southside Virginia side streets...

southside Virginia side streets

on a Saturday night where

“downtown” turns to molasses

the perfect alignment of...

the perfect alignment of

crooked power structures planned

inside dark closed craniums

"WHO THEM GOATS?" wonder the rubes...

"WHO THEM GOATS?" wonder the rubes

hacking wack lives from square frames;

me and them goats here loungin’

prefer going ungridded...

prefer going ungridded

solar to going viral;

prefer lost life to slow death

manufacturing moonsaults...

manufacturing moonsaults

with algorithmic data -

all has been commodified

power obtained or denied...

power obtained or denied

requires connectivity;

burn all grids, real or psychic

dreams I'll never see - walking...

dreams I'll never see - walking

North African cities in

pure wanderlust pilgrimage

mushroom log congressional...

mushroom log congressional

hearings in midst of woods

never silent, unless “MAN!”

yesterday's architecture...

yesterday's architecture

marked down further and further

’til plowed under for newness

[HH3os] The Electronic Book of Black David Dreams trio

(1st round match-up 12 of 27)

I shall continue this thing without repent until the bitter end. It is warm – spring is not only in the air, it is in my fucking blood. Thus my heart pumps with the boom bap of the old school elders, and the gothic futurist treatises of Rammellzee make more sense than ever.

DJ Quik – Book of David

(released April 19, 2011; #29 on 2011 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

Did I mention with last DJ Quik-related project how I feel Quik should get a MacArthur Genius grant? If not, I have now. Musically, he’s on another level, and this album is no deviation from that norm. In fact, you get the sense at times Quik’s just fucking with people, he’s so good. Like the last track, with the extended silence to hide a buried track (as is often done in not-so-clever ways), which ends up being the illest shit ever. I still seek a high quality (lolol, or low) compendium of all the Quik instrumentals to drive around bumping, preferably in a convertible but not a natural convertible but the type of hooptie that looks like maybe it got driven underneath the trailer part of a tractor and trailer in Dukes of Hazzard/Blues Brother evasion tactical style, and thus was forced into customization to correct the necessary damage. (Fuck the police! ACAB!)

Quik is always a lyrical liability, although he has used his voice and delivery style to help cover that technical weakness in his style very well. (He even mentions finding the only word to rhyme with orange in a rap, then rhyming it with “door hinge”, which actually works if you let it.

The thing is, when Quik wants to get real about some shit – like being mad at his sister, or mad about people comparing him to Dr. Dre – it’s just like all those diss tracks he made against MC Eiht back in the day (you see, there’s no “g” in him is why he spells it that way, at least according to Quik at the time) or Denver (lolol at that verse in “Jus Lyke Compton” to this day, as he called THE WHOLE CITY A BITCH), he goes hard. So actually, even if he’s no lyrical miracle getting spiritual with the linguistical skills (as more *purely* regarded MCs are wont to do), he’s steady and consistent with: A) pissed at you diss raps, B) party time raps, and C) gonna have sex that involves oral in reciprocated fashion raps. He holds those lanes solid. And with the beats on some 21st Century Stanley Clarke/Herbie Hancock high fusion from space shit, I’ll allow for it all day long. (Seriously, Blue Note should give Quik a contract. DJ QUIK IS MY MADLIB, INTERNET!) All things considered, this album – even if it ain’t say shit (other than DJ Quik’s sister is a bitch) – runs a bright FOUR STARS!

AraabMuzik – Electronic Dreams

(released June 14, 2011; #40 on 2011 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

Not entirely clear how this was labelled as hip hop, but it was, and here it is. I am disillusioned by this early foray into electronic music masquerading as hip hop, and though I will not outright condemn electronic music, as I have offspring who thoroughly enjoy this type of music, perhaps I am a little too primitively boom baptist when I say I fear the larger consequences behind this type of music, which is designed not as stabs against real world’s cold cruelty, but a more pharmaceutical fog to envelope reality with. If one is not careful, this type of foggy music gets into your bloodstream, and then there is not action that can remove it. The cybertronic effects start to metastasize as copper readings in your bloodstream first, but the copper is able to breach the blood-brain barrier as well, and starts to metastasize in the fissures of your brain as well. It sneaks down your spinal cord through the fluid and starts to leech out into nerve endings throughout your tantric torso. Next thing you know, you are a fucking cybertron yourself, and you begin to justify cybertronic thinking, and feel more at ease in an environment of machines (even if broken) than you do among organic beings (especially when broken). This will eventually be the demise of humanity, which ordinarily might be a good thing, but it’s not organic. The end of human civilization should be an organic act of nature resisting mankind asserting too much metaphysical dominion. Maybe that’s what climate change is all about, who knows? But humanity destroying itself entirely and leaving behind artificially intelligent pseudo-humans is not the cataclysm this universe needs (although it might be the one we give it). ZERO STARS, for eternity.

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

(released June 28, 2011; #14 on 2011 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I really enjoy the Shabazz Palaces, but apparently I have mostly listened to all their other work, and not this one, because I recognized very little of it. The weird thing about this album is it sounds like there’s a party in an apartment on the third floor, but you live on the first floor, and aren’t invited. The production is weirdly muffled, which does nothing to counter the Artist Formerly Known as Butterfly’s whisper rap syndrome. (I have whatever that fake “hate quiet sounds” disease is that social media memes have falsely validated.) I mean I dig it, but not nearly as much as Lese Majesty, which is probably unfair to do, being there’s so much crap in this stupid Pitchfork project that is pure crap. But I have to do something to separate Black Up from The Book of David. THREE STARS!

THE WINNER: If I can find a reason to advance DJ Quik in this thing, I always will, hoping to eventually sink (sync?) into hydrocodone summertime stupor, blasting Quik-strumentals through the back yard, using the old 1970s speakers that weight a thousand pounds each I found at the dump one time. High fidelity, motherfuckers; high fidelity.

buddha trolling your lazy...

buddha trolling your lazy

nihilism with simple

zen finger pointed at moon

country living doesn't have...

country living doesn't have

all the creature comforts of

fabbed life, but it’s real enough

[HH3os] The Born Like Purple Fishscale trio

(Penultimate match-up 1 of 3)

To recap the unnecessary, 81 albums were sorted chronologically into sets of 3 to do battle. In 1st round, 81 albums became (and are still becoming) 27 winners. 2nd round saw (and sees) 27 become 9. Thus this penultimate round, as this thing develops (or disappears) is the top 9 albums according to this entirely non-scientific method of me playing them two times through while driving my family’s second vehicle – a shitty 2004 Chevrolet Venture minivan – back and forth to work. These are 3 of those 9 almost finalists, and it is also spring, so I have gone from late winter driver’s window cracked mode to both front windows down, vibing the fuck out, at least in the evenings because in the mornings full window blowout makes my hair look all fucked up like I am a dimwitted child, and my personality already has enough “dimwitted child” spice to it that I don’t need to add-on through appearance and jeopardize my continued employment.

Cam’ron – Purple Haze

(released December 7, 2004; #9 on 2005 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

From their 2005 year-end best albums list write-up:

Oh, Pitchfork, you're so December 2004! It's called deadlines, rabble-rousers, breathe out. Purple Haze, right now, remains as important and combustible a rap album as has been made this century. So much blood and ink has been spilt (though it has sold less than 700,000 copies to date) that it's easy to forget the virtuosity contained therein.

This snippet speaks to fallacy of internet opinion scientifics – because everything is predicated on URGENT IMMEDIACY! Like Kendrick Lamar dropped a new video last week, and there were literally hot take thinkpieces galore the very next morning. Nothing has a chance to percolate (word to house music), marinate (word to E-40), nor ruminate (word to Rumi). This is under the guise of deadlines, but c’mon man, websites are not printed and do not need to be at the printer by December 15th in order to be on the newsstand by December 28th. Pitchfork had an arbitrary deadline for their 2004 year-end list, which they probably actually started working on well before Thanksgiving, likely near Halloween, in order to DROP THAT AUTHORITATIVE LIST as quickly as possible at (near) the end of the year. So Cam’s hot ass mixtape had to catch super-fire, and then purple smoke linger in the air long enough to be not only included but near the top of the following year’s list.

It’s also funny to see the blurb writer of then mention how much had been written about this mixtape. None of it survives. This is the futile “building cultural sandcastles” effort of the internet – we stress ourselves so fucking hard to make timely (meaning immediate) content, and that shit ultimately is obscure almost as soon as you click publish. Which causes constant existential crisis in the (lolol) creator of content, because ultimately all your acts are extremely fucking futile.

I am okay with all this. Part of the motivation behind having three albums go head-to-head was to counter this desire to either always love everything or hate everything. Something has to be better or worse than the other two when put head-to-head (-to-head) like I have conjured up here with this HH3os shit. The false culture of eternal immediacy is also why I decided to play all three albums, one-two-three, beginning-to-end, once, and then again a second time, to give it a slow back-to-back boil, and see what actually got cooked out of the process, instead of just getting caught up in that smart mark frenzy of wanting to proclaim everything the “OMG! LET ME JUST INSERT A BUNCH OF CORNY MEMES ABOUT HOW AMAZING THIS IS!” of forever, like two times a week.

Of course this process means I have now – in this HH3os Pitchfork process – gone through this Cam mixtape six entire times, and like the briefly alluded to Rumi before him, Cam has embedded bezels of wisdom. The specific cranium crusher for me this past listen through was “can’t get paid on an Earth this big, you’re worthless kid,” because of the last three syllable rhyme patterns of those two lines, but also the deeper meanings one can read into that if they wanted. I mean, sure, perhaps Cam wasn’t speaking to the existential futility of consumer capitalism, but you can crack those lines open and find plenty of fruit to support such a claim. That’s the beauty of great art – whether conscious of unconscious (or sub-conscious) – it does shit like that. Cam was dialed the fuck in as to doing that in this period. SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWELVE STARS!

Ghostface Killah – Fishscale

(released March 28, 2006; #4 on 2006 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

The mention of sufi mystic poets with regards to Cam is fitting for Ghost as well, because no rapper is more I Self Lord And (Am) Master as fuck than him. No rapper is more of a mystic, and in fact, when it comes to the oft-made Action Bronson stole his style comparisons, it could be argued that Bronson is just a superficial, far-less-mystical version of Ghost (which is not a diss, believe it or not). From the 2006 albums of the year blurb at Pitchfork:

In other words, no matter when you heard it or in what form, Fishscale became your favorite rap record, maybe for hours, maybe forever. Exactly how it became Ghostface Killah's most lauded is more difficult to explain. It's not his most compelling album lyrically, nor his most progressive album sonically. Still, Fishscale most vividly displayed Ghostface's versatility. Even when forced into revision by his abiding (but impatient) fans, he retained his signature faculties-- ludicrous imagination, elaborate storytelling, tortured soul singing, and dirty jokes for days-- all while evolving into a wiser, gentler armchair hustler whose charisma spanned race, class and creed.

The position being put forth here is actually the most gentrified of positions I could have ever hoped for as I work this gimmick under loose theme of “gentrification of the internet (as seen through Pitchfork specifically)”, because the blurb writer is saying, very clearly, that Ghost is still the same, but more accessible to all, thus better than ever. The gentrifying personality desperately wants to believe what they have access to is as authentic as ever, and nothing has changed. The experience has just successfully been opened up to them (but not everybody because only they are true enough to the original authenticity to feel comfortable gaining access to this world – the gentrifier has to always distance themselves from base commercial development; they are “renovating an abandoned warehouse”, not “building $800K condominiums”.

That being said, this album is pretty great, for some unexplainable reason. I mean, it doesn’t do anything necessarily different than other later period Ghostface albums, but it still stands out. I think this is because there’s less clunkers on it than other later period Ghost albums. When one is a mystic scratching at superficial reality’s hidden realities, it’s easy to lose people. Or lose yourself. Ghost didn’t get lost too often in this one. Even when he did (that skit giving directions), it was moveset that helped establish whatever was coming next. In my opinion, as former expert whiteboy Wu Fundamentalist who now lives floatingly in the esoteric realm of primitive boom baptistery (we handle snakes daily, and drink home-fermented doogh as tests of faith), I’d put this album as his second best ever. (Nothing will ever top Ironman. I believe that to be perhaps the greatest Wu solo album ever, tbh.) SIX HUNDRED AND NINETY-THREE STARS!

DOOM – Born Like This

(released March 24, 2009; #48 on 2009 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

This only got 48th on their year-end list? Oh, I guess a lot of dope as fuck hipster masturbation rock must’ve come out too. From their year-end album list write-up:

The complex rhymes and truism-flipping still act as DOOM's lyrical catalysts, but they scan even more vividly as true crime warped into surrealist dementia, delivered with a voice that's just raspier and brusquer enough to give it that extra push toward antagonistic malice.

It is hilarious to me how both the regular review and year-end recap heard such scary malice in Doom’s delivery. Though I doubt any of these writers would publicly be that way now, it feels “All Lives Matter”ish, afraid to just accept the reality of violence and retribution and well, just being like “fuck y’all!” to whoever. Like the Bumpy Knuckles message towards the end, just throw your middle fingers up everywhere, because fuck everybody, they all haters anyways. This is used as false defense a lot now, pre-emptively accusing anyone of being “a hater”, but at the same time, this goddamned Earth feels more full of hatred than ever. Motherfuckers love to hate. And when other people you have othered hate back at you, there is this strange human (through digital realm, or cybertronic) ability to consider other’s hatred as inauthentic. Only your hate is smart, and dumb hate is just stupid. You have to be intelligent enough to know what to hate to hate the right things properly. This is internet thinking.

Doom’s Born Like This is amazing, a dark masterpiece of not giving a fuck, and fuck anybody who gets all too woke on your ass and tries to “problematic” Born Like This into erasure. SIX HUNDRED AND SIXTY-SIX STARS!

THE WINNER: All three are classics worthy of rattling the shit out of my crappy minivan’s door speakers. I’d say the only thing that actually separated the three was the time of year I listened to them. It’s springtime – purple dead nettles all over the ground, violets creepy crawling from here to there, and my favorite – the redbud – is blossoming all over, both in planned spots as well as those beautiful little scrappy feral redbuds shining purple in the woods everywhere.

Doom’s Born Like This is very much a dark winter album, meant for barrel fires or pallet fires or pallets fires where you put barrels of flammable liquids on top of the fire, and then it explodes, and catches the city on fire, and you laugh and laugh as the sirens eventually run out of power as the city still burns. But it is not that time of year in real life.

Ghost’s Fishscale is not far from that, but earlier, late fall going into winter, when you’re first pulling that thick coat out every day, feeling armored up for the pending cold. You’ve not hit the darkest winter solstice period yet, but you can feel it coming, and are trying to maintain just a little of that hard-dicked summer warmth positivity, to help you through the spiritual hibernation of deep winter’s cold cruel world realities. But it is not that time of year in real life.

Cam’s Purple Haze is corner store fried foods wafting out thick cracked glass door covered in cardboard ads. The air is hopeful, even if you know everything is fucked, because fuck it, you don’t have to wear shirts all the time (this is not a gender-normative statement either… be free, women, reject the patriarchy), and life is better even when bad. And it is that time of year in real life. So Cam wins, due to seasonal variations, and goes to the finals.

indigenous linguistics...

indigenous linguistics

not much more than city names

after it all got gridlocked

"opioid epidemic"...

"opioid epidemic"

overlooks underlying

cause of self-medication

aged out apple trees e't up...

aged out apple trees e't up

with moss, casting ominous

shadow against pending storms

[HH3os] The My Beautiful Dark Down Don, Man Fantasy trio

(1st round match-up 11 of 27)

There is no intro to this one, because I am uninspired to write an intro. Mass produced crap polished to appear hot will leave you feeling that way – flat and uninspired.

Rick Ross – Teflon Don

(released July 20, 2010; #38 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

I am not too keen on the Rick Ross, because of the common reasons of ya know, stealing your name from actual drug trafficking criminal overlord, who is still alive and dislikes you using his name. Also Rick Ross has that fucked up full torso tat style of someone who all of a sudden decided to get tattoos over their whole body, in four months, instead of slowly accumulating them in the traditional underclass way. But this unleashes the unnecessary potential of a stupid gentrification of the internet hip hop tournament of threesomes turning into long conversation on the gentrification of tattooing, involving white women with too many colors in their tattoos, and shitty bikers being squeezed out of the very market they created by shitty pretend bikers. I am still firmly of the belief that the realest tattooists should be drug addicts, either current or former, of some sort.

Nonetheless, listening to Rick Ross is like accidentally getting one of those 20-packs of Blaxploitation DVDs – it’s all kinda crap, none of the classics are to be found, but if you really squint your eyes (i.e. get lifted), man, it’s not that bad! That’s Rick Ross at his finest – not that bad (if you don’t listen too hard). TWO STARS!

Das Racist – Sit Down, Man

(released September 14, 2010; #23 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

Das Racist is comedy rap, so once you hear the comedy schtick, there’s not much to go back to. They are both very clearly (in their lyrics) non-whites, but they have a neo-liberalism feel to them of lack of stabbitty history. Then again, from consulting the internet, they met at a tiny liberal arts college, which even being non-stabbitty personal history full of high trauma non-white can feel like being the Elephant Man (movie freak, not reggae artist). And I can enjoy this mixtape (which appears to be before they ever released an actual album of corporate sales tag style), but I can’t do it enthusiastically. It sounds like the type of thing somebody would write important sanctimonious thinkpieces about and also exactly like what I’d expect Pitchfork to hype up. I tried to remove consciousness of such post-release attention from my brain (and also heart) while listening, but it was impossible to separate completely. Too easy to imagine 52-year-old “artist” white guys who have lived off inherited wealth their entire life but have parlayed that into important positions on various local arts boards of directors babbling to you for a painfully long fifteen minutes about how important Das Racist are when they hear that you freestyle a lot. TWO STARS!

Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

(released November 19, 2010; #1 on 2010 Pitchfork Albums of the Year list)

This might be the most convoluted and drawn out Penthouse Forum letter ever committed to popular cultural record. This album had flashes of things that allow me to justify Kanye West’s continued existence in my pilfered iTunes library, but then it had twice as much which was too painfully obvious a Kanye the Fool moment. I will say TWO STARS just to be polite, and also make a fake tie with the other two releases that are part of this tired trio.

(Oh wow, just noticed during formatting that this was THE BEST ALBUM OF 2010 according to Pitchfork. That is cause enough to suspend the metrics involved behind this entire dumbass project, but because I am a self-loathing masochist, I shall continue on.)

THE WINNER: Wow, all three got two stars. What separates one from the other? Well the Kanye release felt like it went about 4 lifetimes in purgatory too long to really enjoy, so that makes it lesser. And the Das Racist one, when you listened to it the second time through, all the funny lines weren’t as funny because you already heard them. And even though Rick Ross is corny, if I had to pick one of these three I’d be most likely to listen to again, were this not a stupid project where I will have to listen to one of them again, it would be Rick Ross. So fuck it, Rick Ross wins. Who cares though? God this is stupid.

whosoever shall rent this...

whosoever shall rent this

property shall have shitty

broken down Honda Civic

broken craigslist digital...

broken craigslist digital

camera chops and screws most

all the most middle pixels

reading transliteration...

reading transliteration

of Qur'an while tending goats

(which means sitting on milk crate)

retrospective reflections...

retrospective reflections

tend to have more shine than what

actually happened felt

sad circles venn diagram...

sad circles venn diagram

of lower middle class nose

sniffling just above water

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: Middlesbrough F.C.

(just another day in the 'Boro)

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football dork methodology meant to establish a listing of players who have been most active for English Premier League teams in their past 100 non-friendly matches. Essentially, it is calculated by minutes played, but weighted towards most recent games. The end result is a listing of the 25 players in a team’s recent history who have had the largest hand on their metaphysical sporting trajectory. The English Premier League was chosen because it is the highest level of football played in an English speaking country, and I speak English. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA, where I fucking live. Should I not fail in maintaining my unpaid deadline, a new 25-Man Metaphysical Roster will appear on the 1st and 15th of every month.]

To give clarification as to how this has worked, when Swansea City was the first 25-Man listing done on February 1, I made that determination one month in advance, as they were bottom of the table on 01/01/17. I followed that method – picking the team lowest on the table who hadn’t been metaphysicized yet, one month in advance. I mention all this because Middlesbrough is the fifth team to be listed here, yet sits next to last on the EPL table right now, which means each one month in advance thus far, there has been a shittier team, but Middlesbrough also has plummeted below three of those team (Crystal Palace, Hull City, Swansea City) in that time. In other words, Middlesbrough’s having a shitty 2017 so far.

I don’t know much about Middlesbrough, as I am a futbol dork newb to a large extent, with only a few years of giving a fuck in my system. When you are a newb, you learn about the major teams (Big 6) pretty early on, because they are shoved down your throat against your will, and also they feature all the stars which are also shoved down your throat against your will. But me being a natural contrarian in temperament, it didn’t take much to gloss past that effect and dig into mid-carder teams, especially being a supporter of Swansea City, as those types of teams were our literal peers. Teams like West Ham (what up Dede!), Southampton, Stoke City (what up Wilfried!), and Newcastle United (those fuckers). But even in that contrarian dip into the nether regions of the PL table, I never have yet gotten around to giving too much of a fuck about Middlesbrough. This is likely because they were relegated (literally) to the Football Championship most of my time giving a fuck, up until this season.

I do know they’re not from the London bastion of footballing privilege, and it seems that anywhere in England not London is psychically second-tier. And as a secondary metric, within football, anywhere not Manchester (and not London) is also psychically even further second-tier. So I’d imagine there’s a certain amount of psychic underdog status built into a shitty industrial city in North Yorkshire. In brief study (i.e. scanning the Wikipedia page), I have *learned* that a bunch of Irish fucks immigrated to Middlesbrough back in the day, along with Scots and Welsh to keep up with the rising industrialization of the time. This adds a third level of psychic second-tier status (which I guess means the second-tier metaphor has broken down into deeper tiers? or obstructed views? I don’t know, let’s just go with it), which leads me to believe Middlesbrough is somewhat fucked. This would explain why, after a solid beginning to this season’s campaign, once the calendar flipped to 2017, they have yet to get a fucking win. They are doomed, beyond the players and team on the pitch right now, but at a deep and dark level which can be side-stepped (as they did by being in the PL through most ‘90s and ‘00s), but your innate doom will always rise up and clutch you back into the darkness. There is nothing you can do. I mean, you can fight it, in a three generations manner, and realize you will not in your lifetime see the change you wish could be reality, but maybe your grandchildren will, if everything breaks just right and you are blessed by whatever gods you place faith in.

Thus, a team like Middlesbrough (much like my beloved Swansea City) has no notion to even contemplate being a top club. (This is why Leicester City’s PL title last year was so bizarrely amazing.) They have to build up to consistent middle-of-the-packer, maybe flirt with a Europa League big now and then, usually through a Cup though. Maybe if you hold that course for half a decade or more, then you can start believing you can challenge for a top 6 slot at the bottom end of things. Thus, by the time your grandchildren are old enough to get slobbered before an away match on the bus (around age 10 or 11), maybe just maybe if all is lucky and beneficial in your world, you could be a top club. But most likely not.

When doom sets back in, it is cruel too, as would be signified by Middlesbrough thinking they were okay first half of the season to survive this return to PL and settle in for a longer haul (i.e. the try to work up to perennial mid-table status). But suddenly, doom sets in, you have a bad run, and back in the relegation zone you find yourself, staring at what feels like an inevitable ticket back down a level (to the literal second-tier of English football), back into that scrum. It’s almost sad, and in writing this pre-ramble about the Teessiders, I am now sympathetic to them. They are much like me – a born doomed loser who enjoys brief flirtations with something greater, but is destined to answer the haunted call of ancestral failure demons. (And yet also they have a big match away at Swansea City tomorrow, with both teams fighting for survival, so fuck all things Middlesbrough.)

Nonetheless, utilizing my dork metrics, here are the 25 men who have held the most prominent on-pitch role for this here Middlesbrough FC team of which sits firmly in relegation zone as well as personal blindspot of deep well of knowledge. But I am an American, and that doesn’t stop us, ever…

#1: BEN GIBSON – The most experienced in past 100 matches player on Middlesbrough squad is this 24-year-old defender, who’s been with the club since his youth days, and been persistent presence in backfield for past four seasons (outside of one brief loan to Tranmere Rovers). He also just made his first appearance for the English national team last week in a World Cup qualifier against Lithuania, coming on as an injury substitute. On top of all this, he’s the nephew of the owner, which suggests as usual the world is not a meritocracy.

#2: ADAM CLAYTON – Oh god fuck here I am doing this again, and great Middlesbrough is chock full of the blandest most English names ever like Ben Gibson and Adam Clayton and Stewart Downing and George Friend and Adam Forshaw and Grant Leadbitter and ugh how can their most active players all be so predictably vanilla sounding? No wonder they’re tethered to relegation zone and (perhaps) bound for the drop again… they sound like a Sunday pub team.

#3: STEWART DOWNING – Downing was born in Middlesbrough, played on the Academy team as a yung lean, and in fact got good enough to leave the shithole and go have stints in bigger places like Liverpool and then in London for West Ham United. But, age creeps back in, and he’s made the complete ouroboros return back to the ol’ shithole full of cellular memories, though I’m sure he’s all “It’s great to return back to the place I came from, I love these people, and these abandoned factories, and getting reconnected to the cultural detritus of western civilization.”

#4: GEORGE FRIEND – Former Middlesbrough star player Szilard Nemeth once said, “Middlesbrough is very bad. It is not a nice town and there are a lot of factories.” The shitty small town I live near only has one factory, but it’s been closed for as long as we’ve been here (17 years). It used to make tires, now it sits there doing nothing, but they do have an occasional car show in the parking lot run by the local churches. In the forgotten places left behind by global progress, not only do those factories go dormant, but as opportunities to progress exist elsewhere, the human resource is strip mined, so that those with potential or promise go to where potential and promise might still be rewarded. This leaves behind the diminishing returns of human resource where doomed people end up being the majority. And of course as religion and nationalism fails them, they either double down on more extreme versions of those things, or they self-medicate through alcohol or drugs. It’s a metaphysical downward cycle for a place. And in spaces like that, where the men are forgotten and overlooked and deemed by society as well as themselves as questionably even necessary, and they are fervently pro-whatever the fuck they are, and also perhaps inebriated, they are going to take pride in their shithole. And when some handsome but not effeminate footballer, who attains second captain status like George Friend, is their man on the spectacle they use to distract themselves from full shithole, they’re gonna love that dude. He’s one of them, for pretend, and it helps the illusion we tell ourselves to keep from crumbling into useless dust remain strong.

#5: ADAM FORSHAW – Midfielder who came on in January of 2015, and been occupying space consistently ever since. Not much of a scoring threat, though he did score a pair of goals last season at the Football Championshp level. Perhaps will do so again next year when they are back.

#6: GRANT LEADBITTER – Rock in the midfield for the Teeassiders for half a decade now, earning him the captain’s armband. He looks like a World War II soldier from a 1980s comic book. He started taking some heat as captain towards the slow sour end of Aitor Karanka’s stint as manager. Karanka never really through anyone under the bus, as any manager wouldn’t in that position (because who the fuck would trust you with their players in the future?), but obviously fielding a team of about 7 lesser Jamie Vardys is a danger, and if they underperform (which would be easy), then your manager is fucked. Speculation is Leadbitter, despite his armband, will be gone in a few months as well, as the jump up to Premier League has given people hope again to not just be a Championship team.

#7: DANIEL AYALA – FINALLY A NON-ENGLISHMAN! He went to Middlesbrough for a loan spell in 2014, and fell in love with the place and stayed. Haha, no, they just paid him, that’s all.

#8: EMILIO NSUE – Spaniard who came up through Spain’s league ranks, but then jumped over to England to play for Middlesbrough in 2014, where he remained a constant partial game presence as a wingback until making a transfer move to Birmingham City this past January. Also, despite being a Spaniard in birth and at all levels up to U21 for the national team, he’s a member of the Equatorial Guinea national team, because national team status is complicated. And also corrupt. I actually blog at the international level for Polish national blogger team, due to my paternal grandmother, though I’ve never gotten closer than buying kielbasa in Pennsylvania.

#9: CRISTHIAN STUANI – A Uruguayan whose only taste of  English football has been Middlesbrough, but who – more importantly – has a nice letter remix to the word “Christian” for his name. I can’t wait ‘til ten years from now when cybertronic post-social media text-anarchy children start coming of age and we have players who lack vowels in their names and screenprinters have to start using ampersands and tildebangs on jerseys.

#10: MARTEN DE ROON – De Roon was one of Middlesbrough’s big signings this past summer to upgrade their roster for the Premier League, coming over from Atalanta in Italy. He’s only scored 2 goals, but the first one was an equalizer in stoppage time at the end of a match against Manchester City away, which was one of Middlesbrough’s biggest successes the first half of the season. (Obviously, they have had no successes the second half thus far.)

#11: DIMITRIOS KONSTANTOPOULOS – Konstantopoulos was their GK of choice the past two seasons at the Football Championship level, but has found himself third in depth now with upgrades made at the position this past summer transfer season. The perfect scenic ambiance of a 38-year-old Greek goalkeeper buried deep on the bench in a place like Middlesbrough is wonderful backdrop for a BBC version of The Wire, in my opinion.

#12: GASTON RAMIREZ – Ramirez is another Uruguayan who is bench contributor for that national team, and came up through the most prominent club in that nation – Penarol (they got the second best jerseys going, only topped by FC Palestino; dream Dirtgod outfit for death is Penarol jersey with Pierroth Jr. mask). But Ramirez has never really excelled for Middlesbrough like one would expect, knowing his international credentials. He did at first, while on loan from Southampton, bagging 7 goals in 18 appearances at the end of last season’s championship campaign. But he’s struggled this season at the higher level, and has failed to make an impact.

#13: ALVARO NEGREDO – Won Euro 2012 with Spain, and then was high profile addition to Manchester City the following summer, where he performed well, including a hat trick in the Champions League against CSKA Moscow. City loaned him to Valencia, where he excelled enough to get signed permanently, but then he got loaned out to Middlesbrough this season. He has been their biggest scoring threat though.

#14: VICTOR VALDES – Valdes is the aging GK who once minded the posts for Barcelona, and also occupied an expensive seat on the bench at Old Trafford for a while. His downward trajectory of age has landed him at Middlesbrough this year, where he has been the Choice A amongst their threesome of GKs. I would imagine he is of too prominent a personality to take the plunge down a level should the team not escape relegation.

#15: ALBERT ADOMAH – Adomah’s a Ghanaian striker with lifelong London roots. He’s also one of those sad stories of somebody who was on Middlesbrough for three Football Championship campaigns, and was in fact instrumental in their successful promotion last year, only to transfer to Aston Villa and remain at the Championship level again this season.

#16: ANTONIO BARRAGAN – Handsome Spanish defender who came over from Valenica this past summer. There’s a slew of Spaniards on this team, understandable with their former Spanish manager Aitor Karanka (he’s a former manager, not a former Spaniard, although that would be funny if you could just be an exiled manager with no nationality, roaming the Earth, coaching football), and that adds to speculation there will be pretty big changes to personnel once they figure out who the fuck their next manager is. (I guess big part of that is what level will they be, too. I’d guess they bring in short-term guy to try and spike performance to avoid the drop, then decide something permanent from there.)

#17: CALUM CHAMBERS – Young Arsenal defender getting himself some Premier League minutes with a lesser team. His space with Arsenal is precarious at best, so this loan spell is as much audition for other teams as anything else.

#18: FABIO – A Brazilian whose professional career consisted of contracted times at Manchester United and Cardiff City before going to Middlesbrough, so I am inclined to dislike him on all metaphysical levels. Don’t know anything else about him, and don’t need to.

#19: ADAMA TRAORE – Spanish winger who did the exact opposite of Adomah, because he played for Aston Villa last season at Premier League level, and though they got dropped, he made the move to Middlesbrough to stay up at this level. He ain’t really done shit though.

#20: DAVID NUGENT – Mainstay striker the past two seasons for Middlesbrough, but never justified that spot at Premier level (and perhaps was another example of the Teassiders loving them corny ass vanilla-looking English boys too much). He transferred down a level to Derby County, who – it should be noted – have one of the most tattooable logos in all of English football.

#21: BERNARDO – Came to Middlesbrough this past summer transfer season on a free transfer, which a lot of times is mark of questionability. His time at previous employ was cut short by blown out knee, and he’s actually only made 9 appearances for Boro this season.

#22: TOMAS KALAS – 23-year-old Czech defender who has been signed to Chelsea since he was old enough to sign a professional contract, but has only made 2 appearances for the team he’s contracted to. He has otherwise though appeared for Sigma Olomouc  in the Czech Republic (4 times, who Chelsea purchased him from but loaned him back right away), Vitesse in the Netherlands (67 times), Koln reserves in Germany (twice), and then 43 times over two seasons for Boro before getting loaned to Fulham instead this season, I guess to keep him from competing at the Premier League level just yet.

#23: JORDAN RHODES – Shockingly, white as fuck English striker recruited to help Middlesbrough through their Championship promotion slog on transfer deadline day last season (2016), where his uncle was Assistant Manager (lolol). Perhaps (lolol) not good enough for Premier League, so again transferred on deadline day this season, to Sheffield Wednesday this time, on loan which becomes permanent at end of season. The Owls are right now in the final spot for promotion playoffs though, so who knows, your boy Jordan Rhodes might make it back to being obscure and irrelevant at the top level of English football once again!

#24: BRAD GUZAN – The stupidest looking American on Earth. (I am going to get fined by the Polish Blogging team for saying so though.)
#25: VIKTOR FISCHER – Viktor Fischer is a very beautiful Danish of a man, but played his entire senior career for Ajax, which I’ve been trained by my main football bro to consider pure scum, thus I can only assume Fischer is involved in some sort of disgusting sexual trafficking ring.

staring directly at sun...

staring directly at sun

with nihilist's complete lack

of unblinded fuck given