mission accomplished

another year another non-invite to the White House Correspondents Dinner - I was tipped off today via carrier pigeon (or cellphone) that the media isn't covering the real story of the dinner which is that Stephen Colbert's act made the president feel sad. Listen Colbert: W. doesn't like to feel sad, haven't you figured that out already? Bad news must never reach the W. unless personally delivered from a higher power like God or Santa.

Link to performance here (this is almost like a real blog post)

no news yet on what "celebrity" guests Anna Kournikova, Drew Lachey and Ben Roethlisberger thought of the act (what no Muppets were invited?) - but I'm betting radical socialist Kournikova loved it; and raging commie Lachey apparently kicked the shit out of Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt

guess the Canadian Territorial Flag

note: after 1,000 guesses I'm stopping the contest due to bandwidth issues

advice to America: take a valium . . .now

A film named "Loose Change" about September 11 conspiracies (including a most certainly erroneous theory on the Pentagon not being destroyed by Flight 77 but by a U.S. launched missile) has been brought to my attention in numerous ways lately.

ESPN is showing 10 hours of NFL Draft coverage (including a perhaps unnecessary pre-draft show).

I remember being told years ago about two elementary school students who were on Flight 77. They had won a National Geographic contest and were flying from D.C. to California.

I remember realizing years ago that Charley Casserly was not a very good NFL general manager. See: Washington Redskins, decline of.

I don't think there was a 9/11 conspiracy. I think Donald Rumsfeld is incompetent and should be fired but I don't believe he plotted to brutally murder fellow citizens. I think conspiracy theories help us avoid the anxiety involving the randomness and banality associated with terrible events. Those two kids died that day. That was real it happened.

I think drafting Mario Williams over Reggie Bush might be a mistake but perhaps the nation (and by nation I mean sport bloggers and assorted media types) as a whole should relax a little bit in this instance about everything.

I remember you - you're called hope

JOSH MCROBERTS STAYS! Thus giving me what every sport fan deserves - the foundation for irrational/unhealthy dreams about future glory.

I consider McRoberts at this stage of his career to be much like a young superhero in issues #1-15 of any comic book. Much like said superhero McRoberts has amazing powers (witness his 49 dunks last year, and his coast to coast behind the back pass against Wake Forest in the ACC semi's) also like our young superhero McRoberts has not yet harnessed these skills into a complete crime fighting package and is still learning about the awesome responsibility/ability he now possesses. Clearly by staying at Duke another year McRoberts now has the power to explode into an awesome supernova of brillance and make Peter Parker and Speedball look like the sad little boys they really are.

Note to my zero readers: Prepare for a very in-depth random preview on the upcoming Duke season sometime in the next 6 months. This team which is young, athletic and free from the burdens of expectations could quite possibly be better than the renaissance.

celebrating the death of small town America one town at a time

an ongoing series chronicling the rapidly declining standard of living in the United States - presented by the Annenberg Foundation:

Doomed Town: Cairo, IL

Location: the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers

Population in 2002: - 3,632

Population in 2020: - can you have a negative population?

Reasons it's dying: gay marriage, abortion, hip-hop lyrics, hippies, the low low everyday prices of Wal-Mart, refusing to desegregate in the 1960's probably didn't help, being nowhere near the interstate, the steady onward unyielding procession of time

Times mentioned in the collected works of Bill Bryson: 1 (not favorably)

Fun Cairo facts: the Mississippi River is brown and the Ohio River is blue thus making for a hell of a confluence!!, General Grant did some shit here during the Civil War, the Customs House tourist attraction features a giant Tiffany clock (note none of these facts are found in the Wikipedia Cairo entry - burn Wikipedia burn)

Proposed slogan to attract newcomers: "Hey people living in Las Vegas don't you ever get depressed living there - like you know on Christmas Eve!! Move to Cairo and to cushion your blow we'll provide discount scratch-off lotto tickets."

Chances of survival: Is Mark Twain dead?

last night

I dreamt of you

Number 205 with a bullet

As the World Cup approaches let us celebrate the worst soccer team on the planet: American Samoa - really in my estimation the tiny island nation only needs to climb over 157-199 countries to reach respectability.

Did you know American Samoa is halfway between New Zeland and Hawaii (RIGHT WHERE THE PLANE FROM LOST CRASHED!!!), has great natural harbors, is about the size of Washington D.C., and really sucks hard at soccer.

these people really like basketball

favorite line from a drive-by truckers review this week

A fierce spirit shines through in these broken-down, melancholy songs — a spirit that can survive love being snatched away, lives ruined and a country on the ropes - washingtonpost.com

guess the Canadian Territorial Flag

no multiple choice - winner gets a free McKinley Ford Aeromatic seat cushion

Trey Anastasio the blood is on your hands!!

after reading Seymour Hersh's article in the current New Yorker(the one with the chicken on the cover) about ongoing war planning involving Iran - I thought to myself "Holy fucking shit - there are some crazy people in charge of this country. Good thing all those stinky hippies voted for Nader in 2000 - that really stuck it to the man!! If only Trey Anastasio had endorsed Gore in the 2000 campaign. Then we could have avoided the possible Iran war and the Iraq war. So aside for the many deaths the music of Phish has caused in the United States (38 at last count). The noodling 'jam' band is now directly responsible for the pain and suffering of thousands if not millions in the Middle East. Sell a bootlegged tape of that Trey!!"

This paragraph from Hersh's article sums it up well(the war planning, not the Phish bit): "One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that 'a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.' He added, 'I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, "What are they smoking"' (Hersh pg. 30) Italics and bold mine.

I would though like this blog to go on record as stating that the current President of Iran is probably most likely kinda you know insane.

help me

I have a complicated relationship with deadspin.com - it's a lot like Andy Garcia and Meg Ryan in "When a Man Love a Woman" - but sometimes our relationship can produce pure gold

wanna be a frau

Special K, Sears, Payless shoes, what are they modeling next week - scratch-off lotto tickets?

thankfully we're not tied down in some other war right now or we would be totally screwed

while admitting that diplomacy is the only answer and with total respect to the people of Iran - who knew the beginning of the end would be a ceremony with lower production values than your average high school spring drama production (and we're not talking South Pacific here either)

World Cup Preview #385920439086234

people like to say that Americans from the 1930's are the greatest generation because they lived through the depression and then beat the Nazi's - but young folk the same age in the Ukraine lived through forced Stalinist Purges, the destruction of their bucolic countryside in the name of a crazy ethos, a noticeable lack of first-run theatres showing big-budget Hollywood musicals of the era, and the general deaths of tens of millions and . . . THEN BEAT THE NAZI'S!!

this is why I pick the Ukrainian team to at least make the single elimination round of this year's world cup -

other reasons:

1. They play in by far the worst group (my 4th grade soccer team could do well in this group - even without sliced up oranges)
2. Their starting goalkeeper has returned from injury (Note last link stolen from this blog)
3. they came out of a difficult qualifying section beating a 2002 third-place WC team in Turkey and 2004 Euro Champion Greece - obviously Greece and Turkey were distracted by their 10,000 year hatred (so eloquently depicted in the movie Troy), blog note: insert Kazakhstan joke here

highlight of the week

the George Packer article "The Lesson of Tal Afar" in this week's New Yorker is the most insightful and lucid look at the Iraq war I have ever read. It deals with failures in the Rumsfeld doctrine for a new type of war, it predicts there will be a quiet drawdown of American troops this summer, and it shows how some U.S. military officers have succeed in Iraq by not listening to the Rumsfeld led Pentagon. Despite all this my favorite line in the whole 11 pages article (it took me three train rides to read - Addison to Washington Red Line) is this:

"In Southeast Asia, the domino theory turned out to be false, but Iraq in the hands of militias and terrorists, manipulated by neighboring states, would threaten the Middle East and the U.S. for many years. The truth is no one in Washington knows what to do."

crap

the man they call nails is at the plate

this home run made up for the fact that my soccer team was trounced 47-0 this day; p.s. I watched this clip at least 100 times on a history of baseball VHS tape I had (the tape was better because it had the radio announcers)

Yeah

no really he's awesome

George Packer fan appreciation day - all fans under 21 get free George Packer thunderstix!!

George Packer you are my hero

the President is giving question and answer speeches about Iraq this week; my question would be "What the hell are we going to do about this fucking mess, Mr President?" a woman in North Carolina though simply stated "My hero's have always been cowboys." My next blog entry will be on what my puke tasted like after I read about that woman.

I apologize to my zero readers

the whole Brian Zoubek not going to Duke thing was an April Fool's prank!! Let the Zoubek era begin!! He's Duke's first 7-footer since the time of Tone-Loc.

What the hell does recover post mean?

I just wrote a 1295 word Lester Bangs-esque tribute on Buck Owens and then lost it to posterity - and the wind.

Here is a synopsis in haiku form:

Buck Owens rad
Hee-Haw sux
A dragonfly lands on my canoe

I'm at an 11 right now

I read today that Brian Zoubek is thinking about not going to Duke which is of course insane and caused me to have a minor freak-out. I think it might be time for me to scale it down a little bit. I should just let the laconic, pastoral, anti-military industrial complex rhythms of meaningless April baseball games take over. That and Lucero. To celebrate this post I'm showing a picture of a rural field. With Lucero standing in it.