Raven McMillian

"it ain't nice like purty, but it's nice like nice"

2012-01-05T00:00:00.002-05:00

Right now I am listening to The Grapes of Wrath in CD book form, which may or may not be considered “reading” it though I am calling it that because it’s every word that was written and going straight into my head while I ride back and forth to work. I never remember reading the whole thing, probably because back in school I was too cool to do responsible bullshit like actually read. It was better to figure out ways to do well while pretending to do something I hadn’t done. At one point last year though I was reading a bunch of short story writers for some bullshit I was gonna do on my blog but didn’t, and “The Chrysanthemums” by Steinbeck ended up becoming my favorite short story of forever. It’s straight up erotica, but frustrated erotica, and an amazing fucking story that actually made me think I shouldn’t even try to be a writer.
But anyways, in listening to The Grapes of Wrath, I’m struck by how amazing a work it is, how seamlessly Steinbeck weaves shit together between Joads and overview of America, but also how much it applies to American life now. Things are very different, yes, but also very much the same. Also made me decide I’m slaughtering my own pigs next time.
I should be writing more but am just now getting back into even trying after recovering from some external bullshit involving cobra poison in my soul. Listening to the story of the Joad clan has been very relieving, to realize the pains of being done wrong by those who feign constantly how they have your best interests in their mind, and insinuate you should be more appreciative, is nothing new. Shit man, we started the grand dance of pretendery last night with the Iowa Caucuses. Pretty soon, half of you will pretend Obama is not a fuckin’ Illuminaut funded more by Monsanto Popes than Ickey Woodses, and the other half will pretend that whatever cocksucker Businessman for Christ has the R stamp is not a cocksucker Businessman for Christ.
Oh well. Grandpa was having his stroke as I got home tonight, so I anxiously await getting up at six in the morning to shower, warm my truck up, and hear what happens next. I know it will be painful, but I am thankful for John Steinbeck. Dude gets overlooked probably because he is considered a classic, and we of this age are contrarians by nature and have to like the unheralded. But Steinbeck was a motherfuckin’ man when it came to this shit. I put that dude right up there with any of my literary heroes.

Huginn & Muninn

2011-12-17T10:49:00.003-05:00

So my absence has been part personal turmoil as I started having anxiety attacks do to the prolonged hostile work environment created by my boss, who also is my bro-in-law, and I didn't have much creative energy. But it's also just as much because whatever create energy I have is being channeled into a short story collection to hopefully be published in the next year or so. I hope that all of you who have regularly and religiously read this blog will also cop the book when it becomes available, because I am supposed to do this shit - I've seen it etched in quartz in future travels.
The work thing has been weird because I've never had anxiety attacks before, and don't much like them. I've willed them away for the most part, being well-schooled in breath meditations and removing myself mentally from physical situations - part of the benefits of a wild-assed upbringing I guess. I can compartmentalize well.
Strange thing is I had this dream last night - first dream I can remember in forever, as usually I dream words so when I dream images it is very vivid to me. This was that. I was looking through a window and this huge ass cobra was coming, like 20 feet long, right outside the window and poking at the pane with his head. Then these two huge twin ravens, like four feet tall when they landed on the ground and almost walking like bow-legged people, came swooping in and just attacked the cobra, trying to kill it and carry it off. One got it in its mouth and started leaving, then the snake, who was resisting with complete jiggly snake resistance, fell back down, like ten feet further away from the window. But the other giant raven was right there and swooped in and snatched him again and started dragging him off further. And they carried him out of eyesight in this manner, him fighting the entire time.
Being well-schooled in the stories of Huginn and Muninn - the twin ravens of Odin - I know what the fuck is going on with all that. I also feel better about my bro-in-law - the cobra - because sure he is resisting and manipulating as much as he can, but his ultimate desire is to destroy me because that is his cobra nature. But I have spirit protectors in place who can clear the perimeter. Which makes me feel better, just a little.

update

2011-11-04T16:30:00.002-04:00

What's up peoples of the Cyberian Empire? Just wanted to hit you up with to let you know I ain't dead, didn't fall off a freight train or blast off into space with Mayan Prophets or start wandering the insides of Afton Mountain on spirit quests (though that last one's probably a good idea). Been cutting down on the Cyberian oppression of my life, as I sludge my way through some stories that have percolated in my head the past couple months, hopefully to be published as a collection next year at some point. You can reach me at all them places in the sidebar for the most part (twitter, gmail, whispers on the wind), so I'm still checking my Cyberian passports regularly, getting 'em stamped and shit, but won't be no rojonekku posts beyond the occasional update like this for the foreseeable moments. But I'm still here. And you're still there. So we are still connected. If that ain't strong enough, twit or electronic mail me. Or fuck man, if you put something into PO Box 270 Scottsville, VA 24590, that'd be like four cups of coffee and a line of crank all at once, because that is real. I like real shit. Real shit is the best shit. Always has been and always will be.

t r k b x

2011-09-22T20:00:00.001-04:00

battery cables jiggled
one last time, for good measure,
and then we let the grass grow

r r b a f

2011-09-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

crooked ladder iron jabbed
my thigh - the stab wound is black,
so we poured vodka in it

g r f b k

2011-09-21T20:00:00.002-04:00

run where the forty bottles
break, where freedom's concealed by
overgrowth and rainbow blight

b e t a y

2011-09-21T08:00:00.002-04:00

monsters snarling in my head,
cutting scary promos on
what I should know to be truth

p o w a e

2011-09-16T20:00:00.001-04:00

smokestack brickwork like not seen
no more ascends from homeless
camp in an abandoned plant

t r e z m

2011-09-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

dilapidated roots get
exposed as those with profits
in mind erode their support

r o a d z

2011-09-15T20:00:00.001-04:00

vdot done mowed the roadside -
chopped up my wild blackberry
bushes; fuckin' government

p h n a g

2011-09-15T08:00:00.002-04:00

phoenix got best design for
bedazzled pinewood derby
car, and smiled her special smile

x m a s e

2011-09-13T20:00:00.001-04:00

celebrate mythology -
man's mind makes up amazing
stories to keep his self sane

h a t e c

2011-09-13T08:00:00.000-04:00

so much anger built inside;
designed for demise, but my
dreams still rise as the days break

Redskins 1-0 Positives/Negatives Metasciences Week 1 Recap

2011-09-11T22:56:00.003-04:00

(kicking off another season of scientifical spiritual soul-jazz
about this Redskins franchise - and an
Armchair Linebacker simulpost)

[Each week, I will metaphysically speak upon the positive and negative influences on my beloved Washington Redskins team, as seen in their on-field - or television to be truthful here - performance. As the year goes on, we shall have a metascientific tabulation of who is the most valuable or biggest detriment to their future.]
The Redskins pulled off a victory, and pulled away in the 4th quarter, both of which were not habits of this team in the previous three seasons. They usually found ways to lose, or even if they won kept it way too close and never had that kill instinct. But today, they pulled it off, and didn't let it hang until the last possession either. That was relieving, so much so that I was actually angry at the end of the game because it felt odd and abnormal. But I feel good about this team.
I want to make it clear though, that my "feeling good about this team" means I think they can go .500. Anyone thinking playoffs, even after this win, is jumping the gun, and shifting into standard Offseason Champs Redskins fan mode, just a little later than usual. My feelings are that if this team can go 8-8, that's a successful season, because let's be honest - this is a rebuilding year, and the first legitimate rebuilding process the team has gone through in a decade really. And Snyder's various management regimes have left the Redskins infrastructure more damaged than Afghanistan. But Shanahan's in his second year, and I continue to stick to the thinking that we will judge his successes or failures by his third year. If they go 8-8 this year, we are on pace. If they somehow miraculously make the playoffs, then Shanahan truly is a genius. But he won't be.
However, enough of my jaded cynicism to temper my momentary joy at beating a massively hobbled and still overrated division rival. Let's get into the positive and negative forces on this football team on this anniversary of the terrorists hating the freedom to think either Coke or Pepsi doesn't kill you...
EIGHTH DEGREE POSITIVE: NT CHRIS NEILD - Neild was a 7th-round draft pick out of West Virginia, who had to pass up his preferred #95 roster number because a veteran player already had it. The fact he ended up sporting the old Dave Butz #65 in only solidified what I had thought upon first checking into this dude - he is going to be this team's defensive Chris Cooley - meaning a goofy-assed dude who is impossible not to love. Sure enough, not only did Neild beat out Anthony Bryant for a roster spot (and the number 95, which he wore today), but even as a back-up to highly-touted free agent Barry Cofield, Neild showed and proved today with two sacks and just generally showing himself to be a greatly disruptive influence as a true NT in Jim Haslet's 3-4 defense. And really, this speaks greatly not only of the Neild himself, but of the draft this Redskins front office had this past year, where they actually got a lot of value out of all their draft picks. If you can take a 7th round pick and get you somebody who could potentially be a legitimate starter by the end of his rookie season, well that's something that hasn't really been a habit of Dan Snyder front offices. But if this young defense can really shapeshift into a stunner on a weekly basis as the weeks/months/years progress, I can see this dude being the dirtbag NT heart and soul of that defense, while the Brian Orakpos and Ryan Kerrigans get all the Pro Bowl trips.
SEVENTH DEGREE POSITIVE: TE FRED DAVIS - With Cooley's knee all swolled up, and it seeming more and more like he might end up having another of those dreaded trips to Dr. James Andrews down in Alabama, the Redskins needed Fred Davis to show up the beginning of this season. And show up did he ever. Dude was playing like Kellen Winslow the Elder out there today, and his previous penchant for coughing up footballs wasn't there, as he held tight, even through a couple of minor concussive hits. He looked good, and like he can be that punisher on pass plays that Cooley has always been. (Before anyone gets all wacky again, like they did last offseason, and somehow thinks Cooley is expendable or too old or something, it's usually not a bad idea to have a pair of great TEs, if you can afford them.)
SIXTH DEGREE POSITIVE: OLB RYAN KERRIGAN - Kerrigan seems to be getting this defense quickly, more so than Brian Orakpo did last year in the switch to standing up as an outside LB. Still, Orakpo is a monster, and Kerrigan seems to be more one of those stereotypical gritty players, with some good athleticism to boot. He got pushed around a good bit at the beginning of the game, but settled in, and the tip and INT for TD to start the second half really helped set the tone for that defense to puff out their feathers and feel good. It's as great a first round rookie debut as I can remember in the Snyder years.
FIFTH DEGREE POSITIVE: LB ROCKY MCINTOSH - When the Redskins passed on the retreads available to them and kept Rocky McIntosh, I have to admit I was not too excited. McIntosh never really developed into what he was supposed to be coming out of the U of Miami. But man, he was all over the place today, and actually looked a good bit like his mid-field mentor London Fletcher at times. Maybe a new contract and showing him he was still wanted here gave Rocky some comfort and confidence. Lord knows Sam Huff loves him. This was the best game I can remember McIntosh playing in a while.
FOURTH DEGREE POSITIVE: LB LONDON FLETCHER - Look, even if he doesn't have a highlight reel stop or sack or anything, Fletcher is going to be a positive for this team. There are very few on-field coaches of London Fletcher's caliber. In fact, probably the only other one was Peyton Manning, and he's out with a crookneck. Very fitting that London Fletcher now has the longest active continuous games started streak in the NFL after Peyton clocked out for the first time in a decade. About the best thing you could say for a player to show how much you think of them is to wish they finished out their career on your team; I hope London Fletcher is a fucking coach here the day he hangs up his cleats. I don't want that dude to ever leave.
THIRD DEGREE POSITIVE: WR SANTANA MOSS - I have bad-mouthed Santana and threw him under the bus when he had shady ties to that Canadian HGH doctor, but Santana just keeps proving you wrong. He's always a consistent presence on offense. He's not gonna have a gamebreaker player at his age, and he's going to over-celebrate every fucking meaningless first down he gets, which is annoying, even as a Redskins fan (probably because Art Monk is the high watermark at the position, and Art would never do vainglorious shit like that), but Moss gets his. It can't really be considered his fault the Redskins mostly ran with just him as a competent WR many seasons. This year though, looks to be different, and if Santana can continue to be Santana, it won't be as intolerable if it's part of a larger receiving corps, like it was today.
SECOND DEGREE POSITIVE: WR ANTHONY ARMSTRONG - Double A still shows some of the signs of a guy who played in arena football - dropping passes at times, making mistakes. But the dude is a blazer, and a true deep threat, and hard to not love the dude either, knowing his history as a football player. Every time they went deep to him, it got my adrenaline pumping, and I'm glad he got that TD. Oh man, that one pass that got knocked away at the 10 or so? That would've been immense had he caught that. I think that would've blown this game wide open.
FIRST DEGREE POSITIVE: CB DEANGELO HALL - Hall is never as good as he would have you believe, but I did not see him falling on his face as a Giants WR burned him down the sidelines for a TD, like sometimes can happen with #23. And he gave Manning a nice, painful shot when he got a clear line on him from a CB blitz. All in all, when the weakest part of this potentially wondrous defense is the secondary, and Hall is the leader by default of that secondary, if he can at least look competent and have a presence, then I'm gonna be happy with him.
STAY MEDIUM DEGREE: QB REX GROSSMAN - If you saw the highlight clips and stat lines, it may look like Rex Grossman has resurrected his career this weekend. But as someone who watched every down, let me tell you, there's a lot of the old Rex Grossman left inside the Rex Grossman who started at QB today. Aikman/Buck really pushed the angle of how this system limits Grossman's abilities to make mistakes, and said Grossman even said so himself. But if you have to limit the stupid mistakes your QB makes because he is stupid, well, that's not so good. My man Mavpa Van Cleef put it best when he said Grossman looks like a 15-year-old playing Madden, running backwards for 20 yards then mashing all the buttons at once. No starting NFL QB should lose 18 yards on a sack, like Grossman did today. And he flew some floaters up three or four times that are gonna make better secondaries salivate during film studies. Not to mention some of the high passes he was laying guys up with in the first half that would've gotten them knocked the fuck out, if the Giants had even half a Laron Landry lurking in their defensive backfield. That being said, he won today, so I can't outright hate the dude, though I do feel the whole John Beck/Rex Grossman QB battle was just a long con by the Shanahans to not have to admit they were going to start Grossman from the beginning, because people like me would've been like, "BOOOOOOOO!" about us ending last season with a questionable offensive line and a shitty QB, and not having done a damn thing to address that before this season.
FIRST DEGREE NEGATIVE: K GRAHAM GANO - Gano looked dialed in during the preaseson. First attempt today - just right, showing us that Gano is already in mid-season form. What the fuck man? Are there just no decent placekickers left in this world? Shouldn't there be a second generation of Zendejas kids coming up by now?
SECOND DEGREE NEGATIVE: S REED DOUGHTY - Reed Doughty is one of those guys who ends up coaching high school football and you read about him and they say he had a 9-year NFL career and you think to yourself, "Reed who?" Somehow, he practices well, and tries hard, and is legally deaf, and makes this team every year. And somehow, somebody gets injured (or sucks, if they are Adam Archuleta) and Reed Doughty gets on the field. And then Reed Doughty gets owned, regularly. He is quite simply not an NFL starter, not even due to injury nor illness nor having three other safeties arrested and suspended all at once. He's not an NFL starter. By all accounts, he's a chill dude, and a solid locker room presence, but he is not very good. You could make a highlight package of him having notable moments of suck (the end of the Texans game last year comes immediately to mind, where Andre Johnson and Doughty jump for the same pass, and it looks like Doughty jumped from four feet lower). Today, I was embarrassed for Doughty at times. He was manhandled at the line, and he was spun around or out of position multiple times, giving up long passes. Laron Landry is a dominator on defense, and I want him to be 100% so badly because he will fuck up some motherfuckers, but hell man, I'd be glad with him just standing around out there at half-speed than Reed Doughty playing. The dude is a straight up liability.
THIRD DEGREE NEGATIVE: OWNER DAN SNYDER - Things looked better today, and it seems Shanahan & Son are giving this team some needed direction. But make no mistake about it, Snyder lurks. As Redskins fans, we are like the poor villagers of a fairy tale kingdom, with an evil King who doesn't deserve the crown, who stole it from the previous King, with whom we'd known wonderful successes as a people. And even if our collective fortunes turn, we are still under the rein of this demented syphilitic-brained King of ours, and all it takes is one bright blast of his ridiculous incompetence, and all that had been built over the past couple of years will be unraveled. Seriously, there was a PR story in today's Washington Post about Snyder wanting to hire Shanahan that had tons of fingerprints of Snyder's PR guys all over it that really allows me to tell the full tale of what an evil and manipulative piece of shit owner Dan Snyder is - and the story was meant to be a positive one! Also, on the night before the season starts, Snyder dropped his defamation lawsuit against the Washington City Paper because various news outlets were going to report that Snyder never actually read the piece in question. A fucking first class piece of shit, self-important and delusional, and the most I can hope for is him not having a reason to start running people off and waving his little dick around to show how important he is and how much he only wants to win and what a true Redskin fan he is, not a stupid asshole businessman who has fucked up a once proud franchise with steady illogical meddling from the owner's box.
ACCUMULATED INFLUENCES UPON THIS FRANCHISE 2011, BEST TO WORST: NT Chris Neild (+8), TE Fred Davis (+7), OLB Ryan Kerrigan (+6), LB Rocky McIntosh (+5), LB London Fletcher (+4), WR Santana Moss (+3), WR Anthony Armstrong (+2), CB DeAngelo Hall (+1), QB Rex Grossman (even), K Graham Gano (-1), S Reed Doughty (-2), owner Dan Snyder (-3).

Ultimate 100: 65 thru 61

2011-09-08T22:00:00.001-04:00

#65: SAM STOUT vs. SPENCER FISHER - I do not care and am sewing patches onto my patch jacket so my reviews will be shorter and stupider, which is probably better anyways. Sam Stout is not a beer, contrary to his name, and Spencer Fisher is a leprechaun looking motherfucker, and has bad tribal armband tattoos so he is probably better, of course. The Irish got a bloody eye, but kinda dominated at least from what I heard while not paying attention. The other dude is a kickboxer and the Joe Rogan stupid color commentator guy was like, "Oh you don't become a world champion kickboxer by being a pussy." I hate using that term "pussy" for weakness. The vagina is a strong motherfucker, and alpha dudes need to get over this aversion to acknowledging the power of the vagina. I am alpha as hell and will love on a vagina all day long, and never call it derogatory slang terms, ever, even if I was writing gangsta rap songs, because a true gangsta fucks up conventional thinking with his gangsta ways, not perpetuates tired stereotypes. The little Irish leprechaun dude won, and he looks old in the eyes, like he has seen things - strange nasty things that can't be unseen.
#64: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. RENATO SOBRAL - I would doubt the little fake Travis Bickle ultimate fighter Dana White pal numero uno Chuck Liddell aka the stupid fucking Iceman is going to lose in this thing at all. This is starting to seem like one of those WWE DVD sets where they push the internal corporate agenda instead of give you an actual compendium of the best shit. Of course if you want an actual compendium of the best shit, that involves going inside the interwebs and having a group of nerds analyze, rank, and dissect all the possible fights, and your getting into real hollow-point-bullet-into-your-own-brain territory once you go there.
Oh, I always read dudes talking about Babalu and I never knew who the fuck he is but apparently he is the Brazilian guy partially covered in stupid tattoos who is fighting Mr. Face of the UFC Chuck Liddell.
Liddell is basically punching the fuck out of him, but the Babalu dude rolls around to stop from getting knocked out, but it just doesn't really end because the one dude is on his back getting punched and if it was a bar fight it would've already been stopped. Travis Bickle wins.
#63: GEORGES ST. PIERRE vs. MATT HUGHES - Oh lord, not again. Didn't I see this fight already? It's hard to like either of these dudes. This is the type of IMMENSE SHOWDOWN that you hope Al Qaeda wins. Five 5-minute rounds is not promising, because it might go forever, but luckily Matt Hughes beats St. Pierre with a submission out of nowhere at the end of the first round. Thank god, although I still would've liked to see Al Qaeda win, being they were in Atlantic City when they did this fighting thing on the old paying per watches screens.
#62: TYSON GRIFFIN vs. CLAY GUIDA - Man, if you pause these fights on the opening pics of the two fighters, like I do to type their names, it straight up looks like a gay porn is about to bust out with Tyson Griffin and Clay Guida's faces. And MMA people say wrestling was gay. Although as the fighting is happening, I don't mind Clay Guida so much, because he looks like he would listen to some Kreator. Tyson Griffin however, no, that dude is not cool. I still have never figured out Griffin's back tattoo. LIke it's a retarded dragon eagle or something. And why the fuck does Joe Rogan know and care so much about ultimate fighting?
The Guida dude seemed like he was pretty great every time I looked up, because he'd be doing back spinfists or weird rolls off the Tyson dude's back or whatever, but obviously I don't understand MMA because the judges' had a split decision in favor of the Tyson dude. Sucks.
#61: B.J. PENN vs. JOE STEVENSON - Oh man, another B.J. Penn fight! I'm not going to pay attention at all! But I will let it play so I can send this shit back to Netflix and get the second disc of the second season of East Bound and Down!
The Joe Stevenson dude does this weird "AISH! AISH! AISH!" Monica Seles yell when he throws punches, which I'm sure some old ass dude who does maintenance in his apartment building taught him. Stevenson just got an elbow in his forehead and he is bleeding grossly, like Puerto Rican wrestling blood, like Mexican murder magazine blood. "Well, let's see what they can do to close it up," and the old Grady from Sanford & Son cut man is on it, earning them dollars with his voodoo magic. But they get into a second round, and then the Joe dude is punching like a boxer with his "AISH! AISH! AISH!" yell but all bloody and stupid looking.
So bloody but yet so boring. I guess this is considered a great fight because one dude bled a whole bunch. I would actually be concerned about this dude's blood loss, but then he gets caught in a choke, and he taps out and for a brief second while the camera is overhead and Penn is on the bottom reaching around with the Joe dude on top of him, bloody as fuck, grimacing from a choke, quitting, it made me realize just how disgusting this shit is. Not because of the blood, because I'm not like that, but it's just misguided alpha male energy, directed into a pseudo-sport that really is Romanesque. But hey, we are in the decline of the American Empire so it makes sense, doesn't it? Enjoy your handbaskets bros, I'm moving to China now while the getting is still good for English-speaking middle management types.

Ultimate 100: 70 thru 66

2011-09-04T22:00:00.001-04:00

Not sure what will give first - the end of this compilation, or my motivation to continue with this losing project. It's like water filling a rowboat, and I'm trying to scoop it out with a bucket, but damn, it's hard to care. I might just jump out the boat and see how far I can swim instead...
#70: PETE WILLIAMS vs. MARK COLEMAN - Old shit. The clock counts up instead of down. I am not paying attention. Every time I look up, two white dudes are hugging each other on the ground beside a chain link fence.
Oh wow, they had a whole long match and now we're in a three-minute overtime. This really is old shit, and I haven't paid attention to a fucking ten second piece of it. Luckily though, I looked just in time to see Mark Coleman get kicked in the head, have his eyes roll back into his head, and fall into a lump against the edge of the cage. God Bless America.
#69: B.J. PENN vs. CAOL UNO - I saw this fight one time before, and honestly am having a hard time paying attention to this shit tonight. I would rather drink my spring water with a splash of mango peach juice in it, and just kinda chill, maybe read some Chinese poetry, sitting around on the couch naked and all. But I can't take off my shorts, because I'd feel weird watching MMA naked. But fifteen seconds in, this was over, as Penn dropped him, punched him, then split the arena before Uno was even revived. Slow motion replay of the entire match took like twenty seconds, and ends with Uno in a lifeless hump with one eye open and one shut in a lump.
Haha, they make B.J. Penn come back in, and Dana White has a crewcut of dark hair at this point in his life. He look stupid.
#68: LYOTO MACHIDA vs. TITO ORTIZ - Hey, I think this is our first time seeing the bigheaded Ortiz, who beats his porny wife. I can't stand Ortiz, and he and Jenna Jameson as a married couple actually caused me to join Al Qaeda for about seven months a couple years ago. But then I realized they didn't actually smoke hash anymore when training to be assassins, and I felt it wasn't true to Hassan I Sabbah's teachings, so I left.
Lyoto is called The Dragon, which means he will win, because a dragon punch against a giant watermelon head is no for-real fair match. The crowd is chanting "TITO! TITO! TITO!" though because your average MMA crowd is half-drunk and half-retarded. Unfortunately it's the same half of them that is those two things, so they can carry on normal human lives, yet be completely dim-witted, and still function.
Again, I didn't care, but the crowd got loud because at the end of the first round Lyoto took down Bighead McGee and then started dropping elbows, punches, and knees to that huge noggin. When the commentator resets things and says, "Tito Ortiz, Lyoto Machida," linguistically it sounds like foreign jibber jabber while negotiating with day laborers. I mean, no offense to foreigners. I'm just saying it had an interesting linguistic rhythm, and English is what I've known all my life. And even more specifically, I've known southern dialect of English, which is slurred and drawled out and lacks a good rapid hard linguistical rhythm, because most of the last consonants in words are sort of left off in order to have a nice drawl. I think it's the humidity maybe, it makes our tongues thick with saliva.
The fight is already to the third and final round, and I have not commented much at all. That's what I'm going for here these five fights. I don't think you care for play-by-play. I don't even think anyone is reading this. It's going to be one of those things that sits on the website forever, and nobody looks at, then all of a sudden, like in the middle of January, some dude will send me an email and be like, "Dude! I read your Ultimate 100 stuff and it was the best thing I ever read. You are crazy!" and it will be true because the dude will be like 11, and I will have helped corrupt him, just partially, but this will be a gateway into deeper and darker dungeons of the internet. I can't help that though. Things are what they are at this point.
Minute and a half left and Machida is destroying Tito Ortiz, and it looks Ortiz, who has lost all three rounds, is content to just finish the match and go home to his skeletor wife's crumpled vagina.
Haha, Ortiz got a triangle armbar doohickey with half a minute left, but Machida squirmed away from watermelon doom, and made it to the final airhorn. Both men are on their knees and give each other the bow of honor. Fuck honor.
#67: SHONIE CARTER vs. MATT SERRA - Oh man, one of the seasons of The Ultimate Fighter I watched was Shonie Carter. That dude is a hoot. He is wearing some garish speedo with all sorts of international flags, and already Matt Serra has a giant strawberry on his thigh. They are rolling around back and forth doing flippy flop shit, which means this is technically superior according to the commentators. Matt Serra is a grapple beast, and though Shonie is a virile and strong proud black man, the little midget dude from the northeast is putting on him. But Shonie did one of those spinning back fists while Serra came charging in when the spin went on, and got clobbered on his forehead with Shonie's biceps, which almost knocked out Serra. It was straight up kung fu bro, like you would expect from a black guy with a fu manchu.
Serra keeps catching Shonie in strange near-submission shit, but Shonie can just very calmly shift himself around and get out of it or at least minimize the effect so it doesn't make him have to quit, or TAP OUT in the parlance of mixed martial artistry.
Actually, I just watched closely for like two minutes, and this really is a fun fight. Shonie has gotten his ass kicked, so to speak, even though it's mostly technical ass-kicking and not literal one, but he might be able to outlast Serra's onslaught, and Serra is getting tired. We shall go into a third round and this may be a case of Carter just surviving long enough to put away Matt "The Little Tiny Intense Dude" Serra. Oh man, they seem to be tired, and drop to the ground in the guard right away. I hope this is not a five-minute group hug final round to get a split decision. Carter has underwear or a jock strap or something puffing out the back ass cheeks of his international speedos, and it makes it look like he's wearing a diaper. Maybe he is, who knows?
With like 15 seconds left in the last round, Shonie actually nails one of those spinning backfists, and Serra goes down blank-eyed, so Shonie shimmies in celebratory glee, and it is over very amusingly. Kong fu ass brotha.
#66: GEORGES ST. PIERRE vs. B.J. PENN - Oh man, my least favorite two dudes from the previous 30,000 fights NOW GET TO FIGHT EACH OTHER! THIS IS GOING TO BE EPIC! Epically suck. And gay. Although while they got their pre-fight instructions, Penn was just standing there, but St. Pierre was kinda lurching like he was about to punch or pounce or something, so I automatically have to say B.J. Penn is the lesser of these two evils. Still though.
I muted the TV and put on some Van Morrison Astral Works instead to listen to, and oddly enough, just like pornography, UFC is far more tolerable with the sound off. Whereas normally about two minutes in, you're like, "ugh, how fucking long am I going to torment myself by trying to get through 37 minutes of trifling bullshit for that four minute part that's cool," with the sound off you can just tune in and tune out and eventually you develop an extra sense to where your peripheral vision knows that awesome shit is about to happen. See, I just looked up and... well, nothing awesome happened. Just stupid Georges St. Pierre trying to move in and punch Penn upside his coconut. As the first round ended I did notice that Penn's trunks have a pretend black belt around the waistline with pretend straps screen-printed down the front like it was a real black belt. That's fucking stupid. And between rounds St. Pierre has some dude massaging his temples like reiki. That's strange, and out of place, and makes me uncomfortable to be honest with you.
Every time I look up, it's Penn on his back and St. Pierre moving all around on top of him, so without the sound on, I have to assume St. Pierre has dominated this fight. Yeah, the round ended and I just saw a highlight reel of St. Pierre concussing Penn, cracking his ribs with a knee, and just straight bitch-punking him. In a battle between two evils, the lesser of two evils never actually wins, because evil wins, and the lesser one tends to suck, so why am I even watching this stupid evil shit?
Fuck, the third round ended and they are talking to the dudes in their corners, meaning this is a five-round affair. I think I will go to sleep on the couch. SEE YOU NEXT TIME ANYONE WHO ACTUALLY SEES THIS WITH THEIR EYES AND CAN PROCESS THE MARKINGS INTO COMMUNICATED LANGUAGE!
(Whoa, I woke up and St. Pierre must have won because him and two other dudes were wearing matching shirts and were bouncing around in a circle with their arms interlocked and heads leaning in on each other in some weird ass French Canadian celebration jig. It kinda freaked me out. No one should wake up from starting to fall asleep and be greeted with something like that, because once you see something, you can't unsee it. That's inside me forever now.)

Ultimate 100: 75 thru 71

2011-09-03T22:00:00.000-04:00

Sigh. What a stupid fucking idea this was. Oh well...
#75: ROYCE GRACIE vs. GERARD GORDEAU - This is from the very first UFC tournament, and Gracie is actually wearing a full gi, and I guess this is the end of the tournament. Did I not see this before? I thought I watched all the early UFCs back in the day, actually a few of them with the drummer from Lamb of God back before he was a rock-n-roll drummer and was just this dude Chris and we both had wives/girlfriends, and they'd get high and we'd drink beer and play Sega or watch UFC or something. But I don't remember a Gerard Gordeau at all. Maybe this is for retro value as the main event of the first ever UFC, and to give Royce Gracie some early pioneer of our great pseudo-sport love. Gracie is slowly and methodically getting around to a naked choke, and the crowd is booing, and the announcers are explaining it, and wow, it's really funny to see how far we've been educated by these programs to know what the fuck is up. They are explaining the tap out, and I think that's George Foreman talking on commentary. Man, low budget as fuck. They even use a boxing/wrestling ring bell instead of the air horn. But they were nice enough to give us a long, boring interview with Royce, even asking about why he wore a gi, and what the rear choke was about. "There is no plan for the future. I am just Royce, that is what I am." Nice.
#74: RICH FRANKLIN vs. DAVID LOISEAU - Another Franklin fight, against the crazy black Canadian dude who I saw on some other independently made MMA comp, where he was just straight fucking dudes up with some next level fucking dudes up style. Here is in standard UFC looks, sponsors all over the place, on trunks, ring aprons, ring bars holding the cage in place, all sorts of shit. I doubt there will be some next level greatness at this point in Loiseau's career as it has been exploited already. That's the thing about climbing the levels of something like this - you start out on a little level, do crazy shit, people know you, you move up, so on and so forth, and even if you start at a good MMA school, you've got two or three levels to climb. I saw some MMA at the skating rink in Charlottesville, and Steve Blackman, former WWE karate character, was the head trainer of one of the four schools who brought fighters to this thing, his school coming all the way from Pennsylvania. His guys pretty much won every fight they were in, and were on a different level than the local MMA academies, but that was what these guys probably had to do - drive down to Virginia, run their record up to like 2-0 or 4-0 against podunk ass dudes, then move up to the next level with better competition, after learning some basic shit and experiencing a live crowd and strange opponent and all that. Levels. By the time they get to the UFC, I imagine most of their passion has been crushed from their soul, and they are just trying to not only get paid, but guarantee their position in future money-making matches. There's as much self-preservation for your future match-making position as there is protecting yourself in the fight.
That's why The Ultimate Fighter was such a great idea as a TV show, although painful to watch at times, because you bring in all these lower level guys and give them a shot to skip a level or two, on national TV, and in the process you create new stars for your MMA monopoly. Dana White is a genius at exploiting this thing to Zuffa and his self's full benefit. I'm amazed nobody has outright been like "Fuck you, Dana," from a high profile position and made a stink about the way this thing goes down.
Anyways, Franklin nails a near knockout punch on Loiseau, aka The Crow, at the very end of the first round, with the air horn going off same time Loiseau hit the mat. Second round is pretty much Franklin dominating the dude, with The Crow on constant back pedal mode. The crowd is chanting "USA! USA!" because Loiseau is Canadian and the crowd is fucking retarded.
Zoning out, and Loiseau is bleeding and Franklin was good, but as soon as I typed that, Franklin got knocked the fuck out, and The Crow went in for the kill, but Franklin regained himself and is back in clutch control. Loiseau's eye looks like it exploded, and Franklin apparently has a broken left hand. One of The Crow's eyes is almost swolled shut, which probably wouldn't be allowed to continue in boxing. When boxing is more stringent a sport than what you do, there should probably be some re-evaluation of what's going on with your sport internally.
They are in a fourth round now, and the commentator says, "And this sport is filled with really polite and nice guys." Yeah, whatever on that bro. Loiseau's eyes are swelling out of his forehead, like sickly looking, on some alien shit, and the commentator dude is like, "I have no idea how somebody could watch this and then go back and watch baseball." While I understand that, yes, baseball is boring as fuck, you have to have a certain suspension of sensory perception to accept MMA as a regular, chill ass thing. I mean, I'm a fucking social degenerate, and even I find some of this stuff (like The Crow's eyes right now) sick and disgusting. But I am also a scientist, and enjoy studying the human ability to be sick and disgusting. But they stumble around together long enough to let the clock run out on all five-minute five rounds, and Franklin is your winner, and getting pushed to the high moon in this series of 100 ultimate fights.
#73: GEORGES ST. PIERRE vs. JASON MILLER - More St. Pierre and this crazy Mayhem Miller dude. Like I think I've mentioned, I'm really not into Georges St. Pierre, and Mayhem Miller comes out the gate in the intro hype package saying his style is a combo of streetfighting, jiu-jitsu, Thai boxing, and something or other else. "Nobody in my weight class can handle my rhythm," say St. Pierre in broken English by way of French Canadia, and I think to myself "lolol".
Miller is unorthodox to say the least, and is making this automatically entertaining as fuck from the very beginning. St. Pierre through but missed a vicious backspin fist, which is the most ridiculous move ever, but still pretty awesome in MMA when it hits. Mayhem has a goofy smile on his face most of the time, or maybe he just looks like it, but it really adds to the fun of the fight, because he's kind of loopy, which he is. But then St. Pierre starts just clobbering him in the face, and Mayhem is bleeding all over the earth, yet he conceals it well and attempts to fight his way to the end. His hair is red, his face is gory, and he still has the goofy retarded smile. And when the round ended, that goofy fucker actually pulled away from the cut man for a second.
Maybe the dude's hair is dyed blood red in one weird spot and he's not bleeding up top. I'm not quite sure what to make of this guy, other than he's the best shit ever. He and the War Machine should just fight every Friday night. And Miller's coach is yelling at him, "RETARD STRENGTH! RETARD STRENGTH!" because, well I don't know, but that's what they're yelling.
Georges St. Pierre fight trunks said mopal.com so I just checked it in case it was wacky fun, but it was about mortgage brokers or some shit. Just another reason to dislike St. Pierre. But he's dominating this thing in the second round, and Mayhem Miller is losing his goofy smile. St. Pierre was on Miller's back, but then Mayhem did this head tuck flip roll underneath himself to escape, which was just straight crazy, and it seems like when dudes do straight crazy awesome things they say it's jiu-jitsu so I think I just want to watch capoira motherfuckers fight in the streets of Brazil. At the end of this second round, St. Pierre had Mayhem Miller's arm bent backwards and fucked up looking, but the round ended, and Miller jumps up, without the retard smile, but shaking his head stupidly like, "I'm straight, I'm straight."
Third round starts and they talk about Miller's history working in a junkyard, stripping parts off cars for other cars, and how he claims he's one of the great redneck fighters of Georgia. Junkyard dudes doing jiu-jitsu on each other just changes how I look at this whole thing, to be honest with you. But then I notice Georges St. Pierre again and go back to dismissing MMA as closeted homosexuality-based anger expression. Then I stopped paying attention because St. Pierre was just brutalizing the dude, but Miller never stopped, and gets a standing ovation for tolerating three rounds of getting his ass kicked.
Some dude is trying to clean up Mayhem Miller with a towel and he's like, "I'm alright, man, I'm alright. Get the fuck outta my face." Beautiful. It is a shame he did not win, because I want to see like 37 more Mayhem Miller fights on this list.
#72: MINOTAURO NOGUEIRA vs. FRANK MIR - Whoa, there's an obvious Brazilian crazy man named Minotaur with brown cauliflower ears in this, and I bet he is going to be amazing as fuck. Frank Mir is just your average boring white dude MMA fighter with either weird tiny tattoos across his belly, or strange hair, or Frankenstein stitches. Nogueira has an expression on his face that makes Tony Montana look friendly. Seriously. It also makes me wish Mexican drug lords started a rival to UFC, and hopefully lop off Dana White's head.
The fight does not match my initial expectations as the Nognog dude just kind of keeps pacing forward, gets knocked down a couple times, but does not get finished. He's kind of like Jason Voorhees in that sense, except he doesn't have a meat cleaver to kill the white dude with. First round is all Mir, and he's all smiley and goomba looking, like it's no thing. He should remember Nognog is Jason though, so we move into the second round, hopefully not of all five.
I have a really large television I just realized. We don't buy things, instead just using whatever the fuck we have. My wife's brother bought us our last two TVs, this giant one, and then the previous one we got in like 1998. Fuck buying new shit all the time. This TV will last us for probably two formats beyond blu-ray.
Oh, the white dude knocked Nognog on the ground, pummeled him, and won the fight He basically just boxed the dude right the fuck out. I wish R.A. the Rugged Man did commentary for this shit. He has a boxing book coming out at some point, which I think will be the greatest sports writing of the past 20 years - way better than that stupid soccer book about the dude that loves that one soccer team and talks about it that's supposed to be so great but really isn't. I've even blocked that fucker's name out of my head, that's how much I hated that book.
Frank Mir is crying after winning the belt, so he covers his face with a hat, so he's just standing there with a garish title belt, being cheered at, and hiding his face in a baseball cap where everyone knows he's crying, and yet it looks even stupider than if he would just cry in the open. Macho fuckers are so stupid. Which reminds me, the Macho Man would fuck all these dudes up, with that elbowsmash off the top of the octagon.
#71: TANK ABBOTT vs. DON FRYE - Old school throwback fight right here, a final of one of those early ultimate fighting tournaments, so both these dudes have already fought on this night. Tank Abbott, if you do not know him, is the most awesome dude ever. I had a friend who saw Abbott in Las Vegas one time trying to get more money at a casino, and they wouldn't give him more credit, so he took them to his ATM to prove he had like $200,000 in the bank so that they'd give him more credit. I found that funny, but also wondered why Tank didn't just withdraw some money at that point. And did he pay ATM fees to just get a balance? Because that'd be a real waste. Don Frye also is awesome, because he looks like Magnum P.I. but in tiny fighting shorts, and it's a straight up 15-minute fight, with 3-minute overtimes. It was a way different MMA back then.
Tank comes out like you would expect, beer belly flopping as he slugs away on Frye, knocking him down, and this is just straight up Philo Beddoe shit right here. Tank slips and falls, and Frye is no top of him, behind him, and then almost chokes him out. To his credit, Tank escapes, but this shit is way less jiu-jitsu technical than nowadays MMA, but still Frye chokes him out. It's a shame there's not straight up bareknuckle fighting beside old boxcars anymore, because Tank Abbott would be the best at that shit. The best ever. And I really wonder what Tank Abbott is up to nowadays.
Nary a sponsor on the apron, just the old Hulk smashing fist UFC logo dude center ring. It was not as technical, but it was a simpler, more beautiful sport back then. Tank Abbott is wearing Asic sneakers I notice in the replays. Man, what a great fighting tournament nonsense thing turned into highly-produced shiny garbage by shyster businessmen. (I thought for a minute of a good Public Enemy lyric to insert, but couldn't come up with one easily, so I'm just gonna give up and leave after this parenthesis ends.)

t o y z m

2011-09-03T20:00:00.002-04:00

we all have our wars to fight,
although most are more conflict
without sensible exits

w i n d d

2011-09-03T08:00:00.001-04:00

duct tape holding windowpanes
into worn down wood mullions -
still looks better than plastic

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #8: "Satan Is Real/Straight To Hell" by Hank Williams III

2011-09-03T00:00:00.001-04:00

If I could have one piece of music on vinyl to add to my collection, it would be Straight To Hell double LP by Hank Williams III. I first bought this on CD when I was painting an old dinghy building in downtown Richmond at night, riding a creepy ass freight elevator upstairs to haunted floors, alone by myself in this cavernous building. I bought Straight to Hell, pretty stoked for it, as I dug Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' a lot, even if Tricephus didn't. Man, little did I expect that Hank III would make a drug-addled masterpiece of modern American music. Seriously, I don't think there's ever been a better encapsulation of what it means to be southern small town proud but fucked, and endlessly talented but hopelessly doomed, than this double CD. The thing is the first CD is normally broken down into different songs, like you would expect, but the second more experimental CD is like the greatest shit ever done, and I wish there were whole genres of music like that CD, but instead there's been nothing else like it, ever, not even from Hank III. That album was done on the exact same type of recording equipment that Prolo used to use too, so me and Boogie Brown always felt an added affinity for it. When you make music in haphazard old ways with hardware not software, you become attached to those methods as not just method but ritual, precious artistic rituals that unlock what it is you are truly trying to do through rhythm and word patterns. And though that description is far too pretentious sounding for Hank III to ever agree that's what he was doing, he knows that's what he was doing.
But this double CD echoing through that cavernous fucking old warehouse on Franklin Street in Richmond, working through the night into the early morning hours, to where when I loaded my equipment back up so things could dry before regular work crew came in during the day, the streets of RVA had that beautiful ghostly silence broken up only by distant sirens or the shuffling of a drunkard and/or homeless dude across the street through the chill overnight air. Shit made sense, and it would always be after midnight, plus I had an hour and a half drive home, so I didn't have beer in the ride to travel home with, but this album would make you want to have just that.
In fact, this song - the first off the double CD, pretty much creates a Pavlovian response in my household. The ol' lady will crack open a beer and have extra sashay to her walk, and I will think about how great music through headphones sounds when you've taken 500 mg of oxycodone for a minute, but realize that's not where I'm at right now, and smile and act like I act, doing something like wrestle the dog playfully and say she hadn't earned that white patch on her belly yet, pretending to be an Aryan in jail, or putting on wrestling masks and running around the house with the little ones, and sneaking up on unsuspecting people to mumble "LA MOMIA LA MOMIA" which is Mexican for mummy. I still understand getting fucked up as shit, and appreciate it, and often miss it to be honest with you. But at this point, looking at how many chilluns I've made and the crooked ass world they're gonna get left to live in, I'd rather fuck up the world than leave it at fucking up myself. So I do what I can, when I can, and try to stay calm with that, hoping it's enough to quell my inner-demons.
STEAL "Satan Is Real/Straight To Hell"
NEXT: Some serious ass sangin'!

r o d a c

2011-09-02T20:00:00.002-04:00

beady-headed black vultures
flying like predator drones,
waiting to peck at my brains

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #9: "Nomads (acoustic)" by Howlin' Rain

2011-09-02T18:00:00.003-04:00

We are neural nomads, stifled into sedentary physical positions, but letting our minds wander nowhere in a thousand directions at hyperspeed cyberpace. We feel more connected than ever to our physical disconnect, and pretend this is empowering. Though it's nothing like the old B-movie sci-fi flicks looked like, with us blank-eyed, soaking in a body-sized cylinder of amniotic fluid with sensors and gadgets hooked up to us, unconscious zombies to be harvested by some higher power that sees societal chess moves we aren't even trained to understand, that's exactly what's going on.
My mind wanders constantly with questions and concerns about what the fuck I'm doing, where I'm headed, why am I where I am, and does it ultimately serve my larger purpose as a person? The answers are all over the place, as my brain has been shifted by the algorithmic shackles of our today world. Nothing is processed at human speed, with gut intuitiveness or chance encounters anymore. Your google search results, your Netflix suggestions, your Facebook friends, your twitter feeds, your sidebar advertisements and other items you might like on Amazon or Ebay or Half or whatever - all algorithms programmed by smart people with no realization they are ultimately doing the work of the worst, most vile marketers man has ever known. It is becoming a relentless barrage of consumer stimuli, even if there doesn't seem to be a price tag attached.
It sort of occurred to me today that just as the fast food movement that still occupies most but is seen by some as a slow death mechanism towards failure exploded across the American landscape, and still is far more prevalent than anyone actually slow cooking food in their own house for hours a day, because our pre-packaged grocery store options are just microwaveable fast food anyways, our internet-led information overload is fast food knowledge, little tidbits of alleged intelligence or knowledge about the world around us that actually is lacking in spiritual or scientific nutrition. We are actually making ourselves stupider by thinking we are smarter.
I guess what I am trying to say is run the fuck off into the woods, find yourself a sit spot, and read a book, motherfucker, read a book. I've got Ecology of a Cracker Childhood to dig into (thanks to a suggestion in a comment on this page, so please, comment and interact - it feeds us both in this nutrition-less internet), plus I'm back into my Red Pine translations of the hermit poets of China. Also, there's still some passages in my Outlaw Book of American Essays I want to get into, but I've also wanted to go through the boxes of old books in the camper this weekend to dig out both Hell's Angels by HST and a few William S. Burroughs books. I definitely feel like the way my mind has been lately, I could use some of Burroughs prose to ground me back to reality. Good lord, what kind of fucked up cyberworld have we wrought where William S. Burroughs grounds us? These fucking lizard alien overlords are real beasts.
(Also, props to the always awesome Aquarium Drunkard site, for first exposing me to this, or this to me, or whatever it is that we do in this internetted age.)
STEAL "Nomads (acoustic)"
NEXT: The most fun anthem to reckless endangerment to one's self that has ever been made!

Friday Love/Hate

2011-09-02T15:00:00.000-04:00

Hurricane Isabel cold rolled through and didn't destroy America like the media thought, although all these earthquakes in un-quaked lands and sudden hurricanes of fury got me wondering if those HAARP beam kooks ain't speaking at least partial truth. But the Outer Banks, a place I grew up visiting and love dearly, and wish I could afford to go to still, even though they've torn down the small cottages and replaced them with pastel-colored monstrosities that are a lot out of my price range (and fuck sharing a house with 19 other families - that ain't vacation at all; that's called gen-pop), got all obliterated again, with Highway 12 straight washed out for like 300 feet north of Rodanthe (plus oft-forgotten Waves and Salvo) and that whole Hatteras Island turned into it's usual newly archipelago after the storm. Of course, the government response is WE WILL REBUILD even though what was a naturally occurring barrier island is now being forced against it's nature to be a stable tourist island, to protect the economic interests that have been built on what is basically a sandbar. Of note in regards to all this is how Stumpy Point, a mainland town across the sound, suffered immense flooding during Isabel as well, and I'm not playing straight up connect the dots here, but when a barrier island is not allowed to float and fluctuate and serve it's natural purpose, then you run the risk of messing up the balance of nature, and you're gonna see more flooding and erosion on the backside of the sound, over on the mainland. This is what I hate today, man's incessant inclination to force his dominion over the earth. This is obvious to most people when they look at agribusiness or 11 mpg luxury SUVs and all, but it should be just as obvious when they rebuild Highway 12 every five years. It's pissing money away to prove we are Kings of Nature. But tons of nature loving people, in their own minds at least, have those 12 stickers on the back of their cars, and feel entitled to continue enjoying the Outer Banks, and it is a beautiful place to be sure. Plus, the cleansing power of the ocean is immense, and I probably need a good week of oceanic baptisms at least, after the year I've had thus far, both physically and in internal demon-angel battles. But you can't force that shit to be so luxurious and accommodating. So I promise you Outer Banks of North Carolina, I will not rent another house down there ever again (though I will squat in them if the situation arises... sorry barrier island bro), but will probably bring my family to camp along you in as unobtrusive a way as possible. If you decide to shift and fuck up everybody's material possessions down there, so be it. I support you in these endeavors, and I will still come and lay across your surface and love upon your beauty. In fact, I think you'd be more beautiful if all those damn beach house crumbled into the ocean or were in piles of rubble along damaged roadways. But I am a strange soul.

I love how our relentlessly corporate capitalist system is caving in on itself before our eyes. The specific example I speak of this week is Netflix, which lost a ton of it's streaming services suddenly this week, at the same time it is instituting higher prices to streaming customers, which could very well cripple the company, which like all online businesses, is basically a losing model that pretends it is making money by counting potential revenue as actual revenue and writing off actual losses against those financial wishes and dreams. It's all smoke and mirrors, like most of our financial blessings of the past twenty years. Meanwhile, as Netflix blew up across everybody's monthly bill list, pretty much every major chain video store went out of business. Gone. Boarded up and replaced by costume stores and Chinese buffets. A lot of independent video stores have toughed it out, however they can, and hopefully with the decline of Netflix, they will enjoy a resurgence, or maybe they won't. I would prefer all our businesses be weird dilapidated independent ones anyways. I don't like cookie cutter chain stores that all look the same whether you're in Idaho or West Virginia. Idaho stores should not look like West Virginia stores. I had to buy a belt for my riding mower (again) and I made the same mistake I made two years ago by buying one from Lowes, which of course stretched out and didn't work in like two weeks. Then I bought one from Tractor Supply, which did the same thing. $75 wasted right there. Then I went to some hole in the wall small engine place whose front door was actually an open garage door, and the place was full of machines and dank oil smell and there was only some guy in the back corner wrestling with a giant zero-turn mower, and I kind of stood there at the painted line in the oil-stained concrete you were not supposed to cross, and hollered "HEY!" but he couldn't hear me. Then some younger dude in a white tank top and grey work shirt with both arms covered in fast and furious tattoo styles, came out and said, "Can I help you?" And he did help me, by selling me an actual well-made deck belt for my riding mower, that cost about $15 more than the chain store ones, probably because actual people made it, not Sri Lankan cyborg children, and they charged me extra because I had to use a bank card, and small businesses hate those Visa percentages they have to give up. I understand. Fuck Visa, and it sucks that has to get passed along to me, but it also sucks it has to get passed along to the small business, so I can only hope they are at least meeting me somewhere in the middle. But I digress, because what I came here to love was how Netflix killed Blockbuster but then Netflix dies too, and somehow through all the soulless corporate giant battles, shitty little video stores that have porn rooms and art flicks from Nigeria will somehow survive.

S14: Worst College Football Teams of Past Decade - Division I

2011-09-02T14:00:00.000-04:00

Might as well blaze through these negative Division I teams on a Friday afternoon, and do I ever mean blaze. Work is hectic and the threat of losing funding and being out of a job in a month has been dangled over my head as a carrot to chase that I will never catch, and it is a quiet Friday afternoon at the ol' government bureaucracy, with a long holiday weekend coming, so why worry about the future? Fuck the future! It is college football kickoff weekend, the NFL is less than a week away, I don't have to work on Monday and I will still get paid, which is really the dream of every American - to get paid for doing nothing. We have become a nation of useless fat asses, but we know how to make snarky remarks about trivial shit, so let me do my thing America...
#1: DUKE BLUE DEVILS (22-95, .188 winning percentage) - I was surprised to see Duke was the worst team in all the land over the past decade. I mean, I knew they were terrible. Steve Spurrier launched his coaching career pretty much by magically helping Duke win 5 games in a couple seasons in a row, which was considered amazing coaching upness at the time. Living in ACC country, near UVA, I understand that Duke is a special breed of lower echelon team, that when your own team start running neck and neck with the football Blue Devils, it's a major red flag that your program needs an adrenalin shot to get off of the life support its on that you may have let your guard down and not realized. Usually, there's one ACC coach fired every two years simply for the fact his team is not clearly better than Duke. Seriously. But I did not know they were the worst in the country, even more terrible than Sun Belt bottom feeders. It sort of shows you why Coach K is a worshipped false god at that little bastard university in Durham, and why he can do no wrong, even though the rest of us see him as the snake-souled weasel he truly is. But at Duke, they have nothing else athletically to feel anything unshameful about.
#2: EASTERN MICHIGAN EAGLES (26-91, .222 winning percentage) - The Mid-American Conference is a ragtag collection of directional state universities that tend to do battle on ESPN2 on mid-week showcases during the season. Even though it's one of the lower rated DI conferences, you still for whatever reason see a lot of their games on cable TV. Probably because it's like a Big Ten B-league, to sort of whet your appetite for the big boys on Saturdays. Midwestern people are weird. They play cornhole instead of horseshoes, and the land is flat and forever so that there's no hollers or hills to hide in, which instills in midwesterners a long, slow personality. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, it's just very alien to me, and I tend to want to fight people when I'm out there, because it's just weird. Then when I am riding home on the Greyhound after some small town has bought me a one-way bus ticket back to Virginia along with a threat to be arrested if I ever show my face in town limits again, I cross from Ohio into West Virginia and the land start to heave like a woman's breasts and I can let my breath out because I realize I am home, where people are like me, and I can be myself, and a bunch of ignorant assholes in cowboy boots won't try to force me to live within their socially confining norms.
*: WESTERN KENTUCKY HILLTOPPERS (11-37, .230 winning percentage) - The Hilltoppers didn't qualify to be an actual member of this Shit List because they've only been in DI for four years, after being a pretty successful Division IAA member for a long time. You subtract their initial 7-5 outing at this level, and their cumulative record is that much more embarrassing, with only four wins the past three years. And oddly enough, they are jumping into the Sun Belt Conference rather than the more appropriate Mid-American Conference, although if I were from Kentucky, I too would associate myself with the south and not the midwest. But the jump by a team like this that was good at one level to a higher level to not be good, but cash those whore-ish "come lose at our stadium" fill-in-the-gaps of the non-conference schedule games with power teams, I don't know... I don't quite see how that serves the student body.
#3: BUFFALO BULLS (30-89, .252 winning percentage) - Another MAC team, already. The funniest thing to me is that the Buffalo University moniker is Bulls, instead of Bills, and both teams are terrible. Somewhere in upstate New York, there are men who torture themselves by tailgating all day Saturday, drinking themselves to a violent stupor, and watching the Buffalo Bulls suck it up on the field, and then repeat the process on Sunday for the Bills. Upstate New York is a strange and terrible place. I have been there, and drank amongst them, and written cell phone numbers of fellow wayward travellers on the back of missing prostitute flyers outside of bus stations in a number of towns up there. In fact, Jerry Jukebox, I know you probably don't have internet access, nor would even know where to find this site if you did, but if you have somehow become internet savvy and google your street name, Raven Mack is still out there, bro. My post office box has changed from 569 to 270, but hit me up sometime. I still have the other half of that one thing. Hope you're good bro.
#4: ARMY BLACK KNIGHTS (31-88, .261 winning percentage) - The U.S. Army sucks. We are starting wars in Libya and Syria, to go along with Iraq and Afghanistan, with our internationalist creep into Africa just beginning, as Sudan and Somalia are right there for the fake terrorist threat taking as well. Did you know the alleged Libyan rebels are Al-Qaeda trained, and connected to both the CIA and MI6? Did you also know they are currently rounding up black people in Libya and putting them in internment camps? That's the rebels doing that, not Gaddhafi. Gaddhafi is actually a hero to the African people, and really to all of us, not the obscene terrorist he is made out to be. But how dare he want to use oil profits for anything other than corporate gain? That asshole!
#5: IDAHO VANDALS (32-88, .267 winning percentage) - Ahh, the meager Western Athletic Conference, home to a ragtag assortment of second-rate western state universities that apparently do not realize football is played with more than seven people at a time. Idaho has stormed out the gate with a loss last night to Bowling Green in a battle between lesser conference lesser teams, so it looks like more of the same in Idaho. As we start our parade through the WAC (four teams on this list of Division I's worst), it is mind-boggling that they could all be so terrible. Honestly though, I would rather a team called the Vandals be the good one from Idaho than the stupid Boise State Broncos.
#6: UTAH STATE AGGIES (31-85, .267 winning percentage) - The Aggies are another WAC bottom feeder, which I guess has so many bottom feeders they can't technically all be on the bottom. I have nothing negative to say about Utah State though, because that's where my boy Chris Cooley of the Washington Redskins came from. Simply because he is a straight shooting solid bro, I can only assume this is a straight shooting solid school. So they get a pass.
#7: VANDERBILT COMMODORES (33-85, .280 winning percentage) - Do Duke and Vanderbilt play every year, as the only school still trying to maintain academic integrity in a southern football conference? Because if not, they should. I guess you'd have to throw Northwestern into that mix as well. The funny thing is, when you figure in the fact that half of the SEC made up up this morning's best teams list, and you subtract the Commodores' conference record, they're probably an almost above-average football team. But the SEC is brutal. I have always been for a playoff system, and one that only allows no more than two teams from any one conference, because I think the great fallacy with the NCAA tournament in basketball is that the 5th or 6th best team in a major conference is somehow automatically more deserving than the best team in a shitty conference. But man, when you watch SEC games on TV week in and week out, that's a tough fucking row to hoe. LSU is a national title contender to start the season, and has 7 of their games against preseason Top 25 teams. Vanderbilt, without even looking at their schedule, I guarantee plays at least four. Good luck Vandy, I hope you ruin somebody's decade.
#8: UNLV REBELS (35-83, .297 winning percentage) - A Mountain West team, in case you are like me and still basically jumble all WAC and MWC teams into one clusterfuck. It's our east coast bias. I cannot imagine anyone being a successful blue-chipper at UNLV for football, as the school's only a short city bus ride from the Sunset Strip, and I would imagine all sorts of sketchy activities galore being it is Las Vegas. Actually, if you've ever wandered off the tourist track in Vegas, and ended up near UNLV, it makes the national powerhouse basketball years even more questionable, not in a bad way, because I don't mind sketchy. And there's something inherently perfect about weird old Jerry Tarkanian and his collection of thuggish but loveable misfit players being the best, and probably circumventing NCAA rules or having illegal organized crime fingerprints somewhere on the program. I'm not trying to be libelous here, I'm just saying... And it's fine, because if you have to dabble in the criminal arts, I'd want somebody like Tark at the helm. He looks like he knows how to navigate a multitude of personalities.
#9: NEW MEXICO STATE AGGIES (36-85, .298 winning percentage) - Back to the whack WAC attack, with a second team named Aggies. Being they are both on this list, I somehow do not imagine the New Mexico State Aggies/Utah State Aggies fall interstate fall showdown for some sort of trophy like a bronze donkey or hunk of urethaned rock from Bryce Canyon is all that an extravagant affair. Although one can never tell, as the combination of higher education and heavy alcohol consumption can often magically create parties out of nothing.
#10: SMU MUSTANGS (38-82, .317 winning percentage) - As Miami struggles to excuse itself from transgressions with a snitch Ponzi schemer, SMU is often brought up as the last and only time a football team has gotten the death penalty. They've never recovered from it, and that was twenty years ago, so it literally was a death penalty. Although for whatever reason, as the Big 12 contemplates replacements for Texas A&M, SMU's name keeps coming up, which makes no sense. You already have a shitty B-level Texas school in Baylor; why would you add a second one?
#11: TEMPLE OWLS (38-80, .322 winning percentage) - Ahh, Temple, Division I's notoriously worst team for years, until Al Golden resurrected them from the dead. This is a Temple team that was bad the Big East said, "Yo, sorry bro, but you gotta go because you're fucking up everybody else's good time," and was relegated to the Mid-American Conference. But they've partially turned it around. I mean, they're not tearing anything up and having massive celebrations in the streets of Philly or anything, but they've had two winning seasons in a row, which is a big jump from just a few years back, where they had a 4-42 record over the course of four seasons.
#12: BAYLOR BEARS (39-79, .331 winning percentage) - Refer to #10 for more on Baylor. Anybody good in west Texas is still going to get pilfered by the Big 12 heavyweights like Texas and Oklahoma, and whatever crumbs fall through the cracks are going to be gobbled up by A&M and now even TCU. Baylor will always be fucked, and it serves them right for letting the feds torch all those innocent kids and women out at the Branch Davidian compound.
#13: SAN JOSE STATE SPARTANS (40-80, .333 winning percentage) - One final WAC team for you, and one that I did not even know existed. I'm not sure I've ever seen this team play before, but most of my college football awareness is from reading newspaper agate like an obsessed idiot savant on Sunday morning's when I was a preteen. Maybe this is a new school, created out of nowhere to serve a growing California population, and to further capitalize on the always booming industry of higher education, which is a money-grabbing scam like all other major industries you are made to believe you cannot live without.
#14: FLORIDA ATLANTIC OWLS (24-48, .333 winning percentage) - Florida Atlantic has only existed for the ten years that compile this record, and only the last six have been at the Division I level. You know, in the lower division lists which will go up beginning of next week, or maybe some tomorrow if I think about it, I made the cut off for eligibility be seven years. I must've had lesser standards when I made this one, because the Owls have only been in the Sun Belt for six. I guess Division I has lesser standards too though, if there is a Florida Atlantic/Florida International game most likely trying to include itself in rivalry week at the end of November.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #10: "Fool Yourself" by Little Feat

2011-09-02T12:00:00.001-04:00

Old Little Feat is a good thing, and I often forget them but then they sneak in when I'm feeling all back roadsy and chillospective. I think music like this is dead because the times it came from are dead. The 1970s/early 1980s rural world where things were actually at a slower pace and styles took years to filter through sometimes, that's gone, from the explosion of cable TV in the '80s and then the internet's spiral towards oblivion in the late '90s, and now with robot phones attached to our fingers at all times and people walking around with shit attached to their faces to ramble out loud to imaginary robot friends about pointless shit while in the midst of their real life going ons, we may be too far gone. I even got an email from a Rojonekku affiliate talking about retailers setting up facial recognition software to work in tandem with smart phones so that coupons/ads/offers could be shot at you as you walk by places. What the fuck man? The heavy hands of corporate capitalism has decided it can never reach into our pockets enough, not even after we've run out of real money and use fake credit money, at least most of us do, and they just make it so you can be fleeced of your credit but still be forced to pay that back despite bankruptcy declarations, so really we are getting fleeced for generations now. It fucking sucks.
But music like this doesn't get made any more. We've listened to a lot of Zac Brown Band in my house lately, because the ol' lady loves it, and it's good stuff, but still polished Nashvllle. Another Rojonekku affiliate knows dudes associated with the Zac Brown movement, and apparently one thing Zac Brown said is if you don't know who you are before you go to Nashville, they'll eat you alive. You can see and hear that with today's country music, which is more like somebody crunching formulas through data than actual songwriting and touching on real shit. I mean it gets there at times, and that song will be a hit, but that's more luck of the robot program than actual human feeling being involved. That's why shit like Zac Brown and Jamey Johnson seems so great, even though I don't think it's where either of those dudes would really want it to be. But in this new-fangled cybertronic world, you can't really be free completely. You can either try to play the system and carve some independence out for yourself little by little, like a Zac Brown or Jamey Johnson, or you can just go completely off the grid and be happy that nobody ever knows you. The problem with going off the grid is that type of behavior is frowned upon, and seems insecure to the homeland most of the times, so you run the risk of alienating authorities, even if you ain't doing shit.
I'm not sure where I stand in all this. I feel like I have greater words that need to get out to greater masses, but I don't really have the time to go beyond the distractionary ramblings I write now. Perhaps that is the grid forcing me into position and I should break off that routine. But I don't know how a lot of times because much like our money and credit being fleeced by prying hands, there's a lot of time vultures, usually attached to that monetary struggle, that peck away most of my livelong days. I do this website stuff to tell myself I'm being productive, but I think I'm fooling myself half the time. The other half of the time, I don't give a fuck. Feel like I am already a beaten man, my Universal Potential locked up behind some bullshit that I can see through and know is there, but I don't have a rock big enough to break the fucking glass.
STEAL "Fool Yourself"
NEXT: Some whiny ass awesome shit that's not from 19 years ago like most of what I write about!

S14: Best College Football Teams of Past Decade - Division I

2011-09-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

The college football season began its thing last night on the cable televisions, and I had just forced myself to learn a bunch of dumb Excel spreadsheet stuff because I have a sexual fantasy about being a sexually frustrated accountant who lives in a camper by the river, so rather than use this newfound knowledge to make like a monthly budget for my family or calculate how many minutes of guitar solos Jerry Garcia had compared to Bob Weir on Grateful Dead bootlegs from the '70s, I figured I'd just dork out on some college football, similar to the dorky Best and Worst lists during the year, which always seem to generate ghost comments from beyond where some dude who went to like Becker College or something will all of a sudden about nine months after the fact be like, "Yes, Becker is terrible, I was at that one game, I'm glad you know how terrible it is," but I never see the comments because it's buried amidst ancient spambot replies and about 300 posts into the past, which is hard to go back to with my fractured O.C.D. mind.
Anyways, what I did was tabulate up the overall W-L record of every team in the Bowl Championship Football Subdivision (or whatever the fuck they call Division IA now in marketing pretendery), and here will be a list of the top 14 teams with the best record over the past decade, and later today there will be a companion list of the worst 14, because every stupid thing on this earth has a perfect companion; I read that in the Bible, or my grandmother told me that, or something. Maybe it was at the beginning of a Lifetime channel movie I watched once while high, and then Meredith Baxter-Birney got domestic abused and had some sort of cancer and a missing child but it all came together in the end, because she had a perfect companion. Thus I'm big on companions. But here are your 14 bestest teams, if you go purely by the scientific factoid of winning percentage over the past ten seasons...
#1: BOISE STATE BRONCOS (114-16, .877 winning percentage) - Boise State is the perfect example of what is wrong with college football, both to their credit and their detriment. First, it is utter ridiculousness that a team that has had two undefeated seasons in the last five years against Division I competition should have to justify a chance to play for a National title. But the fact college football is run by a bunch of conmen corporate lobbyists and the bowl system means there is not, and probably won't be a playoff system. This means the little schools like Boise State won't get a chance, even if they are undefeated. They jumped to the Mountain West Conference, hoping to join up with fellow small conference powers Utah and TCU, but Utah bolted to the Pac-12, and TCU is sharing space with the Broncos for one year before joining the Big East (for whatever reason). It's still a step up for Boise State though, who has made their reputation in a lackluster conference. Seriously, when you see the list of crappy teams, like half of Boise State's old conference mates make up that list. Not to mention the complete bullshit of having blue turf and blue uniforms and how that's an unfair advantage, plus looks stupid as fuck. They've built their underdog reputation on a bully's philosophy, where the deck is stacked and you play weak ass opponents, so even though they play the "oh poor us, we deserve a chance against the big boys," they are using that same big boy cut every moral corner to achieve victory as the big fish in their little pond.
#2: OHIO STATE BUCKEYES (106-22, .828 winning percentage) - I'm not a big fan of power conferences running shit, but I enjoy SEC football for it's brutality and excitement, and I enjoy a good Pac-10 game for its different style of play. I even enjoy the classic Big 12 match-ups. But I cannot stand the Big Ten. It is slow and plodding and boring, both in uniforms and mentality and everything. Ohio State, for me, personifies that boring, outdated bullshit from yesteryear, that peppers their roster with half-witted gangsta dudes to try and pretend they are as good as the SEC. The thing I don't understand is this whole "trading gear for tattoos" scandal that SI exposed, which seemed to me a very non-scandal. Like I would expect that at every school. I would expect you could find dead bodies and raped women galore around Columbus, if you actually wanted to look around.
#3: TEXAS LONGHORNS (106-23, .822 winning percentage) - I have not felt the ju-ju of doing these blurbs so fuck actual commentary that cares about college football. I like Texas for some simple reasons, despite their famous pedigree (although I root against them whenever they have gay fantasy QBs like Colt McCoy or Chris Simms). They were the home to Ricky Williams, Cedric Benson, and Earl Campbell. Their fans do the sign of the devil, and because of this one time there was a picture of newly elected President George W. Bush doing the devil horns while wearing a ZZ Top hat. I thought that was pretty awesome. I mean, it would've been more awesome if he hadn't have been the fake figurehead to help fuck up this country entirely to prepare it for the end of the American Empire, but hey, ZZ Top is pretty awesome, so that makes up for it all.
#4: USC TROJANS (105-24, .814 winning percentage) - There is not a more despicable college athletics program than USC football. From the ugly red to the yellow trojan logo to the honorable tradition of not having names on the back of their jersey to the paid players who helped run Pete Carroll back into the NFL before the hammer fell on the post-Reggie Bush era. Whatever happened to Lendale White? That dude was awesome. I always thought he was like Ice Cube from Boyz-n-Tha-Hood, growed up and playing football. Also, it makes me sad all Samoan players - whom I tend to love - either end up playing at USC (if they like pussy) or BYU or Utah (if they like Mormon Jesus). Seems like we should be offering those people more choices in life by now.
#5: OKLAHOMA SOONERS (109-26, .807 winning percentage) - Oklahoma is a pretty depleted place, that I find it hard to believe one of the nation's best programs is there. Really, after the pilfering of the Big 12, which is back down to 10, after being the Big 8 forever, it's really just a case now of Texas & Oklahoma and their sorry little brothers. You feel kind of bad for the two of them, because they probably could just jump to somewhere else and the conference would crumble, but they didn't. And then Texas A&M snuck in the back door to the SEC, which also is funny, because now either Oklahoma or Texas could be that even numbered team to go to the SEC and leave the other one hanging. Or both could go. I really don't care; but Texas A&M vs. Arkansas showdowns seem more like big Southwest Conference games than SEC games. This means I'm old as fuck.
#6: TEXAS CHRISTIAN HORNED FROGS (98-27, .784 winning percentage) - TCU going to the Big East next year is the dumbest of all the geographically challenged team moves, especially considering the Big East is a pretty declining conference when it comes to football anyways, to the point if somebody cherry-picked West Virginia, there'd be pretty much nothing left. Plus, TCU is going to have to travel three of four states for every opponent possible in that conference. UConn/TCU showdowns just don't really do it for me on paper. I wish all the non-BCS conferences jumped into a regulation system like Euro soccer, and like the best 8 teams from all those lower conferences over the past two or three years would form a super little conference each year, and newly successful teams could move up or get dropped if they started sucking. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure how great even that would be, because it would be like BYU, TCU, Boise State, and I'm not really sure anybody else from the non-BCS conferences are that good. So I guess it's a stupid idea.
#7: LSU TIGERS (102-29, .779 winning percentage) - I like LSU. They have pretty uniforms, and I don't mind the fact that half their offense beat up some dude outside of a bar, because it was apparently over a girl, and also because I expect them to be thugged out because they are Lil Boosie's favorite football team. Lil Boosie will probably be the first rapper to end up getting executed for being a gangsta. And yet his voice sounds like a cartoon got hit in the nuts. But that's what happens in Louisiana - you set your own style, your style is not set for you by others. That's why LSU has always had such swagger.
#8: FLORIDA GATORS (98-32, .754 winning percentage) - Did Urban Meyer actually retire? I think he tried to once but then didn't and then maybe he did, but I don't know for sure. I do know that ever since that Ron Zoot dude (or whatever his name was) that every time a major college football team hires a coach that the retarded fan base doesn't like, somebody rushes onto godaddy to register the "firestupidcoach.com" domain and throw up an angry picture and start a message board. I have dabbled in message board culture, and it's a pretty decrepit underpit to America's cyber pop culture, but college football message boards, all about one team, man they are the worst. And there's one for EVERY team, even the worst ones. There are people on a Florida International football message board right now, being all pissed out about something completely inconsequential. Which ultimately that's what the internet's best at - making us emotional about some dumb shit that doesn't really matter.
#9: VIRGINIA TECH HOKIES (99-34, .744 winning percentage) - I always pull for in-state teams, and Tech has been the closest this state has ever gotten to competing for a national football championship at the top level in my lifetime. I was so geeked for that Virginia Tech/Florida State title game where the black Mike Vick was juking motherfuckers constantly. One time, I accidentally met Frank Beamer in a Starbucks. He was on a recruiting trip and right behind me in line and I thought it was him, but the dude was tiny as fuck. Then when he placed his order, I realized it was actually him because he had a big, gaudy ass championship ring of some sort on his finger. So when he came over to put sugar and cream in his coffee like me and like any god-fearing Southern man who knows that chai lattes and crap like that is a stepping stone towards anal sex, I told him that I had friends down in Blacksburg, and they really appreciated how he put the school on people's radar. He said thanks, and then I left thinking about how he exploits the raw athletic talent of wild, underprivileged negroes, and makes millions of dollars a year to do so, and I felt sad for this world, that something like that would be respected.
#10: UTAH UTES (92-32, .742 winning percentage) - Utah, much like Boise State, has thrived in a lesser conference. Now they be all up in the Pac-12, and I ain't gonna lie, I'm excited about Pac-10 football this year. I watched that Oregon/Oregon State game at the end of the year last year, and it was rivalry fury in effect, plus Oregon State had those pimp ass matte black helmets, and I think the Pac-12 did good, although I wouldn't have taken Colorado into my league, even though it matched the big state school philosophical blueprint. The Utes are still flying high from Urban Meyer's earlier building dynasties talents. Urban Meyer is the most brilliant man on earth. If I met him at a Starbucks, I would totally be like, "Hey Urban Meyer, let's make small talk because you are famous."
#11: GEORGIA BULLDOGS (96-34, .738 winning percentage) - Out of all the teams that made this list, Georgia surprised the most. I know they are good, but they've not been on top of the SEC outright at all, but I guess they are consistently near the top. Still though, they've not contended for a National title like other SEC heavyweights on this Bully List of the past decade. They do got some big, scary ass country boys - both black and white - down in Georgia though. I've been in some situations down that way, making trouble along back roads.
#12: AUBURN TIGERS (93-35, .727 winning percentage) - I find Auburn a boring and reprehensible football program. It was sad to see Cam Newton's bought and paid for services help them win the title last year. But I guess people in Alabama ain't got much except for overweight children, a barely functional literacy, and a dark sad future where they max out their credit cards at Wal-Mart Supercenters every year up until they get their Earned Income Credit refund when they tax return come in.
#13: OREGON DUCKS (89-37, .706 winning percentage) - The Ducks have more uniforms than some conferences have in their entire history. It is a running sports meme joke, but really, that doesn't get at the ridiculous stupidity of it all, being it comes from the Nike dude just trying to drum up merchandising anyways, and help tie it to his stupid alma mater. I am cool with where I graduated college, and I'd certainly give them some shine where there any reason for me to have shine of my own to give out to others, but I wouldn't try to force corporate marketing bullshit overload on folks to brainwash them into thinking my old school is the real deal. I might give them acid though and tell them how cool it was, being I sold a lot of acid while I was in college. Tripping acid too, not like concrete etching acid or body disappearing acid like Mexican drug cartels use or anything. In case you were wondering.
#14: WEST VIRGINIA MOUNTAINEERS (88-38, .698 winning percentage) - West Virginia is a consistently good football program that never really gets the love from the other power conferences, mostly because no one ever clamors for the prestigious West Virginia market, and there ain't no high profile recruiting going in there. But if you were wanting a solid program, they'd be your team. I was always disappointed the ACC didn't take West Virginia in instead of Boston College, because it makes more sense geographically and rivalry-wise, as the yearly West Virginia/Virginia Tech games used to be great. But college football ain't about making sense, it's about making money bro. (Yeah, I could've done "making dollars" but it was too obvious, plus made me think of DJ Quik, so now I just want to wrap this up so I can go listen to some DJ Quik real loud in the other room. So let's end this.)

b b l l a

2011-09-02T08:00:00.002-04:00

what shaped me to what I am -
regulation equipment
but cobbled together wrong

t a p a a

2011-09-01T20:00:00.001-04:00

mechanized monsters on the
ground, robot overlords shoot
the angles through their flat screens

i n j n f

2011-09-01T08:00:00.001-04:00

lifelong washington redskins
fan, fully aware of how
fucked such a thing truly is

Ultimate 100: 80 thru 76

2011-08-31T22:00:00.001-04:00

I am going to keep watching these things and keep babbling my babbles and the only thing that is going to stop me is the Ultimate 100 being reduced to nothing in my Netflix queue, although I got to admit, both East Bound and Down Season 2 and Sons of Anarchy Season 3 came out this week, so there'll probably be a lapse in programming. But this site is all about lapses - in motivation, in focus, in attention, in judgment, in execution, in reason. I am nothing if not a cluster of lapses. So let's watch the people fights...
#80: RICH FRANKLIN vs. EVAN TANNER - Hey, I've seen both of these guys. Evan Tanner is the weird looking fucker who I think won against some dude a few fights ago, and Rich Franklin is the guy they push as "so smart he used to teach school and has a degree from a for-real university, not like online college." But before I could even think of more stupid shit to say, I checked into my Netflix queue, and then this was over as Rich Franklin knocked the dude out. They are really setting up some Franklin vs. somebody else fight further along, showing all these first round ass-kickings by the dude.
#79: GEORGES ST. PIERRE vs. MATT SERRA - Oh snap, a pair of secret gays, instead of the normal secret gay vs. guy who openly hates gays battle. This should be interesting. I like Serra here, because although both are foreigners to me - a yankee American gay fighter dude and a French Canadian gay fighter dude, at least Serra and me share a citizenry.
Oh man, St. Pierre has one of those French Canadian symbols tattooed on the back of his calf, but just as I was trying to figure out what it was called, Matt Serra got St. Pierre off his feet, and then just punched the dude in the gay French Canadian face until the ref stopped the fight. That's two quick knockout fights, which means they are probably about to drop like a painfully slow 30 minute long "chess match" on me here in a minute. Serra won the title off this, and the belt was as tall as him.
#78: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. KEITH JARDINE - They are laying out these fights like a wrestling promotion, as both these guys have only won in previously viewed fights in this Ultimate 100 fights, meaning in my mind as I watch this in order, I am thinking, as the casual fan, "Oh shit, who's going to win?" I could be wrong but anybody who has lost a fight on this list has not resurfaced in a later fight. Jardine, like I said before, looks like he'd play drums in a metal band, so I have to like him more than the stupid Iceman, who is not really the Iceman, because he is not named King Parsons.
Jardine is trying to nail kicks, and Liddell is doing his stalk and punch thing he always does. Jardine does have a creepy looking hematoma on the left side of his face. Hematoma and cauliflower ears - pure sexy. And when Liddell does snake in for the pummel, Jardine actually flurries back, which is impressive, because usually these UFC dudes just run from Liddell's fists. Jardine is worse for wear after one round, with that hematoma looking like a big ass bee sting with a black spot right in the middle, just waiting to get popped open and evil baby hornets fly out and start assaulting the crowd. Jardine has cuts on his forehead, under his eye, but clocked leg kicks on Liddell, who's game plan will probably continue to consist of laying back and then trying to knock a motherfucker out. Jardine actually knocked Liddell loopy enough to hit the mat, and Jardine almost got him on the ground, which I honestly don't know if I've ever seen Liddell really do for any serious length of time in a fight. (It should be noted, I do not claim to be an expert, but any fringe sport like this desires nothing more than what I am - the average passerby fan who can be blossomed into a full-blown loyal supporter who will waste my limited discretionary income on their pay-per-views and associated products and on the related products of their advertising partners. That's how this all works.) The side of Jardine's head is a blood flow now, on his bald head, making him look like a horror movie character, just in really stupid clothes. Liddell did a spinning back fist, which is the stupidest fighting maneuver ever, but is really funny looking when it actually knocks somebody else. That's MMA posterizing when that happens, although I don't think they actually sell MMA posters. I'll check next time at the county fair trying to win a new cocaine mirror. Second round ends, and Liddell is a little lost, going to the wrong corner and not even realizing it.
Third round, the final one, and even though he was a bloody mess just a minute ago, I'd give this thing to Jardine at this point. Liddell's just throwing haymakers, and getting kicked, and there's only two and a half minutes left. I wonder what Chuck Liddell does now that his fighting career is over? Being he's Dana's boy, he's probably an ambassador for the sport. Every sport should have a mohawked fu manchu retard with Japanese character tattoos on his head as their ambassador. Fuck man, Jardine is just like punching the dude right in the middle of his face. Crowd is getting loud at the end, Liddell is swinging for the fences, Jardine is fighting it off with leg kicks, and they go to the end. Liddell throws his arms up, knowing you have to pretend for the judges you have won, even if you didn't win. Jardine certainly doesn't look like he won, balded and bloodied. Commentators are thinking Jardine won a decision, but the judges will make the call... Keith Jardine. But it's one of those wins where Liddell didn't really outright lose, with a split decision, and it was a non-title fight so Jardine didn't win whatever title Liddell holds, which means this was probably an elaborate set-up to sell the rematch to the public. It's fucking weird how much of UFC, when laid out in a 100 match compilation like this, is exactly like wrestling. Champion takes on the hungry challenger, but not for the title, champion seems like he might not take it completely seriously, challenger is tough and upsets champion, but champion is still champion and they will now have an actual title fight, for more money, and you pay more to see, in a few months, and it will be for real this time. Shit should've been for real the first time. Fuck this bait and switch, it doesn't count until the rematch, which if Liddell wins, means they have to have a third match since it's 1 to 1 at that point. Fucking bullshit man.
#77: ANDERSON SILVA vs. JAMES IRVIN - Silva is the superstar of UFC right now as we speak, and an allegedly unstoppable fighting machine, so I am guessing this is going to be a blowout that shows the awesomeness of Silva. You don't want to be fucking with no black Brazilians, bro.
Oh man, James Irvin has some really bad tattoos, and Anderson Silva is pretty much hyped up by the commentators from the start of the fight as the probable winner of this shit, and Irvin is a longshot at best. Silva is quick and big and like watching a dude two levels beyond his opponent. Yep. Irvin gets kicked to the ground, then punched into oblivion, less than two minutes into this thing. Silva dances a black man from Brazil dance, and Irvin's eyeball is drooling blood all over the place. Game over.
#76: MATT HUGHES vs. SEAN SHERK - A lot of bad metal and long video hype jobs precede this here fight, which being they are showing me ten minutes of hype leads me to believe I'm about to watch about 20 minutes of fight. Not sure how stoked I am about all that. Hughes is a wrestling machine, while Sherk has your normal bad tattoos. They are on the ground right away, and Hughes is grapple-boxing him. Not sure if grapple-boxing is a real style, but it seems like it should be. Not as good as other made-up styles like pitfighting or kempo, but still. I didn't really pay attention much but every time I looked up in the first round, Hughes was on top, and when the air horn went off to end the round, I looked, and Sean Sherk looked like an IED had gone off inside his left eyeball.
Man, I'm totally zoning out on this whole fight, and Sherk got on top somewhere (I'm now in round 3) and Hughes is bleeding from his ear, or has blood dripped all over his ear, or something. The fact they are showing a full-on long ass five-round championship fight at the end of a five-block of matches shows me they knew people would break these things apart in such ways in their minds, like I am reviewing/responding/ranting off of. But I really don't care about this fight. It may or may not be a great fight, but there's a lot I just don't care about going on - two vanilla midget white dudes pretending they are ultimate fighters because they eat ridiculous nutritions and practice punching steel weights with old guys from ancient boxing gyms... I need more than this to remain entertained. I mean, if this was two vanilla midget white dudes fighting in a barn somewhere in some small town in Iowa or Nebraska and I had to drive out there and stay in a cheap hotel and soak in the small midwestern town culture, including the sad cute young women and lost white boys of the American nightmare, where I make friends with sad souls and we enjoy sad times in a terrible environment watching two well-trained athletes bludgeon each other for our amusement, to take our minds off the depressing overwhelming unending sadness - that I could enjoy. This is just spectacle - a long and boring spectacle, with commentators trying to explain to me how wonderful what I'm watching is, contradicting my gut intuition about the whole thing.
And finally it is over, five rounds of forever, and Matt Hughes is wiped down by his seconds and has a sponsor's visor and tank top on and looks like he hasn't done shit. Finally. UNTIL NEXT TIME FAKE FIGHT FAN TALKING ON THE INTERWEBS READING ABOUT IT SHIT FAN, TAKE IT LIGHT, AND KEEP IT LIGHT, AND LIGHT ANOTHER, OR YOUR FIRST, OR WHATEVER!

p i t c n

2011-08-31T20:00:00.002-04:00

lack of support on all sides
usually leads to cave-in;
I guess start digging my grave

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #11: "Whiskey River" by Willie Nelson

2011-08-31T18:00:00.000-04:00

I don't know what to say in regards to Willie Nelson and this drunkard anthem what which he starts every show for a thousand years. I am overwhelmed by feeling stifled and wanting my hair to shoot out my head again and to end the senseless shuck and jive and ride shitty motorcycles over the edges of horizons that dance just out of reach like solar flares for eternity, but always chasing, with tools wrapped up because all my shit is broken or cobbled or pieced together and I'm sure I'll either have to tighten up something that life has loosened or learn to fix something that's beyond my frame of reference from yesterdays but always expanding. And how would a song about alcoholic over-indulgence to escape thinking about emotional entanglements in the here and now make me want to drink again? But it does. It's been ten months, and I don't exactly wrestle with it because I'm better off, but without the bullshit trust in Jesus route, I am left to fend for myself. And honestly, sometimes my self needs crazy and needs chaos and needs reckless mistakes. Or maybe I don't and I'm just enabling myself. Who the fuck knows?
Anyways, I quit drinking liquor long ago, long before I quit drinking completely, because I did not know how to not go full-speed (still don't) so cutting liquor out of my life meant I maintained more of my knuckles and received less chances of misdemeanor assault charges on the strange streets of late night Richmond. Man, I don't fucking know. Something is amiss right now and I can't put my finger on it and usually giant reckless binge indulgences allowed me to make a giant mess to occupy myself internally and externally long enough to ignore whatever it is that was missing. So right now I'm just like, "???" without an escape clause written into my routine. No whiskey river to take my mind. Just me and my goddamned always on brain.
STEAL "Whiskey River"
NEXT: Old folks boogie music!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #12: "The Deadbeat Heartbeat of a Hobo" by 1000 Feathers

2011-08-31T12:00:00.002-04:00

Not much to speak on this song because it is my own song, done in pitch shifted Ancient Hobo style out in the camper a couple summers ago. I had started writing a hobo left his family song in the truck while riding around, playing this Edie Brickell loop constantly, and was getting tired of it, but my daughter Gypsy was riding and enjoying hearing me work these concepts out loud while riding to and from ballet or soccer practice or whatever, and she actually asked me to finish the song to hear how the story ended. That's the only reason I finished it, because I was starting to hate the song. That's why there's a dedication "to all the gypsies out there" in the beginning. And I really love the first pair of lines: "It's so hard to get lost along roads you've already been; I'm so tired of gathering moss with these so-called friends." That's a real ass lyric right there, and I've always been proud of how those two flow, and what they say, and how they flip metaphors around, and I've always wanted the world to know what the fuck I'm doing. Except I don't know what the fuck I'm even doing, so how can the world know?
I've been writing song lyrics lately a lot, with people other than myself in mind to ultimately perform them. Also been playing a lot of Boogie Brown's more twangy beats from the 39 Blue Globe Beats CDs I've gotten over the years. I've not done hardly any music recording in the past year, which on one hand sucks, but on the other hand makes sense because I haven't had the music wanting to explode out of me like some of these other word demons have been fighting to get out my brain. But I've been feeling the songs welling up inside me. And plus, our youngest - River - tends to sing really loudly about whatever is on her mind. Last night she freestyle-sang some crazy song about "You're not a teenager! You're not a teenager! You're not a human! You're not a human!" and it was hilarious to see this little sassy toddling 3-year-old make up words to a song she was creating in her young little mind, and she sang it as loud as she called, with feeling and the appropriate body movements, and I'm stoked I am the father of a household where that is what happens, and what is appreciated, and encouraged, and even expected. So I guess I'm not so tired of gathering moss along these roads I've already been.
STEAL "The Deadbeat Heartbeat of a Hobo"
NEXT: No thanks, Willie; brown liquor makes me fight people!

c o p a g

2011-08-31T08:00:00.001-04:00

o' majestic freaky snake -
what terrible freaky deeds were done
to condemn you to slither

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 #13: "World of Mine (screwed & chopped)" by Big Mike

2011-08-31T06:00:00.003-04:00

Some rappers just sound better screwed and chopped. Fat Pat for example. Big Mike is another example as well. Even though he was the replacement for Willie D in The Geto Boys back in the day, he's sort of obscure outside of the south. Down south though, he's known to have a fairly decent cavalcade of player anthems from his solo catalog. Rap-A-Lot Records was always the best for releasing like 9 albums a month, so every member of every group had a solo project and side project and Scarface would appear on everything at least once, and it was all so low budget with pre-pen-and-pixel era covers that looked like somebody used a caveman photoshop program on a Commodore 64 at Kinko's the night before the album was gonna get pressed. And yet it was beautifully perfect, and if I were to pick my favorite all-time rap specific record label, it'd probably be Rap-A-Lot. So many classics in their history, and a funk sound that few movements have ever come close to recreating. The in-house production team for Rap-A-Lot is seriously underrated in this world that rates everything blogospherically.
It really is perfect, and more than coincidence that such a soulfully funky and weird DIY record label would be the elder figures in a city where a guy like DJ Screw would grass roots grow his own legend. Rap-A-Lot made it seem like anybody could do it, and do it well, and gain national respect, so why shouldn't Screw have people lining up around the block to buy his mixtapes every Wednesday afternoon? Why wouldn't screwed music take over the world? Why motherfucker? I'm asking you a question.
And while screwed music has gained notoriety over the years since Screw's death, actual Screw tapes are not quite so well-known. My ol' lady, for my birthday one year, bought me some actual Screw tapes from the Screw shop, and they sent them and there was a poorly written handwritten note about how they were out of one of the tapes but sent a different one because it had an awesome Fat Pat freestyle I ain't ever heard. They were right too, about it being awesome and about me not having ever heard it.
Beyond that, I've internet accumulated quite a large amount of Screw tapes, all the regular ones you see hyped, as well as others that show up on this or that southern blogspot bootleg spots full of tags for 7000 rappers I've never heard of before. This track comes off the Screw tape entitled Syrup & Soda, which along with the standard pick of June 27th, comprises my list of "Best Two Screw Tapes to Acquire". In fact, this is the third track off of Syrup & Soda to make a monthly J.J. Krupert list, and it's a mix where you can tell Screw was in the zone. The cuts break naturally just like you feel they should, the chops match what your innards want them to do, it's just right. I remember one time being high with a friend watching The Allman Brothers play, and we got in some long ass Jack Kerouac/Gary Snyder in Dharma Bums ridiculous conversation about how amazing Dickey Betts was, plucking the same note over and over but it made sense and he knew exactly when to stop and move on to something else. That's how this Screw tape flows, and how this Big Mike song flows, which is standard player talk, but also some serious testifying about the various good and bad people swirling around us all, as well as the good and bad swirling within us. It's a constant battle, for ourselves and against ourselves, and just as Screw is dialed in on this mixtape, Big Mike was dialed into those absolute truths of life when he wrote this song, and was in that zone when he recorded, every perfect slur made even more perfect by the warbled effects of Screw's two turntables. It is street testifying pitch shifted for the proper punctuation and delivery to permeate your insides with that simple and pure truths, about the nature of men, about life itself, about chasing material objects and what's truly important. It's a player song, so it makes no judgments nor preaches to you about how to live; it just lays it all out and says that's how it is, and yeah, that is how it is. No doubt. Sometimes we don't need to be told what's wrong or right; we just need to know we're not the only motherfucker on this crooked ass planet thinking about it.
STEAL "World of Mine"
NEXT: A song of mine's!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '11 Intro

2011-08-31T00:00:00.000-04:00

One summer when I was in college I had a May December romance with a French girl named Juliet, which meant she was July, and so fly. She wore airbrushed tank tops with fringe edges that had the Puerto Rican flag except it was the French one but they all look the same to me when they are red and white and blue and un-American. We would go the river and google eye each other and it was nice in the summer, but then when it started getting colder, her pale skin freaked me out, plus she had freckles which is a sign of bedevilment according to the three weeks of Bible study my dad gave me when I was 7 years old. So after about 7 months I started to get that 7 month itch, which it turns out was a yeast infection, at least that's what an old dreadlocked black dude at a herbal store/incense shop place on Grace Street told me, and I had to soak my penis in a mayonnaise jar with 8 drops of grapefruit seed extract in it for three weeks. I mean, I had to do it like once a day for a few minutes for 21 days straight, not that I strapped a jar full of water spiked with grapefruit seed extract onto my groin for three weeks. That would be weird. Anyways, it was fun to watch my penis inside the jar, and eventually the itch went away, and I never saw Juliet again except one time I was riding my bike down Broad Street headed towards downtown the wrong way on the sidewalk, and I saw her at a bus stop half a block away stepping onto a bus, and she looked pregnant. I did that standing coast thing on my bike, which was an old school 10-speed because I'm an old school type, and she plopped down in a seat as the bus was passing and looked out the window and we made eye contact and there was sad recognition in her eyes, and I wondered why she was pregnant, why she was riding the bus downtown, what had gone on with her in our time apart, and where was she going. Not like on the bus going but in her life, where was she going, what was her soul's trajectory? But I never saw her again, and didn't really think about it too much because the mushrooms kicked in. Back then I liked to ride my bike on the sidewalks downtown while on mushrooms; that was kinda my thing to do, because the old Sixth Street Marketplace had this cosmic reflection of the bass bump from passing vehicles when you'd sit under it. That marketplace is gone, cleared out for newer, shinier progress, and nobody even drives a Samurai Suzuki anymore, and I guess some people still drive Jeep Cherokees but usually just white people and not wacky little dreadlocked scary black dudes in Richmond with the bass up 19th degree.
Anyways, these songs made me think of Juliet because it was July when I listened to them, and that was her name, and I bet she's on Facebook but nobody can find me on Facebook because I don't use my real name, much less the name she knew me by.
FIRST UP: Rap-a-Lot empowerment, thickened with syrup!

Ultimate 100: 85 thru 81

2011-08-30T22:00:00.001-04:00

Right back at it, with bird dog persistence, because if I slow down now, I'm going to quit...
#85: NICK DIAZ vs. KARO PARISYAN - I like the Diaz brothers because they are pot-smoking crazy fuckers. Kind of nice to imagine some stoner Mexican athlete dudes learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu, while high, from the Gracies. What could be better than going to Brazil to learn some ancient bullshit fighting style from old dudes who don't speak your language? That's some classical learning right there. The Karo Parisyan dude is a judo expert, and judo is the most traditionally classic fighting style of all. They even do that shit inside the Olympics.
Fight starts with them rolling around like a Mexican wrestling match, but real fighting. Shit is tight, like if they had ultimate fighting but outlawed punching, which actually would be kinda neat to watch, and take out the former Marine tribal barbed wire tattoo on bicep contingent in viewing parties. My youngest sister married a dude who I have caught wearing Tapout t-shirts a couple of times. That is concerning to me, although he seems to be a stoner, although in 2011, with chemical weed and stoner fighters like Nick Diaz, I'm not sure how that makes it a lesser offense. I was reading the other day about how Mexican cartels are growing weed in national forests in the Pacific Northwest nowadays, because it's harder to smuggle across the Canadian border than it used to be. But all the chemicals they use to grow the weed ruins like 10 acres per 1 acre of planted pot plants. I've always wondered about that what with today's supersonic hydroponic weed factor, with flavors and shit. I figured it was more street chemistry than street botany involved, because them hippie fuckers from back in the '60s were actual college brainiacs sometimes, and mad botanical, and if they couldn't make it crazy, then normal natural sciences of plant alone weren't gonna do it. I always figured it was like chemical weed bullshit, which has made me afraid of modern marijuana, unless I knew who grew it. I mean, that's how I should be about weed, food, drink, everything. We just happily allow so many poisons into our body, never even blinking an eye. Motherfuckers give their babies like Pepsi or Dr. Pepper and shit.
This really is a fucking amazing fight, with mad wrestling-style technical craziness going on, with dudes taking control, losing it, taking it, back and forth. This is the type of shit that makes the lighter weight classes so enjoyable. It's too bad they can't be outright outlaw and admit their true nature and Diaz can't have like 420girls.com on his trunks. Karo got poked in the eye and lost a contact, which was probably all part of Diaz's nefarious master street plan.
Final round aka third and they come out swinging for the first time, but get in a clinch for a minute, but you can tell they both know nobody is really outright winning, so they'll start have to start swinging bows at each other, to try and make it obvious. A dude like Diaz who is heavily steeped in that Gracie style, where you can be underneath another dude but still the more dangerous dude in that situation, that's some stylish fighting. Karo and judo are getting the takedowns, but Diaz and jiu-jitsu seems like it is still up to something once down. Only two minutes left, and somebody better do their thing, though this has probably been the most enjoyable fight on this list thus far. Time ends and being I didn't pay attention every second, hard to say who will win the decision. This is why it would suck to be a judge - no zoning out on titties or leaving to go get an Italian sausage or anything. You just sit there watching every little move and are supposed to be making mental notes, but then you probably zone a little and focus back in and are like, "Did I miss something? What the fuck went on that last 23 seconds?" And I'm a pretty sharp and focused individual, and I'd be like that. Can you imagine these old crusty Vegas fuckers who do actual judging? No wonder there's so many questionable decisions.
The judo fucker beat my man Nick Diaz in a split decision. So yeah.
#84: JOSH BARNETT vs. PEDRO RIZZO - I think these guys are heavyweights or something or I remember reading some dumb shit about Barnett and thinking he sucked or I don't know. "Pedro Rizzo" sounds like a good slang term for a drug, probably chemically tainted super weed. "Yo, I smoked a peach blunt full of that pedro rizzo shit the other night, and thought my heart was gonna stop, but was freaking out, just sitting there staring at the cinderblocks in the alley behind the neighbor's house, wondering why we had so many cinderblocks. And why they called 'cinder blocks'? Like Cinderella, the left behind shit that builds real shit solid. I was on that thinking for a long ass time, thinking how my whole world was gonna be cinderblocks from now on. Then I started worrying about my heart again and thought it was beating to the cars in the distance, so I wanted to walk further away from the interstate noise, so that my heart would slow down. Man, that pedro rizzo shit ain't no joke."
Haha, Barnett has a big fat belly jiggling around with every kick and punch, so this is obviously early UFC, before Dana White and the Ziggler brothers or whatever the fuck their name is had enough international presence to weed out dudes like this and only have the youngest male hardbodies possible for their gay sex domination fetish plays. But it also makes me want to see Barnett win, because he's fat, and he's not a chemical street drug that makes me fall in love with cinderblocks. If I'm gonna fall in love with cinderblocks, I want it to be natural shit, like mushrooms, or straight weed, or ayahuasca, or something good like that. Pedro Rizzo just keeps kicking this dude in the thigh and leg, like where it's all welted up and gross looking, although to be fair, Barnett is about a pasty motherfucker, so he might welt up easier than the normal dude. "I love what we've seen for the first five minutes, great respect, this is an example of what this sport is all about!" How many times have you heard a UFC commentator dude say shit like that, pushing hard how much this is a legitimate affair and to be respected and loved. Yeah, this is old, because the center of the ring apron doesn't even have a sponsor on it, just the UFC logo, before it got all angled out to show how EXTREME it really was. Your logo is a representative of your company. That's why the Rojonekku logo is three mirrors pointed in at each other and you have to insert your head in the middle, and there's thousands and thousands of reflections of your own face. That's Rojonekku.
It's really fun to speak nonsense gibberish under the guise of something else, which is normally what I do on this site and with my words, but even more obvious when writing during these Ultimate 100 reviews/commentaries, because it's like the writing equivalent of speaking in tongues, where a normal person may google search "Ultimate 100" and come upon this and not even get far, or not even understand, but somebody will read a little paragraph of Pure Truth and be like, "Yeah, that's it right there." And also people who know this style of mine who could care less about ultimate fighting will read through it, even quickly, looking for these meanders that have nothing to do with what is being stated is the point, and yet speak to a larger overall truth than anything I could seriously write about a fucking Josh Barnett vs. Pedro Rizzo fight from yesteryear. That's my style.
Josh Barnett just took a big fat hit of Pedro Rizzo, like I did, and passed out in the corner, staring glassy-eyed up at the lights, thinking about how ridiculous lights are, and how loud the camera flashes sounded. Props to old school UFC for showing in super slow-motion the immense brain damaging string of punches that left Barnett loopy against the mesh of the octagonal shaped cage.
#83: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. VERNON WHITE - This gets the little pre-fight hype package, even though it's a historical collection, and if they were building up the legend of that Hawaiian dude I already forgot about (B.J. Penn), then this part of the retrospective is probably the "Chuck Liddell is really just the most awesome thing ever" part. Because somebody chose all these matches, and put them in a certain order, and is creating a feeling in the viewer of certain feelings, to make you want to watch more, to respect certain people, certain styles, and hopefully spend money on more UFC bullshit for the rest of your life. We are being branded by all this. After ref intros, "How much does this crowd love Chuck Liddell?" He is being pushed as the best by all moving parts of this engineered pseudo-sport, like Vince McMahon talking about how tough Hulk Hogan is in 1983. Because of all this, even though rooting for classic fights is like gambling on old Super Bowls, I am hoping Vernon White wins. The more Liddell fights you see too, the more you kinda start to hate that guy. Those damn stupid trunks do not help. Nor the hair. Nor anything.
First round is just Liddell dropping bombs on the dude, and Vernon White displaying a human's amazing ability to resist going black from direct blows to the skull that rattle your brain around. Because of this, the crowd cheers him now. Announcer just said how the UFC gloves are just little 4 ounce gloves to protect the knuckles from being broken, which I guess means bare knuckle fighting is more raw, or not as raw? I'm not sure. On my own hands, from punching people and things, out of eight knuckles, three of them are flattened out - both pinkie knuckles and the pointing finger knuckle on my left drunk-jab hand.
Liddell finally knocks him out with about a minute left in the first round, so I guess this match was considered ultimate because the black guy refused to get knocked out until he sustained the brain damage of four normal knock outs.
#82: FRANK TRIGG vs. GEORGES ST. PIERRE - St. Pierre is referred to as a "consummate gentleman" in the hype package, and if you follow the UFCs on the internet, you probably know about the "St. Pierre - closeted gay" accusations. I have no problem with gay people, but if you are going to be gay, be gay, not pretending otherwise. Trigg has a shaved head as well, making both guys look like fighting penises anyways, and little splatterings of tattoos like guys who want tattoos but not really. I bet every Frank Trigg tattoo is a memorial of something or another. It's really hard to even watch St. Pierre for one minute and not assume he is gay, which if ultimate fighting is as populated with either homophobes or closeted gays as I think it is (and probably some hybrids of the two), it makes this fight even funnier. WHAT'S TOUGHER - THE GAY GUY OR THE GUY WHO HATES GAYS! They should've done a whole UFC PPV under that theme - secret gays vs. guys who openly hate gays, although I would bet about one in every ten UFC fights is that anyways, which fits the 10% of the population is gay stat that pro-gay people always trot out when someone is like, "what's up with all the gay shit on TV?"
Secret gays just won this fight, and Shaq O'Neal's big fat face is side smiling out of half a jawbone in the front row, happy for secret gays, who he is in support of.
#81: JON KOPPENHAVER vs. JARED ROLLINS - I have actually never even heard of either one of these dudes, which probably means, it is the end of the first 20 matches on their list, so rather than push their hype agendas of marketing angles, this will be a bona fide crazy ass fight. Let's see though.
Oh, this is from one of the stupid seasons from The Ultimate Fighter, and they had a fight in the house, and Rollins is the black guy who sounds like a twinkle-toes, and Koppenhaver is a white dude with a grenade tattooed on his neck. Wait, I think he's white, but he might not be, as he's from San Diego, and sort of that weird indeterminate light brown color. Still though, the grenade neck tattoo is ridiculous. Actually neck tattoos in general have gotten ridiculous, as they are far more prevalent in modern America than you would've believed even ten years ago. Not just gangstas or fat white girls who date black guys get them now. Regular dudes, like your respectable landscaper business owner with polo shirt that has the company name stitched, not printed, on the breast, and he's got a neck tattoo. Or the dude working at the grocery store. Or the kid on your oldest daughter's soccer team. Everybody has neck tattoos.
The story about Koppenhaver is his dad died, he went to military school, and wanted to be a Navy Seal, which is a terrible thing to aspire to be. I know those guys allegedly killed the fake Osama in that TV propaganda they laid on us earlier this year, and we were being programmed to think of Navy Seals as heroes, but those dudes are usually evil, fight-happy, thugs, trained to kill, and use that training to torment decent people in bar fights. This happened to my uncle Ricky, who got his face caved in by three of them outside of a pizza joint/bar in Farmville back in the day, over a girl of course, to where Ricky was outside the car with his feet trapped in and three Navy Seals were kicking in his head, and the girl reached over and just pulled Ricky up by his shirt and drove off with him hanging out the car and door open. That's what I always remember when I think of Navy Seals - wolfpack assholes who answer to no legal laws, but will answer eventually, as I'd like to believe might does not always write right, for eternity. Then again, my uncle Ricky killed himself with a gun to the head behind a pop-up camper, so maybe those dudes do always win in the long run, because the rest of us do not have the proper training to overlook those certain things that make us feel emotionally vulnerable. To turn off your emotions is to make you a fighting machine, and that's what those dudes are. Funny thing is, this Koppenhaver dude's nickname is "War Machine" and he's all bloodied up, plus sweaty, plus has bad tattoos, plus that weird brownish Eurospic look... oh wait, this is War Machine. If you do not know the full story of the War Machine, let me fill you in briefly... Jon Koppenhaver decided to legally change his name to War Machine, and then also decided to start doing porn movies, being stoked to get paid to fight and fuck, saying he didn't want to work anyways. Then at some porn party, he flipped out and fucked up a bunch of people, but disappeared. Then he got busted at a bar for beating up people because they wanted a second ID because his ID said "War Machine" and they refused to accept it. So he beat up bar staff, patrons, and cops were called in and eventually detained the dude, but put a bag over his head to keep him from spitting on them. I think he's still in jail to this day, where I'm sure he's got some even more interesting tattoos, and made some wonderful white pride friends.
Second round had War Machine get pummeled and bloody, but he stayed strong, and we're in a third and final round, with the twinkle-voiced black dude seemingly having scored more points, but War Machine is getting all War Machine-y here in this final round, trying to prove on the public stage how great he is. The crowd is chanting "War Machine! War Machine!" and I'm sure being a cult hero to Las Vegas fighting fans is like the ultimate ego stroke to this ultimate fighter. War Machine is crazy, and dripping blood, but then just flips over the black dude and elbows him in the front of the face until the ref stops it because the black guy is dazed and confused and staring a thousand miles away. Amazing. Oleg Taktarov has always been my favorite, because he never quit, even when he was going to die, and survived plane wrecks in Africa in recent years. In the Armageddons of my mind, Soviet Russia vs. United States is played out by armies of Olegs fighting armies of War Machines.
Oh shit, a War Machine interview post-match. The guy he was hating before fighting, War Machine is now crying and saying he wished they both could win. What a fucking nut job this dude is, babbling incoherently during the interview, and he can't stifle saying "fuck" all over the interview. This guy truly is the Ultimate Fighter, in every sense of the word.
Consulting the interwebs on all this, apparently War Machine was released from jail like a month ago. LOOK OUT WORLD!

c h v z r

2011-08-30T20:00:00.001-04:00

junkyard meditations - piece
together jigsaw puzzle
shattered windshields on bench seats

i n j n c

2011-08-30T08:00:00.001-04:00

living history often
times is pudgier than the
past probably for real was

Ultimate 100: 90 thru 86

2011-08-29T22:00:00.000-04:00

Sigh... I have to admit I already hit my limit for this and I'm just a tenth of the way through these things, but I guess if they do it in true ascending order it will only get more awesome. I don't know... MMA certainly tries to portray itself as awesome combat and the Best Shit Ever and Real Badass Fighting, but it's really kind of a stupid spectacle that's not nearly as great as it thinks itself to be. Of course the fact most of these guys are pretty tough and could kick a guy's ass who is all like, "You suck, you closeted homo asshole," but that doesn't make him not suck. You can't beat the truth out of my mind once I realized it, hardcore cagefighting bro. So let's jump back into this bullshit being foisted upon us all by Dana White and his penis head and his high school buddies' billions of dollars...
#90: CAOL UNO vs. B.J. PENN - So they are sort of engineering a story here at times, as we saw Penn fight some dude, and then we saw him beat Matt Serra to fight Caol Uno, which they are now showing me, and I can only assume this is the resulting title fight from that match I had just seen. If this was truly scientific you would think it might not play out this way, although the announcer is saying it's a rematch so maybe not. Caol Uno is a little Asian dude with highlighted hair, which means to me he probably smokes blunts and has a spoiler on his car. B.J. Penn is still Hawaiian, still betraying his possible destiny as leader of an international islander uprising to try and get rich off the scraps Dana White pays his minions of brutality, and hopefully get himself a rehabbed porn starlet wife like Tito Ortiz did. I like Uno because he just looks chill. Part of that might be one of my favorite rappers is Jackie Chain, who is an Asian-American ass stoner rapper dude from Alabama, who has long hair and pretty much stays high, like a telephone pole.
First round is already over and Penn's people are talking to him... I love the way islander people who speak in English talk, so lackadaisically gangsta. And then I was looking at weird pictures of my former step-brothers on Facebook, and realize how close to hopeless I really am. Not sure how I denied self-destruction full access considering my DNA make-up, but I am thankful. But in that time, I zoned out completely and didn't watch any of this match, with stuff happening, now it's third round, and Ken Shamrock is doing commentary, which is lulling me to sleep. "This is 21st Century martial arts. This is The Combat Sport," said other announcer dude, pushing the Best Shit Ever company talking point. Personally, I'd rather just have some DJ Screw tapes playing in the background and then DJ Screw breaks through with a warbled voice when something notable is happening, like, "Oh shit, the Jap dude is about to choke that Samoan ass dude out yall," and then it happens and Big Moe jumps on the mic and starts singing about people tapping out and celebrating with some drank and then Fat Pat starts rhyming about what color he's painted his Cutlass this week. See, that would be some next level entertainment.
Unfortunately, this is a five-round match, so we are now in the fourth round and I have to keep trying to find a way to not pay attention. My ol' lady will be coming home from being gone for five days, and I'm sure she'll come in the house and be like, "Why are you watching gay dudes fight each other?" when she comes in. I'm also freaking out a little because late last week I got stung by a Japanese hornet and it swolled my foot up and I thought I was gonna die, but I didn't, but I've been keeping an eye for those fuckers because they've got a nest somewhere around here. But one of them is buzzing in the window behind my head, stuck between the window inside and the storm window, so I'm waiting for him to find the crack by where the air conditioner is, and squeeze his little evil monster bug ass through because he sees the lights inside and is like, "Oh shit, a light. Let's go to that light. Look motherfuckers, there's a light. I love lights." And that's all he really wants, but when he gets here, I'll be here and then he'll just flutter against the light bulb and scorch himself and fall on the floor and then I'll step on him accidentally and get stung again and this time I'll die probably, with gay fighting on the TV, and my wife will come home and I'll be dead, in camouflage cargo shorts, watching ultimate fighting, and that's fucking sad. We should all check ourselves at times with our actions and think about how we would feel if we died right then and there and that's how we were remembered, or at least talked about in death.
Ideally, I would like this match commentary to end with that point, but this fucking thing won't end. They just blew the air horn to end the 4th round, which means one more stupid slow-paced pseudo-sport round to go, with no DJ Screw in the background, and the fear of a swollen foot in my mind. Caol Uno is all bloodied up, but then the Cut Man puts magic grease on his cuts, so it's like bloody but gunky, and he looks like he might be Manny Pacquiao before he grew facial hair. I know fighting to the death would be barbaric and end times Roman style, but it probably would be interesting to watch guys fight to the death, because there'd be no easy tap-outs to preserve your arm or not to choke, dudes would be fighting for their literal life to escape. I mean that's what they're building up to so they might as well go all-in and do it. I'm sure Mexican drug lords have to the death cagefighting clubs, it being the land of cockfight appreciation it is. It does sort of feel like they are fighting to my death here though, as this is the longest... fight... ever.
Finally it's over, and announcers and B.J. Penn's corner thought they had won, but the judges' scorecards went to draw, and Penn was all like "What?" as they read the scores, so I'm sure there's another Uno/Penn fight coming up, and that's why you can't trust judged sports right there.
#89: FORREST GRIFFIN vs. KEITH JARDINE - See, I'm actually stoked for this because Griffin is like a goofy Georgia boy who likes to fight, and Jardine looks and talks and acts like he'd be a drummer for a new school metal band. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've seen two guys just like this fight at different parties like two or three times in my life, usually with the Forrest Griffin guy winning, but the Keith Jardine dude carrying the post-fight activities better, by doing gravity bong hits with an empty 2-liter of Mountain Dew in the kitchen sink. To his discredit though, Jardine's trunks look like a Mountain Dew advertisement, which is weird because they are an advertisement, but not for Mountain Dew. They are talking about how Griffin is precise and tactical and has grown as an ultimate fighter since his first big breakout fight on one of the Ultimate Fighter finales, where he was a straight brutarian. I don't dig the learning to be smarter about bludgeoning people; it is far more stylish to just be crazy. Intelligent fighting is too slow. They should make both guys in every fight fall in love with the same woman, and then she cold shoulders them both until they fight to win her yoni's love.
Jardine just kind of started hamboning Forrest Griffin the face, and he got wobbly, and Jardine jumped on top of him and just let loose, and that was that. Game over, so now Griffin is crying. That was the best fight I've seen in this whole collection so far, because it was quick, it was brutal, and it had a pair of dudes who didn't look like total douchebags. I HOPE YOU ARE READING THIS DANA WHITE (although I doubt you are because I don't have hashtags and it's got too many characters for you to follow). Haha, as they announce the winner, Forrest Griffin is wearing a Mickey's Malt Liquor hat. I know they're a sponsor and all, but still, that makes me laugh.
#88: TYSON GRIFFIN vs. FRANK EDGAR - Oh man, Tyson Griffin is that annoying ass Mario Lopez-looking asshole I saw before. Frankie Edgar has worst more obvious tribal tattoos, but Griffin has the weird dragon blotch on his back that I'm not sure actually qualifies as a tribal design. I do like how Griffin still has a pudge belly. I went to see ultimate fighting of the local variety in my local area last year (actually it was the last night I ever drank alcohol, perhaps because I felt like I was in the happy halls of Hell a couple of times, under the red lights, watching dudes pummel each other while drinking $4 beers, ogling ugly women) and there was a local guy from Louisa County with mad belly, fighting another fat dude, and it was actually an awesome fight because neither of them were conditioned to go multiple rounds, so they just kind of started wailing away to get it over with once they got through the first round. It's like they both thought out loud at each other, "Look, we're both just gonna look stupid if we go three full rounds doing this shit, so let's just start throwing blows and let the fat dudes fall where they may, like the proverbial chips." And that's what they did. It was nice. I cheered, and drank more beer, and then wandered Charlottesville with two of my homies, and we ended up at some hipster bar's basement, and then there was a train, and I put an empty beer can in a mannequin's hand, and then I quit drinking beer, and now I drink herbal smoothies and fight pine trees on other people's properties because my pine trees are actually pretty chill, and the red maple in the field that I listen to sitting under, he told me they were cool pine trees so to not fuck with them.
I wish they could combine lucha libre's fliptasticality with MMA, because that would be the ultimately mixed martial artistry if dudes were like doing circus flips around each other's torso and then one KOs the other with a kick from like a double flip off the side of the cage. Color commentator fuckhead says, "I would hate to be an uneducated judge trying to score this fight." Why are they always acting like you have to be so educated about how awesome certain ways of brain fighting. And then, as if almost on cue, the Edgar dude kicks the asshole dude in the dick, and then starts pummeling him into the cage. But the dork commentators are going on and on about how they should've let the dude have a break for the low blow, and the other guy got some valuable points, and it's an injustice blah blah blah. Then they talk about one guy trying to mount the other, and how they are pushing it "all the way to the limit." Gross. But then the Griffin dudes catches the other guy's leg and bends it the wrong way for half a minute and the Edgar dude doesn't quit, even though he probably tore all his tendons and has to be carried around. Nothing like having your pain threshold overrule your common sense and self-preservation. They show it slow motion replay and like the dude's leg is bent the wrong way, and he's just laying there like, "Yeah, this sucks, but I think I can tolerate it for thirty second and elbow the dude in the thigh until the clock goes." And because of that stubbornness, Frankie Edgar wobbles his way to victory. Congrats bro, your leg is fucked. Honor hugs, they're out.
#87: CHUCK LIDDELL vs. JEREMY HORN - Look, Liddell was the face of UFC for a long time, which made him great friends with Dana White. Hard to say which came first in that, the chicken or the egg, meaning Liddell being the most hyped dude and him being White's real life homeboy. But Jeremy Horn is a real ass dude, the type of guy you'd probably still see fighting in one of those local XTREME CAGEFIGHTING 19 at the Augustaland Expo Center where they usually have chicken shows and tractor pulls. And I never really liked Liddell anyways because the close-cropped mohawk is such a tool hairstyle, no matter how awesome you might think you are. Unless you are a drunken British kickboxer from 1987, you can't really rock that hairstyle and not look stupid. Liddell has that same serious business but I grew up with hip hop in the background look that all major sports-related douchebags like Dana White and Jim Rome have nowadays. Meanwhile, Jeremy Horn looks like a roofer. He looks like he talks all day about how great it would be to drift a Lotus, but actually drives a small Nissan truck with weird modifications done to it that look like he kind of knew what to do, but not really.
First round's first half is slow, normal for a five-round five-minute per round fight, where the two dudes sort of feel each other out. Crowd is chanting "Chuck! Chuck!" and then Horn gets rocked with a punch and then pummeled until he finally regains himself after taking a serious ass beating. There's like a minute and a half and I would be surprised if Horn finishes this first round, as he is 100% wobble-minded. His face is red welts, but he's on his feet and looks like he'll survive this first round. Actually, somehow he's recovered and it's not over, but Liddell loops him with another loper, but it doesn't get ended by the end of the round.
The slow motion replay of the pummel part is amazing, because basically you, as Jeremy Horn, are getting concussed, lose control of your legs, and have to fight through the haze and black-and-white blur vision to regain composure and keep this thing going, for maybe a six figure paycheck if you're one of Dana White's friends. I'm not seeing the math in this lifestyle.
Second round has Horn trying to bring Liddell to the ground, but Liddell resists. His Iceman trunks are the stupidest shit ever though. And the announcer fills into my mind that this was Liddell's first ever title defense, so I'm going to assume he wins this, which I already assumed being he's Dana's boy, so even if he lost he would've won. It is respectable that he has a little bit of beer belly, and again he knocks Horn down and pummels him, but once Jeremy Horn regains his self enough to guard, Liddell backs off to get it on their feet and make it a straight punchfest. Crowd is booing because Horn keeps wanting to take it to the ground, but what the fuck would you do? But he made it through two rounds of getting outright whooped.
Third round, Horn starts mixing in some kicks, and I feel stupid watching this shit and writing about it. So I'm just gonna vibe to the human cockfights, which aren't as beautiful as real cockfights, because roosters are way more aesthetically perfect when they fluff out their neck feathers and fly at each other, turning at the last second to leg whip each other. Two dudes with bad tattoos holding fists up just ain't the same. Third round was boring as fuck anyways, crowd chasing the clock with boos.
Fourth round starts and Horn is just outlasting him, not beating him in any one round yet. More pacing around each other, and I hope this wasn't the main event... oh announcer just said, "This is our main event for the evening," and what a slow and painful main event it is. That's the problem with ultimate fighting sometimes - besides the momentary flurries of physical mayhem, it can be outright painful to watch. And it is. Then Horn gets whomped one more time and doesn't get knocked out but tells that Big John dude he can't see anymore so he has to stop. Apparently, he was having double vision, and the color commentator is like, "Well, Jeremy's very intelligent," which I doubt very highly. Forgive me if I'm being stereotypical about these dudes though.
#86: PHIL BARONI vs. EVAN TANNER - Tanner is the most unhappy looking dude ever, and Baroni has on those tight gay white shorts which looks stupider because they're not covered with 39 sponsors. You see how social conditioning works? I would never in my right mind endorse dudes having a bunch of stupid sponsors on their trunks, but then I get so used to it when it's not there, I'm all like, "Wow, that's weird looking." Tanner gets his eye busted open and is bloody right from the beginning, and Baroni looks like your normal New York/New Jersey/Connecticut white nightmare, the type of dude I mouth off to after too many Gennesee Cream Ales and he kicks my ass in a piss-stained alley while a Puerto Rican girl I was flirting with is like, "Stop it, Papi, you done beat his ass!" and I look up through my own blood and see her hoop earrings and those Lisa Bonet lips and I think that I love her. But I don't.
I'm not sure if anybody would actually be reading this far into a stupid stream of conscious thing about MMA, so I could probably write anything at this point and nobody would know. Except it would be inside the internet so computer programs would swift swoop troll through it and grab snippets of context for their algorithmic madness. So I will babble for those algorithm hunters, being I am bored with writing about actual stupid fights. My sexual fetish is mathematical, specifically right angles. There is something so sexy about that square root sign.
Haha, actually the Tanner dude was on top of Baroni, elbowing his face, and the ref stopped the fight, which Baroni didn't want, so he punched the ref. I'm not sure if this fight is actually over or they'll restart it or what. Wow, that's weird though, a questionable referee decision to stop a fight in a cagefighting match in Las Vegas. You'd never really expect that, would you? I mean, all those things are so honorable and trustworthy.
Man, I'm only up to #86? This is going to be fucking painful.

t o y z l

2011-08-29T20:00:00.002-04:00

internal wars - duty tours
through earth revolutions of
the sunshine; one day, I'll rest

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #1: "Ritual Of The Nile" by J-Boogie's Dubtronic Science

2011-08-29T18:00:00.001-04:00

My eldest daughter's name is Gypsy and she is flowering into an insanely artistic and obsessive little young adult. She often asks questions about the methodical madness that is her father, like why do I have notecards with strange little phrases scribbled on them all over the place. Why can't they throw magazines in this one pile of recycling until I look through them for pictures? How come nobody but me can rate songs on the Itunes and why do I only allow for one star to be added at a time? She understands, and is as obsessive as me, because she's pretty much been working exclusively on knitting projects for the past 200 hours of her life, talking about knitting crazy things, piecing it together. But she understands the J.J. Krupert process of songs being played the most and getting on the list, and sometimes plays songs pretty much constantly in the hopes of making me write about them. Then I explained to her that it can only be songs on my gaypod, meaning a lot of the things she forces into the mix won't make it. So what we did was put a batch of songs on there at one point, and she forced her way into my Krupert dorkness. This was that song that made the final list, that she played for like three days straight in her every waking hour, to get on the list. She has been pretty deeply into Egyptian culture the past half a year or so, making paintings and clay structures in honor of it, talking about mummifying a roadkill animal if I'd bring one home if I hit it, wanting me to find Egyptian meditation music, being stoked when I made homemade falafel and told her this was an Egyptian street food. Her most amazing development is being about 87 pages into a composition book, handwriting a full novel based on Egypitan mythology, which is even more insane and ridiculous than I was at age 12, but hey, this is what we have been fermenting on our Bird Tribe compound. But this "Ritual of the Nile" song was her favorite ever at one point and she made me put on this list after understanding my madness and it's methods and using that to place J. Boogie's Dubtronic Science on the list.
This song came from one of the Deep Concentration mixes which I think was on Ohm Records, and my daughter really digs that ambient/electronic with a slight twinge of funk thing. Not really my cup of tea, though I dig this song well enough (hence it's survival on my little stupid Ipod), and enough so that I dug into getting full-length J. Boogie stuff, which entailed me signing up for their email list and getting a free download, which was not very good at all. But I still get a stupid email from J. Boogie's Dubtronic Science every now and then, and I often wonder if J. Boogie has any other possessive bands, or just the Dubtronic Science one, and who the fuck is J. Boogie anyways? Nonetheless, this song is an enjoyable electronic romp down the river, watching snake charmers and belly dancers and little TVs plugged into bicycle-powered batteries with a McDonalds commercial where a terrorist jumps out chasing a cartoon Hunger monster with one of those swashbuckling Arab swords, yelling "FALALALALALALALALA" and as he catches up to hunger and is about to chop it with the sword, or so you think, he finishes yelling "LALALALALAlafel" and whips out a McDonalds falafel sandwich in nutritionless pita and that is all what I imagine floating down the Nile through Egypt to be like, just with more hot, and sand in my glasses, which is so fucking frustrating because I forget and clean them on my shirt, which scuffs them up and makes me see even less, but I never go get new ones because I hate finding an eye doctor that takes my stupid eye insurance, which isn't much of an insurance, and usually just end up going to the guy beside Wal-Mart (which means like three times in my life) and the last time I swear the guy was drunk and didn't pay attention to me so my glasses were kinda fucked when I got them, like didn't seem clear, but eventually my eyes deteriorated to where it made sense or I at least got used to it, and that's still the glasses I have, because I break everything and because of that when something isn't broke - like in three pieces broke, not just scuffed and dirty blemished but not quite broke - I won't replace it. That's just how I am.
STEAL "Ritual Of The Nile"
NEXT MONTH: we will celebrate our American freedom in the rear view mirror of my mind!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #2: "How Long" by Charles Bradley

2011-08-29T12:00:00.000-04:00

Charles Bradley is straight up baby-making music, and if you are broke and can't afford things like satellite TV or internet that can be the internet at a modern pace, then what is there to do but lay around on lambskins at night and make babies? When you are broke, and from the underclass of America, but upwardly mobile with your spirit and soul, you should be making babies as much as possible, every twelve months at the worst, preferably with a couple ol' ladies. Homebirthing is always the way to go, and how we've had all three of our chilluns, making each experience an amazing memory even beyond a new human popping all up in our faces after standard belly incubation periods. The great thing I discovered about homebirths, after our second kid, is you can be really adamant about not taking your kid into the health department when they are born and you need to get shit set up to prove you have a kid born. I used the "You are a health department, administering flu shots to the sickly... I am not bringing my newborn into this place," and brought a signed letter from the midwife to prove that I had actually had a kid. That's usually enough for the low level government drones who work in a rural county health department. So I've done this six times since then, when we've only had one actual child. I usually used to ramble about The Creator and the lessons of Samson in the Bible and shit like that when I still had long dreadlocks, and when we actually had our third real kid, my dreadlocked wife sat outside in the car with the baby so I could point them out and give visual proof to the religious kook anti-hospital anti-everything crazed dude story I would hint at when getting these rural birth certificates set up. What this means is we have 8 children in the eyes of the government, but only 3 actual kids. This bodes well for us during tax time, especially in regards to maxing out our Earned Income Credit, and also allows us some nice food stamp benefits as well. We don't have the bodies to prove they exist, but we have the birth certificates straight from the Virginia Department of Record Bullshit, and we have SS#s, and those two things count for more than being an actual human.
This caused me to test out a neighboring county as well, using a friend's address, to get three additional birth certificates and social security numbers, with a fake woman, so that the kids have a different last name. I did this to have aliases to give my own three children when they turn 21, as a present. It could be used to start a new life of credit at some point, or to travel anonymously to foreign countries, or really for whatever they deem it necessary at that point in their life. We are raising them right, so I trust they'll make the best decisions they can for themselves by that point. No one really should be stifled by one single alias in this cyber-optically complicated 2011 world. And though the government has tried to make it more complicated, especially after 9/11, it's important to remember our government is still entirely incompetent, and where competent it is outright corrupt, so you there's plenty of cracks to sneak between. If you only have one social security number in 2011, then you just are even trying to be free anymore, and deserve whatever bullshit predatory credit bankruptcy laws they burden you with.
But back to the baby-making music... I may come off as preachy, but it seems to me one reason there are so many fatherless children being raised in this world is because R&B music got so computerized and soulless. That is considered baby-making music nowadays, but the blip bloop synthesized backbeat is nothing like the actual live bass and drums of older soul. I'm not getting all old and crazy, saying this isn't music because of blah blah blah, because I love the collage nature of sampled music. But for baby-making, something is amiss (unless of course DJ Quik produced it, but that's a whole 'nother story). Because of this, there is less attachment to the baby-making involved in the baby-making music, because it's actually just electronic workout music and people are mistakenly using sexual intercourse at a cardiovascular stimulant. Procreation is not simple exercise of the body (though it is a great workout if done well and regularly, which I hope it is, for all of us, even you ugly people) but a connection of molecules to hopefully smash together into a new DNA machine that will be not only you combined with another but also hopefully a superior physical child, losing the weak genes and keeping the strong. The human is a highly emotional creature as well though, so both parents ideally should have a good amount of involvement in emotionally shaping the offspring as well. Without that, we have physically stronger children who are emotionally stifled, and I think if you look around you for the rest of the day, there's certainly a lot of that going on, ain't it?
STEAL "How Long"
NEXT: my daughter's enthusiastic influence in the J.J. Krupert process!

j c k z y

2011-08-29T08:00:00.001-04:00

patchwork jacket, tattered by
travel, been on bus station
floors and mountaintop vistas

w i n d e

2011-08-28T20:00:00.001-04:00

yesterday's industries done
dwindled away to busted
glass panes with plywood backdrops

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #3: "Too Early" by Son Volt

2011-08-28T12:00:00.000-04:00

I've been drinking herbal smoothies lately, sporadically, and going into a store like Whole Foods really just is a completely painful process. In Charlottesville, they had a Whole Foods over in an old strip mall with a budget shoe place and auto parts store and Chinese buffet, so even though it was a Whole Foods, the fact there was a McDonalds like right beside it sort of made it feel like a part of a larger world. However, they just finished building a new shiny one in its own location where you have to backwards down a side road to enter the parking lot from the back end because they jumble the building up against the road on the back end in that pseudo-urban fashion a lot of high end sprawly developments do now, to pretend they are sustainable and geared towards controlled growth of humanity's alleged civilization.
I already hated going into the Whole Foods, but the new one is complete molecular pain for me. The people and the consumer psychologist layout and the exorbitant prices, it really pains me on a spiritual level, as spiritual as I get. The costs are not justified either because the type of shit you get there that is available at other grocery stores - exact same brand and item and packaging size - is usually almost double the price at Whole Foods. So you are paying a tax on overhead and feeling good about yourself and just straight up exclusion of the lower classes. And I think when I see that, that's what gets me.
I am always struggling with money, from the day I was born, and job-wise I'm clocking a better grip now than I have most of the adult times in my life, but it's still a goddamned weekly struggle to even try and pay half our bills. Seriously. And we try to eat better and not poison ourselves with conventional food poisons, but when it comes down to real butter quarters regular is like $3 and real butter quarters organic is $5.50, and you multiply that by everything across the board, or even just the basics you want to make a change with, it equals unsustainable financially. Seriously. Not just difficult but it would mean I can't fucking live in a house anymore. But other people do it, including people who are our friends who seem to be on financially equal footing (or lack thereof), and they pump up the pantry with the Whole Foods items (meaning from the store, not actual minimum ingredients style "whole" foods). I have a line in a song I did a couple years back that says "how'd y'all get all them damn things, I don't understand the math." Because I don't. It doesn't make sense with a limited income to keep up those paces. Only thing I can think is most people are operating on something more than the limited income and have access to additional sources that me and my ol' lady don't. There's only so much sacrificing and simplifying we can do and it still won't free up enough money to do this or that. But when you walk through the new Whole Foods, you can definitely see a lot of folks there who are at a different class of dollar bills than I am or probably ever will be. It is not only in their clothes but the lines of their face - they were born in a position I will probably be lucky to scratch and claw my way up to.
All this is in my mind as this economic downturn continues to trifle with us all, and the Republicrats kick this whole, "No more taxes on the wealthy" because it would stifle business development, falling back to that "trickle down economics" fallacy, that the wealthy, when allowed to use their money, are smart and forward thinking and great and magnanimous and they develop new business ventures and then create totally awesome jobs for the rest of us to do and benefit from. Ultimately, the thinking is instead of the wealthy being taxed by government and being a benefactor for the rest of society, they will build businesses and become a benefactor for the rest of society that also furthers their own wealth and makes America a more vibrant economy, instead of a socialist state. The problem with this is the wealthy have never exactly followed through on that end of this myth's bargain, and usually just horde shit, or when they create something new, they are not exactly magnanimous in hiring up the rest of us, instead going for the cheapest, crudest labor possible that does not empower the rest of society at all but instead treats them as a cogwheel in the entire process to be considered overhead, constantly adjusted and replaced when a more cost effective source comes along. But the wealthy, during this slow demise of the American Empire, can't just straight up be like, "Yo, we're not going to bankroll our society with higher taxes because we'd like to hold onto our shit so that we can be set for the next go-round, whatever that may be," and they can invest in China or Africa or whatever the fuck.
A lot of liberal types get pretty upset by this, and do the whole "Republicans are evil devils but I don't believe in God" schtick, especially now that Rick Perry has jumped in the 2012 campaign. But I have no problem with the wealthy deciding to not fund the rest of us maintaining basic standards of shelter, food, and health. I mean, I can't make someone do right, and ultimately neither can government (although government is rarely an enforcer of right & wrong so much as an engineer of its own self-fulfilling end goals).
Here's the thing though, shit is real right now, and getting more real, and will get far more real by the end of this slow decline. And a lot of people - not the Whole Foods shopping type or those who would pay higher taxes if taxes did get raised - are going to be hit pretty damn hard. And even a lot of those barely sheltered by middle class status are going to feel some hunger pangs and uncomfortability they've not felt before. And all these "entitlements" are going to be dropped because of whatever tax refusals and bad spending habits by our engineered leaders over the past couple decades, and shit is going to be ugly when a lot of folks look in the mirror in the morning.
Which brings me to my warning with this whole line of thinking - calling providing basic human support to all members of a society an "entitlement", as if they shouldn't necessarily feel privileged enough to have food and shelter, that's not as true to the dictionary definition of that word "entitlement" as is hording your wealth to yourself, your neighbors be damned. And I'm not denying these wealthy people may have made that money themselves, although the way our laws and systems are set up certainly help enable them to do so, which makes sense since it is that level of financial American who gets in the position to make the laws. But the true false sense of "entitlement" is that part of a country's human make-up should be allowed to keep everything to themselves while a large number of others outside the gated communities struggle, suffer, wither, and die. If you enter into a social contract where everyone says, even if only by birth, "We are all part of this place and will work mutually to make this place The Best Fucking Place Ever," then you are tied to that, and should ultimately either support or mindfuck everybody involved to be down with it. But when you straight up just say, "We're not paying more to help fund this entire operation anymore," you are breaking that social contract, in an obvious manner. And although there's massive brainwashing operations under way to keep all the lower castes thinking this is the red, white, and blue thing to do, there's plenty of us who see through the bullshit. And once you break that social contract from above, there's absolutely no need to expect those from below to follow it as well. Which means if you the upper doesn't want to support the lower through financial taxes or economic benevolence - which they're failing on both right now and only promise worse input - then the lower shouldn't support the upper by obeying and behaving and using their washed brains to override the hunger pangs in their soul to keep them from slitting the throats of those at the top. It's a basic two-party transaction being broken, and a very basic response system to be expected. And I'm good with that, if that's the way those at the top want to go. I can live with this new deal bargain being established.
STEAL "Too Early"
NEXT: modern soul music by a Bernie Mac looking-ass dude!

d o l l a

2011-08-28T08:00:00.001-04:00

money ain't nothing but some
worthless paper, massively
compromising my free time

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #4: "It Probably Always Will" by Ozark Mountain Daredevils

2011-08-28T06:00:00.001-04:00

The Ozark Mountain Daredevils album this song comes from - It'll Shine When It Shines - is the true pinnacle of redneck hippiedom albums, and a lifelong classic in my brain as my folks used to pump this up back in the day, and when my folks separated after a drunken violent incident I had to step in between when I was 16, only about 20 records from the collection made it up the road to the trailer my dad and me lived in, and this was one. My dad loved that "E.E. Lawson" song to death, man, and this whole album always reminds me of my dad, but also my youth, as the blue willow china pattern (or whatever the fuck it's called) is mimicked on the cover. Me and the ol' lady actually saw some of that china at the antique store today and I wanted to get some even though they only had two plates, just for memory value, thinking about how I was mesmerized by the pattern as a kid, living in a shitty cinderblock house full of field rats on the edge of a farm in Rice, Virginia, staring at the design with my little ass yet to be growed up and mind warped and the whole deal. Very formative times for me, but then again, all times are formative for all minds, which is why you gotta be careful in the age of the cyberwebs, because once you see something, you can't unsee it ever again. The electrosmog also clogs up your psychic abilities.
Hadn't dreamt of my dad in years, not that I can remember since my dream where he was doing crank in hell, happily, with a bunch of dudes underneath the house in Victoria he shared with his second wife. Got to hang with my sister the other weekend though, and there was an incident with my dad where he was putting some mind fuck on me, claiming I had passed on accepting my rightful hereditary ownership of The Power, or familial psychic abilities, and that my sister would get them. Shit was hurtful, in our country fucked sort of way, and I knew he was just drunk and pushing my buttons, and I think those types of "lessons" by him have fucked her far more than they fucked me. But she had seen my dad in dreams in recent years, and he was doing better than when I last saw him, even was gaining some weight for the first time ever. And I realize talking about seeing family members in dreams and knowing it's real and feeling all these planes are connected and not blinking an eye about it might seem crazy to the scientifically inclined or those grounded in what is conventionally considered reality, but it's truth. I feel bad for my dad and the internal struggles he had, and I do not think I would be where I am without him walking the path in front of me, which has allowed me to chop through shit he never got around to chopping at, and I'm still ten years to go before equaling the age he was when he died. And I can look at my oldest and see she's already walking a path I didn't get to for another five or six years at that age, and hopefully that'll mean she can chop through even more shit than me, and we will be doing work as a psychic lineage, for both my side and my ol' lady's side of the family tree. That's all you can hope for. Just like there ain't get rich quick schemes that pan out, and your numbers never hit when they draw the MegaMillions, there ain't no easy path towards psychic salvation. It might not even happen in your lifetime. But you've got to set the overall effect of your DNA on the best path possible instead of garbling it up with self-destruction and endless wrecks into the same guiard rails you done wrecked into sixteen times before.
STEAL "It Probably Always Will"
NEXT: a dude who by name you'd think was from 1938 Mississippi, but he's not!

t r k a a

2011-08-27T20:00:00.001-04:00

thousand dollar cameras
can't bless eyeballs with vision;
no flower blossom shots here

t i p i d

2011-08-27T08:00:00.001-04:00

the natives are plastic, well
poisoned like the rest of us;
it's a new world order, chief

Ultimate 100: 95 thru 91

2011-08-24T22:00:00.001-04:00

Back up in it to win it, if by winning it I mean watching fucking grown men pretend to make a sport out of bludgeoning each other with "hammerfists" as the commentator dude has been saying a lot. There's that report that one hour of TV watching takes 22 minutes off your life. I guess that means by the end of this thing, if I complete it, I will have shaved like a third of a day off the end of my life. Suck city...
#95: SEAN SHERK vs. TYSON GRIFFIN - I remember reading about Sean Sherk somewhere, so I guess he did something notable at some point. The Tyson Griffin dude looks like he'd be part of the extended Bruce Jenner family and part of that whole Spencer/Heidi/Kardashian/Lohan Illuminati cult of reality celebrities thing that's sprung into our collective brains like idiot wildfire in the past decade. Because of that, I automatically am rooting for Sean Sherk, also because his name sounds like some sort of result of an island of Dr. Moreau style experiment. Fuck though, Sherk has worse tribal tattoos, though not much, so I guess he's going to lose. Wait, no Tyson Griffin has something huge on his right shoulder, so let me see what that is. I think it might be... yeah, it looks like some oversized gargoyle dragon thing, which is some next level tribalism tattooing, but still pretty bad. That means Sherk will win.
Sherk Dog bleeding from the nose, but dominating the dominance thus far. I wonder if there's a famous juggalo ultimate fighter yet? I wish there was. Or at least ultimate mushrooms fights at a juggalo function, preferably under black lights.
End of first round, and the old black Cut Man who looks like a more physically fit Grady from Sanford & Son is doing his thing.
Second round has Griffin getting a little cocky, waving his arms, waving in some action, but then like a minute later he's all wore out and breathing heavy. Basically, they're just punching at each other. Griffin looks slightly ethnic as well, and no ethnically non-total white dude has lost thus far in my watching, except Royce Gracie, who is outright foreigner. So being Tyson Griffin looks Americanized non-white, perhaps that trumps his bad tribalish tattoo shortcomings. We will see in this third round. This is basically a really good kickboxing match, as they've hardly gone to that guard/ground shit. Your center of the ring major sponsor is Bud Light for this match. I've meant to note that at times but always forget. HA! The announcer douchebag just said, "This is like a kickboxing bout now." I am ahead of the curve already. There's only a minute left so something crazy must happen because this shit is unnotable right about now. Like a last second knockout or something? Nope, nothing. Winner by judges decision, and Sherk wins, even though Griffin had more pizazz, everyone recognized his tattoos.
#94: DIN THOMAS vs. B.J. PENN - We have a black guy against another of those ethnically questionable dudes who look sort of Hawaiian but maybe Brazilian but maybe Latino but probably from like Toronto for whatever reason. Din Thomas - the black guy - was on one of the Ultimate Fighter shows I watched. he seemed like a likeable enough guy, at least compared to everybody else. Penn is a jiu-jitsu specialist though, which is generally considered the most honorable of fighting art styles worldwide. Being his trunks said "www.BJPENN.com" I thought I would go look at it to see if still exists. It does, and some dude Chael Sonnen, who I think is a real estate con artist and fighter, has a Facebook group set up for Brazilians who want to lynch him when he comes to Brazil later this year. Nice. And then the black dude got wobbled by a kick then eye-rolled by a punch. Game over.
#93: THIAGO ALVES vs. CHRIS LYTLE - I'm sort of starting to zone out on this shit. Think I might've hit my daily recommended intake. Alves is a Brazilian or Hawaiian or something, and Lytle looks like a skinhead. Some sort of cran-razz energy drink is the center ring sponsor for this fight. Lytle is a former firefighter the announcer just said, which means he is probably a skinhead, although his ass ad on his fighting trunks says serious pimp dotcom. I'm gonna check that out now... It exists, they have declared Snoop Dogg President, and you can buy Dogg Pound sunglasses, as well as a Bishop Don Magic Juan lime green sunglasses/bandanna combo. Looks like basically it's a sunglasses hut, but online, and for people who think they can buy their way into pimping. They have a blog too so I'm gonna read that while I don't pay attention to this fight. There's something called a "digital painting" which looks to me like somebody just shared every step of a photoshopping process, and some skinny ass Euro dude getting the serious pimp logo tatted on his arm. Yeah, that's a good move, literally branding yourself, like literally.
Oh shit, I looked up at the end of the first round horn and the skinhead firefighter dude's eye is all busted open and bloody. And on the blog it says, "Serious Pimp is Serious about Protecting its Intellectual Property Rights" and they are apparently patenting their OG Bandanna style sunglasses. Like, hell yeah, bros; shoulda done been done that. I am assuming Brazil beats Skinhead usually in ultimate fighting, but I guess I'll wait for visual verification. Man, I'm bored with this shit but I'm gonna make myself get through #91 before I quit tonight. Maybe.
Aww... they're hugging along the fence right now. It's really sweet. The Brazilian dude is doing that thing they do where he kicks you in the thigh all the time so that the skinhead guy is kinda gimpy and limping. Eventually he's just going to fall over like a tree, although we just ended the second round. But his one leg is not working as well as his other, very obviously even by his casual walk to the corner, although I guess technically an octagon doesn't have a corner.
And then suddenly and anti-climactically the ringside Dr. Nick stopped the fight during the break because of the skinhead dude's cut. It's really weird to think of these guys getting cuts from the pressure of punches squeezing flesh too suddenly that it rips. Shit wasn't even bleeding that much, so the crowd is chanting "Bullshit! Bullshit!" but they are probably skinheads too and all racist drunks who would be soccer fans if they weren't born in America.
I think in their honor hug at the end, they almost kissed. And Alves says, "It was beautiful... I was having fun... He was having fun," in a soft and sweet voice from the back alleys - pun intended - of Brazil. They are interviewing the skinhead firefighter guy now, and he sounds like a New Jersey guy with a southern accent, but from New Jersey, and he's playing up to the racist drunkard crowd.
#92: B.J. PENN vs. MATT SERRA - Serra is this little hilarious midget fighter guy who was my favorite from the Ultimate Fighters I watched when I was watching that. His involvement actually caused me to give it about half a season longer than I would've otherwise. Penn is native Hawaiian, which is always an untrustable mix of Polynesian and colonial blood, with a little mix of Hindi from Fiji probably hiding in there as well. Such a tough tribal group of peoples down in Polynesia, and now all that Fukushima radiation just fucking them. There's that one island where the sea level has noticeably raised in the past ten years already from global warming, and now they're probably getting radioactive rain. Not to mention nuclear testing and the trash swirls of the Pacific and America dumping their electronic trash out there on those islands... guys like B.J. Penn should be forming a cyborg army of island warriors to overthrow the government, not human cockfighting for the attention of a women with fake breasts. Where are our priorities?
I've paid attention to very little of this. Was this on TV all at once, like a marathon? Because I couldn't imagine just sitting around and watching this whole thing for like a whole day. There's just not enough distinguishable type of activities to make this as exciting in a full-on overload like say, NFL Films, or even retro baseball games or something. I think that's ultimately will stifle Dana White's dreams that this will be the number one sport in the world, that it's just not diverse enough in what goes on to keep people's attention. And if you really want to get skeeved out, go googling around for MMA websites and look at the people writing or commenting about this shit. Not exactly the cream of the societal crop, though they analyze things and perpetrate real sports journalism with their dumb shit.
Matt Serra is a little pit bull of a human being, and they are going to their third round. Apparently, according to the announcers, probably each dude one a round each, so this will decide things. THE NEXT FOUR MINUTES WILL DECIDE THE 92ND MOST BESTEST ULTIMATE FIGHTING FIGHT EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE SPORT UP TO THE POINT THEY DID THIS LIST! I CAN BARELY CONTAIN MY EXCITEMENT! I THINK I'M GOING TO GET A GLASS OF COW MILK! (We call milk "cow milk" because our youngest loved nursing, and it was always called "mama's milk" so the other shit was called cow milk. So to this day, when she wants some milk, she's like, "Daddy... can I have some cow milk?" It's really funny when we are at the store and she's all like, "Let's get some cow milk! Can we get some cow milk?" Similar to when our oldest was about three and I was teaching her about animals, and told her that humans were an animal as we were counting animals on the way home from town one day. Like three days later, we're at the soccer field for music in the park or something in Scottsville, and some little kid is hassling our daughter, and she comes over to me while I'm talking to a couple we just met and goes, "Daddy, that human girl over there is not being nice." It was awesome. I just acted nonchalant like I was from Witch Mountain.
Oh yeah, the fight... There's like a minute left and nobody has died or gotten piledrived. Matt Serra should throw a fireball at the other dude, or break him through a flaming table. But they don't. And B.J. Penn gives a very creepy, leaning in honor hug. Such honorable, questionably gay combatants. B.J. Penn wins, and the racist, drunkard crowd boos because they wanted the little white dude from New England to win.
#91: KEN SHAMROCK vs. RICH FRANKLIN - Shamrock is a delirious crazy man from the beginning of the UFC, from back in the very beginning. Rich Franklin is a newer school bad ass dude, very smart (considering he gets punched in the brain). But it's also the end of five matches, much like the Gracie/Matt Hughes fight from #96... thus I figure Rich Franklin will win this easily. Shamrock was already delirious from years of wrestling, and he's babbling about some bullshit in the pre-fight hype clips. And the announcers are hyping up how this would be, by far, the biggest win for the former high school math teacher Rich Franklin. So fixed. More of Dana White exorcising the auras of the originators. I think the real question in my mind is whether this even lasts one round. And I vaguely think I saw this on one of the Ultimate Fighter finales, because I remember those ugly ass camo shorts Rich Franklin is wearing.
Some sort of supplement is your center of the ring advertiser. I've been drinking smoothies/protein shakes lately, full of different herbs to hype me up, although I've been wanting for my goddamned eleuthero powder for like two weeks from the herb people, which used to be called Siberian ginseng, but then American ginseng of the panax variety got it so you couldn't call Siberian ginseng an actual ginseng. Shit is complicated. I've been experimenting with protein powders too, trying to avoid soy because soy is such an unhealthy protein, and the plant is the most genetically modified plant there is, and plus it's full of plant estrogen, which is why some vegetarian men are so effeminate. I also use frozen bananas, which my wife hates, but the bananas/blueberries with the herbs and yogurt and green tea and coconut oil, that shit is the goodness. Still though, I want my goddamn eleuthero to hopefully start hyping me up since I don't drink the evil coffee false stimulant anymore.
So yeah, Rich Franklin won by punching holmes out in the first round. Not a very good fight at all, more included for historical purposes it seems, though like I said, there seems to be a setting up of storylines, ending with every five matches. There's still two more fights on this first DVD, but I'm tapped out for the night, which does not mean I'm going to wear a t-shirt that looks like a retarded piece of lightning got stuck in a screenprint, but it means I'm going to go to bed. My ol' lady and oldest are at an herbal conference, and the toddler already woke up, so she's in our bed, and whenever I go lay in there with her, she cuddles up right next to me, and it makes me feel like a solid dude. For all my faults, all my failures, all my wrong turns and dead ends still to follow, the way my kids love on me, I know I'm solid. More solid than a goddamned warped focus "ultimate" fighter. Fuck you Dana White, and your scrawny assed ring girls, pretending to be sexy but looking like they got 9-year-old boy asses, while men wearing just as little pummel each other then give honor hugs. The whole thing seems like an elaborate plot to take the emotional love felt between a man and a women and pervert it. Once you do that, to the world, there's no more children like my toddler, and there's no more cuddling up with love in a big ass bed that needs a new mattress because it's hard on my back but I sleep towards the middle for the most part and who the fuck can afford a new mattress anyways? You pervert that, and we don't make little kids to be the true warriors. It's like I was saying about B.J. Penn and his islander heritage... where's your fucking priorities? There's a war for our future being fought, inside our minds, and we don't even care. This shit is massive distraction and also making dudes thinking the wrong things are warrior mentality. It's not like the decline of the Roman civilization, though I wasn't there so maybe it's exactly like that and the bad thing about the Coliseum fights and gladiators and all was not the brutality but how it was a cultural plot to desensitize the Roman people to being grounded in reality, so that they cave din on themselves. And actually when I think about it like that, I guess it's great people like the UFC, because I'd like society to cave in on itself. Fuck this world. It's a scam and a scheme and a sham and needs to be wiped clean so we can start over. Or start something else. Or whatever. I'm going to bed to cuddle with my toddler and dream apocalyptic dreams about the most wonderful and beautiful end times you could ever imagine. And when we wake up tomorrow, I'm going to go out to the chicken coop and get some eggs and make us some omelettes and tell the two young ones about this wonderful Apocalypse, and how we all have our calling, our destiny in life. And that they need to listen to their souls, go out in the yard and find their sit-spot and let the cyberwaves calm down in their mind and focus internally and let it all go quiet until they can hear themselves, deep down inside there, behind the intestinal walls, underneath the heart, and listen for their calling, because they are warriors. vikings of right in a world gone wrong.

b a t t z

2011-08-24T20:00:00.001-04:00

if it ain't got two hundred
thousand miles, it can't be mine;
busted up, pieced together

c o p a e

2011-08-24T08:00:00.001-04:00

snakeskin textures dangling from
a deadwood pedestal - the
silly man stands there, gawking

Ultimate 100: 100 thru 96

2011-08-23T22:00:00.001-04:00

So here we go with Ultimate Dork-a-thon 2011...
#100: PAUL TAYLOR vs. PAUL KELLY - I do not know anything about either of these guys but they are both Brits, which I don't like to hear. What kind of Americanized racialism is that? Are they English, or Welsh, or Irish, or Scots, or what? Fucking Great Britain, evil colonial overlords of white people for a century now. I do like when weight is calculated in stones though. I weigh just under 16 1/2 stones myself, trying to get down to around 15 stones or so. The referee is that black guy. One thing I hate is UFC ring card girls who wear those ass-hugging go-go shorts, but have no ass. I can't figure out which is which yet, but the Limey Paul in yellow trunks has a distinct bad tribal tattoo advantage. Oh, Taylor is the yellow trunks guy. they are hugging each other against the cage now, trying to knee at each other. The Kelly Limey dude has an unfinished tattoo on his back which seriously is some new school font lettering that looks like it might be a website or shoot 'em up video game title or something. Why the fuck would you get something like that? I've actually been contemplating my back tattoo lately, as soon as I can find somebody cheap enough but halfway decent to do what I want to do, which involves a road map, cartoon crows leaning on a fence, and big garish letters that say SOUTHERN BY BIRTH RAVEN BY THE GRACE OF GOD. I figure if I'm going to blemish myself in such a grandiose way, might as well go huge with it, you know? You only get one body to defile.
The stupid back tattoo is also on the dude's fighting trunks, and has fang letters at each end, so I guess it's his fighting school or some shit. There is something to be said for outlaw biker gangs, who have a long enough history to weed chump asses out, so that some dumbass isn't on national TV fighting some other dude in a pseudo-homoerotic way with an unfinished MONGOLS MC tattoo or something on his back. You have to have a method for earning shit like that. The yellow pants dude has his nose all busted up and bloody, and I think as they sat there for a second, I realized the stupid back tattoo says WOLFSLAND maybe. The announcers are talking about how the first 30 seconds of this (we are in between round chill time) was maybe the best most furious action they'd ever seen. I must've missed it. I hate fucking things you are supposed to study up to understand what's great about it, especially when it's just two fucking limey fuckers with bad tattoos pummeling each other.
"Now, let's see what Taylor can do from top position..." There is just so much homoeroticism in ultimate fighting, it's really hard to ignore. It basically comes across as gay dudes too pumped up on testosterone to admit they are gay, so they gay bash each other in anger, but then after everybody is beaten up and somebody is the victor, they give each other an honorable hug, like, "Thanks bro, thanks for us beating each other from being gay, let's hug in the most manly of ways now that we have exorcised our homosexuality for the time being. Let's go get some protein shakes."
I should warn you, this is looking like it could easily degenerate into me just talking shit about how stupid fucking ultimate fighting is, even though it's supposed to be the HIPPEST HOTTEST MOST EXCITING SPORT for the all-important young dude demographic. I guess I am not a young dude, but I am also not a fucking sports nerd who thinks baseball with it's numbers and history is superior. I really dig the wacky sub-culture of professional boxing - the weird homemade concoctions famous cut men use, strange trainers who are like horse whisperers for the underprivileged who still look to box. I don't think UFC is really at that level as a culture, although there's far more MMA academies on this world now than boxing gyms, mostly because people understand the long-term effects of being pugilized into dementia.
Yellow pants dude's forehead got elbowed open and he bled all over the place, like a Puerto Rican wrestling match, and in between rounds, CUT MAN is in the house, with his gloves thick with homemade concoction, probably vaseline and yarrow root and weird other shit that he learned from a voodoo lady forty years ago.
Ahh, they start their third round with a respectful, "I'm not gay" hug and then go back to beating on each other. Doomfang tattoo guy is opening up the bloody forehead again, and there's four minutes until the round ends, which means there's a lot of time for this dude to bleed out.
I don't know, having got my ass kicked and bloodied up on a number of occasions, I'm kinda hoping this bloody yellow trunks dude can tough it out and do something, just because I always wished I could recover from the bloody beatdown, and never did physically during a fight, though usually a couple xanax and five beers made me feel like I could destroy the world again. Actually, I never got the shit talk kicked out of me, no matter how hard the shit got kicked out of me. It's a genetic thing I got from my father.
The final bell, and a loving hug between the dudes, battered and sweaty and bloody, and now they wait for the judges' verdict that the non-yellow pants dude won. One thing I will say though is that British dudes just look more natural all swollen faced and crazy from fistfighting. Our American gene pool is too watered around, or we try to hard to be pretty or something.
#99: PAT MILETICH vs. CARLOS NEWTON - Look, I don't pretend to know anything or everything about ultimate fighting, but I know of these dudes. Pat Miletich is a famous fucker for being a monster submission freak artists who trains motherfuckers in the rurals of Iowa in his fighting styles. Carlos Newton is a Canadian mulatto with a sweet voice who seems like he might run a health food store with his beard wife who's name means something in Nubian. Miletich just looks like an angry cop. Newton is really gay looking, and Miletich is a fucking Croatian Drago brutarian, getting elbow blows to the brain when backing off of normal lock-ups.
This is kind of boring. Somebody should do the Macho Man elbowdrop off the cage or something. It kind of sucks that wrestling got so cartoonish and stupid that ultimate fighting could be seen as awesome. They should have a blood-crazed jungle African ultimate fighter with only one name, or somebody sponsored by Mexican drug lords, or something. Fuck this vanilla, "We're going to be in the Olympics in 20 years" bullshit. Round 1 is over, and I should note that Miletich has the corny tribal tattoo advantage, which judging from the last fight, I am going to use as a criteria for not winning. Probably the longer you've been fighting ultimately, the more money you make, the more time you have to adorn your body with stupider but more intricate tribal designs. Carlos Newton doesn't look like he even has a tattoo, but he's pretty cut muscularly, head-to-toe, and like I said, looks pretty gay, which in athletic dudes can be confusing because often times they are just in love with themselves, not guys in general. He has that aura, meaning he's self-gay, and probably wouldn't blemish himself with a tattoo because he would see it in the mirror at night and be sad with himself.
The guard position is really just too much to really enjoy. Maybe I'm afraid of going gay myself or something, but I just am not comfortable with this being what happens for like four minutes in a row, with the end result being the dude on the bottom doesn't give up so the dude on top tries to sit up enough to punch him into submission. It's very caveman gay. I do not mind people being gay, but I would hope we're at a point where we can lovingly be gay with ourselves, not beating each other into sexual submission. Round 2 is over, and apparently this thing could go five rounds. Good lord, I hope not.
Cop guy poked Canadian mulatto in the eyeball, so we had a stoppage of action there briefly. But then while I wasn't looking the Canadian Mulatto grabbed the cop guy's head and chocked him out, and won, and then laid on the ground crying in delirious happies. My tribal tattoo reverse awesomeness decision-making is 2-0 so far. I'm gonna take this shit to Vegas if it keeps up.
Haha, Carlos Newton's nickname is "The Roman". And now he's screaming like a mongoloid baby freaking out on mushrooms he found in the wild as they strap the belt on him.
#98: KENNY FLORIAN vs. JOE LAUZON - I remember the Florian dude from one of the Ultimate Fighter seasons I watched. He was like the guy who seemed cool simply because he was kinda quiet and everybody else was obviously a dumbass, kind of like in The Three Stooges when they say, "Volunteers step forward," and everybody steps backwards except for the stooges. That's how Kenny Florian was tolerable. Joe Lauzon I do not know but he has the most godawful cauliflower ears on a little peapod head I've ever seen. If you don't know, cauliflower ears are what boxers/wrestlers/fighters get when their ears have been busted up in fighting and develop swollen scar tissue kind of, so that instead of a well-defined ear like normal human beings, they just have these tissuey lumps on the side of their heads that looks malformed chunks of bagel dough.
I thought when you measured yourself from fingertip to fingertip holding your arms out sideways, that was supposed to be equal to how tall you were. How do fuckers the same height have reach advantages? I mean, I know there's freakish variations from the norm and all, but that doesn't make sense, at least not according to Mr. Pryzbelewski from season four of The Wire.
Cauliflower kid had the Florian dude on the ground, and then Florian dude just started driving elbows into his the cauliflower dude's shaved skull, and really he's just fucking this dude up. This is more of my style of fight, just brutality and ugly people, no fake sport super-training retard chess bullshit. Florian looks like a roofer and Cauliflower Kid would look like a normal goober redneck kid except for those ears which sort of give away he's into some bizarre nonsense, and make him look even more goober-ish, like his mom is his aunt or some shit. First round ends, and that was actually pretty fucking exciting brutality, which says something about ultimate fighting. Tactical nonsensery is bullshit; just pummel bros, just pummel. They should have three-way fights. Or battle royals.
The Cauliflower Kid is tough because he taking some fucking 'bows to the brain; no wonder he's got them puff ears. And then basically Florian just gets on top of the Cauliflower Kid and keeps beating him in the face until they finally stop it. A combination of one dude beating the fuck out of the other in very bar-friendly manner, and the one dude looking like a goober asshole getting beat up make it the best fight thus far. Did not see noticeable tribal tattoos on either guy, so not sure if my gambling system was broken or not.
#97: RASHAD EVANS vs. SEAN SALMON - Evans is one of the UFC dudes who I do not find annoying as fuck. He seems like a chill ass bro who just beats on people for a living, which if I were given the chance and had the physical attributes, I'd probably do that shit too. I do not know Sean Salmon but he looks like he'd be Joey Buttafucco's younger cousin or something, but kind of retarded in a "my mom used to sniff airplane glue back in the days while she was pregnant" type of way. So I am obviously already rooting for Rashad Evans. It's very nice not knowing who won these matches. Also Evans is from Michigan (Michigan State University) and Salmon is from Ohio State University, so there's a natural collegiate rivalry here. Salmon has worse tattoos so he will probably lose.
Haha, Salmon is like this pudgy dude and he just did a jumping double kick thing at the beginning, looking like a community college performance of Karate Kid. Shit was funny. Evans is a fast motherfucker. And we're like two minutes into the first round and the Salmon dude is already breathing heavy. The announcers are talking up the MSU/OSU rivalry as they both wrestled in college. Man, I bet the Big Ten wrestling championships is some crazy shit to go see live. I may look into that, all those midwestern motherfuckers who still live and breath amateur wrestling, which has only gotten more popular I'm sure as guys know they can parlay that into ultimate fighting.
One of the sponsors with their logo on the ring apron is Mickey's Malt Liquor, I notice as the first round ends. That sounds about right. I imagine both are very popular with the skinheads that used to kick my ass in Richmond until I lived in the same building as one of them and we drank Mickey's together on the stoop enough times that the one crazy guy stopped fucking with me, at least within a couple of blocks of my house. That crazy skinhead fucker went to jail for emptying a 9mm in a party, and I doubt from my interactions - both friendly and afeared of - with that dude that jail really did anything but accentuate his hatefulness.
Oh shit! Salmon got knocked the fuck out with a kick upside the face. I mean like out. It's a minute later and the dude is still laid sideways with his eyes closed and feet curled. That's the type of shit that'll get it shut down, the head crash to the canvas after the knockout, two punches before the baldheaded ref can stop the fight, that's some dangerous shit for the brain. Pudgy Salmon wasn't even able to do the gay honor hug thing during the announcement of the winner.
#96: ROYCE GRACIE vs. MATT HUGHES - Oh shit, Gracie is like the creator of this ultimate fighting style brought to America, and dominated the early UFCs, which were always my favorite, when they had the one-night tournament. Matt Hughes is a crazy assed little Napoleonic wrestling insaniac who is really hard not to love, even if he does talk shit, because he's like your little volunteer firefighter friend who talks shit about everything, but you don't care because you know he's a chill dude when it's crunch time, and he'd lift a car off a baby if he had to. The pre-fight clips are hyping up Gracie as the history of the sport and Hughes being like, "Yo, this is the new history." I am sure this is a famous match, and I may even know from somewhere that Hughes won, but Royce Gracie is Royce Gracie. His family created this shit. That big goofy goomba white dude who yells "LET'S GET IT ON!" is your referee. So yes, let's get it on.
It is always weird to see Royce Gracie not wearing a karate gi, but they outlawed that shit years ago. When gis are outlawed, then only outlaws wear a gi. They are on the ground, the Gracie homeland, but Hughes is not afraid, and has the camouflage on part of his fighting trunks to prove it.
Matt Hughes has Gracie's arm bent backwards, and yet Royce is just laying there chilling, like he's thinking about what to do next. The dude is like, "whatever," with his arm bent backwards at the elbow, and no give up. I always wish a sports dude could be like that, where he hits a home run every time or some weird amazing shit that just can't be stopped, and everybody is "what the fuck?" but nobody can explain it, and then one day the dude just disappears to retirement in southeast Asia or something. Hughes got on his back and just started punching Gracie in the head, and goomba ref stopped it. Gracie's old ass dad is sitting ringside, and I'm sure this was all some sort of stage event to eliminate the Gracie influence from the Zuffa corporation's ownership of UFC. It's all some sketchy ass WWE/Illuminati/Godfather shit.
Hey look, there's Dana White's penishead looking self in the ring gladhanding it up with Matt Hughes, probably because he knows he no longer owes the Gracies tithes anymore. Fucking fixed ass shit. Kind of fitting I do it five match blocks because this is a good spot to stop. None of these dudes have cracked my top 5 all-time most awesome MMAers list yet, which I'll share with you at the end of each five-match review. #1: Oleg Taktarov - insane Russian guy who I think is actually KGB and running drugs in Africa now; #2: Tank Abbott - for obvious reason; #3: Cabbage Correira - because his head defies neuroscience; #4: I don't know, I can't really think of five right now, like I can think of a bunch of other dudes but nobody I really want to put my name behind as endorsing. Let's just let it ride and I'll think about it until I watch some more of this.
SEE YOU NEXT TIME FANS OF READING DUMB SHIT ABOUT FIGHTS YOU'RE NOT EVEN WATCHING!

r r s a m

2011-08-23T20:00:00.002-04:00

once road a railroad home from
north georgia, singing this one
jim croce song, loud as fuck

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #5: "Pancho & Lefty" by Townes Van Zandt

2011-08-23T12:00:00.003-04:00

I wrestle a lot with Townes Van Zandt, not meaning I wrestle with whether he's awesome or not, like you have to do with most alt.country superheroes, because the genre is sort of misled into thinking it is somewhere between T.S. Eliot and Willie Nelson, so there's a lot of academic fluff that gets passed off as greatness. Townes, I have found, sounds better and more interesting when he's less polished, which ultimately is why alternative country was supposed to exist, because Nashville is a hyper-demon beast that polishes everything beyond recognition, fills it full of audio monosodium glutamate, and unleashes it on a cartel of country pop stations nationwide, brainwashing people into thinking things like "Toby Keith is cool" or "I love big pick-up trucks that I don't do anything with other than consume energy" or "fuck anywhere but here". It's just one of those things. But if you look at the Heartworn Highways movie (which I think this came from if I remember correctly), there's Townes playing "Waitin' Around to Die" in some old black dude's kitchen, and it's pretty goddamned cool, which is not to say Townes Van Zandt is pretty goddamned cool, because I'm not so sure.
I actually wrestle with Townes Van Zandt a lot in my dreams, like regularly. For whatever reason, I have a recurring dream thing where Townes Van Zandt has a wrestling promotion, and I am always fighting him in a prominent match in front of a giant crowd full of hipster alt.country PBR-drinkers, in a warehouse somewhere. Townes is himself, and very popular. I wear a red mask just like the custom one made for me by Sexy Sadie and the Wild Irish Rosie down in Alabama (look for Sexy Sadie's Spandex on ebay... they are your hook-up, and very good street peoples of mine), and I am managed by Sly Stone, who is wearing a full-on hillbilly Nudie suit, as I saw on a classic Soul Train a few months back that Nudie made all of Sly's outfits back in the day, but Sly talks with a stereotypical hillbilly accent the whole time, hollering at people about, "Fuck you you white devil piece of shit, fake ass poor folks, from your sheltered cul-de-sac upbringings. I did coke off your mom's ass back in the day." And it's funny because the crowd kind of wants to like Sly Stone, because you know, they are hipsters and like anything that is stylishly crazy. But Sly is so good at plucking their nerves, as a whole as well as picking on individuals, that they end up just absolutely hating him, and thus me. My job is basically to just bludgeon Townes Van Zandt, who demands I don't pull my punches, even though it is wrestling, and he lets me cut him with our little scrap of razor blade rather than him cutting himself. I get the sense he has some sort of self-hatred thing going on, even when dead and in my dreams running a wrestling organization. Usually he's all like, "Make it deep," when I'm about to cut him, and I do sort of, but trying to be really careful, but then I'm stalking around, trying to work the crowd, and I see the windows are dark in the warehouse we're wrestling in, and I get freaked out thinking it might be like New York City outside, which sucks because I am a country boy.
Oh yeah, I never get named in the introductions, just referred to as "One Thousand Aliases" most of the time, though Sly calls me all sorts of gibberish names, and sometimes he'll be like, "Come on Bodhi Sattva Mr. Allah Bama Proclama Jamma!" at me and then turn to the crowd and say calmly, "That's alias number two hundred and nineteen."
But while I'm zoning out worrying about whether we're in New York City or not, I usually get sloppy and start dropping Townes Van Zandt on his head or shoulder in bad ways, and he never stops though, just all disabled and broken, keeps pretending like he's going to come back and beat me, to make the fans stoked, like a Hulk Hogan match from 1985. Usually I shift in the dream though and never see the actual ending, and we are back in the locker room, and Townes is cleaning up, and most of the time Elvis Presley is back there, getting ready for his match, by putting on a black version of his shiny suit, and putting full-on blackface on. He is a bad guy, and usually me and Townes are talking while Sly Stone is watching through the curtain, and "I'm All Shook Up" starts blaring and out strolls Elvis to ridiculous hatred and vitriol because the hipster alt.country crowd can't stand him. Sly is always laughing it up and being like, "Hahaha, motherfuckin' Elvis... that's my boy. We gonna get fucked up tonight." And Townes is talking to me about how good I did, and usually I realize everybody is a musician except me and I'm like, "Oh shit, why am I here? I don't make music." And Townes, still all smeared with his own blood and sweaty but drinking some sort of microbrew his hippie girlfriend makes him drink, says, "Raven, you know you've got them songs inside you man. Fuck those people out there. We both know they're assholes. You gotta sing them goddamned songs man." And at that point I'm all jostled by the conscious realization of what's happening in my dream, and wake up. It's normally about 8 minutes or so before I have to get up to the alarm and go to work, so I reset the alarm back about 7 minutes because it sucks to wake up before the alarm and not have at least 15 minutes to fall back asleep for. And then I get up, thinking about what dream Townes said after we were wrestling again, and how I need to let my songs out, but then I have to go to work, and work is a soul-crippling affair, and I think about song lyrics until about 11, planning on sneaking off for a break to write them down, but don't get a chance, and then by 2 or 3, I'm like, "I'll write out in the camper tonight, start putting these things on paper at least," but work just stifles and stifles and stifles, and by the time I get out of there at 5:00 or 5:30, the end hopes of my dreams have died already, and I need the few waking hours left after taking care of animals and shit around the compound just to convince myself to bother again with another tomorrow.
STEAL "Pancho & Lefty"
NEXT: a most played remnant from my daddy's record collection!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #6: "Alabama Highway" by Steve Young

2011-08-23T08:00:00.004-04:00

Here it is almost the end of August and I'm still working through my June Krupert catalog... Not much love for the cyberbot machine I guess. Not enough real shit on here, or in life anymore, or anywhere really. The big holiday of the year in my little town is the 4th of July and they do a fireman's parade which scars all the little children with incessant fire truck and ambulance siren testing from every volunteer department within four counties, and the politicians glad hand their way through the sticks, which is us. And that night they have a big fireworks display, plus there's a flea market for like a whole week usually, which used to be a lot bigger but is still okay I guess. I don't think flea markets really work anymore because people just junk shit and go buy some new junk shit at Wal-Mart, which kinda of kills the need for a flea market. I mean if your house fan was a giant metal thing that looked like it powered planes back in the '30s, yeah, you might go get a new one of those at the flea market. But now you just get you a new $10 box fan at the Wal-Mart (or Dollar General if you shop local where I live), and get on with your slow sweat.
What always strikes me when the flea market is rolling up around the 4th of July is the type of people we see there - strange, wild people, with jailhouse tattoos and feral good-time looks about themselves and ragtag children wandering behind, wanting to go look at this or that. (Wow, I guess my family sort of fits that description too, which on one hand makes me proud but on the other hand makes me scared because I'm not sure what kind of future there is for people like us, which I'm about to get into, so let me close this parenthesis.) And the vendors are the same, selling military crap or old hot wheels or "water pipes" or whatever. It's really kinda beautiful, and over the years we've gotten many nice functional household things like cast iron frying pans and enamel plates plus nice decor like old herbal medicine bottles and one time I even bought a velvet Willie Nelson painting for a quarter.
I wonder where all these flea market people are the rest of the year though. It's like for that one holiday, they let out all the winter's bone people in our entire area, and they run the streets. Then a week later, it's back to normal shucking and jiving, Joe & Margie Nuclearfamily hustling down the road in their Volvo to their 1.5 jobs with their 2.3 children. The reason I wonder is because it's these crazy flea market people who are the future, if shit falls apart, or they'll continue to be the sheet rockers and backhoe operators and weekend prison population of America if things don't fall apart. But the whole move towards clean Wal-Mart plastic, which started twenty years ago or so, has led to alleged redneck types who look pretty clean and drive clean big trucks, with bed covers (what the fuck?) and shit like that. There's no grime anymore for a lot of people, and it's almost like that shit is encouraged, to always trade in your shine before it loses all its luster to get some new shine and never experience the solid soulfulness of hard-earned grime. This also affects people's lack of ability to fix their own anymore as well, as the encouragement to always replace junk with junk eliminated the desire to learn how to patch and repair and make due. And basically the biggest problem we'll all face during the impending financial collapse of the American Empire is our collective inability to make due. Though it's completely different from the "entitlements" that politicians jibber jabber about, we are all feeling a good amount of entitlement in our daily lives, about what we deserve to have, and how it should be better. Like how the fuck does anyone deserve a big ass flat screen? What kind of nonsense is that?
The survivor mentality is being polished away, being banished to jails and trained to be embarrassed of itself so it hides, and I guess only comes out around the 4th of July, drunk on freedom mythologies. And what struck me as most odd during this all juggling around my head around the 4th of July was the fireworks got cancelled because it rained too much, so in honoring the persistence of the patriots, it got pushed back a week until the ground wasn't so wet. So we came home early and I was flipping through channels on the television box, and there was a commercial for a stupid computer generated Smurfs movie. They ran through the characters I knew, like Papa Smurf and Smurfette and Jokey and Brainy and all, but Handy Smurf was gone. You know who was in his place though? A Scottish style smurf named Gutsy. This just kinda kicked around with all the other thinking on this I had been doing, and made perfect sense that pop culture would flip the script and replace a Handy do-it-yourself type with a Gutsy character, that probably fights Azrael-Qaeda and doesn't fix a fucking thing because he refinances the mushroom to upgrade his home electronics every other year. Well fuck you Gutsy Smurf. And fuck you social engineering.
STEAL "Alabama Highway"
NEXT: a dude named after a plurality of town!

w i n d f

2011-08-23T08:00:00.003-04:00

the beautiful urban blight -
a ghetto peacock perched inside
broken windowpane backdrop

Ultimate 100: Intro

2011-08-22T22:00:00.001-04:00

A while back I was trying to do some sort of DVD viewing/ranking/rating thing for the Ultimate Fighter TV show, like starting with the first year and moving on. I think I got to about the third or fourth season before I became completely disgusted with it, and not because of the tragic human cockfighting aspect or anything, because I'm all for human cockfighting. We're not good for much, so we might as well fight each other brutally for entertainment.
My problem ultimately with ultimate fighting is two-fold... First, the dudes who do it tend to be complete fucking tools, yet they don't know it, and they don't think they're tools but everybody else is. This is standard Las Vegas syndrome, which it only makes sense this shit is heavily tied to Vegas. That's one of the few places on earth a completely sheltered but thinking he's cool guy can wear stupidly designed shirts, take undetectable growth hormones, and get his "I'm a bad motherfucker" vibe on, without having to join the military, like most small town weightlifting losers do, so that they can end up in awesome places like Virginia Beach or Texas. Secondly - and most importantly - Dana White is about the most goddamned annoying fucking dumbass on earth. Seriously. He always acts like these guys have the opportunity of a lifetime by being exploited in his goddamn company. Any time somebody rocks the cool boat, they are outcast and exiled. Dude tweets, twats, and self-imports his way through life, thinking he's some goddamned Jesus of True Sport, making UFC the next big thing.
Doesn't help they signed a deal with Fox for four events a year, which could be great or could be crap. If they do it like WWF always did with their NBC events, and use it as a means to further hype overpriced pay-per-views, it's essentially a ridiculous corporate infomercial. If they can do some sort of mega-events on regular TV and try to actually be like the next football, I could see it making some ground until it gets big enough that politicians and NFL lobbyists work in cahoots to get it outlawed or put on after 10 pm or some bullshit. Dana White thinks he can just have people fight and that's all he's got to do. Plus, any time one of these punch drunk retards goes for self and does anything out of the appropriate lines of UFCdom, they get run off or reprimanded. He's basically already being Roger Goodell before they are at the NFL level, which is going to fuck him in the ass at some point.
Any ways, I did get the Ultimate 100 from the Netflixes, to watch the alleged top 100 ultimate fights (as determined whenever this shit was determined, and I guess I'll review/commentate/whatever the fuck it is I do to the matches, either in batches of five or batches of ten, depending on how wordy I am at the beginning. And let's be honest, most likely I won't even finish this thing, because I am an American, and we are fat and lazy and Mirko Cro Cop kicks us in the head when we aren't looking.

t a p a c

2011-08-22T20:00:00.002-04:00

if "maximum overdrive"
really happens, living near
a big farm is gonna suck

t r e z p

2011-08-22T08:00:00.001-04:00

my favorite trees are dead
ones - creepy, upright firewood
stacks, before axes and saws

Hype & Intentions

2011-08-22T07:00:00.001-04:00

What is going on? Had meant to do a plug for a couple things last Friday, but got sidetracked by life, and not really sure if I feel compelled to make time for things like this, but would like to pretend I'm trying to accomplish something by having a cyberhole to fill, so let's do it this way on a Monday morning...
First looking back, my man Neil and myself (along with the motley crew of associated contributors) are gearing up for the new NFL season as Armchair Linebacker. Me and Neil are doing team previews, starting with the bottom of the league, working our way up until kickoff the second week of September. You should check out the previews, and know that my NFL bullshit I usually do is just going to be there.
Also, my Rojonekku tumblr has sort of developed into something or other... I'm not sure, but I put a lot of my robot phone pictures up there, as well as other dumb shit. It is a thing, to be sure, but like all tumblrs, just a fucking distraction. But hey, look at you, staring into the cyberboob like you is. Maybe you'll like it.

As for intentions for this week, I am conjuring up/outlining/fleshing out/working on a six-pack of short stories, which I'd previously thought of submitting here or there, but I may do some wacky kickstarter thing to just publish them here instead. Fuck the way the world works, because the world is crooked.
I am also writing long-form poetry, for whatever reason, probably because I have enjoyed sitting by my pigs and rambling insanely in a scientific computational notebook lately in red ink. It makes me feel like Walt Whitman, though to be honest, I have no fucking idea how Walt Whitman wrote, or if he was crazy, or what.
Also, there is a zine in the works, which features some of the better nonsensical recent items from here along with some uninternetted nonsensical things. This zine will be a strictly in person type deal, set at a couple of places, but I am planning on doing some sort of kickstarter deal for that as well, and there will probably be a chance to get a copy through that mechanism of patronly cybertronning. I've been laying shit out on that one, and hope to have the first full issue close to done by next weekend, though my day job (which I have kept, thank you very much stereotypical critic) has promised to be a fucking blitzkrieg of soul-blocking lately, so who knows what will actually happen with that.
There has been a bump in comments on the blog lately, and I enjoy that. Not because it gives me any ego boost or anything but because shit man, I feel like this is an open space, or else I'd just carve all this jibber jabber into trees down by the creek. Feel free to have some ownership in it and jibber jabber back at me. I am inside the twitters as well, but that place is like four real people, 3 million sales pitches, and 400,000 propaganda programs being run by the government. But if you dabble in such pretend revolutions where the propaganda is the revolution because the greatest trick the devil ever pulled off was convincing you he didn't exist, then I am @rojonekku. Rojonekku is me everywhere. If you see a motherfucker with that shit, that means they are good people. If they are somehow co-opting it for nefarious means, then whatever man. I got cosmic karma and a fifty-foot aura, so when they diss Dre, they only diss themself.

d r t z z

2011-08-21T20:00:00.002-04:00

nothing but right turns except
the wheels go the wrong way through
dirt - controlled chaos, like life

i n j n d

2011-08-21T08:00:00.002-04:00

all day long, chains on my life -
stronger than most weak souls, but
wearing my warrior one down

c o p a h

2011-08-20T20:00:00.001-04:00

lotta snakes lurking inside
the tall grasses of my life;
I hold dull, cynical axe

t o w n d

2011-08-20T08:00:00.001-04:00

sometimes you chase the sunset;
sometimes you follow the grid
back-and-forth responsibly

r r b a a

2011-08-19T20:00:00.002-04:00

bremo bluff to hidden shores -
that's my power hike, soaking
up river aura, soul deep

g r f a y

2011-08-19T08:00:00.002-04:00

abandoned hotels litter
desolate stretches of road
replaced by smooth interstates

t o y z f

2011-08-18T20:00:00.001-04:00

"punch buggie purple" got smashed
with a hammer to show my
kids how I used to play "chips"

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #7: The Ballad Of Curtis Loew" by Lynyrd Skynyrd

2011-08-18T18:00:00.000-04:00

At one time in my life, I lived in a dilapidated trailer number seven in a magical trailer park run by a chill ass old dude along the edge of his tobacco farm. A trailer park is often looked down upon by the socio-economic types who proliferate the interwebs, as is a single solitary trailer, but there's something really stimulating psychologically when living inside of one, which I have done multiple times in my life. A trailer is a pretty bare-bones, so it's not too far from rustic camping at times, and true to this, our trailer had a busted doorknob, so we kept a butter knife hidden under a cinderblock outside the door to open the door with. It was our key. But the cramped confines of a trailer make your brain go in strange patterns, which is why I think so many people who live too long in trailers tend to have fairly wild personalities, which of course just reinforces the negative perception of trailers. But when you are cramped into a long, slender rowhouse of a home that you can feel shake when the wind blows too strong, that'll create in you the type of attitude that tends to holler loudly at full moons or large crowds and will make you think wearing shirts is not a requirement for public appearances. I understand this, because I am this.
Anyways, in this trailer, we tried to spruce it up, with nice shit like a Steve McQueen tapestry, leopard print fabric over most of our sitting furniture, and I think some sort of weird ass velvet painting. But the main piece of decor ended up being my roommate getting a fish tank. Fish tanks are a funny thing.
The hobbyist ownage of a fish tank is as close to being a stoner that a non-stoner person can be. In fact, you will find fish tank enthusiasts to really mirror the behavioral patterns of actual stoners, but without actually smoking reefer regularly, if at all. I mean, what do you do to enjoy a fish tank? You look at it, and watch the fish. Apparently, this has some sort of scientific therapeutic value, which is why everybody had those stupid fish tank screensavers briefly, or at least I think that was the justification. But there's no doubt sitting around watching little tiny neon fish pop around in some water will put you on chill mode, much like weed smoking, but without the weed. This is probably why a lot of professional athletes have ridiculous fish tanks, because they are drug tested but want to be high, so the do this instead. And there can be no one to deny it is a stoner-style mind that can ramble on and on about the fourteen different types of tetras floating around in his tank, with personality traits for each one, even if that person does not or has never smoked weed. It's still the same type of dude in the brain.
So in our decrepit little trailer's fish tank, we had a pair of really bright ass tetra that were named Curtis Loew and Kurtis Blow, because honestly you couldn't tell them apart, no matter how stoned you got, and that's a funny pair of names. If I ever had twin sons, that's what I would named them - Curtis Loew Stone Mack and Kurtis Blow Nation Mack. But I never had twin sons, though I tried many many times. Zygotes are hard to train with internal thought processes.
So Curtis Loew and Kurtis Blow were pretty chill, and we had those slave scrub fish that never get names because they are basically just weird little wretched of the fish world fish that just suck the scum off the edges and you ignore because they look like shit eels or something. And we added a couple other small bright fish I think. But then we got a channel cat, for whatever reason, probably because they looked gangsta as fuck, and if you are going to have a fish tank and look at it instead of getting stoned, you will eventually want something gangsta as fuck in there. This is also why professional athletes end up having shark tanks. It's all a very logical progression.
The channel cat we got was a dick though, and started eating everything, but not like whole. He'd just kill them and leave them floating as a warning to the others, which I guess was gangsta as fuck. Eventually I came home from work one day and there was either Curtis Loew or Kurtis Blow laying there sideways at the top of the tank, both his eyeballs gone, and the other one hiding in the little castle that had a Lexus Hot Wheels parked out front (which I still have, and my kids play with, oddly enough), and the channel cat just lurking along the bottom of the tank. Next thing you know, Kurtis Blow or Curtis Loew or whichever one was the other one was dead a few days later, and nothing was left - no scrubs no tetras no nothing, but the goddamned channel cat.
So we figured it was survivalism, and put a second channel cat in there to keep each other company. Except the first channel cat was more gangsta than the second and killed him too. I did not get to see this happen, or else perhaps we would have encouraged fish fights as a gambling activity while we drank Private Stocks on our leopard print covered furniture, but it sort of was the final straw with that channel cat. He was too gangsta for this earth, at least the little part of the earth that was a 10-gallon fish tank in trailer number seven of Lindy Hamlet's trailer park. So I took an empty coffee can and scooped out the channel cat, and then flushed him down the toilet, to give him a fighting chance.
I often imagine that channel cat grew to be 100 pounds, and is still alive (because catfish can live for upwards of 40-some years) and he's lurking in a river bed somewhere in southside Virginia to this day, fucking up everything in sight. And he probably acts this way because he spent so much of his formative fish years living in a trailer. That's just how things work in life.
STEAL "The Ballad Of Curtis Loew"
NEXT: another awesome song no one's ever heard from Heartworn Highways!

d o o r b

2011-08-18T08:00:00.002-04:00

beyond the screen door is our
collective cultivated
wild; then further, the damned world

MNZ: The Atlantic Monthly - September 2011

2011-08-18T00:11:00.002-04:00

The cover of this here Atlantic monthly says in big bold letters CAN THE MIDDLE CLASS BE SAVED? with your stereotypical nuclear family floating on a lifeboat in the middle of rough waters. Okay.
Then you turn the page and it's a two-page ad for the all-new 2012 M-Class Mercedes-Benz, pushing the family vibe because every normal middle class family drives an overpriced German trophy vehicle that guzzles premium gas. Gotcha.
Flip two more pages and it's a two-page ad for Conrad Hotels, where some young douchebag white couple (meaning rich douchebags, not Jersey Shore douchebags) are sharing some food on a plate with chopsticks at some wacky Asian street market where some old lady is chopping fish on a wood block right beside them. The couple looks about 23. Seriously. But they are experiencing the world! And apparently Conrad Hotels and Resorts lets you do this, but while having "the luxury of being yourself". Which means this shit is demographically targeting something way further than what I think is middle class. Which means the fact I consider myself "middle class" is probably a mistake, which my yearly consultation with tax returns and poverty lines and the Earned Income Credit usually proves to be true. (I have lived in poverty, meaning below the governmental poverty line, most of my life, probably all but maybe three or four years. I will probably be above it this year, although I fear I may lose my job at any point to be honest, which will shoot that all to hell. But fuck it man, we survive.)
So automatically, before I even get to the table of contents, I'm all like, "Fuck you Atlantic Monthly, with your pretentious bullshit." And I was gonna make that be my review of this magazine, short and hateful and done. Audi 5000. See yall next time.
Except I read this one column in this thing by some dude named Rob Jackson called Replacement Therapy, where Mr. Jackson is hoping his Ipod dies so he can get a new one, because he wants all the new dope ass features. So this leads him into this long thing about how companies used to jive people by making products that broke quickly enough to need replacing without upsetting the customer, where they actually tested that theory out, or a simple tailfin change or something was supposed to make a car look completely different. Jackson lays all this out like it was this big scam corporations did to milk the most out of the consuming ass public, and it has sort of a negative feel to it, which it should. Corporations have failed America, and failed capitalism. We should all be slitting the throats of CEOs, not tweeting about reality television.
But then Rob Jackson goes on to explain how this new-fangled desire to have a new product even though the old one still works is the result of superior technology, and what great strides are being made. It's worth it, he's suggesting. You are getting something way better, because what may seem like a subtle new electronic tailfin is actually like the Best Shit Evar, or so he thinks.
The thing is, he's full of shit. It's just more junk, and I would imagine Apple has that shit charted out for years. Whatever you bought just now from them, they've already got the better version ready to launch in four seasons. To, you know, exploit your consumption predilections. Nothing's changed at all. Motherfuckers are still getting fleeced, and getting something that is the Best Shit Evar until the next Best Shit Evar comes out next marketing cycle.
Why this bothered me so much is I have noticed since the Osama "assassination" how much the alleged left-leaning media like NPR and magazines like the Atlantic have gone into propaganda mode like this, but it's propaganda geared for a more educated mind than like Fox News. It uses different triggers and trickeries, but it's still pretty obvious propaganda. I'm not sure what's going on behind the scenes, but for Obama to unleash the ace card of the fake Osama assassination like he did, then kick the fog of propaganda into overdrive, some serious shit must be going on. So we probably can't save the middle class, because people like me are finally realizing we are not middle class at all, because that assumes there's a lower class, a middle one, and an upper class. But the divide between upper and middle is huge, and middle and lower are a lot closer than anybody realizes - one layoff or surgical infection or blown headgasket from crossing that blurry line. Very few make the jump from that big clusterfuck of lowers and middles down the highway, over the gated walls into the Upper Class community. Very few. And yet we are pitted against each other constantly, to be afraid of dark-skinned kids using twitter to flash mob their ways into our homes and steal our flat screens, to be afraid of the future landscapers of America sneaking across a desert in the hopes they don't get dissolved by a drug cartel in a vat of acid, to be afraid of anything too Middle Easternly looking in our lives. What the fuck man? Fuck you Atlantic Monthly. I only paid $6 for your stupid one-year subscription through a discount website, but I still feel like a dumbass for paying to read your bourgeoisie propaganda drivel.

r i v z n

2011-08-17T20:00:00.002-04:00

river was my visual
muse; before her, I didn't
realize I could see pictures

g r f a t

2011-08-17T08:00:00.002-04:00

a solid sentiment, though
the iron cross confuses
me about the real meaning

r o d a q

2011-08-16T20:00:00.001-04:00

down the road was once pasture;
now it's robot corn stalks, all
spindly and lacking plant soul

b b l l b

2011-08-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

"you play basketball on grass"
incredulously asks the
sheltered suburbanite face

s a w a a

2011-08-15T20:00:00.002-04:00

my daddy worked on chainsaws,
big old bow barred behemoth
monsters like ain't no made no more

d r t z x

2011-08-15T08:00:00.002-04:00

racing fuel smells chemical
yet earthy, reminds me of
roxboro trips with ricky

r u s t c

2011-08-14T20:00:00.002-04:00

junkyard patinas of rust,
primer, factory base coat
blended into dull palette

u s a z r

2011-08-14T08:00:00.001-04:00

the fourth of july firemen's
parade is my small town's big
event of the entire year

r o d a p

2011-08-13T20:00:00.002-04:00

feel like the trapped coyote,
calling at the new moon, while
calm souls free from storms surround

r o d a m

2011-08-13T08:00:00.001-04:00

poisoned plants nourish masses;
bloated bodies lacking real
nutrition feel good with this

r o d a l

2011-08-12T20:00:00.002-04:00

dilapidated bridgework
connects gravel to gravel
along undeveloped paths

Friday Love/Hate

2011-08-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

Not a hate bone in my heart, though I've done a lot of behind-the-curtain bitching about situations inside the confines of the compound, where only myself and my ol' lady can hear. There are lots of secret dramas going on, both in my personal life and in this publicly manufactured financial calamity. But on both accounts, it just seems so obvious to me, as I sit under the moon at night, that worst case scenarios usually end up being for the best in the long run. Sure, the short-term pain can be tough at times, but man, we are a weak humanity right now, stuck on technological tethers, more cattle-like in our accepted, legalized, and engineered diets than ever before, and there's no real care. I think some bare feet stepping across the coals of scorched earth zones would probably do us some good.

I love, to be specific rather than cryptic and general for once, me some Chinese poetry. Really been digging into the Red Pine translations this past week, at night, and actually writing long-form poetry again for the first time in years. I think it's my duty to the wretched people (I say that lovingly, as in that The Wretched of the Earth book) of southside Virginia to become as insane and wild-haired and cult-like a poet/writer that I can be. Hell, most of the country's going to be the same drug-ravaged, mostly rural wasteland we've been for a couple decades now in the next couple decades, so for once, I feel like we're trendsetters. It is my calling to bring these scarred emotional survival techniques to the world, not for financial exploitation, but so we can have more vikings and pirates. There's not enough fucking vikings or pirates of the mind anymore, just pimps and prostitutes. I prefer the old ways, the ancient ways. They make more sense to the man in me, though the consumer in me knows there's less value in that path. Oh well. Your path is your path.

d r t z y

2011-08-12T08:00:00.002-04:00

circular blurs kicking up
dust storms with barely controlled
slides ev'ry twenty seconds

g y p a g

2011-08-11T20:00:00.001-04:00

expressing her egyptian
obsession, gypsy covers
unstretched canvas in homage

s t y z z

2011-08-11T08:00:00.001-04:00

the grass is always greener
when you make a habit of
stomping your world into mud

x m a s g

2011-08-10T20:00:00.002-04:00

drunken night time blurs - a thing
of the past for me; not just
my own, but generations

c h k a f

2011-08-10T08:00:00.001-04:00

another picture of my
gimpy buff orpington - it
seems clear I am the strange bird

t r k a c

2011-08-09T20:00:00.001-04:00

passenger seat snapshots by
kid on boring rides help pass
the hours plus instill vision

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #8: "Barry Horowitz" by Action Bronson

2011-08-09T12:00:00.002-04:00

Look, when I was pumping Action Bronson like crazy, that was three months ago, for it to make the June Krupert list, so I don't necessarily feel the same way now in retrospect that I did when I was like, "OH SHIT, CHECK OUT THIS FAT FUCK WHITE DUDE TALK ABOUT GRILLIN TUNA STEAKS ON YOUTUBE!" His music is awesome, but it's not awesome in a gonna-make-the-best-rap-album-in-twenty-years awesome. He's no groundbreaker; but he's great at what he does - nostalgia rap for those unwavering boom baptists amongst us who refuse to accept this new form of blip bloop hip hop worship as an authentic form of soulful expression. And let's face it, regardless of how caught up in this rapidly changing world we get, there are times when riding down the road in a cleaned up Mercury Grand Marquis, with the windows down but AC on high, smoking blunts at 2:30 on a Tuesday afternoon because the sunshine made us do it makes perfect sense. And Action Bronson is the perfect fucking soundtrack for such moments.
I have no problem with throwback raps, and often the white boy into hip hop in me causes me to wear actual throwback jerseys. I get them off the ebays usually, or straight from China, always bootleg, but don't give me that "authentic" vs. "bootleg" shit, because even the real ones you get from actual licensed stores online come from China, and probably get made next door to the same ones you buy for $19 each plus shipping illegally. It's not like those big businesses are using that extra cost to treat American workers with respect and dignity, and toss them great medical benefits. No, them motherfuckers are using the same Chinese laborers, same materials, and pocketing the difference, minus advertising costs to trick you into believing that shit is necessary in the first place. So if you don't buy your stitched jerseys bootlegged from China, then you are a fucking mark.
That being said, I actually like the bootlegs even better, because they have oddities about them that you wouldn't find with the quality control of the bonafide (being they have to justify the added expense to the consumer). In fact, I often think the bootlegs are probably just from the same factory, but the lots that didn't pass QC in the first place. I've got a Julius Erving high school jersey that's an ugly ass yellow, and when I washed it one time the stitching got all loose and some of the numbering borders came apart so it hangs funny, but actually looks even better. It has a tag on it that says 58 OF 75, like there's only 75 of them on earth. I bet if I ever ran into another dude who had one on, his would be 58 of 75 too. But that's okay. I just like rocking the Chinese bootleg throwbacks because they make my dick feel half an inch bigger, and also I want to do whatever I can to expedite the downfall of our western capitalist system.
STEAL "Barry Horowitz"
NEXT: once had a catfish in a trailer named after this song!

l i n c c

2011-08-09T08:00:00.001-04:00

whitewalls and hubcaps faded
into the past by rubber
band tires stretched over big rims

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - June '11 #9: "Desperadoes Waiting For A Train" by Guy Clark

2011-08-09T00:00:00.003-04:00

I have inherited an inflatable river boat from a dude I used to work for who is now swashbuckling in Middle Arabia somewhere, so it has been a summertime goal to float the fam down the James now and then, to just get outside on the water and soak up the goddamned barely left freedom of our modern American lives. This entails dropping the truck off at the second spot, and then shooting up to the first launching spot with the uninflated boat in the back of our Subaru (R.I.P.) and pumping it up, loading kids, loading ourselves, and then meandering the fuck back to the truck. We did this last time, and did a different pair of points, which caused boredom and complaining to kick in for the last half hour of the trip, so rolled back to the Subaru to load up and roll home for cooking out.
The center child stayed in the truck with me, enjoying quality one-on-one time, plus they dig my wild mood after being on the river, playing music really loud, laughing because I have relapsed into 1970s mode being my wife has to sit in the back of the truck being we can't fit everybody in the cab with all three kids, so we sing lyrics loud as fuck out the back sliding window at her, and usually I hang my soaking wet shirt over the side of the truck like a flag, hooked onto my tie-down that never leaves my truck bed, because I am the type of guy that kinda needs to have a tie-down strap at any given point suddenly. As we rolled back into town, past the farm supply place with the quality lounger that works there, I saw three dudes just sitting in front of a trailer, doing nothing but sitting there. I said, "Whoa, check out those loungers." So the center child goes, "Daddy, why do you always say 'lounging'?"
So I went into an explanation of what loungin' means to me, being laid back against all odds, and just generally trying to be a good person, more caught up in helping out someone else or having a good easy time than chasing dollars or scams or schemes or memes or tired routines that get you nowhere. If you're going to get nowhere, you might as well just flip over a goddamn 5-gallon bucket there at nowhere, and go ahead and enjoy the scenery instead of running all over local creation for 60 hours a week only to end up right back at nowhere and nothing.
This lead me to also explain what unloungin' meant, and how it's easy to become an unlounger, and why it's important to not lie, to be a good-hearted person, and to think of the other angle when interacting with folks. At that point, "Every Rose Has A Thorn" came on my J.J. Krupert, so I started singing the lyrics really loud, but making them different to fit Phoenix, my center child. This caused her to smile that perfect Phoenix smile that she rarely kicks because she can be a broody sort at times, but you know when she's got it, she's letting her guard down and being happy. And she'll stare at me in those moments, like "Who is this crazy awesome man?" I try not to think about how that man probably ain't there big parts of the week when overstressed by Other People's Drama and getting caught in the ringer of work-a-day bull tripe.
(I should point out that I thought Poison was gay in high school, and never listened to them. There was a fine line between acceptable glammy stuff like GNR or Faster Pussycat and stupid glammy stuff like Poison, Cinderella, or Warrant. The former was for solid dudes who wanted to get fucked up, and the latter was for girls not dudes. But I have come to enjoy a few of these more stupider selections for their overall pop cultural value, and ain't afraid to listen to them, even if I rode by another me, the other me might be like, "Whoa, what the fuck is up with That Guy?")
The next morning was Sunday morning, which usually means dumpster diving through a giant loop to hit the four stores I hit on Sundays, because ain't no trash service on weekends and they can be loaded. Phoenix absolutely loves to go with me on these, and we caught a bounty at one store, like a ton of cakes and bread and donuts, at least 40 pounds of it, plus plenty vegetables at my favorite Sunday spot. Sundays are my favorite day, when I can sort through trash and give it to my animals and walk my property calmly, and hang with the kids. Even in our western world, with our spiritless Gods of Capitalism, Sunday mornings every thing slows down a little and is less frenetic. Stores open later, and smaller businesses ain't even fucking with a Sunday. I dream of our society collapsing to the point all day every day is like a Sunday morning - free and easy and chill as fuck.
It's bothersome to me how much work gets in the way of actual life, and actual loungin', and it's a shame we've been taught to think by chasing the endless circles to nowhere, we'll somehow be rewarded with some sort of bounty of free time and loungin' days that never come. We have been duped, and continue to be duped, but not many of us are confident enough in ourselves to really make a break off that grid of normal life.
All of this has nothing to do with the song here (as if that should surprise me if you've been a regular reader of this blog), but I imagine at least one of my kids is going to have children, and probably a son, and being I have all daughters, there's not as much room for me to ramble about shit like Guy Clark, because it doesn't strike a chord at this point. So maybe by the time I'm an old dude with a tagalong grandson, and he's hanging out while I'm playing dominoes with three dudes at a picnic table we dragged to the end of a logging road by the river somewhere near Shores, and we have an old boombox we tuck under an empty bucket down there to not forget to bring but also not get ruined by the rain, and we play cassettes, not because they are cool or hip but because shit, it's a tape player. And each time, the batteries die on tape mode, so we switch to radio, which doesn't take as much battery power, and squeeze a few more songs out of it before the sun goes down, and the CSX coal line will shoot east from the mountains, full of mountain raped energy bounty, and the train will sound as great as ever clack-a-clack-a-clacking over those old tracks, and "Desperadoes Waiting For a Train" will come on whatever new-fangled audio device they've installed into our vehicles at that point while me and the grandson ride home to grandma's house where a fresh apple crisp is waiting, and my grandboy will be like, "Whoa, this song is my shit kinda" in his head, and he'll ask, "Grandpa, what is this?" and I'll tell him about loungin' and unloungin' and then start yelling nonsense lyrics out the window like I always do when I feel good as fuck from the river aura cleansing my goddamned money sins away.
STEAL "Desperadoes Waiting For A Train"
NEXT: throwback rap!

h o m e f

2011-08-06T20:00:00.001-04:00

sunrise morning, already
gone; twilight return time means
my grass is tall, mailbox stuffed

t i l l a

2011-08-06T08:00:00.001-04:00

"tuna" was a small engine
mechanic, always smelling
like oily gas and winstons

r o d a n

2011-08-05T20:00:00.001-04:00

man's wicked machinery
parade is impressive - no
doubt - siren songs for the eyes

r v a z z

2011-08-05T08:00:00.002-04:00

city bricks that seen stories
for centuries - nothing like
new school suburban facades