March of Time

It's my older kid's 21st birthday today. And my father-in-law's 77th birthday. Someone who is not mathematically inclined (which is fine) will not point out (which is fine) this morning that today is the beginning of the last 47 days of our lives when neither of us is 60 fucking years old. That we got here is remarkable, as serendipitous as (if more complex than) the random and joyful afternoon farm market meeting he referenced last week; the number of opportunities we've dodged, together and separately, to not get here, simply staggering. And those spread over 50 fucking years, almost 85 percent of our fucking lives. Pretty fucking lucky to be able to say that about anyone, ever. Go in peace.

So It's Like This

I've developed a serious inability to STFU over on the Twitters. Noncoincidentally, I've developed a serious inability to keep from looking at the Twitters.

I used to not be able to STFU here, but that was a while ago, and while the starch had long since  started to fade from my shorts, Sasha's death in April 2016 really just completely sapped my desire to express myself at any length beyond maybe four characters. The rest of 2016 did not improve my aura.

I don't care about the same things I used to. I care about things I used to not care about. That's nature, right? The point here is that I have been feeling the urge to write. An old friend correctly pointed out a few months ago, after a 15- or 20-tweet thread ("...manifesto, if you will...") about Ba'al knows what, that I was being sort of a douche there. Since this friend is an actually sometimes nice person, that sorta hit home. Other friends have correctly reinforced that sentiment a time or three since. My answer is to try to keep the manifestos, if you will, over here. The bad news? Uhm, I'm gonna have to tweet about my blog posts. Sunrise, sunset.

The news: I remain unemployed, but it's looking up and I might soon be slinging packages late at night for a certain large conglomerate, part-time and seasonal. There are other relatively positive-looking developments, too, but that's all still jinxable. Ilse is stable and busy. Databoy works, as he has for a while, at the health-nut grocery outlet of said large conglomerate, slinging fish at hippies. Bam, as always, abides.

I will write soon about a couple of topics that have been nagging at me. You may or may not care. That's cool. Hasta WTFever.

News

1. I cleaned up. There was stuff in the links that was old, moribund, dramatically changed, and in one sad case, deceased. Thanks to BFF for the inspiration to get around to doing something that's needed doing for a very long time.

2. I am unemployed. Low-effort Kickstarter ideas welcome (turns out "Bologna sandwich" was already taken).

3. Yes. Jill Stein is a fucking dipshit who has no business running for office. I don't care whether she's pandering to anti-vaxxers or actually is one. And yes, it is, in fact, one or the other. Don't fucking embarrass yourself by arguing otherwise--you got nothing. No one is putting words in her mouth or on her Twitter feed (or deleting them from her Twitter feed) for her.

4. Databoy makes his way to the University of Turtles very, very soon. I won't claim success yet, because the scoreboard's not showing zeroes. But it's close.

5. I forget what eight was for.

Happy Fucking Birthday To Me

Thanks, as always, to my lifelong friend and foil and intellectual trampoline and I don't know whatthefuck else.

This is a weird one, to be sure, with Databoy turning 18 today as well, and off to college (the right college, thankyouverymuch) in six weeks, and my own unemployment looming. It has been one seriously fucked up year:

-The famous dead (Bowie, Rickman, Prince).
-The infamous dead; Sasha's wretched death is sometimes just not there, and sometimes, when I reach for the phone to tell her a story made just for her, when I watch a beloved sportsball team faceplant endearingly, when the cluster that just won't stop clusters fuckingly--it was second nature to share the contents of my brain with her, to earn that guffaw, to process the undigestable.
-The loss of a thing I loved beyond measure (my work family), and of a job I sucked myself dry to earn (when we calculated the risk of my professional move back in December, we ignored extremes of probability in our analysis: probability rewarded us with a set of extremes that we could not have imagined) .
-The turmoil of externality, the march of shit changing just because shit changes.

And it's only July. There are touchstone years in our lives, years we look back on and say, "Good riddance to that fucking turd of a year." This is one of mine, and it's not over.

But I'm out on the stroll, and a john will pull up soon. Bam endures, now enduring at 6'2" tall and 190 pounds of giggle and flap. Ilse rocks. Databoy will get the fuck out of my house, and he won't have to live in an appliance box. It's not all hopeless bleak despair, and it's important to say that, to stare down the void and flip it off before walking away, to click my heels and will it gone, not caring that I'm a big doofus in red slippers.

Thanks and love to you all.

Yeah, That

Thanks to BFF for the shout and the tunes.

Every day is a holiday at Minions, because, y'know, fuck you it's all about you. And you deserve a break today.

This year: Nimoy dead. Pratchett dead. Planet graduated. Databoy seventeen, Bam-Bam fifteen. Purple all growed up and become an engineer. Wait, did I say Planet fucking graduated?

Jeebus. Probably a good day to get hammered and eat a shitload of red meat, since Zombie's leaving his alone. Sadly, my corporate overlords--myself included, since I'm one of them--demand more today, so we'll just get to a very mild buzz sometime much later on in the day.

But oh yes. There will be a shitload of red meat.

Thanks again to BFF for the birthday love. See y'all around August 28 or so, unless something pops up that's so compelling that I have to be a jackass about it. Love, with peace out.

So There Was This Guy

There still is, actually. And he's old. Today. It is the day when he is older. He used to not be older. We used to be young. And skinny.

The first time I saw him, he was the very last guy on the Ricky Monkey basketball team's bench. We mocked him. He got into the game. He took a set shot. I don't remember if he made it, but I like to think so. I had no idea on that day that he would become the Hamster. Our Hamster.

See BFF. I can't top that. However, I did get candids.

You might think he's not really that scary. I am here to tell you that he is. Oh, yes. He is.

You don't want to know what those little paws just touched. Oh no you don't.

Not much is known of Our Hamster's leisure activities. So, we speculate:

That's right. Cosplay. We went there. That just happened.

You might confuse hamsters with other small furry creatures. This may be helpful:

Sensory whiskers. Chix dig it.

Our Hamster? Has a very long tail. Oh yes he does. If you knowhumsayin', and I'm pretty sure you do.

Happy birthday, Hamster.

An Ending. I Think.

It is to be fervently hoped that the cigarette I just finished was my last. We shall see. I am hoping that there is some value in admitting this in public, to my very limited public. Value to me; I don't give a fuck about its value to you (and therein may lie some of the problem, I suppose).

I have been smoking regularly for something like 38 years, though my first was longer ago than that, probably at summer camp when I was 14. I honestly don't remember, but it seems by far the most likely beginning. It was a beginning to my life as a pointlessly punkass contrarian, a thrill-seeker, a counter to sensibility and propriety. I had been, until that moment, a violent anti-smoker, and I was intellectually well aware of the health risks. I recall freaking out when I was 7 and my parents--both essentially non-smokers who could, back in the 60s, smoke an occasional cigarette socially--lit up after a dinner in a restaurant. My change became complete when I started swiping Larks from my father's parents--both of whom smoked until they were in their 70s (my grandfather, the Original Recipe John the Daftist, smoked until about a year before his death from COPD).

For a long time I smoked two packs a day, Winstons by choice, Marlboros sometimes and then always when I succumbed to the peer-pressured notion that Winstons were pretty freakin' gay. Then the world stopped letting people smoke at their desks, and rightly so, and I cut it to a pack of Camel Lights a day because the Marlboros (along with a steady stream of marijuana smoking) were making me noticeably unhealthier.

I quit for nearly a month almost 10 years ago. I had a heart attack, and was mildly impressed by that, and stopped, aided by a common smoking-cessation antidepressant I won't name. It made me itch. It made me insane. The drug, I mean. I had the heart attack the weekend before Thanksgiving, and I don't think I stopped right away--I think I waited until just after the holiday. I spent Christmas Eve with my brother and his family; my mother was visiting them. I bought a pack of smokes on the way home.

My bout of pneumonia, accompanied by the worst cough ever, chest pain that is at best musculoskeletal (and we are now fairly certain that it is), some potentially rather dire potential diagnoses from various test results, and the prospect of prematurely and irrevocably leaving Ilse, Bam, and I suppose Databoy, the lights of my life, has thoroughly frightened me, for reals, my genuinely risk-humping nature laid open, the frontier of risk aversion now discovered (in my personal life--professionally, it's more calculated, by many more orders of magnitude). Boy, do I feel like a pussy. Seriously. 38 years of the Devil may care, and now this, simpering about the game clock, veering away from the head-on. The only thing I can think of that would be more shameful would be acquiring formal religion (and in a way, my frenzied dash to perceived safety is a rejection of my previously established semi-formal secret religion). I'll get over it.

I hasten to add that while the dire stuff is not ruled out, it now seems far less likely, based on a visit to my newest doctor, a pulmonologist. Part of how we rule it out is for me to stop smoking, and we have created a cunning plan that includes nicotine replacement, a therapy I had not previously considered. I hasten slightly less hastily to add that it's not like I actually hate Databoy. He's just a thought-provoking series of questions, is all. I am a 53-year-old long-time smoker with cardiopulmonary issues. I don't have the fucking energy for thought-provoking series of questions.

So there it is, on the Web, my hope, my innards. I accept your good wishes for this enterprise whether or not you express them, and honestly, I'd probably prefer that you didn't, with one exception, because my contempt for you does not extend to actually wanting to disappoint you in some meaningful way. I am genuinely sorry to tell you that the exception is almost certainly not you; she is a visitor of delicate and extreme rarity, and there are very, very good reasons that she is the exception, in that she is the one human being on this planet from whom I will tolerate, unconditionally, any wee dram of optimism. And three of you just figured out that math.

And don't ask. I'll fess up if need be, or maybe, if need be, one of the local denizens who knows me in real life will attempt shame as a tool. Ask the She-Nurse of the SS how that works out. A tubercular cigar brothel/butcherteria in Tegucigalpa, to make an educated guess. In fact, the one person out there in the world who absolutely does not get that it's not okay to ask--the farthest thing from okay, in fact--is the She-Nurse.

The header quote stays. Only years will tell if it's applicable, and chances are it is, whether or not I stay quit. You really don't smoke for 38 years without shortening your life in some measure, even if you luck out and that measure is small. There's some magical thinking that only compounds the shame, hmm?

Goodbye, smoky treats. I will do my very best to never speak of this again.

The Festival & c.

Yeah, it's that day. Legitimate debate rages on whether you'd rather give up a birthday bang to me, Patrick Stewart (STFU, honey), or Han Solo, but of course that's your call, because even more of course, it's all about you.

On the state of the sentient computer:





Love to all the peeps.

World Autism Awareness Day 2012

I have no idea if anyone is still using the above logo/icon/whatever, but I like it, so I am. I'd like to think there's a certain appropriateness to that.

Minions has visited this day from time to time, apparently last in 2009, the commemoration's first anniversary. I haven't chosen to post on April 2 in 3 years. I'm fairly sure that this has not made any of you less aware of autism. It certainly hasn't done so to me. There's some twinge of guilt here, some internal nag that I should've been marking this day each and every year. And there's a recognition of reality, too. Because you're not any less aware of autism, or how it affects me and my family.

The usual suspects will spout the usual idiocy on this day. There'll be a lot of feces-throwing, and a lot of earnest labelling, and a lot of self-pity. Shit, I do all that every day, I don't need a special day for it, and neither does Bam-Bam, who is, as you probably remember, Minions' local person with autism.

There are some truths about autism that are pretty absolute. It isn't a condition or a disease as much as a spectrum of observed--and, it is hypothesized, related--behaviors that can vary wildly from one person to another. It is not caused by vaccines. It is not caused by toxins. It is not related to diet, though some children have comorbid conditions related to diet, or may display some autism-like behaviors as a result of gastrointestinal issues. It is most likely genetic in origin. These are all things that have pretty solid scientific backing. The truth is that there's a little of the spectrum in many of us, and probably some way that each of us can find to connect to that.

It's probably best to let people who are passionate about autism believe as they choose. Parents should select the treatments they think appropriate for their children (within certain limitations--for instance, chelating children to remove heavy metals is a treatment that probably amounts to child abuse). You're not going to talk an antivaccination lunatic out of their position using calm reason or science or anything else. You can't talk to Jenny McCarthy, period. What can be done is to insist that research money not be thrown down black holes of wackaloon alternative research or into self-serving charities that believe that there is a one-size-fits-all "cure." Many high-functioning persons on the autism spectrum detest the notion of a "cure" in the first place. Others, like my friend Swami and her son Max (see here)...not so much.

And then there's Bam-Bam, my stepson, who lights up my life in a way no other person can. That doesn't mean I love my wife, or Bam-Bam's brother Databoy, or anyone else, any less. But Bam-Bam and I connect. I wrote this once, about a month before the first WAAD. Here's the money quote:

I accept Bam-Bam for himself. He is a happy kid who lights up when he sees me, who wants me to play with him and hug him and wrestle with him and bathe him and put him to bed and give him pizza or chips or cheeseburger and wake him up in the morning (when he doesn't do that on his own at 4 AM) and put him on the bus. This kid loves me and I love him. He is a sweet and stunningly smart kid who happens to be different, and who happens to have some trouble communicating. And by different, I don't mean "sick" or "disordered" or "damaged." I mean different. Bam-Bam views things through his own lens, and who the hell doesn't? His lens just isn't shaped the same way as mine.

Nothing there has changed in the four years since I wrote it. Bam-Bam is now 11, and in middle school. The school program is a little more focused on occupational skills--counting and sorting and packaging and the like--and on interacting in the community; his class goes on community outings three times a week, rather than just once. The high school program is even more focused on life and occupational skills, and we're fortunate that we live in a jurisdiction that will, essentially, allow him to extend high school by 3 years without prejudice. That's 9 more years of school for him. Who the fuck knows how he'll be able to grow?

I don't know what the future holds for Bam-Bam, and like any parent, I'm scared shitless about it. I'm so scared I can't begin to process it. So, like him, I just keep on, doing the things that can be done. Unlike him, I press a little harder--usually not enough to piss him off, because that doesn't do anybody any good. But he presses too, and he'll usually answer a challenge when its posed.

So please give a thought to Bam-Bam, and to my friend Swami and her Max, and to my friend Kimmah and her Sam, and to millions of other parents and kids I don't know and can't name, every one doing the things they have to do, day by day, often one minute or hour at a time. Just today, or today and every day, or whatever thought you can spare, when you can spare it. Speaking for me and Ilse, there are parents of ASD children who are in far more stressful straits than we are; there are people whose uncertain and scary future is next week, not next year or next decade. Of course I'm scared for me and mine, but I think of them too, especially those whose childrens' behavior is less comprehensible, more threatening, more self-endangering than Bam-Bam's.

And to Bam-Bam, my little buddy...well, words don't cover it, can't and won't. But I'll be there when you wake up. Sleep well, my son.

Strangest Days of His Life

Until the next strangest, of course, but maybe this'll fucking learn him.



Also too because OCD memes me:



Happy Tebow's birthday, bitchez. Or Jewish Civil War commemorativity. Or  Buddha Belly Stuffed with Ham. Or SprechenTannenbaumCastleTodenangstNacht. Whatevs.

What the Fuck My Problem Is

So about 15 minutes after I hit "publish" on my last post, and about 2 minutes down the road on my way to work, I realized why I'm so fucking pissy right now (in addition to yesterday's anniversary, which stretches into today for me, because I didn't hear about that thing until the morning after).

You see, it's between Thanksgiving and, say, January 5 or so. I hate everything, everything is shit, fuck you you fucking fucks, and have a lovely and peaceful motherfucking holiday season, you fucking butt-pirate leg-pissers. I am the fucking living embodiment of the motherfucking War on Christmas, bitchez, and I'm okay with that, because it's the most fuckawful time of the year and I'm not responsible for my actions, because, and I mean this quite literally, Jesus made me do it. Whatever it was.

So, y'know, fuck you. And Merry Fucking Christmas.

Heh. "Butt-pirate leg-pissers." Don't think you've seen that for the last time.

Free Associatin' With Landru

The Sucktucky Saga deepens. Yes, my presence in rural Murkuh seems to breed...y'know, I'd try to jerk you off and tell you that it breeds creativity, but you'd see through that unsupportable bullshit in a heartbeat. It breeds boredom. I'd like to tell you a little about what I'm doing here, because there are some epically fucked-up stories associated with this enterprise; some of them might entertain. But I don't trust the random currents of the universe. There are simply not a lot of DCish smartasses hanging out near the highway in rural Kentucky incident to doing the sort of work I do, and it's the sort of discussion that would allow the wrong people to find out that I have opinions. I'm sure that most of you understand, and if you don't, fuck you, I don't actually give a fuck what you think. I may have given away too much already.

Things I can tell you:

-P.J. O'Rourke said it first, but the best kind of car is, in fact, a rental car.

-By the way, that's the last worthwhile thing P.J. O'Rourke ever wrote, and it first appeared in the National Lampoon in 1979 (the cite at the link is erroneous).

-There are exactly six Starbucks between Cincinnati and Knoxville on the I-75 route. Precisely none of them are in the approximately 100-mile space that begins 10 miles north of Knoxville.

-That's why I only flew into there oncet.

-Shit, that probably narrowed down the geography too much.

-There are three sit-down restaurants in the town in which I stay. Okay, that's a lie. There are three sit-down restaurants in the town in which I stay that are not named Cracker Barrel or Waffle House. Of the three, one scares me. Culturally, I mean. I'm sure that the beer bottles are clean enough if you wipe them off, and there is no American food that frightens me from a culinary/gustatory perspective (someone will call bullshit on this, but she's already pissed at me for saying something nice about P.J. O'Rourke).

-Culturally why, you ask? There's no kind way to say this, so I just will. There are some really hard-looking women out here. Up in the college town, much less so. But out here? Wow. Life ain't kind to these people. They frighten me. Even the docile ones. This is because I am, in a technical and totally non-spiritual sense, a member of the ruling class. It's unfortunate that I fear this place, because it's a barbecue joint. I'm trying to find the right Sherpa for this expedition.

-Speaking of Waffle House, it's fucking awesome. It is the most reliable chain restaurant in our great land. It's the one thing that justifies my repeated treks to America.

-You do know that a greasy breakfast is the most important meal of the day, yes?

-Question for Sasha: Who would you most like to torture: P.J. O'Rourke or Norman Mailer?

-Okay, okay, I lied. Yes, I'm spiritually a member of the ruling class. Duh. New here, or what?

Anyway, I'll be spending parts of just about every week here for another couple of months. Look ye forward to more Free Associatin' With Landru. Just be thankful I haven't returned to that asshat format where I interview myself.

Progress Through Jealousy

I am a Webhead. I don't mean to overclaim, because I'm not, really, not compared to Sasha or Elric or the folks who work for me, one of whom will check in to chide me despite my brutal honesty. But my day job involves a lot of knowing what's up with Web technologies and content and strategies. One of my adorable little gifts--or not, depending on your perspective and the given value of "adorable" and "gifts"--is that I speak fluent Web, understand how things should work, know something about the place of the Web in communications strategies, sort through hours of technical blahrg from actual Webheads, and then distill the whole mess into something that actual Webheads can run with, rather than getting endlessly trapped inside their engineer-like minds.

Wow, that got unnecessarily dense and self-serving. Anyway, the point is that I have reason to be jealous when my friends have cooler Web toys than I do. I commented sort of obliquely, sort of approvingly (but not recognizably enough) on BFF's dynamic blogroll toolio, back when I raped his aesthetic sensibilities. The thing has really grown on me. I like it at BFF's place, and I like it at other places whereat I've seen it. I am jealous that he has a toy that I do not.

Well, enough of that shit. I rearranged the furniture and now I'm dynamically blogrolling, because I didn't realize how easy it was. Sorta puts the lie to the whole first graf, huh?

So there are goodbyes; some friends haven't updated their blogs in months. If they tell me they're not done, I'll relist them (lest you think I'm a complete idiot, I kept the wife, who posts about three times a year, if that). I said goodbye to an insufferable celebrity prick (I'll bet you don't miss him). And because of the dynamic nature of the blogroll toolio, some people who don't have update feeds ended up in the "Just Links" section, which is not dynamic (I may revisit this--Elric doesn't look bad in BFF's dynamic buddies section). I think I might've dumped one or two other sites that I almost never visit.

There's also a hello. Jack is a decent enough fellow who's perfectly willing to trade gratuitous unkind suggestions in a spirit of theoretical discourse. Until very recently, I've sort of shied from him and his blog, engaging him in conversation once or twice at BFF's place. But I noticed a little while back that Minions was appearing in his dynamic toolio, and I've since been contemplating returning the kind. Jack frightens me a little, because he's one a them deep thinkers, and as I like to remind you, I ain't. I can cope with deep thought from BFF; it's the habit of years, and I don't find it threatening coming from that vector. On the other hand, Jack's been blogrolling me, so he is obviously a man of varied, and sometimes low, tastes. Recent events sealed the deal. Welcome Jack.

Another lil thing opened up the time to do this facelift; I'm stuck in rural Sucktucky. That's becoming a regular event--this is the second of three trips in four weeks, with, it appears, more to follow. Now, it's possible that good things will result from all this travel and sturm und drang and weeds-level management of a business line with which I am only familiar enough to blow some pretty decent smoke (not Web, FTR) and a contract type (fixed-price) that's way riskier than what I'm used to and a customer (I can't tell you, because I've already said more than enough for some folks to figure out who I am) that's way different from my usual comfort zone. Good things for me and mine, professionally, I mean, and like many of you, I do not have the luxury of doing what pleases me for a living--I work to be a materialist oinker (unlike, I suspect, some nontrivial number of you), which includes, of course, feeding Ilse, Databoy, and Bam-Bam. Anyway, rural Sucktucky breeds time, because I've been in planes and cars all day and working at this point in the day is beyond possibility. Hence: change! No hope advertised or promised. Ciao.

Raisin d'ether

So it appears that candidates for public office pay some attention to how their names are used on the Web. One person, purporting to be the Montgomery County Council President Nancy Floreen, commented on my last post on the campaign. It appears that the balance of evidence is leaning toward that person actually being Nancy Floreen. I may or may not have more to say about that later, though rest assured that if it develops that I'm a complete idiot, I'll cop to it in these pages.

I mean a complete idiot with respect to this incident. Chill your blains, Landru-smashers. I can't spend all my time copping to being a complete idiot.

Another candidate mentioned in that post (and I'm real sure that it's him) also made it clear that he had seen the post. Hans Riemer seemed tickled, but he's a polite and kind-hearted young fella, as behooves a challenger for public office.

This would be a good time to reiterate my raisin d'ether. Most readers recognize this blog for the largely hyperbolic claptrap that it is. Some readers are offended by my choices of language; they're welcome to not read. As I've said many times, I don't care who reads, or who takes me seriously. Most people who actually know me know full well that I don't necessarily take me seriously.

Of course I'd be lying if I didn't admit that it's sort of a trip that two county council candidates (apparently) have paid attention to me. But that isn't why I blog. I'm here to entertain me (first) and you (second). If I'm not entertaining, don't read. If the way I put things is too raw, too angry, too anything, don't read. You'll be healthier, and my life will likely be unchanged.

As to anonymity, there seems to be some feeling among political types that it's bad. I'm not going to pretend to compare myself favorably to Ben Franklin. But come on, people, reconnect to your fundamental American-ness. Look, it's obvious that people should consider the source when consuming information (including blog comments). But even journalists with names frequently cite anonymous sources. Including the journalists cited in this graf. That said? It's their blog.

This is mine. I have a life, and a family, and a job, and an entitlement to the privacy of my opinions, and it's a mean, destructive world. If I thought that using the word "fucktard" about, say...well, I'm not mentioning her name again...in an anonymous blog would actually be destructive to a particular councilperson's chances of re-election? Uhm...well, actually, I'd still use it. That's my opinion of at least three Council incumbents, all listed by name in the referenced post. If I thought it would be destructive to them in some life sense? No, of course I wouldn't.

I do actually express my well-reasoned, articulate, and more kindly worded opinions under my own name sometimes; just not here. Most of this blog's regular readers (and some not-regular ones, now including Hans Riemer and the person who may actually be Nancy Floreen) know my identity, though they likely don't know all that much about me as a person. There are those close friends who believe that reading one of my blog posts is not terribly unlike conversing with me. But I have very good reasons for anonymity, including my desire for fallout from my opinions to not affect people who aren't responsible for what I think or say.

In this world, that's not very easy to guarantee.

Things That Annoy Me

Losing 0-5 to Mexico. Even if it was Team USA's B- team, and even though this edition of the Gold Cup doesn't count for much.

Drawing the second-worst team in MLS. Even in their stadium.

Movies that make swiss cheese out of well-constructed book plots, shredding them and raping them in the ass until it's obvious that any forthcoming movies in the franchise will be virtually unrecognizable. Not that I didn't like the movie, except for what they did to it in Peru.

The way these fucking movie things slowed down my blog's loading time to the approximate speed of tectonics. So I fixed it.

My family. Not those who live in this house, so much, though they have their moments. Parents, siblings, extensions thereof, cousins and suchlike? Oh yeah.

Seattle, both the city and its soccer team and that team's clueless douchenozzle fans, although not my good friends who live there, who are neither fans of that team nor douchenozzles. Mostly.

That thing I do, although I won't go into any detail because whatever I say, Choir Boy and his ursine pervert neighbor* will torment me with it. Not that the lack of detail will stop them. Oh, no. Not for a moment.

The fact that I have two more weeks of total scorching burnout scheduled before I get to take a freaking vacation, and those two weeks are already looking, schedule- and work-wise, freaking impossible. My social filters gave way weeks ago--as near as I can tell, in the middle of a week out of the office that was neither all play nor all work--resulting in some spectacular trainwrecks of decorum and good taste, and whatever controls keep me from doing things that result in prison are failing fast.

Anything else that annoys me that you'd like to share?

UPDATE: bDr's comment and my necessary rejoinder remind me that Max Bretos and Chris Sullivan annoy me. A lot. Also:

* I was content to leave that reference as ridiculously obscure inside baseball, but who I mean is this guy, who was, it seems, unaware that Sonia Bompastor is totally June 2009, and that my new WPS objects d'woof! are Allie Long (a Tar Heel) and Rebecca Moros (a Dookie). But that's okay, it's not like I stop by his office every day and tell him who's currently giving me a woody. It's not that I don't appreciate Ms. Bompastor. She's a tremendously nice person (seriously) and an awesome player. But I gotta be me, and sex will be where I find it. I mean, do you really think I'd turn down Ben Olsen?

A Punch In The Balls

Housekeeping first; as the last Xtranormal movie warned, I'm not going to blog that way for some time. It limits my expression, it keeps this guy from being able to easily grab quotes¹ from me so that I get published in a higher-traffic blog (which is, as we all know, my sole raisin), it's getting repetitive (although everyone loves the Ilse dance), and most importantly, the scripts that Xtranormal loads as a result of the embeds significantly slow down my site's load time (UPDATE: Gee, the site seems to load much faster this morning, just not having an embed as the top post.). For that reason, I'll leave the embeds as they are for a bit, then convert them to links in a week or two. Or less, if I have time and get really sick of the slow loads.

Let's move on to the topic of the night, which this guy correctly, understatedly, and uncharacteristically (for him--he's obsessed with keeping his blog clean, although I hope he never kisses me with that mouth, even though he's a total sex god) referred to as "a punch in the balls."

As you will find from other sources, DCU lost at New England tonight, only its second loss of the season, and only 2-1, after a more-or-less acceptable first half and a not very good second half. As D pointed out in his first impressions, they shouldn't have been in a position to lose.

That said, center official Hilario Grajeda called a travesty of a game. The centerpiece of it was a fuckawful penalty in the 89th minute against Brian Namoff. Grajeda blew the whistle a full six seconds after Taylor Diving Fucking Twellman flopped backwards and pretended Namoff had pulled him down.³ D offers that he'll forgive Grajeda if it develops that the assistant referee thought it was a penalty.

I won't. The assistant referee had a better angle (for once--offsides calls coming from that A.R. were consistently off, too, in both directions), but a more distant view. It should've been obvious to him that Namoff didn't pull the diving fucker down. I also won't forgive Grajeda because, in the last minute of stoppage, he didn't call a penalty when Rodney Wallace was blatantly and obviously pulled down, by the jersey, in the box, as he was trying to play a pretty well-placed cross. The foul committed against Wallace was far more egregious--and booking-worthy--than the foul Namoff was alleged to have committed.

That was the worst of it, but Grajeda lost control of the game early and kept paying for it. Sainey Nyassi should've been booked three or four times, by my count; the inept fucking moron actually booked Josh Wicks for making a fucking save--again, because Taylor Diving Fucking Twellman fell down and rubbed his pussy; and he consistently overlooked bumping and shirt-tugging. Some of it cut both ways, but when it counted, Grajeda very clearly and decisively favored the home team (or maybe he was getting Taylor Diving Fucking Twellman's jersey after the match).

This is getting old. Sometimes MLS officials' ineptitude is just plain distracting, as it was in the USOC game at RFK against the Red Scum. That was a dreadfully officiated game, and fortunately the game was so decisive that the referee couldn't fuck it up. Mostly. Other times, entire games revolve around asinine decisions by people who shouldn't be in the middle of a pitch.

It's also a credible view that the team shouldn't have been in a position to go down on a 90th-minute penalty. But that doesn't matter. If you live on the edge, that's where you live, and if you keep getting yourself out of the deep cacky, you have a right not to be put back in it by utter fucking incompetence.

I've been hard on Tom Soehn. I've softened that view the last couple or three games, although I still think that his mentality--and thus the team's--is entirely too defensive. I think Soehn has some heat to take for tonight's effort. The Rev have some speedy motherfuckers on the wing, and playing a slow 3-5-2 against that is just bone fucking dumb (I'm not the first person to say this: has Tom Soehn ever played Football Manager?). On the other hand, the lineup was well-chosen (the subs weren't--McTavish was a dumbass sub from a coach who swears he wants to bring Jacobson into the offense more, and I'd have brought in Moreno before Mister Sulu, although it was appropriate not to start Jaime), and the team's effort in the first half didn't seem to reflect a bunker mentality. Wicks shouldn't, in my view, have to take much of a rap; he made a great and appropriate effort on the Shalrie Joseph goal, and Joseph just plain beat him, though Jacovic (I think it was him--whoever was defending the cross on the right side just got stomped on that play⁵) probably should.

After all of my rant, D still said it better and best: what a fucking punch in the balls.

¹ While I'm on the topic, I am putting a jihad on him for not doing a full debrief on the RSL game, thus leaving to the book of unwritten history this best six-word game summary evar: "They're the real hot item, Powdermilk."<sup>2

2</sup> Yes. I'm done now.

³ Some are contending that Grajeda called a handball on Jacovic that was simultaneous with the Twellman dive. Twellman didn't think so. On the other hand, he tells us in the same interview that he also thinks he has a God-given right for the goalkeeper to get the fuck out of his way and let him score, and that failure to do so constitutes a penalty, so I'm not sure I want to bank anything on what Taylor Diving Fucking Twellman⁴ thinks.

⁴ Way more discommodated (as a Terp) than Tino Quaranta ever was or ever will be as a human.

⁵ UPDATE: I now think it was Pontius who got punked there, adding another slice of flat to what was really not a very good game for the lad. Who this guy doesn't like any more anyway.

Other Things

But first, some words on the previous post, which was as inside as baseball gets. Only two of you got it, and only two of you have a hope of getting it, and I didn't get it until I casually and without rancor waterboarded the post's focus. Tough.

Further, I must, in the interest of responsibility, update the previous post without destroying its tone and flow, which was in fact an homage (which more than two of you should have gotten, and which you should work on if you didn't). The update is this: the author in question isn't Japanese, he's thoroughgoingly English and has a Japanese name by virtue of having emigrated from Japan to England at a young age. All this lies squarely in the realm of fact, none of which should denigrate the beauty of my previous post. Disagree? Don't like? Don't care? Tough.

The Washington Capitals today traded....uhm...no one. Some fans are outraged, others not so much. I'm the latter. I understand that the Cup may not happen this year, and that I need to put myself in the position of begging, as I once did for a local basketball team, for an uberchampionship once in my life, and be done with my bad self, understanding that that once may not be this year (as it was not, when I did it for that gloriously, but now drunkenly and pedophiliacally coached, major college team). The Caps had nothing to give that wouldn't have kept them from an outside shot at a serious run this year AND a number of serious runs in the future.

More later--I'm interested in this thing our President did today, one that has the potential to directly affect my life.

My Friend

Winter makes many of us fat and sleepy. It's why Euros play futbol now, rather than in summer, when some of us get fat and sleepy and sweat more of it off than we do in winter, while others, like my friend, go traipsing. Winter is not for them like my friend, who tizzes when he can't traipse, bending his (perfectly pleasingly) lysergically cubisticized and educationally wallpapered head around the unbendable, chewing and effervescing and bloopblooping until the interior of his thought becomes Asimovian space where impenetrable Japanese English-language novels become comprehensible and terrifying. Or even, the process seen from a more droogy (and, plausibly, far more dissociated) perspective like mine, laughably meaningful. Breathe unconditionally, bitchez.

Special Bonus Post

Beloved and too-infrequently-contacted Minnesotan correspondent Swami calls me fat!

...it's always a thrill when I click on your link and see something new! It's kind of like seeing a whale breach: rare & spectacular, but you know there is way more meat just below the surface.

To be fair, she did note, in her own way, that she wasn't calling me fat.* That's okay. We're equally not telling you that, in the Minions yearbook, Swami is voted, every year, as most likely to get very subtly crushed by a flying house.

Very subtly, mind you. But that's a thing we've always dug about her. Seriously.

As you all know, Minions takes an Oscar Wilde view of being talked about.

*Even though she was.

Special Postscript Instructions: By the way, S, get out there and shake loose some ballots, wouldja? You know what I'm talkin' bout.

Today in Culture

95 years ago on this day, this drivel premiered. Around 87 years later, I got suckered into seeing it with then-wife Gamara and some friends, including William Wallace (known to you hereabouts as "Steven") and his uberfabulous spouse Ellen the Hun, on the pretense that it was "Russian ballet," which was, of course, technically true, but not in the sense that I thought (which would have involved Tchaikovsky and babes--as Gamara and the real mastermind behind this crime knew perfectly well).

Now, it was a great evening overall, and an experience I'm glad to have had; we had wonderful food and wine and rode in a limousine to the Kennedy Center and laughed our tits off. But one man knows that I haven't forgotten this ignominious act of betrayal:



Hope you're happily commemorating this crucial day in cultural history, Hamster Hamlet, you tights-loving Europoof.

Never forget!