Fantasies dead on arrival

No, not that kind.


















This kind. It was bad enough when I lost Michael Redd to a season-ending injury, and now Amare -- oops -- Amar'e. Don't want him to get pissed off and pummel me into a bloody pulp that'll dirty up his size 853 sneakers, thus causing more, um, blinding pain for yours truly.

"Dude, he can't see anymore, even you could evade him."

That's right! Take that, freakishly large man with the extensive bank account! Randal wins again!














Anyway, since my hoops team keeps on getting sledgehammered by the hardwood gods and my current third place will probably remain so only through this week as this is the last scrub team on my schedule, I figured it's time to set the Imaginary Sports Brain for the heart of the shining, crazy diamond. As I did with football, I've created a free Yahoo league hoping to gather all of my fellow sports-obsessed bloggers for merriment, whimsy and ample vulgarity. Send me an email or make your desire known in comments and I'll get you the password. BYOB.

First prize: nothing.
Second prize: nothing.
Third prize: nothing.

Bragging rights: priceless, for about an hour until you realize all the time you wasted debating over whether to pick up that speedy, backup middle infielder or the power-n-strikeout callup could have been better spent towards completing your version of the great American novel, you stupid bastard.

"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"

"I hate those spammers."

Besides having to deal with punks, troublemakers, n'er-do-wells, never-will-bes and the rambunctious ghost of John Belushi, Dean Wormer is also saddled with the additional



















and not the kind that exotic Hawaiian Monty Python fans enjoy, but stringy, bland dishes cooked up by internets robots grilling in China or swilling in Russia whose culinary power is so effective, we're all but forced to buy things in mass quantities to fund the bulk purchase of WD-40 for said robots. No one wants a squeaky The Google.

Why should you buy things wholesale?
It's the discerning consumer's holy grail,
like a film crew avoiding Christian Bale.
Imagine a surplus stock for your lunch pail,
or when imitating Jesus, an extra nail --
carpentry, sheesh! Don't send me to jail
because of one very important detail
and that is lack of access to email.
Hey, Nigerian riches don't come via snail --
though it would be safer than hunting quail
with you-know-who. Remember that tale?
Wonder what passes for his white whale.
Probably not a gay romp o'er hill and dale,
but lady justice's big ole -- cover those up! -- scale.
One more thing, is it me, or is this bread stale?
That's what I get for buying wholesale.

Tornado of douchebaggery

In the grand scheme of things, a trifle,
but don't make me reach for my rifle --
"That's what you call the dead?
Please see a doctor for your afflicted head --"
You know damn well that's not what I meant;
neither of us can check what's heaven sent.
Funnels, cakes of ice are surely frightening,
but when one is struck by lightening,
'tis not an electrified action
but merely a step towards Michael Jackson.
Thus, I beg, AP, hire some competence
and end this flood of disturbing malfeasance.

"That was horrible."

Truly, but not as offensive as finding irrefutable evidence of a creature once thought to be a figment of a whiskey-and-weed sodden imagination: the Track-Suited Elder!











"I'm seventy years young, punk!"

A coworker was regaling me this morning with tales of these inhuman monsters and their faux testosterone-fueled lifestyle, a midlife crisis that keeps on eating and regurgitating itself far beyond impulse sports car purchasing and judicious applications of Just For Men, settling at last in Golden Buckeye Card perpetuity.

Lo, believed her I did not, but soon that pound of doubt was smashed into a tasteless pancake when such a creature managed to create an obscene amount of jamming in our hydraulic Raw Power Stapler® that even a six year-old can operate without too much effort, but MAXIMUM ZONE BUSTING AND PUSHING THE ENVELOPE IS WHAT I LIVE FOR BLEAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH! FLEX FLEX FLEX I READ FIFTY-SEVEN PERIODICALS AT ONCE GET OFF MY LAWN

So, with the timely aide of a hammer, I was able to unjam about 17 staples from the chamber. Je vous remercie, unholy combination of Chuck Norris, Jack Lalane and Matlock, you are a douchebag.












"Look what you did to my stapler when you pushed too hard on my stapler and you jammed it because it's not a Swingline it's my stapler look what you did to it my stapler."

Damn hell ass kings

Having an extra day away from work and purposely cutting oneself off from the world, including the internets, is quite liberating and solitary in the richest, most joyful sense of the word because most everything and everyone is full of shit, except you of course, you're the best, you bastards. Aside from the missing regalia, the purple trappings of empire, and actual power over the miserable lives of your subjects, I'm sure it's quite similar to being royalty.

Which got me thinking on the bus this morning on multiple things, two of which carried great import, the rest being the daily dose of silent aspersions and barbs thrown at various and sundry, required for the upkeep of my sanity: I had, as on most days, no post at the ready and no access to livestock, thus haruspicy as an aide was out of the question. Plus, they'd probably make me clean up all the blood and subsequent vomit from the other passengers. Secondly, are we denizens of the internets not already royalty? Within the legendary, mythic cycles of all the great civilizations, must not the hero make a perilous descent into and through the underworld, the ineffable darkness, a hell that cleanses the soul of fear and guilt, preparing it for the monumental tasks that loom ahead, its shadow consuming every step?

Do we not, crawling into the Stevens Tubes, mimic Odysseus and Beowulf and Frodo and Bill Kristol as we trudge through the murky depths of hardcore pornography and RSS feeds? Are we not mythic heroes?

So embrace your destiny, grab your sword, and chop someone's head off.

Happy Valentine's Day, chumps

Macrocosm

Burst without, clues once within draw edges,
cut tongues from mouths crawling down rabbit holes
hidden in blood. Above, weeping spangles
carve malediction upon broken limbs.

Weak balancing act, equilibrium
draining out, splits apart a searching eye
electrified. Slow burn apocalypse
throned by idle words falling like idols.

A shed temple lords smiles somewhere,
spit out by a copper throat tasting third,
fourth, a further second death. A flesh
retraces trails that circumscribe nous.

Stinging flakes rebuke all my speechless love
that fails to choose. Constellations speak,
ignore, reflect no more, choose! I ignore
and descend into fervent certitude.


Invocation

Touch lies on surfaces of elegance,
in castings high and low. A coup-d'oeil
with strange geometry burns away ink.
O, witness the decline of illusion.

Steps spiral cold, spin a darker measure.
Blind and silent, tips print a hex on glass,
sure that sin such as this is deserving.
O, affirm your drifting complicity.

Waters brought you to curiosities;
I can still hear their splendid forgeries
of sovereign calm in delirium.
O, condemn absence of tranquility.

One-ring circus with the bitterest bread
offers nothing save a kindred poison.
Trudge through crimes of rust, leave this shore behind.
O, flee, allow me to be tried alone.


Microcosm

Play at a blade, outstretched beyond my neck;
watch me escape, time and forever more.
A starry step, my boldest yet, curses
at winds that wither with a parched whisper.

Subtlety, their deceit, murders with pride.
Gale force ghost caresses the railing,
keeping me upright, keeping me from where
always rests in the tidiest of beds.

Next, and deep, a forge to blacken all hearts
with reddest bluster, with crestfallen heat.
Mine eyes lose sight of carcasses in line,
memories being readied for the dirt.

I stumble and fall, again as before,
where each new glare is but a plea reborn.
I know, thus cannot forgive this trespass
on a past never permitted to sleep.

Another post about love and laziness

I'm off to look for my brain,
likely circling down the drain.
Since push is pushing shove,
another YouTube about love.

Night of the Living Post

Bonjour, all you fancy glitterati --
captain, o my captain, what rhymes with that?
"Enjoy the spinach cheese manicotti."
Away your frets, arsenic laces not --
or -- dramatic pause -- does it? I kid, kid,
for why would I wish you forever rot
seventy-two below this milquetoast earth,
dining fresh on mercurial toxins,
thus to mutant undead you shall give birth!
"What the fuck are you going on about?"
Up north in Canuckland, that's aboot,
as, 'I'm aboot to kick you with a boot.'
"Strainin' to do some postin', ain't ya, bub."
Rub 'a dub dub, alone in my old tub
stormin' cranial waves, fishin' for bits --
"Always Plan B, a picture of some --" cough!
Huge tracts of land is the preferred term, pig.
"That hurts, Dr. Frankie. Now do you see
what happens with a monster-making gig?"
Oh, sob and sackcloth, I've learned my lesson!
Nevermore will I create, nor stimulate --
"Yeah, right." Do you mind, brain? I mean, really.
-- with these needles, threads my TARP scratch bought.
Lightning will be harnessed only for good
such as frying eggs, a slab of bacon,
mayhap some Congressfuckers in their house.
"Not concerned 'bout these violent tendencies?"
Merely fun n' games; look! eyes all around.
But a plea, good sir, how to end this verse?
Something terse, funny, voluptuary?
"Nay, something tried n' true, brimming with blue."
Ah! Supreme melancholy, the rich -- "No!
Like your ideas, big bangs that whimper,
sparks that burst, fizzle, then dull the senses
as Cosmic Candy: flashy then stale --"
What was that bluster about monstrous gigs?
Three reckonings as to what always dies.
"With thanks, so does this post." Amen to that.

Might as well face it, you're addicted to addictive stuff that's addicting

Revenge is dish best served cold, apparently.














Not exactly what I had in mind. Though I am hungry.

Alright Noo Yawk, I tag you, you tag me, blood is shed weeks later or whenever the tag was I can't remember, someone calls the cops and soon the internets ends up on one of those Investigation: Discovery shows as a suspect spoken about in hushed tones by an informant hidden in the shade spewing forth a bad Peter Frampton outtake. I see how the game is played. Well, my corpse does.

The deceased is required to talk about five items that he was addicted to before he shuffled off this mortal coil, then tag five others. We're assuming his wife has run off to Europe with Randal's vast wealth, so we can only guess at his vices.

"Do corpses always talk in the third person?"

The corpse is glad you asked.

"...."

Five addictions:

1. Music. The most interstellar brobdingnagian of duhs. If given the choice of forsaking their hearing or their sight, most would likely retain the latter because of its everyday usefulness, especially when it comes to safety issues such as pushing little old ladies out of the way to cross the street and going hunting with Dick Cheney. I, on the other hand, would have to think about it. Music, whether alternately intricate and propulsive chamber, depressive and downbeat neo-folkery, soaring symphonic epics or strings of skullcrushing divebomb riffs forged in Tartarus, is worse than crack. I have never had crack, but I am listening to music right now.

2. Writing. I'm being vaguely misleading here because there are days where I don't physically write, which is apparently some kind of art-collar crime punishable by 3-5 years of reading books on deconstructionist theory, but I'm almost always mentally writing, at least in a non-bloggy sense, especially while at work drinking unhealthy amounts of coffee and avoiding helping others to the best of my ability which is also what I am doing right now because the monolith of interruption is lethal to flights of fancy you lazy and annoying patrons.

And before you say anything, brain, my kind of lazy is charming.

3. Coffee. Morning fuel of the gods and of slacker library employees.

4. Tea. Evening fuel of the gods and slacker fathers and husbands.

5. Stroking the ego.

"I thought this was a family-friendly blog."

Of course it is, Mr. Jump-To-Conclusions, but you know my wife hates me, so it's not like I can list 'show me your id, and I'll show you mine.'

"You like onion rings."

But I don't have them every day like I do the others which is the subject of an entirely different rant because it's my Office of the Pretzeldent-given right to kill Ay-Rabs, kiss Is-reel's ass, wag a finger at the Reds and banana republics not named the United States, all your money are belong to us, and stuff my face with onion rings.

"Complaining?"

Such as this morning. Look, fellow public transportationistas, have your fucking fare in the form of cash or a card ready when you step on the fucking bus because many drivers will wait until you are seated before moving the fucking thing so while you're playing pocket pool and I'm wishing I could stick my headphones directly against your eardrums and turn it up to eleven thereby shattering them to pieces and leaving you in a bloody, writhing agony to ooze down the steps onto the curb, that coffee ain't getting brewed because I'm the first fucking person at work, you fuck. And don't come on the bus with a wallet full of tens and twenties asking anyone and everyone for change then get all pissy when no one has any because the economy sucks, you stupid fuck.

Apparently, someone else from that state tagged me -- is this combined assault because I hate The Fucking Yankees? -- but since I'm a nice guy, I'm only tagging zero, because I can't remember who has or hasn't done this. Here's your chance to be like a bank and steal something without fear of reprisal.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

"Great Satan! Just you wait 'til mine fills out!"

Plus ça change, les saisons changent

KBR, the perpetrator in the electrocution deaths of American soldiers in Iraq, gets another contract? Check.

"I'm sure they learned their lesson."

Businesses self-regulating proving once again to be a laughingstock? Check.

"A quick buck'll always trump."

You're quite the poet, brain. A kinder, gentler Jack Bauer-ization of the intelligence community continuing unabated? Check.

"Iron Law of Institutions, baby."

Speaking of laws, will the underlings, like the architects, get off easy as pie? Check.

"Oh, and Karl Rove still hasn't appeared before Congress."

But my absolute favorite has to be, in order to stave off the obvious lunacy of an above $900 billion stimulus bill (ostensibly to be spent here in Murka) which would be akin to a serrated, rusty knife twisting in the flabby gut of the American taxpayer unlike the trillion-plus visit to the massage parlor with deluxe Wall Street benefits if you catch my drift wink wink nudge nudge that was the last eight years highlighted by romantic adventuring in Iraq -- we permitted thieves and malcontents to rip off, what, $1 billion every 8 seconds? -- thanks to the serious, forthright, honorable philosophers in that most august and cautious of deliberative bodies, the United States Senate and their lopping off of stark wastes of money such as $1 billion for Head Start and $20 billion for school construction, the bill's reduction to a far more svelte and palatable $780 billion.

Whew!

Kids and their sloppy joes and fancy book learnin'. The only thing they stimulate is my patience. Go get 'em, Congress.

Once all the greenback brouhaha exits the 38-second Murkan attention span, at least we have the inevitable sabre rattling against Iran to look forw -- hey, Dancing With the Stars is on. Go Hollywood has-been!

"What does all that have to do with the seasons, or did you fail in your attempt at being clever?"

As usual, the latter, but for the first time in quite awhile, it's sadly not cold outside, as it's already around 40° this morning. Now, summer can certainly go to hell and rot as all good corpses do, but spring is fine in small doses, and any nudge of the spirit away from the inexorable bullshit of humanity to the terrifying and beautiful grandeur of nature is alright with me.



That's better.

Love is for suckers

As I tried and failed last year, and tried and failed many years before that, I plan on trying and failing to win fabulous prizes via the local classical radio station's Valentine's Day poetry contest again this year.

Think the following has a shot?

"No."

Did you even read it?

"Why? I know you wrote it."

Ouch.

Dearest wife! a gift, you crazy loon?
The money'll run out with a quickness, and soon,
for th'economy, yours n' mine, lies in shambles;
I feel like we've sprinted through brambles,
our skin slashed and torn open wide,
carried off on the blood-dimmed tide --
yeah, I thieved that bit, what's it to you?
Don't make me toss my tattered shoe
because, radiowaves, we're just about through.

Every year you wankers pick some chump
whose verse is worse than a thing that goes bump
in the bowl of my toilet after a pot of beans,
you goddamn weenies; it certainly seems
that you have no poesy in your bones.
Oh, I've tried melodrama, dulcet tones,
comedy and such -- grumble, I'm beside myself.
Might as well steal from that Ronsard on the shelf.
Sigh. Unka Dick, line? Go fuck yourself.

The Number of the Beast

In honor of this, my 666th post --

"You're just a walking cliché, ain't ya. No, wait, walking requires effort."

Touché. And in lieu of a YouTube that would sound, if you actually clicked on the damn thing, like nails on hell's chalkboard to you non-metalhead chumps poorly versed in the beauties of oppressively dissonant riffery, here's the Official Trailer® from one of the crappiest finest pieces of art ever filmed, a cosmic tour-de-force of good versus evil:



The moral of the special effects?

Not even Satan himself can deal with the awesome power of Shatner.

Ye Olde Clerkes

"Verily, our employ wuld be exceptionell if not fower these cusstomers of fuckerie."

Dearest jerkface patronnes, thou with thine face markede by vareed wrynkles, straines and scars of jerkerie, furtherest thou whine, bitche and moane as if a memberr of Parliament, lesse inclyned am I to helpeth thee. I say unto thee, rejoyce in the Ways of the Lord and shew unto Him thy gratitude, fower the King's Goode Lawe doth preventeth me from implementynge the racke, a garrotynge, impaylement on a pike, or strikynge thee with a cat o' nine tails in thy face of jerkerie itselfe.

"Sheesh. Should we send them to Guanatanamo?"

Why not. Like the video store, it'll be open for awhile.

Also open for business, Bolivia.

“We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. “We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”

Yours?

Nobody puts America in the corner!



Gotta go, Michael Vincent just found me a new job!

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Subpar Bowl?

"Just throw me the damn ball."

Thousands of column inches have been written about:
1. The Steelers' manly defense.
2. Troy Polamalu's wacky hair.
3. Whether 71-year old Dick Lebeau uses Grecian Formula or is a genetic mutant like Dick Clark.
4. The resurgence of the Cardinals because of
4a. Kurt Warner,
4b. Kurt Warner's love of Jesus,
4c. Ken Whisenhunt's magical inspirational speechery after one of the worst beatdowns in recorded history,
4d. dumb fucking luck.

Look, the NFL seeding system is stupid given the fact that there are 72 divisions when six was quite fine and though I have no problem with a division champ getting an automatic bid, I would certainly prefer that each conference then seed by record. For example, the NFC this season could have looked like this --

1. N.Y. Giants (12-4)
2. Carolina (12-4)
3. Atlanta (11-5)
4. Minnesota (10-6)
5. Philadelphia (9-6-1)
6. Arizona (9-7)

-- and the AFC like this:

1. Tennessee (13-3)
2. Indianapolis (12-4)
3. Pittsburgh (12-4)
4. Baltimore (11-5)
5. Miami (11-5)
6. San Diego (8-8)

Would the actual outcomes have been different? Only Odin knows because, unlike him, I cannot travel through time. But for all of you bitching about the Cardinals getting here as the flukiest fluke in the seven seas, the NFC had THREE chances to knock them off and failed. Against a defense that gave up over 400 points. Against an offense that for sixteen games couldn't run the fucking ball. In other words, shut the fuck up you fucking whiny fuckers. Go Cardinals. Steelers, 28-17.