I Admit It

Silvio Berlusconi's existence is darkly reassuring to me.  It's comforting to know that the United States in general, and especially the conservative rural interior I'm native to, is not the only place in the free world where majorities of complete fools will place a sociopathic rat in a position of great power.   Whatever it might be about Italy's culture that leads anyone to willingly support this creeping letch with delusions of omnipotence is not my place to dote upon.  It goes without saying that we have failings of our own.  Still it's amazing that this man fails and fails again and yet simply will not die;  in a strictly political sense I mean.  Though I suppose he is, (doing wikicheatpeak now)  76 years old. 

Overnight

It got cold enough to lightly freeze the running water in rivers and creeks around Nebraska
.  I suppose that's enough to compell me to surrender my Yankee pride and concede that yeah, it was rather uncomfortably cold yesterday.  One major difference is that these Northern fronts usually hang around for about a week and bring some snow with them.  This one has done neither.  Temperatures have already returned to their December 'norm' (There's really no such thing on the Plains) of mid-thirties or so.  Perfectly comfortable if you're under the sun in your coat, scarf, gloves, etc. 

I read an aside in the NYT yesterday about the Syrian rebel who digs Johnny Walker Black.  but has now taken to playing Islamist in order to placate therocracy minded suppliers.  I have no geopolitical point to make in this observation.  Or any point at all really.  I would only say that I was pretty indifferent to scotch for a long time.  It's  as I've aged and lived through some truly cold holiday seasons that I have come to learn that a dose of high-grade scotch to a savory-filled belly on a freezing day is God-damn orgasmically good.  Some Jameson in the winter is even better still.  Bushmills can do the trick too.  I have an uncle who's a total fuckass otherwise who brings some of that stuff around at Christmas and that's good on him.  Nothing more for today comrades. 

My Thoughts On This Valiant Nebraska Girl

*To address what's truly important first;  I appreciate middle-era Green Day myself and have always thought it rather underrated by the public at large.  I can't say I adore them at the level of Dylan Queen or P-Funk but hey, 'Warning', 'Minority',  'Brain Stew/Jaded' and 'Walking Contradiction' are all perfectly solid tunes.  Of course all anyone really remembers from this period is 'Time of Your Life' and the way it Borg Assimilated every modern rock/soft rock/top 40 radio station or high school related function for a full decade after its release; and that's a shame. Still it's no fault but our own that pablum sells. 

*At a somewhat more serious level.  I hope that no serious pundit or social will use this incident as a pretext for the next codgery kids-these-days rant, claiming that the mass access to fame provided by Youtube, Facebook, etc. is raising human foolishness to levels never even dreamed of in the good old days; because that simply isn't so.  People are precisely as stupid as we have ever been, no more and if anything a good deal less, in spite of the myriad examples of stupidity like the above that are still out there.  It wasn't the woman's on-camera end-zone dance that got her caught anyway. Rather it was robbing a bank in a small village where everyone knew everyone and knew exactly who they were being robbed by immediately.  That form of stupidity is by no means particular to our own time and certainly doesn't rely on modern technology. Not that Al Capone or John Dillinger ever shunned the limelight anyway. 

*  Finally, in punishing this woman, I hope that the judge and jury in punishing this woman do take into account the fact that what she did was quite indisputably.  I am not such wannabe-trickster nihilist to suggest that being funny attones for threatening lives destroying property or child abuse, but it counts for a hell of a lot alright?  Yes dear, the system truly is nothing but a game anyway, and it's one that you just lost on an unforced fumble.  The ones who are truly smart and dangerous enough to realize that the system is just a game are the ones that go into banking.  Everyone knows that. Several years from now, when you're parolled and hopefully somewhat wiser, we can go on and on about how the search of purpose leads people of all ages to do and think stupid things; how the young seek purpose in dramatic self-destruction while the old seek purpose in stasis and mindless dogma, or even how these two impulses feed off each other in war, terrorism, etc.  Feel free to call me up when you get out, and be sure to let me know if that band gig of yours looks promising.

Mule Is USA

Stamina of a camel, climbing prowess of a mountain goat.  Guranteed to get you to the highest peak, hottest jungle or deepes driest nothingness alive and in one piece,  so long as you're not too old when the journey begins.  A mongrelized misfit for a mongrelized misfit people, exponentially hardier and harder working thean those thoroughbreds made weak by incest to satisfy the aristocracy fetish of the Old World.  When the war comes these triple crown winners shall be nothing but dinner and their bouquets of roses shall be our garnish.  The Mule meanwhile shall live amoung us as our comrade and our brother together we relish manly toil.  The mule is of the people and we shall reign as one body forever. 

Post 400

Be cartoonishly epic in everything you do.  If you are unemployed then amen but you must eat beans and watch General Hospital with enough passionate glory to make the Gods shudder in their very thrones upon holy Olympus. 

Seek conflict for it's own sake.  You must convince yourself that any refusal to eat your special raisin bread cookies is a life-threatening insult or else verily you are already dead. 

When the New Order comes it shall truly be the greatest day of life.  Not that you were ever with them, of course not.  Still the look on your neighbors faces, after year upon year of laughing while you stockpiled on guns and sardines and now forced to knock on your door beging for your help.  You'll give them your help alright.  for you are a rightous man.  Still the pleasure of it.  By God it will be so wonderful.  You realize now that your honeymoon sex with that whore of an ex wife was only a plae echo of the glory to come. 

 

What it comes down to see is work ethic and love.  Love what you do more than you love your children and love the great men who made your work possible more than yourself.  Amen but verily all else must flow from that.  Love your lot in life and become your work as an act of war  then amen but the answers must surely come.  God bless.  

 

 

Here and There

Their reasons are of course their own and they are perfectly entitled to them, and it is also true that this Enrique Nieto received only a plurality of the vote, not a majority.  Still I'm mystified as to why any large group of Mexicans would ever trust those fuckin shyster Death Eaters from the PRI ever again.  Though their official policy positions are vaguely leftish the PRI are an truth a aideological mafia in political clothing who leeched the southern folk dry for nearly a century.  Now here they are again.  Duly elected by all reasonible accounts, yet the amount of penance paid for the amount of harm they caused seems shockingly brief to me.  Thankfully the human race as a whole seems ever less inclined toward submission and it's unlikely that these jokers will be able to get away with anything near the levels of tyranny and corruption that they have in the past.  Maybe. 

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I'm curious man... are you a completely bad faith actor or; is there some part of you that, out of natural fear, honestly refuses to accept that some level of innate mortal vulnerability is unavoidable?  Have you truly convinced yourself that there is such a thing as perfect control over one's own fate?  That it's humanly possible to be eternally vigilant and prepared against any threat?  That victimhood can always be staved off through sufficient force of will?  Or whenever something shooty happens do you simply go into bullshit autotron when you say 'If only victim X had been armed'?

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The group stage of the UEFA Champions League is often criticized as being hopelessly dull and/or weighted in favor of the big name teams.  This is true in no small way.  Yet also true that it is we the common fans, acting as a worldwide army of shameless bandwagon frontrunning bastards; who create the financial incentive to favor the aristocracy and are therefore responsible for the competitions' bloated contemporary shape.  They shouted out who killed the Kennedys...

Yet in spite of all that there will be some interesting drama in the last jag of group games on Wednesday afternoon, American time, involving my adopted club of Celtic.  The Bhoys (We are so intimate enough for me to call them that:) are tied with Portugal's Benfica for the second and last survival spot in Group G on seven points.  The Portuguese hold the tie-break on head-to head record, so that a win would put them in the last 16 no matter what the papists do.  The catch here is that Benfica are playing their last game at  Barcelona, while Celtic will be home with already doomed Spartak Moscow.  Overall I'm feeling pretty good about, if you'll excuse me, our chances. 

Celtic's best recent performance was probably back in 2007 when they took eventual champions AC Milan to overtime in the second round.   They acheived this by intentionally playing for 0-0 and penalties the whole way but fuck it, underdogs gotta do what they gotta right?  A wildcat run similar to what those Cypriot guys acheived last year would be very cool.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

Not That It Hasn't Been Clear for some Time Now

But something is well and truly fucked up within the bowels of American football culture.  At the personal level this means that, as a Nebraskan, there is alwo something well and truly fucked up within my own 'native culture.'  There's the UNL Cornhuskers of course, but also the related fact that most Husker males play at least a few years of organized football.  I was tight end and secondary, still remember the basics of blocking and tackling, and it can be resonably presumed that most men one sees on the Lincoln streets do as well. 

I do see with the same blinding clarity as everyone else how much of a filthy, poisonous, corrupt, evil little game this is.  Yet my boyhood love of it is still there.  Aye.  Perhaps last night's reminder that the home team will never, ever, ever be elite again will be enough to free some of us from this chauvinistic, patriarchial, blindly authoritarian hate fuck that sucks the blood of legitimate education like a horde of lampreys.  Time will tell.