S14: Best African Cup of Nations Teams Over the Past 10 Competitions

Hey, guess what? This past weekend the 2013 African Cup of Nations kicked off in South Africa, and that is a thing I am casually interested in. Being this is a website inside of the American internet, where sort of interesting content is very often created by people casually interested in a thing, I figured what the fuck man, let me waste some time probably better spent on other things, and compile a list of the national football teams, African style, old sporting 14 list style, dork style, pure internet styles galore. So what I did was I broke open an Excel spreadsheet and calculated some functions and sorted some datas and went through the past ten African Cups, giving teams different points for how far they went each cup, and then powerfying them according to which one was most recent and which one was most farthest, and I came up with this totally scientific as fuck list of the Top 14 National Teams in the African Cup’s past ten tournaments, and will use this as a way to talk to you about what this team’s chances or whatever are for this African Cup.
You might be like, “Whoa whoa whoa… what the fuck is the African Cup of Nations?” Well, remember that shit about the UEFA Cup that was all over the ESPNs last fall, in Poland and the Ukraine, what which had white peoples from everywhere all talking about that shit, and people you never even knew were from Europe originally in your local locale started talking about shit like Wayne Rooney or Portugal or racism in the Ukraine or the local Irish pub that serves Guinness on tap? This is the African version. It was supposed to be in Libya, but then Libya came apart at the political seams in 2011 and traded spots with South Africa, who was gonna host this shit in 2017, so Libya will be all better by then I’m sure and be able to host the African Cup of Nations. There’s always some sort of craziness with the African Cup, like a country’s team is abducted or absolved or killed in a plane crash or there’s a civil war or something. So let’s travel through this wonderful continent that was the mother of all humanity...
#1: EGYPT aka The Pharaohs – Not even competing in this one; ranked 54th in the World by the FIFA. Egypt has won more African Cups than anybody – 7 – and even set a record in the early 2000s by winning or tying 19 straight games. They won this bama in 2006, 2008, and 2010. But during World Cup qualifying in 2010, they lost a controversial play-in game with Algeria, and the national team has pretty much gone into disarray ever since then, not qualifying for the 2012 CAN (aka African Cup) or this one in 2013 (which switched to odd years to avoid World Cup crossover). To their credit, they have two wins in their first two games of African group qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, and I am sure the fine folks of Egypt would rather have the nation’s third appearance in the World Cup than anything else, especially post-Mubarak era.
#2: CAMEROON aka The Indomitable Lions – Also not in the field of this 2013 CAN, and ranked 67th in the World by the FIFA. Cameroon is tied for second-most CAN titles having won four, just like Ghana. They’ve actually made the knockout phase (final eight) of the African Cup seven times in a row, before not qualifying in 2012. The early 2000s saw Cameroon as one of the Third World’s best football teams, almost cracking the FIFA top 10, and they’ve qualified for six of the past eight World Cups. They also are notable for controversial uniforms, as they had sleeveless bamas in Africa in 2002, which the World Cup wouldn’t let them wear. And then in 2004, Puma designed one-piece outfits for Cameroon (lolol) which FIFA declared illegal, even though there was no official wording saying shirts and shorts needed to be separate articles of clothing. As many things football-related end up doing, it went through international court systems, and Cameroon agreed to wear two-piece uniforms, and the FIFA gave them back their qualifying points that had been stolen by white men from Europe.
#3: NIGERIA aka The Super Eagles – In Group C of the African Cup, ranked 52nd by the FIFA. The 1990s saw one of the African continent’s best national team runs ever as Nigeria not only qualified but won their group in both the 1994 and 1998 World Cup, failing to win their first knock-out game in both however. Still though, those runs gave African teams confidence in their hyper-speed style of play. Nigeria, as you can see by their FIFA ranking, is not as great as it was when it was considered one of the best 5 teams on the Earth. Nigeria won the CAN twice, but not since 1994 when they were truly the Super Eagles, but has finished 2nd or 3rd four of the past six African Cups. They were, however, tied by lowly Burkina Faso in their first game this African Cup, which inspired THIS amazing celebration by the Burkina Faso goalkeep.
#4: COTE D’IVOIRE aka Les Elephants – In Group D aka the African group of death, ranked 14th by FIFA. Cote d’Ivoire, led by good ol’ Didier Drogba, is the darling of the African continent currently, with the highest FIFA ranking of any nation. (Algeria, also in Group D, is the second-highest ranked team according to FIFA nerdery.) The thing is though, until the rise of Drogba, Cote d’Ivoire has little international presence. They’ve qualified for the past two World Cups, but not made it out of the group stage. In the African Cup, they had a run in the early ‘90s where they won in ’92 and finished third in ’94, but that’s their high. They’ve finished fourth in ’08, and lost the championship in ’06 and ’12, but have yet to win the Cup during the Drogba era. This might be their last chance to do so, as he is already transitioning into circus show stage of his career, playing in China for big money against lesser competition.
#5: GHANA aka The Black Stars – In Group B, ranked 26th in the World by the FIFA football ranking organization that is totally corrupt. Look, I will be honest, Ghana is my favorite team from the whole world, as the entire history of gaining independence before any other African colonial country, slapping a black star on their flag, and becoming proud soccer players, is a story that is unparalleled in Africa. Add to this weird Ghanaian movie house homemade movie posters, and a country that produces the best hip hop on the continent (fuck you Nigeria), and Ghana is the place I often convince my ol’ lady we should relocate to before America completely disintegrates into financial chaos and cultural Armageddon. They’re tied for second with 4 African Cup titles, but haven’t won it all since 1982. In 2010, the Black Stars became only the third African team in historical foreverness to make it to the World Cup quarterfinals, losing in that round to Uruguay in a heart-breaking game I watched on a laptop sitting on the hood of a 1972 Pontiac Catalina (for real – word to the Fresh Dipped). Had they won, they’d have been the first African team to make the semifinals, ever. Here’s hoping to 2014 in Brazil! And here’s A SONG to hype you up about it!
#6: TUNISIA aka the Eagles of Carthage – Trapped in Group D, and ranked 53rd worldwide by the FIFA. Tunisia won this is 2004, but has drawn a group that features the two best current teams from the African continent. They’ll kick off group play tomorrow in a border bash against Algeria. They’ve qualified for four World Cups, including three in a row from 1998 through 2006, but are most famous amongst African football historians for being the first African nation to win a game in the World Cup, beating Mexico 3 to 1 in 1978. Ultimately, African football history on the international stage has been a slow-growth process of post-Colonial independence, as displayed through the prism of sports. This also is why I always root for African teams in the World Cup. Fuck the first world.
#7: ZAMBIA aka The Copper Bullets – In Group C, also the defending champions of the African Cup, and ranked 39th in the World. They’ve qualified for five World Cups, with very limited success there, and been a top team in African from time to time, but never won the African Cup until last year. Thus, there has been a cash bounty placed on them repeating as champions, as it is a proud moment for Zambians. I mean, sometimes I have to mail in these blurbs because I don’t feel like writing anything, so I just say really normal shit like that. It sucks, but luckily I don’t know any Zambians who will be insulted by it. I guess maybe that’s not lucky I don’t know Zambians, as perhaps my life would be more enriched with their influence.
#8: MALI aka Les Aigles which means Les Eagles – In Group B, ranked 25th by the FIFA. As of writing this, the first six games of this year’s African Cup have resulted in five draws, with Mali’s win over Niger (aka the N-country for poor spellers) being the only outright victory. Mali is the top-ranked team in this year’s competition that has never won an African Cup, and much like throughout their history, they are currently experiencing chaos and unrest at home. In fact, Mali has had to withdraw or didn’t even bother to enter qualifying for every World Cup up until 2002. Even then, in 2006, when they lost a qualifying game against Togo on a last second goal, riots broke out afterwards. So they’ve never won the African Cup and never even made the World Cup, and still are ranked 25th in the World right now. If you are a fan of chaos, I suggest you pull for Les Aigles.
#9: SENEGAL aka the Lions of Teranga – Unqualified for this African Cup, ranked 79th internationally by the FIFA. Senegal’s high watermark of historical footballdom came in 2002 when they made the quarterfinals of the World Cup. They’ve never won the African Cup, though they did finish 2nd in that 2002 year of greatness, and finished 3rd multiple times, as recently as 2006. But they’re not even in the field this odd-ass year.
#10: SOUTH AFRICA aka The Stupid South Africans – The host country and in weak-ass Group A, ranked 85th in the World. You may remember that South Africa hosted the last World Cup, which had those vuvuzelas making noise all over the place. I can only assume that shit is going on again at the African Cup. I fully support the use of cheap plastic horns; fuck the haters. That being said, I never cared much culturally for South Africa, even after apartheid ended, because I don’t know, it seems like the one African country that would be next to Florida on an imaginary map’s geopolitical reconfiguration of the Earth’s nations. That means it’s not so desirable. (Apologies to all Floridians and South Africans who are cool peeps though; keep it real y’all.) And actually their nickname is Bafana Bafana, which is Afrikaaner for “the Stupid South Africans” I think.
#11: MOROCCO aka The Lions of the Atlas – Another quality Group A team, and ranked 74th internation-style by FIFA. I don’t know, I’m getting kinda bored of this, and thinking about Morocco makes me wish I could smoke some hash, so I’m going to take my writing tincture and zone out to some Wino acoustic troubadour metal goodness for a little while.
#12: ALGERIA aka the Green Desert Foxes – In Group D, ranked 22nd in the World. Most of what I know about Algeria and Algerians was taught to me by an Egyptian co-worker right after Algeria beat Egypt in World Cup qualifying in 2010 and the two countries almost went to war. Algerians are dirty, smelly people, and carry giant swords around and kill people for no good reason, and are a country of thugs and murderers who wouldn’t respect the word of The Prophet if it was given to them right before their eyes. And really, they stink.
#13: ANGOLA aka The Sable Antelopes – In Group A, and ranked 78th by the FIFA. Look, all I know is Angola has the best flag in the whole wide world, because they are one of the last Communist countries left, and their flag features the traditional hammer and sickle image re-imagined with half a cog and a machete. I would love to have one of these. If you are reading this right now (which I doubt anybody is) and you were to buy me a full-sized Angolan flag and send it to my PO Box, you would be my most favorite person for at least three weeks. At least. That is not me begging either, because if I was going to beg for a flag I would beg for the old style Rwandan flag, pre-genocide style, which had the traditional African red and green and yellow with a basic black R right in the middle. That shit is tight as fuck.
#14: GUINEA aka the National Elephants – Not even in this bitch, ranked 61st by FIFA. They’ve never qualified for the World Cup, and were even banned from international competition at one point in the early 2000s due to government interference. They were runner-up in the 1976 African Cup, but have never made it beyond the quarterfinals other than that. And yet they consistently appear in the tournament, maintaining mid-card status in African football team. And with that vague wrestling-reference, I am out of this bitch. WATCH AFRICAN CUP GAMES ON WHATEVER ESPN IS ON THE INTERWEBS, OR BETTER YET GO TO SOME FOREIGN ASS WEBSITES AND DO SO, BECAUSE HONESTLY IF AFRICAN HISTORY HAS TAUGHT US ANYTHING IT SHOULD BE FUCK AMERICA.

freestyle sonnet #9

trauma clenches upon neck muscles - iron grip
of tension, slow boiling stress conditions plus quick
strikes of accidents complement fight-or-flight trip
of ancient brain chemistry; one slips into thick
cranio-sacral congestion hard to unwork,
hard to re-wire survivor thought process ingrained
in unconscious brain's mechanisms, built by jerk
against the unsure flows of chaos life sustained,
which is mostly better than the alternatives,
as no other life is promised, thus another day
will have to suffice, repelling superlatives
as well-defined white matter is slowly turned gray;
born as the uncarved block to suffer existence -
to keep existing is to offer resistance.

January V

This is Sugar. She is a goat. I taught her how to play football.

This is Phoenix. She is a child. I have taught her many thing, which is an ongoing process. She may be the strongest visionary in our Bird Tribe, which can be hard to handle at times.

This is graffiti on a freight train. It is all the beauty of Industrial Revolution, right there. We have wasted 500 years of our human existence, and also shaved human existence down for large segments of our humanity because of this. The next 100 years will be painful for many. Oh well. Step up or get swept up. It's your choice.

January IV

I do not know if anybody actually sees this website or if it's just robots that crawl through and make the artificial numbers even more artificial. Sometimes I think we are no longer a civilization but just robots talking robot to other robots. But as you can see from above, I have chickens. they keep me grounded, as they are ground birds - except many days I don't even see them because I sit at a desk in the middle of a ridiculous stack of bricks and do whatever it is I do that I get paid for, which ultimately leaves me barely hanging on financially, and suffering spiritually. What the fuck man? Anyways, here are some interaction-inducing things hopefully...

This is my actual home. At the corner upstairs closest to this picture is a huge loft I built for my oldest. The other children sleep up there on that floor as well, Little House on the Prairie style. Downstairs I scribble gambleraku graffiti scrolls. I am going to start sending gambleraku graffiti scrolls to whoever initiates or contributes some interesting discussion in the comments to each post on the blog, over the course of the next month or year or however long it takes. That begins with this post. I will do this forty times, because I am about to turn forty and because I do not trust the internet as much as I trust real things, so I am hoping to encourage real thing interactions with internet fuckers like yourself.

This is an actual milk crate that is my lucky milk crate. I am not lying either. It is my favorite of all the ones I have. I put my dilapidated laptop on it and write in the back yard. I do my One Thousand Feathers zine upon it, which nobody buys because A) who the fuck buys a zine in 2013? and B) who the fuck actually knows this even exists? But I am going to start giving them shits out in batches on my Twitter (@SSVa_Raven) because if they just sit around in piles it is going to make me feel stupider than I already feel.

And that is the way the neurons impulse this week. Have a glorious day.

freestyle sonnet #8

(from the suggested subject of bee decline by @badtracking, which always makes me think of my daughter River who has been possessed by honeybee spirit from birth, and in fact on her birthday this past weekend we gave her this awesome honeybee lamp made by this guy)

River – my youngest – is possessed by honeybees,

even speaking of Melissa, their ancient queen,

before she even knew about mythologies;

toddler games played, sniffing her nose at things unseen,

breathing deep, then sighing at times, soft voice sings “sweet,”

yet sad for when she couldn’t find them, less each spring,

missing the buzz of their spirit, feeling incomplete,

like humanity itself: will the future bring

a time of hand pollination as GM crops

disrupt raw smells that attract honeybee desires,

plus the growing pesticidal effect that stops

bees’ chemoreceptors from leading these flyers

from being a part of this well-balanced system;

thus man-made world becomes my child’s man-made prison.

freestyle sonnet #7

(on the subject of "delayed gratification" by @brumblehag which led to me reading about the Stanford marshmallow experiment)

My childhood marshmallows were accumulated

slowly, in fifteen minute increments as Mom

set one on the table but said if I waited

I would get a second, then a third, and so on

it went through my younger years, then adolescence

ss well, my bedroom closet swollen with white fluff

corn syrup sugars whipped into U.S. essence;

and yet still I resist the temptations to stuff

my face with false nutrition in order to acquire

more, though ultimately it all has no value

or practical real World use, unless a bonfire

breaks out for millions with sticks but nothing to do.

I’ve achieved marshmallow wealth, white eagles will soar;

this sonnet is really just money metaphor.

sunday morning coming down

Feeling some deep questions today, wondering what the fuck I'm doing. It can be difficult when you see others experiencing success, and you have this notion that on a basic ability level, you're right there with anybody. But it comes back to the realization that this is not a true meritocracy, and there's a combo of ability and luck (aka lottotunities) that come into play, so all one can do is stick with pushing their ability, to control that part of the equation, and fuck man, you are just forced to see what happens with the luck part honestly. I even had a dude who is a famous award-winning literary author type tell me that it takes the ability to tell a good story, and to have somebody be able to see that you can tell a good story. Probably the best one hundred writers in the history of this American experience, I bet at least 30 of them are completely unknown. Not published but unheralded, but un-fucking-known, non-existent in your local library.
A second thing I try to tell myself is to not see myself in the eyes of public knowledge, in other words do not equate success in terms of pop cultural recognition (even within the fringe pop cultural worlds of the internet and literary establishment) but in doing what you want to do. Most of the time when I get hung up on trying to translate what it is I want to to do in something that can pay an electric bill, it becomes compromised. I seriously have no fucking clue how to make those things jibe together.
I do know that what I am doing is not what I want to be doing. And I know what I should be doing is not what I do most of the time. Part of this is my own fault, part of this is the holes I have been dug into by life (which again is partially my fault), and part of it the simple fact where and what you are born into sets the prism for you the rest of your life. It's like that Price is Right Range Game with the green window - if you come from certain segments and circles, your green window is only going to go so high. That's just how it is. I mean, there's shots at bigger endings, but those are the luck (aka lottotunities) half of the equation, and if you are born from certain segments and circles your chance at luck is limited, as you are just not connected.
I feel like everything I'm connected to right now is draining, and only yelling at me about what it is doing, nobody pushing or inspiring me, nobody feeling me. And then tomorrow is Monday, where I sit at a desk, to keep about 3/5 of my bills paid, and give me a hope to keep the other 2/5 successfully juggled in the way modern American creditory systems allow you to juggle as part of their game.
I guess I'm fucking sick of this shit. It's so dissatisfying, and not what I feel inside. When the outside reality doesn't reflect the inside's desires, that's when illness of the mind starts, to try and survive the non-matching inputs and outputs sending bad signals. Mental illness is generally considered to be a bad thing, but shit man, we're so externally-inclined, as well as externally-manipulated, we need to think of the causes of these mental symptoms. We won't though. And I'm going off on another direction I shouldn't be putting inside the robots. Fuck you robots.

January III

I think there are sketchy things going on behind the scenes of the interwebbers lately as my robot numbers seem to have powered up like Shinobi. I figure this is probably some asshole attempt by corporate cyberlords like Google or Facebook or whoever to inflate something, increase value, pretend part of that value is mine, keep all the value themselves, have it explode because the whole thing is artificial, but they keep their shit and I am back to nothing, like always, and a lot worse for wear through the whole process, including emotionally because the trials and tribulations put survivor mentality into our brain molecules. PTSD from the everyday, know what I mean? But just in case this is not some trumped up overlord scam in its early unacknowledged stages I am picking up signals and clues about, let me explain to you some of my wonderful "put food on my kitchen table" literal literary things I have, that are real, and yet accessible through robot transactions.

Rojonekku word fighting arts next phase of printed battle against a civilized world's false promises is One Thousand Feathers which has the first two available, but will end up being a thousand. No shit, that's the goal. I'm in the middle of five more already, in mad juggler style. One Thousand Feathers the One is The Primordial Traditionalist I, which is back roads philosophizing but also heavily influenced by my main man Rene Guenon. One Thousand Feathers the Two is Recession Proof I which is a dope ass short story set in the short-term future after America completely gets into austerity chaos and the lower 70% or so of society is left to be fucked. It's tight. And look, if you just paypal me $15 to $20 through the DONATE button over on the right sidebar there, I'll stuff a box full of about 20 of them, mixed and matched, for you to share amongst your local circles of peoples. It's real literal paper you can really literally hand to others or leave on your kitchen table or give to people who buy weed from you or whatever. If you do the DONATE, mark it as a gift so we can fuck paypal out of their cut.

Also of note is along these Virginia side tracks I wild harvest ripened-by-life railroad spikes, bring them home, wipe them down with magic apple cider vinegars on old hospital rags, and industrially carve haiku I wrote into them, creating a one-of-a-kind magical object that would totally motherfuckin' bless any mess, from double-wide to mountaintop mansion. If you click that link and are like, "Oh fuck bro, that's expensive," I can understand. The main reason I make art is I can't afford art but I need art. I also have some of the homepix from this site photo-printed up and matted and looking all pretty and shit that would also bless most any mess. They're all worth what they are listed, probably worth more actually when I look at the crap other people sell as matted prints or art objects, but I also understand and respect the struggle. If you something you are in love with, hit me up, and maybe we come to an agreement that is mutually beneficial. As much as I can always use money because I never have money, I am also like, "Man, fuck money," plenty of the time too.

freestyle sonnet #6

(triggered by the first drawing ever of Snuffy Smith, who is tattooed on my right arm, as shared by Paul through the twitters)

colored pencils can't sketch how sketchy is the life
spent juggling scrap heap troubles amidst hardscrabble
strife; mountainside struggles to make peace with a wife
and raise half-wild children where the yardbirds cackle,
where the winter hogs forage 'cause scraps don't exist,
where the clapboards got gaps which whistle with wind, while
we making our ends meet though most middles got missed,
and the woodstove's hungry for a bigger woodpile,
plus the tin roof's pinholes drip droplets when the rain
starts to fall; "when it rains, it pours," like grandpa said,
which was more about money than the water stain
on the plywood ceilings hoverin' overhead;
we say we'll get by, while civilized worlds all scoff;
we drop literal "g"s to keep our actions soft.

freestyle sonnet #5

(on the suggested subject of "Gorilla Monsoon" by Low Records)

mountainous men mentally maimed by machismo
meander around squared circles in front of marks,
psychologic'ly building tension, touch and go
until two "tough cookies" repress feminine sparks,
mauling the emotions they're afraid to express;
the colorful voice on commentary hard-sells
angles - the hatred between men mostly undressed,
engaged in sweat-soaked bearhugs triggered by ring bells;
Pavlov's people howl, hoot, and holler at proper
moments of engagement, believing the two sides
to be opposites opposed - bruising showstoppers
taking pre-conditioned crowds on piledriven rides
into subliminal switches of behavior -
sexually inclined to have rich flair nature

freestyle sonnet #4

(on the subject of "wenches and winches" as per Robyn R. thru the twitterbox)

Where I live, redneck chicks got jacked-up scowls
twisted in perpetual anger; where's the fun
crazy bitches I remember, with the Jim Beam jowls
and feminine howls that would stay would 'til the sun
brought another goddamned day, but still no worry;
have the times been changed, where sweet rural souls act hard,
steering big shiny trucks with windshields never blurry
from moonlight mud, parked perfect in manicured yard;
what the fuck? where went the wide open but laid back
ladies with tangled cooches unshaven like my cheeks,
shaking asses to Skynyrd, drunk off of living
as wild as we wanna, parked beside backwoods creeks,
getting dirty as fuck without a misgiving.
But these No Fear chicks ain't outlaws, nothing near it;
they've wal-martinized away these women's spirit.

freestyle sonnet #3

(on the subject of West Virginia, as per Paul R.)

A wild and wonderful woman from either War
or Cucumber - somewhere southern where wastes
run rampant like loose slurry; she was never more
than this wildbird lounger could handle; her mouth tastes
of cigarette smoke and the High Life; mountaintops
removed her inhibitions; two minds stripped in cheap
hot tub hotel room; when intertwined, the World stops
needing meaning, we speed like demons, hope to keep
the thrill of the hills in our amphetamine hearts;
but pleasures of flesh are best measured in mirrors
faced rear view; one good month became one thousand parts
broken and patched, broken again. I still hear her
words of protest; I said "I love you," I did;
that's the last time I seen her, holding our first kid.

freestyle sonnet #2

(based on subject "Challenger explosion" by @TyrusBooks)

Earth-bound monkeys with nervous tinkering fingers

Thinking better of their future than history

Should allow; but collective memory lingers

Less than the promises of Gods of mystery

acting scientific suggest spirits lifted

into the Heavens beyond shall find paradise;

thus the monkeys most mechanically-gifted

build a snub-nosed flying pistol robot device,

fill it with our earth-bound hopes, and aim at the sky,

pull the trigger on our madness, to imagine

other-worldly futures as our creations fly;

yet lacking solid ground logic to examine

our humane limits, we burn up on re-entry,

plus continue this process each human cent’ry.

January II

I have been publishing short novels, about one a week lately, inside the deep web, but also in pastebin pages, so you can find them by google searching "pastebin" plus "NDAA" because I did a text replace search and change the name of the main female character in each novel to NDAA, which stands for Never Demean Asstastic Angels, because it's important to me that we never demean asstastic angels. They are blessing, from god or science or some shit. Also, one of the better novels in this series, that NDAA lead has a daughter named Peach who is sort of a Down's syndrome angel herself, but also what would traditionally be considered a halfwit by our prejudiced standards of so-called civilization. But her mom, NDAA, feeds her square cereal, which is like those cinnamon grahams or whatever, but Peach calls them "square cereal" and hates them because she hates breakfast, just on general principle. So NDAA tells Peach she is the president of a square cereal secret society, to try and get her to eat breakfast. Except Peach still doesn't. Instead, she hangs out on the front porch and every time a car randomly passes their rural abode, she yells out at the top of her lungs, "I'M PEACH, THE PRESIDENT! I'M PEACH, THE PRESIDENT!"

Also I started working a comedy novel where a family of four cousins from southern West Virginia win the lottery, and rent an RV from Cruise America, and go on a cross-country travel spree where they kidnap various rural crime noir writers and force them to work mundane jobs, fall in love with loveless women, have doomed children, and experience the beautiful wonders of a life without hope. And then they have a time machine so after they make the writers experience all of that, they throw them in the time machine (American made, naturally) and go back to the first time they kidnapped them and instead torture and kill them, but with the added benefit of the writer having the full brain of memories related to actually being forced to live that type of life they glorify.

But mostly I am working on a collection of sonnets called Viking Underclass Conjures Valhalla in an Earth Gone Dark. It is post-apocalyptic, racially charged, has pornographic scenes galore, and the main character is based on what I'd like to be in life, namely a naked hillbilly viking warrior hiding in anarchic mountains who fucks a lot but also sneaks into cities to tear shit up, all in the name of building a more better world. Each sonnet is normal 14-lines, four rhyming quatrains with the rhyming couplet exclamation, and Alexandrine in nature each line, because seriously, fuck an iambic pentameter. Also each person/relationship is a crown of sonnets, where there are 14 basic sonnets whose last lines compose the crowning 15th sonnet. But there are also 14 different people/relationships that tell the story, so each of those crowning sonnets compose a final crowning crown sonnet at the end, which when I'm finished, will be tattooed on my right foot. At that point, I will add a new inside joke to my arsenal of inside jokes, where when I am barefoot at summer gatherings, I'll say, "Can I kick it?" in reference to the old Tribe Called Quest jam, but then I'll point at the sonnet on my foot and explain what it signifies and what a large undertaking writing a sonnet collection that really was and how taking on such a complicated form poetry project in such a free-form brainfucked era is a shining example that yes, I truly can kick it.

January I

Those normal ghosts of disillusionment have paraded into my brain again. Why believe? Why trust in fate? Why continue to pursue the EMF dazzle dance with carpal tunnel jazz hands, pretending it is building something, rather than destroying?

Basic tenet of most religions was expressed in that NGE-inspired Jay Electronica line, "You either build or destroy, where you come from?" Tricked into thinking we build, only destroying ourselves and our peace. This civilization is a trickier beast than ever before, and those at the top have robot fetishes at least in terms of letting robots heard the domesticated animals into the proper fences. Don't believe for a second the same rules apply top-to-bottom. The meritocracy delusion should be gone from your head by now.

This is me - an online blur of darkness, out of focus on purpose (my purpose - or their's?), showing bright brilliant flashes but never able to pull it together. By civilization standards, I am a failure, and perhaps even a squandered talent. But on the build or destroy standard, I am a success, just without the "I". It is a success that what gets done under the name attached to me has been done in the ways it has been done. It is beyond me; I have had little control over it my entire life. Now is no different. Though sometimes it would be nice to lottery ticket imagine if I was a successful by civilization's standards writer, working in a back yard studio with electricity, paying my electric bill the month I get it instead of right at the cut-off date and usually even then calling to get an extension until my next paycheck, but that isn't the way it goes. The things that would have to be done to be that type of civilized success, they are not in me. And if they were in me, I wouldn't do this the way that I do it. Word is bond.

freestyle sonnet #1

Cyber-syllable sonnets dribble from the dome

Through the electrosmognetic haze thick like thigh

Muscles, and causing similar sex thoughts to roam

Through the dullard corridors of internal sky.

Keep telling my children the universal stars

Seen in dead winter dark through loose windows rattling

Is mirrored within, confined loose in skull-like jars

Where caveman molecules built by fire are battling

With cybertron special effects, buzzing, sealing

The perimeter of lime green auras, free born,

But the mental illness ain’t ailment – you’re feeling

what’s real in the rhythm of caveman children torn
From uncarved block party wild style universe birth;

If you can’t hold it in your head, then what’s it worth?

River Dip #1

Almost didn't because I felt lazy or fighting off cold or something or other, but did end up dip dip diving into the dirty James River this afternoon. The ol' lady laid out, fighting off the ironic anemias, but my eldest kid did the soul baptism to start a new year as well. Water was cold (naturally) but air was nice, heart muscles clenched up for a brief minute and I wasn't sure if I was bound to die a Polish immigrant death or not, but my body settled and lungs started working. It was good.
I turn 40 this year so am hoping for 40 dips in the river (at least), spaced appropriately, so as to utilize winter water to keep the Viking Blood pulling to the top. I already notice a difference in my ability to enjoy cold, which will be beneficial should I have to sleep outside in the coming years I guess (even with global warming, temp. extremes will occur).
I set some goals for the year, and since most were attached to quantities, which I am trying to replace with quality attitudes in my life, there's no need to recap those goals specifically. But in a nutshell, it is like so:
#1) distribute my paper words more AS SEEN HERE, which is a relatively new thing kickstarted by the fine people of Earth this past month. I had planned on writing like 10 of these in my week off from work, but holidaze got in the way, and honestly I've been writing more poetry than anything else the past few weeks, which is odd. Still though, this will be my first means of expression, because I am disillusioned with the power of the internet (or betrayed is probably more appropriate, lying fuckers, always trying to squeeze dollars out of a motherfucker). And related to this is...
#2) do more readings. I am hoping to start a series in the Charlottesville area in the coming month, and hopefully can line up a similar less regular thing in Richmond. Additionally, there are a number of areas people have said, "Hey, we can do that here," or "I've got a place, let's do this," but you know how people are - when you actually want to do something you find out they are all ideas without many actions. Real shit is hard to find. But I plan on riding buses regularly for weekend tours to do readings. If you know a place or set up readings, or whatever, let me know. Looking to do Friday/Saturdays within bus trip of each other, and hopefully the cheap ass budget buses go wherever the fuck you are at.
#3) slang these haiku spikes AS SEEN HERE, which the more I have them around the more amazing they are. These motherfuckers got power, ain't no doubt about it. I hope to eventually be spending all non-bus-riding weekends carving these things in the back yard and tearing up power tools. (There's photographies on that store too, so scope that shit. Taught myself how to cut mats freehand and everything. Country livin' bitch, you either learn to do it or you don't get it done.)
#4) writing more sonnets. I've laid out a number of crowns of sonnets, that I'd like to get started on because I fear like the Beerbox Haiku project from previous, this will probably be a three to five year process to do what I'm thinking of doing. That being said, I've definitely shifted into sonnet mode for whatever reason, settling with the three rhymed quatrains, then rhyming couplet to close out, all lines 12-syllables (Alexandrine) rather than standardly popular 10-syllables (aka Shakespearan style), because honestly, fuck ten syllables. Twelve has a much better rhythm to me, you can split it into sixes if you want to do internal rhymes as well like a decent battle rapper would, and even split those sixes into threes if you want to go buckwild and do internal linguistic patterns within the rhyme scheme. I don't necessarily do that, but I also don't necessarily don't. In fact, lately when I am bored, I write a "freestyle" sonnet, which means I just sit down and do that shit. I can do 'em in roughly 20 minutes. They ain't time-loved classics, but they have proper syllable/rhyme schemes, follow a story, play with words, and that's probably not normal "casual" behavior for people. Hopefully, I amass a fat stack of these things this year, somewhere in the triple digits. Knowing me, I might get close to 100, or I might write 450. Hard to fucking say.
#5) make music again. Have not made music in a long minute, mostly because I lost the partnerships to do so, one to distance and the other to severing the ties that bind. Amping myself up to post a song a day in February, when I actually do turn 40, which will cover the shit I've done in my life musically (which isn't much), but will hopefully trigger me making some new shit in the next few weeks. I dug out all the broken parts of my haphazard recording system, and everything seems to still be there, other than needing a new pair of dollar store pantyhose for the twisted coathanger spit guard I clip onto my cheap ass mic. Lo-fi til I die, y'all.

A new year really ain't nothing but flipping an old set of calendar boxes for a new set, but still, I hope it brings to you hope for new beginnings and burning out old clutter and cutting those ties that bind. We had a fire today in the yard and burned up all the Christmas greenery we had used for decorating the holidays - cedar twigs and holly and all that shit - and it flamed up white and bright and wild like evergreens do, and it felt pretty crazy. Definitely some letting go of the old bullshit involved, and moving into the new real. I've felt large strides of personal growth the past two years, as has my ol' lady, and our paths are definitely intertwined beyond just being the Bird Tribe family together. Our ultimate purposes have not fully presented themselves, but I'm willing to keep pushing at it, and excited to see it unfold.
If you are a regular follower of this site or my bullshit over the years, I hope we get to connect face-to-face this year. Let's build. And let's destroy. Unfuck the World.

December V

If you think your boxcutter blade might be dull, you should change it because it is. Mind is the same: if you think things are feeling dull, sit down and read for 20 minutes - a one thing that takes 20 minutes, not a bunch of little electronic shits that isn't really reading so much as robot scanning. A dull mind does not cut through long days that easily.

[then I got bored and wrote a sonnet in 14 minutes inside the facebooks of boredom dumb shit]

waning moon hovers over the end of lost year
boring further dullness into my life's routine,
I gave up self-destructing, gave up drinking beer,
sometimes gave up dreaming in this world rinsed too clean.
my natural born grime shows through my scars, my skin
scuffed, marked with homemade ink stains, bright brain going dark
because all the shinefaces buzz by, born to win.
marked by birth to live lemmy lyrics on a lark;
one step astray, ten years hard work to straighten out,
running what I brung with my supersport ass soul,
but no matter the holeshots, still sit idle, shout
at random passersby, wondering how this whole
facade got built with insanity and magic;
so ends this sonnet written melodramatic.

and then I was gonna complain about how full of shit everybody is, not really just online but in the town I live in, which seems content to pretend to be this little vibrant community without actually building anything artistic or unique about itself, as well as the small city/college I live near and work around, which also seems pretty content to continue to pretend it's some sort of great savior of thinking minds when in actuality it's a country club for the liberal-minded. but you know what? fuck it. 2013 will have me thick up in it, and you motherfuckers can either get down or get ground.

December IV

We are at the end of the line for this collection of boxes called a calendar year.

This World is going up in flames, as Charles Bradley sang. Did you know you can pretend to put the World in flames by supporting my arts in the forms of words as well as objects?

I will always agree with this graffiti, so long as it is speaking of the slang pigs and not real pigs. Real pigs are chill as fuck. Perhaps this was some chill as fuck pigs writing "Fuck you pigs" as in "fuck you rest of civilization specifically human civilization, sincerely signed us pigs."

December III

Fuck man don't even know what I do on this site any more. I really hate the internet and mostly want to be outside, away from the bzzzbots.

Fire cleanses. One day there will be a huge fire that burns up our entire electrical gridlock. The air will have that weird plastic chemical fire smell for half a generation, but ultimately it will be worth it.

Our scraps and shards become artifacts down the road. How will digital shards and scraps exist? If I blew up this site tomorrow, what would the wayback machine salvage? What ends up being our legacy once we go offline? The fuck if I know.

December II

don't really have shit to say, but my man Ben LeRoy of Tyrus Books did tell me, "Hey I recorded this thing called '19 Cycles' you did last year," and I was like, "What the fuck is that?" so he uploaded it. It's actually pretty chill. I think I was writing some sort of epic Chinese poet reincarnated as rural stream of conscious rapper thing at one point when I was transitioning from my Ancient Hobo style into something else. But honestly I don't fucking know. It's pretty cool though, and got me hyped start doing readings on the regular in 2013.

Christmas week so I'm off all week like any good bureaucrat. This is the ghost band that marches through my brain. Been trying to write more but haven't felt good inside so mostly write by burning fires outside at night and writing haiku in offline notebooks, plus started fucking around with sonnets again. I've got this epic thing I started outlining in an Excel spreadsheet, as when I realized a 15 sonnet crown had the 15th sonnet comprised of the last line of the other 14, I figured, "Why hasn't anybody written a crown of crowns?" where there are fourteen crowns and then a final super-crown sonnet comprised from the 14 crowning sonnets. So I started outlining it. Honestly, sometimes it pisses me off how fuckers think America is great, because for the price of one fucking death missile, the government could subsidize me for like five years to work on shit like this. Our legacy will not be long for the history books or strong for the legend, that is for sure.

Still though, Christmas, time with the family, enjoying my kids and Bird Tribe compound. I found blue jay feathers in the woods today and built a couple rock statues and practiced catching chickens and wrestled with goats and wrote some haiku and made chili and chilled the fuck out. This is a good life. Be clear though, nothing enables good in your life but yourself. No government, no gun, no god, no nothing makes your life good except you. Even if there were no governments or guns or gods and we lived in chaos, good still comes from inside your goddamned brain. Remember that shit.

December I

A hermit wrote this drippy writing on a dumpster. It is drippy from the calm sadness of hermitic solitude, which is not so much sadness at being alone but sadness at what man's false claims of civilization have become.

I followed the drips which led back to this scrap tin shack near the abandoned power plant along the Rivanna River. This was the roof, or a close-up of the roof. If you look closely in the rain-slick reflection on the tin roofing, you can see the mirror image of dystopia.

The hermit, when confronted, shrunk himself tiny and crawled into my brain through my left earhole. I tried to shake him out doing that comedic Curly from The Three Stooges thing where you lean your head over and bang on the other ear, but the little hermit didn't come out. For years, he didn't come out. Then I bought this O-scale freight car at the antique store in my small town which is actually a pretty shitty antique store to be honest with you, and also while I'm being honest I'm not sure it's even an O-scale car, I just said that because I know it's not the normal tiny scale people use this time of year around their Christmas trees. But when I brought this toy freight car home, the little hermit started coming out at night and leaving graffiti on the toy freight car. I leave him different color Sharpies out at night. Sometimes he uses them, sometimes he don't.

new goings ons in cyberlands

Hi regular purveyor of fine literary gobbledy-gook, as well as random casual wander-thru-er. I have added a pair of links at the sidebar there that are places you can now purchase the One Thousand Feather zines as well as wacky railroad spikes & junkyard photographies. Perhaps you will consider these things as worthwhile additions to your various lifestyles. Perhaps you won't. Ultimately it is your choice. Ultimately all things are your choice, although not really when you consider the neuroscience triggers often set off by popular advertising as well as the overall numbing effect of electromagnetic pollution. But you still kind of have a little choice in things, and these items I offer upon you are all ideally suited to further help you have more choice amidst the buzzing robot world trying to destroy our dirty animal minds.
So hey, say something in the comments... It helps me waste time when I am watching the minute hands crawl around the same clockface during the daytime.

One Thousand Feathers winding down, explaining my madness

So the ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS KICKSTARTER, which has been wildly more successful than I ever thought, is winding down today. To be clear, I'm using each $100 to support one issue of this thing, so all the extra money is just supporting more of this craziness, not just lining my coffers with gold. Anyways, I showed my junkyard photographies and railroad spike haikus this weekend at a show, and response was strong. I wrote up an explanation of my different projects to have as a one-sheet explanation for folks at that show, and it seems like a pretty good explanation of what the fuck I am doing in my various ways so I am putting it up here for you to peruse and maybe support my kickstarter today. Thanks. Let's unfuck some shit down.

ROJONEKKU WORD FIGHTING ARTS

Rojonekku is a style of word fighting arts taught by me, Raven McMillian (aka Raven Mack) to various demographics of the Universal Underclass as a means of empowerment. A general socio-economic condition of the Universal Underclass is local legislations usually make illegal normal underclass means of survival, thus creating outlaws through normal living. The goal of Rojonekku is to channel these natural Universal Underclass psychologies and genetics into word fighting styles that are generally overlooked by local legislative bodies, who prefer to use the Freedom Charade Technique to keep the masses placated. Thus, word fighting can be disseminated throughout, in traditional means as well as through the use of newer developing social media technologies, without literally causing imprisonment.

I was born from trash psychologies and genetics, and it has taken me hard uphill work for most of my nearly 40 years to recycle myself into a positive enough force to not self-destruct, much less help others who come from similar backgrounds gain power over their lives, even if nowhere else other than the realm of the human word clusters that live inside our heads. When the world around you is a prison, sometimes literal and sometimes metaphorical, it’s probably a good idea to unlock the inner-worlds which go as forever as outer space. Big picture of the forest, that’s the goal of Rojonekku.

Inside that forest though, each tree cannot be a grandiose utopian dream. For the Universal Underclasses, life is hard work. So the trees of Rojonekku – the lessons I use with my students, the forms of writing we share with each other, the forms of expression you see here before you – they are all  work. There is dirt and grime and struggle in all of it, because that is what we come from. And instead of feeling ashamed of this dirt and grime and struggle etched into our bloodlines and scarring our insides, we need to embrace it, get the good out of it, and discard the bad. This is what I was born into, so beyond my choice, that is what my life’s work must be.

BEERBOX HAIKU PROJECT

I had for years kept this box full of scraps of magazines cut to the same size, for so long I can’t even remember why. I think it used to be to glue into a writing trigger notebook, but then it became its own thing. At some other point, while deeply immersed in the rewarding life of being an hourly housepainter, I fell in love with haiku again and decided, “I shall write a thousand.” So I did, each one on its own notecard. As they started to pile up, I wanted to highlight my favorites, but all I had laying around was the box full of magazine pictures, as well as empty 12-pack boxes from my family’s recycling bin. So in the haphazard way, I started making Beerbox Haiku Plates.

Eventually, the plates piled up themselves, so I decided to put them together as wall-hangings in groups of three plates. All told, 1000 haiku (only 900 of which were used on boxes), 225 empty 12-pack boxes (most of which, unfortunately, I probably drank on my own, which in itself is 2700 beers), 75 total wall-hangings, not to mention the thousands of magazines pilfered for images over the years. I am glad to say that at this point in my life I no longer self-medicate with factory alcohol products, but piling these haiku up in such a literal sense around me in my life was an important step in moving beyond the self-medication/destruction tornado many Universal Underclass people like myself get stuck inside of.

JUNKYARD PHOTOGRAPHIES

Haiku, being quick observational flashes, indirectly led me to starting to take pictures of random roadside detritus along my life’s meandering path. At first this was with a Polaroid, where I just took pictures of old cars. But then Polaroid stopped making Polaroid film, and this became a hot commodity amongst artsy types, thus pricing me out of that realm. It was sort of cutting it close before they stopped making it, but I enjoyed the dirty effect of Polaroids enough to justify it to myself. Once prices went black market, I couldn’t.

We had multiple family digital cameras, so I took the older one, which has always had a nice feel to it to me. It’s been dropped a number of times so has a cracked bottom where the batteries/card are held in, and has to be duct-taped together to keep the connection working. Thus it looks like a homemade bomb. I bought a new digital Polaroid camera one time, thinking it would continue the Polaroid lineage, but it failed to match the simple megapixel beauty of the older digital camera. In fact, over time I have tried two other newer, better digital cameras, one even suggested by an actual protographer friend, but none of them gave me the happiness of the old ones weird settings. These pictures started going up on my website one a day, and I would write a gambleraku poem to go with them, and then they just started being their own thing. It’s a very meditative experience for me, to just wander around the back sides of the American Façade and take pictures of beautiful blight.

GAMBLERAKU GRAFFITI SCROLLS

Gambleraku is a three-line form of poetry with 7-syllables in each line I started writing because I was feeling confined by the 5-7-5 standard westernized haiku structure, but do not support free form poetry, as it is not workmanlike. Free form poetry is vacation from constraints, and my life is all about constraints for the most part. My constraints have constraints. But I started tinkering with the 7-7-7 structure and enjoyed the flow of it, to use with my pictures I put on online. Somewhere along the way I stopped putting them online, but then I found a roll of receipt paper for a gas pump, and thought, “Wow, it would be fun to turn this into a graffiti scroll.” So I am, little by little.

HAIKU RAILROAD SPIKES

Carving haiku into railroad spikes came to me as a great modern recreation of the work of my favorite rapper – T’ang era Chinese rapper Hanshan, who was a mountain hermit and scribbled poems into cliffs and caves. Where I wander, there are no cliffs and few caves, but there are tons of railroad spikes. These spikes are wild harvested from throughout Virginia, wiped down with vinegar, and then a haiku I’ve written is painfully carved into them, using an industrial back yard method that is loud and physical and really great. These haiku are only used for the spike they are carved on, then gone, so not only are no two alike, but that haiku is unique to that spike.

Additionally, railroad spikes are considered powerful objects in southern hoodoo magic, often used to bless or protect properties. The spikes are infused with the energy of labor, and for me also the spirit of the railroad which has always plucked an outlaw nerve in American history. With this southern hoodoo magic tradition in mind, where the spikes were placed at the corners of a house or property with the pointed edge of the top pointed inwards, I carve the haiku in such that the side with the pointed top edge is blank, and can thus be pointed in the direction you need the haiku to shoot. Conceivably, these haiku spikes could be driven into the ground with the point properly directed, and the energy and spirit of the haiku would shoot in that direction. There are aspects to Wilhelm Reich’s theory on orgone energy involved here as well, and honestly I am afraid to really explain all that these haiku spikes mean for fear of weakening their magic.

I am available for railroad spikes commission work for individuals or properties on a larger scale. This can mean either special requests, or a visit to your land or home, learning its history and your history with it, getting a personal sense of the place, and composing and carving original haiku in relation to the place. These are powerful objects, either for marking a space, or for helping heal a place from past activities.

ONE THOUSAND FEATHERS

One Thousand Feathers is a pamphlet project I’ve recently started that will involve the creation and dissemination of one thousand small literature tracts over the course of the rest of my life. Having a father and a father’s father who both died in their mid-40s, mostly from being caught in that self-medication/destruction tornado that afflicts the Universal Underclass, this project is a means for me to envision and shape the second half of my life beyond the age of 40. This is a portion of my life that I honestly did not believe would exist until recently, and I am excited to see how it unfolds. You can learn more about how to make it unfold, literally inside your hands, as it progresses, online.

CONTACT

Further information about all of these projects, or questions, request, or commissions can be done at www.ravenmillian.com (web), ravenmack@gmail.com (email), PO Box 270 Scottsville VA 24590 (mail), @SSVa_Raven (twitter), Rojonekku (google), or along the back roads of Virginia (life). Thanks for your interest and support.