SONG OF THE DAY: Missing

There’s not a lot of desire to hear what white men say because that voice has crowded history’s book shelves so violently the past few centuries. But I think it’s important white men willing to grow and change and adjust share their internal dialogues, so that everyone else can better understand where we come from. For example, in the heart of every man, there’s a constant conversation happening, between an inner-Joe Rogan, and an inner-Beto O’Rourke. The inner-Joe Rogan wants to get high after work, and indulge in a digital buffet of spirituality, awareness, and fantasy. But the inner-Beto O’Rourke wants to go out, and make friends that aren’t just other white men, except he’s unable to do that successfully because he only goes to a set square of exactly 36 acceptably hip spots, and 12 times out of 10, does so in a clever t-shirt that’s actually only clever to other white men. So the post-modern day white man struggles under the burden of this inner dialogue, in fact argument, between the inner-Rogan wanting to get high and look at cool shit online, and the inner-Beto wanting to go out and be appreciated by others who are not just more white men. EVERY WHITE MAN YOU MEET IS GOING THROUGH THIS STRUGGLE BUT WILL NEVER ACKNOWLEDGE IT. And it is that deception of the actual conversations happening inside themselves that makes them “white men”.

World Cup Tanka: COLOMBIA vs. ENGLAND (Match 56)

my Colombian 
friend's oddly somber and calm, 
against her nature 

"I cannot get excited" 
she explains, in yellow kit 

no love for English, 
despite my American 
whiteness assignment 

rather be American 
in twin continental sense 

whenever either 
team flirts with box entry, the 
other defends well 

early stages are just two 
teams internally probing 

sports euphemisms 
are either sexual or 
based upon battle 

I am a romantic at heart, 
thus also an erotic 

Harry Kane looks an 
insufferable asshole, 
falling for free kicks 

the English match plan appears 
to be fall down and free kick 

this theme remains in 
place second half, penalty 
for a barely foul 

Kane converts, rewarded for 
false football philosophy 

where is Falcao's long 
hair? Samson mentalities 
please true football gods 

we live in horribly corrupt 
age, with all culture compromised 

strong metaphysic 
blow from the football gods off 
Yerry Mina's head 

extra time, extra drama - 
drained cramping legs suffer more 

the football gods so 
cruel - giving hope then snuffing 
out just as quickly 

colonial knockouts - world 
cup's mostly European 

TOP TEN ONE JUDGMENT CALL BY PROGRESSIVE WHITE PEOPLE WILL RUIN YOUR DAY

from farm to table
from white father to white child
guilt-free privilege
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/lJhh8tdyNU

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

"we locally source..."
multiple dollar sign yelp
reviews - not for poors
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/WggvSpAww9

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

bussed in immigrants
pick produce with leisure class
polyfaced interns
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/ivjUeXdArA

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

redevelop hoods
artisanal poverty
graffiti murals
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/zGGldDzxK3

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

just as poor people
got scars, poor neighborhoods got
dilapidation
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/ys7YfEcq76

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

kickstarter to fund
*empowering* street artists
cover-up tattoos
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/sbCkROhnE4

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

don't mean to demean
dreaming but make sure your dream
is all-inclusive
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/IR5dTvNl2C

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

inequality
seen through instagram filters
is not really *real*
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/rwVyivYwaX

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

just 'cause you don't feel
guilty don't mean you ain't; you've
monetized penance
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/Nx4B6ruAXf

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

most folks can't afford
talk of *inequality*
busy being poor
.#haiku#rojonekku pic.twitter.com/mstw5s2MIl

— Tha Dirt-God (@rojonekku) March 3, 2016

#1: from farm to table/from white father to white child/guilt-free privilege

#2: "we locally source..."/multiple dollar sign yelp/reviews - not for poors

#3: bussed in immigrants/pick produce with leisure class/polyfaced interns

#4: redevelop hoods/artisanal poverty/graffiti murals

#5: just as poor people/got scars, poor neighborhoods got/dilapidation

#6: kickstarter to fund/*empowering* street artists/cover-up tattoos

#7: don't mean to demean/dreaming but make sure your dream/is all-inclusive

#8: inequality/seen through instagram filters/is not really *real*

#9: just 'cause you don't feel/guilty don't mean you ain't; you've/monetized penance

#10: most folks can't afford/talk of *inequality*/busy being broke

S14: Top 14 UEFA Champions League Group Stage Teams Not From The Major Five Nations In Recent Years

The comparisons for us stupid fat self-important Americans are always made between soccer (world’s football) and football (concussion ball), but with the UEFA Champions League knockout stage 2016 starting up today, it seems obvious to point out the most glaring parallel between world and American football. American football, at the collegiate level (if you can call it that), has undergone some major transformations in recent years, not really in the game itself but more so in how different teams align themselves in allegiance to making that money. A handful of top conferences have bodied their way into control of most of the lucrative spots at the end of the season, and in terms of quality of teams, sure that makes sense. Except in terms of fairness of play, not sure it does. I mean, being the third best team in a power conference doesn’t necessarily have a better claim to challenging for the best team in the nation than a championship team from a lesser conference.

The same is going on in the Champions League, as the money is bigger than ever, so the top domestic leagues are wanting more and more slots in the Champions League, which at one point back in the day only included the champions from each national top domestic league. But the 1990s were transformation into big business for world football, both the with the reformatting of top flight English football into the Premier League (to squeeze out the poors and also bring in them corporate dollars, plus TV dollars, which those two are intertwined like tween girls using fore and middle finger to visually display besties forever), as well as the updating of the UEFA top club tournament into what it is now, with multiple entrants from top leagues. In fact, this season, Manchester United are seen as a huge failure, not because they’re not going to win the Premier League, or even contend, but because they specifically look like they’re not going to finish in the top four, which means they are outside next year’s Champions League field looking in. So the top teams in Europe (from a few nations at least) are talking about wanting to change how it goes, which means they’ll either give more of the CL spots to top leagues, or some super league will form, likely comprised only of those famous clubs from the top leagues.

For me, and perhaps I’m simplistic and not putting enough attachment to the money to be made, and simply regard this as a good ol’ competition for declaring the best team, it all seems a lot like the NCAA basketball March Madness tournament. Personally, I feel the top team from every conference has a stronger claim to participate than any 2nd place team, much less a 6th or 7th place team from a power conference. Like if you’re not the biggest fish in your own pond, even if it is a small pond, then you have no claim to being the biggest fish in all ponds. And sure, if you put a 5th place team from the SEC in football in the middle of like the Mid American Conference (or Tottenham Hotspur in the top Polish league), they’d dominate. But the point is, they’re not in that league.

There is the argument, “Well, we want to see the best teams play.” But I don’t buy that, because if you limit the best teams to one from each, then you make seeing the best teams play more memorable, and harder. How fucking crazy would people be going in England this year if it means Leicester City was going to take the only Champions League slot available? They’d be losing their shit, and demanding more teams get allowed in. Which is what we already have, and I understand we’re not gonna put that genie back in the bottle, but much like the NCAA basketball tournament, I fear we’re going to move further in the wrong direction (more fluff from the top, at the expense of the smaller places on earth).

Really, these changes in European soccer certainly make a lot of sense coming after the fall of the Soviet Union, and “free market capitalism” taking over the earth, and though we are swinging that way, same with college football in America, it will be interesting to see the pendulum swing back the other way once these abstract bubbles of ETERNALLY BUILDING MORE WEALTH OUT OF NOTHING get burst by Molotov cocktails, assassin’s blades, sniper rifle, and chaos in the streets.

Nonetheless, I thought it would be fun to faux-analyze this by looking at what teams have scored the most points in the group stage of the UEFA Champions League that past 14 years. Except to display my thoughts about smaller fish from bigger ponds, I’m only going through clubs from nations not in the Big Five of UEFA domestic leagues: Germany, England, France, Spain, and Italy. That means most of the famous teams you know aren’t in this list. But all these teams had to earn their group stage points, likely against a lot of teams from those leagues, over the past 14 years. So what teams have performed the best (according to how many group stage points they’ve earned) the past 14 years in Europe’s top continental club competition, but aren’t from those five football-privileged nations?

#1: FC PORTO (of Portugal) – 120 group stage points, advanced to knockout rounds 8 times, but not this year, when they finished third in their group thus got demoted to the Europa League knockout phase. Porto is one of the oldest clubs in Portugal, and considered one of the big three clubs in that nation (don’t worry, the other two will show up in this list as well), which is probably one of the nations countering that Big Five Nations argument. In fact, Portugal’s coefficient was higher than France for this CL, so really they’re #5, not France. However, Portugal’s football history has not had the same evolving history as some other nations, as Porto and the other two of the Big Three have been in the top flight every year ever. Current season of Portugal’s Primeira Liga has Porto sitting in third, but 7 pts clear of the 4th-place team. Porto was the only team not from the big five nations in this 14-year period I looked at to win the Champions League though, and in fact were the last team not from those big five to do so (in the 2003-04 final, beating AS Monaco from France, which actually Monaco is an independent state, but their main football club plays in the French league). And I would say it might be some time before that feat is duplicated again.

#2: OLYMPIACOS FC (of Greece) – 92 group stage points, advanced to knockout round 4 times, but not this year, finishing 3rd in their group behind Arsenal and Bayern Munich, thus relegated (like Porto) to Europa League knockouts. But to give an idea of the disparity between being in the Greek League as opposed to the English or German leagues, in 1998-99, perhaps the best Olympiacos team ever was making its way through the CL, and narrowly missed making the semifinals. That’s considered a high point for the club, although they continue to dominate the Greek leagues. Additionally, they moved to the knockout stage of the Champions League three out of six seasons from 2008-2014. That last time in the knockouts, they were drawn against Manchester United in 2014, and won the first leg in Greece, 2-0, but dropped the second leg 0-3 at Old Trafford, thus was knocked the fuck out.

#3: FC SHAKHTAR DONETSK (of Ukraine) – 77 group stage points, plus advanced to knockout stage 3 times, but came in 3rd in group stage this year behind Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain, thus (like the other two teams so far) got put in the Europa knockout stage. Despite the working class communist-era beginnings of Shakhtar Donetsk, they are currently a known commodity in Europe, owned by billionaire/perhaps organized crime boss Rinat Akhmetov, part of that class that came to power once communism was replaced by oligarchic klepto-capitalism. In fact, Chelsea superstar Willian came from Shakhtar Donetsk during a summer 2013 selling off of their biggest assets. Despite that, and the chaos of war which has fractured the top Ukrainian league, Shakhtar Donetsk remains a top club there, hugely supported, and bound for yearly trips to the Champions League so long as Ukraine holds onto their extra spots. It should be noted that this year, for example, though Shakhtar Donetsk, being the second place team in the Ukraine, had to go through the 3rd Qualifying and Play-off Rounds of the CL just to make Group Stage. But even though they’re not top five nation status, they’re big enough to muscle their way past the European minnows still floundering along during those early rounds.

#4: S.L. BENFICA (also of Portugal) – 73 group stage points, and advanced to knockouts 3 times, including this year, matched up against Zenit St. Petersburg. Benfica is the second of Portugal’s big three teams, based in Lisbon, but they had a financial decline from the mid-‘90s until around 2009, which includes about half the 14-year period this stupid list looks at. But they have won the Primeria Liga the past two years, three of the past six, finished no worst than second those other three years, and sit at 2nd this season right now. And perhaps they are an example of free market capitalism working because they are now (since 2007) a publicly traded company with stockholders who have not wasted money on ridiculous transfers like many of the bigger English teams are well-known for doing.

#5: PSV EINDHOVEN (of the Netherlands) – 66 group stage points, advancing to knockouts 4 times, including this season, taking on Atletico Madrid. They beat out Manchester United in their group this year. Dutch football is well-known, and PSV Eindhoven is one of the Netherlands’ big three clubs. Famous Dutch fucker of football note Arjen Robben honed his little Dutch fucker craft for Eindhoven. The city itself is not quite on par with Amsterdam, and considered a lesser city of peasants, so the club (and it’s supporters) pride themselves on that. But really, at this point, how can any major club really claim peasantry, even outside the big five? They won the Eredivisie last season, their first time after about a six year spell of not winning, which ran against the previous decade’s trend of winning shit all the time. Their current squad continue the club trend of mostly Dutch dudes with a minimal sprinkling of foreigners, including a little South American flavor.

#6: AFC AJAX (also of the Netherlands) – 61 group stage points, moving to knockouts 2 times, but this year didn’t even make it beyond the 3rd Qualifing round, getting knocked out by Rapid Wien of Austria. Ajax is an infamous team, not only for its on-field success but also for having one of the more infamous hooligan supporters bases for a team not from England or Italy or East Europe. They actually won the Champions League back in 1994-95, and more historically important, when the competition was still called the European Cup and only featured domestic champions, they won it three years in a row from 1971 through 1973, behind the skillz of Johan Cruyff, who forced that Dutch Total Football philosophy onto the world, which the Dutch are only now really starting to contemplate moving beyond.

#7: FC DYNAMO KYIV (of Ukraine) – 55 group stage points, moved to knockout phase once, which is this season, which is where they likely get crushed by Manchester City. Dynamo Kyiv was a top flight club even when still part of the Soviet Union, and was one of the few Soviet clubs to break the dominance of Moscow-based soccer clubs on that Soviet league. They won the Soviet league 13 times, and have won the Ukrainian top league 14 times since then. Keeping it Ukrainian, they’ve tended to be top source for the national team, and that was actually true during Soviet era as well.

#8: FC BASEL (of Switzerland) – 53 group stage points, knock out times 3 times, but this year got knocked out in the playoff round right before Group Stage by Maccabi Tel Aviv. I am halfway through this thing and losing interest fast and being nobody pays me it’s hard to give a fuck to POWER THROUGH, especially for some Swiss club that sounds too close to FC BASIC for me to really think about anything other than that.

#9: FC ZENIT ST. PETERSBURG (of Russia) – 49 group stage points plus 3 knockout trips, including this season, drawn against Benfica, WHICH MEANS THAT AT LEAST ONE TEAM NOT FROM THE BIG FIVE NATIONS WILL MAKE THE QUARTERFINALS. Early on in me thinking about soccer was years ago when they won the UEFA Cup and had big ol’ riots to celebrate, and I was watching the news bit on the television because internet didn’t exist in 2008, and I was like, “oh man that’s awesome, it’s foreign people rioting in celebratory excitement.” You see, my American life then – as now – was missing celebratory excitement. It’s all so mundane. However brief Wikipedia research shows me that Zenit St Petersburg are owned by something called Gazprom, which is probably a phone company or some shit, but being it’s foreign and weird sounding and I’m a fat lazy American, it might also be some robot overlord hellbent on fucking up the entire earth, like a Voltron Drago. I’m afraid of Voltron Dragos. Also pretty sure this is one of the teams full of racist fans (I guess that’s every team in Russia though) so I’m really afraid of Voltron Dragos who have a lot of drunken scary racialist Russians as supporters.

#10: CELTIC FC (of Scotland) – 48 group stage points, 3 knockout trips, I think but I’m also questioning whether the column of my excel spreadsheet I thought was for times in the knockout stages might be for some other weird shit. Let’s just stick with it since maybe two people will read this max, and being one of them is a Celtic fan, I’ve strategically placed this caveat at the perfect spot. Celtic is a team with leftist fans who have been loudest drum beaters during Scottish movement for independence in recent years. Celtic, along with Anglo-friendly Rangers, were the twin opposing forces of the Old Firm rivalry, perhaps the most bitter of all soccer derbies on earth until Rangers financial incompetence has led them into multiple administrations, relegation to the bottom of Scottish football pyramid, and so on. They may make it back to Scottish Premiership to compete again with Celtic next year, but they may be administrated again. Who the fuck knows? Kinda funny the pro-English team would suffer financial calamity while the pro-independence one does not (although stadium attendance looking pretty sparse lately at times). I’m of the belief we all need enemies to motivate us, so without good legit enemy to death, Celtic has become complacent. They’ll be King of Scotland (pun intended) for as long as they want, so the talk moves to a superleague or admission to the English Premier League, where Celtic pride combined with EPL TV dollars will mean CONQUER THE WORLD. But that also feels a little like English “conquer the world” thinking too. Still though, I always pull for Celtic from afar – in the pack of non-big five nations teams I always pull for, there’s a couple (Celtic, Fenerbahce, that may actually be it) that I really hope do well just to fuck up the hegemony at the top of the world footballing pyramid.

#11: PFC CSKA MOSCOW (of Russia) – 46 group stage points, two trips to knockout stages, this year though finished 4th in their group. This was the team of the Soviet Army during Soviet days, and since then has had partial support from the Russian Ministry of Defence, which is all sorts of weird. Could you imagine an NFL team being owned partially by the Department of Defense? Actually they all might be for all I know. PATRIOTISM through sport seems prevalent throughout the world. But CSKA literally stands for “central sports club of the army” so I don’t know, that’s next level shit.

#12: GALATASARAY SK (of Turkey) – 38 group stage points, 2 trips to the knockouts yall. Galatasaray are part of the big rivalry in Istanbul, Turkey, between them (the more elite club) and Fenerbahce, which is more like the people’s team, although there’s also a third team Besiktas which is like an anarchist team to an extent, so I don’t know. But Turkish fans are well-known for their stabbing techniques, especially against English fans, and Galatasaray have always blown big money to maintain that big status on a big name from somewhere in the world. Didier Drogba played there briefly. Current international superstar is Wesley Sneijder, but it didn’t help them finish better than 3rd in their group, meaning they were relegated to the Europa League knockouts. Galat’s supporters are INSANE though, and their home stadium is infamous during both domestic as well as international games for being one of the most intimidating places on earth to play. Basically, fans set off red pyrotechnics everywhere, so it’s smoke and fire and loud singing and dramatic shit and a proudly self-proclaimed Welcome to Hell atmosphere.  Galat supporters are big on the large banner displays not so common in England but still prevalent in South America as well, unfurling giant images of opposition teams getting ass raped or something like that. But even all this atmosphere is sort of manufactured because the real old ass stadium they played in has been retired because of the fancy ass new Turk Telekom Arena built in the financial sector of Istanbul. The high dollar support helps keep the team at their high level but it’s that “gotta spend money to make money” bullshit too. Actually, you could a thousand anthropological thinkpieces on football in Istanbul alone, with the big Galatasaray/Fenerbahce rivalry (plus Besiktas) and how that straddles classes and continents and cultures. But I’m just some simple ass dude who does a blog (plus zine plus books plus whatever the fuck else), not a cultural anthropologist.

#13: RSC ANDERLECHT (of Belgium) – 33 group stage points, never made it to the knockouts, and didn’t even make the Champions League this year. I think this is the team all the jihadis who did the attacks on Paris played for.

#14: SPORTING CP (again, of Portugal) – 31 group stage points, 1 trip to the knockout rounds, third of the big three in Portugal, yadda yadda yadda, I got dinner to make.

If you enjoy this type of dumb shit, consider supporting Rojonekku Word Fighting Arts. If you already support it, buy it for a psychic comrade. We need to build our psychic comrades network before these next 20 years. 

monuments to white men turn

green from mildew culturing

itself, exposing the truth

google maps picture dump: Africa vs. Europe football stadiums

African Champions League is down to final 8 group stage. European (& more commonly known) Champions League is down to final 4. I thought it would be interesting to compare views of stadiums for the final 8 clubs of each continent's league of champions.
EUROPE: PARIS SAINT-GERMAIN - PARC DES PRINCES

AFRICA: SMOUHA SC - ALEXANDRIA STADIUM

EUROPE: JUVENTUS FC - JUVENTUS STADIUM

AFRICA: MOGHREB TETOUAN - STADE ANIAT RAMEL

EUROPE: FC PORTO - ESTADIO DO DRAGAO

AFRICA: ES SETIF - STADE 8 MAI 1945

EUROPE: ATLETICO MADRID - VICENTE CALDERON STADIUM

AFRICA: AL-MERRIKH SC - AL-MERRIKH STADIUM

EUROPE: REAL MADRID CF - SANTIAGO BERNABEU STADIUM

AFRICA: MC EL-EULMA - STADE MESSAOUD ZOUGAR

EUROPE: FC BARCELONA - CAMP NOU

AFRICA: USM ALGER - STADE OMAR HAMMADI

EUROPE: FC BAYERN MUNICH - ALLIANZ ARENA

AFRICA: AL-HILAL CLUB - AL-HILAL STADIUM

EUROPE: AS MONACO FC - STADE LOUIS II

AFRICA: TP MAZEMBE - STADE TP MAZEMBE

what I read in bed last night

With World Cup qualifying going strong, I've had that on my mind. I've been compiling a ridiculous amount of nonsense over the past year in anticipation of a Football Metaphysics style preview book for next year's World Cup once the field of 32 is set (currently still 117 national teams eligible), and basically with the injury of RG3 last year, so was destroyed my interest in the NFL. I already had a hard time giving a fuck about Dan Snyder's Redskins, once I realized they were his and not mine, but RG3's charisma and excitement pulled me in. However, seeing that young man be allowed to go out and potentially destroy himself like that, it was inhumane. And to know he is recovering ahead of schedule, likely the recipient of questionable medicinal techniques that will probably be outlawed by the NFL in a couple of years, if they are not already technically illegal, I don't know man, I can't really get down with the NFL any more.
So I turn to the world's football, which is beautifully chaotic, and everywhere, like crabgrass. So here are a pair of articles basically related to the sport...

WHEN THE BEAUTIFUL GAME TURNS UGLY from ESPN
A long-winded piece from ESPN's Wright Thompson came out this week regarding Mario Balotelli and Kevin-Prince Boateng of AC Milan, and them dealing with racist Italian football fans. First off, before you click the link, let me warn you about this piece. You know how when you watch a movie and sometimes it's great acting, but sometimes it's just an actor acting great? Like, he's doing what would stereotypically be regarded as great acting, but it's not really great on its own? That's what type of writing you have in this article. It's not great writing, but it's a writer writing great. He does some forced cornball shit that probably seems like pretty great writing, but it kinda pissed me off. Most notably like this is everything relating to the character Wright Thompson refers to as The Hooligan. Horrible stuff. And the reason it pisses me off is if you are given this wealth of material, this story to write, and you don't execute, you have wasted it. Anybody else who tries to do it will not be considered the guy who first wrote the article, thus later attempts to get it write and dig at this in an actual meaningful way will be tainted by not being the first one. That sucks.
Nonetheless, there are some interesting things I took away from this. First off, I'd just like to say, regardless of racist assholes doing monkey sounds at him, beyond this article Kevin-Prince Boateng has never seemed like anything other than a complete asshole to me. I tend to root for African squads in the World Cup, so his German national ass fouling up the Ghanaian team in 2010 with his asshole bullshit sucked to an extent. But still, he is obviously the victim of racist taunting, which seems to be way more common than you'd expect in southern and eastern Europe right now.
The weird thing about this article is how it so easily just does the Mussolini thing. But the same thing is happening in Greece right now. How do you explain that? Same thing is happening in eastern Europe. No Mussolinis in their history. So what is it causing this? Pure racism?
That's part of it, for sure. But there's something more going on here that I was thinking about. When you have this push for global multi-culturalism, to some extent it's not so much an appreciation for all cultures as it is an assimilation of all cultures into this one sort of United Colors of Benetton ad. And I can understand why people would think that sucks. If everybody ends up being a watered down version of everything else, we lose the histories and cultural individuality that makes every foreign place so wonderful in the first place - it is foreign to us. So I can understand people being resentful of that.
Of course, crossing over into taunting people as monkeys (which seems ridiculous, but shit man, I can believe it happening), that's not chill at all. That will never be chill. But using that as a reason to just force mass assimilation onto the world is not chill either. The whole this-or-that, black-or-white argument gets tired anyways. "If you are not for this, you are obviously against it." No man, there are shades of grey everywhere (stupid book), and we should be able to have discussions about what points on this spectrum of greys are best for people.
The Balotelli part of this is interesting to me too, because he's not of Italian blood, which seems to be the biggest gripe against him, even though he was adopted and raised as Italian. No one chooses where they were born. This is why borders and immigration seems so weird to me sometimes, because as a baby you are just accidentally birthed inside of some arbitrary political boundaries. And this binds you from that point on. It goes to the old nature vs. nurture argument too, because Balotelli was nurtured as an Italian, from age 3, but was not naturally an Italian. Is it nature or nurture that creates the individual's identity?
Oddly enough, years ago I did a bunch of reading on psychological profiles of Siamese twins, who share nature and nurture completely, and those motherfuckers were always way different. So again, perhaps it's not black-or-white, nature vs. nurture, but shades of grey.
Of course, nowhere does the ridiculousness of arbitrary political boundaries play out more amazingly than the World Cup, which is going to be in Brazil next year. Speaking of which...

CITY OF FEAR from Vanity Fair in April 2007
This is the story of P.C.C. - a prison gang that grew from a football team inside one prison - causing massive disruptions to Brazilian society, operating in the so-called "feral zones" of our modern world. For one, this is interesting because well the World Cup is going to be happening there next year, and there's a crazy element to Brazil (which I guess is no worse than South Africa in 2010), but also because no matter how hard governments of the wealthy attempt to keep everything in line, or at least limit the unprivileged into accepted zones of self-destruction, it spirals beyond the government of the wealthy's control. It always does. That's sort of what we're seeing play out in America right now, which is really exciting to see. You can force a grid of order over top a map of humanity, but humanity is a wild crabgrass, a dandelion springing from cracks in the asphalt, and the grid never holds. It might work for a while, and this current digital shackle we've all been operating under without being forced to acknowledge, it might hold things in place for a few more years or decades or whatever. But it never holds forever. Look at any empire in the history of man upon the surface of the earth. It never holds.
As someone who does not trust authority, locally or globally, this is a great thing to realize.
But also, within the organization of the P.C.C., it's interesting to note how these semi-autonomous groups lack the standard pyramid of corporate hierarchy, which we've been led to believe is the way things work. This swarm mentality has been evident with hacker groups too, as well as something as simple as downloading Game of Thrones through a torrent. When a swarm of hornets stings you, you don't know where the queen (or king, or leader or whatever the fuck) is at. This will become important as we move further into history, because they've got that pyramid with the all-seeing eyeball tip ironed the fuck out pretty good. But through the use of black block tactics and swarm mentalities or leaderless movements, you can circumvent this shit.
It's all very exciting to be honest. I know a lot of people are bummed about the NSA spying shit, but honestly, to think a Department of Defense developed technology like the internet was not being used in such manners is naive. It's also naive to think that just by these things being outed publicly through an inside leak that the American government is gonna be like, "Oh yeah, sorry about that. We will remain true to American principles and go back to not being dicks about everything using some vague threat of terrorism as the excuse." This is American government at this point. It is a corporate kleptocracy, and it's going to keep being that for as long as it can because never in history - not one single time - has some group that has been in power been motivated by the greater common good of all of humanity to step down from power and share it with everybody else.
And yet this article about Brazilian prisons shows two things - you can't maintain control when you basically make a majority of the population outsiders without access. And if you literally cut them off - which we are in the early stages of in America with cuts to alleged entitlement programs - you then make these large swaths of humanity foreigners to you, and potentially your enemy, especially if you're hoarding all the good shit.
Also interesting is how even when the P.C.C. controlled neighborhoods or jails, crime went down, as P.C.C. became the new pseudo-government that, though not providing certain normal governmental services, decided who was allowed to be killed or punished or whatever, through the means they had in place. This is something that has been seen in criminally-controlled communities everywhere, something that was glossed as the romantic side to the Mafia in old Hollywood movies like The Godfather - the code of the streets, so to speak. People are chaotic, but they want to be allowed to thrive. They want to not be fucked with, and just be allowed to live a chill life. Usually if you have a full belly and are not sitting outside in the rain and nobody's gonna come into your space and fuck up those things or infringe upon you in the moment, people will be good. They don't need the world - just a little fucking piece of it to live chilly.
What's going on right now on our earth is attempting to justify ensuring that right to a chill life, by disrupting that chill life. It's a weird thing to do, but shit man, it's happened over and over again during human history. We are dumb animals a lot of times, far dumber than we give ourselves credit for. But we have potential. We always have potential. We will constantly fuck ourselves up, and then constantly find a way to carve out something better within that mess. And we'll probably keep on doing that until we can't any more.
So yeah, the World Cup next year is exciting. What will our world political landscape be like? What about in 2018 when it happens in Russia? What countries will have new shapes, or new leaderships? And really, I think this is what has ended up drawing me to international football more than anything - it is this weird fabric woven into the background of the chaotic orderliness of human existence, all over the globe, far deeper than any other sport. That in fact makes it even more interesting that America doesn't dominate football, like it has been able to with most every other sport after a dedicated two decade effort. Good fun craziness.
And oddly enough, as much as the American government freaks me out nowadays, through no choice of my own, I was born here. And though my natural bloodlines have tastes of other countries running throughout me, I'm an American. So I'll be rooting for those fuckers. But there's only so far Clint Dempsey can take us, I fear. Maybe he should start stealing good players from other teams against their will, in order to protect us against the terror of America not winning.

Don De Dieu

AFFORDABILITY: There was a literal styrofoam cooler of beer for me at the post office the other week, with one-and-a-half four-packs of this here Don De Dieu beer, compliments of my man Pitz Dogg in North Carolina, which was perhaps the most amazingly large and pleasurable package to have showed up at Scottsville, VA's, box 270 in quite some time, maybe ever. I know in real people's world, where people pay for the things they use along their days, the Don De Dieu is exspensives, if you can even find it in your town (probably can't unless there's a college there, and total population is over 35,000). But I am a dude who has people mail me things... free things... and free is the greatest price of all. I mean, I know they lay it on you heavy about dead soldiers dying to pay the cost of freedom or whatever, but even that's not that bad. If a couple of broke assholes from Texas had to die for you to personally steal all the music and look at all the naked bitches you wanted for the rest of your life inside the internets, is that really that expensive? Not to sound cold or anything, but seriously. 5 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: Firmly destroyed. Does "Don de Dieu" stand for "gangsta of God"? Because this were a beer that put me on all fours mentally, and had me walking with a mighty wobble literally. I am sure it costs a million dollars a four-pack, which is a shame, because I could enjoy this being a weekend part of my life. 5 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: Some sort of viking ship glowing with a magical yet demented aura. Ideally, this is my soul, but honestly, the world sucks that glow down to halogen hallucinations most of the goddamned time. Still though, the label instills in my drunken hope for a better tomorrow, where I am paying more than the minimum payments, or better yet there are no payments at all, not because I am rich, bitch, but because the great facade has crumbled down and I can be a Myself again. 4 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Don De Dieu, the gangsta of god, is made by Unibroue, which I am sure is French talk and not pronounced the way I pronounce it, which is "you-ni-brow" like one long eyebrow across some dude's forehead. I have never had issues with their Frenchie flavors of beer, and have in fact enjoyed some of them numerous times during my life. They only show up at the strangest of places, like in a cooler in my PO Box, or at some fringe ghetto liquor store in Manchester, New Hampshire, or the frou-frou beer stores that pop up in college towns for about five years on average before whoever their owner is sells the place or shuts it down because frou-frou types tend to move on to $500 of wine and not $12 4-packs of beer. Also I am not so anti-Frenchie as I used to be, because World Cup 2010 thinking has got me to believing if you were to set up some sort of scientific criteria for what makes French people suck, and then apply it to the rest of the World, America would finish second in that data model. Thus, when I diss the French, I diss myself. So I don't actively diss the French so much anymore. 4 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: As the mayor of Drunkachusetts, I hereby declare this beer to be totally awesome! (I vaguely remember using that joke before, but not enough so to know I did it for sure. My life is a blur of lost dreams, hallucinated novels, actual experience, and the things beamed into my head by the thousand tentacled beast, each tentacle with a wi-fi transmitting tesla coil artery running to the very tip.) 7 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 5 STARS!

Freya’s Magic Stick

AFFORDABILITY: Freya’s Magic Stick is a homebrew we made that I concocted completely on my own, the first time I’ve imagined up a beer recipe. Basically after listening to the new Burzum record too much while falling asleep, I got into Norse mythology, and started learning about gruit ales made in that region of the earth. Gruits are flavored and bittered with herbs instead of hops, to this day in fact, made in big fucking pots and meant to drink sooner rather than later because it don’t last well. Apparently the types of herbs used - juniper berries, sweet gale, mugwort - they can be mildly psychotropic as well (that is not a juggalo vacation spot, although I guess actually it is). I did some poking and prodding inside the internet, read about old ladies who kept the same stick of juniper for stirring their beer that the yeasts would actually live on, so they called it a magic stick, because it magically fermented beer, and if you moved often times someone would give you a special stick to take with you on your move from the old village. All this was happening the same time I trimmed the fuck out of a juniper bush at the end of our driveway, so I had gotten way up in that bush and become close to it, feeling its branches, and I wanted to cook up some of it into a gruit ale. I also trimmed up a link of it for my own magic stick (which is currently drying out to take all the bark off of and then carve cryptic designs all over with my wife, so it should be ready by the fall). After all the planning and recipe conjuring, I went to the Fermentation Trap place up in Ruckersville to get ingredients for this and another batch. The defense intelligence dudes who had owned it as a hobby business apparently sold it to some upwardly mobile redneck dude who used to build houses. He didn’t seem to be as well-versed in the home beer shit, but he was a decent dude. Still though, the total runs the fuck up in a place like that, and the fucking ingredients for this beer alone, I’d guess were like $80. Being we got 27 big bottles of beer out of it, that’s about $3 a goddamned bottle. I guess that’s cheap for those big bottles, comparable at least to big Guinnesses or Red Stripes or whatever. But still... $80? I was like, “WTF Ceva?” 1 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: There is a certain craziness to this beer, there is no denying. My man Mike Gee was over last week so we could record some wack ass thirty-something white guy freestyles against the world’s better judgement, and I told him up front, “This beer tastes like ass, but it tears you up in a strange way.” He didn’t think it tasted so bad, more like a shot of Goldschlager than a beer, and yes, it tore us up. By the end of the evening we were doing some stupid rap bullshit that has already been deleted from my goddamned laptop. Tonight though, I plan on taking a bottle of this Freya’s Magic Stick (with mad head, by the way, you have to open it in a pan because it overflows, and overflow is sticky like honey) and kicking it out on the sitting stump by the pigs, who hopefully have not escaped yet. They are trying their best, and should be slaughtered in the next week I’d say. I am not looking forward to figuring out how to move 550 pounds of pig, so perhaps I’ll get drunk when I have to do that, get my berserker nature on, and suplex them motherfuckers into the back of my truck. Also, I’d like to say that everything I’ve ever learned about fixing cars has been because I don’t feel comfortable paying so much for another man to do it - it upsets my alpha male internals. I can vouch that before I drop $250 to get the next pair of pigs slaughtered, I’m gonna buy me some slaughtering equipment and do that shit myself next time. Fuck paying some dude to do some shit that I ought to be able to do myself. Plus, if I do it myself, I can mix in pig blood with the berserker beer to try and turn myself into a wolfman. 5 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: Usually we had printed out our shit with wacky fonts on white labels, but the day we were at the Wal-Marts looking for label paper, which was a frustrating experience since all sticker paper is like pre-sized now to mail out Christmas cards or shipping labels or some shit. I just want blank full sheets of sticker paper, motherfucker. But as I dug quickly through the office supply aisle while the middle kid wanted to go look at toys and the youngest kid was just screaming to not actually be in the seat of the shopping cart anymore, and I found sheets split into two halves what were recycled paper looking brown, so I boughted it. Being the Magic Stick is some Scandinavian bullshit, we went with a retarded olde world font, typed that bama up, and made labels. I have a big box full of vinyl I took from an old job that would've been used for printing letters for vehicles or signs or whatever, and I didn't really steal it so much as organize the vinyl room and ask the boss if I could have all the scraps that needed to be thrown away. He was like "sure" because he was stoked somebody was organizing a messy corner of his life, so I ended up with what probably amounts to a couple thousand dollars worth of vinyl sticker scraps that have lasted my personal vinyl sticker needs for nearly a decade now. Anyways, our Bird Tribe Brewery homebrewing label style is to print out a label with the name and bottling date, and then have some sort of shape of a certain color of vinyl sticker material go across a corner or edge of the label in the same way on all the bottles of the batch. My thinking behind this, because all the most retarded things in my house come from my thinking, for bestest or worst, is the big homebrew bottles we clean out and use again would eventually have layers of watered out labels and colored pieces of vinyl all over it, gradually buried by the long existence of each individual bottle in various homebrews over the years of my stupid life. This obviously makes it all great, because it increases the bizarre magic of my every day life. 5 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Nothing can ever be my corporate master unless we enter a post-Apocalyptic world where corporations involve wearing leather jackets with the sleeves cut off with rusty steak knives and living in structures made of crudely stacked rocks. And though I am a slave to many things in this little life of mine, to one solitary corporation I am not. Though I guess if you think about the many-tentacled beast and how it always is trying to slap a new headlock on a dude like me, then I guess I am a slave. Which is why I drink nasty tasting mildly hallucinogenic homebrews. 4 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: Freya's Magic Stick tastes terrible, but the culture it comes from, and is somewhere beneath the electronic buzz at the surface of my life, deep down in my bone marrow and blood stream, it makes me tolerate it. I have been drinking this stuff more like a sipping tea that is cold than a beer, and it wonkifies me good enough. I have to admit, this batch turned out so left field-ish that I have become nervous of trying to correct it and making another beer flavored and bittered without hops, but I will. And I will try to add more psychedelic properties as well. I want a beer that makes me feel like Fox cartoon notions of drug abuse are drawn out eventually. And corporate beer will never give this to me. And microbrewed beers are simply corporate-minded individuals making beer on a smaller level to get their hands a little dirtiers and feel like they are still attached to the end product. It is all bullshit, and this beer has none of that to it. This is beer brewed in my kitchen, fermented in my hallway, and stirred with a stick from the bush beside my driveway. And if it becomes absolutely terrible tasting (which it is getting close to), then I'll feed it to my pigs the Friday night before slaughter. 5 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4 STARS!

S14: World Cup Preliminary Hating Interests

The World Cup shall start this weekend, and like three months ago, in pure nerd fashion, I already did a Sporting 14 list about the teams I would most be rooting for. But sports is not so much about rooting for your team all the team as it is rooting against some other batch of assholes. So I would be lacking in my proper dork remembrance and self-important coverage of the World Cup of World Football 2010 South Africa - AFRICA REPRESENTS! IN THE COUNTRY WHERE THE WHITES RAN SHIT FOREVER! 2010 if I did not make a long-winded stupid tangential-driven list of the 14 teams I shall be playa hating upon in the coming weeks.

#1: FRANCE - Defending Copa Del Mundial Campeones and Group A frontrunner, I am completely not down with the Frenchies. I was not down with that Zidane Zhidane Zildjian dude headbutting that other guy in the last World Cup, and I am not down with their sneaky handball that got them in and the Irish out when it came to qualifying for this Cup, and I am not down with them. Thierry Henry is planning on signing with the New York MetroBulls for MLS after the World Cup, which also sucks, even if he is former awesome player of Europe of the year. I am not down with expensive washed-out foreign superstars coming to MLS to try and trick soccer into being an integral part of this balanced American consciousness. We have lost our Americanness, our ability to take dilapidation and shine it up right tightwise. Now we just look for shiny shit right away, and that's why America is in decline. We can't fix crap on our own anymore, so it has to be pre-fixed and shined up just right and cheap enough we can replace it right away under our credit limit if necessary. Shit, we Americans are as close to the French as possible, full of self import and condescending as fuck to outsiders, even when inside their world. Oh well, the French talk faggier than we do. Plus, I've never met a full-blooded Frenchman or woman who wasn't hard to get along with. Although when I was a kid, in my dad's stack of OUI magazines, there was a brunette French chick who was taking a bath in one of those by itself bathtubs like from the Old West, and she kicked it with a red sweater on and nothing on the bottom, and this was back when women still rocked the hair and had yet to be convinced they should try to physically replicate anime robot women to be sexually attractive, so she was pretty great in that magazine. And she was some sort of Frenchie. But outside of her, random porn mag chick, there's not much in defense of the French I can come up with inside my mind.

#2: GERMANY - During a brief intertwining of lives with family-in-laws who ended up bailing on us just as quickly because we weren't up to their uppitty snuff, the dude of that fam was sporting himself a German national team jersey from 2006. Chumpassdom. Plus, I'm not down with the German style of playing soccer, nor life itself. They are a robotic people, closer to cyborg status than the rest of us in this world could even imagine. Scientifically, they were forebearers in all the brainwashing arts that are so rampant nowadays during the Third Reich. I mean good goddamn, when a creative stroke of brilliance within your culture is the blip blooped tomfoolery of Kraftwerk, you are no longer ruled by blood and sinew and neurons so much as formulas and calculations and planned deviations that are expected from cold running the experiments a few thousand times beforehand, top secretly. Still, there are only like five teams that can actually win the World Cup, and usually a home continent team wins, but let's be honest here... Africa is fucked, both historically and in regards to this World Cup. Does the hemispheric partnership with South America have the advantage, or do colonial fucks from Europe? I don't know... unfortunately I think colonialism trumps down-with-yall-ships, and the asshole scat-loving robot athlete slave master Germans might be around for a while this coming month.

#3: ENGLAND - The limeys are the enemy, even though, unfortunately, America is like a second-tier version of the English national team. The English uniforms (no matter how soccer-gay I become, I will never start calling them "kits") are always the ugliest, most boring uniforms around, except for when America ups the ante, like we did this year, with our retard sashed unis. Unfortunately for myself, after months of hyping myself up for the World Cup, since last fall really, and looking forward to that opening U.S. game against England, our former motherland, which if America can win, puts us in a great position to not only get through the group stage but actually position ourselves better for the knockout stages, I will be travelling during the game. I will be in a fucking airplane going from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Las Vegas, Nevada, and the entire game will happen while I am in the sky, not really still in America, yet governed by it's rules and regulations. Isn't that why motherfuckers, according to historical myth, became Americans in the first place? Fuck. I am hoping Univision or something replays the game and I will just head straight to the hotel upon arrival and not look at TVs until I can watch the replay in its entirety. Or some dumbass will be like, "YEAH! WE FUCKING WON!" and his accent (or lack thereof) will ruin it for me. I hate fucking airplanes. And at least through Saturday night, I hate fucking England.

#4: ALGERIA - Working with an Egyptian guy has really taught me how naturally evil Algerians are, so much so that, currently, they might have surpassed Armenians as my least liked nationality on Earth. Of course, my Egyptian co-worker has also dropped a bit of Zionist conspiracies on me and told me that they were performing crazy surgeries and had built rockets from stone on the Arab peninsula, so who knows how much weight I should put into his words. But I do know that the Algerians drew the same group as America, so as a man who has decided to embrace the country I was randomly born into as the be-all end-all for me to pull for in the World football Bowl 2010, that means I hate them. Although I have to admit, if I get to watch them play in those green uniforms they have, I might not hate them so much. Maybe they could beat England to help my personal rooting causes. Of course, England is above Algeria on this list, and that is on purpose. Hopefully, they will wear green against England, who will be in their bullshit white uniforms, and evil Algerians with those big swashbuckler swords yelling "FALALALALALALA" will chop Wayne Rooney's left leg off right below the knee.

#5: SOUTH AFRICA - Speaking of green uniforms, is there something I do not know about why all the African teams are rocking strange green uniforms? I mean, I knew Nigeria always wore green, but it seems like most all of them are wearing green. Are we recycling Africans now? The whole Africa hosting the World Cup thing is kinda cool, but also bugs me because it's all the way down in stupid South Africa, where white people ruled shit with an iron shackle and golden gun for a long time, and most of the great soccer teams for Africa are up in the western part. So this makes me resent South Africa. Also, the fact South Africa will probably get worked into the knockout stages, as they always seem to get host countries into the knockout stages, even shitty South Korea and Japan when they co-hosted, that bugs me too. I might actually be rooting nearly as hard for Mexico to crush South Africa in the opener on Friday as I will for America on Saturday. One positive of it being held in South Africa is the giant black ghettos full of wannabe gangstas who will be robbing mad tourists over the next month when they wander a few blocks too far out of the safe zones.

#6: GREECE - Even though the Greek economy has gone to hades, I have no love for that country, nor it's soccer team. Maybe if they weren't all sitting around being hairy and eating olives and counting on endless government jobs with endless benefits, this wouldn't have happened. Of course, that seems to be the plan for economic resurrection here in America, so it's our future too. When it comes to international soccer of a national variety, I am a hater of the Euroteams, for no real reason than most maps you look at, that's the center of our earth universe. On top of that, Greece has boring colors in my opinion. Plus, they're only like the 14th best team in Europe. Plus, there's only so many teams I actively hate with any amount of emotion, so I have to fill out the list with teams I just don't care about.

#7: ITALY - Rooting for defending champions that you are not personally attached to is always a chump maneuver. Plus, they are Italians. Full-blooded Italians are some of the most impatient people on earth. Plus greasy.


#8: JAPAN - I don't support Asians playing soccer. They should be sticking to kung fu, or drifting souped up Civics on highway ramps in cities that are abandoned because the Mothra alarm went off.





#9: SWITZERLAND - I don't know man, fucking Europe.








#10: SOUTH KOREA - Like I said, I am against Asians playing soccer. Plus, I think it would be awesome if Kim Jong Il really was the son of god and became leader of the world, so I obviously support them in the Korea vs. Korea conflict. Too many of this world's leaders are boring political dogmatic types or religiously oriented. There aren't enough crazy artsy wacko type dictators.

#11: SLOVENIA - In the American group, so I do not like them. But as you can see from this listing of teams I shall be rooting against, I hope they come in second in Group C. And they actually have some fairly pimp uniforms.

#12: SPAIN - Don't let the bronze skin mislead you... Spaniards have the souls of Europeans, those that kill and enslave people for profit. Though their bronze-skinned women are awfully attractive, and make the blood rush to my penis. As pertaining to sport, Spaniards have the athletic genetics of browner people, yet the floppity whiny nature of the Mediterranean peoples, yet they love soccer, and they are supposedly one of the best on this earth at it. I ally myself with Portugal though, meaning Spain is a lesser country in my mind. Spaniard blood is not good unless you mix it with indigenous people first.

#13: SERBIA - Serbia is the only country you actually here of from the nineteen countries that broke apart from the former Yugoslavia. I find eastern Europe very interesting, because white people from there actually know what type of white people they are, and even go to war with each other over it. In America, we are just white people - a giant slushy hodgepodge of mostly European bloods, all mixed together into a clusterfuck of genetics that is dazzled by shiny things and cul de sacs. Because Serbia is King of these eastern European trash cultures (no offense), I can only assume they are hooked up with the Rosicrucians or Knights of Templar or some shady shit like that.

#14: DENMARK - Mostly, in my brain I put Denmark and the Netherlands together, and only like the one that wears orange. That is not Denmark.

Cuvee Du 8eme

AFFORDABILITY: This was mailed to me by my broken legged homeboy Ten Dollar David, so it was free, but it was only one bottle, and I had to drink it, and my time is worth something. Isn’t it? 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: There was only one in the package, and it was tiny, and French. I drank it and it left me feeling unfulfilled and wishing for more. But it magically appeared inside my PO Box, so I guess that counts for something. 1 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: Looks like the label was printed on white linen paper like you would've used for your resume back in 1999, before 9/11 changed everything and you started emailing your resume to HR@youfuckfaceyoullbestuckinconstructiontilyoudie.com and you worried more about fonts than the type of paper. But then what if they didn’t have your perfect font? Do you include the font so they can look at your resume in all its glory? Of course not; that’s pretentious as fuck of you, and who the hell is gonna unzip and plug in a font for somebody’s random resume, especially when it’s a fat lady at the human resources office looking at it and she’s thinking more about if she can eat one of those donuts in the break room and not trigger her diabeetus by lunch time. The very uppermost left-sided thing on the label says, “be smart, say it in French: ((Q-V-DUE-WHEATY-M))”. That’s what it says. This is the stupidest fucking beer ever. If we lived ten years in the future, this beer would include a font file when you downloaded it so that you could properly see just how clever its label really was. 0 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Cuvee Du 8eme is made by a Switzerland company but written with some French bullshit and imported by Connecticut people. Do the Switzerlese speak francais? I do not know. Whoever makes it does so with a nice looking bottle, so they have a flair for style. Yet the label looks like somebody printed it on their computer, so they cut corners in cost, and still charge the astronomical realm of prices, I’m sure. They are confused people obviously, which is understandable. European culture is so entrenched and so old that the cellular memories probably cross wires internally, not to mention the thousands and thousands of years of history and the pollutants and buried environmental scars from all that. Somewhere a couple sediments down, the Plague is still kicking it over there. Still though, I cannot give a beermaker credit because of the poor upbringing they might have had that left them confused and needing therapy. There comes a time when a beermaker should be old enough to know better. 1 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: How could a gift from an old friend be so disappointing? I think I was reading about this beer on the internet at some point and people were all like talking about the year or some bullshit like that. I don’t understand. I don’t care about beer, good or bad, to become a historian. I like to drink things that make my brain wonky, and I like them to have interesting tastes, which is funny since beer, good or bad, is an acquired taste. Cuvee Du 8eme will never cross my lips again. 0 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 4/5 STAR!

Oranjeboom Premium Beer

AFFORDABILITY: The Oranjeboom is some sort of semi-real beer you can purchase in the beer aisle of Trader Joe's, which means it's on the budget tip, but budget white people tip, because you can only find Trader Joe's in white enclaves where the Whole Foods is too corporate and people just aren't comfortable putting Angie's vegetarian frozen foods into the trunk of their Prius, so they'd rather fill it with questionably organic frozen foods from Trader Joe's. I will tell you we hit the fuck out that store for the following things: organic frozen corn, frozen wild blueberries, olive oil, grade B maple syrup, crackers, funky little bottles of balsamic vinaigrette, “fresh” mozzarella balls, and weird shitty beer. Also, we do it all with food stamps, except for the beer, which means you paid for it. You paid for my children to fill a plastic coffee mug with organic frozen corn and walk around the house wanting to watch some Angelina Ballerina on the television. I mean, I paid for it too, in a worked sense, but honestly, I cheat on my taxes and don’t pay shit, ever. Fuck this government. But yeah, when you roll into the Trader Joe’s, the dude behind the cybertronic bar code scanning machine says, “$52.39,” and you say, “I’m gonna use my EBT card for what I can,” and he pushes a button and then says, “$4.29,” then the Oranjeboom don’t cost shit. Bwahahahahaha. 5 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: The Oranjeboom has a slightly odd taste that makes me feel like I used to be The D.O.C. maybe, but kind of Norwegian instead. I don't necessarily like that feeling, although I'm sure a vast array of vaginas comes as a standard feature. Kind of like GPS satellite directions though, I don't really need that. I'm good as it is, good as fuck. Oranjeboom rolls like the type of thing, that though supposedly part of a "good time", actually steps in the way a touch, causing you to point your toes inward like an 42-year-old woman having an oral sex orgasm, except you are a dude wearing some raggedy ass Converse, and you can't walk with the proper swagger through life when you got your toes curled all day long, tensed up, putting an ulcer inside your Achilles tendon. Also, I am watching Good Times and James Evans wouldn't drink this shit. You know, I went to the Best Buy and the Good Times was on sale, but I didn't have for-real money, just a little bit left of credit limit, and I thunk upon myself, "What would Florida Evans do?" And I knew she wouldn't buy this shit, so I left. But then I also thought to myself, "What would J.J. do, before he learned his good morale lesson in part two of the cliffhanger?" So I went back in and through The Good Times inside my jersey, and then kind of hung out loosey goosey style looking at the markdown shit up front until a pair of younger black dudes walked towards the exit, and I followed right behind, and the alarm went off because of my Good Times, so I stopped with my arms out, and the door dude was like, "You're good," and went after the black dudes, saying, "You're good." You'd be surprised how much shit you can steal through those electronic alarms just by stopping when the alarm goes off. I guess I could feel bad about having those black dudes get played by stereotypes, but I ain't the one that's racist. I'm just using racism against society's self, to my own benefit. And really, a white dude like me can only play the race card in small stakes increments, like getting his self some Good Times on DVD for free. And James and Florida are always wearing orange-ish clothes, to properly highlight their bold African-American features. James Evans has the best nostril flares in ever. He would've never drank Oranjeboom. Ever. Shit, the bus don't even go to Short Pump where they sell this shit at. 0 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: There are some things going on on this can that I fully endorse. Pinstripes and odd colors, kinda like Trader Joe's is the liberal company I would expect them to be and they have a beer vending machine at their design office, and some dude was sitting there drinking and listening to Premier League games on the satellite radio and decided he'd make a beer can up that would look good as a soccer jersey. So he came up with this. As I am in the midst of early onset of World Cup Fever, I cannot hate upon such a scenario, even if I completely made it up with my retarded brain. 7 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Oranjeboom has allegedly been brewed since 1671 by some Dutch people, United Dutch Breweries, but what the fuck is it about orange and the Dutch? Is there something I've missed in history? The national sports teams where orange, and this shit has orange in it ("Oranjeboom" translates as "orange tree"). I don't remember seeing crazy orange flags looking at Euro flags in the almanac when I sit around and look at flags and fantasize about all the ones I want to buy (#1 on my list - Rwanda). But whatever the situation, I have to think United Dutch Breweries is some sort of syndicate that controlled all the smaller breweries, and this one was the proudest and cheapest Dutch model to force upon the world, so they cut a deal with Trader Joe's, since I've never ever ever seen it anywhere else, or even heard of it before. I like such proudly ambitious yet naively localized world domination efforts. 4 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: Oranjeboom's tall slender cans and odd style from crazy Dutch people is flavorful, but the fact it's only found (as fas as I know) at Trader Joe's makes it seem kinda frou-frou with a splash of ghetto (because that's basically what Trader Joe's is). I don't know, if it came in weird-shaped 12-packs at the Food Lion with pictures of the Dutch national soccer team on it, I'd have more handfuls of daps for it, but as it stands, I'm on the fence. 3 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 3 & 4/5 STARS!

Heineken

AFFORDABILITY: Heineken is not the cheapest beer, but it is not the most expensive either. It seems to position itself as the ultimate beer for a new money type individual, or as a cheap beer for rich folks, a sort of Budweiser for the bourgeoisie. I bought a stub can of it, so I didn’t have to cash out an IRA or anything to get one (hahaha, like I even have shit like that), but I could’ve just as easily gotten a tallboy Modelo Especial instead. 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: The Heineken's destroyability has always been an issue with me. It has, as I said, always perpetrated it's fanciful nature, yet I've never really felt it. I know white people who only drink that shit, and honestly, when Jay-Z did the endorsement for Heineken, I was like, "Hahaha, Jigga so white." For a while in my life, I didn't even like beer in green bottles because of Heineken's white assness. (I should clarify, yes I am white, and proud of my melanin - an ethnicity of wage slave laborer who built skyscrapers and die for papers featuring pictures of bossmen that cost them the best years of their life. When I use white derogatorily, it is similar to a dark-skinned girl - better than light-skin, naturally - calling someone else with dark-skin an "Uncle Tom" type, like that dude on Geraldo that threw the chair at the singer from The Cro-Mags.) Yuengling got me back on that green bottle shit, and Beck's helped with the battle, so much so that their two-pronged drinking public relations with my personal habits and consumer tendencies opened up the possibility of me buying a Heineken. And again, it tasted skunky, which maybe is its deal since Germans love scat porn, and the big can did not give me a big can greasy throught stream. 1 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: There is not much there, simple green and white pomp and circumstance, and I am in a hater mood tonight. The only thing I could remotely think great about Heineken at this point is I guess some people shorten it to Heiney because they are retarded, and there's that "Ex Girl to the Next Girl" song by Gang Starr where Guru says, "even tempt me with the hiney", in reference to his old girl's big ass. But that doesn't relate to the Heineken label, which would make a great soccer jersey, and probably is somewhere, where people spend denominations of money that end in vowels, and women don't have to wear the top half of their bathing suits at public beaches, and you're not supposed to get a hard dick from it. 1 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: Heineken’s corporate master is themselves, masters of the Mediterranean white slave trade, secretly funneled through the Middle East to make it seem like brown people are behind the dastardliness. Heineken is one of the most openly evil corporations in the world, supporting scat pornography, the systematis abuse of kidnapped Russian women, and forcing Jay-Z albums on us to this day, as well as Kanye West and now manipulating the media to convince people Drake is good, since they realized Charles Hamilton would probably Kobain himself before they could get a good recoup on the initial investment. 2 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: Look, I will not lie. I think very little of Heineken or Heineken drinkers. As a youth, my folks’ friends who drank it were the most pretentious people they rolled with. And as my own adult, that experiential stereotype has been nothing but solidified. If you drink Heineken and think I’m an asshole, props to you, do what makes you feel good. But also I would expect nothing more than for you to judge me as a lesser human, being you drink Heineken. 1 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 1 & 2/5 STARS!