Can you tell a paraphrased lyric from a cold steel rail?

A thrilling glimpse into the exciting world of librarianism.

I think I'm going to start posting more of these bad photographs in between ruminations on sport and album reviews, really postmodernize the hit count.

Minimalism!



















Oh, happy Walpurgisnacht. Be sure to leave out cookies and milk for the devil.

The sporting life

This is what happens when you ask someone if their mom is a prostitute:



Now that's what I call a pitched battle.

Speaking of the pitch, go here to read me waxing idiotic on some footy.

Speaking of feet, those north-of-the-border frogs used theirs to kick our nation's capital to the icy curb. This will not stand. Canada, prepare for an invasion of our finest crackers brandishing fried foods.

Pittsburgh vs. Montreal: I'm not sure people are grasping how large a miserable failure Washington just barfed on the East coast. A 33-point regular season gap, a 91-goal differential gap, world-class star power against a collection of midgets and pieces-parts and blowing a 3-1 lead. Somehow, I can't see Crosby, Malkin, Gonchar, et al permitting a second coming of blasphemy. Penguins in five.

Boston vs. Philadelphia: A shame when two perennial underachievers meet, for one gets to shed a few blemishes off such truth. The city of brotherly angst is already aware that three key forwards will be lounging it up at home while the beaneaters are getting back offensive wiz/defensive fizz Marc Savard. But the latter also has Satan, the ultimate sleeved ace. Bruins in seven.

San Jose vs. Detroit: Now here's a matchup brimming with tradition. Hockeytown vs. The Choke Job. Californistan has talent, but until they put up, they can shut their piehole. Red Wings in six.

Chicago vs. Vancouver: The number two seed is the chic pick, and though rookie goalies with postseason success aren't unheard of -- Cam Ward in 2006 and backstopping gods Ken Dryden in 1971 and Patrick Roy in 1986, for starters -- the Canucks have a bit more thermonuclear weaponry at their disposal than those quarterfinal hillbillies. Still, who doesn't love being à la mode. Blackhawks in six.

Suckiest bunch of sucks that currently suck

The King is dinged, long live the King's elbow.

He's fine, though what troubles me most about the upcoming [insert combat-related colloquialism here] against Boston is nothing X-and-O related, no Pierce-ian truthiness, no Shaq Fu free throw adventuring, but something more subtle, a growing monochrome tint upon the technicolor conference semifinal canvas: just how bloody awful Rasheed Wallace has become.

Not merely an old, aging gracefully samurai warrior archetype able to plop his increasing flab onto the hardwood in order to display, reminiscent of a peacock, one final time that classic, bug-eyed, a foul on me?ball-don't-lie!a technical? stare into a specific point in the space-time continuum, a cosmic meeting of the x, y and z axes within a documented time frame, visible only to his insectoid globes, but awful, fucking awful.






















I miss the little scamp already. Sniff.

The Flash on the Doorstep

Ye gods, I almost forgot about this. That sickly aroma of the harried, the hurried, the rushed? Blame Yog-Sothoth.

I said that you don't have to believe me, and I certainly wouldn't...if I were in your shoes. But the facts remain steadfast, Howard, in spite of the conflicting factions of your quaint, beloved reason and my glaring neon insanity. So fucking haughty you are, but you'll see, you'll see, and then you'll believe.

But not now, of course, old friend. Ha! Go on and claim taut threads will prevent gnawing through this flesh, through this bone to get at the sweet, sweet marrow inside. Don't look at me like that, it's all that'll be left once they've begun. Nothing left. Tell me, is that the meaning of the 'good' buried below 'for my own?'

You will tell me, for your hubris know no limits.

Behold!

You lord all you survey. A shame it's naught but padded shouting. Ha! Rigid as a preacher, an impressive figure you'd cut, if you weren't so amazingly wrong. A serious visage for a serious matter. The DSM-IV spread upon your hands, the Gospel according to the psychiatric hospital. This is the word of the lab. Praise be to Howard. Your good book to be heard by the multitudes of unfortunates who will die like dogs. Like me.

Such a sad fate this hallucination, given what passes for life in the septic tunnels of a poor, pill-fed, once respected mind safely out of public earshot, the only plausible outcome.

Like you. Oh, don't step in the afterbirth.

No, no, listen, I know you saw what I did, why else would you lock me away, but how else was I to stop its coup d'état? Don't encephalitic fluids, like the subjects of our illusory democracies, deserve freedom, too? They're coming.

And you'll scream for a room.

While you're busy laughing, can I have a drag? Thanks.

You're a good friend, Howard. How I pity you.

Proof that Cleveland isn't all cracked concrete and cannibalism

Tengrain, I'm looking at you.











































































Man, I love this camera. Now I can put even less thought into posting than I did before, which I'm sure you've noticed. Oh, alright, you insatiable dogs, here's come classic Cleveland:































That poor, poor barrel. The backstory: when we initially refused the below, being the city flush with bootstrap pulling patriots of the first rank that we are, an army of Guevaran partisans overran our streets and shot many of us dead and murdered that poor bird out of raging socialist spite. Sniff.

Really?

A Denver fan after learning his team wasted a first rounder on Tim Tebow.



The rest of the NFL.

Stupid human tricks: a visual essay

Inter's Maicon after scoring against Barcelona.

















Lenny and Squiggy.














Bayern's Arjen Robben after scoring against Lyon.


















Dr. Evil.

Scare tactics

♪ ♫ The hills are alive ♪ with the sound of Nazi UFOs ♫ ♪














Seriously?

Halloween is supposed to be frightening!

disturbing!

bloodcurdling!

and nuclear-powered robot Hitler, Michael Myers and the American electorate aside, what's more terrifying than Jake Delhomme tossing enough picks to where you'd need more than one severed hand to count them all?













Curiouser and curiouser as you no doubt are, let me inform you that those pound signs indicate games that have been marked as potential flex matchups, thus offering irrefutable proof that someone in the NFL offices is drunk.

A descent into the maelström

Sailed to Burns...



































































...wrecked on McGonagall.

Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin' into the future

Wait 'til next year, a Cleveland tradition since 1965.

















Really? All of us? Even that one guy who sucks?

















Oh, alright, fuck tradition.















Cleveland vs. Chicago: I know, I know, the Clash of les cheveux is quite compelling intrigue, but don't you think Mr. James has forged the last year out of crystal, a clarity of such exquisiteness that verily we all blindeth shall be? 38-8-8 is great, and it rhymes, too, but even the best need a hand (in the face of a wing) or a made three (cough, Mo Williams, cough) or it's 38-8-8 and a series loss. I'd wager they got the message. Cavs in five.

Boston vs. Miami: Grumpy Old Men meet the Lone Ranger. Contrary to certain segments of the philosophical community and wackadoo Buddhists, more is more. Celtics in seven.

Orlando vs. Charlotte: The team with the most generic aesthetics (I guess Wildcats was taken) in the entire NBA are a veritable hornets (how ironically ironic!) nest on defense. On the downside, especially if you're a certain ex-baller with a flaccid executive record and a penchant for gambling, Dwight Howard is 75 feet tall. Imagine how frightening he'd be if he had a bit of the Hakeem sang froid assassin flair. Magic in five.

Atlanta vs. Milwaukee: The Hawks are the new Bucks, vintage 1980s, a fantastic team destined to never take the floor 'round the summer solstice. Lack of Vegemite hurts the upset chances, though. Hawks in six.

The Fucking Lakers vs. Oklahoma City: Please go Kissinger and LeMay, Scoring Champ Kevin Durant, and bomb my prognostication into the stone age, pretty please? The Fucking Lakers in six.

Denver vs. Utah: Kenyon Martin is hurt. So is Carlos the Traitor (and their commie defensive wiz) but the former is hurt worse, though two is greater than one, conundrums, conundrums. Wait, Deron Williams is a motherfucking mofo. Plus they've got Magic Underpants Nation in their corner and who dare draw the blade against that army of wives? Jazz in six. Maybe.

Dallas vs. San Antonio: Riverwalk is a bit healthier this time around (thank you, socialized medicine!), the existence of Dajuan Blair means The Big Fundamental doesn't have to play 48 minutes on one leg, Richard Jefferson is a useful pieces-part at last (Popovich is the real Zen Master) and believe you me, Dallas won a lot of close games against a convoy of scrubs, so don't buy the second seed too much. Spurs in six.

Phoenix vs. Portland: Poor Rip City. Oden, Przybilla, myriad other nicks and cuts and tears and now their best player's meniscus is on the couch stuffing its face with Funyons. The fact that Amare is surprisingly interested for once (gee, must be a contract year) doesn't help matters. Suns in six.

Volcanic ash ist krieg

Land of vikings? Land of fucking poseurs.

You talk the talk, but will you walk the walk?

We're walking.

Вы можете у меня переписной лист, когда вы подглядывать его из моих холодных мертвых рук.

I briefly considered heading down this too-sunny afternoon to get a quick chuckle at the West Side Story between those who bag tea and some presumably metaphorical lefty counterpunching, but then I remembered I have to clip my toenails, plant rutabagas, wash that grey right out of my hair, discern ancient Chinese secrets. Bonne chance, spectacle in a bottle.

никакого налогообложения без представительства!

What is this puckery?

I know that's how a preponderance of you wankers feel when I post yet again about sports. Good. Embrace the pain, build some character.

The worst American side against one of the world's best, even if it'll be their B-team? We'll still need the A to stave off the ass-whuppin' bounty our pitied fools shall receive. But at least it'll provide a comic (perhaps not for this guy) palliative for post-semester decompression.

See, this is why I need photoshop, so I can show Mr. T firing one past Troy Perkins. The following will have to suffice. Je suis désolé.



Now, for the world's least in-depth Jimmy the Greeking, on the rocks:

Washington vs. Montreal: One team has Alexander Ovechkin and Mike Green and the other does not. Capitals in five.

Pittsburgh vs. Ottawa: One team has Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin and the other does not. Penguins in five.

New Jersey vs. Philadelphia: I don't trust Ilya. I do trust Martin. Devils in six.













As if you wouldn't vote for this guy over a career politician. Right.

Buffalo vs. Boston: Watching the Bruins' offensive ineptitude this season, I was gently reminded of a local gridiron squadron. Oh, and the higher seed has Ryan Miller, he of the olympian Olympics. Sabres in six.

San Jose vs. Colorado: Californistan never chokes until the second round. Sharks in five.

Phoenix vs. Detroit: A clash between the inexplicable and the explicable. If the inexplicable wins, explain that. Red Wings in six.

Chicago vs. Nashville: Barry Trotz is a god. He simply doesn't have enough power at his disposal, his Sweet Zombie Jesus combating Chicago's Zeus. Ever see JC wield bolts of lightning? Blackhawks in five.

Vancouver vs. Los Angeles: If I had faith in Jonathan Quick, the young Kings would be the choice. Not that Robbie the Robot isn't likely to blow a circuit. Canucks in seven. I guess. I don't know.

What a crock of flash

Few things are more magical than words.

The trouble with me is that I never realise how deep in the shit I am until I'm choking on the stuff. Praise be to fifteen centuries of kings and queens that the flavour rolling over my tongue wasn't fecal matter, but blood.

My blood.

Not much of an improvement? When you've been struck with a virulent plague of sticky notes and gluey tabs polluting text after returned text, you live with the consequences of invisible, no doubt dangerous retaliation. Oh sure, combing through the musty, cobwebbed crypt of a repository did wonders for my respiratory system, but when the rumours proved their whispered veracity and that infamous, sepia-coloured cover, a disturbingly wan hue of ancient skin, was glaring back, in here of all places, I knew whatever pain befell me would be worth this grim endeavour.

Believe me, even I questioned such a fantastical sentiment after a whirling dervish of tomes, tumbling out of the rank air from nowhere I could discern, nearly buried me alive between the stacks, those grey steel walls lording and laughing over my bruised form prone in the valley below. But after I somehow wormed my way home to patch myself up, I turned on the telly and smiled.

Scotland Yard was baffled.

Death by a thousand cuts was no longer a mere phrase.

Saturday Gigs

There's the ass of the infamous and ridiculous free stamp.


















There's the ass of the NFL.


















Note clever placement of the cannon, able to ward off invasion from the Great White North and bombard the hapless Browns into submission.


















Doing out PR part to save green crap from capitalist pigs.


















Mellow on, nondescript burg, mellow on.

The Ill Beehives

My head pops off & this is where it dawns
to float & collect over nectar floors:
suffocating under self-spun honey
to conclude polluting smoky vertical combs: again:
stinging stinging stung by empty
sheets' regurgitating flare gun.
Please
I tried to send
I'll try again demain
after the glass magnifies the basic truth:

the magic center thrives in burning space.
Abstract accident soarings
wheeled free, now stroll
strangling boulevards of unquiet obliques &
carefully tended poppy beds.
Knocked out: wake:
vomit disease & royal spectacle
gritty here in the throat.
All we are permitted is to choke
on droning misdirections that

build
build up
build a new
wax museum
swarming far & wide
open to the public
dressed so nervously:
gaze on those eyes cloudy
with paint & blackened equilibria
below blue skies on sticky ground.

Police state

Oh, great. There goes my plan to spray paint "RTA go to hell" all over the sidewalks of this fair town. How about "Messi just scored again."

Frescoes of the Skull

Shelves and stacks and shelves of skulls, a Dewey
Decimal number inked on each unfurrowed forehead.
Here's a skull
who, before he lost his fleshy parts
and lower bones, once
walked beside a river (we're in the poetry section
now) his head full of love
and loneliness; and this smaller skull,
in the sociology stacks, smiling (they're all
smiling)—it's been empty
a hundred years. That slot
across the temple? An ax blow
that fractured
her here. Look at this one from the children's shelves,
a baby, his fontanel
a screaming mouth and this time no teeth, no smile.
Here's a few (history)—a murderer,
and this one—see how close their eye sockets!—a thief,
and here's a rack of torturers' skulls
beneath which a longer row of the tortured,
and look: generals' row,
their epaulets
on the shelves to each side of them.
Shelves and shelves, stacks stacked on top of stacks,
floor above floor,
this towering high-rise library
of skulls, not another bone in the place
and just now the squeak of a wheel
on a cart piled high with skulls
on their way back to shelves
while in the next aisle
a cart filling with those about to be loaned
to the tall, broken-hearted man waiting
at the desk, his library card
face down before him.

-- A Library of Skulls, Thomas Lux

C'est-à-dire, pay your fines sans regret.
Books aren't the only thing we collect.
Muahahahahahaha, et
cet-
era of good feelings, I mean, whee.

Flash of oranje

The real reason why totaalvoetbal lost the 1974 World Cup Final?
Start there and end here.

Hearing is sometimes believing.

Whatever the motives that fueled the editors of Bild Zeitung, whether anti-Dutch agitprop or simply pre-TMZ nonsense, and whatever damage control from the lips of Netherlands coach Rinus Michels would have succeeded or failed post-report, to those stakeholders unwilling to truly listen, certain facts remained undercover. Even if certain members of the Netherlands football side and their female German companions did not. Skinny dipping and champagne? Who's to say?

A bowl of cashews?

Someone, that's who.

The telephone was glued to the ear of star forward and pitch magician Johan Cruyff the following night as he pleaded with his wife that this was nothing but a fabrication, that he was as faithful as ever. The contents of the large, porcelain bowl were glued to the fingers of his teammates. The nuts, brought to the previous evening's party by one of the German girls, were ambrosia to the confident Dutch and, as they dwindled in number, began to be fought over, first playfully, then with a slightly ferocious, yet drunkenly askew resolve. A fly on the wall would have seen no alcohol in the room, only the increasingly bizarre behavior of the world's most enthralling outfit.

After a night's rest -- only the players themselves can confirm whether it was good, bad or ugly -- both teams took the pitch only to experience a slight delay as someone had forgotten to place the corner flags in their proper location. For the Dutch, their proper location was in the hearts and minds of football fans young and old. Seventeen passes and a penalty. The Germans hadn't touched the ball a single time before it was 1-0.

German forward Gerd Müller, Der Bomber, flashed a grin seen by no one.

Colors, the colors, something was very wrong with them. The no-longer-green grass heaved and twisted, not as during an earthquake, but as if Euclidean space itself was being permanently altered into something incomprehensible. There wasn't a goal, wasn't a cache of heavenly white mesh, only that No-Longer-Green. What the stadium audience, and the billions watching on television perceived as arrogance as the Dutch flitted and floated and weaved over the carefully graded rectangle and around the Germans was anything but. The man who had scored on the penalty shot, forward Johan Neeskens, coolly remembered a wonderful feeling of elation from the distant past, and he tried to grasp it, his hands moving through the pink and chartreuse kit of the opposition. No, it is gone, he thought to himself. Perhaps asking for help.

Willem van Hanegem took the gift. Then Wim Jansen. Johnny Rep.

An interloper.

Wave after wave of usurpers to the throne with three heads and twenty legs.

Then a diving masterclass by Bernd Hölzenbein, 10.0 from the English judge and Paul Breitner's gold medal shot. 1-1.

Cruyff panicked in that placid way cerebral masters do, sliding back to help on defense as the Germans continued their onslaught, those twenty-legged interlopers brandishing their bloody glaives and forked purple tongues, cutting angular swaths through the swelling earth.

At last, their general appears, the devil. Der Bomber. A relentless push, a crafty tip back, decidedly Euclidean space cleared of Oranje and a crawling centipede through frozen keeper Jan Jongbloed and into the cradling arms of that heavenly white mesh. 1-2.

Half time came and went for the Dutch, and the undulating soil soon regained the elegant proportion so reminiscent of their native Holland. Their reality that would gleefully eschew our inept simulacra, would mock our pretensions to proper space and form, dissipated as quickly as a springtime shower. Beautiful totality vanished along with the symphony of blood and monsters, replaced with a human violence, volley after volley threatening to decapitate Jongbloed's opposite, Sepp Meier. Those who had tuned, turned and dropped were now once again men. Woodwork hits, turfed craters, desperation.

The final whistle.

In the subsequent chaos, a reporter manages to corner the world champion Müller, asking a garbled, ridiculous question on the game-winner, his last international goal. His answer is equally as garbled, ridiculous. "Ich liebe Cashewnüsse!"

Friday, and 'tis a good one

Perhaps I need to rethink this whole "religion is full of kooks" gig. Oh sure, it's still full of them --

example, check this serendipitous whackery out: logging in, I accidentally transposed a couple of letters in this dump's URL, and look where I landed; before you ask, no, that is not my devious doing --

but thanks to one of the three kookiest monoliths, the bus was (mostly) chock empty of fellow public transportationistas, ergo an earlier arrival at work, ergo squared I was permitted to imbibe a not inconsiderable swig or three before I had to send in the clowns.

Ah. Life is mediocre good.

No, it's still mediocre, but I've got brew to compensate.

It's Never Sunny In Cleveland

April Fools!

Riddle me this, Camelot. How the hell did Barcelona, after that crazy ass opening fifteen reminiscent of a Great War fusillade, not win?













"This new learning amazes me, Sir Bedevere. Explain again how sepp's blatter may be employed to prevent goals."