#THE FUCKING ANTI REAL MADRID THAT IS RIGHT THERE

[moviestarmartini]

sick and tired of ppl without tumblr etiquette throwing their hate towards rma in the regular real madrid tag

i’m just trying to see my boys only to be disturbed in such manner??? in my own house, in the year of our lord and savior jesus christ superstar 2024??? please.

[nando161mando]

A todxs lxs trabajadorxs de ALDI...

🛒 🔴⚫️ Frente a sus abusos, ¡ORGANICÉMONOS!

Escríbenos un correo a sierra@cntmadrid.org o contacta a través de nuestras redes sociales.

To all the ALDI workers ...

🛒 🔴⚫️ In the face of their abuse, LET'S ORGANIZE!

Write us an email to sierra@cntmadrid.org or contact us through our social networks.

🌐 Toda la información en:

[norgestan]

I'm going back for seconds! Viri/Hugo, Nora/Miquel, Lucasim, Emma/You. Lol tbh I just want an Emma ship and I feel like we haven't properly settled for one. 😔 Who should end up with Emma, Mia excluded since you haven't watched Druck yet?

ardi round 2, i loooove this :)

VIRIHUGO:

i think at the end of the day i’m just resigned to virihugo’s existence. do i hate that they just Start pining for each other with no setup at all? yes. do i hate that their relationship was a noorhelm+vilde esque get-together where dylan is the one who ends up alone? yes (imagine if noora had told william something like “oh lol vilde is just some slut that goes for every boy around her, she’ll get over it soon and she doesn’t really care about us being together ;)”. bc that’s essentially what virihugo did LOL). do i hate that half of their clips are they just standing still and monologuing about each other? oh yes. do i care? not really. i would resent them a lot more if viri had been the protag of s3, but eskam had really compelling couples with noriquel and norandro so i just spend my time focusing on them and not the lesser part of the season.

viri is an endearing character, and although i didn’t like most of her subplot in s3, i do think eskam made her an interesting character with what they had and i’m happy she got a nice boyfriend that she has lots of fun with. moreover, norandro was lacking the enemies-to-lovers snarky interactions (too busy being a really compelling couple!) and the trope was picked up by hugo and viri. which i kinda dig, because those interactions were the only things that i enjoyed about various noorhelms in the skamverse - if most of them were like that and less bad abusive boy feminist girl jerk-fest, i wouldn’t loathe noorhelm as much as i do. although this also makes me wish viri and hugo had been that kind of dynamic from the start, and just gotten a lot of will-they-won’t-they glances from their friends throughout the show until they finally got into each other on s3. but i guess that would’ve made it impossible for eskam to use dylan just to *checks notes* make every person in the love triangle insanely infuriating, oh well.

tl;dr: they are allowed to exist.

NORIQUEL:

ardi, you just want to see the world burn LMAO

to me it’s hard to dislike any pairing with nora on it because she’s a very good character and that just means she’ll always have great dynamics with other good characters. and oh is miquel a good character. in a lot of ways, eskam gave us two great williams in one season: my boy alejandro, who is the perfect candidate for a nora love interest, who earned his place and then helped nora earn her place as the best candidate to be his love interest as well, and then miquel, that has just enough characterization to be exactly what the narrative of the season needs him to be - not only a mustache-twirling antagonist who will punch out then smirk his way out of situations, but a real person.

see, they could’ve made miquel into a one-dimensional asshole that nora is stupidly into because he’s hot (does that sound familiar to you? LOL) but oh no, miquel is way more than that. he earns nora’s trust because he’s not an asshole, he resents olga for cheating on him and you can see how nora waits until the moment where he’ll call her a slut but it NEVER comes, he defends nora in front of his friends... he gives her what she needs, and he fits right where she expects him to. and that’s so important in a season where every other character is challenging nora in one way or another: alejandro doesn’t fit in her box of “incorrigible fuckboy”, viri doesn’t fit in her box of “helpless friend who needs my pity”, emma doesn’t fit in her box of “s/a victim”. being with miquel is easy, when he just humors her and spits out thoughts that nora agrees with all the time. it’s just REALLY great to watch. not only is her season a display of how emotional abuse looks like, but also her entire relationship with miquel showcases her shame, her flaws, the things she needs to work with to better her relationships with the people who ask more of her because it’s only fair.

i honestly never was in the miquel hate train. once you get the point of the character, it’s easy to love him for what he is. as i said before, miquel was also a call of attention because the conversations that he had with nora reminded me of talks with male friends i’ve had in my uni years, and it really put it in perspective and made me realize that i have been humoring numerous miquels by sitting through their “i’m actually a feminist, ya know” think-pieces and agreeing with the general feeling of it. and i don’t think a character like niko could EVER make anyone feel like that.

i’ve checked the middle square because that was my reaction every time eskam made a point to parallel noriquel to noorhelm. like YES. YOU DO GET ME. TRULY A SEASON FROM NOORHELM ANTIS TO NOORHELM ANTIS. what a skamverse treat. this relationship is good for the SOUL. that’s why i never got infuriated watching the couple, despite knowing what the point of their existence was: at the end of the day, i knew that the signs of abuse weren’t pointless and just fillers for an end-of-season sex scene, but they were actually going to do something interesting with them. and that’s exactly what they did. noriquel is actually a perfectly crafted relationship for what its message is and it deserves to be remembered as that.

LUKASIM:

oh BOY.

i just.... kasim is in this relationship. that already makes this REALLY difficult to tackle it. the thing about kasim is... if you only watched the season as the movistar+ channel shows it, kasim is simply a plot device. he’s not a character. he’s only there to introduce conflict and stir some shit and then fuck off to the sunset. he doesn’t have an og counterpart which meant that eskam didn’t have to actually try with him, and kasim is just what they need him to be: a way to introduce the main conflict, a reason for dounia to hate amira, boy on boy action for that sweet fanservice, misogynist microaggressions towards amira, a loose way to wrap things up at the end of the season and absolve her from any guilt or shame, etc. he just shows up when the plot needs him and then walks away very swaggily. and that’s why kasim is an essay kind of topic because to talk about him, you have to tackle the racism in s4 and all the ways they could’ve made a conflict-inducing gay muslim guy actually likable. which i won’t do here.

but then if you look at the lucas extra clips... he’s actually LIKABLE. he’s a character: he has personality, he’s funny, he doesn’t take lucas’ shit, he will only be with him if lucas apologizes and changes first. and as someone who desperately wants to protect kasim from the shit characterization and treatment he got in the show, i treasure those clips immensely - which i don’t think a lot of people do, and i can see why. it’s just sad that the moments where kasim was a likable, real character were hidden behind a paywall, and drown in a convoluted plotline of outing people when they behave badly as a good punishment. the thing about their get-together is that their impact relies only on amira, and is meant to make her life a living hell. other than that, there’s not really a narrative or character reason why they’re both into each other. is it only because they’re conventionally attractive guys and the only recurrent mlm in the show? wow, that shit’s BORING.

sigh, anyway. in a slightly better world, kasim being gay wasn’t actually a nuance as it was presented in the show. rather, kasim was out and confident about it, close to his sister, probably a regular in las labass where he could also work with organizations of other queer muslims in madrid. this also means that lucas and kasim’s relationship wasn’t the typical hidden gay love story that they were in the actual show, but they’re just, ya know. typical gay kids who made out in the club and then became just friends. or lucas’ activism on s2 warranted some instagram dms and then they upgraded to acquaintances. it’s upsetting that lucas is the only eskild who doesn’t really get to hangout or be in queer circles like other eskilds are implied to, so it would be great for him to actually have gay friends that he enjoys just as much as his primarily friend group. like, their version of lucas’ queer lifestyle being going to bars and hooking up with older guys it’s so....................... why. they didn’t have the time to say anything interesting about it and so obviously they didn’t do it lol. at this rate lucas’ only platonic queer companion is cris, which is lackluster to say the least.

the decision of making kasim lucas’ endgame is just another one on the list of things s4 got so, so wrong. what for? why does lucas need (another) boyfriend, again? why does every queer person in this show have to be dating someone and also come out to their parents? again, their relationship is just another rushed hidden gay love story that i found interesting at 13 years old and then never again. they could’ve taken it into ANY other direction, please. i’m begging.

anyways, you had really nice headcanons of lucas being the only eskild willing to revert to date a muslim guy, so that’s the only reason why i’m open to the idea of them being a couple. in a better universe, eskam actually made a case for these two being a good couple, and i agreed with it. as it is for now, it’s just really pointless, and rooted on the fact that kasim is not a real character to begin with. so i’m OBVIOUSLY sending them to superhell <3

EMMA/ME:

standard wlw relationship that would probably get sooooo much backlash about how neither of the characters Really feel like wlw and the emma love interest being boring as fuck, tbh.

alright, now that we’ve covered all that.... should dear emma grace even end up with someone in the skamverse? maybe one of the skamau girlies, given the proximity? maybe she’ll hook up with the female eskild that i know so many people dislike? idk. emma deserves a nice love story, in the same wavelength as nora. she deserves someone who is patient, who communicates well, who establishes boundaries and asks for respect, who understands she’s not only the act of crazy party girl and there are really interesting, carefully placed layers around her. maybe someone who went through a similar situation or at the very least sits down with her and tries their hardest to understand all the things going on with her life. like... there’s something about emma dropping the accusations and then dipping to another country, away from her parents and even her hometown in the states, just to throw herself in a city as busy as nyc is, that is desperately asking to be explained and explored. in a lot of ways, emma’s story is the other side of the noora story that couldn’t be told through nora’s perspective. in a perfect universe, there’s a spinoff that takes place right between s3 and s4, where emma gets the news of how much of a shithead miquel actually is and she has to question all of that yet again, and break the sense of normalcy and comfort she had built during all those years. it would be great if that story featured her closest friendships, and a newfound love. yes i was serious when i talked about the emma grace spinoff @ movistar+

[bongaboi]

Liverpool: 2019-20 Premier League Champions

30 years of hope: my life as an ardent Liverpool fan

After three decades of near misses, slips and tears, the Merseyside team’s wait for another league title is nearly over. So what does it mean to a scouser and lifelong fan?

by Hannah Jane Parkinson

I am three years old in the photograph, hugging a plastic, flyaway football. I am seven, arriving tentatively for my first training session at a local girls’ club. I am bounding back to my mother’s car, blowing hot breath on cold hands, beaming, the salt from the artificial turf embedded in the soles of my trainers.

I am eight and glued to the television, watching teen wunderkind and my Liverpool hero, Michael Owen, score the perfect goal against Argentina in World Cup 98.

I am nine. I give up one of the few days I have to visit my father to attend my first ever match at Anfield, Liverpool FC’s famous stadium. A week later, my father dies. These two events are inextricably linked in my mind, and the guilt continues to whichever day you are reading this.

I am 10 and make my first appearance in print in a feature for the local paper, the Liverpool Echo, about girls getting into football. I am quoted as saying that all my sister cares about is boys and fashion.

Twelve years old and the fuzzy letters of “Parkinson” on the back of my shirt arch down my shoulder blades.

I am 13. Our team, known as Liverpool Feds, are approached by Liverpool FC to become their official girls’ outfit. We visit Melwood, the first team’s training ground. The full-size goals loom like scaffolding.

I am 14. My hero, Owen, makes the same move to Real Madrid that Steve McManaman made five years before him. This breaks my heart. Suddenly, all I care about is boys and fashion. Without really making a decision, I give up football. Cold winter nights are spent inside on the sofa watching Sex and the City. I discover live music and MySpace.

I am 15. I own the entire range of Clearasil products. A group of my schoolfriends and I take a night off GCSE revision to watch the 2005 European Champions League final in Istanbul; the first the club has reached since the mid-80s, and so it is forbidden not to watch. Liverpool are losing by three goals at half time. A lost cause. Minds wander to the second biology paper… But wait. Liverpool pull back to 3-3. And win on penalties. Pandemonium. We join the throng in the streets; the blaring car horns; the beer jumping, like salmon, from pint glasses; the embrace of strangers; the straining vocal cords.

I am 18 and living in Russia, watching games on my first-generation smartphone via a 2G internet connection. Each time a player goes through on goal the signal drops to endless buffering. Liverpool finish second in the league, four points behind bitter rivals Manchester United.

I am 26, we are bearing down on the title. Steven Gerrard in an impromptu on-pitch team talk, after a crucial win against the newly flush Manchester City, shouts hoarsely at his players: “This does not fucking slip now!” The next home game, Gerrard – one of the best players the club has ever seen, captain, scouser, Liverpool FC lifer – literally slips on the turf against Chelsea to concede a goal. We lose. Manchester City finish top of the league by two points.

I am 29. I am in Cuba, where the internet is heavily censored. But I manage to watch the last game of the season, which will be decisive. Liverpool finish the league with 97 points; the highest points tally ever for a team that doesn’t win the title. City win again. With 98 points. Liverpool do, however, win the Champions League – for the sixth time – after scoring four goals in a sublime semi-final comeback against Barcelona. The injured Mohamed Salah, watching on the bench, wears a T-shirt bearing the slogan “Never Give Up”. The T-shirt sells out.

I am 30. I have never witnessed my beloved Liverpool FC lift the title. Two months from now, this is going to change. As I write Liverpool have a 22-point lead at the top of the table. Of 84 points available this season, they have taken 79. Next Monday is the derby against Everton.

I want to untangle what this will mean to me – the fan who met Steven Gerrard a couple of years ago, grinning like a child; the fan who, two weeks ago, was unbelievably touched when current star Trent Alexander-Arnold recorded a video message to cheer her up during a bad time. What it means to other fans: those who witnessed the dominance of the 1980s, and the younger ones who have known only disappointment. And what it means, too, for the future of the area of Anfield itself.

It’s late February in the Flat Iron pub, one of the many dotted around Anfield. Steve Dodd, who is 49, is with his friends Dan Wynn, 26, and Gerrard Noble, 47. All from Somerset, they are having a pre-match drink before the home game against West Ham. Steve talks of the current Jürgen Klopp-assembled side as the best Liverpool side he thinks he’s ever seen.

The friends have been scouring the internet for places to stay in the city for the last home fixture of the season, but to no avail. “Rooms are going for £400 a night,” Gerrard says, his eyes widening. He and Steve are allowing themselves to get excited, but Dan, who like me has yet to experience a league title win, looks anxious and rubs his thighs. “No,” he says, “I don’t want to jinx it. Though I’ve been kicked out of various WhatsApp groups for being smug about all the results.” Steve tells me they weren’t prepared for it, this three-decade-long wait: “I just thought we’d go on winning.”

We talk about how important it is that Klopp’s politics match the club: Liverpool is a leftwing city; Liverpool is a leftwing club. At the last election, Labour retained all of its 14 MPs on Merseyside. The city has never forgiven the Tories for former chancellor Geoffrey Howe’s strategy of “managed decline”. Thatcher is a hated figure. But so is Derek Hatton, the former city council deputy leader and member of the Marxist group Militant. Last month, Italy’s rightwing politician Matteo Salvini was forced to deny that he had pulled out of a visit to Liverpool after the metropolitan region’s mayor called him a “fascist”. During several games last year, chants rang out for Jeremy Corbyn. The current prime minister conspicuously avoids visiting. As Gareth Robertson, who is a part of the immensely popular The Anfield Wrap podcast, with more than 200,000 weekly downloads in 200 countries, puts it to me: “Not only do we want a good football coach, we expect almost a political leader, someone who gets us, and our city, its values.” Humorously, there have been petitions for Liverpool to become a self-determined scouse state, and “Scouse not English” is a frequent terrace chant.

The club has a mantra: “This means more.” It pisses off other teams and is, understandably, dismissed as marketing speak. But isn’t it true? Isn’t the 127-year-old club what people think of when anyone, anywhere in the world, mentions “Liverpool”? The famous football team that plays in red – allowing for the Beatles, of course.

The city has another team, the blue of Everton. I have nothing against Everton. I consider Everton fellow scousers and too little a threat to focus animosity towards. In a way, the clubs are unruly siblings; we love and scrap in equal measure. Totally different personalities, but born of the same streets.

Four years ago, a man named Jürgen Klopp arrived on these streets. Or more accurately, he arrived in the suburb of Formby, renting the house from his managerial predecessor, Brendan Rodgers. Klopp is the football manager that even non-football fans like. He’s Ludovico Einaudi, seducing those previously uninterested in classical music. He is a man of principle; a baseball cap permanently affixed to his head, as though at any point he might be required to step up to the plate on a blindingly sunny day. Perhaps for the Boston Red Sox, owned by Liverpool FC’s American proprietor, John W Henry.

Klopp is erudite. He is proudly anti-Brexit in a city that voted 58% Remain. “For me, Brexit makes no sense at all,” he has said. He is a socialist: “I am on the left … I believe in the welfare state. I’m not privately insured. I would never vote for a party because they promised to lower the top tax rate. If there’s something I will never do in my life it is vote for the right.” He grew up in a humble village in Germany’s Black Forest, and it shows. There’s a saying in the region: “the hair in the soup”. It means focusing on even the tiniest things that can be improved.

He has the good looks of one of my favourite 1960s Russian film stars, Aleksandr Demyanenko. He hugs his players as though they were the loves of his life and he might never see them again. Journalists like him for his press-conference banter as well as his eloquence. He visits children in hospitals. He is funny. When Mario Götze, one of his star players at former club Borussia Dortmund, left for Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich, his explanation was: “He’s leaving because he’s Guardiola’s favourite. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I can’t make myself shorter and learn Spanish.”

Liverpool have had many famous managers, of course. Bill Shankly (there’s a statue of him outside the ground); Bob Paisley (ditto); Kenny Dalglish. But Klopp is already being talked of as one of the best ever.

Liverpool the city has evolved from its shamefully prominent role in the slave trade – in common with other major British ports – to a place with a diverse population and a well-won reputation for being friendly and welcoming. But the tragedy and scandal of Hillsborough, in which 96 fans were crushed to death in 1989 at Sheffield Wednesday’s ground, is etched into the nation’s sporting history, and its social justice record. After a 27-year-long battle to clear the names of the Liverpool fans whose reputations were smeared, after inquests that lasted two years – the longest case heard by a jury in British legal history – a verdict of unlawful killing was returned. But, as Margaret Aspinall of the indefatigable Hillsborough Family Support Group pointed out, after David Duckenfield, police commander at the ground, was cleared of manslaughter last year, no one has yet been found accountable for those killings.

The Sun, which categorically did not report “The Truth”, as the infamous headline went, but was found to have published untruths that blamed Liverpool fans for the disaster, is a red-top pariah here. The paper is the bestselling national in print, but shifts a measly 12,000 or so copies on Merseyside. A branch of Sainsbury’s was once found to be selling copies under the counter, as though they were counterfeit cigarettes. It’s a boycott that has lasted longer than many marriages.

The socially progressive values of the club extend to it supporting an end to period poverty – free sanitary products are available in every women’s loo at Anfield. Last month, the Reds Going Green initiative saw the installation of organic machines to break down food waste into water. The club even has its own allotment, which grows food to serve to fans in the main stand. It was the first Premier League club to be officially involved with an LGBT Pride event in 2012, at the invitation of Paul Amann. Amann tells me how he set up the LGBT supporters group, Kop Outs, because: “It’s essential that our voices are heard, our presence is welcomed and respected.” The group works alongside the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ group and the Fans Supporting Foodbanks initiative and has regular meet-ups. These things mean something to me: a football fan as a girl, and now as a woman. A woman who dates other women. A woman who doesn’t want to hear homophobic chants on the terraces. Or, it goes without saying, racist ones. Jamie Carragher, ex-player and pundit, has apologised on behalf of the club for its backing of striker Luis Suárez, who was banned from playing for eight matches in 2011 for making racist comments. “We made a massive mistake,” Carragher said. “What message do you send to the world? Supporting someone being banned because he used some racist words.”

Back on the pitch, some of this season’s performances have been, quite simply, balletic. Others as powerful and muscular as a weightlifting competition. Formations as beautiful as constellations. Forward surges as though our fullbacks were plugged into the mains. Possibly the best fullbacks playing today: 21-year-old local lad Trent Alexander-Arnold (known just as Trent) and the fiery Scot Andy Robertson (Robbo) are spoken about by pundits as innovators. Gary Lineker and I text, rapturously, about the two of them.

For a football team to be consistent, for a team to win the league, it must be capable of winning in many different ways. The aesthetically pleasing playing out from the back. Lightning counter-attacks. Scraping 1-0 wins in the final minutes (and, particularly at the start of this season, we have done a lot of that. It’s something Manchester United used to do in their 90s pomp, and naturally, I hated them for it). Mindful of the trauma of The Slip, the agreed club line is “one game at a time”, said again and again, as another scouse son, Pete Burns, once sang: “like a record baby, right round, round, round… ” And my God, how many of those we’ve smashed. The current side is the first in England to hold an international treble (the Champions League; Uefa Super Cup; Fifa Club World Cup). We have not lost a home game for almost two calendar years. Shortly, we’ll no doubt break the record for the earliest title win during a season; the most points across Europe’s top five leagues.

It is, even to the neutral, extraordinary stuff. It is, even to the haters, albeit grudgingly, extraordinary stuff. In 2016, one of the greatest stories of modern football was the previously mediocre Leicester City winning a surprise title. Liverpool’s dominance this season surpasses that for drama. It is watching history in the present.

Being at a game at Anfield is like being high while ingesting nothing. The stands seem to have lungs. Though You’ll Never Walk Alone has become supremely emotional, an anthem for strength and perseverance post-Hillsborough (“walk on through the wind / walk on through the rain”) it’s a song originally from the musical Carousel. It was a standout 1963 cover version by Liverpudlian band Gerry and the Pacemakers that kicked off its adoption at Anfield. “It’s got a lot of lovely major-to-minor changes at often unexpected moments that have the effect of emotionally blindsiding you,” music journalist Pete Paphides says (although he’s a United fan, so feel free to discount everything he tells me). “But it’s also obviously very hymnal, with a chorus which invites that religious ambiguity. It was Aretha Franklin’s version that John Peel played after Hillsborough and rendered himself incapable of carrying on by virtue of doing so.”

Anfield has always been something special; players from countless teams often talk of it being the greatest ground they have ever played at. Or the most intimidating. Or the most electric. But of late, there’s an extra buoyancy. The crowd salivates.

Watching the game against West Ham, we take the lead within 10 minutes, but they quickly equalise, before going ahead. We score twice more. It is our 21st consecutive home win, setting a Premier League-era record. At the end of the game, Klopp and his players applaud the Kop end, fans’ eyes glistening with both emotion and wind chill (“walk on, through the wind… ”)

Adjacent to the stadium at the redbrick Albert pub, Clara, Tom, John – all in their 20s, students, and local – and John’s dad, David, who is 53, are cheering the last-ditch win. I repeat what I asked Steve and his friends: just how excited should we all be?

“Very fucking excited,” says John. “Very fucking excited,” Tom concurs. (Scousers use swear words as ellipses. And the speed of Liverpudlian patter matches the rat-a-tat-tat of freestyle rappers.) The Albert is floor-to-ceiling in flags; unassuming from the outside, iconic inside. Across the road at the Park – the “Established 1888” sign above its door – it is Where’s Wally? levels of rammed, entirely usual for a match day. But the mood is as disbelieving as triumphant. It hasn’t happened yet, but it already feels as though people are waiting to be shaken awake from a dream. Around the corner, posters at another fan favourite, the Sandon, advertise a huge end-of-season victory party. I grab a burger at the Kop of the Range, a kebab joint not far from a scarf stall that has seen its business rocket over the past three years.

My Uber driver, Mohamed, 35, moved to the city from Sri Lanka. A massive Salah fan, he tells me his own revenue booms when the club win a game – happier fans means higher fares. “People don’t want to spend money on a loss,” he says. “If we win, the whole mood lifts. You can feel it in the car. Though when you start driving with Uber, they tell you not to mention what football team you support. Because football means a lot to people. There are many feelings involved with football.”

It’s unsurprising to me that even back in Sri Lanka, Mohamed was a fan. Liverpool is a global behemoth. The richest club in the UK outside Manchester.

A £1.7bn valuation; £533m turnover; pre-tax profits of £42m. Matchday ticket revenues increased (thanks to a regenerated £110m main stand). Visiting the club shop, there is LFC-branded gin; babygros; even a Hello Kitty tie-in range. As Richard Haigh at consultants Brand Finance tells me, next season’s kit deal with Nike is “expected to represent the largest in history. Brands will be willing to pay to have some magic dust of LFC.” There are official stores as far afield as Dubai and Bangkok.

John W Henry has won the support of the fans for his positive handling of the club. And yet, despite this huge wealth, Anfield is the 10th most deprived neighbourhood in the country. Boarded-up houses surround the stadium. The club has not covered itself in glory in the past, accused of buying up properties in unscrupulous ways. But it is hoped that local enterprises, such as the community-run Homebaked cake shop and new housing association properties, will make the neighbourhood better.

Last week, we were knocked out of the FA Cup in a match against Chelsea. Or, as I call that fixture, Kensington versus Kensington. (In Liverpool’s “Kenny”, 98% of residents are among the most deprived 5% nationally. In London’s, residents earn three times the national average.)

In the league, there has been a blip. Last weekend we finally lost. And we lost 3-0 to, with the greatest respect, Watford; not a bad side, but a side ensconced in a relegation battle. Arsenal, who once went a whole season unbeaten (“the Invincibles”), and are keen to keep that record, tweeted from the official club account: “Phew!”

But I am not panicking. It’s possible Dan from the Flat Iron is panicking. But Klopp isn’t panicking. In typical fashion, he said the fact we played an absolutely awful game of football was “rather positive… ”

“A couple of years ago,” our hero reminds us, “I said we wanted to write our own stories and create our own history, and obviously the boys took what I said really seriously. It is so special. The numbers are incredible.” In a nod to Sir Alex Ferguson’s famous line that his greatest challenge was “knocking Liverpool right off their fucking perch”, Liverpool chief executive Peter Moore says now: “We are back on our perch.” As The Anfield Wrap’s Gareth says: “In a dream scenario, a period of dominance follows. Not so long ago that dream was just that. Now, it’s a reality that is much easier to imagine.”

Four more games. Eyes on the prize. For me, at last, 30 years in the making, eyes on the prize.

[onlyfangz]

Jack-fucking-septiceye can goshdang go fuck off with that casual ass "yo that looks like Anti on the background" shit I love him so much

i fucking know right? like the best thing that came from anti in october is just how casually he mentions him right now. like you’re sitting there, watching a lovely video about a robot trying to figure out the difference between “real” and “Real Madrid” then all of a sudden it “ooo Anti” and my dumb ass is like “whAT WHERE GIVE ME” and he’s not even there! (or is he? ;P) that son of a bitch has got me fucking trembling for an anti fix, what an asshole.

still love him tho.

[jukeboxgraduate]

Barcelona, Travel Post

Everyone was so generous to me with their Barcelona intel that I wanted to write down all of mine so that I could return the favor.

Airport transport: being someone from New York, my first thought when arriving in a new city is "Can I get into the city center via public transportation?" The answer is yes, but a QUALIFIED yes. You have to take a shuttle bus to the domestic terminal, which is 10 minutes away, and then it is a long, long walk to the station. It did drop me two blocks from my hotel and cost me less than 1 euro but the airport bus was 6 euro, stopped right outside the terminal, and was three blocks from my hotel. 

I did not take the train back, but the morning airport bus was a soul-crushing, sardine-packed-anti-tourist experience that I would not recommend to anybody.

IMPORTANT NOTE: There is no ATM in the airport. Do yourself a favor and go to AmEx or an international bank so you have like 25 Euro when you arrive.

Lodging: I didn't do an Airbnb because I was traveling solo and Airbnb is great if everything goes well but if it doesn't you are FUCKED. For example: When I went to Scandinavia and missed my connection so my bags didn’t arrive until the next day, I could t just have them dropped at the hotel whenever, I had to waste a whole day waiting for them. When the plane was late I had to rely on the host to be flexible. There were too many things that could have gone wrong.

I chose a location with proximity to the metro going to the festival and the location of the shuttle bus. I have burned out with locations that are "a short walk" because short walks become lengthy on a day-in, day-out basis. It was worth it to me to pay a premium to be central so I could go back to the hotel whenever I wanted.

Honestly, I would have really liked a nice apartment in Eixample where I could have foisted my bad Spanish on the local cafe daily. Next time.

Sights: 99% of what I like to do in a city is walk around and Barcelona is absolutely a city made to walk around and every block is gorgeous. I would walk and get lost and then pull out my phone and figure out where to go next. 

[I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR about using my phone. I fucking backpacked through Southeast Asia before there was an internet. I have earned the right to use a goddamn smartphone in Europe. The phone meant I could LOOK at the amazing architecture and not have to be looking at a map all the time, and it makes you less of a target for thieves. (More on this later.)]

El Born/Barrio Gotic: Seriously the best thing you could possibly do here is pick a random street and walk. The most famous streets are clogged with people and I moved away from them as quickly as I could. I stopped by the Cathedral but didn’t get in because it was tourist hell. On the other hand, I stumbled into Stella Maris on Sunday afternoon during Mass and I said I wanted to light a candle for Santa Barbara (which I actually did, I do this for my mom) and it was lovely. But mostly I just walked around and got lost.

My favorite thing in El Born was the Mercat del Born Cultural Center. This is the former location of the old neighborhood market that was going to be torn down and turned into a FNAC and then was going to be a library when they discovered hella ancient ruins underneath. Now you can walk around these ancient ruins. I went back a second time, it was so amazing. There is also a restaurant featuring local foods and a shop with locally made goods and public bathrooms.

By Sunday I had promised myself that I would “go sit in a park or something” and although it had poured rain in the morning/early afternoon (when I was writing in a cafe) I took my computer back to the hotel and started walking through El Born to get away from tourists. I ended up at the Arc de Triomf and the park leftover from the 1888 World’s Fair. And although there was a dude under the Arc singing “Easy Like Sunday Morning” it was mostly locals walking around and it was totally chill until a drum circle popped up (to be fair, it was not a bunch of Burning Man leftovers drumming, but, like, actual immigrants/residents from the African Continent). It is a great park. I recommend it.

Sagrada Familia: You have to go. I went in 2000 when I was there and as my tour guide said, “You haven’t been.” It was not even close to the same building. As a coworker said, “How often do you get to visit a 100-year construction project in progress?” I highly recommend plumping for the guided tour and not just the headsets. My guide was awesome and I learned a lot and you can stay and hang out as long as you want to. I did not pay to go up to the Towers because I AM A GIANT CHICKEN ABOUT HEIGHTS, but that was actually fine because they were closed that day. I think I was there for 3 and a half hours. 

Casa Batllo: This is worse from a tourist hell perspective than Sagrada Familia because it’s small. I did the 8:45am “sunrise tour” (hahaha Barcelona you are so cute) and I would advise the 8:30 instead so you have the place to yourself for half an hour before people start walking through with iPads. My advice with Casa Batllo is to spend as much time as you can in the front room, because the rest of it is not nearly as inspiring, and then head to the roof. Ignore advice telling you to go to the roof first and then wind your way down. Keep in mind that you cannot see the entire building because people still live there. So you can’t spend 3 hours like I thought I was going to.

La Pedrera/Casa Mila: I bought a ticket thinking I’d go in the morning and then I didn’t, so I had to go to the nighttime tour and beg to be allowed to pay the difference. The nighttime tour isn’t a tour. It’s a lecture in the courtyard, a climb SEVEN FLOORS UP to the attic with another lecture, and then an audiovisual show on the roof. *bzzt* I was Gaudi-drunk at the time I bought the ticket and honestly I should have just given it a pass. I got more out of doing a Lonely Planet guidebook walking tour than I did out of this experience.

Fundacion Joan Miro: This is lovely and comprehensive, and well-curated. I hate his depiction of women, however, and by the end was done. The gift shop has many cute items as well as jewelry from local Barcelona merchants. The Fundacion is up on Montjuic, which you can get to by bus, cablecar (teleferic) or funicular. The funicular is part of the Metro system so you can transfer to it without paying extra. (Given the GIANT CHICKEN ABOUT HEIGHTS note above you know I did not take the cablecar.) I did not walk around Montjuic because that is also the location of the Palau San Jordi, and I spent a whole lot of fucking time there in 2000 when I came to see Pearl Jam. It is a lovely green space though and I would advocate trading it for the other park noted above, if you find yourself looking for a green space.)

I did this instead of the Picasso Museum because his most important works are not in the museum and I’ve been to (and LOVE) the Musee Picasso in Paris twice, and I have to get to Madrid so I can see Guernica in person anyway. 

Things I deliberately did not do: La Boqueria (cutting through it was nightmare enough), any lengthy walk down Las Ramblas, extended beach time

I also saw the traveling version of the V&A Bowie exhibit, which just happened to be in town, and also let’s remember three nights of Primavera Sound that I had to file from, which kept me up late and sleeping in at the end of it.

FOOD IN BARCELONA:

At this point it will be a separate post.

IMPORTANT PROTIPS:

METRO: The Metro is awesome, convenient, clean. I bought the T-10 card, which gives you 10 trips for 9.95 Euro. That includes the RENFE train from the airport BUT NOT THE Metro (I don’t get it either). The T-10 is good on Metro, buses, trams and the funicular to Montjuic.

OVERSEAS SIM CARDS: It’s getting easier to buy a SIM when you arrive somewhere but I opted for an option called KnowRoaming, which is a sticker you put on your US SIM, and it switches over automatically. WhatsApp is free, calls are cheap, you get an alternate number so you can text, and they have unlimited data plans, which in BCN was $6.99 a day. I bought data for the first day to see how much I used. I bought a 7-day data plan. It was FANTASTIC to be able to use my phone the way I normally use my phone, especially when needing to find friends or discover that Arcade Fire is playing a pop-up show. Also? The map was freedom. I could go ANYWHERE. Maybe when you’re a dude you don’t worry about finding your way out. 

PICKPOCKETING/THEFT/CRIME IS A REAL THING. I read the stories and I was almost sure they were fake, except 1) a Spanish friend who lives in Barcelona met me for lunch and told me how she was clutching her purse in the Metro and when crossing Las Ramblas and 2) a smart woman who was on my food tour had her purse snatched when in La Boqueria. She grabbed it back and kicked the kid in the face, and then bought another purse to replace the leather purse WITH A VERY STURDY STRAP that got yanked off her arm.

EVERYTHING IS CLOSED ON MONDAY except the Museum of Contemporary Art, which I went to partly because I was over there collecting my festival credentials next door, partly so I could get in some air conditioning and use a bathroom but also because this stuff is my jam, and there were some great exhibits. THEY ARE OPEN ON MONDAY. Go watch the skateboarders on the plaza outside if nothing else.

ALL THE RESTAURANTS ARE CLOSED SUNDAY NIGHT so plan in advance. I was literally [] this close to going to McDonald’s because every.thing.was.closed. Ask your hotel. Plan it in advance. Book at the place I ended up (which was fantastic).

Advance tickets: I booked tickets to Sagrada Familia and Casa Batllo one week in advance. I felt kinda touristy until I turned up at the queue for Sagrada Familia, and the women behind me who had no tickets were told “No, we are totally sold out for the day” at 11:45am. All of the sights will scan your barcode on your phone and most hotels will let you print so I would suggest booking the things you can be sure about and then doing the rest on a case by case basis. THAT SAID, I booked a ticket to La Pedrera that I ended up not getting to use/having to pay up just to get in because I was too ambitious. So, book but be smart.

[d2kvirus]

Dickheads of the Month: June 2018

As it seems that there are people who say or do things that are remarkably dickheaded yet somehow people try to make excuses for them or pretend it never happened, here is a collection of some of the dickheaded actions we saw in the month of June 2018 to make sure that they are never forgotten.

It somehow didn’t occur to Isabel Oakeshott that, when she has seen evidence of collusion between Arron Banks of Leave.EU and the Kremlin, the correct course of action is to report this to the relevant bodies immediately - not withhold the information for a year thinking it would make her look really, really important when she reveals this information in her next book - a book which may well have been released after the after the Electoral Commission’s investigations into Banks’ activities - which also happens to obliterate her defence of not knowing how important the information was if she was holding it off for her next book, so her haranguing of Carole Cadwalladr when Cadwalladr suggested these links now looks a whole lot more unpleasant as Oakeshott knew Cadwalladr was correct but had to maintain her pro-Leave psychosis anyway

Satan’s personal cheerleader Ann Coulter outdid everyone on the right not named Alex Jones by claiming, on national television no less, that every single child see crying as they were torn away from their parents to be locked in cages were actors and their tears weren’t real - which not only comes across as sociopathic with her smears, but the fact she’s cribbing InfoWars’ usual gamibit means she’s not even being original

Architect of Britain’s economy tanking Boris Johnson responded to legitimate worries of British businesses that Britait will hit them hard with the comforting response of “fuck business” - which shows that Johnson is still doing a fine job of justifying how we send £141k a year to pay his salary when it could literally be spent on anything else, let alone taking responsibility for him being the person responsible for this complete mess

In a blatant attempt to pull the wool over the license fee payers’ eyes, the BBC reported how the proposed £20bn funding increase for the NHS would be paid for by a tax increase - pretending that they didn’t report just 48 hours previously that the cost would be comfortably paid by this mythical “Brexit dividend” that they were banging on about at the time in spite of the fact people with the most basic understanding of economics or mathematics (as well as MPs on both sides of the aisle) calling this a complete fabrication used to try and dupe the taxpayer

Unofficial spokesman for the FBPE mob Eddie Marsan decided the best response to somebody having the temerity to suggest that acting as if Britait is the only notable thing to happen in British politics since 2010 and that nothing else matters at the voting booth by calling the person with such foolish ideas a “stupid, over privileged, hipster socialist” - and that’s a direct quote

Lover of all the creatures on God’s green earth (except women, homosexuals, the poor, the elderly, and animals at the receiving end of bloodsports) Christopher Chote proved himself to be a master of the political world by blocking a debate into making upskirt photography illegal - which would have at least won him a few friends with The Sun, given their habit of publishing upskirt photos taken of random female celebrities without their knowledge or consent

Having dragged himself back into the limelight by paying the dessicated husk of UKIP’s £30, Milo Yiannopoulos rapidly reminded everyone what an irresponsible dickhead when telling a journalist “I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight” - and two days later, after somebody did just that in Maryland, the best he could come up with to defend what he said were how his words were something something twisted by the leftist agenda - rather than sounding remarkably like the threats that Brandon Griesemer sent to CNN back in January, the only difference being that Griesemer didn’t attempt a pathetic backtrack of “B-b-b-but I didn’t mean it, you leftist scum” when called out on it

So either Melania Trump is so brainless that it doesn’t occur to her that wearing a jacket bearing the slogan “I don’t really care” when going to visit one of her husband’s concentration camps for Mexican children could be seen as either grossly insensitive or outright antagonistic, or she knew exactly what she was doing which means that Ivanka isn’t the only one of the Trump women who the phrase “feckless cunt” applies to 

Tommy Robinson fanboy Jason Collins attempted to raise support for his boneheaded messiah by tweeting a photo purportedly showing the massive turnout for the Free Tommy protest in London - only for anyone capable of noticing landmarks to point out it was a photo from Liverpool taken in 2005 for their Champions League winners parade.  But apart from being the wrong city, the wrong decade and completely out of contest it proves...oh what’s the fucking point?

In response to the Argentine football team cancelling a friendly against Jerusalem in protest of Israel’s actions in Gaza, Israeli defence minister Avigdor Lieberman harrumphed about how "We will not yield before a pack of anti-Semitic terrorist supporters" - which is less a statement and more a high-scoring game of Zionist bingo

Britain’s answer to Ted Nugent Morrissey claimed that he was cancelling his entire tour because something something left-wing agenda, as opposed to the more commonly-accepted reason for him cancelling his tour (which is hardly unique, as he;s cancelled over 100 concerts since 2012) being related to lack of ticket sales due to tickets being priced at £75, which is double what several bands playing the same venues are charging

In response to Jimmy Durmaz conceding a last minute free kick that led to Germany winning the match in the last second, Sweden fans responded by racially abusing Durmaz on social media while sending death threats to him and his family

On a similar note, Columbia fans sent Carlos Sanchez’s death threats after his handball led to Columbia conceding a penalty and him being red carded - which, considering what happened to Andres Escobar after his own goal in the 1994 World Cup, is the sort of thing that shouldn’t be thrown around lightly

Completing the trifecta of football fans, fans from various African countries were quick to accuse the VAR system used in the World Cup of racism after Senegal failed to win a penalty after VAR rightly adjudged that the tackle from Columbia’s Davinson Sanchez (who also happens to be black, but that’s not important right now...) was fair.  Among the conspiratorial nonsense was a damning indictment of both these vocal idiots’ knowledge of geography or their memory spans

After literally years of horror stories predicting Russian fans committing acts of hooliganism and drowning matches under a tsunami of racist chants at their World Cup, it has to be pointed out that the most notable act of racism in the first two weeks of the tournament is Alan Sugar’s tweet about the Senegal team

Obnoxious host of Singled Out (no, not Jenny McCarthy, the other one) Chris Hardwick responded to accusations of being an abusive and controlling boyfriend by saying that Chloe Dykstra cheated on him, which not only failed to dismiss the accusations but also imply that Dykstra cheating on him meant it was perfectly okay for him to be an abusive and controlling boyfriend

Z-Pack spokesperson Chris Amann very kindly allowed his own incompetence to become a part of the legal record with his nuisance lawsuit against CM Punk & Colt Cabana which saw him attempt to claim loss of earnings and damage to his reputation in spite his remaining in the employ of WWE to this day, failing to even prove that Punk named him in the podcast in reference to what he was suing for, and hiring a lawyer who managed to submit the wrong evidence to trial on several occasions.  Suffice it to say Amann did not win - but he did draw attention to the fact he had an affair with a WWE employee...

Somehow it occurred to neither Chris Grayling nor the BBC that the chaos inflicted by Govia Thameslink on people using their Northern franchise was not unique, as those using their Southern franchise have suffered the exact same problems on a much larger scale but somehow this minor detail continued to be overlooked again and again and again

According to Priti Patel it is not acceptable to see rogue behaviour from government ministers.  Just a reminder: last year Priti Patel was sacked from the government for claiming to be on holiday when she was actually holding covert meetings with several Israeli officials, meetings she had not informed the government nor the Foreign Office about

It’s interesting that left-wing blogs such as Squawkbox, The Canary, Evolve Politics and Another Angry Voice all received micro donations of between 1p and 10p due to members of the FBPE mob and the usual Tory and UKIP trolls operating under the belief that donating so little money would cost the blogs money, when all they were actually doing was giving PayPal free money while giving those blogs plenty of free material - not just the story of people deludedly thinking they could bankrupt them with donations of a few pennies, but also how the supposedly left-wing FPBE mob are just as keen to silence opposing viewpoints as followers of Farage and Rees-Mogg 

In a remarkable lack of awareness, Butch Hartman stated that he loves anime but suggested that all animators should practise other art styles - which not only came across as remarkably condescending to a vast number of animators, but seemed oblivious to the fact that every single show he created uses the exact same art style 

For some reason Real Madrid thought the best way to prepare for Spain’s World Cup campaign would be to announce they had signed Spain coach Julen Lopetegui as their new manager just three days before Spain’s opening match.  The RFEF agreed that it was such a good idea that they promptly sacked Lopetegui the day after Real Madrid announced his signing - which of course drew the usual conspiratorial bollocks from Florentino Perez, who decided to play the victim rather than consider the concept that maybe not announcing Lopetegui as their coach on the eve of the World Cup might be a bloody stupid thing to do

So having torpedoed her comeback with a bunch of racist tweets, what has Roseanne Barr done since?  Attempt to blame it on being under the effects of Ambien and, when that failed to convince anyone who checked her post history, came up with some mealy-mouthed waffling saying that her tweet that compared  Valerie Jarrett to an ape was actually about anti-semitism, convincing precisely nobody

While promoting the forgettable fluff that is Ocean’s 8 Sandra Bullock stated that any and all criticism from male film critics could be ignored as the film is not for them.  Let me put this into perspective: when noted misogynist crackpot Sam Peckinpah never tried that line to dismiss any negative reviews from female reviewers such as Pauline Kael, yet Sandra Bullock attempts such obvious gatekeeping, this is the sort of things that people who believe that GamerGate was their Woodstock will pounce on

Special mention to both Nike and Adidas for their kit designs for the World Cup, where the two companies appear to be in a competition to take what should be a series of straightforward kits to design and instead decide to be “creative” and create something ugly

And finally, because of course it is, there’s the the only person who ever took advice about prison reform from Kim Kardashian Donald Trump - although he amazingly didn’t flip-flop on that decision like a petulant child, as opposed to a child he ripped away from their parents and locked inside a cage

[anton-chigurhs-friendo-blog]

Credo

felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,

quique metus omnes, et inexorabile fatum,

subjecit pedibus strepitumque acherontis avari [1]  

                                            ~Virgil

  Credo

Canto I

 The Rain in Spain

  “the more religious a nation”

said Ayn Rand

(due to its anti-body anti-sex thought)

“the more varied

and violently obscene

its four-letter-word repertoire—

the Spanish”

she said

“are the most obscene”

 Hemingway agreed—

saying their blasphemy had to keep pace

with the austerity of their religion

 and there’s that part in War and Peace

after Balashev dines with Napoleon

and the emperor asks if it’s true

that Moscow’s called Holy Moscow

as “such a great number of churches

is a sign of backwardness—

nowhere else in Europe

is there anything like it”

 “I beg your majesty’s pardon”

says Balashev

“but there is Spain”

   where

during the Lisbon quake

of All Saints Day

cathedrals collapsed into rubble

killing thousands—

yet taverns and whorehouses

came through unscathed

 when these Spaniards stumbled upon the Americas

the Arawak brought them food

water

gifts

“with fifty men” Columbus said

“we could vanquish them….

let us in the name of the Holy Trinity

send home all the slaves

that can be sold”

 but so many died on the return voyage

that he set them to mining gold—

and those who did not fill their quota

had their hands cut off

 Stanley Kubrick called civilized man

an ignoble savage—

irrational

brutal

weak

unable to be objective about anything

(where his own interests were involved)

and he said that any attempt to create social institutions

based on a false view of the nature of man

was likely doomed to failure

 Tecumseh’s brother

Tenskwatawa

said this civilization came to America

as a great ugly crab

vomited forth from the sea

claws full of mud and seaweed

the spawn of an enormous evil serpent

that lived under the ocean

 and asked what he thought of this white culture

an Osage named Big Soldier said

“I see and admire your manner of living

your good warm houses

your extensive fields of corn

gardens

cows

horses

wagons

a thousand machines I know not the use of—

you are able to clothe yourselves

even from weeds and grass

you’ve the power to subdue every animal

and are surrounded by slaves

everything about you is in chains

yet

you are slaves yourselves

 I hear I should exchange my presents for yours

yet I too should become a slave—

as for myself I was born free

raised free

and will die free”

   Canto II

 hos epi to polu

                                                   “know in thyself and all one self-same soul

                                                                  banish the dream that sunders part from whole”

                                                                          ~from an anonymous Hindu poem

  an individual atom may decay

today

or in a billion years

with no way of telling when

yet their behavior in large numbers

is predictable

for science must be broad in order to work—

it develops in the sense of evermore general laws

 such with anthropology

 Gerry Spence called it the cluster-concept—

people’s personalities

viewpoints

prejudices

come in bunches

like grapes

and if you examine one grape in a bunch

you get a good general idea

of what the rest of the grapes are like

yet generalizations have garnered an ill-reputation

for being liable to exceptions

(those shaded unions in every venn diagram)

but in the long run these anomalies

hold little bearing

as broad anamorphosic effects

are produced by the accumulation

of plethora of minuscule causes—

and subtle differences in many individuals

create huge distinctions in cultures—  

sunny days in Seattle are nice

as are storms in the desert

but it takes legions of rainy days to create a rainforest

and the absence of a few

will not turn it to a wasteland

thus

playing blackjack with life’s probabilities

is not gambling

if

you count your cards wisely—

for generalizations oft point toward likelihoods

and the mind would be helpless without them

as in general liberals tend to be smarter than conservatives

as it takes less intelligence

to embrace stasis

than to welcome pragmatic novelty  

as in general people with lapdogs

are more intelligent than those with pit-bulls

and in general people who enjoy concertos

are brighter than those who like country

as in general patrons of Masterpiece Theatre

are sharper than those who watch nascar

and in general where there is dullness of mind

there too is an excess of fertility—

science is based on observable facts

these are observable facts

 Canto III

 Land of Jewelers

                                                                   “men never do evil so completely and cheerfully

                                            as when they do it from religious conviction”

                                                                                                        ~Blaise Pascal

 the time revolution of the 1860s

rendered the Garden of Eden

into Mesopotamia

where a left-brain farmers’ revolution

spread out in concentric circles

stretching west like kudzu

sowing seeds in its wake

that would germinate into factory labor

contractors

miners

dam-builders

real-estate developers

bankers

corporate lawyers

and CEOs

who confuse information with knowledge

wealth with security

credulity with faith

and gluttony with virtue

allowing the arithmetic of finance

to dictate profit-driven lives

that slakest still not the thirst of greed—

and as revolutions tend toward excess

holistic thinkers were cast from this garden

for the analytic western mind yields obedient soldiers

who will travel to every quarter of the firmament

to slaughter people they don’t know

over philosophies of which no one is certain

philistine weathervanes inflexible to reason

yet spinning in the tempests of popular opinion—

as the most pious Baptists

would have made the most devout Muslims

had they been but born into that faith—

when these opinions

(so often spoken of in tides)

turn against them

they swim with the current

dictating values

in the same manner they dictate fashion

giving no more thought to normative ethics

than what they wear to the office—

cookie-cutter personalities in cookie-cutter houses

shooting like invasive weeds

from once Edenic forest—

a civilization forged upon Vulcan’s anvil

and founded

(according to Freud)

upon the repression of instincts—

brimming with a false sense of security

fostered by clergy

and short-term individual self-interest

that weaves in its aftermath an elaborate latticework

of environmental degradation

fueled by men who can describe a grain of sand

in great detail

but know not

nor care

what the beach looks like

as making rent and feeding children

too often warrants mindless toil

that

ipso facto

damages the environment

and

devours time better spent on reflection

this

in a life where it takes near forty hours a week

of omnivorous reading

to even begin to understand the world

 this is why Robert Frost called the brain

a wonderful organ

that starts working the moment you wake

and does not stop

until you get to the office—

and it was of this left-brain work-ethic that Thoreau spoke

when he said the most amazing thing

about the pyramids

was that so many degraded men

would spend their lives constructing a tomb

for some ambitious fool

 and this side of the neocortex

responsible for logic

is

oddly

the side most likely to defy it

as this left-brained person is creative

in that he is imaginative enough

to allow himself to believe that which is most convenient—  

for I know people in New Madrid

who think dinosaur fossils were planted

to test our faith

reminding me of another Osage

who upon getting up and walking out of a sermon

(about Jonah and the whale)

said “we know the white man will lie

but this is the biggest lie

we’ve ever heard”

 and it was a Seneca

Red Jacket

who said these missionaries could make the bible talk to suit themselves

“if we had no land or money to be cheated out of” he said

“I doubt these blackcoats would trouble themselves

about our good hereafter”

yet

if the honorable light of western civilization

were run through a prism

it would split into art

music

literature

philosophy

and the science to which we attribute

a scientific method written in pencil

that invites challenge

as theology avoids scrutiny

and is stamped in ink—

ink that is bleeding into a rorschach stain

of the san marco dragon [2]

spreading exponentially

into a nightmarish reflection of the basilica

rupturing into temples for the worship of mammon

over a Venice flooded by receding glaciers

  expand or expire

a Sophie’s Choice decision

a pyrrhic victory

 a whitewashed tomb

   Canto IV

 The Beatitudes

                                                   “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology

                                                                                of the cancer cell” ~Edward Abbey

  people are geographically

sexually-selected biological organisms

not fallen from grace

but arisen from primordial earth

subject to the same laws of evolution

and constructed of the same cells

as every other creature—

cells that

(as Robert Pirsig so eloquently set forth)

“make sweat and snot and phlegm…

belch and bleed and fuck and fart…

piss and shit and vomit

and squeeze out more bodies just like themselves

all covered with blood and placental slime

that grow and squeeze out more bodies”

 and the human brain

(being part and parcel body)

begets a mind as shaped by these laws

as are eyes and thumbs—

just as the child’s psyche

has been sculpted by eons of evolution

to want to sleep between its parents

for it was under cloak of night

that the child’s very real killers lurked—

Plato said we can easily forgive this child

for being afraid of the dark

“the real tragedy” he said

“is when men are afraid of the light”

 but familiarity too blinds

and proficient perspective is a matter of distance—

as out the window unfolds the greatest mass-extinction

since the demise of the dinosaurs

whose soil was this

before Kinko’s/FedEx covered it in concrete?

whose blood spilled here?

what love lost?

 and though sharp lines be often drawn at peril—

this right-brained individual

is (normally) left

and the left-brained individual

is (by and large) right

and these hemispheres of the brain

analysis – synthesis

correlate generally with the hemispheres of politics

republican – democrat

and the hemispheres of earth

east – west

socialist – capitalist—

each hemisphere viewing the world

from a distinct vantage point

thus

understanding it incompatibly

and seeing each the other askance

giving credence to the old dictum  

where the dog gave meat to the ox

and the ox offered straw to the dog

and both went hungry—

as the left is equipped with a microscope

loupe

calculator

and the right with binoculars

globe

and telescope—

a telescope that has

historically

landed people in worse strife

than microscopes

(or even calculators)

for in a pedantic left-brained world

the truth will not set you free

as holistic tools produce holistic views

grounded in cynical reality

and harboring not ‘love’ of truth

(for quotidian minds

so often find it difficult to love that which is ugly)

but an innate respect for unadulterated honesty

as the suffering of great men

most reflects itself in marble busts

for the finest artists do tend toward despair—

ignorance is bliss

and depression is

far too often

a sickness for the intelligent—

but genuine progress has always stemmed

from dissatisfied people

 this right hemisphere

with its inherent aversion for caution and thrift

covets a life without fletchings

generally geared toward independence

empathy

generosity

and practical simplicity

freedom – honor – things of the spirit

and an affinity for the environment—

Kant having once said that loving beautiful art

was no indication that a person was decent

but he said that seeing beauty in nature

was the sign of a good soul

 and according to Aldo Leopold

though we strive for peace in our time

too much safety

yields

in the long run only danger

 the left hemisphere

emits a more optimistic disposition

geared toward collaboration—

as evolving in harsher climes

necessitates alliance for survival

and a monotonous life of redundant tasks

that fosters a conservative aversion toward change—

and it is this western mind

that conceived a western cornucopia  

that has poured forth its fruit out over a world

whose fate can now be calculated

by repeatedly punching the multiplication button

on a calculator

(like the king’s chessboard)

or watching the first three minutes of Mike Judge’s Idiocracy—

for the same inertia that keeps a people static

keeps them propelled along a destructive path

once thrust in that direction—

and a pendulum is inclined to swing

until it is forced to stop

 one and a half billion people at the start of the 20th century

three billion by 1960

in excess of seven billion now

and over twice as many hemorrhaging forth

every month

than walked the earth at the dawn of agriculture—

to even suggest

that an unchecked geometrically swelling population

where the least intelligent people

rapidly out-reproduce the more gifted

is anything other than a prescription for disaster  

is akin to denying 2 x 2 = 4

nor 4 x 4: 16

ad infinitum

yet instead of being restrained

we celebrate such behavior

with television programs like 19 Kids and Counting

where a conservative Arkansas family

breed like lemmings—

I doubt one of whom know

who Thomas Malthus even was

this

in a country where the average college student

can identify over a thousand corporate logos

yet cannot at the same time name ten plants or animals

native to his own soil

 and this western mind

harbors further subdivisions

as the teutonic mind tends toward rigidity

militarism

rules and authority

in a way the gallic does not

arbeit macht frei

and it lies within the boundaries of possibility

that the holocaust could never have happened in France

        and though they’ve begat their Bachs

Dürers

and Beethovens

this great germanic burden

dovetails snugly with their general excellence  

as engineers and scientists—

for the more analytic mind

derives morality primarily from social pressure

and is therefore conformist by nature—

medieval Germans had a saying too

stadtluft macht frei [3]

but much has changed

 and though all and sundry use both minds

every outlook is a matter of degree

dependent largely

upon which side of the cerebral meridian

the bulk of a personality dwells—

nor is it just an issue of lateralization

for there is the vertical y-axis of intelligence

creating a quadratic line-graph in which we all reside

and though deviations steer human history

the numeric strength of these general antipodes drive it

and though we cannot have larger meanings

without the small

this graph is far too heavily laden

in the lower-left quadrant

for the world to remain a sustainable biome

 great minds think in epochs

small minds in increments—

for context by its very nature

always trumps text

             Canto V

 Pathos

                                                                 “ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey

                                         where wealth accumulates, and men decay”

                                                                                       ~Oliver Goldsmith

                                                                                                                              ‘The Deserted Village’

  Goethe called Hamlet

a fine porcelain vase

in which an acorn had been planted

so too the seed of civilization

within the ecology of this planet

for there is a swelling chemical deadzone

at the mouth of the Mississippi

and on Diego Garcia

hermit crabs live in bottle caps

as in Denmark

kittiwakes weave synthetic straw

fishing line

and plastic Q-Tips

into cliff-nests overlooking an ocean

from which Tenskwatawa said the white race

emerged as a great ugly monster

an ocean that now has 46,000 pieces of floating plastic trash

per square mile—

thinking it’s food

albatross starve with stomachs full of Styrofoam

and discarded condoms

and as I understand it

there are now Wall Street think-tanks

calculating profit margins

from the longterm effects of global warming—

as parrots in Brazilian jungles

mimic the sound of chainsaws

[1] happy the man who has learned the causes of things, and has put under his feet all fears, and inexorable fate, and the noisy strife of the hell of greed

 [2]  c = – 3/4 + 0i

[3] city air makes one free