BLCKDGRD tag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-510134 2009-12-04T13:33:34-05:00 Knez of Egoslavia TypePad England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b89669e2012876113183970c 2009-12-04T13:33:34-05:00 2009-12-04T19:58:21-05:00 I wanted England and an easy draw and SHAZAM! A South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France B Argentina, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece C England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia D Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana E Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon F Italy, Paraguay, New... BDR

I wanted England and an easy draw and SHAZAM!

A

South Africa, Mexico, Uruguay, France

B

Argentina, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece

C

England, USA, Algeria, Slovenia

D

Germany, Australia, Serbia, Ghana

E

Netherlands, Denmark, Japan, Cameroon

F

Italy, Paraguay, New Zealand, Slovakia

G

Brazil, North Korea, Ivory Coast, Portugal

H

Spain, Honduras, Switzerland, Chile

G is Group of Death. USMNT very very lucky to draw the weakest of African teams in Pot C, very very lucky to draw one of the weakest European teams in Pot D.

Having said that, the USMNT will lose in an ugly 1-0 game to England, tie Algeria in an ugly, boring 0-0 game, get smoked by Slovenia 4-0, leave tied for 29th. Fire Bob Bradley. I wanted an easy draw so we can be rid of Bradley once and for all.

Fuck Mexico, and fuck fucking France, rewarded for cheating with easiest group. England, Spain, and Italy got silly-easy draws, Germany and Netherlands easy draws. Argentina a deceptively tough draw, especially if Maradona is still coach. And just fuck Mexico. And fuck fucking France.

UPDATE! I think it's a tougher group for Netherlands than I did at first blush.

Guardians' odds post-draw: 5-1 Spain, 11-2 Brazil, 6-1 England, 10-1 Argentina, 13-1 Italy, 14-1 Germany, 15-1 Holland, 16-1 France, 29-1 Ivory Coast, 35-1 Portugal, 59-1 Chile, 79-1 Ghana, Paraguay, 95-1 USA, 100-1 bar.

More, and links, later. Or not.

 http://bdr.typepad.com/blckdgrd/2009/12/091204.html At Closing Time, We Say Our Good-byes, and I Kiss Loretta, Just a Little Peck, Because I Know She Is Married to a Chicken, and I Respect That tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b89669e2012875ffe83e970c 2009-12-03T06:55:16-05:00 2009-12-03T22:34:26-05:00 I never expected Obama to turn decisively Left because he was progressive at heart and believed progressive ideas in the country's best interest. I expected him to turn decisively Left because it was in his political interest. Or turn decisively... BDR
Bananas

I never expected Obama to turn decisively Left because he was progressive at heart and believed progressive ideas in the country's best interest. I expected him to turn decisively Left because it was in his political interest.

Or turn decisively Right. One or the other.

This dumb motherfucker believes his own bullshit, thinks bipartisanship entails alienating everyone equally. In a moment of schismatic national anxiety, he thinks splitting differences wisdom, half-measures strength? We want to be lead, you dumb motherfucker.

I'm not a roob because I thought Obama a progressive, I'm a roob because I thought Obama a smart, canny, gamesplayer.

I never imagined he'd deliberately brand himself a pussy.

He's a cow the size of a schnauzer. My apologies.

Bray

Angry Cow

  • Agitprop is shutting down. This was the second group blog I contributed to. I don't miss the first (which is still densely humorless and humorously dense), and I'll not much miss the second because we'd all pretty much stopped contributing to concentrate what time and effort each had to their respective personal blogs. Bookmark Pime (from whom I found that Maury photo from last post) and Stump Lane, yo.
  • Quick Study has shuttered too.
  • UPDATE! No, it's not. And, um, it's because Proyect has picked another fight.
  • And it looks like Ellis is (at the very least) on hiatus.
  • I curse a lot. I'm probably not going to stop.
Angry Cow
Sycamore
  • Earthgirl grew up just up a two minute walk from Sycamore Store.
  • Greivis Future.

Angry Cow

Seidel
Bray

WAYLON'S WOMAN

James Tate

    Loretta had a rooster that was so fierce
nobody could visit her anymore. Loretta loved
that rooster, and the rooster loved Loretta,
thought she was his wife. So the only time
we got to see Loretta was when she came to town.
We'd meet her at Mike's Westview Cafe and drink
beer with her all night. The rooster's name
was Waylon, and she'd talk about Waylon all
night, and if you didn't know better you'd think
she was talking about her husband. Well, I knew
better, and I still thought she was talking about
her husband. "Waylon wasn't feeling very good
this morning.""Waylon was real sweet to me
last night.""Waylon is so handsome, sometimes
I just can't take me eyes off him." She's still
fun to be with, and she seems completely normal
to me. At closing time, we say our good-byes,
and I kiss Loretta, just a little peck, because
I know she is married to a chicken, and I respect
that. Waylon has made her happy in ways I never
could. The starry sky, the police hiding in the
bushes, God, it's good to be alive, I think, and
pee behind my car in the darkness of my own private
darkness.

Bray

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

 http://bdr.typepad.com/blckdgrd/2009/12/091203.html Fireless and Vacant as Any Hat tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b89669e20120a6effb78970b 2009-12-01T12:24:30-05:00 2009-12-02T10:14:33-05:00 Updates below. Perrin writes: I think Obama has already cemented his legacy, and those who believe he'll dramatically shift direction and do "what's in his heart" are beyond help at this point. Those who grumble in liblog threads about ditching... BDR

Neg2
Updates below.

Perrin writes: I think Obama has already cemented his legacy, and those who believe he'll dramatically shift direction and do "what's in his heart" are beyond help at this point. Those who grumble in liblog threads about ditching Obama and the Dems in 2012 are also blowing steam, for the system is self-correcting, and once the vampirish Repub candidates start baring their fangs, stray libs will be frightened back into the fold, hoping that the next four years will somehow be different.

True that. I'm not betting against that being me, though I'm gonna try to lose that bet.

Sullivan says what I've been saying forever: If (Obama) ramps up Afghanistan and delays Iraq withdrawal, he will lose his base. If he does the full metal neocon as he is being urged to, he should not be deluded in believing the GOP will in any way support him. They will oppose him every step of every initiative. They will call him incompetent if Afghanistan deteriorates, they will call him a terrorist-lover if he withdraws, they will call him a traitor if he does not do everything they want, and they will eventually turn on him and demand withdrawal, just as they did in the Balkans with Clinton. Obama's middle way, I fear, is deeper and deeper into a trap, and the abandonment of a historic opportunity to get out.

True that. I've said over and over Obama could roast Muslims alive on a spit, gouging out their livers with a poker while screaming Fuck You, Allah, and pigs will call him pussy.

Zizek at Birkbeck College. Consider this: Today's lecture, dramatically entitled 'Apocalypse Today' (a promise or a threat, I wonder), kicks off with Zizek identifying the three modern horsemen of the apocalypse: the techno-digital, the New Age, and the Christian fundamentalist, of which the last of the three is both the most dangerous, the most ridiculous, and also the closest to any kind of desirable emancipatory politics.

True that. If you're American power, who do you fear more, Beckian cranks and Christers or fat and complicit fucks like me? The strategy is to make me more afraid of Beckian cranks and Christers than I am disgusted with the oligarchy, that I hold my nose and tolerate them rather than hold my nose and work with the cranks and Christers to challenge the status quo.

Polny pizdets. To challenge the oligarchy's power, there's more likelihood for success if America's Leftists work with America's christiest, crackerist Right than waiting for help from the Democrats (and more likelihood for success if America's christiest, crackerist Right work with the looniest, most marxist Left than wait for help from the Republicans)?

Maury

True that. I voted for X-Boxes for Giftmas and instead got shittier reality shows for the Spring season, bitches! I can get the same shittier reality shows without voting, yo.

Neg

  • UPDATE! A deadly liar and manipulator.
  • UPDATE! Dead Parrot.
  • A reasoned response to the question, What's Gone Wrong w/Obama? Fuck reasoned responses: what's gone wrong is he had his chance brand himself as new - regardless of whether or not he actually wanted to enact new - and he chose to brand himself old.
  • UPDATE! True this: The fact that Obama is following in Bush’s footsteps – talking to an audience of captive individuals who would be ruined for life by a single catcall – is a sign of how archaic hope for change and reform has become.
  • UPDATE!
Obama-facebook
Kirkphallus

Neg

Pappys

This past Sunday night we had dinner with Elric's parents at that restaurant in Baithersgurgle, a restaurant that iterations and years ago was once Pappy's Pizza where, during a summer break in 1978(?) between his freshman and sophomore years(?) at Kenyon, someone exceptionally dear to me (and familiar to regulars), to the everlasting and glorious head-exploding of his father, John the Daftist, while working in the kitchen fell in love with a waitress and dropped out of school and has had a full and (give or take two ex-wives and a Sinister Bitch of Doom) happy life. xoxo.

Pappys2

Neg

Neg

THE DRUNK IN THE FURNACE

W.S. Merwin

                For a good decade
The furnace stood in the naked gully, fireless
And vacant as any hat. Then when it was
No more to them than a hulking black fossil
To erode unnoticed with the rest of the junk-hill
By the poisonous creek, and rapidly to be added
                To their ignorance

                The were afterwards astonished
To confirm, one morning, a twist of smoke like a pale
Resurrection, staggering out of it chewed hole,
And to remark then other tokens that someone,
Cosily bolted behind the eye-holed iron
Door of the drafty burner, had there established
                His bad castle.

                Where he gets his spirits
It's a mystery. But the stuff keeps him musical:
Hammer-and-anvilling with poker and bottle
To his jugged bellowings, till the last groaning clang
As he collapses onto the rioting
Springs of a litter of car-seats ranged on the grates,
                To sleep like an iron pig.

                In their tar-paper church
On a text about stoke-holes that are sated never
Their Reverend lingers. They nod and hate trespassers.
When the furnace wakes, though, all afternnon
Their witless offspring flock like piped rats to its siren
Crescendo, and agape on the crumbling ridge
                Stand in a row and learn.

Neg 

Another one of dozens of my five favorite songs ever:

 http://bdr.typepad.com/blckdgrd/2009/12/091201.html So Much for More Experience. What Can Grow Has Grown; What's Small Now Stays Small. No Portion Waits for Those Who Deserve More. tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b89669e20120a6e1cd24970b 2009-11-29T08:24:57-05:00 2009-11-30T13:48:36-05:00 The last bleggalgaze of this, the bleggalgazeworthiest week of the year: I caught myself writing paragraphs in notebook what I usually say in sentences. I caught myself, after successive days of not-blegging but reading, not just fiction and poetry, reading... BDR

Flbssept

The last bleggalgaze of this, the bleggalgazeworthiest week of the year:

I caught myself writing paragraphs in notebook what I usually say in sentences. I caught myself, after successive days of not-blegging but reading, not just fiction and poetry, reading theory and mirrormirror theory and mirrormirrormirror theory, and then I caught myself writing lectures about theory, and, truly and thusly, fuck that.

So, in a sentence: Humans in general (and Americans in particular) will always be divided between those believing Freedom need be followed with a to and those believing Freedom need be followed with a from, and what guarantees the eternal clusterfuck is that those who worship the to when it comes to economics worship the from when it comes to personal liberties, and visa versa.

I link to others teasing out the duh because they want to tease out the duh. I've done my academic poking around in duh's stomach and intestines.* Once it was fun, up through grad school, it's.... been losing enjoyment since I quit that particular game. I enjoy reading it now - the reason I link to it - but the rigor of writing it is no fun now even if I had the time and was in shape: it's a youngsters' game. Besides, I think I've earned the right to encrypt my deciphered duh as I please, and you ping back or don't.

Which makes me a pussy when I get pissy people chose not to ping back. Proving, like every blogger, like you and you and you - like anyone who pushes a submit button in any format or media - I think there's something I know I think it vital you know, though I don't pity you for not reading me, I pity me for your not reading me. Just like you and you and you do.

*I was going to use Ozzy Froats in the context of this post, but after revisions it didn't fit. Still, a pint of beer to the first of you who, sans google, names that allusion.

Construction 007

UPDATE! This seems appropriate today:

Pink-flamingosl
  • It does occur to me - and you too, yes? - that if Obama did do want what we want him to (and he doesn't, yo), to succeed he'd have to increase more of the presidential power accumulated under Bush we bitch he hasn't ceded yet.
  • It's almost as if he doesn't want to win reelection. Still, consider this sentence from that Fucking Washington Post article: The revised plan, which faces a war-weary and increasingly skeptical American public, is expected to call for 30,000-35,000 new troops in a phased deployment over the next 12 to 18 months. Can you imagine that sentence being written if John McCain was president?
  • Greenwald's Daily Duh. Jeebus, it's easy to see why professional Republicans hold professional Democrats in such contempt.
  • On the silliness of The Nation.
  • Milking every anti-Obama talking point as if the udders were full of benedictine.
  • Take a look at this map about % of people receiving food stamps and draw your own conclusions about the South.
  • Consider that some South Carolina crackers consider Lindsey Graham a liberal.
  • Your Fucking Washington Post reminds you that christers are moral idiots regardless the hue of the christer.
  • James and Marisacat on bleg-hiatus. Lot of that going around.
  • Contracts versus Tenure: Heh!
  • A decision I'll be making in the next six months.
  • This will seem mean, and I've don't know the parents and don't know if the name has familial significance, and maybe they did it on purpose, and perhaps no one younger that 45 gets the allusion, but people named their new daughter Hannah Barbara?
Yogibear1

  • I don't think this is the Druid Hill Park Cemetery behind and to the right and out-of-bounds of Holes One and Two at the disc golf course, but it might be.
  • Possible pig to challenge O'Malley looks like a pig.
  • My future hell.
  • Humpback endangered! Oh, and please enjoy this paragraph, MOCO property-tax payers: Three months after Montgomery County finished its $450,000 restoration of the East Deer Park Bridge over railroad tracks between Gaithersburg and Washington Grove, the CSX Corporation is mulling whether to raise or raze the historic structure to make room for double-decker freight cars. Heh.
Humpbackz062409_rgbb
  • I like to imagine Randy Hardy is driving that red van.
  • Fentyville!
  • Crisis in Bethesda! "This will take money out of taxpayers' hands and turn it into a path that leads to nowhere," said Tiffany Audas, whose property abuts the proposed project. "This is going to bump right up to our fence." Hmmm. I wonder which of the two is Tiffany's true concern.
  • Clarksburg!
  • Clusterfuck!
Humpbackz062409_rgbb

Construction 007

CHARITY

Carl Dennis

Time to believe that the thin disguise
On the face of the blessing in disguise
Will never be pulled off,

That the truth that's still in hiding
Will stay there, far in the dark.
All that can be revealed is revealed.

All that can be learned from the burning house
Was learned the first time, when the smoke
Blackened the walls in every room.

So much for more experience. What can grow
Has grown; what's small now stays small.
No portion waits for those who deserve more.

The flowers in the yard of the blind and deaf girl
Will never smell any sweeter to her
Than they smell now to any of her visitors.

The music she imagines will never compare to ours.
Her best day will brighten with no joy
That hasn't brightened our day more.

Time to admit that her steady cheer
Is the burden she assumes to keep us here
Touching her fingers for a while.

Construction 007 

New Paul Weller?

 http://bdr.typepad.com/blckdgrd/2009/11/091129.html You Might Have Been a Vowel on a Typewriter or a Number on a Telephone Dial or a Consonant in Books. You Could Have Been a Dot on a Die in a Child's Monopoly Set tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d83451b89669e20120a6cf00f7970b 2009-11-25T07:48:56-05:00 2009-11-26T10:13:02-05:00 Julius Finsberg, on his death bed, tells his godson Ben Flesh: It's incredible really. Amazing. Who could believe it? You weren't aborted, you didn't end up in a scum bag. You survived the infant mortality stuff. You made it past... BDR

Keyboard 

Julius Finsberg, on his death bed, tells his godson Ben Flesh:

It's incredible really. Amazing. Who could believe it? You weren't aborted, you didn't end up in a scum bag. You survived the infant mortality stuff. You made it past measles, polio, mumps. You outwitted whooping cough, typhoid, VD. God bless you, boy, you're a testament to the impossible! And not just that, but you aren't broken or damaged, there are no birth defects; you've your full complement of fingers, your fair share of toes. You're literate, you do sums. The Dean's List at Wharton. I know, I know. And even without parents you've got clothes, shelter, sex, what to eat - you know, the drives , the hydramatics of being, four on the floor and more where that came from. Yes, and you get the point of jokes and have a favorite movie and maybe even the room where you stay is done up in your favorite color. My God, lad, you're a fucking celebration...

Ben, everything there is is against your being here! Think of get-togethers, family stuff, golden anniversaries in rented halls, fire regulation celebrated more in the breach than the observance, the baked Alaska up in flames, everybody wiped out - all the cousins in from coasts, wiped out. Rare, yes - who says not - certainly rare, but it could happen, has happened. And once is enough if you've been invited. All the people picked off by plagues and folks eaten by earthquakes and drowned in the tidal waves, all the people already dead that you might have been or who might have begat the girl who married the guy who fathered the fellow who might have been your ancestor - all the showers of sperm that dried on his Kleenex or spilled on his sheets or fell on the ground or dirtied his hands when he jerked off or came in his p.j.'s or no, maybe he was actually screwing and the spermatozoon had your number written on it and it was lost at sea because that's what happens, you see - there's low motility and torn tails - that's what happens to all but a handful out of all the googols and gallons of come, more sperm finally than even the grains of sand I was talking about, more even than the degrees. Well - am I making the picture for you? Am I connecting the dots? Ben, Ben, Nick the Greek wouldn't lay a fart against a trillion bucks that you'd ever make it to this planet!

- Stanley Elkin, The Franchiser.

UPDATE! My favorite paragraph ever.

Fleaneg

Signone 

Got home Monday night and saw this sign in my front yard, got an email Tuesday morning from a good friend re: bleggalgazing, thus this, a post I will spend more time on and invest more mmwah in than any other post since the last and until the next, deliberately posted for the two slowest bleg days of the year.

This bleg is where I spend whatever creative mmwah I have in the time I have to mmwah. There's a reason I want this bleg to be different than the blegs I read, not to be better but different. I'll not deny I'm competitive, that I want to be recognized as smart by people I think are smart - and I am, thank you - and I'll not deny there are bleggers who (and this isn't aimed at anyone who'd be reading this) are almost as smart as they think they are, who appropriate others' work and call it their own and....

Meh. It's Thanksgiving, the one civic holiday I genuinely like (that whole celebration of the successful genocide of the aboriginal population of North America aside), so, Kind.

I could be the Number Two stenciled on a pencil, says Julius Finsberg. I'm lucky to be a blegging Ben Flesh.

Signtwo

Fleaneg
Siren

UPDATE! Meet Julia.

Julia

Fleaneg

  • One can't have lived in DC area for forty-five years and not note the passing of Abe Pollin. I find the NBA unwatchable and don't give a sliver of fuck about the hockey team (which he sold x-years ago), but for his part in revitalizing downtown, he did good. See Sasha for more. And lordy, the concerts at this place:
Usairarena

Fleaneg

Fleaneg 

FROM THE MANIFESTO OF THE SELFISH

Stephen Dunn

Because altruists are the least sexy
    people on earth, unable
to say "I Want" without embarrassment,

we need to take from them everything
    they give,
then ask for more,

this is how to excite them, and because
    it's exciting
to see them the least bit excited

once again we'll be doing something
    for ourselves,
who have no problem taking pleasure,

always desirous and so pleased to be
    pleased, we who above all
can be trusted to keep the balance.

Fleaneg

 http://bdr.typepad.com/blckdgrd/2009/11/091125.html