- It's been ages since I posted any PJ Harvey, what the fuck is wrong with me, she's in the second circle of MSADI5G. Been three year's since anything new.
- Jeebus Effing Crisco. (There's today's poem tie-in, btw.) The dilemma: is priming this country's soccer-neutrals into flag-waving jingoistic bandwagoneers worth pissing off this country's soccer-hating flag-waving jingoistic rightwing assholes?
- And the people who feed soccer-hating flag-waving rightwing assholes their jingoism: Coulter plugs in the usual culture-war critiques about the game -- that soccer is somehow socialistic and immigrant-ish and faintly fruity; you know this song. She gets her jokes off like the pro she is. But she is, as usual, mostly writing to remind readers of where they should stand. That is, that the people her readers have defined themselves against really like this stuff. That is her whole argument against the sport, finally.
- Teething troubles: on Suarez.
- How the world works: Luis Suárez has apologised to Giorgio Chiellini “and the entire football family” for biting the Italy defender, an offence that has earned the Uruguayan a four-month ban from football, and effectively admitted he lied to Fifa when contesting the charge handed down by the game’s governing body. In a move instigated without Liverpool’s knowledge and that will inevitably be considered as a public relations ploy from the striker’s camp before a mooted transfer to Barcelona, Suárez tweeted his apology on Monday from his home outside Montevideo. The forward, twice previously sanctioned for biting an opponent on the field of play, vowed there would “never again be another incident like this” and expressed his regret at what had occurred in Uruguay’s critical 1-0 Group D victory in Natal... Perhaps more pertinently, there had been strong suggestions in Spain that Barcelona would pursue the signing of Suárez from Liverpool only if he had issued a formal apology and vowed there would be no repeat of such behaviour in future. Barça hope to secure the player this summer, with the Chile forward Alexis Sánchez potentially moving to Anfield as an eye-catching makeweight, and have indicated they have the funds to compete at such a level in the transfer market.
- Barca's response to Suarez's apology.
- Is there such a thing as a beautiful defeat? If we’re lucky, we can focus on the victors, who sometimes—as in the case of Colombia the other day—feel like truly deserving ones for the way they brought us joy in the process of winning victory. In that odd calculus of the World Cup, we can root for France, and Karim Benzema, to avenge Algeria—instead of facing them, as many had begun hoping they would. But, in the end, slowly, we watch a tournament that whittles down to the usual European and South American teams, the familiar match-ups, a cycle of repetition. All the African teams are gone. I hope that there will be surprises ahead: maybe Costa Rica will defeat Holland, or the U.S. will make a historic run far into the tournament. But the settling process has begun, reminding us that at this stage of the tournament the dream of the radically unexpected, of the impossible, is usually replaced by that of the usual. Even as I look forward to the final weeks, I always find there is an odd sadness about this part of the tournament in which so many of the different possibilities we had envisioned vanish before our eyes.
- The Rise of the Red Devils. Yes, I'll be watching today with Planet. Then dinner at the best Thai restaurant, Ruan Thai in Wheaton, I've ever.
- Propaganda Hydrahead.
- Coywolves: Coywolves are about 62 percent coyote, 27 percent wolf and 11 percent dog, according to a 2013 paper by Monzon published in Molecular Ecology. Researchers have found them as close as Quantico, Va., and surrounding Prince William County, and game-management officials have confirmed their presence in Laytonsville, Md., in Montgomery County. We live two hundred yards from Rock Creek Park. We hear coyotes howl at night occasionally. Have seen coyotes. Don't think I've seen a coywolf yet.
- Tower Road! A long-lost friend used to live on Tower Road.
- Why do you study the shell?
- Star Trek: the HR Perspective.
- OK, Deep Space Nine: I'm midway through Season Four. Motherfucking Worf is on the show. The only character I like is Garak. I just saw an episode created solely to rif on early Bond movies, Garak was in it, it just sucked sooooo much. Now Ducat has a crush on Kira, everybody has a crush on Kira. I don't think I'm gonna make it.
- I did watch Strangelove again last night. I'd forgot the Ripper was McCluskey, got to break Pacino's jaw, forgot that Joe McCarthy was listed in actors' opening credits.
DOUBLE VISION
Wilmer Mills
At Waffle House, they fired her on the spot:
“You talk too much!”
She’d told her customers
That “made” gets “mad” and “poet” goes to “pot”
Without the letter e. The “amateurs,”
She’d said, “inherit everything: the sand,
The stars, the world that only God possesses.”
While washing dishes with a bleeding hand,
She’d told them, “through ‘possession’s’ double ‘esses’
There’s a line that cleaves; things come apart;
‘Refrain’ means both ‘hold back’ and ‘go again’;
Things join in wholes of which they are a part.”
She “touched” the people. Was it such a sin?
Her broken pencil left a double line
On my tab, both legible as one design.
