The Hairdryer Treatment

it’s not an allegory, i see it amuses you. true, mr. verkhovensky says that i’m lying under a rock, squashed but not quite crushed to death— just wriggling. that’s a clever way of describing my state.

— fyodor dostoyevsky

a spider...

Without the thought of preconceptions, things come out like mustard, words free fall with correct spelling, sort of.

Bombs are going off on some of my former stomping grounds, people are dying and all I can really do is just think about how fucked up it all is.

Yeah I can write about it and I can go to protest, but what can I really do, how can I really be a factor?

It’s a disturbing thought. These last two weeks have serious repercussions. Perhaps in my life, my career, my friendships, my political socialization in the post-collegiate, still making no money period, who knows?

things go boom, that much is understood.

i have been attacked by a spider and it hurts…

7-28-06

and then there were 32...

some amazing scenes today/tonight as the final 2010 world cup field was established.

also, an absolute travesty of justice occurred in paris as the irish got egregiously raped out of a spot in south africa as the ref failed to see two offsides and two handballs (in the same play). yeah, the ‘hand of henry’ condemned the irish out of, yet another, major tournament.

that one is going to hurt, especially since lebanon sucks narrowly missed qualification again. if i didn’t have a match of my own tonight i would be mourning with the rest of the irish via strong irish drinks in dark-lit local irish establishments. AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!

regardless, as the whistle just blew in montevideo with uruguay wrapping up the final spot (suck it costa rica), here are the 32 countries that will learn their groups in the live draw going down on december 4th…

FULL LIST OF TEAMS AT 2010 WORLD CUP

HOSTS: South Africa

AFRICA QUALIFYING: Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria

ASIA QUALIFYING: Australia, Japan, North Korea, South Korea

EUROPE QUALIFYING: Denmark, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland

SOUTH AMERICA QUALIFYING: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay

NORTH, CENTRAL AMERICA AND QUALIFYING: Honduras, Mexico, United States

ASIA/OCEANIA PLAY-OFF New Zealand

203 days, 40 hours, and 20 minutes until it kicks off!

swine flu '09 pandemic mix 3.0

well, it’s all fun and games and media sensationalism until one of your best friends gets it and then— within a week— it spreads to his wife, parents, friends, sister, 1-year old niece, and co-workers. um, yeah. shit is for real.

in times like these, some get vaccinated, others stockpile tamiflu, many put their trust in high-tech holy water dispensaries, a few simply flee to south dakota.

i inoculate with multilateral bass-y mixes. no mercury included, promise.

here is vol. 3, enjoy.

1. K’naan & J.Period - Don’t Think Twice (Messengers Remix)   
2. Los Destellos feat. Fefe - Elsa (Sonido Martines Remix)
3. Jahdan Blakkamoore - Get Hustlin  
4. Phaseone - Villain Jawnt  
5. Sir Mixalot - Posse On Broadway (Diplo Mix)
6. Los Rakas - Fuego En Su Cuerpo   
7. Zomby - Digital Fauna   
8. The Very Best - Nsokoto   
9. Schlachthofbronx feat. Slush Puppy Kids - Too High  
10. Magic System - Bouger Bouger   
11. Uproot Andy and Geko Jones - Manuelita (Remix)      
12. Elephant Man & Ishawna - Give It To Me                 
13. El Hijo de la Cumbia - La Cumbia Es Un Tango                  
14. G-Side feat. Shyft - Hit Da Block  
15. Jahdan Blakkamoore feat. Durrty Goodz - Mesmerized   
16. Checkpoint303 - Rissala-Min-Qalandia       
17. Gnonnas Pedro & His Dadjes Band - La Musica En Vérité

**Download Swine Flu 3.0**

previously…

Swine Flu 1.0

Swine Flu 2.0

“You know who’s guarding Hillary Clinton in Afghanistan right now? Blackwater,” Scahill told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Tuesday night. “You know who guards members of Congress? Blackwater. They have half a billion dollars in contracts in Afghanistan right now. CIA, State Department, Defense Department. Why is President Obama keeping these guys on the payroll? There has never been a company in recent history that made the case that corporations are corrupt, evil organizations [better] than Blackwater.”

…”Another way of looking at this is Blackwater knows where a lot of bodies are buried,” Scahill told Maddow. “These are guys who worked on the CIA assassination program, the drone bombing campaign, and regarding all of the senior officials, they know a heck of a lot about what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, and those are not guys that you want on the other side of the fence if you’re running Washington.”

scahill was speaking on this bombshell in the times today that shows how blackwater bribed the iraqi government after the 2007 nisour square massacre. sad, sad state of affairs.

every promise is a threat, every loss a discovery. courage is born of fear, certainty of doubt. dreams announce the possibility of another reality, and out of delirium emerges another kind of reason. what it all comes down to is that we are the sum of our efforts to change who we are. identity is no museum piece sitting stock-still in a display case, but rather the endlessly astonishing synthesis of the contradictions of everyday life.

— eduardo galeano, celebration of contradictions/2

in detroit, 7 of the 9 incoming city council members boast permits to carry concealed weapons.

jean-paul sartre is my anti-drug...

Sartre: … when we decided to experiment with drugs, I ended up having a nervous breakdown.

Gerassi: You mean the crabs?

Sartre: Yeah, after I took the mescaline, I started seeing crabs around me all the time. They followed me in the streets, into class. I got used to them. I would wake up in the morning and say, “Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?” I would talk to them all the time. I would say, “Okay, guys, we’re going into class now, so we have to be still and quiet,” and they would be there, around my desk, absolutely still, until the bell rang… . The crabs stayed with me until the day I simply decided that they bored me and that I just wouldn’t pay attention to them… .

I would have liked my crabs to come back. The crabs were mine. I had gotten used to them. They kept reminding me that my life was absurd, yes, nauseating, but without challenging my immortality. Despite their mocking, my crabs never said that my books would not be on the shelf, or that if they were, so what? You have to realize that my psychosis was literature… . My crabs had considered me important, or else why bother me? De Gaulle, the ridiculousness of the Cold War, America’s drive to conquer and control, all that made me realize that I was not and would never be significant.

Gerassi: From the end of the war until de Gaulle’s coup d’état in 1958, you were haunted by neither crabs nor depression?

Sartre: We keep calling them crabs because of my play The Condemned of Altona, but they were really lobsters.

Gerassi: Anyway, they were gone then?

Sartre: Oh, yes, they left me during the war. You know, I’ve never said this before, but sometimes I miss them — when I’m lonely, or rather when I’m alone. When I go to a movie that ends up boring, or not very gripping, and I remember how they used to sit there on my leg. Of course I always knew that they weren’t there, that they didn’t exist, but they served an important purpose. They were a warning that I wasn’t thinking correctly or focusing on what was important, or that I was heading up the wrong track, all the while telling me that my life was not right, not what it should be. Well, no one tells me that anymore.

um, i guess hallucinogenic talking crabs (that are really lobsters) more or less define an existential crisis.

via.