Musing of the Moment: Tottenham's Transfer Window So Far

One of my favorite words I discovered after I started following real football (soccer) is "shithousery," which is defined by Urban Dictionary as "underhanded conduct or gamesmanship in a sport, with the intention of gaining an advantage." 

The club I follow religiously, Tottenham, apparently is signing a guy who has a bit of shithousery in his game, Richarlison. He's a player who can play a center forward when Kane isn't playing and will play as a winger when Kane is at the tip of the attack. 

Spurs have had a fun summer transfer window to follow with five signings so far if Richarlison and Lenglet come through the door, with the last guy coming over on loan from Barcelona. They need to sign a right wingback or two, and the deal for Spence is going quite slowly. 

As for outgoings, Bergwiyn is going to get bought from someone, and Winks is likely to go to a different club. I'd like to see Spurs keep Rodon and loan him out somewhere to get playing time. We'll see what happens with Emerson Royal and Reguilon. 

I'd like to see Tottenham sign Eriksen as a creative midfielder, but rumors on that front have gone very quiet. 

I suspect we'll see some surprises before the window closes. 

COYS

Random Notes from a Crank

I'm sure I'm not the first liberal leaning heterosexual male to say this, but I find Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quite fetching. 

 

That beautiful woman represents America. 

In the GOP primary for the 15th district of Illinois, one of the most reprehensible and despicable House reps, Mary Miller, won the nomination. Those who think Hitler had some good ideas and/or might have attended some KKK rallies and/or are indoctrinated by FauxNews rocked the vote for a woman who is bat-shit crazy.

I am so tired seeing the stupid back-the-blue American flags on vehicles and elsewhere. People can criticize the BLM movement for various inane reasons, but they can't criticize BLM using the American flag for its political purposes. 

Leave the flag of the United States alone. It represents everyone. And these blue, red, and green tinged black and white American flags are merely using the flag as a political prop. 

Random Notes from a Crank

For the first time in my life I voted in a Republican primary on today (Tuesday). It made my skin crawl to do so, but here's why I did it. 

My county votes primarily GOP in national elections, which isn't surprising since I live in east central Illinois. I simply focused on races where I didn't want certain candidates to win the nomination. 

The easy vote was for US House Rep where the GOP has two abhorrent choices. I chose the less abhorrent candidate. They are both terrible, but one candidate is less terrible than the other. 

As for the ass-wipes running for Governor, I chose the candidate who is the least likely to win against Pritzker. The GOP candidate I voted for is an intellectual bumpkin. And for county judge, I voted for the incumbent who seems to be doing a decent job. I voted against a person in a local race out of spite and experience. 

I could write a long diatribe about the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade, but I'll leave that to better writers than myself. 

However, it's inconsistent that guns aren't covered by "state's rights" but a woman's body apparently is. 

At my son's baseball tournament this weekend, there was a team there that had a player exclaim "Eyes like a beaver!" whenever one of his teammates was up at bat. 

It's an odd but humorous saying to say the least. 

After some cursory research via the InterWebs, I suspect the 14-year-old got the saying somehow from the Urban Dictionary definition of "beaver eyes," which is defined as "using abnormally good eyesight to see something clearly or something concealed." 

With a bit more research about beavers, the saying does not make any sense because beavers don't see that well according to various nature-based websites. 

So where the heck did this term "beaver eyes" originate from? Considering the definition came from Urban Dictionary, I have some obvious suspicions. 

Music Friday: "All I Needed"

American Aquarium has a new album out this month. I haven't got it yet, but I plan to. 

Here's the final song on Chicamacomico. 

Musing of the Moment: Leftward Change in Latin America

The Washington Post has an interesting article about the political happenings going on in South America: "Gustavo's Petro's Win in Colombia Is Latest Leftward Shift in Latin America." 

As the author of the article, Samantha Schmidt, relates, many of the recent presidential elections in Latin America are electing what most would consider liberal leaders. 

Another big election to watch is the Brazil one, an election that will hopefully unseat a Covid nincompoop. 

Schmidt provides the skinny: "All eyes are now on Brazil, the largest country in Latin America, where former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva leads polls to unseat President Jair Bolsonaro in October. A Lula victory would mean all of the largest countries in the region, including Mexico and Argentina, are led by leftist presidents. From Bogota to Santiago, many voters are no longer buying the argument that a swing to the left will mean a government run by the likes of Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. 

And Schmidt offers the differences between past candidates and these newer ones: "And that's partly because today's leftist leaders look and sound very different from those of the past, at least in the case of Petro and Boric. Instead of building an oil-rich economy -- the basis of neighboring Venezuela's ruinous socialist revolution -- they're looking to build a unified front against climate change. They're tried to distance themselves from the machismo of previous leftist eras, winning power by promising to protect the rights of women, LGBTQ people, and Afro-indigenous communities. And they're backed by a young, politically engaged electorate [who] took to the streets in massive numbers in recent years to protest inequality." 

My hope is what is happening in Latin America spreads northward to the US. But with the number of campaign signs touting insane politicians I see on a regular basis, I'm not confident that it will happen. 

Music Friday: "I Just Want To Make Love to You"

Today I'm stripping this post down to the basics. 

It's a blues song about nookification. 

Musing of the Moment: A Potential Class Action Lawsuit

I listened to and watched some of the Jan. 6th hearings today.

With the revelations that Moscow Don's grifted his idiotic supporters through his obviously sketchy "Official Election Defense Fund," I wonder if any of these clowns will seek legal recourse. 

If I were a lawyer in the style of Saul Goodman, I'd put together a class-action lawsuit for those dopes. 

Then again, why would I want to help such morons? 

Music Friday: "Driver"

The Drive-By Truckers dropped a new album last week titled Welcome 2 Club XIII. 

I've listened to it off and on throughout the week and am enjoying it. Here's the opening song from the album. 

Random Notes from a Crank

One of my FB friends shared this article by RawStory the other day that I found interesting. It's written by a neuroscientist: "Link between Religious Fundamentalism and Brain Damage Established by Scientists." 

The gist is that in the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that does critical thinking, religious fundamentalist don't have a propensity for "cognitive flexibility and open-mindedness." 

As the author states, "Religious beliefs can be thought of as socially transmitted mental representations that consist of supernatural events and entities assumed to be real. Religious beliefs differ from empirical beliefs, which are based on how the world appears to be and are updated as new evidence accumulates or when new theories with better predictive power emerge." 

They're not open to change: "Fundamentalist groups generally oppose anything that questions or challenges their beliefs or way of life. For this reason, they are often aggressive towards anyone who does not share their specific set of supernatural beliefs, and towards science, as these things are seen as existential threats to their entire worldview."

Religious fundamentalism is one of the things wrong in this world. 

And this all reminds me that I need to reread Mencken's Treatise on the Gods. 

Wales made the World Cup for the first time since 1958. So the group the US is in includes England, Iran, and Wales. 

This fine article from The Onion hits a little close to home since I'm usually geeked up when blue jays and woodpeckers show up: "Area Bird Creeped Out by Bird Watcher.

I need this notebook.  

Musing of the Moment: "Then Came Moscow Don"

Here's a great article people should read by the reporters who covered the Nixon administration. 

It's in The Washington Post. 

It's "Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein Thought Richard Nixon Defined Corruption. Then Came Trump." 

Some snippets of note are the following:

Donald Trump not only sought to destroy the electoral system through false claims of voter fraud and unprecedented public intimidation of state election officials, but he also then attempted to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to his duly elected successor, for the first time in American history.

Both Nixon and Trump had been outsiders, given to paranoia, relentless in their ambition, carrying chips on their shoulders. Trump from the outer boroughs of New York City, not Manhattan. Nixon from Yorba Linda, Calif., not San Francisco or Los Angeles. Even after achieving the most powerful office in the world, these two men harbored deep insecurities.

Our conclusions come from covering Nixon and Watergate for half a century. And from reporting on Trump for more than six years — Woodward in three books (“Fear” in 2018, “Rage” in 2020 and “Peril” with Robert Costa in 2021); Bernstein as a CNN reporter and commentator, analyzing Trump, his behavior and its meaning from 2016 through this year. Bernstein reported in November 2020 that 21 Republican senators were contemptuous and disdainful of Trump in private, despite regularly voicing their support for the president in public. After the story ran on CNN — which named the 21 senators — another senior Republican senator said that the number was closer to 40.

Random Notes from a Crank

 As a follow up on the my Music Friday post, here's an op-ed from the Daily Eastern News: "Thoughts and Prayers Isn't Enough." 

Fuck your thoughts and prayers.

This is a fun video to watch if you're a Spurs fan. 

Here in East Central Illinois, the candidates for the GOP primary for governor and  House reps are trying to out-crazy each other. The TV political ads are nonstop.

Darren Bailey is a ultra-conservative moron, and Richard Irvin is a scam with well-endowed backers. And Mary Miller, she's downright nuts. 

Representative democracy can do better. 

You realize how often you wash your hands when you have a band-aid on one of your fingers. 

Music Friday: "Shit Shots Count"

The Drive-By Truckers have a new album out that I purchase this morning. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. 

Here's the opening song from 2014's English Oceans.