Hey, where are the bloody pictures?

Since those of us of a vaguely anarcho-lefty-slacker persuasion are always touting the virtues of stealing from those more fortunate economically, I decided to steal this meme from Anthony Cartouche, a man so rich he drives a 24k gold-plated gas guzzler on his way to and from the regional GOP offices while running over little old ladies crossing the street to Mass. Seriously.

Would I lie to you?

The deal is that you are to list five books you're theoretically supposed to be embarrassed for not having read yet. C'mon. There are so many fucking books sitting in the shelfosphere that getting to all the good stuff is nigh impossible unless you're going to live forever like the biomechanical Cheney Bot, but that psychopathic killing machine hasn't been programmed to have time for reading, not with all those third world refugees to eat. Oh well, here's five.

Books, not refugees.

Jane Austen, Emma.
William Godwin, Caleb Williams.
George Eliot, Middlemarch.
Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure.
Emile Zola, Thérèse Raquin.

I'm going to tag everyone. I know some of you are fellow book geeks -- not that I'd do anything so cheap and tawdry as to name names -- so I expect this to be done at some point. Don't make me scowl at you from across the tubes.

The Kentucky French Fried Movie Blog

In the comments to my Angry White Man post, POP wondered when I was going to go all French on everyone again. Given that she's a fan of The Fucking Cowboys, it's probably some snarky jingoistic crap 'cause all fans of The Fucking Cowboys are Junior Bush Rangers, sporting those FSM-awful ten-gallon hats stuffed full of taxpayer dollars they got from yet another corporate bailout, right? Either that or it's some French maid deal and even though I've got the sexy gams to pull it off, this is a family-friendly internets website and I prefer to be a sharp-dressed man. I'll leave the cross-dressing to Rudy! and fans of Frank N. Furter. Man, I fucking hate that movie.

I've got jack shit today, alors, pour vous, quelque musique française.



L'ouverture d'Acte 1 de Platée de Rameau, dirigé par Marc Minkowski.

Comme les américains disent, that's some good shit.

En plus, le 18 septembre 1180, le roi de France, Louis VII, est mort et son fils, Philippe II Auguste, est devenu le nouveau roi et il était un fois que j'ai écrit une dissertation sur Philippe pour la classe. Quelle émotion !

La référence obligatoire à la politique: Bush suce !

Le gasp !

Hier, l'extraterreste Mooselini a apparu à Cleveland !













"I know you're looking forward to us controlling your uterus."

Who the hell wants to be a grownup?

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Plan 9 From Outer Space

A flash of light, and then it was gone! No, man, I'm serious! You didn't see it? How the hell could you not have seen it? It was a fucking UFO! Heading east! An alien presence here, in this place! At this time!

Oh, Youngstown, you're doomed! Doomed!












Look, man, they've landed! Look, damn you, look!

"We're going to put an end to the reckless corruption and unbridled greed on Wall Street," McCain told a crowd of about 8,000 in a giant hangar at at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport.

Oh, alien overlords, why must you incinerate our beloved American way of life?
I beg of you, please don't destroy our god-given right to greed with your advanced interstellar technology!

And if Wall Street doesn't heed his call for reform, McCain said, "They will have a fight on their hands with the president of the United States."

Nooooooo! Not the Socialism Death Ray!


















Curse you, proletariat aliens!

A malediction upon your manifesto!

A hex upon your superior intelligence!

A pox upon your planet of origin!














Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

Impressionism

"My friends, that's my 'Bush.' What do you think?"

Listen to that funky music, white boy

After whining like Ted Stevens in the halls of Congress making a legitimate inquiry into why I hadn't been tagged by a certain person on a music -- music! -- meme, I was thrilled to see that said certain person corrected her egregious, but no doubt honest *cough* error.

En plus, it works out for the best because all I have to do is a minimum amount of work without bitching about politics because, frankly, I'd rather not punch holes in the monitor where I'd not simply slice my hand up, tearing tendons and ligaments and thereby derailing my burgeoning career as a major-league fireballer, but get contaminated by some rare chemical whose danger has been vastly underreported in the press. And if I croak, how could I do my beloved posts on the Browns?

Anyway, according to the rules, we're supposed to list our 25 favorite tracks on our mp3 player. I love lists, but narrowing down anything music related to a mere 25 is like someone asking me to choose between my kids. Both of them piss me off with equal verve.

Therefore, I decided to list the last 25 tracks that I've played. Given that I'm more of an album dude than a songmeister, that won't work either, so you get the last 25 albums I've played from the most recent to those last heard many aeons ago (last week).

Metallica, Death Magnetic
Opeth, Blackwater Park
Opeth, Still Life
Opeth, Watershed
Katatonia, The Great Cold Distance
High on Fire, Blessed Black Wings
The White Stripes, Elephant
Philippe Graffin and Pascal Devoyon, Joseph Canteloube/Pierre de Breville: violin sonatas
Corrosion of Conformity, Wiseblood
Celtic Frost, Morbid Tales
Faith No More, Angel Dust
High on Fire, Surrounded by Thieves
Wolves in the Throne Room, Two Hunters
Weakling, Dead as Dreams
David Oistrakh, Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin concerto and romances
The Florestan Trio, Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano trios, volume one
Metallica, ...And Justice For All
Metallica, Ride the Lightning
Van Halen, Fair Warning
Sir Neville Marriner, conductor, Johannes Brahms: symphonies 3 and 4
Daniele Gatti, conductor, Piotr Tchaikovsky: symphony 5/Romeo and Juliet overture
Daniele Gatti, conductor, Piotr Tchaikovsky: symphony 4/Capriccio Italien
The White Stripes, Icky Thump
Voltaire, The Devil's Bris
Josep Pons, conductor, Georges Bizet: L'arlésienne suites/Symphony in C

Alright, suckers, 25 favorites, 25 last, 25 albums, I don't care. Here's a golden opportunity to not post about McFossil and/or Mooselini. Don't be a fool and pass it up!













"Really? Methuselah's Greatest Hits is my favorite album, too!"

Dean Wormer
the boss
Liberality
Mathman
susan

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly II

"At least we haven't ripped your heart out like the Chargers."

The Good: the defense was far superior than against The Fucking Cowboys. Okay, 5.3 yards/play doesn't rekindle memories of the Purple People Eaters, but Pittsburgh had less than 300 total yards and only 10 points. En plus, putting aside any statistical sabermetricism, they hit a hell of a lot harder and thankfully blitzed now and then which, yes, led to actual sacks of an actual NFL quarterback! More than once!

The Bad: watching the offense, I kept on showing my O-face. You know, "O, I think I'm going to throw up." What the hell happened to the line this year? I understand that Braylon Edwards has forgotten how to play receiver and that Derek Anderson was about as sharp as knife found on an archaeological dig, but weren't you guys Manly Men of Manliness last season?

The Ugly: where to start? Braylon's continuing case of the whoopsie-doodles, DA tossing a duck into the evening air flush with 40-50 mph gusts -- shockingly, it was intercepted! -- the horrid red zone offense (2 field goals and a pick near the goal line), and a golden opportunity fumbled away on special teams. Look, when the opposition flubs a kickoff, don't be a McPOW. Forsake the Sportscenter highlight and fall on the fucking ball.

Why couldn't we have opened up against two cupcakes? Thanks, Mr. NFL Schedule Bastard. At least we should be 2-2 going into the bye. Should be, but this is Cleveland.

Up next: at the team that stole our Super Bowl thanks to Art the Traitor -- hell yeah, I'm still bitter. Fuck you and your 'time heals all wounds' shit.

An Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence

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Metal up your ass

Gather 'round children and I shall tell you a tale. Once upon a time, there was a band, and they were so wonderful that they made all us angry kids shout

FUCKING METALLICA!

Then they went away for awhile and when they returned they had cut their hair and we said

Fucking Metallica.

I won't even begin to explain their last album.

We all have those bands, the foundations that don't merely comprise the 'soundtrack to your life' cliché, but become a tangible part of existence, of growing up, of finding your place in the world. Yeah, that's also a cliché, but it's fucking true, no? Unless you hate music in which case kindly go Cheney yourself. For those of you older than I, the Beatles or the Stones or Zeppelin or Bowie or Elvis Costello or Miles Davis or whomever held -- and may still hold -- that coveted throne, remaining a touchstone. For me it was these guys. Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, ...And Justice For All. I've spun those four albums more than the rest of my collection combined. Believe me, as much as I love music, that's a lot of spins. Hell, I'm listening to Metallica right now as I type this. The only difference is that it isn't one of those hallowed, precious slices of anger and frustration and release, but their new one, their supposed return to form after the what-the-fuck boogie rock of Load and Reload and the metalized primal scream therapy of the universally panned St. Anger, Death Magnetic.

And I'm speaking of the music alone. You'll find no ham-fisted Napster bullshit, no sellout speak -- for the record, shifting genres this much isn't selling out, quality of the music be damned; tracks like Ronnie and 2x4 were what the kids were jonesing for in the mid-90s? Really? You fucking sheep. How come you never bitch about painters trying new shit? -- no Lars the out-of-touch Basquiat collector nor the running gag that the band became after the Some Kind of Monster documentary. I don't give a fuck about any of that garbage. We're all dickheads and assholes in our own way, we all fuck up at one time or another. Hell, I just corrected two typos in the last sentence alone.

Hmm. I'm getting dangerously close to not following my own dictum.

"Heh, heh, he said dick."

A heartbeat starts the album before eerie, single notes are plucked, the slow, brooding intro that the band used to perfection so many times, leading into the galloping thrash riff of That Was Just Your Life. The not-Rick Rubin production -- is there a more hands-off producer? -- is dry and the guitars are sharp, but there's slightly less of a bite than there should be, at least when compared to the Flemming Rasmussen jobs back in the old days. At least a buzzsaw with gently rounded edges can still cut through flesh. James Hetfield is, thankfully, singing less and barking more than on recent efforts -- St. Anger truly proving to be, in retrospect, even more of an anomaly than once thought, both musically and lyrically -- and, what's that? someone found Kirk Hammett! Actual guitar solos! A lot of them! Both pre- and post- solo, there are oodles of Justice-style parts-consciousness and, architecturally, that is the album that Death Magnetic most resembles.

Texturally, the band runs the gamut of their catalog, second track The End of the Line melding a sinewy, Load-style groove with choppy thrash runs and staccato drumming. Yes, Mr. Ulrich isn't, and never has been, in the same class as true percussion masters such as Slayer's Dave Lombardo, ex-Sepultura drummer Igor Cavalera and Charlie Benante from Anthrax, but for some reason, his rudimentary skills seem to fit the riffs -- most of the time. Not that I wouldn't mind a drummer who could actually hit the skins quickly without sounding sloppy when the band shifts into third gear. At least the drums don't sound as clicky as on Justice -- though they certainly don't crack as on Metallica -- but I'd wager they're a bit too high in the mix, at least for my tastes. Hetfield's vocals, with their jagged, intermittent intonations, remind me a bit of Death Angel's Mark Osegueda, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It does indeed get harder to scream the more grey hairs one collects.

Broken, Beat & Scarred takes a rubbery, black album aesthetic and fills in the gaps with bits and pieces of mid-paced thrash. The jackhammer repetition of riffs and vocal lines, though perhaps slightly overdone in the bridge, keeps the song glued together, enabling it to beat you over -- okay, finish the joke yourself.

First single The Day That Never Comes has far more in common, despite both what some knuckleheads will tell you and the song's subject matter gleaned from the lyrics, the video and various interviews with the band, with Fade to Black than One. Somber, dreamy chords and vocals trade licks with heavier measures before giving way to a Maiden-esque guitar duel before blowing up with the obligatory machine-gun climax.

Speaking of climaxes -- not that, perverts -- side one -- dating myself, ain't I -- climaxes with the spiritual successor to Enter Sandman, the superior All Nightmare Long, which severely ups the aggression meter with a barrage of Disposable Heroes-esque measures bookending the chorus through judicious use of tempo changes.

The album's first misstep is Cyanide, a track that sounds like a Reload leftover with better production and demonstrates what I'm sure is a common complaint: the songs are too long. This is actually one of the shorter works, clocking in under seven minutes, but its hefty bridge and solo is weighed down by slightly unfocused verses. Cut off a couple of minutes of fat, et voilà, instant okayness. I'm a big fan of long songs, and for the most part, the ones here seem to have been recorded at their natural length, but every ear is different, so varying mileage and such.

When I first saw the track listing, I audibly groaned when I read The Unforgiven III. Unfounded worries, so rest easy, young man. Not as good as the stellar original, it's markedly superior to the Hetfield-as-blue-eyed-crooner pseudo-sequel on Reload, mainly because it forges its melancholy using different -- for Metallica -- sparser elements, the song commencing with piano, understated strings -- hear that, Michael Kaman? Oh, that's right, you're dead -- and even a few bars of brass for color. Unlike the traditional metalli-ballad, it never catches fire and may bore the fuck out of the 'dude, where's my thrash?' crowd, but the progressive whole is better than the sum of its parts. This is what Nothing Else Matters should have been instead of the insipid dreck that it was. Fuck, I hate that song.

Recalling any number of past works, Harvester of Sorrow and Holier Than Thou above all others, The Judas Kiss mines that midtempo territory where lost souls go to brood. Like Cyanide, this is another track that could probably do with a shave and a haircut -- laugh, you bastards, laugh -- but it has its moments.

The nearly ten-minute instrumental Suicide & Redemption is less The Call of Ktulu epic mythologizing or an immortal hymn to despair à la To Live Is To Die, but a multi-layered, brick-by-brick jam that is the emotional kin to Orion. A meandering, dare I say it, joyful -- in that 'ha ha we're crazy but we don't care!' way -- riff slowly mutates into further riffs building upon each other before cycling back to the original, now-thickened, chords.

My Apocalypse concludes the album the way Damage, Inc. and Dyers Eve did so many years ago, with relentless pummeling, which is what I imagine the song's subject matter, a horrific car crash, might be like. At least until your charred body burned up in the gasoline explosion.

Death Magnetic is as much a return to form as one could expect from metalheads on the wrong side of forty. If they had continued down different, non-thrash paths, they would've been panned. By returning to their roots, they're panned. Believe me, many of their musical steps I questioned -- St. Anger is indeed 9/10ths crap. I would've loved Justice parts two, three and four. But I'm a fan, I'm not a member of the band. We all pick our favorite album by a group and secretly wish they'd repeat that formula over and over and over and over. Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and Trujillo -- as new guy, does he really count in this equation? -- have aged, they have families, perhaps they've mellowed a bit. None of us have remained the same over the years, and the stories about Rubin having the band harken back to the thought process around the writing of Master of Puppets only exacerbated already existing disdain for whatever these guys would do. Fuck, that album was recorded in 1985. Most of you bitching internets jokers weren't even born yet or were still shitting in your Huggies --

Too 'get off my lawn?'

Even Metallica knew they couldn't repeat it. Did the Stones figure Tattoo You would be another Let It Bleed? C'mon.

At last, the bottom line: is Death Magnetic an A+ triumph of cutting-edge metal craftsmanship? Hell no. They're 45-year old rockers, not Beethoven or Mahler. And though never a master lyricist -- though he was exceptional on the overtly political ...And Justice For All -- Hetfield has gone back to the darker side of things, thankfully shedding the psychiatrist's couch blatherings of the last platter. Is it brutal? Um, Metallica wasn't the heaviest metal band around in 1987 -- just the best -- so if your basement is full of Xasthur demos and bootleg Mayhem concerts, no. Is it in the same league as those greats from over twenty years ago? Impossible. Those albums carry decades of emotional resonance, not to mention musical importance within the genre itself. But you know what? For a bunch of old dudes, it's surprisingly good and I'm glad they're again playing what they're best at.

Zip

No, not those guys.



















"Gerry! Gerry! Gerry!"

Sorry, fond memories of watching the Akron Zips stumble through a 5-6 campaign at the Rubber Bowl during my two semesters of Summit County matriculating so many years ago before my life was shot to hell blessed with a wonderful family. But alas, the wistful stroll through memory lane must be put aside, as we have far more pressing issues to deal with, such as what to post about today, as I believe I've been infected with a severe case of the zips!












I had considered making a smarmy comment about my fellow Ohioans over this revolting development, but thought better of it. C'mon, do you really want to give up the mantle of America's Dumbest Voters? After we worked so hard on not one but two separate occasions? Please, lie-bruls, spare me your histrionics about Ken Doll and his nefarious deeds. It was close enough to steal because it was close enough to steal.

Morons.


















Speaking of morons, how about you, Senator Obama? As if you weren't flabbergasted by those new-fangled magnetic audio cassettes way back during your angry black radical youth. I would wager that you're still too busy jamming to your Super Funk 8-track to understand how to send a computer letter either, Mr. Barack Hussein X, so how about laying off the ageist attacks. Someday, someone might air an ad about your inability to grasp the finer points of nanotechnological bioimplants, points easily picked up by any inebriated teenage punk you glower at on the way to get the 5am Matlock special at the local Denny's, $1.99 for eggs and your choice of meat plus free coffee refills with your AARP card.


















"Putin, I've got a bigger boat."

Speaking of attacking, now this is what gives me a happy. Preach it, Moosolini!

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

Controlling the world's energy supplies is our mission, Pooty-Poot. What do you think all that soul lookin' was for? Because Chimpy is a drunken idiot child? The Cold War ain't over, motherfucker.

















"Vet me loook into yoor soul."

Go right ahead, soul brother, let me drop some funky fresh rhymes.

There once was a man from Moscow.
Black ops, KGB? Boy, and how.
But this tough guy shit a vodka brick,
met his match in a moose huntin' chick --
McFossil? Tired from tellin' he was a POW.

Yet another chance to make shit up

"My friends, of course just one more war."

You've all seen it floating in front of your eyeballs, tubular electroparticles transformed into the Latin alphabet in the ancient form of a meme. I've been tagged by this treasure, this welcome break from politicaliscious blogification not once, but twice.

Praise be unto thee, lovely ladies of the internets.

But also a curse upon thy souls! for verily have I submitted such chicanery, with slightly different verses, long, long ago, and now I must concoct yet one more delectable cauldron of lies.

Trust me, if I didn't make shit up, you'd all be snoozing by now.

















Yeah, that's real funny, man. Um, hey.

1. Where was I ten years ago?

Same job (sort of), same wife, same kids (though we had just bought one from the store, an impulse buy, like our first), same tunes. Well okay, we lived at a different address.

Same town.

Yeah, same town.

And you were less of a curmudgeonly ass.

Go fuck yourself.

2. What was on my ToDo list today?

This post. Signs point to yes.
Pretending to earn my paycheck. Most likely.
Writing more of my stupid book. Ask again later.
Trading scowls with the wife. Without a doubt.

Wow, this Magic Eight Ball is like Nostradamus in a, well, ball!

I wonder if it comes in an aerosol.

Anytime you want to start making shit up is fine by me.

3. What would I do if I were a billionaire?

I already used my 'billion items at the dollar store' line, so I'd probably give a nice hunk to organizations like the ASPCA because I'm a big fucking sap. I'm sure I'd do some investing -- in Euros -- so I can have even more to give away, but man, I want to travel, then when I'm exhausted from seeing the world, crash at my swanky Parisian pad. Plus I'd be able to pay for college for my wallet-sucking offspring. Stop growing! Stop eating!

4. Five places I've lived:

Five more places than John McCain did for five years, I can tell you that.

Bloody hell!

In the poll, 52 percent said they thought the U.S. was adequately prepared, compared to 39 percent who said the U.S. was not prepared. This is the first time since March 2003 - right after the U.S. invasion of Iraq - that a majority held that opinion. As recently as last September, after the revelations of a failed terrorist plot in London that summer, 56 percent said the U.S. was not adequately prepared.

Still trust the American voter?

Doubt that Chimpy and Unka Dick are celebrating today?

Fucking politics. And I didn't even watch the teevee last night.

5. Bad habits:

Just think of all the annoying shit I post, say, do online and imagine that in the flesh with even more vulgarities sandwiched by vast swathes of time filled with an obscene and unhealthy amount of brooding.

Hey, I'm surprised my marriage has lasted this long, too.

The following suckers are tagged, standard disclaimers apply:

Freida Bee
The Flying Nunly
MRMacrum
Spartacus
Snave

I've got a today mindset

Comrades!

Given that tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of the Great Patriotic War, I thought to myself on the bus ride to work this morning, "Randal, you handsome devil, as usual, you have no post at the ready -- you sure do live on the edge, you rebel, you -- so how about penning a well-informed and witty essay glorifying this Holy Day of Obligation Prime Example of Blowback Thunderbirds Are Go to Blow Up Brown People?"

No need to point out that the above is about Bush the Smarter. Same family, same rot. I just wanted something extra riffy 'cause I'm in a bad mood.

Gentlemen, start your pimping!

"On Thursday, we will put aside politics and come together to renew that unity, to honor the memory of each and every American who died, and to grieve with the families and friends who lost loved ones while meekly reestablishing our patriotic street cred so that Beltway jokers won't pen snide copy about Democrats because that's mean and they don't do mean which is why they continually refuse to point out the permanent and crass exploitation of this event by Republicans at every opport --

Sorry, I must've fallen asleep while penning this well-informed and witty essay.

I just wish I had dreamed about naked ladies instead of Dems with spines.

Oh, and pragmatism trolls? Stick it up your ass, or I'll write about soccer.

Anyway, having run through various scenarios using other historical events that happened on September 11 in order to point out our propensity towards a grotesque nationalistic fervor worthy of a nineteenth-century tract self-published out of some lunatic's basement, I found that none of them were all that hilarious. Oh, sure, I could've lambasted the current American political and cultural scene via the Treaty of Kars deftly teaming up with Gary Numan, some of those always-comical Byzantine shenanigans, the 1973 coup d'état in Chile or, most frightening of all, the introduction of the Ford Pinto.

The more I toyed with these, the deeper I fell into self-deception which *sniff* slowly revealed its true nature to my conscious mind: self-loathing at having watched *sob* CNN for three consecutive nights.

No, it wasn't hour upon hour of Leslie the Living Stubble, Lou the Mexican and Captain 360°, merely a few moments here and there. But aren't a few moments of this Guantanamo-esque torture enough? I ask you, isn't it enough?




















So, for at least fifteen agonizing minutes -- though it felt to be an eternity of screeching and painful aural violence rupturing the delicate inner ear -- I was afforded the privilege of listening to the aforementioned Leslie the Living Stubble along with Mr. Crowley, David Gurgling and Mark Harlequin wax idiotic on the Palinosity of Miss Mooseburger.

She's Distractastic!

Praise be unto Mighty Cthulhu, for I was saved by a baseball game! Yet resisting the cosmic pull of such well-coiffed and inhuman fuckery proved to be far beyond the limits of my mortal powers and I was commanded through the hidden signals beamed directly into our skulls by UN satellites to flip back during the commercial where, instead of learning about the newest deals at the local auto mart from another well-coiffed stooge in front of Old Glory -- was this section 827 of the Patriot Act, everything must be sold with a fucking flag? I know I'm in America, you fucks -- I got to hear more about Mayor Emeril and her edgy, lipsticked pigs and pitbulls.

Everyone is sexist.

Palin? Sexist.

Obama? Sexist.

Can we talk about issues now?

This is America, Randal.

Oops. Je m'excuse. Gimme more, CNN! I love celebrities!

Change up, little trooper, it'll be alright once your cross that bridge and find the merry old land of nowhere. And if not, there's always booze, though maybe you should try shooting wolves from a helicopter. I hear it's a blast!

Since I was smart enough to not watch any more of that putrefying network -- because I'm not addicted to watching teevee jerks boil my blood like some people; I've got self-control, I do -- I missed this supposed event which, frankly, I don't buy for a nanosecond. A talking hairpiece acting like a real journalist? What's next, flying pigs, with or without lipstick? Sexist! Derek Anderson, Super Bowl MVP? Randal Graves, Nobel Prize for Literature? The entire Democratic Party growing a collective spine, assailing their opponents while embracing a truly progressive platform as they distance themselves further and further from the true masters of the realm, the corporates?

I don't believe it, either.

You're having a hard time ending this post, aren't you.

That obvious, huh. Here we are, PETA babes getting their protest on in beautiful downtown Cleveland the other day.


















Sexist? Ask PETA. I keep my threads on when I fight The Man.

Party time

"Ha ha, George, you said I'd never get to experience a Menagerie of Troy.
You owe me five bucks!"

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly I

"Oh, fine, Coach, we'll tackle him, if we have to."

The Good: Jamal Lewis still runs like a man and despite only being 11-24, Derek Anderson was actually pretty sharp, only making a couple of ill-advised throws and throwing zero picks. Too bad we dropped at least half a dozen, Braylon Edwards accounting for four all by himself. Good to see that Kellen Winslow didn't forget how to catch.

The Bad: What happened to the offensive line? Not enough holes for the running backs and far too many blueshirts were able to waltz on through to disrupt a decently-called game. And sure, Donte Stallworth, Brodney Pool and the Best Special Teams Player on the Planet, the Mighty Josh Cribbs, were out, but yikes.

The Ugly: Holy fuck, the defense. I can't even begin to describe how putrescent this abysmal fuckery was. Imagine the evil of Republicans with the spinelessness of Democrats combined and multiplied by a factor of the mutated love children of Sean Hannity and Nancy Pelosi vomiting all over your living room. Wide open third receivers, huge Nixonian gaps, Mr. Jessica Simpson having enough time to pen the sequel to War and Peace, scrub the toilet and take out the garbage while scanning downfield. Fuck, man, they averaged nearly 8 yards/play. That's a Tecmo Super Bowl number. Good thing I didn't do a shot after every bad play. You can't buy livers at the 7-11.

Up next: home against our Soviet Union, our Iran, our Democrat Party, those guys. You know who I'm talking about.

Where the devil hangs his hat

I'm finding with prodigious speed -- okay, I found out aeons ago after only a few pages, but I wanted a decent opening; I knew I should have gone with the scantily clad babe -- that writing fiction is a Dick Cheney's basement of a lot harder than poetry in certain respects.

Why didn't any of you bastards tell me?

Sure, fine-tuning a few short lines into the perfect -- ha -- snapshot of the exact shade in the vast spectrum that even a single emotion contains is nigh impossible, but it can drive you to drink copious amounts of booze be ruminated upon with delicacy and thoughtful care over intermittent gaps in time. Au contraire for some inexplicable reason, I feel I can't go too long in between bouts of composing the next batch of paragraphs with something this large or I'll lose, I don't know, the narrative flow (even as it goes off on various tangents), the vibe (dull melodrama sex! drugs! absinthe! rock and roll! um, street musicians! is about the most apropos description). And since it's historical, I have to deal with the omnipresent problem of research.

Research, as one could plausibly assume, can often be tedious -- combing through piece after piece of utterly useless or merely inapplicable bits of background detail whose only power lies in cluttering an already overloaded, bloated and run-on hunk of crap -- or frustrating -- waiting weeks for an uncommon volume that you hope holds what you've been searching for, all the while assuming whether it does or not might turn out to be moot because it's in a language you're a rank amateur in, praying to Cthulhu, as us atheists do, that it's not as empty as McFossil's --








You said that you wouldn't blog about politics today.








I'm Evil Randal, dumbass. Evil.








Then let me finish the post.








By yourself? Fine, you're boring as hell anyway. I'm gonna go chat up some of the ladies. They dig twirling my moustache, if you catch my drift.

Anyway, research can also be quite enjoyable -- no, really, hear me out -- and rewarding in ways both obvious and inconspicuous. I'm a sucker for footnotes and endnotes -- you know, those bits of documentation that Regnery authors never use to back up their outrageous claims and blatant lies, thereby proving the truth since only candyass lie-bruls need to reinforce their feeble words in their pointless quest to feel good about their inadequate selves -- because a single volume can open up new vistas of information and imagery.

I know what you're thinking, "Randal, you stupid fucker, I had to use those goddamn things on papers all throughout high school and college when I actually went to class because I wasn't usually hungover on Wednesdays and sometimes Thursdays, so shut the fuck up." Mellow out, people. Give Nunly a call, maybe she's got some extra in her stash she can comp you. My point being that I've come across some of my favorite, or at the very least, highly enlightening, works through these unfairly cursed scholastic requirements, and no matter where you find your details, these particulars will lend a further gravitas to your work. Even if your reader may not initially, or ever, recognize that the crumbled-up cookie things they gloss over without a second thought are real or merely figments drawn up while sprawled out on the couch or careening over an endless chain of potholes as the bus bobs up and down like a drunken sailor fallen overboard, their presence can only help augment the atmosphere you're trying to create because you know they're legitimate, and if we don't write for ourselves, then what's the point?

Concerning research's shadowy, ninja-like aspects -- I miss playing Ninja Gaiden. But man, did those fucking birds give so many cheap deaths -- the wealth of information you've gleaned from your sources, whether they be maps, official documents, historical non-fiction, novels, music, art, cannot help but trickle, through the kinetic energy they inherently possess and fluidly display in those of us who enjoy learning and can't keep our brains on one thought for too long before jumping to another, into the writing itself. Now this doesn't mean an overt placement of an item by our subconscious, but simply the flavoring of the prose. Think of it as a palimpsest we access while writing. Sure, we might be using text A, B or C but the tenebrous remnants of X, Y and Z of a related subject continue to haunt the creative process beneath the surface, informing the words and phrases we pick without knowing it, choices we might not have otherwise made.

Lastly, it's just neat when you come across something cool. Okay, maybe this won't be cool to you -- and I won't shun you if you feel otherwise, 'cause I'm gentle -- and perhaps it's not as thrilling as finding and deciphering the Rosetta Stone or the clues to a long-buried crypt complex full of the rarest of treasures and gold doubloons and a crate of mint-condition Action Comics #1, but I wouldn't have minded being at this gig:

2e concert extraordinaire
Le Dimanche 20 décembre 1863, à deux heures précises.

Programme

1 Symphonie en la, Beethoven
2 Fragments de la 3e partie de Saisons, Haydn
3 Romance en fa, pour violin, Beethoven
4 Final du 2e acte de la Vestale, Spontini
5 Ouverture du Freyschutz, Weber

Interesting about the tastes of Second Empire Parisians, starting with the main course, and finishing up with the hors d'oeuvres. Shouldn't the foreplay be first and the climax at the end?