Obligatory? Football Post

It isn't racist to believe that Richard Sherman is a 'thug'.  Not necessarily.  What is racist is believing that he is less of a thug than the entitled designated hero he'll be trying to intercept on Sunday, or that it's possible to play this game at all without being a thug.  I remember reading of a lineman who would bring himself to tears in the huddle by telling himself that his opposing man for the next play had raped his mother, how he made his career by willing this delusion on himself play after play, week after week.  One needs to be at least a mild psychopath to hurt someone they have no personal feelings against and the NFL, however counter-intuitively, has only a slightly higher proportion of psychopaths than the general public.  Hate needs to be constructed.  These men need to believe that there is only either absolute dominance or absolute worthlessness in order to do their jobs. The game is fucking evil.  That's the thick of it.  The game is fucking evil and in full truth we all know it is. No matter how loudly some might say so no one really believes that there are exceptional manly virtues that only American football can teach.  It's just one of those totems that allows us to pretend that it's still 438, that the Vandals are bearing down on us from the hills and patriarchal hierarchy still has some claim to utilitarian necessity.

Yet still I am of two minds.  I could make the excuse that I'm Nebraskan and football is of my culture but really it's the theater of it; sublime and true. There's strategic nuance to the game is richer than any other major organized sport; and the drama of human choice involved in run vs. pass/down vs, distance/ score vs. time remaining is more than food enough to hook the minds of those of us who fall on the other side of the false jock vs. nerd dichotomy.  In the late eighties I had just grown old enough to have developed a continuous mind and memory while in the Big 8 conference the major powers of Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado were all running different variations of the option offense, brutalizing each other in tense stalemates.  I learned to love the aesthetic beauty of a close-fisted defensive football game, where every first down had huge importance and was fought for accordingly, where the touchdown that puts you up 10-7 with 9:50 left in the third might well be the decisive score.  I'd say that my openness towards soccer was formed in these days as well.  It's infantile to take excitement in scoring for scoring's sake.  Scoring, along with the game itself, is simply better when it's so hard to do that you have to sweat blood for it.

So even though I hate the violence of the gridiron It would be the modern 'softening' changes to the game that have allowed me to finally break from it, more or less.  Actually defending receivers has been more or less banned; as has tackling the quarterback as if he's just another player.  The personality cults around coaches and quarterbacks are the most loathsome monarchical rot that any freedom loving American should be ashamed to partake of at the slightest level, and the ever-increasing deference given to QB's by both the rules and the culture of the game is often a reflection of real-world privilege.  It's coaches sons from fattly funded private schools who get to be the ace, more often than not.  Then to be pimped out to elite college programs like a Hapsburg princess.  At the political economic level the entire state of Texas is more or less being run this way now.  Even oil bows down to the Heisman golden boy.    

  The result is that scores in the range of 42-38 have been routine for several years now.  Yet still it's generally seen as axiomatic that more points = more fun.  Hogwash  A 0-0 tie that takes three hours is objectively more entertaining than a 49-48 game that takes three hours and one second.  The excitement of a touchdown is after all, largely one of those social constructs that us eggheads carry on about.  There's a ritual cheer, rock concert fireworks, a standard uptempo celebration song on the jumbotron.  Strip away all that and it's just beefy fucks running around and decking each other same as every other play. The only tangible entertainment value of a touchdown is it's individual importance to the outcome, so that in these days of manufactured pass-happy openness a touchdown is twice as boring as it was twenty years ago.   Even last-second comebacks have become banal, something expected and routine in any game where the teams are even generically level.

We could  of course get into the insufferable frequency of commercials, though that ground has been well covered by many before me.  (It's actually worse watching a televised game in person; with the park-like illusion of being at a live outdoor event being shattered by routine periods of.....nothing.  I'd happily take more Bud Light misogyny over that Sartian despair.) For closing's sake I can only continue to give away my age and remember a time when televised games were rare at the college level.  Both teams had to be top 10 and playing for a major conference title, at the least, else it didn't happen.  So it was generally later in the year when it was cold outside and a kid was glad that there  was something 'major' on TV. The live broadcast started five minutes before kickoff, then after eight minute drives that produced nothing and the clock being stopped for incomplete passes maybe ten or 12 times your team needed barely more than two hours to either win or lose.  Than you went on with your day either happy or sad while your boys went out to do things the things that would land them in prison.  It was a smaller game; less bombastic, less self-important, though probably no where near as much as I remember.  In truth I was probably just an easily amused little shit. 

FC Top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Arsenal
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Manchester City
9. Olympiokos
10. Raja Casablanca

You Know What Mr. Low Level GOP Zac Efron? ..............................

"A Republican lawmaker in Oklahoma has proposed a controversial way to stopping same-sex marriages in the state. According to News9.com, state Rep. Mike Turner (R) has proposed scrapping marriage in the state altogether." 


.................. Good!  Damned good!  You're on to the right idea here, for all the wrong reasons to be sure but fuck it.  Strange bedfellows and all that.  If private couples, (or triples or octuples) wish to formalize their own relationships, through means of either their own invention or traditional religious ones, then alright.  I'm happy if people are happy.  But fuck State marriage.  Legal marriage is a most asinine sexist, superstitious, and anachronistic act of snake-dancing hoodoo and that's all it's ever going to be at root no matter how much society might change for the better overall. I applaud this young Republican pol for helping to give traditional values the death by blunted anal impalement they so richly deserve.  Here here good man.  Ave Satanas. 

Had a Flat Tire Fixed Today

I accidentally jacked my car down onto my right foot.  It isn't as necessarily traumatic as I would have thought before.  Just jack your van back up quickly but not manically.  No need for panic, and anyway I was wearing my good boots. 

Being More Anti-Abortion Than Thou Must be Tiring

Alternate title :   "I have never seen anything so asinine in my life,"

Perhaps women should be allowed to have abortions only if ten hours of Lord Hypnotoad's mysterious commands leaves them still inclined towards that procedure. 

Or maybe they should be allowed abortions only if able to produce a 19-0 record in Tecmo Super Bowl with the Arizona Cardinals.  This requires serious discipline believe you me.  Precisely the steel a woman needs to stop carousing and buckle down to a woman's Only Real Work of bearing the heirs her man has already created single-handedly. 

My own personal preference and recommendation though is to require all abortion clinics to cover every wall and ceiling with this....

Requirements for surgeons to hop on one foot and chew gum while operating have unfortunately already been found to fall short of constitutional muster. 

 

I've Given Up Drinking Mostly

But I want scotch. 


I've cleaned fish.  I have a rough technical knowledge of how to gut a wildebeest; it's the same, just larger scale, but no hands' on experience.  I technically know the trick of how to rip out a fish's entire digestive system with too small cuts and one clean jerk but never had the nerve to try it. 


I want scotch with some really meaty casserole type thing, or better yet some African peanut soup with hunks of blackened-grilled chicken in it and enough saracha sauce to make you go blind if the slightest drop hits your eye. I want gravy made of nothing but capsaicin and melted bone.  In Chicago I tried lox which is brined fish served on a bagel and it served me when it was summer there but entirely too motherfucking daintyass for my taste just now.  Even then I only had it as a side to my egg-stacked biscuits and gravy drenched in hot sauce with excellent black coffee and no water. 


Fish would be a more regular food to me if they were rolled into blackened fish meatballs comprised of ghost pepper and meat half and half.  I have taken to adding a bit of pumpkin spice creamer to my coffee but I just love pumpkin too is all.  In winter I still take my first cup black and thick as always. 

!!!!

ttp://www.omaha.com/article/20140120/NEWS/140129937/1685#at-least-10-injured-others-trapped-after-possible-omaha-plant-explosion


Good hard workers in South Omaha.  this is just awful. 

FC Top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Arsenal
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Manchester City
9. Roma
10. Raja Casablanca

Lazy Linking Day: Timothy Snyder via T.N. Coates

"The general design was consistent throughout: Germans would deport, kill, assimilate, or enslave the native populations, and bring order and prosperity to a humbled frontier. Depending upon the demographic estimates, between thirty-one and forty-five million people, mostly Slavs, were to disappear. In one redaction, eighty to eighty-five percent of the Poles, sixty-five percent of the west Ukrainians, seventy-five percent of the Belarusians, and fifty percent of the Czechs were to be eliminated.
After the corrupt Soviet cities were razed, German farmers would establish, in Himmler’s words, “pearls of settlement,” utopian farming communities that would produce a bounty of food for Europe. German settlements of fifteen to twenty thousand people each would be surrounded by German villages within a radius of ten kilometers. The German settlers would defend Europe itself at the Ural Mountains, against the Asiatic barbarism that would be forced back to the east. Strife at civilization’s edge would test the manhood of coming generations of German settlers. Colonization would make of Germany a continental empire fit to rival the United States, another hardy frontier state based upon exterminatory colonialism and slave labor.
The East was the Nazi Manifest Destiny. In Hitler’s view, “in the East a similar process will repeat itself for a second time as in the conquest of America.” As Hitler imagined the future, Germany would deal with the Slavs much as the North Americans had dealt with the Indians. The Volga River in Russia, he once proclaimed, will be Germany’s Mississippi."

For what it's worth I am both German and Slavic myself.  My sister referred to us as 'mutts' some holiday or another, which struck me as odd.  Not That There's Anything Wrong With That butwe are hardly anything of the sort by American standards. 


Oh Mother Prairie, you great tester of manhood you. 

Every Nebraska Prisoner Gets out for Good Time

Doesn't that make us lenient little angels?  

Actually no.  Of course it doesn't.  Prisoners get automatic good time no matter what because our prisons are overcrowded.  And of course the main reason why they are overcrowded is because of nonviolent drug offenders.  Same old story same old.  But of course Governor Heineman and hack attorney General Jon Bruning have no intention of eliminating those offenses or any intention to stop lavishing funds upon the State Patrol or Local police so the money can be spent on addiction treatment mental health or general welfare. 

Their new legislation to require actual standards for earning good time is reasonable so far as it goes.  It is born out of the Nikko Jenkins affair, a man who was already established as a violent loon before he went to prison once; was put in solitary to protect other prisoners and staff from him, (while begging his own self for mental health treatment) and then once released on good time proceeded to murder four innocent members of the public in the space of about a month, at least partly on the orders of an 'Egyptian god' who does not actually exist in the standard Pharonic pantheon.  

The rule change as I said is a reasonable one but at the same time far from adequate.  Heiniman has been shirking his legal duty to address the crowding problem our prisons already have and shows every sign that he will continue to do so.  In the meantime he is pushing to eliminate for massive tax cuts so that Nebraska will never be able to afford to meet its basic needs in either public safety or welfare.   The man himself, at least, seems to sincerely believe that he's doing the right thing by us, now and always.  At least he has that.

FC Top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Arsenal
5. Atletico Madrid
6.Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Manchester City
9. Roma
10. Raja Casablanca

Closing Bridges and Such

Out of all the murdering bastards on 'Breaking Bad' I must say that Tyrus is the character that I absolutely loathe the most.  I can understand being a tyrant or a thug for one's own material gain, evil as this can be.  But I nothing but the deepest contempt for riding the tiger's back, to be a bastard fr somebody else's benefit; and then not just coldly accept your paycheck but actually feel arrogant yourself over basking in somebody else's power.  Despicable, utterly disgusting. 

I never did care for Chris Christie.  He's a bore, the sort of man sort of man an introverted lefty like me has nightmares about sitting next to on a plane.  Arrogant, mean and 'moderate' only by the standards of the GOP in its current fallangiloon  form.  And I doubt that he really knew nothing about the GW bridge closing.  Innocent until proven till and all that, but I doubt it.

But whether or not it was just out-of control subordinates, precisely what kind of.... people could these subordinates possibly be.  What kind of filth would this Kelly and Wildestein have to be to take pleasure out of showing those damned liberals what's up, all for somebody else's aggrandizement.  Christie could have waltzed to the Senate or the White House without us having ever hearing of their 'contributions' to the world.  Yet still the pride expressed in those e-mails is clearly sincere; and all for a political gain that was in all probability imaginary; some measure of 'bipartisan' esoterica that might gain improving nods from the East Coast press for a day or two and then be forgotten long before it would influence a single vote in a contest that may never come.  Incredible.  At least G. Gordon Liddy was and is able to act and think on a Grand Apocalyptic scale, none of this shitassed junior prom tyranny. 

In addendum:  I'm okay with 'federalism' mainly, in the various things it means to various people federalism is in itself morally neutral at worst, mostly.  Having said that, is it really a good idea to give local/state authorities the power to restrict access to the most direct route into New York from much of the country's interior?  The GW bridge, Holland tunnel etc and all their approaches should be under full federal control.

This Blog endorses Ernie Chambers for God...

..... again. 

"Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers is looking to help the state gain more income, rather than less, by taking away churches' exemptions from taxation. That bill (LB675) is aimed at the exemption for religious organizations.

Chambers said the governor and Revenue Committee members have said that when it comes to taxation, everything should be on the table.

If taxes were paid on the many churches and cathedrals in every Nebraska city, he said, the state might not have to tax anybody else.

Religious people want to carry out the directives of Jesus, Chambers said, and the Bible says to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.

'In other words, pay your taxes,' he said.

'When I bring this bill, I am carrying out what Jesus wanted to see his followers do, and we want to see that the scriptures are fulfilled,' he said.

Every day that someone in the Legislature offers a prayer, it should be another vote for his bill, he said.

'And this should be one of the easiest bills to pass that I've ever offered to the Legislature'."

This is cool of him as well. 

Shooting a Mountain Lion, or an African one for that matter, requires precisely as much strength and courage as shooting a chipmunk.  It is that absolute same physical act.  I just don't get it.  If you want to demonstrate humankind's mastery over nature, just change the channel again and you have.  Yeesh.

Ben Sasse is a Cock

Ahh good old right wing pseudo-populism.  Never exactly in or ever completely out of style is it?  Never mind of course that we Nebraskans are round abouts 1/200th of all Americans, and that in as much that 'Big Government' is out of touch with us it would be for that rather obvious reason.  And of course let us not speak at all about the various form of welfare payments to already rich and powerful corporate ag interests.  They deserve it after all.  They are America, the rightful social masters that the rest of us simply live and work for.    The lobbying that they do , however successful, does therefore not truly count as 'influence peddling.'  It only counts as wasting money if it goes to strangers in the cities and on the coasts, people who we rarely if ever have to interact with and are therefore free to imagine as morally degenerate lesser beings instead of flesh and blood people they actually are. 

It will be interesting to see how far Sasse can go with what is actually a very orthodox, very 'Washington' style of Republican campaigning.  Nebraska, while conservative, his historically been a stoic and mild mannered place in the cultural sense, averse to the operatics one finds in say Texas just for example.  As conservative hegemony continues to die its many death its sad to watch us take on that embittered entitlement, rural purity kitsch, and theatric piety that has never actually been a part of who we as a more or less culturally 'Yankee' people have ever been. Ben Sasse may well be our next junior Senator, and he'd make a shitty one.  Probably nondescript but shitty all the same.

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Actually, the most dangerous group of spoiled, childish thugs in Omaha, (barring of course everyone who lives west of 120th, no competing with that)  be its police department, just as it is everywhere.  Just as it is everywhere.  This is beyond despicable.

      

And Yet....

In spite of it all....


.... The sun is already coming back. 

That's what the keeping the spirit of Christmas really means.  Charity is fine but not really season-specific.  Families fucking suck and love is an evolutionary slave mechanism meant to make you serve your genes instead of yourself.  But hope.  Hope is okay.  There is no such thing as good.  Only disgustingly bad & okay.  Hope is okay.  :-)

So is sexually ambiguous pagan iconography.  That's okay too.   

The Thing About New Year's

Is that it's like a birthday for everyone.  It's true that we live in a rich and eternally peaceful country where dying young is rare.  But still nothing is guaranteed.  We all made it to this arbitrary point together and that's worth fucking celebrating.  We drink and live at least partly in honor of those who didn't make it with us, i this country and every other, and also in defiance of whatever took them.  I love life.  If I personally know you and allow you to talk to me than that probably means I love you, not necessarily but probably.  If you're a stranger than I do at the very least most sincerely love sharing this world and this particular age with you.  All the best to everyone.  Good day.