Lenny Bruce

There are so many people we just never hear about because the grade schools in America are set up to prevent us from learning anything useful. People who are monumental to culture and activist movements will just not be covered at all. People like Lenny Bruce.

I don't know anything about him yet, really, except that he was a comedian, he pushed the limits of free speech, the government hated him, the political police of the U.S. government - the FBI - tracked and terrorized him, and that means he was probably doing something very important and very right.

Looks like there are a lot of books out there - a lot of material about Bruce - but here is one that seems to be pretty good. And a quote about the book:

Lenny Bruce opened the doors for all the guys like me; he prefigured the free-speech movement and helped push the culture forward into the light of open and honest expression. I thought I knew his story pretty well, but I learned a great deal from this book. It is a major contribution toward understanding the threat perceived by the “powers” from simple artistic honesty.

—George Carlin
Comedian

Russian Futurists - 2 Dots on a Map

Using Songbird today I stumbled upon a couple of great songs at fluxblog. The song I want to briefly expand on is '2 Dots on a Map' by the Russian Futurists. The second song is a Russian Futurists Remix of a Cadence Weapon song called 'Sharks (The Russian Futurists Remix)'.

But '2 Dots on a Map' kind of blew me away. First, it jumps out at you like you already knew it. But then it does some funky indy rock stuff that just sounds cool as all get out, and the lyrics end up crushing you - especially if you've ever felt the feeling expressed in the song. The lyrics are here:

I'm burning and crashing, I've lost all my passion with age
I'm learning real fast that you can't leave the past on a page
But we're two dots on a map and it seems that without fail
Those inches in between us are really miles when drawn to scale
(We used to laugh, we used to cry)

I'm crashing and burning, my stomach has turned to knots
I'm asking and yearning for you to connect those dots
Because we're wasting our lives and the space between us sings
And if we knew we were dying is this how we'd leave things?
(We used to laugh, we used to cry)

And then you find out the Russian Futurists come out of Toronto, and you're like, 'of course'.

Plenty of good stuff to say about Cadence Weapon, too, but not tonight. :)

...check out the CokeMachineGlow review of the Russian Futurists album. I always find out about this stuff a year and a half late.

Google Programmer Is Blind

Well, sometimes you just like a little inspiration-slash-guilt trip to get up off your ass. Here's one.

Reddit.com - A is for Anarchy

Reddit changed their logo to the V for Vendetta dude. Is it because our government just passed a bill legalizing torture and indefinite detention of U.S. citizens and no habeus corpus?

This is a scary place.

The 'A is for Anarchy' is a reference to this site.

Our previous post on V for Vendetta.

And with this post, a couple of suggestions from Reddit itself:
1) an anti-tv note
2) a programmer's call to action. i've long since thought that us programmer-types were the biggest cowards on the block. good to hear someone else say it.
3) and an anti-wage slavery movie.

they all tie in nicely.

note: would Reddit put up this symbol if they were a corporation? heeeeeeeeeeeelllls no.

powered by ODEO

Fancy Little Football Person (i.e. 'uppity negro')

A terrorist from the Dallas Police Terrorist Defense Committtee today got off on his hate for uppity negros. Apparently, he can't stand the fact that Terrell Owens is allowed to call a white man a liar:

"The officers reacted because they were called to this location to do this job. Now they're being put under a microscope by some fancy little football person," White said. "Give me a break. Those officers are 10 times better than this man."

It's funny watching this go down. It's too cliche. You know this loser Glenn White wants to start dropping N-bombs, but he knows he can't be _that_ outwardly racist, even in Texas. Instead, he chooses to go the 'uppity negro' route, referring to Owens as 'some fancy little football person', and then finishing off his tirade with a 'those officers are 10 times better than this man'.

Typical racist shit. How boring.

And how awesome is it that this fool Glenn White has such a white name? Classic. Mr. White's challenge for T.O. to 'go down and file a complaint' is a common tactic amongst our nation's finest terrorists. Most terrorists around the U.S. just trash those complaints when they come in, or the terrorists just harrass, terrorize, beat, arrest, or murder the people doing the complaining. Typical terrorist tough-guy coward hiding behind his badge.


powered by ODEO

Good Samaritan Gets Screwed

No universal healthcare? Then don't go trying to save people from criminals, else you could end up a lot worse than just stabbed.

Firefox Needs to Stop Sucking

Seriously.

The same way that Mircosoft sucked so badly for so long, Firefox is continuing to suck so badly for so long. Think about it - what we're talking about here, really, is the lesser of two evils. It's Republican (Microsoft) or Democrat (Firefox) - both suck horribly, but we're afraid that Microsoft might get the job done (end human existence) a little bit quicker - so we stick with Firefox. This shit is not right.

I used Firefox forever just to issue a big 'Fuck You' to Bill Gates and Mircosoft. I used it in spite of the fact that it could take minutes to render a page that Internet Explorer could render in two seconds. I used Firefox in spite of the fact that, when I first started using it, you couldn't even click on a 'mailto:' link and have it get to your web-based email account (matter of fuckin fact - it still can't! not without an extension). I wrote my own extension to handle it at first - how many developers can do that, much less regular browser users? 1%? Talk about anti-democratic.

How does Firefox continue to suck so badly after its been around for seemingly ever, now? We gave you a chance, Firefox, and you still suck - after all these years. And we hear that Mircosoft is going to have tabbed browsing eventually - and you know what? We. Can't. Wait. That's right. We can't wait to switch back. If the world is gonna continue to suck, then we just want to go ahead and get this thing moving along - so we choose to enter the death spiral. It's a heck of a lot better than getting dragged kicking and screaming. At least we feel like we have a choice in the manner of how we get fucked.

Yes - we do feel vindicated that Mircosoft is finally about to introduce tabbed browsing ten years after it was obvious it was needed - it's a broken Bud bottle to the eye of all the Mircosoft apologists over the years who continued to scream "but it's free, therefore it's good for the consumer!". We all had no choice but to use shitty Internet Explorer. So listen Mircosoft apologists - and Bill Gates apologists - go fuck yourselves. Corporations are evil and Bill Gates is at least an asshole. Dude is a fuckin gangster. I'm not impressed that he or any other rich gangster is trying to become a philanthropist after they savage regular working people who were only struggling to provide the most basic existence for themselves and their families. That's right Bill Gates - I know what you are.

And I'm gonna use your new browser when it comes out anyways.

Because Firefox sucks. Where's the shortcut key to get to my home page? Where? <Alt>+<Home>? Are you kiddin me with this shit? <Alt>+<Fuckin>+<Home>?? These people think I'm double-jointed or some shit?

<Ctrl>+H gives us History. Seriously. Like I really want to know where the fuck I went yesterday, or ten days ago. Jesus Christmas.

So I download the Keyconfig extension and it totally sucks. It's a brilliant idea - a major attempt at fixing a major Firefox flaw - but the extension itself is near impossible to figure out. It's got this drop down that appears to be completely meaningless. What the fuck? I finally figured it out, but not before I went over to Internet Explorer to find out that it, too, used <Ctrl>+<Fuckin>+<H> to go to its History list instead of Home.

I'd love to use a half-decent, not-overly-shitty browser like Opera. Really. But if I use it, then some other asshole will use it, and before you know it - I'm writing websites that have to comply with three shitty browser implementations. No way. Spare me the browser bukkake party - dealing with two shitty browser implementations is already more than I can handle.

Firefox extensions out the ass. I mean, when I upgrade to Firefox-whatever-the-fuck, I'm gonna need to upgrade my twenty or so shitty extensions. Don't even get me started on the shitty, Nazi-esque versioning/update/upgrade system that Firefox has put in place for extensions (sorry, 'Add-ons'. Now that Microsoft is threatening to get back in the game, the MBAs over at Firefox decided to start speaking fucking normal, down-to-earth English, again.).

What a situation. What are we to do?

How about, tell the MBAs running Firefox to pull their heads out of their aaaaaaaaaaasses and start including some decent core functionality in Firefox. How about, stop adding new, stupid shit like 'Livemarks' until you implement core functionality that should have been in the browser since Day One? How about providing a decent Firefox extension API - one that doesn't require a degree in XUL-onomics and abstract-XPCOM-shinterfaces just to create a simple extension?

Seriously - Firefox may be beyond repair. There really is something to dynasties and such. The consistent failure of Firefox to produce a decent browser over the past how many years? may just mean it's time to abandon ship. Look at the University of South Carolina football program. I don't care if they get Bill mf-OG-gangster Gates to run that shit - it is never going to be a winning program. The loser tradition there just runs too deep - too long. It takes hard work to build up that kind of tradition. Hard work over years. At some point the losing becomes ingrained in the psyche of everyone associated with the program. It's a bit like the Boston Red Sox and the Curse of the Bambino (which was really nothing more than Boston's crazy racism and them not allowing the best players they could get - black players - to be on the team). At some point, the people involved in these losing programs/projects are just waiting for their chance to give up - to fold up like a wet paper napkin. They know instinctively that they are supposed to lose - so they lose.

So, I gave one suggestion for how to fix Firefox - it went something like 'pull head from ass' - something to that effect, but let's just get rid of all pretenses - let's drop the objections for just a minute and be reasonable. How difficult would it be to design and build a new web browser from scratch that would do all of the things you wanted your web browser to do? What if someone semi-competent like Google took up the task? Could they get it done in six months?

I think they could, and I think it would be a much better browser than either Mircosoft or Firefox (who owns them? Mozilla Foundation or something?) has right now - and it would probably be better than either of the next versions from these technology lightweights. Google could open-source the browser and make it so that normal humans could write add-ons for it.

When Google buys their UNIX, I hope they get rid of that X-Windows bullshit that prevents UNIX/Linux/etc. from becoming a serious contender against Mircosoft. Building a browser from scratch would really lend credibility to Google when they finally launch their computer operating system in five years.

I know there are lots of genius-types associated with Firefox - which is part of the reason I'm so pissed-off about its lackluster implementation. Misusing talent like that is a serious crime in my book. We have to allow people the freedom to accomplish, and it's obvious that whoever is running Firefox has been crushing the creativity and genius of many of its team members for far too long. It's time for a change.

That reminds me - having some Apple UI-type influence on Google Browser would be really neato. I could almost get excited about something like that. Who cares that Google is sending my keystrokes directly to the Injustice Deparment, Department of Homeland Hilarity, and the Congress of UnAmerican Activities? Look at the interface!

...fixed many typos.

...and prepended 'In' to 'Justice Department'. (I'm not proselytizing - just tellin the truth. In the spirit of self-criticism. Just plain speech. Frank speech.) And if you know the scholar whose words I'm stealing in this final bit, then you are the shit. Not 'shit' or 'a shit' - 'the shit'. Big difference. One is a complement. The other - not so much. :)

...I checked-out the Firefox 'Add-ons' site recently and it has this slick process for uploading/updating extensions. Don't know when that happened, but it's a massive improvement. I take away everything bad I ever said about Firefox. :) Not really. But this is a huge plus. Maybe I need to contribute an api/library/facade that would actually make Firefox Extension building possible for mere mortals. They do have a couple of other new tools that do a lot of good - including this extension wizard - which seems super-cool, but I haven't actually used it yet.

powered by ODEO

Immigration, and Nicaragua Remembered

This LA Times opinion piece popped up in July, but just getting to it now. The immigration debate rush has passed, but now the attack on Iran is about to commence. We thought we should look back at the immigration debate issue before it gets forgotten completely. Let's go to the video-tape:

The most formidable leader Nicaragua ever produced was José Santos Zelaya, who ruled in the first decade of the 20th century. He was a crusading reformer who built roads and ports, challenged the power of the clerical-backed elite and dreamed of converting his country from a feudal backwater into a modern capitalist state.

Zelaya's nationalism, however, placed him in conflict with several American companies that were active in Nicaragua. They brought their complaints to Washington, and in 1909 the U.S. government engineered Zelaya's overthrow. In his place it installed the chief accountant of an American mining company. With the help of U.S. Marines, he suppressed a series of rebellions and kept Nicaragua in its backward state.

U.S. overthrows yet another government, same old story, whatever - nothing new here. But check this part out:

Through a combination of immaturity, arrogance and incompetence, however, Sandinista leaders — including Daniel Ortega, who served as president from 1985 to 1990 and who is again running for president this year — squandered their historic chance and turned most Nicaraguans against them. Their decade in power was a period of war, repression and steady impoverishment.

So, the government of Nicaragua 'squandered their historic chance'. And then somehow, magically perhaps, Nicaragua was wracked with 'war, repression and steady impoverishment'. War with or against who?

Well, you see, the writer's former employer, The New York Times, has a track record too - of supporting U.S. military interventions abroad - wherever they may be, for whatever reasons our government tells us. And now the LA Times has allowed him to hawk his wares in their paper. Color me not surprised.

Ever heard of those terrorists called the Contras? Sure you have, but the New York Times doesn't want to remind you that the U.S. government was busy terrorizing the civilian population of Nicaragua for ten years, until they finally relented and elected a U.S.-supported candidate. And they won't even deign to tell you that they were, in fact, terrorists - terrorists of the worst kind. Bill Blum's got the goods. As do many other folks - like South End Press.

It's as if the Sandinista government just decided that a war should take place against some unknown, nonexistent enemy. Hilarious. Or, not.

This is the kind of straight-up propaganda that the New York Times and other corporate newspapers like the LA Times produce every day. Most Americans are not even aware of it. The passive voice is one of the tell-tale signs of propaganda. Nobody was actually responsible for anything, things just happened.

We got sidetracked on the propaganda aspect of this story, but the point of this post was supposed to be about the fact that America destroyed the economies of Central America through massive state terror, and the destruction of those economies is what has forced so many Central American people to come to the U.S. to earn a living. If the U.S. government had never wrecked the economies of those countries in the first place, we might not be having an immigration debate at all.

How odd that, as you continue to learn the true role of the U.S. government in the world, you see how our government has been involved in massive violence around the globe for decades - many decades - hundreds of years, even! It's all a bit surreal.

There's been a massive escalation in U.S. terror since WWII, sure, but we're been doing it as long as we've been able to get away with it. And with your new knowledge of the American Empire you begin to see how U.S. terror campaigns always seem connected somehow. We installed the Shah of Iran in 1953, then American hostages are taken by pissed-off Iranians during Carter's presidency, then Reagan gives weapons to Iran to trade for the hostages, but he needed money for the arms for Iran and for his terror force, but he needed to do it without the knowledge of the U.S. people or the U.S. Congress, so he smuggled drugs into the U.S. from Central America, all the while raping, torturing, and murdering the people of Nicaragua in his eventually-successful campaign to install a pro-U.S. ruler in Nicaragua.

It's just too much. How could anyone possible be so sadistic? I think that's the question many of us ask. And it's not just one person - it's the top 1% or top one-half of 1% of Americans who are most responsible for these decisions. Power and privilege are powerful drugs, that much seems apparent.

UPDATE: Fixed typo - changed 'overthrew' to 'installed' wrt the Shah of Iran in 1953. The wiki seems somewhat knowledgeable, but I prefer to stick to the documentary record.


powered by ODEO

Google Sucks !

Google sucks! They are terrible. They are bad bad bad. They are the worst people ever. That corporation is worser than Microsoft. They are so bad it is unbelievable. Bad bad bad. Google is crappy. They are crapy. Google is the worst. Google sucks. Google is atrocious. Atrocious is Google. Worst. Company. Ever. Worst. Search. Ever. They suck. Google is shit. Google is ass. Google is piss. Google is downright terrible. Google is disgusting. Google sux. Any other search company is better than Google. The worst search company is Google. Why does Google suck so bad? Google is horrendous. Google are click fraud fraudsters. Google only knows click fraud. Click fraud is Google's best friend. Google loves click fraud. Google only makes money from click fraud.

There. Just wanted to see if dissing Google will affect the ads they serve on my blog. Will they stop serving ads altogether? Will they cancel my Blogger account? Doubt it - I don't have enough pull. But it would be interesting to note what happens when an influential person decides to savage Google - someone whose various blog properties are serving Google ads.

powered by ODEO

Bad day?

At least you didn't get run over by one of your own tanks:

Two soldiers from the Golani Brigade were killed in an accident that occured when an IDF tank accidentally ran them over in the village of Shakif-al-Amal in the East. Two other soldiers were wounded in the accident, one seriously and the other lightly.

24 Israeli terrorists killed yesterday. Were there any Americans among them?

It's difficult to figure out the culpability of soldiers in the terrorism. Of course they're terrorists, but how much did they know? As Israelis, they have to serve. Even American soldiers don't have to serve. That said, these two soldiers who got rolled by one of their own tanks probably never dreamt - nor did their families - that they'd be meeting the same fate as American Rachel Corrie.

StumbleUpon - Just Awesome...

This is the best damn site/tool I've come across in the last three years. Holy crap this thing is good.

I'm not kidding. I'm seriously impressed with this tool. I don't know anything about the 'social networking' aspects of the tool, but I know about its ability to help me find new websites that I think are interesting - completely awesome.

PayPal Subscriptions - Theft By Another Name

I signed up for pbwiki a while back, canceled my account - or so I thought - and then got dinged for another $5.00 from PayPal. It's the principle of it. These fuckers ganked me. It's not all or even mostly on pbwiki - maybe - but it's certainly on PayPal, who makes it damn near impossible to cancel a 'subscription'.

So, the FTC gets a complaint about PayPal/eBay:

PayPal 'subscriptions' are almost impossible to find, making it impossible to cancel a subscription and stop paying money to vendors. This resulted in at leasta $5.00 loss for me, probably more. But I'm a tech expert, and I couldn't cancel my subscription without much difficultly. This means that thousands of Americans are probably being ripped by PayPal.

I want their procedure fixed. If they make it easy for me to subscribe, they should make it equally easy to unsubscribe. As it is, their unsubscription model is like AOL's - PayPal specializes is stealing money from people who are not tech savvy.

FTC is just a bunch of terrorists, too, but at least now it's documented.

Bastards. If I'm a tech weenie and I can't figure this shit out, how are we expecting grandma and grandpa to figure this shit out?

Fuckers. PayPal is now owned by eBay.

...even dead people can't get out from AOHELL. Color me, not surprised.

...I should say I don't think the FTC are terrorists. I think the U.S. government consists of terrorists at the top - always has. The FTC - I know nothing about them - other than the fact that they're good at spending my money and ignoring my complaints - but they're certainly not terrorists. Just wanted to clear that up in case we get some wackos down the road trying to dilute my arguments by bringing up statements that were obviously-at-least-to-me-hyperbole. As for PBWiki, I got no issues with them. Was still an overall good experience for me, and I'd still recommend them to others.

People Aggregator to Its Users - 'Fuck You!'

I just attended the 'SF New Tech Meetup' at C|Net HQ. Marc Canter, C-something-O of People Aggregator - a social networking universal ID-type web service - gave what was shaping up to be a great presentation until he told us in the audience and all his company's future users to go fuck ourselves.

I asked something to the effect, "What will you do, what is your policy when the government comes calling for my data?" This, I thought, a very pertinent question given that People Aggregator is aiming to be you - and your umpteen 'personas' on the internets. Marc ducked the question - which was supposed to be the last of the evening.

A fellow behind me, though, felt that Marc's ducking of this very important question was not good enough - so he followed up. He said something similar, but spelled it out in no uncertain terms so Marc couldn't duck it again. He said something to the effect, "What will you do when the government issues you a subpoena for our data?" To this, Marc issued his big 'Fuck You' to all of us, saying (not an exact quote, but pretty damn close - and someone was shooting video, but I don't know who the dude was):

That's not a battle I'm going to fight. No way.

There you have it folks - a major 'Fuck Off', 'Fuck You', and whatever else you can imagine from the thought leader behind People Aggregator. Give your data to us, so we can give it directly to Uncle Sam.

Marc made a joke out of the question, saying he was going to 'fight the revolution in other ways' - maybe by spending it in the lavish quarters afforded him by his new best friend, Uncle Sam.

Fuck me? Fuck me? No, People Aggregator, fuck you!

Another Israeli Terror Attack on Tyre, Lebanon

Twelve innocent men, women and children injured, many more terrorized:

Where should we hold the war crimes tribunals?

More videos here.

More evidence for the war crimes tribunals:

Boing Boing: Home to Sick Twisted Fuck, Mark Frauenfelder

I wrote to Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing for this anti-human post in which he links approvingly to a selection of mugshots from the Des Moines' Polk County Jail.

Subject: pics of jailed girls? regular citizens? non-public figures? shameful.

i've seen some shameful stuff on the net before, but posting humilitating mugshots of young girls? hope they don't, you know, need to get jobs when they get out of jail. they are, of course, innocent until proven guilty, but an employer doesn't care about innocent - they care about orange jumpsuits and their potential employees wearing them.

are you competing with Jill Greenberg?

unreal. it's just totally unbelievable what some people will do to get a few page views.

i can only imagine that the people who created the laws allowing agencies to post these pics, and the people who then posted them on the net, including the people who approvingly linked to the post, reproducing the pictures for some sadomasochistic fetish, have all never been arrested and/or are just sick, twisted, fucks.

Linked from one of the most, if not the most, popular blog on the entire fucking internet. Posted by a co-founder of that blog. The one girl is about in tears - probably her first time getting arrested.

Sick. Twisted. Fucks.

...email bounced.

Watching Zidane Get Red-carded...bad.

Watching Italy go on to win the World Cup...worse.

Listening to a bunch of drunk Italians partying the night away....the worst ever.

Italy has proven that they can take better penalty kicks than France when France's best penalty-taker is off the field. After having being dominated for the better part of 120 minutes. I guess that's something to celebrate, right?

Congratulations, Italy. Congrats to diving your way into the final - with particular note to the dive against Australia that saved you from an ignominious early exit.

I thought it was particularly ironic that at least one, and possibly two, Italians were the most-often-fouled players in the tournament. In this final, they were flopping all over the place - like fish out of water. When France striker Malouda was taken down a second time inside the Italian penalty area, there was no call. And this time there was no question - it was a simple takedown that deserved a simple penalty. Most of the papers so far have failed to point out that France dominated the match - instead, choosing to go with the 'obviously Italy were brilliant' storyline, even though Italy were just doing their best to reach penalties to have a shot at winning on the cheap. And there have been no mentions as of yet of Materazzi's holding Zidane in the penalty area as the ball was played in - this was what led to Zidane's head-butt of Materazzi. The holding should have been a penalty and red card, but we'll see if we're allowed to read that in the press. And Materazzi's goal - the head ball - he pushed down on his defenders's left shoulder with his right hand/arm - this is a $2 call - it gets called 10 times a game, but our referee chose not to call this one.

Bravo Italy! You suck!

:)

...so, the truth is slowly leaking out. On top of Materazzi holding onto Zidane, we have a titty twister and the terrorist insult.

As background, I attended a Rutgers soccer camp back in the day when Rutgers seemed to be a decent soccer school. We had a few big-name players there back in the day, and my claim to fame is that one of the camp couselors, Alexi Lalas, borrowed my shampoo. In any case, one of the other camp counselors was a former Italian striker. He relayed to us stories of how we should act on the field - doing anything and everything we can to get an advantage - no matter how dirty, shameful, unsportsmanlike, cheating, etc. He told us stories of how he'd hit, kick, pull, punch players from opposing teams just to get them thrown out when they swung back at him. He told us how he'd spit in a defender's face to achieve the same effect, and how it often worked - getting the opposing player thrown out when he retaliated. I remember looking around at other players in our circle at camp - we were all around 14 or 15 at the time - and we were just stunned. He was serious. Very serious. He was demanding that we become terrorists first, and soccer players second, and only if necessary. All of us players just stared at him like he was some crazy uncle. Little did we know he was absolutely serious and abolutely telling the truth.

Our crazy Italian camp counselor must have trained Materazzi, too. Materazzi has left his stain on the World Cup. He'll forever be remembered for terrorizing the game's greatest player in that tournament, until that player had finally had enough.

Ugly American comic book from 1958

Boing Boing tells us about the You Don't See These Sights on the Regular Tours travel comic book.

Florida professor Kenneth Osgood points out the extent to which psyops are meant to influence the American public, first, and only then the international audience, in his book Total Cold War. He also did C-SPAN (why is this stuff not free?). Completely interesting stuff.

Though I haven't read this book yet, Professor Osgood really makes it clear in his C-SPAN presentation, which I did catch, that George W. Bush wasn't the first president to use the government's massive resources to use propaganda against the U.S. citizens - it's been around a long, long time.

Bush's distinction, perhaps - according to me, is that he's the first President to employ the entire government to progagandize the citizenry.

In his C-SPAN presentation, Professor Osgood covers this exact type of travel pamphlet, if not this exact pamphlet linked-to, above. Watch it if you can find a bootleg copy somewhere!

Joga Bonito, Kung fu-style

I knew I'd seen Eric Cantona's face before. He's the main spokesman for Nike 'Joga Bonito' campaign/social website/etc. What I didn't remember about him was his apparently-infamous flying Kung fu-style kick of an English Premiereship fan:



Those darn Frenchies. Who knew he was French? I always thought Spanish.

Read the wiki for more fun details. Too hilarious.

Joga Bonito!

Béla Károlyi and 'Big Phil' Scolari

Béla Károlyi is the famed Romanian and U.S. women's gymnast coach. Though many of his methods (like starving his athletes) are highly controversial, he still has this reputation, aura, something - of being a father figure. Extremely demanding, but still a father figure. And his reputation precedes him. Give him something to work with, and he'll produce a champion - it's as simple as that. He famously carried an injured Kerri Strug to the medal podium in the 1996 Olympic Games, further adding to his 'father figure' and 'molder of champions' status.

To me, he looks much like Luiz 'Big Phil' Scolari, the former Brazilian soccer coach, and now coach of the overachieving Portuguese. Scolari took Brazil to World Cup success in 2002, and he's pushing Portugal through wins, now, in 2006. Sometimes Portugal even looks convincing - like real contenders for the championship. I like the way his players play for him - it's the same way Hiddink's players played for Hiddink, the same way Károlyi's gymnasts performed for Károlyi. A true indicator of the level of quality of a coach, sometimes, when other indicators are not so readily available - are the players giving it their all? Are they, in a word, playing for the coach? Or are they playing for some other cause, maybe none at all? Portugal's players may be playing for more than one 'cause', but one of them certainly is their coach, Scolari.

The father-figure-type persona that Scolari has as head of Portugal is like Károlyi had coaching all his champion athletes. I'm not sure what that 'father figure' quality dynamic is that makes champions, but there it is. Give Scolari something to work with (he has that in Portugal/Figo/Ronaldo/Deco), and he'll produce a champion.

Odd that both their names end in the Italian-sounding 'i'.

Wayne Rooney and Ronaldo of Brazil - Shameful

Rooney, pathetic as always on the pitch, the most overrated player in the history of the game, personification of the spoiled brats that are most England internationals (certainly not Gerrard, who's always been classy, at least what little we've seen of him) - did the unspeakable today. He actually stomped on an opposing player's groin area - penis, testicles, etc. That's your Rooney for you. That dude should be banned from competitive soccer for life.

Our second despicable act of the day goes to Ronaldo of Brazil. He took a dive at the top of the French box as the clock was ticking down. The ref - the same as the U.S./Italy refs - calls everything, every dive, everything - gave the kick to Ronaldo even though nobody touched him. The Brazil free kick went over the crossbar, and the end result of the game was not changed, but Ronaldo shamed himself, his team, his country, this Cup, and the sport of soccer. May that dive forever disgrace his name, his record, and overshadow anything he's every accomplished on the pitch - especially having the most goals ever in the World Cup. Good riddance to Brazil and the Brazilian Ronaldo.

As to England's exit - bravo! Think of all the pathetic hooligans across the globe who are turning cars upside down and terrorizing innocent people as we speak - just because their side once again proved to be a bunch of whiny-ass-titty-babies. Beautiful. Losers. Feel bad for some of the players, who seem to be decent people, but the sense of entitlement the players seem to have, but especially the fans - it's outrageous. And the hooliganism/terrorism needs to stop. England should be banned from all future World Cups until they fix the problem. On that note, Spain should be banned from all future cups until they fix their racism problem.

On the English team and racism, after watching France take care of racist Spain, I started to think, "Where is Shaun Wright-Phillips?" Wright-Phillips, of course, is black, and the last time I remember seeing him play, he was alongside my man Claudio Reyna, and Wright-Phillips was awesome - which is why he got called up to Chelsea. Now, why was Shaun Wright-Phillips not selected to the England team? Most of France are black. Most of racist Spain were white. Most of England were white. An incredible black English player is not selected to the national team for the World Cup? Why not? I wondered if Eriksson might not be comfortable with black people, considering how he grew up, presumably, in Sweden. Is it possible? It wouldn't be a crime to be uncomfortable around a person of a different race, but to not select them to the national team because you don't feel comfortable around them? That would be a crime - a moral crime.

Supposedly Wright-Phillips has been warming the bench for Chelsea this season, having scored no goals in several apperances coming off the bench. I can't argue with that. It just seems to me that the more opportunity there is for black players to show their class on the pitch, the more they continue to dominate. Ghana were the latest example, taking the attack to Brazil, even though they ended up losing 3-0. Lennon, a black player for England, finally got another chance today, in place of Beckham, I believe, but Beckham only left the game because of injury. Does one have to be white, or at least light-skinned (Fernando), to be called up to the England national team? Is England really that devoid of black athletes? I know France has a close history with African countries and all that, but why is the England roster filled with perfectly ordinary players like Beckham, who wouldn't impress on an American college side, never mind an international side? Who are the rest of the boring white players in the England squad? I have no idea. I can't remember any names. Almost none made a name for themselves. The only white player to show up today for England was Hargreaves, who's never played in the Premiereship. And maybe that's another key to England's continued international failure - their players are, by and large, spoiled brats. They play in the Premiereship, tell themselves that it's the toughest, most competitive league in the world, and then they're shite when they get on the pitch with real players.

To reiterate this post:
* Rooney: Pathetic. Shameful. Should be banned from competitive soccer forever.
* Brazilian Ronaldo: Pathetic, shameful dive. Go eat some Twinkies.
* England: Spoiled, entitled players and hooligan fans. Shameful all the way around.

p.s. Cheers for France in all their multicultural glory for dropping the Brazilians from the tournament. To hear the shock in some people's voices after the game ("What?! Brazil lost?!"), you'd think Brazil just had to show up to collect the Cup. And the American announcers - whew. JP Dellacamera - heard near halftime - "Well, you'd have to say that France are holding their own." Ummmm....JP, buddy, France has controlled the game since after the 60-second mark. They've had more possession, more shots on goal, more creativity, they're controlling the flow of the game, they've committed fewer fouls, etc. Nobody was 'holding their own' - Brazil was looking beaten, and in the end, that's what happened.

In fairness, I actually thought Henry or someone else might have been offsides on the cross that Henry scored from. But, a deserved win. Just puttin it out there.

Be interesting to see if England can get Hiddink to coach them before the next Cup. Hiddink is scary coaching any team, must less a team with some World Cup history. I hope he doesn't do it.

...p.s. As to Rooney, I thought I heard one American announcer, on watching a repeat clip or review of the England/Portugal game, I _thought_ I heard the announcer describe Rooney's groin-stomping action as a 'mistake' - something to be overlooked. They said stuff about Rooney being 'young' and 'inexperienced' and all that. This, to me, is the ultimate in passive racism. If Rooney were a black player who'd done this, _all_ the papers in Europe tomorrow would be digitally lynching his ass for being any number of horrible things - and most of those descriptions would be correct, but for Rooney, who is white, you will see very little if any condemnation, and lots of defenses of the 'young' and 'inexperienced' lad.

Let's address how 'young' that fool is. He's 20. Sure, that's pretty young, but he's not a baby. He's an adult who's been doing adult things around the world for year. Exactly how 'experienced' is he? Well, let's see - his first international for England was in February 2003, when he was 17 years old. So, that's three full years of international experience, with the Euro 2004 tournament his coming out party where he played several full internationals. He went through world cup qualifying with England. For several years he's played for Manchester United, either the first or second most popular soccer club in the world. Does all of this experience qualify as what certain commentator's would described as 'inexperienced' - i.e. a general lack of experience? I would only say that if Rooney was still inexperienced by the beginning of this Cup, then I would like to know what, if anything, would actually qualify a player to be 'experienced', besides a World Cup experience itself.

To sum up, with Rooney's play in the 2004 Euro Championships, his coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, compared his impact with England to that of Pelé with Brazil. When asked to compare Rooney and Pelé, Portugal's current coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, said, "One is black and one is white."

Scolari may have been more insightful than he realized.

...on the offsides comment, I saw the goal again, and it was taken from a free kick on the left-hand side of the field - Zidane. Can't be offsides on a free kick. So, it looked like about three French players were goalside of the English players who were supposed to be marking them - one of them was Henry, and no English players bothered to pick him up at all. That's pathetic. But, that said, a lot of the in-the-box marking in this Cup has been atrocious - starting with the Americans. Blah.

...this article contains a great quote about Rooney:

His frustration, a product of his impotence in an unfamiliar role, resulted in the stamp on Ricardo Carvalho.

The 'stamp' on balls wasn't something that Rooney did, proactively - it was just the 'result of frustration' - i.e. it couldn't be helped - i.e. he's just a young lad - i.e. he's white, it's really no big deal.

...'Jeu Admirablement'? 'Play beautifully', or 'joga bonito' in French? si? oui?

...violence in France after the win. Pathetic. Where does the blame go? Sucks.

...England keeper Paul Robinson is listed at 6'3" or 6'4". And I'm Pelé. It's not the end of the world to see a player stretch his actual height by 6 or so inches. A little bit ridiculous? Sure - I mean, 6 inches? That's more than most NBA point guards stretch their heights, but whatever. In World Cup penalty shootouts, however, height can make a difference. I dunno - I'm just not crazy about short goalkeepers, and listing Robinson as 6'3" or whatever is just a bit absurd. My guess is that he's pushing 5' 11", on a good day, after waking up, after a night on the stretching board. He didn't do anything to help England in the shoot-out. Why am I all over this guy? I dunno - probably just because I hate England, and their drunken, violent, hooligans. And their violent players - a la Rooney.

...one other thing. If you plan on crying for 15 minutes after you lose in a shoot-out, please make sure you leave everything on the field during regulation and overtime. Is that too much to ask in return for some compassion? To me, it looked as if England were coasting, willingly, towards the shootout. Why? I mean, you _know_ someone is going home crying - why not do what you can to prevent the shootout. It's just difficult to have compassion for a bunch of players who were dogging it through most of the match. Sorry. Some players weren't dogging it - Owen Hargreaves - but most were. And the coach is included in that, too, of course. He, above anyone, has the most control over the situation - whether or not a team decides to attack, or if a team decides to make it to the shoot-out and pray for a miracle.

...parish priest calls Rooney a thug.