Whose Shake Is This!!?

There is too much instant communication and not enough time to contemplate or enjoy it. There are too many things to know and too many things to do and still nobody seems to know anything. There are too many mechanisms and too many gadgets and none of them are the right sort of gadgets that we have any control over anymore. If I had a hammer….a simple real hammer, not a hammer that is glorified staple gun or a working man’s Ouzi, but a real solid Craftsman hammer that I can hold over the head of the ten-penny nail of reason in my little fist of fury, I would drive that nail deep…drive it like a stake into the heart of the vampire world in which we dwell.

Both technology and temperament conspire against us, or, me. The unlimited world in which we live…the wired and wireless universe…is no where near as limitless and boundless as we’d care to believe. Communication which should be more expansive since any fool with a machine can reach a audience unimaginable in the Police Brutality Days of the late 60′s and early 70′s, is actually taughtly controlled by the vehicles we most commonly use to communicate. Twitter limits me to 140 focking characters or less. Not 140 words, 140 characters. Useless as a turd unless you’ve been arrested on visit to Azerbaijan, or have fallen down a crevasse after being chased by a polar bear…then it’s useful I suppose. But too many people ((that’s the REAL problem with the world, there’s just too many people and they’re no damn good)), find a urge to tell the world that they’ve got a boil on their bum. Facebook is even worse. You get to see the pictures. There seems to be some limits to the amount of characters as well. And while Twitter’s fascist chokehold on communication is fairly benign, Facebook seeming knows no bounds. But I’ll save that prize number 12 for another day. Sorry Malcolm Gladwell and those of short attention span with too much of the wrong sense of time on their twitching texting hands, with ME you have to do all 2,500 words, pictures, and the 2-10  minute musical outro.

There are no shortcuts to actuality. I found this out a long time ago when I attempted to program a computer to write poetry. Unlike some of the computer geek types at the time who took it way too seriously (and still do), I wanted to embrace the machine world and bring a new and terrible poetry to life. So I devised a program in FORTRAN, of course, and banged away at the punch cards as though I were some college boy/man prodigy flogging his way through The Goldberg Variations on a Bosendorfer piano. A world, well…a little world, more like a satellite of Mars than a satellite of Jupiter…of words and phrases and other utopisms filled numerous boxes of cards. And when the punchcards were fed into the IBM 1620 in Green Bay and sent off to the Univac mainframe in Madison and the machine was set in motion, the idea was that poetry would emerge as though the machine were a modern day Walt Whitman or William Blake or T.S. Eliot. The conceit was that the machine would have a (programmed) mind of it’s own. The machine was writing the poetry. The random, mechanized, aggregation of words, verbiage, phrases would have a brave and terrible beauty all their own. The problem, ofcourse, is that the machine DID have mind of it’s own….a mind that wandered into some nested DO loop never to return. When, in my strange powers employ, the machine found it’s way out, the epic realization on my part was that while the machine had a mind of it’s own, it clearly had no soul.

Now it would be nice if I could just look at Facebook and Twitter and say, “That damned machine!!”  But unfortunately, it’s people, not machines. As they say, accordians don’t play “Lady Of Spain”, people do. Now maybe those people know something I don’t know. But unless what they know is the meaning of John Dryden’s poem Absalom and Achitophel, I guess I just don’t want to know. And meanwhile and meanwhile and meanwhile from MY stupid Twitter feed, me and my 12 followers and my 8 followees….some dude wants to fight Shaq, Yoko Ono babbles about changing the course of reality by interception, and Justin Townes Earle wears earplugs when flying to drown out the sound of the low rent suits. I’m with Justin Townes Earle on that one, the low rent suits.

But enough of this shite…let’s get on with the other shite… the motorsports and the football and the beer.

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I made a list of things to write about this week from the sporting world that taken as a whole have little to do with one another. But as usual, this does not stop me from trying to find some common thread. There simply HAS to a fearful symmetry somewhere in the interstices between Joey Barton’s Hitler Moustache and Kyle Busch winning the Triple at Bristol last weekend. I know that F1′s return to the track at Spa foretells some crazy cuckoo cosmic connection to Nationwide’s return to Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. And hanging over it all like a sultry ol’ moon is the headline, torn from the broadsheets of terrible reality HOTSPURS BUGGER YOUNG BOYS 4-0.

So…let’s go see how right, or how grievously wrong I am.

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The average fan, the general public, the casual viewer of the NFL, is for the most part unaware, or at the very least, not AS aware, of the very imminent potential, possibility, likelihood that there will be no NFL football in 2011. They do not know or realize  the extent of what the pundits, sportswriters, sport journalists, sports bloggers and other nattering nabobs are keenly aware of. A lockout of the NFL in 2011. Which means, for all intents and purposes for the average American, a day, and no doubt MANY days, without football. No Green Bay Packers, no Dallas Cowboys, no San Diego Chargers, no cheatin’ New England Patriots. Instead it will days of waiting around, pissing and moaning, with Who Dat? Who Dat? Who Dat? echoing into oblivion.

Yes, America. The Day Without Football is coming. Best prepare yourself NOW.

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It’s not really the destination that’s important. It’s the journey. So going nowhere is not always a bad thing. Because no matter WHERE you arrive, well…there you are. And along the way, what you have uncovered, discovered, lived and relived determines where you arrive and when, but more importantly, who you are when you arrive there.

So many people get this all backwards and confused. This is not some hippy love-generation psuedo-zen nonsense. ((Although it used to be)) It’s honest philosophy that has been lost in the time-management business motivation and other euphemistic instant gratification psycho-babble. The journey is forgotten, an after-thought, and a mere means to a mostly mean end. As long as the journey is over with quickly along the unrelenting fascism of the Interstate, that seems to be all that matters.Fire up that GPS and get there NOW.

And there you are. But who are you when you get there?  And where are you really when all is said and done?

It’s all fine to have a destination in mind. That’s well and good. But HOW you get there…that’s the key that’s missing most often. The irony of all this is that most people, without realizing it, wind up going nowhere FAST, or somewhere FAST. But all was a blur, and where they arrive is more blurry than they realize. The only people who should be going nowhere FAST are Matt Kenseth, Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt Jr, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel, Danica Patrick and the rest. Motorports is the ultimate metaphor of going nowhere fast. Although they all have the same destination in mind, Victory Lane, getting to Victory Lane is all about the journey.

A journey does NOT have to have a destination. The journey can be and of itself its own destination. So with that thought in mind, let’s go nowhere and see where we end up.

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Somewhere, there is a Dreamland where everything is perfectly clear. There is sufficient and essential information, but not too much information, and the language used to express it is crystalline and eloquent and truthful. In that Dreamland, we are informed, enlightened, and more richly entertained because we take the time to savour the richness of it all. Savouring the richness of it all, after all, is the reason time even exists.

Unfortunately, the world we live in is naught that Dreamland. The signal to noise ratio has become precariously askew. The is too much information that is increasingly superficial and ultimately uncommunicative. It all become mere verbiage. It is a frightening prospect…to dive into a morass of verbiage where depth that does not exist. There is so much of it everywhere…from the fascism of Facebook to the puerility of Twitter to the constant thumbing of text-message jargon to the increasingly hysterical infotainment that masquerades as journalism. Words are everywhere, pretending to communicate, but falling so far short of their quixotic notions that someday I’m afraid words will lose their power to communicate, and more frighteningly, words will lose their charm.

I suppose I’m guilty of this as well, but I try very hard not to be guilty. I joke about never letting the facts get in the way of the truth. But I hope I’m broadcasting a clear signal. And I hope that you can seize back the time that our world is constantly stealing from you. Time is all you have and if you don’t take that time to savour the world around you, if you constantly hurry from one little thing to the next little thing, if you are too busy to take the time, then you will lose and may have already lost, more of the wonderful world around you than will ever accomplish in it.

The only real place were speed is needed is at the racetrack. So step on the brakes…ease off on the throttle….slow down, in other words. Welcome to Dreamland. The speed limit here is strictly enforced, by RADAR!!  26 miles an hour, chumplin. No faster.

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I’m almost tempted to borrow a technique or two from the late, great Edgar Rice Burroughs that was used to great effect in many of his novels. such as Beyond The Farthest Star where, the words of Tangor were automatically typed before his eyes as if by ghostly hands; or as in Lost On Venus, where the words and experiences of Carson Napier came to him telepathically and Burroughs’ only role was that of a mere scribe. I sort of like that little conceit. It’s charming and ancient and if what I write is not to mine or anyone’s liking, I can blame it all on ghosts.

With the World Cup final approaching, and by the time this is read by some or many or anyone, the carnage of that beautiful game will be in the books, I thought a few ghost stories would be in order. It’s a summer anime tradition—either telling ghost stories around a campfire, or a kimodameshi–or both. It should be another of those laws of anime, but apparently isn’t.

But I’m fully capable of conceit without resorting to one. So what I tell, what little I will tell, will no doubt be more than ghostly or ghostlike….wispy and immaterial….hopefully reveal the soul of something, but more likely the words will wander around like zombies until someone clubs them (or me) in the head. Here we go.

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I was almost too perfect too even expect it to happen, but it did. Dale Earnhardt Jr. drove the #3 Wrangler Chevrolet to victory in the Subway Jalapeno 250 at Daytona Friday night. It was a car that was an homage and tribute to his late father…a car his father drove to victory many times in his hallowed Hall of Fame career….a car Dale Sr. won two of his championships in. It was a car that Junior would drive for the last time, and never again. No more # 3 EVER!

So it HAD to go to victory lane. There was no way it couldn’t, and many ways it couldn’t. And remarkably, as the laps were winding down, Junior and the #3 car team found a way to win. It was a brilliant and wondrously emotional moment. It simply HAD to be. There no way that fate or god or Kyle Busch was going to keep #3 from winning the damn thing. It was a great tribute to the late Dale Earnhardt and the #3, which are 2 of the most enduring memes of NASCAR…and 2 of its most endearing memories.

Now the concept of meme has been greatly abused in this brave and terrible world of 4-chan and all that dross. But it still can be of some use other than for cheap comedy. So I got to thinking…maybe memes can be used for smart, intelligent and obscure comedy. Maybe memes or a reasonable approximation thereof can reveal a truth or two about the world that otherwise would have gone unnoticed. So I thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I stuck the picture of Junior in Victory Lane into a meme generator of some sort.

I thought about it and decided to use the Multi-Image Service at:  http://iqdb.org/ What IQDB does is search multiple anime image databases for images that are similar to the one you enter. Usually it is used by people who have an image and don’t know the source…what anime, manga, or hentai game the image is from. Or they’re looking for some similar type of image. So I thought to myself, why not see what comes up.

So on the first go at it, the picture in the middle, above, by artist Jitsu Hidari, was one of the images that came up. Now mind you, the similarity is more metaphorical than actual. The similarities that result from using non-anime/manga images usually ranged between 27 and 42%. I was pleased with the image you see above, and amused that some of the images that came up were on the filthy side.

But then the porch-light came on and I thought….aha!!! Diego Maradona is out there!!  And THAT’s when the curtain rose and the music began to play.  The results of this little skit, a tale in 6 parts, are after the jump. All images are what IQDB came up with as being similar to the source image. Every picture is worth a thousand words or more, and some of these pictures have a LOT to say!!

“Diego…..are you nervoushh!!”

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Germany 4    England 1

They played like dopey wankers. They were old, they were fat, they were slow, they were a bit too full of themselves as individual stars to play together as a team, and in the end, they were sent packing back to England by a younger, quicker German squad. Sure, Lampard got cheated out of a goal that would have equalized the match in the first half. But nothing in England’s play throughout this match and most of the World Cup gave any indication of team that could win, when necessary, at any cost. They had talent, but not the right talent. They had stars, but as well as Rooney, Terry, Lampard, Garrard and the rest play for their Premier League clubs, putting them together on the same team was not going to get the job done. They were star-crossed from the get go….from the John Terry/Wayne Bridge drama ahead of the World Cup to Wayne Rooney’s petulance on the pitch. And even though they showed some heart on occasion, they really honestly played like a bunch of dopey wankers.

England might have been served just as well or better if they’d sent an NPower League 1 team out there….the Milton Keynes Dons, or Dagenham & Redbridge. Heh. They might as well have…at least there would have been more team spirit.

But….it takes more than just team spirit to win…

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The more we know, the more we seem to forget. Even, and especially, if it’s the things we love the most. It seems ironic and counter-intuitive, but the more knowledge and passion we have, the more capacity we have to overlook something, be it minuscule or essential. I’m constantly forgetting the names of the main characters in the anime shows that I love…if you were to ask me right now to rattle off the names of the characters in Arakawa Under The Bridge or Angel Beats or ef-a tale of memories, I know I would miss quite a few of them. It’s the same lapse we have when we forget an essential birthday or anniversary…not that we actually forget it, but we are off by a day or two. So this week I suppose I will try to remember here, (some of) what I have forgotten over the past several weeks.

But before I forget and rush headlong into the tidal wave of more rhetoric, there is THIS:

Mexico 2   France 0

Ha Ha ha!! Take THAT ya cack-suckin’ cheatin’  fackin’ Frenchies!!  HA HA HA!!! All hail Javier Hernandez  whose goal in the 55th minute and Cuauhtemoc Blanco whose penalty kick at the 62 minute mark sent the fackin’ Frenchies packing.

¡¡Jodimos el Frenchies!! ¡¡¡¡HA HA HA!!!!

¡¡Cagomos en la leche de tu puta madre, Frenchies!! ¡¡¡¡HA HA HA!!!!

¡¡Los Africanos le joderán el culo, Frenchies!! ¡¡¡¡HA HA HA!!!!

I certainly didn’t want to forget about THAT!! And I know all of Ireland was cheering along with me. But I know I’m forgetting something….

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7601 W. Hampton Ave.   Milwaukee WI

I just flew in from Pocono and boy are my arms tired. It was a hell of a week I’m here to tell you. If I ever had to live my life over again, I’d do it overseas I swear to God. And speaking of God, he sneezed the other day and I didn’t know what to say. But I guess it wasn’t all bad this week though….enroute from Pocono I stopped off in Milwaukee and did a good deed. I helped this Polish gentleman from Cudahy who locked his keys in his Buick…it took us about an hour, but we got his wife out just fine, no worse for wear. So a good deed done. Scout’s honour.

Alright alright…Pocono…the Gilette Fusion Pro-Glide 500 at the famed, triangle shaped superspeedway at Long Pond. And Mr. Pocono himself, Denny Hamlin won. He pretty much owns the joint and if my mother-in-law wasn’t so mad at me over squandering her money on the last race, I DEFINITELY would have put ALL of her money on Mr. Hamlin to win. And he did. And my mother-in-law would have been so proud. But…alas, I have no more of her money to invest in the sporting life.

But the beauty of the race was in it’s aftermath. And no, not the burnouts and the victory lane celebration. Nope. The beauty was on pit row after the race when young Joey Logano came steaming up in #20 Home Depot Toyota to That Lout Kevin Harvick’s #29  Shell/Pennzoil Chevrolet to have a few words with the lout. Words like: “Que le fait de baiser est votre problème baisant, l’imbécile ?!! Words like: “Mi a fasz van a kibaszott probléma, seggfej?!” Words like: “Bu da ne lanet sorun olduğunu, pislik?!” Words like:  “Was das Bumsen Ihr Scheißproblem, Arschloch ist?!!” Words like: “Kas fuck ir jūsu jāšanās problēma, asshole?!”   Words like……okay, you get the idea. Joey was completely justified in his attempt to have spirited chat with Harvick….although said chat was thwarted by older, larger and more brutal men. After a few words like: “Beth oedd y meddwl fucking asshole dwp?!” and: “Apa itu berfikir bodoh sialan brengsek?!” and a little faux bitch-slapping, Logano was led away to his hauler by a few cooler heads in his crew.

What made Logano so pig-biting mad was this. Harvick bumped Logano out of the way on lap 200….sending Logano in the wall and screwing up a potential top 5 finish. It was unnecessary on Harvick’s part since Pocono is a wide track with lots of room. But Harvick chose to do some thing stupid and unnecessary. Logano was able to recover somewhat, to finish 13th, but the damage was done. And Logano was more than justified in going after Harvick. I really hoped they would have been allowed to actually fight, even though Harvick would probably have kicked Logano’s ass. But that was not to be be.

Logano, however, won the war of words. With THIS gem:  “It’s probably not Kevin’s fault. He does what he’s told. His wife wears the firesuit in the family.” *ba-ding!!*  That was a wonderful remark.  Very clever considering the heat of the moment. Props to the kid for that one.

But somehow, that bewildered DeLana Harvick at first. The firesuit remark. Yes, she wears a firesuit at the track, unlike most of the NASCAR WAGs. But Joey was not commenting on her firesuit. He was saying that DeLana wears the pants in the Harvick family. And he said it in a clever and funny way.

But eventually, the lighbulb finally clicked on. And DeLana had some t-shirts printed up with I WEAR THE FIRESUIT IN THIS FAMILY. And now all is well, sort of, but….Kevin Harvick still wants to get in the last word.

Kevin Harvick: “Take my wife….please!

DeLana Harvick: “Oh Kevin, don’t be such a silly! You KNOW I wear the firesuit in THIS family.

Michigan tomorrow. England vs. USA in few minutes. In golf,  The St. Jude Classic has teed off with Lee Westwood at the top of the leaderboard. Someone will break 70 today. That’s a lot of clubs!