RAVEN MACK is a mystic poet-philosopher-artist of the Greater Appalachian unorthodox tradition. He does have an amazing PATREON, but also *normal* ARTIST WEBSITE too.

Wednesday, September 29

b o o t s


boots that climbed thousands of feet
of aluminum ladders,
retired on a stump - thank god

Tuesday, September 28

n i t e b


scoping the night scene with a
sniper's eye, drinking warm beer
on a beach town balcony

Monday, September 27

p a l a b


orange impalas are made for
late saturday night smashings
into blurred vision guardrails

Sunday, September 26

Weekly Recap

Not too much outsider shit to recap, though I did keep up my footbal-related obligations at Heavy for Week 2 of the NFL, and at Armchair Linebacker for the game against the Texans by my beloved yet doomed Washington Redskins.
I also listened to some personal branding bullshit book on tape for some people I am doing some online hypeman for, and it tricked me into starting a twitter account for Rojonekku. Then like a day later, it felt stupid as fuck, and then the guy who handles the money at my daughter's ballet school, who has a sorta tool-ish aspect to him regarding sales and marketing, he was talking to my wife about how great twitter was and how many people followed him and that was the final straw for me so I went ahead and deleted it already. But I did get a $20 donation through Paypal using the ENABLE ROJONEKKU button over there to the right in the sidebar, and realized that people's addresses are in their Paypal donations. So I sat down and wrote the dude that gave me $20 a one-page letter and mailed it to him. Actually, it's sitting in my truck still because I didn't make it to the post office in time today, but I'm gonna mail it Monday. Sending people handwritten nonsense is so much more my speed than stupid fucking twitter. I am about real people in real places.
So yeah, if you donate anything above $10, I'll send you a postcard at least. Above $20 and I'll bust out a letter. One-of-a-kind insane internet man gibberish, but real life in your hands like paranoid schizophrenics who write about Jesus on yellow legal pads and tack their shit in every phone booth around town. And now there are no more phone booths. Where has all the real shit gone?
You also don't have to do shit and things will most likely continue along as usual. That's sort of how this thing works.

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - August '10 Intro


You may or may not have noticed I have been doubling up on the J.J. Krupert posts whenever I get around to doing them the past week. This is because I am two months behinds and have the ultimate goal of being in the correct month again by the end of October. I know I said that last month as well, but I’m for real this time. Really, it’s going to be different.
Also I just got a new home computer set-up, and lost all my play count data for my musics in moving it over. I did some google searching and there are ways to rebuild it, but why bother? My Itunes music was never in the right place and was basically like 53 different folders of clusterfucked together stolen audio that I would add as a giant file to the Itunes master playlist without copying in Itunes, so to actually keep all that data would not be worth the trouble at all. Amazingly enough, in moving all the music over, there was a ton more music than I realized on that one computer. And I still have a laptop and two semi-broken external hard drives to hunt and gather through as well. So what I’m saying is that after this (last) month’s list and the September list, it will be like a re-start at 0 for everything that’s in the gaypod database. One super dooper benefit to the new home set-up is I will run my USB turntable directly into the thang and start ripping shit that I do not have already. I'm not gonna share it all because what the fuck, you think this is some dumb shit music blog? Hell no bitch; I got a life.
So yes, in recapping briefly, this would be the J.J. Krupert list, meaning things that have survived on my tiny 4gb gaypod shuffle machine, where things only survive in survival of the fittest mode. The things upon that which have been played the most (with skip counts subtracted) that I have not wroted about before get wroted about. That is the springboard for this stupid shit, so instead of trying to impress you with my vast knowledge on a few very specific obscure genres, I’m giving you the overview of my tastes, and what really rocks my world or makes up the background soundtrack to my stupid long and boring slow death days upon the surface of the earthball.
FIRST UP: More quality obscure bumpkin rap from Alabama!

p g s p f


penned-up animals given
smiling faces in our minds
to feel right with our life's lot

Saturday, September 25

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '10 #1: "Fortunate Son" by Lyle Workman & Bob Thiele


This song actually came from the episode in the first season of Sons of Anarchy where that Mexican bike gang leader dude was having his bro get stabbed in the park, and this mellow ass version of Creedence Clearwater Revival was playing, and both me and the ol’ lady were like, “oh shit, that’s some next level awesomeness,” meaning the music not the Mexicans stabbing each other in the park, though with the influx of immigrants into the further reaches of Virginia, I guess it is potentially some next level shit on that front too. Most of the Mexicans around here are first wave hard-working types, occasionally a little hip-hoppy, but mostly salt of the wretched earth types, not the full-on 39 people around a picnic table on Sunday afternoon at the park and seven of the guys have their shirts off and are covered in tattoos and they look cool as fuck but if you try to go play horseshoes on the horseshoe pits they will make you leave because the one guy in the tattoo shirt is the winner and he’s got the next game and he doesn’t feel like playing right this minute because he’s eating, meaning he’s drinking.
Anyways, I googlefinded the song in question, and upon googling about Sons of Anarchy, I partially ruined the show for myself by reading what a giant self-important prick the guy who writes the show is. (He’s the Big Otto dude who is in jail, and in real life is married to Katey Sagal aka Peg Bundy aka Head Ol’ Lady.) The writer guy is kind of like if you took Kevin Smith (who sucks), but made him grow up somewhere far less stupid than New Jersey, like a fake south place, meaning not the for real south but somewhere like southern Indiana or rural New Hampshire or the whiter parts of Arizona up near Colorado where people are flying confederate flags except they are not in the south. But you have a Kevin Smith type grow up in one of these places, get addicted to heroin and then find salvation from drugs through creativity not Jesus, and he will be a giant overly sensitive jackass about his creativity, because it his personal salvation.
That being said, I really like Sons of Anarchy, and I hate most everything ever. In fact, when it comes to TV, Sons of Anarchy is probably the only currently active pretendery show that I do not hate. Which sucks for me because usually I jump in on a show long after everybody else and I can plow through its entire existence on Netflix. Sons of Anarchy was so overloaded with a long wait when the second season came out that I actually bought it (meaning stole) from Best Buy, meaning walk out right in front of a sketchy kid so when the door alarm goes off, they wave you on and start harassing the sketchy looking kid. Sorry random black dude, but I had to get Sons of Anarchy Season Two! It ain’t my fault they racist.
The whole bluegrass remakes of different classic rock things was a good idea like the first four minutes you heard it, but then they wore that shit to death. TO DEATH. But mellow acoustic guitar instrumentals of that stuff, that would be tight as fuck. I’d just play it on my genetically engineered cyber-horse, riding around Fluvanna County, dragging home women and chickens to add to my growing flock. That’s what would happen in the future if Lyle Workman does a whole collection of CCR acoustic sunrise greatness like this. Which would ultimately lead to me getting stabbed by a Mexican in a park, bringing it all full circle. That is the beautiful ebb and flow of the universe we live in, brothers and sisters.
STEAL "Fortunate Son"
NEXT MONTH
: Last month!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '10 #2: "The Ol' Lady" by Blue Globe Beats


After getting a stack of old Easyriders magazines from the ‘70s, and watching too much Sons of Anarchy (see the next listing in the J.J. Krupert saga), I have really been making an extra effort to going back to calling my wife my ol’ lady. We live in Charlottesville, Virginia, and hang out with too many Whole Foods-shopping, square ass white people who do not understand that it makes sense sometimes to just stay up all weekend long at least until Sunday afternoon. The two terms are very different, and I think my relationship with my wife would be more secure long-term if I only referred to her as ol’ lady.
First the term “wife” refers to a legal agreement more than anything. In the eyes of the government, your “wife” is your acceptable partner. This of course is our American sectarian way of rethinking the old “yoke-fellow” Christian notion of husband and wife being bound for eternity in the eyes of Da Lord. Now I am not really a Christian (actually not at all, but there’s so much Christian bullshit in this country, I still say “not really” because I fear they’re gonna jump out from behind the cabinet in the corner and start holy rolling me into a small package for Jesus), and I’m as anti-American as the next guy (at least when it comes to American govt.), so neither of those really do justice to my ol’ lady and me’s relationship.
“Ol’ lady” on the other hand, is a fluid term. There’s no legal paper between you in this, yet you are already insinuating she is your “ol’” lady, as in you’ve been together forever. And will be together forever. Now, we all know forever is a rare thing when it comes to relationships, but it seems to me that one reason the divorce rate is so high between “husbands” and “wives” is that they have this convoluted Hollywood notion of what love is and how it is magic and requires no work and when someone gets flabby or annoying we bolt for some new legal agreements to free ourselves up to not break our old legal agreements. Essentially, this is fucking ridiculous. An “ol’ lady” can be an ol’ lady without losing that luster. If she hits you upside the head with a 2x4 because you were out with Deric drinking and driving home from Richmond while drinking with professional wrestlers in some dive bar in Shockoe Bottom, well that’s just how the ol’ lady is. It would be grounds for a separation or counseling if it’s your wife, but with the ol’ lady, whatever man, she was pissed, you deserved it, walk on eggshells the next afternoon, and then fuck again the next night, like good fucking where you start in the dark when you go to bed at the same time, but it’s so much fun you cut a light on so you can see what’s going on. That’s just how the ol’ lady is.
My wife is a pretty good ol’ lady. One morning, as I was getting ready for work, she came out from the bedroom wearing nothing but a yellow tank top, which made her look gooder than hell. I was about to just quit my job for the day, but she was only walking through to get one of children some milk with two other children circling around the house on the insides like inside vultures. There would be no need to stay home from work because we would not be left alone to our bedroom to be an ol’ man and ol’ lady together and wrinkle up the sheets, which to be honest were probably already wrinkled because usually we don’t make our bed until we go to bed the next night so that the bed is made for about seven seconds perfectly before we pull the covers down again.
My wife is also kooky. She was telling me about how all these people are showing up now allergic to red meat and pork because ticks are biting other mammals, have a little bit of that blood in them, and then bite the human, so that foreign mammal blood gets into the human immune system and it starts to fight the substance as an intrusion and breach of security, and from that point on whenever you try to eat a hamburger you get violently ill. It’s some crazy shit, and true, and happening right now, and you will hear about it on the news in like four years once the regular world cares, but my wife meaning ol’ lady told me about it this week. In great detail, too.
Back in the day, I used to joke I needed a Mexican Redneck Hippie girl to be my wife, and in my ol’ lady, I got about as close as I could to that. She’s not Mexican, but very olive-skinned, and from the looks of her dad, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some dirty Spaniard blood in there somewhere. And though she is herself a Whole Foods shopper, she also likes to drink beer and get wild. She did a joke thing one time when we were hanging out in this public square in college about how I should meet a chick with a little scrap of paper that said, “Do you like Raven?” and had a box for yes and a box for no. I kept that shit, just because. And fifteen years later, we have been married for eleven years in the eyes of the government and in the eyes of fake Christian gods, but oh man, we’ve been ol’ man and ol’ lady for ever. So much so that I’ve got her name on my forearm and she has my name on her upper back, except we didn’t want to get names because I guess we were brainwashed on a “husband” and “wife” kick and afraid to have names. I have an owl, which is her bird spirit, and she has a raven, obviously, and that’s how we roll. But I very well could have just gotten big bubble graffiti letters of SUZY on my arm because she’s my ol’ lady and always will be, even if I end up with some other ol’ lady down the road. There are no such things as ex-ol’ ladies. They are always your ol’ lady still.
Plus, if she ever does decide to just be my wife and leave me instead because I am retarded in some unforgiveable way, well then I get to be a hobo. Win-win, in my opinion.
STEAL "The Ol' Lady"
NEXT UP
: A song from a fucking TV show!

L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 20 to 10 - 2 of 2

We shall repeat the short and sweet question battle version, because it just makes sense...
AFRIKA BAMBAATAA vs. GHOSTFACE KILLAH
Who makes a point of dancing with fat chicks on stage at pretty much all his shows? Ghostface Killah.
Who extended the influence of creepy ass Kraftwerk on pop culture by 20 years? Bambaataa.
Who would I rather have teach a group of 10 to 13 year olds for an afternoon seminar on whatever the fuck they felt like teaching about? Ghostface Killah. He should take over Zulu Nation and change the name to Zag Zig Zag Nation.
Advantage: Ghostface Killah.
JIM "DANDY" MANGRUM vs. LEMMY KILMISTER
Is Jim Dandy awesome as fuck? Yes.
Is he Lemmy? No.
Advantage: Lemmy Kilmister.
FIDEL CASTRO vs. GARY SNYDER
Which one has shot guns a whole fucking bunch? Castro.
Poetry? Both, in all likelihood.
Had sex with the most brown-skinned women? I am going to assume Castro.
Favorite natural type thing? Dolphins for Castro, Sierra Madre Mountains for Snyder.
Advantage: Fidel Castro.
LEONARD KNIGHT vs. MIROSLAV TICHY
Possessed by inner godliness or inner bedevilment? God for Knight, devil for Tichy.
Favorite medium? House paint for Knight, homemade junk camera for Tichy.
Ultimate goal? Make you accept Jesus for Knight, fuck you leave me alone for Tichy.
Advantage: Miroslav Tichy.
DAVID ALLAN COE vs. SWAMP DOGG
Raw as fuck? Yes to Coe, kind of to Swamp Dogg.
Times I've seen them and had my mind blown? Like four mind-blowings by Coe, only one by Swamp Dogg.
If I filled up an 80 minute CD with my favorite songs by them, how much of those songs would be awesome as fuck without a doubt, even if I was hungover so badly when listening to it that a Dr. Pepper made with real sugar didn't make me feel better? 71 minutes on the David Allan Coe CD, 48 minutes on the Swamp Dogg CD.
Multiplied awesomeness from their best song ever? Times 72 for "Walkin' Bum" by David Allan Coe. Times 83 for "Sam Stone" by Swamp Dogg. Still not enough though.
Advantage: David Allan Coe.

s v n t y


seventy miles from somewhere,
I tap railroad ties and watch
the james river meander

Friday, September 24

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '10 #3: "Man About Town" by Charlie Rich


I was walking between two places related to work today and a helicopter flew off behind me. I watched it like a six-year-old kid, taking off and mussing my hair, which is always mussed because I am not used to cutting my hair on the regular and force my wife to do it instead of paying some old ass white dude to do it. Then as I continued walking the half a mile to wear I am allowed to park near a hospital inside a medium-sized city, I passed a sexy woman, but her left arm was a stub right below the elbow. And right behind her was walking a man who looked like he would’ve been good friends with Philo Beddo. He had a button-down shirt, with a few buttons undone, and 1970s tough redneck white guy hair, and was wearing jeans, and he said, “morning” in passing with a husky voice that had seen a few broken knuckles before. (I assume he said “morning” though I guess maybe he was on some next level shit and just saying “mourning” to everybody he passed while dressed like a 1970s tough guy because his wife, the woman who saved him from a life of hardscrabble street tussles and endless struggles with her strong yet pliant ways – the same qualities a vagina has – and she saved him from this all, and now she’s in the hospital with brain cancer, and he is sad so just goes “mourning” all day long wandering the streets waiting for her to die so he can start teaching all these punks he sees a lesson or two.)
Anyways, I immediately thought, “Wow, what a great day to be an American.” When people talk about that melting pot shit, they all too often just think of foreigners and how black people can get rich if they stop being so street scary unless they can play sports but even then they are eventually tricked back out of their money by white devils (of which the Jewish are part of… well white people, not necessarily devils automatically though we all have that potential, do we not?), but the Great American Melting Pot where helicopters just take off and we have sexy cripples and 1970s people and a guy like me who doesn’t know how to cut his hair in an appropriate way consistently but can still get a decent job if he knows the right people. America.
(And actually, it might be my bad hair that made 1970s tough guy say “morning” to me in the first place. He probably thought I was walking over the diner on Cherry Avenue for a late breakfast of fried eggs over easy, corned beef hash, a jelly biscuit, and a cup of coffee that tastes like iron filings but that is perfect because that is what you get in one of those diners that still exist like that. I would have a thousand of those diners before I had even one fucking Applebees or TGIFridays. Strip mall chain stores are the eugenics of the Great American Melting Pot. I know that is not a popular opinion, but fuck popular opinions.
I bet 1970s guy and me could have a wonderful discussion about how you can’t work on new cars anymore and why, even though fake breasts are larger, you can’t really get the same use out of them like old school large breasts, while drinking our crappy coffee while Charlie Rich played on the radio sitting on a shelf behind the counter. Sexy cripple wouldn’t have set foot in that diner. In fact, sexy cripple is the perfect example of what is wrong with America – we attach ourselves far too strongly to our sexiness and try to pretend we aren’t inherently crippled.
STEAL "Man About Town"
NEXT UP
: Yet more Boogie Brown beatitudes from underneath the Blue Globe!

J.J. Krupert Top 13 Countdown - July '10 #4: "Wood Wheel (screwed & chopped)" by U.G.K.


So odd the things that become pimp-worthy in a vehicle. A wood wheel, as in steering wheel, although that would be pretty tight if somehow you could have actually wood wheels. Personally, I’d prefer a wood car. Shouldn’t be impossible to attach that to a steel frame; the choices we have for fastening things together nowadays is amazing. That would be my dream car, a tight ass sedan shaped like those old Caddies with the slanted tailgate, but covered in cherry and mahogany wood instead, like ten coats of clear on top to keep it clean, and heavy on the chrome in the front and back ends. Actually I guess that gold chrome style would look better next to the wood, with as dark a tint as you could get on the windows. But if you couldn’t get a super dark tint because of government overregulation of how you pimp your car, you’d have to start over, and go with a mirror tint, switch back to the regular chrome, and then put a dark stain on the wood to get it closer to but not at a blackish color. You’d probably want to switch from cherry to walnut in that case though. Wouldn’t be good in crashes, but shit man, I ain’t gonna crash anyways.
We also live in the age of genetic engineering and computer nonsense going on, so maybe I could just have me a horse genetically engineered to fade from black on top to white on the bottom like a spotlight was shining underneath him at all times. And then they could cyborg him too so he had speakers in his hind legs and a subwoofer pointed out from somewhere too, or maybe just emanating from his rib cage. He should have some side view mirrors on his head too, even though he’s a horse and I could just look over my shoulder, because I love that shit when your side view mirrors vibrate from the bass, although I guess your car works as a cabinet for the sound and that enhances the effect. Still though, side view mirrors coming off a horse head would be tight. And all his hair braided, but with no bows. Any time you see kids riding horses in parades, they braid the hair and almost always put a fucking bow in the bottom. Why can’t a horse just pimp a straight braided style like that’s how he wants to roll, with a simple ass rubber band at the bottom? Fuck a bow.
In all likelihood though, even when science catches up to my next level thinking, I’ll just be riding a donkey with like a Zune jammed into an old Ipod dock duct taped to the donkey’s forehead. And I’ll be pulling a cart full of produce I took from behind the grocery store, trying to sell it to the mutant mulatto people living along the edge of the corpse-stained road, because if science gives us stereo cyborg horses that you can choose the color of beforehand, then most likely we will armageddon ourselves too. This is why we as mankind can’t have nothing nice.
STEAL "Wood Wheel (screwed & chopped)"
NEXT UP
: Some every day old school music that makes me feel good to my heart!

l t u s a


roadside lotus garden spread
across a pond's surface as
far as I could throw a rock

Thursday, September 23

L.E.o.R. - Fall ’10 - 20 to 10 - 1 of 2

We will make this round a simple best of three questions format...
ATSUSHI ONITA vs. JIMMY VALIANT
Where do they live? Somewhere in Japan vs. Shawsville, Virginia.
Do they have a beard? Not that I know vs. yes, a long ass one.
Advantage: Jimmy Valiant, two to none.
CHAZ BOJORQUEZ vs. GABRIEL DUENEZ
Who is older and more obscure? Duenez.
Were I rich, who would I more likely commission to do something for me? Bojorquez.
Am I rich? No.
Advantage: Gabriel Duenez.
JACKIE TYSON vs. JOHN RIGGINS
Which has cut down a tree in my back yard? Jackie Tyson.
Which has taught me awesome things in real life and once almost shot me with a .357 because he is really paranoid and I thought I was a neighbor crackhead trying to rob him? Jackie Tyson.
Who was on a football team I watched on TV when I was a kid? TV heroes are gay.
Advantage: Jackie Tyson.
CHARLES MANSON vs. TED KACZYNSKI
Who is smaller? I don't know; they're both small as fuck.
Who has the better beard? Upon arrest, probably a push, but I'd bet Manson keeps better facial hair in jail. Still, no photos to prove this.
Who wrote a better manifesto? Again, a push, because The Unabomber Manifesto was a nice piece, but very intellectual. Manson was a word-of-mouth oral manifesto manifester. There is something to be said for that.
Who would I rather receive a letter from if I wrote both of them in jail? Oh, without a doubt, Manson.
Advantage: Manson.
LARRY FLYNT vs. OXANA MALAYA
Who subjugates women? Flynt. (This would not be considered an advantage, in case you were wondering. Women can be objectified, but they should be treated well so as to enjoy their rampant sexualization as much as you enjoy it.)
Who wants to live amongst wild dogs? Malaya. (This is an advantage.)
Who is more obscure, thus making me feel like more of an obtuse internet hipster fuckface, and after all, isn't that what this is ultimately all about? Definitely Malaya.
Advantage: Oxana Malaya.

d o o r a


door got busted by windstorm;
bungee cord holds it almost
tight, but black wasps lurk inside

Wednesday, September 22

NFL WEEK 3: NFC North & West - 1st Quarter

Let us discuss the professional football like we there is nothing better to do this time at night. I spent three hours listening to one of those sales marketing audiotapes, and those things always leave me feeling like I don’t ever want to make money because the type of things you have to do to become successful following those frameworks always seem so fucking annoying. Not stupid, but annoying, to yourself and to others. Yet there’s always something built in to make that your fault, like you don’t have “business DNA” or “self-hustle” or something. Anyways, I am going to write one of those books by Thanksgiving, but I can’t legitimately push my own other wordsy things and fully sell that sales book manifesto bullshit thing without exposing my real face, so if there’s anyone out there who wants to be the face of my sales manifesto, let me know, we can work out a deal. It’s my scheme, you’ll just be the actor. Kind of like all those dudes on Sunday football shows that act like the shit’s not fixed.
Anyways, in our second week of pretending I know about pro football, I am taking a swing through the NFC North and West divisions, team by team, personal prejudice by personal prejudice, and hoping I can do it all before I die…

#1: GREEN BAY PACKERS (2-0, 4th overall) – The Packers are being mightily hyped as the real deal Holyfield this year, and it’s pretty obvious to see why. Their defense is a motherfucker, and the offense is set up enough behind enough O-linemen who aren’t on injured reserve (which killed them last year) to throw up some points. And if they make the playoffs, football in Green Bay in January, yadda yadda yadda. They should put the fucking Super Bowl in Green Bay. It should have nothing to do with fancy stadiums and hotel rooms and just be given on some sabermetrical scale to whatever team has the best overall finish the previous five years, but you can only get it once every 10 years, and they do it three in advance. THIS WEEK: A Monday night black-n-blue division showdown on the road against the team just below.

#2: CHICAGO BEARS (2-0, 6th overall) – On one hand, it’s easy to be like, “Holy fuck, the Bears are back, ain’t they?” Then on the other hand it’s just as easy to go, “Shit, they in all seriousness actually lost to the Lions already, so fuck them.” I will go with the latter. Of all the emotional I.E.D.s cooking up in locker rooms around the NFL, I think the Jay Cutler/Mike Martz deal in Chicago has the best bet of creating seriously comedic news stories. I mean, far stupider things will happen with T.O. and Chad Ochocinco in Cincinnati, but Cutler/Martz is a pair of self-important white dudes who could explode all over each other after a couple of three or four interception games. Poor Lovie Smith. THIS WEEK: I already told you, they’re hosting the Packers.

#3: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS (1-1, 20th overall) – Pete Carroll’s triumphant return to the NFL was short-lived, as they got beat by old AFC West rival the stupid fucking Broncos. My buddy Loftin is a Seahawks fan, so I will now say the only good thing I can think of about the Seahawks – they are lucky the Texans joined the NFL because now Seattle only has the second ugliest uniforms. THIS WEEK: At home, hosting another former AFC West rival in the San Diego Chargers.

#4: ARIZONA CARDINALS (1-1, 21st overall) – I have the Cardinals defense on one of my two fantasy football teams, and was smart enough to not play them last week against Atlanta. I did not realize I would be that smart. Sad thing is they don’t even really have a quality QB anymore. I would’ve at least just run Matt Leinart out there for the year just to see if he could sink or swim in game conditions. I mean, hell, he’s been sitting around doing sudoku on the sidelines for three years, you might as well. Now they are as fucked as the Cardinals usually are. THIS WEEK: At home, hosting the Oakland Raiders, in a game that I hope I am not forced by local TV to watch.

#5: MINNESOTA VIKINGS (0-2, 23rd overall) – Oh man, the wheels came off the Vikings bandwagon pretty quick this year. The Ol’ Gunslinger is having the media turn on him, and it’s only a matter of a few more weeks – if they keep losing – before the locker room follows suit. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy. You know who else I don’t like? Jared Allen, that’s who. You know another problem I have with the Vikings? How does Adrian Peterson get his jersey numbers all covered in paint or dirt or something like five plays into the game every week? Seriously, that dude has the nastiest numbers in football, but his jersey is still clean, and the numbers aren’t muddy, they’re like covered in paint and shit, like he rubbed against a freshly rolled wall or something. THIS WEEK: They will try again at home, hosting the Detroit Lions. The NFL should make every division play two games at the same time. I think they’re doing that to end the season this year, but it would be tight if that was just standard procedure, so you knew when the Vikings and Lions were playing, that automatically in your brain without you having to verify it knew the Packers and Bears would be playing as well.

#6: SAN FRANCISCO 49ERS (0-2, 26th overall) – Seriously, how bad is the NFC West if the still-expected winner of the division stumbles out the gates 0-2, and is still the favorite? I can imagine, for as awesome as Mike Singletary is, coach Samurai Eyeballs of Hatred’s schtick wearing thin pretty quick if you had to deal with it all the time. It’s like if your dad is like, “Quit that or I’m gonna beat the fuck out of you!” but he never actually beats the fuck out of you, because no matter how bad Mike Singletary is, he can’t literally beat up his players, or he would get fired or sued or both. If you never actually get beat, you eventually learn to think fuck the old man and do whatever you feel like doing, just without him seeing you. THIS WEEK: They give it a third try at winning a game, on the road against the Kansas City Chiefs, for the coveted Joe Montana Legbone trophy.

#7: ST. LOUIS RAMS (0-2, 30th overall) – Looks to be shaping up like another rough year for the Rambos, and yet another high draft pick next year. They host my beloved and emotionally painful to watch Washington Redskins this week, which should be an easy win for the Skins, but probably means the Rams will win, thus fucking up their draft pick for next year. That’s kinda what my Redskins do – they play the roll of spoiler, except they don’t spoil playoff runs, they spoil how high your draft pick ends up being. THIS WEEK: Just told you, didn’t I?

#8: DETROIT LIONS (0-2, 32nd overall) – I have a constantly fluctuating collection of five or six teams that are my second-tier favorite teams underneath the Redskins – teams that I will gladly root for but am not do-or-die-beat-my-children-when-they-lose attached to. The Lions have pretty much throughout my entire life been one of these teams. It is no different nowadays because Calvin Johnson is one of my favorite players. I feel really sad for lifelong Lions fans. It’s like being born with a giant flaccid dick that can never get hard. THIS WEEK: Ndonkakong Suh breaks Brett Favre into pieces in the Metrodome, and cannibal Al Qaeda Somalian kids (there’s lots of African refugees in Minnesota for some reason) feast on his raw flesh. Yet still the Vikings win.

S14: Worst College Football Teams

This is your college football Shit List thus far the fall season of inter-collegiate athletics. These are the absolute crappiest forms of organized football being played in America today, and all of them will carry this with them for the rest of their lives, as they sell insurance and operate internet start-ups and work at their father’s law firm and become addicted to prescription drugs and grow old and mostly white but sometimes black together.

#1: TEXAS COLLEGE STEERS (0-3, 61.333 avg. margin of defeat) – Texas College is notoriously the worst team in the worst level of college football there is – the NAIA. They opened this year at home against Belhaven, and lost 53 to 3. Sadly enough, that’s their highlight, that one field goal, because since then they went to Ouachita Baptist (which I think is a church group) and lost 70 to 0, and then to McMurry and lost 64 to 0. Steer Football Fever… CATCH IT!

#2: HUSSON EAGLES (0-3, 55.667 avg. margin of defeat) – The year has started ugly for the Eagles from Bangor, Maine, and Division III independent team, with three straight home losses, 38 to 0 to Otterbein, 51 to 0 to Springfield, and then they finally scored a touchdown last weekend against Salisbury, but unfortunately still lost 84 to 7. Luckily for them, two of their remaining opponents are on this year’s first Shit List as well – Anna Maria and Becker. Someone will have to win those games.

#3: NEW MEXICO LOBOS (0-3, 49.667 avg. margin of defeat) – My dislike of Brian Urlacher and his state trooper haircut is so immense that I am thankful his alma mater is the shittiest Division I football team going right now. They lost to Oregon to start the season 72 to 0, which is usually the type of ass-kicking reserved for IAA teams. Fuck you Brian Urlacher.

#4: ANNA MARIA CATS (0-3, 48.000 avg. margin of defeat) – Man, I am so thankful I did this this week, because Anna Maria and Becker are in the same conference in Division III football, yet for some reason did not play last year. Both were on this list towards the end of the year (and maybe even at the end, but I don’t feel like looking it up), but did not get a chance to see who was worst. Well, after being outscored the past two weeks by 116 to 0, Anna Maria is travelling to Becker, this weekend, for the most mightiest of showdowns ever. For one of these two teams, this will most likely be their only win in three years. And I hope, oh god I hope by some odd chance that someone has followed these things on my blog and knows how immense this will be. This is why the internet was invented, to shine a spotlight on little strange corner of the world cockroaches like Anna Maria vs. Becker, September 25, 2010.

#5: CULVER-STOCKTON WILDCATS (0-3, 48.000 avg. margin of defeat) – I know that Culver-Stockton is a great team, because they regularly show up in my search terms as having brought somebody to my stupid fucking blog. Well, here you go again Mr. Random Dude Googling Culver-Stockton Football to see if the world knows how truly bad something you probably know firsthand really is. It doesn’t. I’m not a good gauge on the real world.

#6: CONCORDIA FALCONS (0-3, 48.000 avg. margin of defeat) – This would be the Wisconsin Concordia team, in case there are like nine of them in Division III. They host Maranatha Baptist Bible College in three weeks, which is a notoriously bad program that has yet to win this year as well.

#7: LA VERNE LEOPARDS (0-1, 45.000 avg. margin of defeat) – Took me a while to find anything about them after the initial data because I was looking up “LaVerne” instead of “La Verne”. I guess that makes a difference to them, but damn, when your team is the leopards, I don’t know, doesn’t seem like much to be proud of.

#8: LIVINGSTONE BLUE BEARS (0-4, 44.750 avg. margin of defeat) – They just restarted football last year, playing in the historically black college and university Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association, and basically getting their asses handed to them regularly. I have a hard time not just calling them the Livingstone Brambles though.

#9: CHOWAN HAWKS (0-3, 44.000 avg. margin of defeat) – Well, Chowan is also in the western division of the CIAA along with the Livingstone Brambles, so they will have to play at some point this year. See, that’s the type of dumb shit I make a road trip for, to watch two absolutely terrible small black college football teams play somewhere in Pennsylvania or North Carolina on a Saturday afternoon in October. And then I go to the drag races nearby, and get stabbed by Mexicans, although that’s just what I call them. They probably were actually Salvadorans.

#10: WESTERN STATE MOUNTAINEERS (0-3, 43.000 avg. margin of defeat) – A little misleading for the Division II team, as they went out of their class to play IAA Montana Grizzlies in Missoula at the beginning of the month, and got waxed 73 to 2 in that affair (and you have to assume the Grizzlies gave them a safety at some point so that they could punt the ball more safely). Western State is a consistently good football team, and I have to figure them playing out of their league means they just want their guys all fucked up and beaten down to start the year so they come out and completely obliterate their actual Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference competition. Or maybe they really do suck.

#11: MACMURRAY HIGHLANDERS (0-3, 42.000 avg. margin of defeat) – What can you say about the pride of Jacksonville, Illinois, that hasn’t already been said? Nothing like Highlander football in northern Illinois on a crisp Saturday afternoon, far enough from the hustle and minorityness of Chicago to relax and enjoy a warm cup of apple cider and feel good to be an American still.

#12: VALPARAISO CRUSADERS (0-3, 41.000 avg. margin of defeat) – A IAA team that most people only know from occasional NCAA basketball tournament appearances. The Crusaders logo is like a cartoon drawn by a drunk hipster kid who took a time machine back to 1957. I am sure it has been incorporate nicely into many comedically drunken fraternity party screen prints.

#13: BECKER HAWKS (0-3, 40.333 avg. margin of defeat) – Forget the 78 to 19 ass-kicking at home three weeks ago to start the year. Forget the near win on the road against the MIT Message Board Administrators, losing 21 to 13 two weeks ago. Forget the 55 to zero stomping at the hands of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Engineers last week (yeah, that’s a real team). For you the mighty Hawks of Becker College in quaint Leicester, Massachusetts, there is only this weekend, when the equally impotent Anna Maria College comes to town for the game of the year. Order your kegs from Hannaford’s now bros; it’s on.

#14: KENTUCKY CHRISTIAN KNIGHTS (0-4, 40.000 avg. margin of defeat) – It’s only the third year of football for Kentucky Christian University, which sounds like some shit I want nothing to do with. I mean, fucking Americans get mad about mosques being in the middle of giant clusters of cemented cities full of millions, yet we have all these podunk ass Christian colleges floating through small towns that train people to have that blank look in their eyes. It freaks me out just thinking about it. This country needs more mosques, not less. You motherfuckers better hope I don’t get wealthy because I’m gonna open a goddamn Intifadah University with a golden dome made of Russian machine guns over top our basketball arena. Seriously. And then in a purposeful moment of irony, I’ll blow the whole thing up with an improvised explosive, but I’ll attached Bible verses to my media manifesto.

S14: Best College Football Teams

May not do it entirely all year long, much less weekly, but I was fucking around the other night and calculated the best and worst college football teams thus far in the young season for 2010, so I figured I’d make a pair of stupid posts about them. These are the teams winning by the most, called the Bully List, because they be fucking people up without remorse.

#1: OREGON DUCKS (3-0, 58.667 avg. margin of victory) – In three games, the Ducks have beat two inferior teams at home 72-0 and 69-0, and gone on the road to Rocky Top to tear up the Tennessee Vols. They open up Pac-10 play (and hopefully a run to the title with USC out of the way by their own legal undoing) at Arizona State this weekend.

#2: BETHUNE-COOKMAN WILDCATS (2-0, 47.500 avg. margin of victory) – Early HBCU frontrunner in the IAA MEAC… I just like writing nonsense like that with a bunch of abbreviations and acronyms and shit. Sports fandom is a very serious nonsense gibberish to outsiders, and at this moment, it seems completely ridiculous to me. Why do I do shit like this? What the fuck is wrong with me?

#3: LINDENWOOD LIONS (3-0, 47.000 avg. margin of victory) – Not only is Lindenwood again a terror of the bizarre NAIA league, but their win last weekend was against a fellow top 10 team in Missouri Valley, who they barely beat 45 to 27.

#4: TRINE THUNDER (3-0, 46.333 avg. margin of victory) - #12 Division III team in the country, from somewhere in Indiana, where I would bet small college football is really popular until just after Halloween, when everybody is like, “Fuck this shit, basketball season is starting.” It’s very strange that there still exists a predominantly white people enclave in this country where basketball is immensely popular.

#5: DAKOTA WESLEYAN TIGERS (2-0, 45.000 avg. margin of victory) – This is some bullshit. Dakota Wesleyan isn’t even in the NAIA Top 25. They must not really exist or something. Andy Kaufman’s kid has pretended them into existence as part of his pop cultural studies class in college.

#6: MAINE MARITIME MARINERS (2-0, 44.500 avg. margin of victory) – Well, their first win was on the road against one of the most consistently notoriously terrible college football programs since I ever started doing this in Anna Maria, so the ol’ Mariners may not be around in a few weeks.

#7: SALISBURY STATE SEA GULLS (3-0, 43.667 avg. margin of victory) – There is some disparity in the interwebs about whether they go by Salisbury State (which could never be taken seriously) or simply Salisbury at this point, but the fact of the matter is they beat a team called Husson, 84 to 7, at Husson (wherever that may be), last week. And yet with NCAA Division III being such a giant clusterfuck of teams like it is, they’re still not ranked.

#8: WISCONSIN-WHITEWATER WARHAWKS (3-0, 42.667 avg. margin of victory) – The Warhawks are ranked in Division III football though, at the very top. They played their closest game of the young year last weekend, only beating Campbellsville on the road by 30 points. In Division III football, there are the Warhawks and there are the Mount Union Purple Raiders. Those two are like the Ohio State and USC of Division III.

#9: WITTENBERG TIGERS (3-0, 41.333 avg. margin of victory) - #6 ranked Division III team, and another yearly power in that underclass of college football. I imagine you could get a good book out of just being drunk and travelling between small college Saturday afternoon showdowns throughout the state of Ohio. Of course, I am of the belief I could get a good book out of just being drunk and travelling anything. The key has been to find a rich benefactor lady to help cover the life costs that not having a for-real job would create by me doing such things. But all it takes is one. One benefactor and/or one book. WORK, BRAIN! WORK!

#10: UTICA PIONEERS (3-0, 39.000 avg. margin of victory) – A domineering team thus far this year, yet not ranked in the top 25 for Division III. This leads me to wonder about the types of guys who actually are forced to vote in the Division III poll. Like, I’m dorky enough just looking some of this shit up casually, but to be completely immersed in it to where you have to have a valid opinion on the matter… it’s a scary world out there for some folks, trapped inside of terrible microcosms. Then again, maybe it’s not so bad. Like, I might end up being invited to vote in the poll by the end of the year simply because I know more then 12 NCAA division III teams by name.

#11: NORTH CENTRAL CARDINALS (2-0, 38.500 avg. margin of victory) - #8 in Division III, and I love reading those polls because it goes like #6: Central (Iowa), #7: North Central (Missouri), #8: Indiana (Pennsylvania), #9: North Central (Illinois), #10: Trinity (Illinois), #11: Trinity (Texas), #12: Central (Ohio), #13: Trinity (Wisconsin), #14: Bilderberg, #15: MK Ultra, #16: Sirhan College, and so on.

#12: ALABAMA CRIMSON TIDE (3-0, 38.333 avg. margin of victory) – Hey! A football team you’ve heard of finally! They are #1 in the NCAA’s premier class of allegedly amateur athletics, and I fucking hate them, just because I hate everything that is either good or popular or both.

#13: STANFORD CARDINAL (3-0, 38.000 avg. margin of victory) – Ranked #16 in the AP poll, and it’s a down year for the Pac-10, so if they can upset Oregon, they could win one of these two “USC doesn’t count” years coming up. Head coach Jim Harbaugh has solidly established himself as a solid dude at the collegiate level, so much so he is no longer the head coach flavor of the month every off-season in the NFL.

#14: WALSH CAVALIERS (3-0, 38.000 avg. margin of victory) – Your #8 ranked NAIA football team, from somewhere in the bowels of Ohio. It was founded by something called “the Brothers of Christian Instruction.” I like that because I am a big fan of just making shit up and pretending it’s all serious business.

r s t a d


a concrete wall, set in place
by human hands, a canvas
now for rust and waterstains

Tuesday, September 21

p a l a c


orange impala has promise,
sitting on south route 20,
filling my broke ass with dreams