's argue who's inside hammering out or outside hammering in.

Chomp, mofos. I'm getting there. I won't get there, but I'm getting there.

United 4, LAG 1

Most important first: Benny Olsen.

"It kind of came out of nowhere. I was going into surgery Monday, and thought "before I go into surgery I really want to give it a full go and see if I can't get through some of the pain." And the pain's there, obviously. You can see the limp and certain ways I'm not able to explode fully off of. It's going to be a long road back, today's a little soul break for me and saying all that ... with the fans and getting choked up with the support the fans have given me over the years I can't explain how much it meant to me, and it makes me want to get better and give this organization and the fans something for sticking by me for a long time."

"I don't understand, it I really don't. These people here are just so supportive of me. All I do is play hard, I like to play soccer, I like this team and I guess they appreciate it. It's nice to see. It's emotional. A lot of this stuff you act like it's not a big deal. But I like to play soccer; this is my living and I want to come back, but again it's going to be a long road back. But again I'd like to thank the fans for helping me through this and giving me the benefit of the doubt -- I get choked up just thinking about it now."

Me too, rube that I am. My favorite United player ever.

And word to Soehn - subbing out Moreno for Benny so Jaime could hand Benny the captain's band - ACE!

UPDATE: Bromark found this on BigSoccer's board.

   *

I wouldn't say it's cynical to discount the game's result, but I'm all for skepticism, because the result is compromised by the gutless pussiness of LAG's performance.

I'll be truthful: I hadn't watched a LAG game this year, so maybe they totally suck, but that effort after United's second goal, and especially that effort the entire second half, was so thoroughly unprofessional as to make achieving average LAG-pussiness seem impossible (and don't forget, LAG's history of pussiness, as exemplified by El Pussio del Ultimo, Cobi Jones, is a formidable standard of pussiness). Thank Ba'al I'm not a LAG-fan, though that'd make for a more entertaining blog-post.

Ooooh, it was hot! It was hot for everybody, wussies. Ooooh, the referee was letting United tackle hard. Play hard too, pussies. And Fucking Landon Fucking Donovan = LOSER. Waaaah, motherfucker. It's almost enough to make me giggle at the thought that I thought I felt a twinge of sympathy for David Beckham.

Hah! I made a funny!

(Though his actions on the field, his quotes after the game, and this, make me think he's infinitely a better dude than given credit.)

UPDATE:

From what I can see, I seem to be the only one hammering LAG's pussitude. Granted, I take LAG's pussitude as a universal truth, so it's entirely possible a combination of LAG's general shittiness and DCU's form was responsible for yesterday's result. If so, I apologize for giving LAG's standard pussitude more credit than it deserves.

United looked good, yes? but they should have scored 12, as shitty as LAG played when it gave a damn and as pussied as they played when they didn't.

Beat Ningland 4-1 or Chicago 4-1 or Kansas City 4-1 or Houston 4-1 or the freaking Rochester Rhinos tomorrow night 4-1, I'll upgrade from skepticism.

Still:

Goff's player ratings:

Wells 7; Namoff 7, Peralta 6, McTavish 7, Martinez 8; Quaranta 6, Simms 7, Gallardo 7, Fred 6; Moreno 7, Emilio 8. Subs: Burch 7, Dyachenko 6, Olsen 5.

Any questions on whether Marcelo Gallardo was the best player on the field? Yes, he gacked a couple, but his diagonals into space are brilliant. Moreno gets him, Emilio gets him, Martinez especially gets him, Namoff gets him, Quaranta gets him. It's going to be beautiful.

Fred? Doesn't get Gallardo. Here's where Goff and me consistently disagree. Fred gets a 6? For what? Bad passes, broken runs, such a shitty first touch he NEVER shoots when the keeper is vulnerable? I'm not saying he doesn't work hard; if anything, he works harder to less effect than any player I can remember. I understand his importance - team's have to track him, he creates space for others as well as himself - but jeebus, he's maddening. It must be his head.

Peralta and McTavish are a concern, and without Simms tracking back (and without Gallardo tracking further back than he already does in response to Simms' tracking back), Peralta and McTavish are borderline shitty. It's not so much yesterday's offense against the LAG crappy defense that makes me skeptical, it's yesterday's United middle defense during the twenty-five or so minutes that LAG gave a flying fuck that worries me.

No worries about the outside defense. Martinez and Namoff are terrific. (Did you see Martinez shadow Beckham so dutifully that there were periods when Martinez looked like a forward and Jaime rotated back to left back?) Both are good defenders, both like to go forward on wings. Namoff had one nice deke and shoot with his left foot in the first half.

Now July. I take United serious at their word that they're taking US Cup seriously this year - it provides the easiest ticket into next year's CONCACAF, and making CONCACAF is a requirement, yes? I love Germantown games, and two in eight days? Sweet. (Here's why RFK is unavailable.)

Maybe the team is rounding - I'm still skeptical - but they needed nine of nine points out of this homestand before July's diversions, and they got nine points out of the homestand.

And it feels to me like the team now has a personality it didn't for the first months. I'm still skeptical, but I'm no longer pessimistic.

DCenters debriefing is up with insight plus all its linky goodness.

?

Rubitudinous!

Can I remind everyone excoriating Obamawful (dibs BDR!) over FISA that we who are excoriating Obamawful over FISA are despised by most and disdained by all but us'uns? We are the relative at family reunions who sparks involuntary oh-shit grimaces when first seen by grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, in-laws.

Even if Obamawful was one of us he couldn't run as one of us, so bitch and moan theatrically or bitch and moan stupidly, scream OMFG! Obamawful isn't campaigning to win our self-righteously strident hearts. If I was Obamawful, I would not only be running away from me, I'd be running with the amoral pliability of this fister.

Obamawful isn't one of us. He wants to be president.

   *

• World's Shittiest Human hates Obama, which is reason to vote Obama.
• Pastor Gerson likes Obama's religiosity, which is reason not to vote Obamawful.
• Tony Perkins hates Obama, which is reason to vote Obama.
• In case you forgot.
• Peggy Noonan and the McCain Stink Finger.
• Yeah, name this assclown pig-vpotus candidate.
• Henley on yesterday's Heller ruling.
• Richard Cohen gets Wolcotted.
• Big Dog, Little Tail.

UPDATES!

• HEY! Another GHS graduate reaches glory!
• The difference between rights and power.
• How neoliberalism kills.
• Elitism for dummies.
• Doctorow on America as White Whale.
• Nixon and Elvis.
• Contrarianism Today!
• Advertising links.
• Friday Hope Blogging.

   *

Quit the rubitude: mofos, I'm not giving up next Spring's England vacation with Planet and Earthgirl to donate the money and time to rebuilding a house in Appalachia washed out in an early April flood. I'll send $50 to Red Cross and get me to some Premiership games. Any of you soon-to-be ex-pats living in London in protest of Obamawful, I'll buy you a pint.

My unitary theory of self-interested rubity, mofos.

..

Obamawful's gonna get him a couple, too. Is there a question in your statement, ma'am?

Fleabus, Search for Damn?

True dat.

  *

• IOZ and Greenwald debate. Perrin grades. Oofdah!
• Sasha on the naderite piece o'shit.
• Brooksmacking.
• This, adding, imagine what Democrats will do if Obama is in office, they control both House and Senate, when the next terrorist attack hits.
• Another helping of el toro pie.
• Today's obamapostasy.
• Sadly, No? re-boots Max Boot. Max Boot?

.....

• Read Marx's Capital with David Harvey. Do.
• B.S. Johnson's book in a box, The Unfortunates? Quick, to the library catalog. (This also explain's GO'B's snorting disdain for Robert Coover's A Child Again (w/shuffling playing cards) when I showed it to him, yes, George?)
• I just finished Netherland, and feh, I agree much more with this than these. I read the detachment as a deliberate trope, but a well-executed detachment in the service of a meditation on detachment makes for an admirable box of detachment I can only appreciate with detachment.
• NEW! ALICE MUNRO NEW!
  
• The new Death Cab for Cutie? suckity sucksuck suckity sucks. Ba'al, does it suck.

  *

Let's address the vitally important:

..

Devo sues McDonalds over flower-pot copyright violation.

Are we not tools?

Sinister By Competence

Set aside Obamajeebus and obamajeebusism. Think about Obama as professional political candidate and Obamacorp as professional political organization. Inevitable bumps and gaffes aside, consider how remarkably and relentlessly efficient and smart and effective and competent Obama and Obamacorp are compared to McCain's or Clinton's or, of course, Bushco.

Watch: Republican operatives, their mouthpieces, anti-Obamers, will portray this efficiency and competence - this professionalism - as evidence of Obama's sinister and arrogant otherness.

So used to blundering asshatery and proudly patriotic assclownery are Americans, Obama's relentless competence does come off as otherworldly, mysterious and calculating, dangerously plotting, un-American.

Plus he's a nigger. His lack of shiftlessness is proof enough of his duplicity, but organizational skills, far-sighted strategy and execution of tactics, and success?

His refusal to bumble like McLame? It's more than his refusal to be tortured by the Viet Cong.

He must be a double-agent.

  *

• This? scares the bejeebus out of me. This too. They are not unrelated.
• Willful and proud stupidity.
• As soon as I saw Friedman's column today, I knew an Atrios response was mere minutes away, and I knew once he responded he couldn't resist posting this. As he shouldn't.
• Sinical, or, Carlen's legacy debated.
• Hillary as Cordelia, or, whose candidate's supporters love their messiah complex?
• Greenbelt United, or, I hope O'Malley's people are calling McFarland on an hourly basis.
• Spain prepares its excuse for choking tomorrow.
• Thirty worse uniforms ever?
• Five days late (me, not her), Friday Hope Blogging.

UPDATES

• Ladder of Fundamentalism, starring Martin Amis as "The Handbag."
• Obamareality. ExZACKly WELLSaid.
• Yes, true, but he'd be the nominee running as Tupac?
• Isaac makes a funny at Free State Politics. Hah. Hah.
• Should I bother anymore?
• A silly thing, Herbert.

   *

Henley suggests everyone start calling McCain "Worf."

Thoughts?

   *

In my head. Be in yours.

We Don't Have To Call It Love, Let's Call It Swimming

KEXP's DJ El Toro loves him some Martha and the Muffins:

My passion for Martha and the Muffins is no secret. The name of my weekly program, “In Between Sleep And Reason,” comes from the first track on Side 2 of their 1984 album Mystery Walk. Heck, the original invitation from our KEXP online content guru to blog here came after he peeped something I posted about a M+M-related solo project.

Martha and the Muffins, opening for Psychedelic Furs, Ontario Theater, 1982, a windowpaned top ten night of my life. Saw them the next night at 930 too, descending still from the night before. This is the Ice Age is still in the perma-rotation.

New Martha and the Muffins?

Imagine my delight then, when I read last week that Danseparc is finally being released on CD in early August. With bonus tracks! (And, better still, promise a brand new album due later this year.)

Lordy, that's got a 99% chance of jeebusdon't, which doesn't diminish Martha and the Muffins place in my heart's history (and this guy's).

Obamaccomplice

If true that in scheme of wheeling galaxies (or, to go infinitely smaller, in the lives of starving children in Zimbabwe) the difference between a donkey-whore and an elephant-whore is measured in the bulge of secret Bermudian bank accounts, there's always rooting for Obama because asshats like Richard Cohen disqualify him for the presidency because he hasn't been properly tortured by the VC.

Because McCain was tortured, The Villagers will grant him preemptive forgiveness:

At its broadest, the goal is to portray Obama as "them, not us." And if anyone does not remember the term "Black Muslim," with all its associations to '60s domestic terrorism (by the way, did I mention his connection to the Weather Underground, and the position attributed to him by John McCain that as president he would meet with terrorists?), it is unconsciously active in all of our minds now. We should expect a demonization of Michelle Obama that makes the Republican branding of Hillary Clinton in the 1990s pale. There will likely be a spate of YouTube ads and once-played television ads that will receive tremendous media coverage aimed at consciously raising questions about the ads while unconsciously reinforcing questions about Barack Obama....

We are poised for the nastiest, most racist presidential contest in modern American history. Why? Because John McCain can't win any other way.

Duh and yawn, but this:

Obama's running for president, his not having the decency to be tortured by the VC, against The Villagers' favorite torture victim is so gauche, elitist, presumptive, so outrageously offends the patriotic sensibilities of Georgetown's best cocktail circuits, that to ask John McCain not to scream AIIIEE! MUSLIM NIGGER! is to disrespect both John McCain's stay in the Hanoi Hilton and The Villagers own sense of high martini-duty.

Duh and yawn.

Rube that I am, I still cannot disabuse myself of the notion that, in the scheme of wheeling galaxies, kids in America who need Head Start and healthy breakfasts on the state's dime aren't benefited by a few pennies when Democrats are in power. If government is negotiating the terms by which the elite bribe the masses to peacefully allow the elite to exploit the masses, the Democrats still offer more pennies than the Republicans. On those few pennies I perch half my damn. Rube that I am.

The other half? Pigbrains exploding, mofos, pigbrains exploding.

   *

• A smackdown of the above sentiments.
• A smackdown of the above sentiments.
• A smackdown of the above sentiments.
• On nigger bitches.
• More Carlen you-tubes, and a good appreciation.
• How homosexuals ruined the kiss of peace.
• We were hiking this section of this trail last month.
• We were hiking this section of this trail last month.
• Greenbelt United, or: Marc Fisher, Shitsmearer.
• Steven Moore interview.

Updates later. Or not.

   *

Having said that, this is fucking creepy:

.

.......

.

The trouble with detonating pigbrains is it need tap into the same instincts that created pigbrains in the first place.

I, for one, am not a pinhead attracted to ur-fascist symbolism.

.

......

.

..

I'm off to shine my jackboots.

!