How I Confused My Literate Blogfriend. Or Not.

I have some. Literate blogfriends, I mean. Jim is way the fuck smarter than me, at least in his oeuvre and some nontrivial number of others, so I mostly just look at his pictures and skim over the stuff with the alphabets because it just gives me sads.

I discovered this thing today called the Flesch-Kinkaid Readability Index. It's pretty cool and utterly fucking meaningless. It calculates, in theory, the grade level at which you write, and the ease of readability of a given passage of text. I found it in some story about how congresscritters speak, on average, at a 10th-grade level, which was meant to be an insult. I shoved some work-related writing samples into this online calculator thing and discovered that I write at a 12th-grade level with a readability index of 41 (the lower the index, the more dense and incomprehensible the writing). A sample of recent Minions posts yielded scores of 10/50 (the Moog post), 12/47 (the hockey coaching post), 12/45 (the Mothers Day rant) and, stunningly, 10/54 (the Bam-Bam post, which earned me a cookie from Jim, and thanks for that, Jim). Jim's most recent prose post (other recent work has consisted of pictures and quotations), about Mittens' gay-hatin' garnered a 14/32. This makes Jim measurably smarter than me, so STFU, QED.

Yeah, it's a toy, and a pretty stupid one, at that. A Slate article I read about it called it "reductionist," and that's pretty spot on. Actually, I think it was a Weigel piece, so it probably couldn't decide whether it scored an infinity/infinity or a 6/smartass. But I had fun reductionizing myself.

So anyway, I lit into Himself, lovingly and a little bit, because the day had reached the point where I was no longer fit to do the things people pay me to do, and the peasants would've thought ill of me if I'd had the sedan chair brought around as early as 4:45. A little cruise led me to a brief mention of DCU midfielder Branko Boskovic, beloved by Himself because he's from one of those Balkan places, and Himself is also a 'Vic/'Vich, great-grandma from Buda and great-grandpa from Pest, or some such trifle, and he's all prejumidiced and suchlike. He claimed it's because he likes tens.

And I ranted, in the comments therein, about Tennism. You can poke over there for the rant, if you care, or not. Jim did, and I'm suspecting he regrets it, which is a shame because he's never done anything bad to me.

A ten is an center attacking midfielder, a playmaker who can also score. We're talking about footy here, by the way. Famous tens include Johan Cruyff, Zinedine Zidane, and others I'm too lazy to remember, but knock yourselves out in the comments. Less famous tens--who are pretty significant here because they significantly contributed to BFF's and my conversion to Tennism (by playing for DC United), would be Marco Etcheverry and Christian Gomez (first tour of duty, pre-obesity). Less famous tens who made us wish for Marco Etcheverry and Christian Gomez, mostly because they weren't tens or were sucky or washed-up tens, would be Marcello Gallardo, the Ginger Fucking Midget (who may well have been shorter than Gallardo, who was nicknamed El Muneco--The Doll), Freddy Adu, Matias Donnet, Rod Dyachenko, Justin Mapp, Justin Moose, Santino Quaranta, Jamil Walker, Rodney Wallace, and Christian Gomez II (The Fattening). Some of those guys had value as footy players, but they all sure sucked balls as center attacking midfielders.

We really, really want Branko to be a ten. That's because he could be, although he prefers to play out left, because his right foot sucks every bit as much as the noodle dangling from the end of the late and lamented Marc Burch's right leg. And even though he's slower than Databoy trying to eat asparagus, and not a whole lot more enthusiastic about the team's preferred pace (to Branko's credit, he's shown more energy in the last two games, which he has started). It's also because we really like Dwayne DeRosario, who is probably more of a natural ten, and Hamdi Salihi, who is also probably something of a natural ten, up top.

Of course, in BFF's case, he also wants Branko to be a ten because of the fucking Balkan connection. But that's neither here nor there.

By the way, the other half of his ancestry is German, so he's not all bad. And he can't help that wrong side of Pennsylvania thing, so it's unfair to mock him for it, even though it is pretty tragifunny.

A point, a point, there was a point...right, how I confused Jim. I didn't. That was a lie. He pretended to be confused, and placed his cultural origins in...uhm...well, exactly the same generational spot as me and BFF, which really isn't very surprising at all, now, is it?

But the whole thing left me troubled and vaguely confused, and not because of Jim, because of the demons in my own shadows. Leaving only one place to turn:

These bunnies stripped Mary Ann and left her in the creek.

This bunny is enjoying itself just a little too much.

You can't fool me. This bunny is a motherfucking space alien.

 

These bunnies are creeping me the fuck out, but I'm guessing Sasha digs them.

Okay, I was wrong. These bunnies are creeping me the fuck out.

 Fucking rubes. You fall for the bunny trick every fucking time.
 

A Promised Discourse on Walmart Derangement Syndrome

So it all started over at BFF's place, my godzillan steps into a likely unpopular speculation that makes even me a tad fluttery as I try to articulate it. He linked to a YFWP story about a Walmart going up on Rockville Pike, on the heels of another over in Aspen Hill, the second and third MoCo Walmart-branded legacies of Old Dead Sam (there's a Sam's Club in Gophershole, and maybe another over in Wee-Tone, or maybe it's the other big club box--beats the willies out of me).

I don't give a flying fuck about Walmart any more than I do about any other ginormous retailer. Sasha weeps of a tragedy in that the proposed Wallyworld outlet will glass over a shithole shopping center that happens to contain her favorite bagel joint. Fuck that, it can move across the street to the abandoned former Hooters.

Comments hilarity ensued, all in good fun, and it took blogquaintance Richard (who is, I posit, as literary and thoughtful as I am snarky and reductionist--and if you think I'm overdrawing my credit for snarky and reductionist, then please do me the favor of extending him my overdraft and then some for literary and thoughtful) to crystalize my point; from the perspective of the loosely affiliated community over at BFF's place, what's the difference between Target and Wallyworld? Richard--like Ilse--frequents Target. I surmise that this is, in part, because Richard has a youngish child. From a complicity perspective, Target is a lesser evil for those of us who have to cover little growing humans in textiles--and I think we can all admit that this level of complicity is probably preferable to alternatives like, say, the Division of Child Welfare. I suspect that many of us will admit that it's even preferable to draping our wee folk in homespun.

The point extends, as it did in BFF's comments; unless you're living a life completely withdrawn from our consumerist culture--including your diet--you're not free of complicity in this nightmare. I suspect few of us in that circle are so completely withdrawn. I know Sasha isn't--one of her plaints about the proposed WallyWorld is that it'll increase traffic on her secret back escape hatch into...a nearby Target.

I'm not trying to throw unreasonable stones here. At rock bottom, "I fucking hate Walmart" is good enough, isn't it? I myself dislike asparagus and Exxon and the Dallas Cowboys while buying into all manner of related corporatey goodness. But let's get real. On the merits, Walmart is no particularly worse than any other big box (I'll concede its hostility to unions, though I'll ask if Target, since we seem to have defaulted to them as the comparison, is a UFCW bastion).

The YFWP story points up some proposed legislation by my local county's governing body:

But after the Aspen Hill announcement, five County Council members sponsored a bill that would require some big-box retail stores to sign, or make a good-faith effort to complete, a public-benefits contract with community groups. After its introduction last Tuesday, the legislation drew ire from developers, big retailers and chambers of commerce.

The bill, which has not been passed, would affect both Wal-Marts because they would be more than 75,000 square feet.

Well. I wonder what the fuck that means. Oh, look:

"If these big box retailers want to move in, they have to sign a binding agreement with the community, and the community has a major say in what that store looks like," [Council President] Ervin said.

Community input could include whether employees are hired from within the county and whether the business uses green technology.

So...ginormous superstores already in place are exempt? Wow. Cuz, uhm, there are a boatload of big boxes round hereabouts that easily exceed that 75,000-foot mark. Ervin, a notorious sack of crap, also seems to be using the issue to drive a wedge between two sizeable unions. One of them is a UFCW local. The other is a UFCW local consisting of county government employees--a constituency that Ervin, as noted in my linked post, despises, reviles, and shits on at every opportunity. I sort of think the proposal is reflexive obstruction. On the other hand, I'm not all that sure how much it matters--I reckon Wallyworld is probably capable of conjuring up enough of some shitstorm of corporate responsibility to outsmart the likes of Valerie Ervin.

Oh, right, the point: Sasha supports this legislation. I'll pass on levying (in detail) the guilt by association, at least here.

A final note: No word yet on what poor Hans Riemer thinks of this. But maybe he'll see his name in Google reader (the point, in fact, of this paragraph), blanch when he sees my blog's name next to it, and let us know. That is, if he thinks anything shareable yet (he's a clever lad, our Hans, and one of my favorite things about him is that he typically shuts the fuck up a whole lot and lets other councilmembers duke it out in the pages of the Gazette). Full disclosure: I once ordered a glass of water for Hans at lunch when he was off taking a phone call. I'm told that doesn't mean I have to register as a lobbyist.

O Frabjous Day! Callooh! Callay!

Curt Onalfo fired.

I'm not the sort of person who takes glee in the suffering of others.¹ I'm sure that Curt Onalfo is a very nice man who loves his family, and whose family loves him. He certainly deserves to be paid the balance of his contract, since he shouldn't have been hired in the first place. But the man is a mediocre-to-bad professional soccer coach, and a horrible fit for my club.

Since I have some common sense, I'm feeling a little tremulous about Benny becoming interim coach. The man is, after all, someone I consider to be a living saint. And he's likely immersing himself in a giant bucket of dysenteric shit. Onalfo didn't suck in a vacuum; DCU's front office set him up to fail, though I will  continue to argue that he could not be set up to succeed, because he is, at best, inept.

I will continue to have serious concerns about Benny's ability to break free of our club's traditional system, which should've died with Saint Piotr Nowak. After all, Benny was raised in it. And there's simply no way that he can shake things up too dramatically at this point in the season--even a wasted hopeless turd of a season like this one. Perhaps he can get us away from the bunkering mentality; that's my only measure of success for him this season, and I hope that management sees it the same way. In my view, if the club can score two goals a game for the rest of the season, it'll be a huge success, even if they lose every one of those games. This team cannot succeed until it restores an attack-oriented outlook. It is a vicious myth that it lacks the horses to do that.

I also suspect that Benny will have the brains to realize that the MLS season is tanked, so a US Open Cup might be a pretty cool thing to show for it all. Even a US Open Cup final would be a pretty cool thing to show for it all, even if they lose in Seattle at 1 PM on a weekday in a half-filled stadium (which is all they ever get in Seattle).

Okay, I take that back. There is no circumstance in which losing to the fucking Retard Baristas is cool at all, ever.²

But let not my caution detract from the joy that is this day. On August 14, I'll be truly, unreservedly happy to go to RFK for the first time in almost three years. Yea, though I walk through the Valley of Beer Showers that is Section 232, I shall fear no Phunions (IP h/t) or Gals or TDFTs or CJ Browns or RedScum or even Sartorially Challenged Retard Baristas, for Benny Art With Me.

Vamos United.

¹This is a gods-damned lie.
²And a great big first-ever Minions shoutout to one of my two dear Seattle pals, Eric the Christkiller, formerly known as the Ugliest Broad in the World, for reasons that will herein forever remain shrouded (get it?) in mystery.

Links Update: BFF (who rightly and karmariffically accuses me of Ba'al-taunting); Fullback (with whom I do not entirely agree, but not violently, and his main point is on target); and D (with whom I like to disagree just on principle, but can't really fault here).

There's a lot of reasonableness out there; the general tenor seems to be that no one is willing to go so far as to say that Onalfo can coach, but everyone wants to dodge that issue in favor of immolating Kasper and Payne. I'm down with the latter, but let's call a thing the thing that it is; Onalfo wasn't anyone's first choice, and he wasn't the right hire, because he's a piss-poor soccer coach.  He also certainly played his role in the player personnel debacle; is anyone going to deny that we now own Kurt Fucking Morsink and Adam Fucking Cristman for any reason other than that Onalfo thought they were a good idea? No. No, they're not.

Star Wars IV: A New Hope

Look, I can't be having with all this hope and change crap. Of course, I am overjoyed that, at noon, our 8-year national nightmare is no more. This is, in fact, the day we've been waiting for. But you people? You're taking a big dump on my city. Did I particularly want to head into town today to see John the Daftist and other relations? Well, yeah, it would've been nice, actually. They're all kinda crunchy and stuff, for moneyed elitists, and they've descended like flies on an Aunt Jemima-covered superhero.

The two basic inaugural themes never change. I well remember an Inauguration Eve 16 years ago*, similarly rife with...uhm...hope and change. In fact, I seem to recall another imminent inaugurant, from...uhm...a town called...uhm...Hope.

The other theme, of course, is Fuck You, Peasants, Mind If We Take A Dump In Your Living Room For Four To Eight Years?

Are we glad Barry's going to be Preznit in a little over 2 hours?** Duh. Can y'all leave my town and let the man get down to making splendiferiously good and vomitoriously bad decisions? Yes. In the approximate words of another bringer of hope and change: Yes, you can. We have a government to continue to fuck up, just like we always have, regardless of leadership ideology, and your portapotties are crapping up our park.

*There's a story here, involving alcohol, hundreds of hookers in fur coats lining the streets of Northwest DC, preznitential motorcades, more alcohol, and...uhm...alcohol, although I think there was some food in there, too. So I won't bother telling it.

**Barry called me, and told me that he doesn't mind if I call him "Barry." He also told me that it was tough shit that I think there's a 72-percent chance that the new Ubertsar of the federal agency whose budget pays for my family to eat and be warm and have fast Intertubes will turn out to be a dipshit. But that's okay. Barry's honest** with me, and I'm honest with him.

***For a given value of "honest."

Why Elizabeth Hasselbeck Shouldn't Think

Courtesy of Sadly, No!

Yes, she really compared the issue of the origin of the universe to the design of upscale handbags. This is what's wrong with the Seahawks this season; having to deal with this ninny at family gatherings has actually made Matt Hasselbeck stupider.

Maryland Terrapins Mens Basketball, 2007-2008

Note how the turtle assumes the inferior position in the food chain here, as in life.

Go Terpchix.

Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!

My greatest cultural accomplishment ever. Scroll down to the letters.

Take THAT, published author friend!

Things to Tell You

I am insanely busy right now, hence the radio silence.

The Supreme Court is five-ninths of a pack of flaming assholes. Anthony Kennedy is the worst of the lot. While Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas can't help themselves in the face of their deeply ingrained hypocrisy, Kennedy knows better. Oh yes he does.

The Democrats in the Senate who allowed Sam Alito to be confirmed should be impeached, disbarred, shunned, and discommodated. And it was obvious at the time of his confirmation that this was the case. For shame. Today's decision on voluntary school desegregation is an affirmation that a small band of racist scum are trying to impose their disease on the rest of us. I'd like to say that the Court is the best evidence of why the President has done incalculable damage to this country. But there's too much evidence for me to make that statement.

Who says summer's not for futbol? USMNT wins the Gold Cup, and USMNT Lite is going to get treated like cows in a slaughterhouse later this eve against the evil Argentines. Meanwhile, DC United needs to take tonight and recover from its failure, last Saturday, to remember what it's supposed to do on the pitch.

New link to your right: Who Ate All the Pies? is a lovely blog on the world futbol scene. Take a look. Or not. More links--futbol and politics--will come when I have time, because I really need to update my navigation tool.

I'll be back.