Friday Jukebox: World of Troubles Edition

Because I just can't think of anything else to say at the end of this week that seems to have been so fraught with danger and fear, with things exploding and innocent people swept away in the merciless wind that blows from the heart of the inferno.

May you come home tonight whole, and sound.

Blown Away

Two thoughts:

First; what kind of fucking idiot takes his small children to film a burning fucking fertilizer plant?

Hearing the sonofabitch's kid begging the father to get them out makes me want to do something very medieval to the parent. What. A. Fucking. Tool.

In case you don't know - and I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't know this - ammonium nitrate, the primary component of nitrate fertilizer, is related to other nitrate compounds (such as nitroglycerine) and is a powerful oxydizer. Back when the Army still trained the Special Forces to run guerrilla groups behind enemy lines instead of teaching government goon "armies" to blackmail kebab-stand owners and use power drills on people's kneecaps it loved these things. Fertilizer plants (and grain storage facilities) are basically explosions that haven't happened yet.

And both of them - along with fuel storage and refining plants and God knows what else - are mingled into all sorts of places in Texas, where things like zoning and development regulations are part of the liberal commie Agenda 21 plan to choke off our natural American right to work for shit wages in dangerous places and get whatever hand-me-downs our corporate masters choose to bestow on us.

When I lived in Houston my rundown shitheel apartment was two streets away from some sort of chemical plant. When the wind was right you could get a contact high just breathing, and the air had a sharp, dangerous smell that made me think of open drums of something dark and fuming. I still have no idea what the hell they were brewing over there, but had it been toxic I suspect the first we'd have known about a spill would have been the moment our lungs stopped functioning.

Second, this is exactly the reason I have nothing but loathing and contempt for the sorts of people who try and convince me that American "conservatism" is all about liberty and "personal responsibility" and FREEDOM! in its consuming greed for union-busting and regulation-smashing.

It makes absolutely no sense to me - worse, it stands sense on its head - to insist that "government bureaucrats" - making reckless, boneheaded decisions without popular consent, destroying jobs, issuing edicts, "taking" money in return for nothing - are the embodiment of Pure Evil while insisting that the same sort of actions when taken by corporate bureaucrats or individuals are the highest, best, and noblest acts of civilized mankind.

Texas was where this sort of idiocy took physical form.

Everywhere I went in West and South Texas I saw this sort of shit; dangerous, obviously un-inspected, unregulated commercial outfits shoehorned into little crapped-out towns and rundown parts of the cities, just like my nasty chemical plant. I hadn't been out of the active service for long at that time and sometimes the old mindset would kick in as I drove by some reeking fertilizer plant or immense grain silo across the street from a row of houses; man, give me a rucksack of C-4 and some det cord and I could flatten this whole shitty little town, I'd think, forgetting that this wasn't the Soviet Ukraine and these were my fellow citizens and not inhabitants of some enemy country I'd been tasked to terrify.

But I was young and stupid then, and just passing the time of day.

Today children, men, and women are ripped to bloody rags in West, Texas, because no one bothered to make rules or enforce the rules that might have kept their homes away from the West Fertilizer Plant.

Who was being the young and stupid one during that time, eh?

Scouts out!

On the subject of Boston yesterday, LTC Bateman Explains It All For You



As we would have said in the infantry, fucking-A right, sir.

Peace of mind

Couldn't help thinking that - as terrible as yesterday was in Boston - I worked a regular workday and then bitched at the traffic on the way home as if it was the most irritating fucking thing in the world.

And really...isn't that what people usually do when others suffer a tragedy? Sure, we think about those who suffered, if we are compassionate souls we pity them, if we are human we worry about the potential for harm to ourselves, selfish creatures that we are.



And then we get on with whatever we've been doing.

The trivialities of our lives don't stop mattering to us because someone else has suffered unspeakable horror.

Yesterday three people were killed and some 130 were injured by bombs in Boston. But thirty people were killed and over 100 injured by bombs in Afghanistan and fifty were killed and over 200 injured by a car bombings in Iraq. And hundreds, probably thousands more died or were maimed in silly, pointless little domestic tragedies; car accidents, slips and falls, chokings, heart attacks.

Every single one was a horror and a tragedy to the people left behind. The parents without a child, the children bereft of parents, the couples parted by death, the grandparents never to know their grandchildren, the friends and lovers and acquaintances shattered by sudden loss. Every one of those lights that went out yesterday was a little universe to the dead, and part of the universe that they and those they knew and loved had created around them. And every one of those little universes was shattered into fragments, some to wobble on, some to drift away into darkness never to shine again.



And so it has always been, and so it will always be. Some of us will die. Some will live, and go on. And the contrast between those deaths and our lives invites all sorts of reflection, speculation, accusation, and deliberation.

The only difference between the "always has been" and today, it seems to me, is that we now have these instant outlets for all that speculation and accusation. And that many of those thoughts, as our thoughts always have been and always will be, are foolish and vain and contumacious and silly. Ed at Gin and Tacos puts it better than I can:

"The internet and 24-hour cable news environment overwhelms us with "grief porn" in response to events like Monday's bombing. It encourages us not only to express great sadness but to do so publicly. It's not enough to spectate; we have to be part of the chorus of prayers and tears. We've always been less than enlightened thinkers as a nation. Today, though, we have a window into our half-baked thought processes and speculative "journalism" encouraging us to join them in a leap to conclusions. We have every opportunity to say things and very little encouragement to think before doing it. The exhibition of bile and stupidity that we see online is evidence that we could all benefit from a quieter and more reflective response to the horrible things the world throws at us."

Boston suffered a deadly day yesterday.

But not only deadly day. And the deadliness of Boston's day does not mean that the commonalities and trivialities and normal business of our own are worthless, or inconsequential, or that we somehow need to stop what we're doing and join the keening of those whose universe was lost.



Our lives go on while others' end. We are changed and yet the same, our existence no weighter or more trivial than they were the day before yesterday. And I don't know what that says about us, other than that human nature is and always has been the best and worst of the things we are and do.

We are our own angels.



And, alas, our own devils.

More than a feeling

Couple of thoughts re: today's news:

One of the most unpleasant things about human beings and the world in general is sitting down and trying to figure out "Who would do something like that?" and within about two minutes generating a list that begins with various groups of Muslims that we are effectively warring on, right-wing militia nuts, diehard Tamil separatists, rogue PIRA fanatics and ends up with the ever-popular "random nutter". Homo homini lupus, damn it. We are our own worst enemy.

I cannot express how grateful I am that I do not have to sit my little daughter down tonight and explain the bad thing that happened to her first-grade teacher. I called the school and Mrs. Sammons' family has been in touch to let them know she's okay.

I cannot express how horrified I am that someone else is going to have to sit their little girl or boy down tonight and explain the bad thing that happened to their mommy, daddy, big sister, uncle, or their first-grade teacher...



We must be utterly fucking mad.

Too little to fail

So it turns out that - surprise - after former Superintendent Michelle Rhee threatened her teachers and their principals with the axe if they didn't get their students' test scores up (and the students were largely the usual inner-city no-hopers) they did what any sane human being would have done. They cheated.



Sigh.

What the fuck, people? Have I been talking to the goddamn wall here? We've been over this again and again and again; if you make MY success dependent on YOUR performance I will do my best to help you succed. But I will proceed to flog and beat and generally fuck you up if you fail.

And if you are a congenital fuckup to begin with, then I will lie and cheat my ass off to get past your deadweight ass and save my livelihood. I will recognize that I am better off taking a chance by cheating than to trust my future to you.

Anyone who doesn't believe that is true is a fool, or a grifter, or too good for this world.

Michelle Rhee is either one of those, or a bit of all of them.

And I am neither surprised nor disturbed by these "revelations". They were foredoomed from the moment she decided to put the livings of the people who worked for her in the hands of their students.

Game of Thorns

The Portland Thorns - our new women's professional soccer team - played their first match last night. My colleague Chris has already done such a fine job with his match report of the 1-1 draw that the Portland Thorns FC scratched out against Kansas City FC that I just thought I’d add some of my impressions of the gamecast and the game itself.

I should say up front that I missed a sizeable portion of the second half from pure frustration; I was cooking with the live-feed on my wife’s tablet perched on the kitchen window and the buffering had become so slow that I shut the thing off to concentrate on preparing the miso butter for the asparagus. I turned it back on in the 60th minute in time to see the final half hour of the match. Chris says the Thorns improved in the second half, though, so I’ll take his word for it.

But I did want to add my takeways from the broadcast.



1. For all that I’ve heard Portlanders complain about the Timbers broadcast announcers I can’t say that I really pay much attention to them.

The KCFC announcer Sean Wheelock was impossible not to pay attention to.

Was it his constant reminders of the historical importance of the occasion – did you know that the match was the first ever in the NWSL? Sean reminded us of every first ever – first ever goal (by KC’s Cuellar) and first ever PK; Sean even informed us that Emilee O’Neill was the first ever substitution in the NWSL! For all I know Sean mentioned the first ever use of Magic Spray for the first ever injury. The live feed wasn’t so great that I couldn’t have missed it.



Wheelock had several more of these catchphrases. By the 80th minute my children were both using “but we play on…” as a description for not getting booked for quarreling with each other or leaving the top off the milk jug. And when Nitty the Cat batted her catnip mouse off the sofa she was said to have played “a long searching ball.”

Wheelock’s partner seemed to be some sort of KCFC player or coach but she said so little I couldn’t even learn her name; it was all Sean and his first evers. As much footy as I watch I don’t often think about announcers but after Sean & Co. I’ve revised my opinion; they need to be like officials – if they’re doing their jobs right you shouldn’t even notice that they’re there. Are you reading this, Thorns? I hope so.



2. As for the match itself, well; KC is a damn good team, and Renae Cuellar is a fucking load. I’d heard that they had been touted as potentially the best balanced and organized team in the NWSL and tonight they looked it. The good stuff I saw for the Thorns is that the gals earned a point on the road. And, well…that’s the bulk of the good news. The first half was just ugly for PTFC; lots of missed passes, little attack, and several scary moments on defense.

Well, as Chris said, the team tightened up a bit in the second half. But over the match KCFC imposed their pressing style on the Thorns, disrupted our attack thoroughly, were typically able to pass through the Thorns defense when they needed to, and were visibly the better team on the night.

KCFC completely dominated the Thorns midfield. Angie Kerr, who looked so composed and resourceful against University of Portland, was not effective. Far too many passes went astray, or directly to someone in a blue jersey. The Thorns midfield looked poorly organized, scattered and out of synch for much of the match.



KCFC marked the Thorns forwards relentlessly, too, and the result was next to no space for the frontrunners Sinclair and Morgan. Sinclair was reduced to retreating back past midfield in an attempt to gain possession. After Foxhoven came on for Kerr at 63′ the Thorns had better run of play but the Attack did not look especially dangerous at any time tonight.

The other difficulty the KCFC pressure caused was that the Thorns were unable to consistently possess the ball and thus play the game Parlow-Cone hoped to play. For long stretches the only attack Portland could generate came from booting the ball forward and trying to run under it – Sean’s “long searching” balls. One hopes that this was the collected impact of the awful pitch and first-match jitters. But it never looks good and tonight was no better; those long balls seldom searched out a Thorn or, when they did, the hard pitch made for heavy first touches that were usually immediately lost.

3. Did I sound dire in the paragraph above? I don’t want to; I’m not despairing. This side is loaded with good players, and with more time to gel, on a better pitch, against other opponents – for KCFC is one of the best sides in the NWSL – the Red and Black will get their first ever win. Parlow-Cone now has 90 minutes of experience to make adjustments from, and the women are coming home next week to their home opener against Seattle. I had to remind myself that this team has played together less than two months. And we snatched a point on the road after shipping a third minute goal; that’s nothing to get depressed about. We will see better from our Thorns.



4. Overall the match, the broadcast, and “Shawnee Mission District Stadium” reminded me more than a little of the Timbers’ days in the USL than it did a first ever anything.

The screen in my kitchen window tonight reminded me strongly of peering at dumpy little pitches through cheaply filmed video feeds (where the camera was just as likely to be showing the costumed mascot as the play on the pitch) while listening to announcers muttering through badly-adjusted mikes that also picked up every kettlecorn vendor’s cries and gradeschoolers’ chatter. Stone-hard turf pitches painted over with the local high school football team’s gridiron – I’d almost forgotten how bad that looks for soccer, with the faint yellow lines of the bigger pitch fading out on the screen.



We may have forgotten how lucky we are, here in the Rose City, to have the beautiful pitch we see every home match.

I know it’s early days yet, but if the NWSL management hopes to earn any sort of credibility it really needs to work harder to make its venues look more professional than Middlefield Cheese Stadium (remember the home pitch of Cleveland City Stars? I do now).

Final Thoughts: Was it a great match (for all that is was…wait for it…the first ever!) for the Thorns? No. Was it reason to despair? Also no. The gals will be home next week against Seattle, on our own beautiful Jeld-Wen field, with a full 90 against a good opponent to help tweak our play and make adjustments to our tactics. We will be ready for Cuellar & Co. when they show up out here on D-Day. We still have a talented side and a lot of time to work out the hitch in our stride.

And I feel confident that day will be a day that will live in infamy for KCFC.



Onward, Rose City!