“Do you guys think I’m crazy?”

GwinnettPrep Sports.

Dave Daubenmire tends to get easily distracted. Instead of foaming at the mouth ranting about all those evil commie NFL players in any sort of consistent manner, he derails, right into…soccer. Yep, actual football has his knickers in a knot. Seems that it’s unamerican. Or something.

“American boys play football,” he said, “they don’t play soccer.”

Daubenmire returned to the topic during his webcast today, suggesting that there is an effort to encourage young boys to play soccer in order to undermine the institution of family and insisting that people who can’t see this obvious fact are simply blind to the spiritual forces at work.

Soccer is football, you knothead. Oh, spiritual forces. What forces, Dave? Could it be…Saaatan? Maybe it’s…Deeeemons? Hmmm, perhaps it’s Stolas, he looks like he be good at football:

Stolas is a Great Prince of Hell, commands twenty-six legions of demons, and teaches astronomy and the knowledge of poisonous plants, herbs and precious stones. He is also known as Stolos, Stoppas and Solas. He is depicted as either being a crowned owl with long legs, a raven, or a man.

Daubenmire said that during his coaching years, he routinely saw “little 5 and 6-year-old boys drug off over to the soccer field and their daddies didn’t even know what soccer was, the daddies couldn’t talk to their sons about, ‘Oh yeah, back when I played soccer’ and then the boys could never talk to their dads about when they played football because they took them all and stuck them over in soccer.”

How long ago were you coaching, Dave? Because by my reckoning, that would make you very old indeed. Many decades have gone by in which kids of all genders have flocked to the soccer field in droves. It’s a much more attractive game, and one that requires considerable skill to play, which kids actually recognize, so they understand the point of starting early. Given how long ago soccer became popular here, there are a good many dads and moms out there who played soccer, and can happily yak about their playing days, boring the socks off their kids. It seems pathetic that a coach would need to be told that a parent doesn’t need to have sports behind them to encourage or enjoy their child’s engagement in it.

“Why do we have soccer fields everywhere?” he asked. “Because it takes a man to play football and mommies don’t like seeing their little boys get knocked down, so mommies put them into soccer where they get little knee pads and they don’t really hurt each other.”

Soccer is hardly a pain free or injury free sport, Dave. Most sports for young children are protective in nature, after all, the goal shouldn’t be “brain damage ’em by seven years old!” I’m certainly glad you’ve given up coaching to be a loon. I see this rant devolves into the usual misogynistic crap, where you can’t acknowledge that many women play sports, many women enjoy sports, and of course, it’s the fault of all those evil pussies walking around. Sometimes I despair. All manner of parents look askance at American football these days, the injuries are by no means lightweight, and most parents do actually love and care about their sproggen.

“What does grandpa get to do on Saturday morning?” Daubenmire continued. “Go watch my grandson play football? No. He’s a penguin, he’s running around hitting balls with his head. I can’t relate to him playing soccer. But I can go to a football game and watch him get knocked on his butt, be able to tell him after the game, ‘You know, that happened to me back when I was playing too and let me tell you what to do.’ But I can’t help him with soccer.”

This is not 1950, Dave. Why do I get the idea you’ve never actually watched a football match? I’d dearly love to see your ample arse shoved out on the field, and have to make one goal. Just one, Dave. Then you could leave and get back to ranting. I’m not a sportsball person, I don’t like any of it, but even I can’t deny the disparity between football and American football when it comes to sheer skill and talent. Lining up and ramming people as brutally as possible really shouldn’t be a sport at all, but this is ‘merica.

“Do you guys think I’m crazy?” he asked. “I don’t care. I’m telling you [the truth.]”

Oh, don’t tempt me, Dave. That’s not nice. You aren’t telling the truth, you’re just ranting about your personal dislikes. There’s a difference.

Via RWW, where there’s video.

Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

© Ricardo Edwards.

Jamaica-based visual artist Ricardo Edwards says his detailed portraits are each infused with “little fragments” of his personality. If that’s the case, any meeting with him would sure to be a mind-blowing experience of beautiful renditions of Afrofuturist imaginings, as is the through-line of his work. Pulling from cultural histories, the artist’s paintings are rife with symbolism: there is a bloody police officer wading through water with a horned skull covering his face, and in another photo a person with tribal tattoos bursting through a similar skull.

“My main inspiration comes from my culture and the exploration of my own obscure thoughts,” Edwards explains to Artists of Jamaica. “Motive? to express myself and hopefully inspire. If my work inspires or motivates at least one person in this reality before I die my purpose would’ve been served.”

You can see more at Afropunk and Artists of Jamaica. Stunning work, all.

Word Wednesday.

Bane

Noun.

1a: obsolete: Killer, Slayer b: Poison c: Death, Destruction d: Woe.

2: A source of harm or ruin: Curse.

[Origin: Middle English, from Old English bana; akin to Old High German bano death.]

(Before 12th Century.)

3: Bane

Transitive verb baned; baning: obsolete: to kill especially with poison. (1578)

“People” – Geralt turned his head – “like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.” – The Last Wish, Andrzej Sapkowski.

“A thing called the Atlantic Ocean.”

President Trump on hurricane response challenges in Puerto Rico: “This is a thing called the Atlantic Ocean. This is tough stuff.”

Donald Trump blamed the Atlantic Ocean for the federal government’s failed response to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of the American territory of Puerto Rico.

“This is a thing called the Atlantic Ocean. This is tough stuff,” President Trump stated in a Rose Garden press conference with Prime Minister of Spain Mariano Rajoy.

The press conference marked the second time Tuesday that Trump blamed the ocean for the humanitarian crisis. Earlier, Trump stated, “it’s an island, sitting in the middle of an ocean.

No shit, Sherlock. Did someone just tell you that? Most of us know the basics of Puerto Rico, including the fact it’s in the Caribbean Sea, another really tough one, you bet. That does not excuse your ignorant, boneheaded mutterings and complete failure of proper response. Really, who the hell knew oceans are tough stuff? Perhaps the Tiny Tyrant should be tossed off a yacht for a while. After all, he’s the great businessman winner winner winner, so naturally, he could tame the ocean, or make a deal with it. It’s worth experimenting.

You can see some of the responses here.

Demons. It’s Always Demons.

Furfur, Earl of Hell, Commander of 29 legions of demons. Furfur causes love between a man and a woman, creates storms, tempests, thunder, lightning, and blasts, and teaches on secret and divine things. [Oooh, scary.]

Lance Wallnau is at it again, with new ‘understandings’ of current events, and now he gets it. Naturally, it’s demons. What else?

“The whole thing about the issue of taking the knee in sports,” he said, “understand what really is the warfare there is a spirit of globalism which is saying that no nation is worth bowing for, no nation is worth respecting, no flag is worth dying for. Satan wants to eradicate the nation state so that he can create a union of nations—that’s what the immigration thing is all about; by the way, I just realized, that’s what the climate accord is all about. I always thought there was something demonic and suspicious about these things. Now I get it.”

I guess I’m all over glad you “get it” Lance, but no thinking person is going to get whatever it is you’re rambling about. The protests aren’t saying anything of the kind; they are pointing out the hypocritical jingoism which is prevalent in uStates; people who happily wrap themselves up in a flag and pile of rotten peaches, claiming their right to be often murderous racists. No one should respect that. If a foundation is rotten, it’s pointless to plaster your eyes on the roof and extol its virtues.

The ‘immigration thing’. Mmmm, well, immigration is about people, first and foremost, Lance, not things. Immigration has been going on since…always. If you live in uStates, and you are not an Indigenous person, then you really, really need to shut the fuck up about immigration.

And now the climate accord is demonic. Some of us, Lance, not being idiots, would rather have a somewhat stable future in front of us, especially those with children, who are looking many generations ahead of them, and rightly worried about whether or not they will even be able to survive on our world. I won’t be around to see the worst, but what we’re seeing right now is bad enough. Most countries are fortunate enough to be populated with citizenry who are not embracers of regressive ignorance. They realize their very future is at stake. Here in uStates, however, it won’t be until great swathes of the country are rendered uninhabitable and food is in short supply that people like you will get the fucking message, and even then, you’ll holler the oh so convenient “Satan!” You and those like you are committing crimes against humanity. It’s a pity you can’t be tried.

Wallnau said that the left’s goal is to create a new world Antichrist system in which all nations are dissolved, which is why they are at war with President Trump, who is “a nation-state patriot.”

I’m not the least bit interested in your fictional antichrist, dude, nor does anyone want all nations dissolved, even if they do want them all to behave a bit better. The Tiny Tyrant is an unashamed white nationalist, white supremacist, bigot extraordinaire piece of rancid shit. That would be one reason I’m happily anti-regime and anti-Pinchpork. The full list of reasons would take up quite a bit of space.

The left, he warned, dreams of seeing the world turned into “one gigantic bureaucratic machine, assimilated by the United Nations, run by European bureaucrats, controlled by a one-world economy and eventually isolating Christians out of that community and making you the Jews in national socialist Germany.”

Oh for fuck’s sake. What do you idiots take to come up with this nonsense? I’m hoping you take something, because an unaltered brain shouldn’t be manufacturing this crap. Don’t be dragging Germany into this, Lance. Stick with your own fucked up country, where Nazis and fascists are running loose all over the place. If they got their way, Lance, you wouldn’t be persecuted. You’d be dressed up in a nifty uniform, and be put in charge of persecuting others, something I expect you fantasize about.

There’s video at RWW.

Tacoma.

Tacoma is a science fiction drama of survival experienced as a video game. Playing as a contractor named Amy who is recovering the artificial intelligence (AI) from a space station in 2088, you encounter the specters of its vanished crew through fuzzy recordings of their colorful silhouettes. Some of these voyeuristic scenes, retrieved from a fragmented augmented reality technology on the station, are from months ago, others are just hours, and each adds to a heightened sense of dread about their fate.

The recently released game was created by Fullbright, the studio behind the popular 2013 Gone Home. Where Gone Home had players navigating an empty house in the Pacific Northwest, piecing together the narrative of its absent family, Tacoma is set in a more isolated home. You can dig through the crew members’ belongings in their air-locked rooms and messy gym lockers, read their private messages, and eavesdrop on their interactions with the AI, called ODIN. There are key codes to find and doors to unlock that can add to your understanding of how the six-member crew dealt with the station’s sudden lack of oxygen.

You can read and see more at Hyperallergic.