Truly a beautiful game

One to none doesn’t sound as beautiful as it was.

In the first half the elfin El Niño made the world class move we all wanted to see. The Spanish held the side.


Federico Tornado of Thursday City recreates a scene from the game.

In the second half both teams puffed up their chests and began trading blows like true Titans. Though no goals were scored there was a controlled and determined aggression displayed throughout the second half. One could feel the build up like the earth rumbling in preparation for a volcanic belch. And though it’s the rare volcano that is as sensationally explosive as we imagine them to be in our musings the breathtaking—gasp inducing—beauty of even the slightest of such natural wonders is not to be denied. If the Spanish are to be compared to a natural wonder it must be to some tentacled aquatic creature. They flowed in a truly organized fashion combining the ethereal beauty of the oceanic dynamo with its sublime power. The Germans roared back with a characteristic bruteness, which could only be hated or despised by the fragile things. The Germans at their best have virtually none of the graceful force the Spanish showed, but one has shut off one’s most ancient sense organs if a twinge of ancestral terror is not felt at seeing those brute giants come storming down the field, reminiscent of their Gothic forefathers entering the fray with a guttural war-cry.

Is El Niño not patently molded by the gods to be an electrifying footballer? He played a focused and bellicose game from the get-go. Is Torsten Frings not the epitome of the long haired Goth, combining rugged power with surprising agility? And is Christoph Metzelder not carved out of black forest fir? But just as the truth obstinately remains obscure behind the war of opposing views the hidden gem for the Spaniards has to be Keeper Casillas. Mr. Iker was not tested often, but he played like a lightning cloud, striking with terrible might. From punching crosses all the way back to midfield to stretching like one of the Great Cats to bring down a dangerous pass he played like an impenetrable force. If he continues to play that way he will go down as a truly great keeper.

The two teams for the better part of 90 minutes played like heroes, which, when all said and done, is what we actually want from them. One could feel the power of the human spirit pulsing through the match. I couldn’t help but marvel at the absurd heights to which we have taken our play. It makes me understand why Gods of the past have, at our best moments, been jealous of humanity. The Natural and the Divine take it as a birthright to attempt the absurd, it explains the sardonic laughter of the Gods. But at our heights—and our depths—humanity has the potential to also orchestrate such profound paradox as to challenge the divinely absurd while also tasting of fiercely ripe mortality.

Op-Ed: University backs professor in “civil liberties” case

An excerpt from today’s Thursday City Chronicler:

By now everyone is familiar with the story of the events that took place last week at the Thursday City University philosophy department’s auditorium. But if you aren’t, a quick recap: During the question and answer portion of a panel discussion in Hegel Hall an attendee by the name of Friedrich Blitzkrieg asked the moderator, tenured professor of philosophy Jeremiah Squiggle, what Squiggle deemed an inappropriate question. When he continued his aggressive behavior Squiggle had Mr. Blitzkrieg escorted out of the auditorium by security and subsequently banned from all future University events. When informed of this decision several outraged students, most certainly shadow proxies of Mr. Blitzkrieg, contacted the Thursday City chapter of the radical left-wing ACLU and began a picket of the university.

We have unerringly voiced our opinion on the entire sordid affair, but the university issued a statement today and we think it merits consideration:
“Thursday City University prides itself on playing host to vigorous debate on the most controversial topics. Our myriad institutional curricula and public events aim to pique interaction and inspire critical discourse. That being said the University does not endorse nor tolerate hate speech in its class environment nor its public forums. The University unequivocally supports Professor Squiggle in his decision to eject and ban the offender at last week’s debate ‘The Quandary of the Spirit in Contemporary Pop-Culture,’ and will not be swayed by the aggressive tactics of the Thursday City ACLU.”

Here here! We at the Thursday City Chronicler could not be prouder of the courage our local university has shown in the face of that farcical organization’s frivolous attacks and vicious smear campaign.

And an artist’s rendition of the event based on audio tape from the Philosophy department at TCU:

Technicolor dreams

This is Jamie Butler. She appeared to me in a dream the other night swathed in vivid technicolor beauty. She informed me that I am moving too fast, and that Freud’s interpretations of dream symbols were, in her words, hogwash. When I asked her what she meant she replied, “Figure it out for yourself, mister.”

I am trying to slow down.

The invisible knock of the bad infinity

I opened the door. I opened the door and there wasn’t even a knock. I opened the door. In walked Mr. Gravity. Mr. Gravity walked in, and my world spun out of control. He opened the door to the infinite. But not the good infinite of love and virtue and excellence and greatness. He opened the door to the bad infinite of insatiable ego and vicious accretion and crippled meanness. He opened the door of the bad infinite and flung my soul right in.

How can this be? How can there be more than one infinite? How can this be? How can I let him in without even the common courtesy of a sympathy knock? Aren’t we consensual adults? Are we consensual adults?

Without even realizing I gave my consent—consent by introjection—I found myself swimming in the vertiginous ocean of bad infinity. Mr. Gravity held me under like a school yard bully giving me a swirlie, a bogwash, a dunnyflush. Before I knew what hit me I was drowning in the Boggy Swamp of Swampy Bogginess. I imagine I could hear the distant sound of a gurgling Gracey Kallifracks wail. It was all over.

But in truth I was oblivious—even of my despair. My predicament was beyond me. Rather my predicament was me. I was, I am, beyond me. Even when lost I am searching for myself. And I did not know I was lost until I was found, but once found all may be lost. Is it worth the risk?

It was the call of the lord that did it. The divine. But the good divine. The bad divine, Mr. Gravity, disappeared. I was lifted. I didn't know I had been down until I was up.

And that is the true horror. The true horror is knowing that what I do not know will be my down fall. The true horror is knowing that the up going is the same as the down going and vice versa.

What I do not know will be my down fall. But I do not know what I do not know. And knowing that is the Judas’ kiss that will seal my fate for a paltry 30 pieces of silver.

General Updates

I am hard at play on my next book entitled “Severed Limbs.” I am a couple/few dozen pages into it and it looks to be finished one day.

This weekend I am participating in Open Studios in my building. A bunch of the artists here are opening up their studios (as the name would imply) in conjunction with a big arts thingamajig that BWAC does each year. We’ll see how that goes.

Also this weekend is the MoCCA Festival, in which dozens of really good cartoonists and publishers purvey their wares. Unfortunately I was too late to procure a table for “the Moth or the Flame” this year, so hopefully next time. I am angling to make it out, but with Open Studios, Big Brown making a run for the Triple Crown at the Belmont, and various and sundry other odds and ends, who knows if I actually will? God?

I am also working on a collaboration book of poetry, philosophy, polemical dialectic, cartoons, and comics with the amazing Martijn Benders, which we plan to complete within the next two years or so. You can read some of the stuff in germinative form on Martijn’s blog Loewak, which I also contribute to. As for the drawings they will remain largely a secret until the book is complete.

The official website for the city of Thursday City is almost done (a long time coming). I will post a link when it is complete. Postmaster General Benjamin Santiago predicts an arrival date sometime next week, but we all know how reliable the Thursday City Post Office is. We will see.

And finally please don’t forget to peruse the goods at thursdaycitywares.blogspot.com. One of the new items to check out is the Lightning Lump stuffed animal I am producing on demand in collaboration with Kristin Little Bear Lindner. I have received an amazing initial response to “the Moth or the Flame,” but in order to build this snowball into an avalanche I need to actually receive some financial remuneration for my years of toiling away in obscurity. And let’s face it, you could use some mythic power in your life.

That’s all for this transmission from the city of Thursday City. I will leave you with a sneak peek of a page from the upcoming “Severed Limbs.”

Potemkin glowers from on high: