The American Dream

I see this from time to time in my neighborhood- a Black Man riding a Harley. To my mind, this captures something essential and is worthy of notice. That the descendents of slaves would have enough leisure time, disposable income, and cultural freedom to buy and wear an outlaw identity is, what? Unique? At least... where but in America could this happen? Perhaps the only other country with the cash to support that kind of flash is Japan- and in fact, I have seen in Japan a man riding a PERFECT replica of "Electra Glide in Blue", uniform too. But that gentleman came from privilege- you won't see any recent Korean immigrants terrorizing the Land of the Rising Sun on a chopper, you won't see any Filipinos there rumbling away on a Wide Glide. Nor an Indonesian on an Indian. So it occurred to me that the particular combination of African-American and Milwaukee iron might signify something unique to the United States. Maybe of equal importance is the notion that liquidity of identity can be a precursor of freedom- most "hip" types decry this, protesting that democratizing a cultural symbol robs it of import. Bullshit- if someone wants to buy it, it is important enough to them! More, buying an identity means that anyone can be anyone. That's democracy.

I think what you're saying is "Get Over It"

You are right. And this doesn't have to be a "right wing frame of mind"...if the "Left" (and I can remember saying, in 1986, that The Left was dead in America) wants to be taken seriously, it needs to deal with the world as it is. That means that we as taxpayers, no matter what political stripe, are the legal owners of this war. So we'd better be sure we're getting our money's worth! Which brings to mind a thread about covert ops....

Roads Girdle the Globe

I'm obsessed with this song for the past 3 days... and I started hunting for sheet music, only to be confronted with this. Irony is so ironic....And no, I'm not CMC's neighbor! Besides, there's already an XTC cover band.

The Death Penalty

IF Rove or Cheney leaked Plames' name, then they are guilty of treason. Since the treason took place during wartime, that makes them eligible for...THAT'S RIGHT YOU GUESSED IT! THE BIG ONE! The Electric Chair, the caustic cocktail, drawin' and quarterin', the Major Ouch, etc., etc.

Land of the Dud

So CMC and I went to check out the new George A. Romero installment on Saturday; on leaving, his words were "I'm never going to the movies again!" ... those very words spoken by me on several occasions, most recently after paying to see (and that's the real point) "Minority Report" (funny how nothing elicits this level of disgust like a Tom Cruise vehicle). Many things disturbed me about this movie- what sticks in my mind is the simple-minded pseudo-Marxism (example: class war subtext, potentially interesting ambiguity about who is the consumer and who the consumed, the nature of citizenship, equal rights for zombies) in stark contrast to the very weird racial politics Romero seems to be playing. "Night of the Living Dead", still one of the scariest movies of all time, also had one of the first and best Black Heroes in film history, albeit one who meets a tragic end. This tradition extended to "Dawn of the Dead": the best line in the movie delivered by a black guy ("...the only person that could miss with this gun is the sucker with the money to buy it...") So it really chaps my hide to see the following in this new film:
1. Casual racism- Dennis Hopper's character refers to John Leguizamo as a "spick".
2. The Samoan- "Pillsbury"- is a cartoon. Islanders ought to be pissed off about this! The whole litany about stolen cars, blah blah blah. Bullshit alarms go off when characters make soliloquies in combat zones.
3. The Stepin Fetchit butler; I suppose that, combined with item 1, the purpose of this character is to make sure that we know that Hopper is an Evil White Guy. But why, George Romero, do you have to stoop to a Speilbergian level of emotional manipulation just to make this point? It reeks of someone running out of ideas.

Which is a goddamn shame, because there is a lot of potential here. Zombies start to get a little bit smart in this movie- the Zombie Hero learns to shoot a gun (Steyr AUG! yeah!), which is very bad news. I wonder, when the Zombies develop language, how they will refer to the few remaining "living" humans? Quickies? Warmies? Food? Will we ever come to an understanding with the Zombies, or at least detente? Could Zombies potentially develop technology? Oh yeah, we've already got Zombie tech- it's called Microsoft. And what are the legal ramifications of this new Zombie/human sphere? Will there ever be marriage between a Warmie and a Stencher, or will they have to go to Massachusetts?

Who is training these people?

"Alright people, this never happened....and I don't want to see any paperwork!!!"
-Maude, Monsters, Inc.

James Joyce

Joyce predicted Television, not only in its banality but also ubiquity. What are they doing in the bars these days?

More Disgust

Jimmy Cliff has just been co-opted by Toyota, an automobile company.
"You Can Get It If You Really Want,
But You Must Try,
Try And Try"
-Jimmy Cliff

slightly invisible
mine, all mine!!!

Th' Poap

You think Benedict XVI has "Arbeit Macht Frei" tattooed somewheres under that miter?

haecceities?

what the hell are they? and how do you pronounce?

Something about mediated reality....

...oh yeah. The phrase "throught the magic of Television" says it all. In the fifty or sixty years that we've had television, we are only just beginning to come to terms with the implications of the medium. TV essentially amounts to an infinite extension of our eyeballs (place a camera anywhere in the universe and you can transmit live images to your living room. There may be relativistic effects...). TV depends on persistence of vision to work- it uses a mosaic pattern to create a convincing simulacrum of what our eyes see, and it uses animation techniques to recreate motion in those images. That both of these objectives can be accomplished electronically busts the whole game wide open- not only does this allow complete abstraction of the signal vis a vis how to store it and transmit it, but at the same time gives complete flexibility in the message. Anything you can imagine visually, can be represented on a screen.

Magic: any technology sufficiently advanced blah blah blah (Arthur C. Clarke? Ted Sturgeon? somebody like that). Even sophisticates such as myself can be fooled into slack-jawed amazement by the things we see. So what does that imply for the state of the art? In sixty years, we should expect that the simulacrum has become ever more convincing; we should expect, in fact, that the illusion is complete, and that control of the illusion is complete.

and here's the soundtrack...

yum

Burgers!
It's what a carnivore likes to eat!
Burgers (whoa oh)
that's why they are made of meat!

I am going to hell (in a handbasket)(unless I repent)

Here are a couple of limericks:

A bulimic girl (Terry Schiavo)
Was eating by means of the IV-o
Congress got hot
And said "She eats a lot!"
And now she's no longer alive-o



The idiot grin on poor Terry
Is not from sipping on sherry
They used too much lube
When installing the tube
And instead of binge/purge, she's Merry!

the tail of the Big Chicken

Down in Mexico...down in Mexico way...there's a playa (dry lake bed) that's not so dry. Red mud and seabirds rub shoulders, and the mud's dried into hexagons. Closer to the water it's as slick as potter's slip. You can skate and the mud dries instantly on your feet, squishing and receiving your trail in its lens, the aqueous humour of a giant eye.

The Power of Profanity

I LOVE profanity. I like people who use it, I like the dirty fucking words themselves. As far as I'm concerned, all fucking people must always make god-damned blanket fucking statements.

New Short Duration Tag Line

"Ouch, Babe....it is 'Babe', isn't it?"

The Real Point

-is that America is the only place where Black People are from.
-Haters you can find anywhere.

true RAWK

"Have Love, Will Travel"; finally a song that I'm glad was purchased by a car company. But will Richard Berry get his cut? I've been giving some thought to possible strategies for moral reclamation of this RAWKIN' cut...make a video, with lots and lots of burning Land Rovers? Keep those cards and letters coming!

Adios, Hunter

Timing, as always, is everything. For someone that stood for MAXIMUM LIBERTY, it seems like an obvious checkout point.

My Rap Sheet

I can tell right now what gorge is rising in the throats of all CMC's "white" readership- "But that's not me!" is the collective whine rising over the land. Liberal petulant insistence that one has "never- never, ever!" been a racist ("ahm zo zorry; ah had no ahdea we employed a rahcist here!"). So it got me to thinking: what is my own culpability in this (rigged) game? Never mind that the question is seriously begged from the start. Here's what I've done and not done:
1) I have been uptight around a hoodlum-looking black dude (or group of black dudes).
2) I have NEVER used the word "nigger" as an epithet
3) I have lost much use for the concept of Black and White. Every person in this country, and everyone you know, is of mixed heritage. So it really should be a non-issue at this point. And it is our duty as Americans to identify with each other (and not just identify each other, AssCroft!)


Even I- a Jewish guy raised in a big, ethnically mixed city (L.A.)- have pretensions towards being "part of the solution, not part of the problem". For instance, I have long thought that one of the only relevant viewpoints on race has been that held by Albert Murray .

But a lot of water still needs to flow under the bridge for everyone to identify themselves as "American". And Crack, why should anyone settle for being a second-class citizen? My point being, why wouldn't your black friends disavow citizenship? I agree that such a pose is a cop-out; what we need is more engagement. But I understand why an impetuous young person might choose to make such a statement.

That's funny!

When Stephen Colbert says "feasting on my ball sack", that shit makes soda spurt out my nose. And I wasn't even drinking soda!

The Ultimate Power in the Universe

Let us reflect for a moment on the necessity of ROCK (and I know that ALL CAPS equals shouting, but tough titty said the kitty). As is well understood by all intelligent beings and non-beings, and thinking and non-thinking things, ROCK is the ne plus ultra of human expression. And when I say ROCK (you say, HOW HIGH?), I am of course referring to all popular music. That ROCKS. And that includes rap, disco, boingy stuff, trippy shit, and whatever (please reference my previous post re: musical genres). What is that ineffable (or effable) quality of which I speak? It is the outward pushing, emotionally committed, headlong charge into oblivion; or the sonic induction of muscular rictus; or the sudden urge to BANG ONE'S HEAD!!!!!!!

Ah, the transcendent power of Queen. Only music that ROCKS this hard could become this popular amongst the youth despite the quite-obvious homosexual subtext. Ghod, they were good! Freddie we hardly knew ye. How 'bout "Dragon Attack"? And I think the reason that no-one of late has approached this level of artistry is that musicians are, quite simply, afraid. Afraid to let it all hang out- and in this day and age, what with all the boundaries we've crossed as a culture, and the dearth of subjects that will shock, letting it hang out (think about the etymology of that phrase) involves a major act of will and bravery. I mean, even Marilyn Manson and GWAR are raising yawns anymore, and that says a lot about how jaded we all are. It's gonna take some serious atom-bomb style conceptual power to wake the peoples up.

Delaminating

Let's get back to basics here. Left, right, who's whining, who's a pain in our ass, and cetera, and cetera, and cetera. Because I think that we're rapidly falling into the Twilight Zone as regards politics in this country. It's like the dog in the cartoon- "Left is right, up is down, dogs and cats living together...it just doesn't add up!!!"

My first question for the Cracked One: what is so outlandish (other than sheer outlandishness) about the various conpsiracy charges that lefties have thrown at our Pinhead-In-Chief? Granted, it's prima facie absurd to even contemplate that any Gummint O-fish-al had anything to do with aiding and abetting the perpetrators of 9/11. It's just as absurd as saying "The Jews Did It"! BUT. There is precedent. Consider the (rather well substantiated) contentions by various historians that FDR had prior knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. It's just a short leap from there to total complicity. Every American knows that the "President" knows more than he lets on; this is just best practices for intelligence operations. And every lefty knows that Dubya was in business with the Saudis and Bin Laden from the very start of his career- and so was George the 41st. Crack tells me, "no way in Hell would a sitting President allow 4,000 of his own country's Citizens be murdered." BUT. Every military officer knows that an explicit part of his training is to learn how to order subordinates to their death. So it's not too hard to imagine Dubya letting a bunch of Blue-state functionaries be killed for political purposes.

Question two- or rather, a response. Re: all those whining pseudoliberals, bitching and moaning about how bad young George da Turd is. Yeah, Crack, I'm with you on this. It was tiresome long ago. Now it's just embarassing. BUT. You, yourself, are treading dangerously close to that maudlin state of politicized apoplexy. Flogging a dead horse much? I suppose there's no way to avoid, in this town, the extreme juvenilia that comes out of people's heads. After all, we've STILL got "flower children" hassling us for KIND BUDS on the upper Haight. That's ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT, that's STASIS, that's INFANTILE DISREGARD FOR THE WORLD AT LARGE, that's almost SOLIPSISTIC. Even I, a confirmed fan of Chaos and Anarchy (but never, ever, an Anarchist- I'm not interested in any Ism that would hold my member hostage), find it to be Beyond the Pale. And it's been this way for YEARS, nay, DECADES. So GET OVER IT! And that means You too.

"Well, boys, looks like this is it: nuculer combat toe to toe with the Russkies!"