Auntie Semitism

Well, there I go, cracking wise about a serious subject. Which automatically makes me...an anti-Semite! Geez, I'm glad that's off my chest. What a great weight lifted! Monkey off my back! ([s] close sarcasm tag [/s])

A commenter came by to warn me of linking to a writer who regularly posts remarks critical of Israel's actions:

Anonymous said...

By endorsing and linking to Fleming Lee's site, you are endorsing his views that the holocaust did not occur. He is extremely anti-Semitic in his public postings on the very blog that you are linking to... Be aware of who you call friends, as you will be judged by their deeds.

At the time, it was tempting to say, "Gosh, Anonymous, that's very sage advice. Could I get that in a suppository?" Instead, it made me think about what I really thought. About what's true about that big subject, and what's not. In the absence of knowing exactly what he/she/it might be referring to about Fleming Lee, I replied as follows:

Thank you for your observation and admonitions. While I have not read all of Fleming's blog, I have become aware of his view that Israel is now a colossal pain in everyone's ass. I fully endorse that one.

As for holocausts, I would guess Fleming believes that no one group can claim it as their "brand." I've been close enough to ethnic cleansing to know, as did Hannah Arendt, that holocaust is very much in the eye of the beholder.

Millions of Jewish people were victims of virulent nationalism. Hundreds of Jewish people made up over 90% of the founding Soviet Comintern, which went to kill a score and more million Jews. Does stating these facts make me a "holocaust denier?" Does noting that the Neo-conservative movement has a de facto Comintern dominated with names like Feith, Abrams, Wolfowitz, Podhoretz, Kristol, Goldberg, Strauss (in absentia), Perle, Kissinger, Frum, et al make the Jewish people perpetrators of a latter-day Holocaust?

I endorse none of these things nor the vicious, state-sponsored murders of innocents they so euphemistically promote. I decry them, and have every reason to believe Fleming does, too. Food for thought. What, Anonymous, do your eyes behold?

Regarding the use of the term "anti-Semitism:" in the future interests of precision, its full meaning may be helpful. All Arabs, including the Israelites, are Semites. Ishmael and Isaac have the same father. I am not an anti-Semite, and don't believe in killing Arabs.

Later, I went to Lee Fleming's site, poked around, and found whole gales of fresh air which cleared away much intellectual fog on the topic, including some of mine. But first off, for the record, I'll go with something simpler. Guess what? I like Semites. And I really, really like Jews. I liked one of them so much I married her. That's why I hate the Zionistas. Why so much? Umm, lemme see...because they're bullies.

Lots of bullies had parents who beat them. And that's terrible, because the abused so often turn into abusers. But rather than re-enact abuse and exact pointless revenge on other innocents, how about dealing with it? Because until you do, you're still bullies, bullies who claim to dish out beatings on behalf of everyone who happens to share some DNA with you. I ask you, knowing the likely response in advance: was there ever an uglier thing to be, than this? I ask you again, then how are you any better? Everyone hates you just as much.

"The Holocaust did not occur" is a phrase applied increasingly by propagandists and apologists to people who believe Jews weren't the only victims of unspeakable crimes in WWII. Let's look at that for a minute. Holocaust denial. What does it mean? Maybe this: why should the Jews get a majority share of the milk of human kindness? They got a country, at least, and have quite a PR campaign going. But what about the Armenian Kurds? What about the Japanese nuclear bomb victims who bear different kinds of tattoos? What about the piles of dead Slavs, the ethnic-German Ukranians, the Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenians, the Vietnamese, Africa in general, the history of pretty much all of South America, and the 100 million slaughtered by Mao? Must I use the term "Killing FieldsTM" to describe all this tragedy, or can I say "Holocaust" if I pay the Simon Wiesenthal center its regular royalty? Could you somehow allow me to donate my Holocaust Royalty Check to Iraqi children orphaned by my government's "smart" bombs, without being accused of anti-Semitism, and probably terrorism?

Expansionist Zionism, if it ever had any usefulness, is now a bankrupt, xenophobic, criminal, zany mess which literally threatens the lives of billions of people. So, ah-yup, count me against further Zionism. Enough with the Zionism, already. I'm against unspeakable crimes, against the violent, infinitely manifold means of torture and death visited upon people because of a bunch of nonsense. I'm against World War Four, annoying traffic jams, people who try to deceive and poison me and my family with crap so they can get richer, I've never much liked broccoli sprouts and think them an abomination, and I don't want the world to end in a nuclear war started over religious philosophies which are, to put it mildly, tenuous at times. Is this so wrong?

So if I must be called a Holocaust-Denier, here goes: Jews don't have a monopoly on victim-hood, nor does a Jewish nation deserve free passes to viciously apply violence because collectively it's more than a little verkakt in the head. My views on this subject are thoroughly unexceptional. Got a little news for ya: There are a lot of Holocaust-Deniers out here. The American people, the world, and especially the Middle Eastern world, are sick and tired of the xenophobia, exceptionalism, racism, self-justifying ratiocinations, obvious lies and outright murders. Do you think I want my tax dollars supporting this evil bullshit? Think again. Cut it out, or to paraphrase Woody Allen, there are only two roads in front of Israel; down one lies ignominious ruin. Down the other lies utter catastrophe.

I went and read many of the posts the Anonymous Commenter presumably took exception to. Here are some discussing the growing movement of Jews against Israel. Jews who are being called Anti-Semites. How weird is that? Maybe the Anti-Defamation League should give its PR firm a serious talking-to.

Linking To "View From The Moon"

I've always wanted "a moon with a view," and a professional writer, lawyer, and blogger who drilled through to Adored By Hordes from Iran Facts, (a.k.a Neo Resistance and run by the lovely Naj), Fleming, who runs View From the Moon, happened to read and kindly comment on the recently concocted posts of Prozac the Clown.

Fleming provides penetrating analysis of current events backed by deep knowledge of history, law, and mythology, spiced up by scalpel-sharp thinking free of convention's baggage. He (I think that's right, ey?) happened to write the children's book 'The Last Dragon,' and amongst other projects worked on writing 'The Saint' series, a spy character Val Kilmer would eventually portray in a 1997 movie by that name. Here is Fleming's profile:

I've lived many lives in one lifetime while teaching literature and creative writing in several universities, earning my living as a fiction writer for 10 years (4 of them in England), and practicing law (appellate practice mainly). Under my birth name, Fleming Lee Blitch, my children's books -- "The Amazing Adventures of Peter Grunt" and "The Last Dragon" -- were published by J.B. Lippincott Co.; I was a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Fellow as part of an award for Best Children's Fiction of the year. Various other books of mine were published, and I collaborated with Leslie Charteris on a number of books and television scripts in the "Saint" series. I've now retired from law and am devoting myself to playing and writing.

Like most of the people I link to, Fleming doesn't seem to be too hung up on self-promotion, but View From The Moon is a refuge for fellow travelers. He is able to reach behind the Bullshit Curtain in impressively hygenic, surgical, and professional ways. With less wasted motion and fewer lost patients than my forays.

In current affairs, it's quite forgiveable if you're off huffing nitrous oxide from a large medicinal tank of it, but we've all got to come up for air sometime. VFTM would be that air, and is worth the time of anyone who wishes to understand what's going on in the now. To paraphrase Mel Gibson's character in M. Night Shyamalan's movie 'Signs:' "Play away, Fleming. Play away!" I look forward to learning much.

Hey, Baby...It's The Fourth Of July!

Fireworks keep going off, and the smell of burnt gunpowder still wafts through our neighborhood. There were fire engine sirens racing down the long unimpeded surface street above us to put out fires at unknown houses an hour ago. The odd pops and crackles keep going off, and I hear the mis-timed firings of unpredictable pistons in Harleys flying up the freeway in commemoration.

Today was a good day. A great day. It was sunburn-sunny in the Northwest, and hot. Lord Wife and I took Lord Running Boy out to play with his busy bosom-cousin of the same age, to him whose whole family was dropped onto us like a god's surprising beneficence a year and slightly more ago. I'm up suffering from the indigestion of overindulgence, grateful as I am and was, of too much Copper River salmon, potato salad, and grass-fed Oregon cows. As parents, we slathered the naked little bodies of our white sons as best as we could with sunblock every hour, and we set them loose in solar rays and spraying waters until the light was failing and they were finally going down. Until our young charges, these soulmates and partners in crime, had to bid each other exhausted and regretful goodbyes.

There were pyros out there in the suburbs, and we were just four couples on an acre of back yard land amidst the proceedings of millions of explosions. Our political perspectives may not be in the same quadrants, they probably run the gamut, and by common consent we lit no fireworks. Others did it for us. But to quote Britannicus, the exiled son of Claudius during the reign of Nero, from Robert Graves' 'Claudius the God:'

I don’t believe in the Republic anyway. You can’t reverse the course of history. My great-grandmother Livia said that, and it’s true. I love the days of old, as you do, but I’m not blind. The Republic is dead, except for old-fashioned people like you and Sosibus. Rome is an empire now and the choice only lies between good Emperors and bad ones.”

The Founders cannot protect us now. They were wise, and their wisdom will inform us, but they are long gone. The cannons and rifles they shot in anger are now being echoed in hollow, decorative explosions. The only way for us is forward.

(Hat Tip to Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis.)

John Smeaton - Hero For Our Time

You'll be happy to know that John Smeaton, the Glasgow Airport baggage baron/terrorist avenger, has the aforementioned and hoped-for 1,000 pints of beer lined up for him at the airport's Holiday Inn bar (via Paypal). Thirst no more, Johnny!

John is burning up Google at the moment, and rightly so. Endearingly foot-in-mouth after kicking al-Q'aandie ass, his nation can be proud. (Vids previously posted here, thanks to Al C.) Perversely proud, if they so choose. There's talk of a knighthood for Sir Smeato, and his impromptu promoter is seeking for more. I'll hand the blog to him for a minute:

But are you going to stop now? As well as melting the internet, is there more to be done?

I say there is. I say let’s sort it out. I’m talking T In The Park.

The ‘official word’ goes as follows:

T in the Park organiser Geoff Ellis said: “Through his actions at the weekend John Smeaton absolutely epitomises the spirit of Scotland that we are always so proud of at T in the Park.

“However, due to heightened security and an incredibly tight performance schedule on the Main Stage at T in the Park this year, unfortunately we can’t allow him to get up on stage.”

This make no sense to me.

They talk of a tight performance schedule. And I answer, “But they let Amy Winehouse spend ten minutes falling all over the stage while introducing her band at Glastonbury”.

They talk of heightened security. And we all know, really, that that is a major concern for everyone. But, I ask you, “If you need security, who better to be there than the Smeatonator?”

There is a campaigns page coming soon for signing a petition. Apparently Smeats is already gratefully accepting donations in pubs, since no one has been able to find him for days. No doubt he'll turn up soon. Until then, we bid you "Cheers!" from this side of the pond, John.

Scooter Libby's Friend And Yours: Prozac The Clown Returns

Hi kiddies! It's great to be back at your great little day care. Prozac thought he'd drop by unannounced today because he knows that some of your parents will be talking about Prozac's fellow clown, a clown named Scooter Libby. He's got a very special clown job. It's to make the President happy!! And that's just about the bestest ever job a clown can have.

Now, remember last time Prozac was here, when people were saying how they were sending Scooter to jail and it made his head hurt because it didn't make sense? And Prozac put his hands up on both sides of his poor head, put them into his big red hair and he said, "Ow-wie!?" Well Prozac's head is better now! The President said Scooter doesn't have to go to jail after all. Now everything in Clown-Land makes sense again. Toot-toot!

Some of your parents might be very happy or very sad tonight. If they're happy, that's nice. It's nice when parents are happy, even if they are for pathetically wrong reasons. In Clown-Land we call that "Farce," and it's a tool we use when we want to make things look silly. And so many things are silly anyway that it's really easy. Toot! But if they're sad, and start spouting incomprehensible meaningless blathery-things like this:

Pelosi: Shows Bush's "Word Is Not To Be Believed"...Schumer: This "Completely Tramples On" Principal Of Equal Justice...Reid: Act "Disgraceful"
...Obama: Move "Cements The Legacy Of An Administration Characterized By A Politics Of Cynicism And Division"...Edwards: Bush "Clinically Incapable Of Understanding That Mistakes Have Consequences"

If they're sad and confused, they won't give you as many presents, and that's never good, huh? So when you go home you need to give them Prozac's Special Thought of the Decade, so they can start to be happy and make sense again. Repeat it after me so you don't forget:

"Dear Mommy and Daddy: where the hell have you been since before I was even born? Don't you realize these guys make Hitler and his goons look like a political vaudeville act? Why did you think the President was going to put his favorite clown in jail?"

Good! Here let's try it once more: "Don't you realize these guys make Hitler and his goons look like a political vaudeville act?" Better. You're such smart girls and boys, and you're going to do just gr-r-r-r-reeeat!

Now, you could also tell your parents, if they come back at you with any guff, a different Special Thought. Maybe even the Special Thought of the Century! So we can keep it as our secret, if you want. Because no one is going to believe us anyway. Prozac is just a clown. And lots of people think little kids aren't smart, and don't want to listen to them. But we know better, right? You can learn better and faster than just about anybody!

You know, Prozac sees lots of cars driving around with bumper stickers on them that say "01.20.09," or "Visualize Bush Out of Office," and he hears people saying, "We've turned things around before, and we can do it again." Prozac has to scratch his head, stroke his chin, and then maybe even scratch his butt when he thinks about that one. Prozac knows Scooter and the President's other clowns, he knows how much fun they're having and how good they are with the new tricks they've practiced so hard on. So his tiny clown brain doesn't see why they're going to get ready to leave. [Stage whispers to the day care children.] Maybe not ever leave.

Remember, kiddies, this message to your parents is optional. "Optional" means you can tell it to them if you feel like it, or you can forget all about it and get popsicles or ice-cream sandwiches from the freezer and go play Nintendo and get your hands and the controllers all sticky!! Prozac is only going to tell you because you're such special boys and girls and he thinks you're so clown-eriffic! Toot-toot! Ok. Here it is:

"Dear Mommy and Daddy: What will you do if the President and his clowns don't leave?"

So kiddies, not to end on a downer. C'mon, not one of you is 5 years old yet, and your day care provider just threatened me with an icy gaze. Prozac really thinks what happened today is good. Scooter Libby, while a very, very good clown, is just a clown who works for a very big and very bad man. That's why Prozac works alone! Toot! And people are going to get more and more mad at the bad man for things like this, and maybe if they get angry enough they will take Scooter's bad President to where they take all bad men. Away! See you soon, kiddies!

A New Stephen King Movie, Or A Slight Problem?

Somehow, the business end of this sea monster wound up in a fox den on a 50-acre farm in New Jersey. I have questions. One: what is it doing on land? Two: what pissed it off enough to crawl across New Jersey? Three: How do I avoid it?

Actually, this creature is called a wolf eel, which inhabits the deep, dark waters of the North Atlantic. It gets to be about six feet long. If you do not swim in the deep, dark waters of the North Atlantic, you'll be fine. Even if you do, but still refrain from acting or looking like a lobster, you'll probably be fine.

Unless of course the wolf eels have decided to make New Jersey into their New North Atlantic and lurk in wait for people and pets. Then you might be fine, or, you might be eaten alive like hapless victims in a Steven King movie.

John Smeaton "Set About Ye" Terror-Timmies

Al C. alerted me this AM of a local Weegie hero who assisted a Glasgow airport policeman who was being assailed by a flaming...terror-asst. John Smeaton, baggage handler extraordinaire, promptly ran up and "set things right." Smeaton is being hailed as a hero and someone has put up a web site, the purpose of which is to honor Smeats with 1,000 pints. I have ponied up what should be good for a couple pints, even with the exchange rate what it is. Here's a short vid:



And a longer clip of the interview. Quite entertaining. Smeats was quickly assisted by "4, 5, mebbe 6" others in beating the car-bomber down to the ground. Seems terrorists aren't destined to have much luck with Scotland. If ye go te-a Glas-goww, they're sure to "set about ye."

Al-Qaeda: We Are The World, We Are The Children

As I may have mentioned before, al-Qaeda was a CIA scheme artificially grown in Islamabad. It means 'The Base' because it was the Base of CIA funding and weapons-dealing. Islamabad was once the biggest CIA station in the world, so big that I was recruited to go there. Wisely or not, I was more interested in girls at the time, operating on the hopeful hypothesis that getting laid was more fun than haggling over RPG prices. Guess I'll never really know.

Al-Qaeda is now an ill-defined brand, a concept run amok. It's twenty different things, and nothing at all. Its center is everywhere, and its circumference is nowhere. If kids in a tony suburb spraypaint 'Die, Honky' on someone's Land Rover, they're part of al-Qaeda. We all are, in the end. Stop eating at McDonald's, and you're on The List. How some governments respond to things they don't like may be related to why a couple of inept car-bombs failed to go off in London this past week, and why a couple of twits drove their green Jeep Cherokee towards the Glasgow Airport's automatic sliding entryway doors, then set it on fire. While they were in it. Therefore, all the adults in the Western World are supposed to PANIC. We must go out and stock up on Depends diapers so we can mess our pants sanitarily. The headlines call out: We are entering the era of the car bomb, Second day of terror, More arrests coming, and Run for the hills!

Maybe we could try holding off on the Depends for a while longer. A little confession: I personally have wanted to ram my car through the doors of more than one airport, but managed to restrain myself. If I'd broken through those doors as an understandable and perhaps overdue protest against the injustices of air travel, you can bet your ass my car, had I wanted it to, would've burst into flames right on cue.

So if this is Al-Qaeda, Al-Qai'ida, Al-Qaida, or how ever the hell they're spelling it today, might we not be at least somewhat reassured? Yes, there were threats. Farcical, odiously stupid threats which decent police work thwarted. Decent police work and military response, had it been allowed to proceed by the accursed Bush Administration, would also have thwarted 9/11, and 3,000+ people, including my former boss and his associates, would not have died. Instead, their charred, dismembered, desecrated bodies were used to help the Bush Administration hit its disgusting "Trifecta."

Even if 9/11 were legit, like the Madrid train bombings and the London bus bombings in 2005 were, the price of closing airports across the UK grants these idiots too much credence. Too much fearing of fear itself. And wouldn't you just love to be a tourist in England right now, trying to travel somewhere? Oh, yeah, that would be fun. Search my dirty undies, please! These latest ying-yangs were like Robert Reid, the loser who tried to blow up his shoe with a zippo. And failed. This idiot has us all, years later, still having to take off our f&*#ing shoes every time we enter an airport like it's some kind of Mormon temple or Japanese tea house. If this is Fourth Generation warfare and we're all embroiled in the Clash of Civilizations, let me tell you, we're getting our butts kicked by a bunch of morons. By Al-Queer-da. If we're not, then why can't I bring an honest tube of toothpaste onto an airplane? Here's a little historical perspective about implacable enemies from Kung Fu Monkey:

FDR: Oh, I'm sorry, was wiping out our entire Pacific fleet supposed to intimidate us? We have nothing to fear but fear itself, and right now we're coming to kick your ass with brand new destroyers riveted by waitresses. How's that going to feel?

CHURCHILL: Yeah, you keep bombing us. We'll be in the pub, flipping you off. I'm slapping Rolls-Royce engines into untested flying coffins to knock you out of the skies, and then I'm sending angry Welshmen to burn your country from the Rhine to the Polish border.

U.S. NOW: BE AFRAID!! Oh God, the Brown Bad people could strike any moment! They could strike ... NOW!! AHHHH. Okay, how about .. NOW!! AAGAGAHAHAHHAG! Quick, do whatever we tell you, and believe whatever we tell you, or YOU WILL BE KILLED BY BROWN PEOPLE!! PUT DOWN THAT SIPPY CUP!!

When Britain's intrepid WWII hero Lord Mountbatten got blown up by Irish Republican Army in Knightsbridge, I don't recall England threatening to nuke Dublin. I recall the main response was a group of kids created a punk band called 'The Exploding Mountbattens." There is peace now in Ireland precisely because the British decided not to bomb or otherwise demolish Irish people's homes and did not resort to massive use of force. They chose to treat members of the IRA as criminals. Not enemy combatants. And the IRA put al-Qaeda to shame, having the advantages of being home-grown and actually real. Britain's response to the IRA might have had something to do with England and Ireland's mutual victory being just about the only successful example of counter-insurgency by an occupying nation in the 20th century.

Is it just me, or do the United States and United Kingdom responses sound a lot like what Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler used to take power and keep their domestic dissent in line: appeal to latent racism and prejudice; sacrifice minority groups to the maw of government ire; conflate outside threats; repeat the same messages, over and over. All Fear, All the Time. Welcome to Uh-merica.

James Gandolfini Shot By Closure-Seeking Fan

In the main, most people can't stand moral ambiguity or paradox, so when Lord-Wife told me about this headline, she got me. More accurately, people can stand moral ambiguity; right until it drives them insane. I got off the Sopranos treadmill a couple seasons back, maybe suspecting multiple mind-rapes were coming compared to the family picnics of the first 4 or was it 5 or 6 seasons. Call me psychic or a coward, either way, now I get to take perverse delight in non-seeing the non-ending that apparently has everyone in conniptions. As per the Onion article:

"I couldn't let it just hang," Bowen told police in a post-arrest confession released to the media. "Eight years of my life, and a fucking artsy cut to black? It was eating me up inside."

In his statement, Bowen also used the word "betrayal" to describe the series's resolution, which he was convinced set up a climactic death for the sociopathic mafia don. The realization that Soprano's brutal life of constant fear and anxiety would have no real end slowly drove the obsessed Bowen over the edge.

"I had to tie up the loose ends, I just had to," Bowen said. "I'm positive this is exactly how [creator and executive producer] David Chase wanted fans to interpret the ending."

The media pundit comintern has, it seems, enforced closure via interpretation, saying that when the screen goes dark abruptly in the last episode, it means that Tony Soprano has been shot in a New Jersey diner after biting into his last onion ring. What else could it be, but the sublimely logical conclusion of a bloody mob war that had been raging all season with Phil Leotardo?

The show's creator, David Chase, has refused to speculate, hint, nod, or wink, basically saying, "It's all there for you to see." He means it. To contemplate moral ambiguities is to contemplate human nature. Correction: all nature. If you kill an enraged, out-of-control driver in a highway incident, we call it homicide. If you kill an entire town in its sleep because you didn't properly maintain your chemical plant, we call it product liability. If you kill millions in a preemptive war to improve your popularity, we call it politics. Not seeing a lot of closure so far. Maybe that's why Hollywood knows to give us their trademark endings. But Hollywood is a business. David Chase is, I suspect, a great artist; The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure, two of my most-savored series, are also his creations. But with the Sopranos, he did something special. He returned to face his childhood.

The greatest art imitates life without sentiment, without morality, without agenda, but only with interest and intense observation. Such art endures so long because, in real life, few things are final, and the complexity of the artist's visions and decisions resonate across time. They probably had to struggle to transcend their own personal fears and feelings, to set them aside for a while to see things as they are, on the surfaces with many faces. The artist applies a technique that is unique to their manner of expression, and simply shows what's already there. One of my favorite painters told me once that he couldn't paint his daughter well, because his sentiments for her overwhelmed his technique; he painted someone different who existed more in his mind, but he loved to paint her anyway.

When someone like Seurat tries constructing the world in a different way, and chooses a bunch of reeds and fishing boats as his subjects, it's because they are in front of him. 1980s rapper Ice-T referred to that process when he testified in front of Congress to his controversial song, "Cop Killer" as a genuine work of art. He said he was simply writing poetry about his environment, which was ruled by gang violence, and turning it into music as personal catharsis.

David Chase has stated that the character of Livia Soprano, Tony Soprano's mom, was an accurate rendition of his own mother. If anyone reading this has not seen the Sopranos series, like perhaps Al C., this is a tremendous admission. One more piece of data to add to the stereotype aggregate about art being often correlated with the catharsis of pain. Livia Soprano, to put it kindly, was a character suffering from narcissistic personality disorder.

Like his fictional creation, Chase grew up in a garden apartment in Clifton, New Jersey. His real name was David DeCesare. He is a mid-level player in a declining, or at least radically changing, industry. I wonder where he got his material from. Nothing ends. Dreams don't, relationships supposedly do, but then a song or smell, a look or sound reminds you of family, friends, lovers and enemies eluded in the temporally syndicated series of lives. The memories and molecules are all still floating, shimmering, right there in you. Chase titled his last episode "American Dream." Maybe I stopped watching because I didn't want it to end.

Introducing: Prozac The Clown

Several Hordies have taken the time to blame me personally for throwing them into spiralling black funks of suicidal depressions, stemming directly from one of my recent book reviews. Hey... guys: look at it this way: at least I saved you from reading the book. Plus, it was on Oprah's Book Club, it won a Pulitzer Prize, and I even told you about the happy ending! Humanity survived in the end, didn't it?! And can I help it if Lord Mother watches Oprah, fer chrissakes? I do feel your pain, and so have decided, just for you, just for today, to become...Prozac the Clown. I am putting on my fake nose right now.

Toot, toot! Hey kiddies! Do you know who Scooter Libby is? He's a clown, too! Only he's a very special clown. His job was to make the President happy. And that's why he was called Scooter Libby, that's right, Emily! Scooter got his federal prison inmate number assigned today. That makes Prozac feel very sad for Scooter because he and many of his friends are fellow clowns. But it turns out that clowns can go to prison, too. Even if they work for the Bush Administration. Having the President's favorite clown go to prison doesn't make sense to poor Prozac, it makes his head hurt, oww-ie, so Prozac will believe it when he actually sees it. Can you say, "the jury is still out?" Sometimes Prozac says that when he doesn't know if something is finished yet. The jury's still out! The jury's still out! Hee-hee! Even so, just in case, Prozac has had a T-shirt made for his friend Scooter to wear in prison:

I'm Here For Dick (Cheney).

Haa-ha-ha-hee! Toot-toot! Kiddies, maybe you've heard your parents or their friends say funny stuff like this:

"If the liberals would stop spending so much money on midnight basketball, free abortions and treasonous investigations of the Executive and Vice-Presidential branches of government, we could afford to build more small-town prisons and boost the local economies."

If you're like Prozac, you know that grown-ups can be ree-eee-ally silly sometimes! This stuff about midnight basketball and treason is just fancy-talk, kind of like when they spell things with letters so you can't understand. What they really mean is that they're freaking out and will beat you with a shoe after you fall asleep. And what's that mean? Right, that means they need a Time Out. Say it with Prozac: "Mommy, you need a Time Out." "Daddy, you need a Time Out." Good! You're such wonderful boys and girls. Oh, and if any of them touch you in or around your "bad places," then you come tell Prozac right away, ok? Then we can report them to the state and send them to prison to keep the economy boosted!

Now, kiddies, Prozac has to go really fast to visit another party, but when you get home he wants you to get out your dictionaries and look up this word: immigrants. Im-mi-grants. Will you promise Prozac to do that? Good! Because then we can talk about it next time! [Prozac mounts brightly painted orange, lime, and purple scooter festooned with pom-poms.] Bye-bye kids, and remember the Prozac Promise: Take Your Ritalin to Be a Good Citizen!

A Melting Pot No Longer

The Supreme Court is thinking, maybe, you know...of trying out a caste system. It just issued an education and race ruling that appears to be so contorted not even court clerks and former Attorneys General can figure it out. Brown v. the Board of Ed was challenged, and here is what came out Justice Roberts' other end:

Race cannot be a factor in determining racial diversity.

Lucky for you, I am smarter than Supreme court clerks. I'll prove it. For starters, I was smart enough to NOT go to Law School, even when they begged me and offered me free money and women of easy virtue. Having passed that test, I can now correctly interpret what the Court means, without reading all of Justice Kennedy's 15-page masterpiece of ambiguity, moral bluster, and bug-like vacillation. I got it by page #1.

Let's compare the American educational system to a restaurant. The meals it serves are not to be from melting pots, they shall not be bouillabaisse, nor even wretched ratatouilles. They're to be a partitioned smorgasbord. On one end is the great food, educationally speaking. It's available in wonderful variety in the private dining room. Out on the main floor is a long table once of pretty high quality, only now it's mostly fast food. There are still the occasional specials, and sometimes even three-day old leftovers show up from the gourmand section. These don't last long and there is some rather unseemly behavior when deciding who gets to eat those choice morsels. Then there's the dumpster behind the restaurant, which can be surprisingly nutritious for those who are absolutely determined to eat.

How can I assert this? Because it's the Republican-theocratic end game. With this decision, the New Court moved one step closer to realizing one of their dearest visions, a vision you could see coming like a far-off freight train. It's not so far off now. The radical social darwinists who call themselves conservatives (Scalia, Alito, Roberts, et al) do not believe government should have any part in education. At all. They don't believe in public schools to begin with, and that's what informed their latest decision.

It's not about overturning Brown v. the Board of Ed. It's about not having a Board of Ed at all. When placed into that context, their legal teamwork is elegant. A thing of beauty, really. There's not a Board of Ed in the country that is going to be able to successfully interpret this decision, and they'll be agonized over it for years. It's bureaucratic Zen. It guarantees that every public school in the country, when faced with an issue of race, will be in automatic violation no matter what they do. There's no way to avoid violating a policy which isn't a policy to begin with. It's an intentional tautology.

Current Reading: The Road, By Cormac McCarthy

I just read this book, which Lord Mom gave me for Father's Day. Whoo. It's a millenial achievement, and it's not comforting. It won the Pulitzer Prize, and I almost picked it up to read it for a second time tonight. What it conveys, in a Hemingway style stripped down of all time and names, is disquietingly close to a near vision of what could happen to our world, a combination of a long dark time wrought by both nuclear winter and climate change. The animals, the plants, and the oceans are all killed. The sun doesn't shine through. It's Kerouac's On The Road without the enlightenment, without the jazz, without the Mexican whores, without the joy, and filled with desperately roving, starving people. The Road without the "On." Here is Dennis Lehane's review of it:

Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith.

The unnamed man loves his son above all things, and his purpose is to deliver him, somehow, to survive in a world in which, he has faith, life will eventually re-emerge. The father is dying from consumption, and has little more than a half-loaded pistol and conviction on his side. His son is probably about 10 years old, about as old as the apocalypse which has enveloped the earth. The son's mother committed suicide. They are traveling across the devouring country, gradually south through manifold difficulties to the ocean, hoping to find deliverance. Their mission, their love, and their bond has three rules:

1) We will not eat children;
2) We will be the good guys;
3) We will preserve the fire of humanity.

I have contemplated these Cormac McCarthy endings. I know the minds of our leaders, who countenance and prefer apocalypse over the compromises they personally find unacceptable. No bullshit. Straight up. I'll say it out loud: they're closer than they ever were to pulling the trigger. Like frustrated, spoiled prodigies when the game turns unimaginably against them, they would rather upend the chess board than admit a loss. Their pride is paramount. Far more important than us. For the rest of humanity, that would be a do-over by the skin of the DNA left on the scum of our teeth. An excerpt, from page 11:

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.

Am I scared? Yeah, I am. Damned straight. And so is Cormac McCarthy. I have sat with assholes in their frats, in their bishoprics and in their hypocritical councils, and have been dumb enough at times to do their frivolous biddings. But I'm not doing that anymore, and I'm not going to give up. There is something high above them which I, and our race, must serve. And I trust it will help us serve it. If it does not, our time is soon done.

A man comes up The Road on page 283. He looks responsible. The father has just died. The boy asks the man,

How do I know you're one of the good guys?
You don't. You'll have to take a shot.
Are you carrying the fire?
Am I what?
Carrying the fire.
You're kind of weirded out, aren't you?
No.
Just a little.
Yeah.
That's okay.
So are you?
What, carrying the fire?
Yes.
Yeah. We are.
Do you have any kids?
We do.
Do you have a little boy?
We have a little boy and a little girl.
How old is he?
He's about your age, maybe a little older.
And you didn't eat them.
No.
You don't eat people.
No. We don't eat people.
And I can go with you?
Yes. You can.
Okay then.
Okay.

And back at the beginning, on page 4:

He knew only that the child was his warrant. He said: If he is not the word of God, God never spoke.

A Dying Order

Thanks to Bruce at The River Blog for finding this sign of hope out in the blogosphere:

"Change is taking root. I think that the part of humanity that resists change is terrified by it, because it is so clearly unstoppable. The Earth herself has joined the struggle. All the surveillance, all the war, all the repression, are the last desperate attempts by a dying order to hold onto power.

The revolution is coming, and when it does, it will come like water: soft, flexible, yielding - but unstoppable in its power."

We are still enthralled by Mayan priests who sacrifice captives on the altars of our pyramids to appease the sun. I hesitate to say where it's from, but a lot of people are realizing what's going on, and that a big change is going to come. Realization is the most important thing. The Wall Street Journal, Meet The Press, The Washington Post, and the Main Stream Media sacrifices aren't helping. Study the water, and the forests. The Mayans who left still live today.

Lewis Black On Neo-Conservatives

And specifically, on Paul Wolfowitz, who saw one of his performances...and liked it. Liked it so much he went up and introduced himself to Black's parents. Who, like most sentient beings, hate Wolfowitz and were chagrined because they felt like they had to be nice to a poison dwarf who they know has spread misery over a good portion of the planet. Black, who compares his elderly parents (who are in the audience) to salt and pepper shakers, defines Wolfowitz and neo-conservatives in this manner:

"And Paul Wolfowitz raced up them afterwards, and you have to realize that Paul Wolfowitz is a neo-conservative who's designed many of the programs that, ah, that President Bush seemed to follow, uh, and he...neo-conservative, by the way, most people don't know what it means--well I know. It's someone who watches the movie 'The Matrix' and believes it's real."

Bravo, baby. Having been thwarted on finding the missing Lewis Black travel monologue on Italy, I was determined to get my fix. You know, people think Lewis Black is a comedian. He's not. Far from it. He's a political genius who has figured out a way to have cheering fans and get rich by telling the unvarnished truth.

Lewis Black On Travel

(Note: I'm re-posting this. It originally went up on December 28th of '06. Someone from Canada (good day, ey?) googled through to this video clip. I was looking for some diversion myself, and this is the ticket. I was on vacation between Christmas and New Year's, so had time to have some fun writing. And now I see that the video is no longer available, nor can I find it on YouTube. We have not made it back to the Caribbean or to Italy. But here's hoping, and I'll leave this up anyway until I find a replacement.)

Lewis Black may be my favorite comedian, and here he's talking about travel. I originally went YouTubing looking for a Lewis Black monologue on the Holiday Season. I found a few, but I didn't want to send anyone over the edge, this time of year can be touchy. Not as touchy as having three kids running around a center fireplace, screaming and chasing a shell-shocked Jack Russell terrier and trying to take her temperature with a rectal thermometer (yes, that was the Christmas nativity scene at Casa Lord), but touchy nonetheless. And Lewis Black is for people who like their humor...black. Not just dark or a little off-color, but lovingly charred with a flamethrower, stuck on a spit and marinated in lighter fluid, then thrown into a magnesium barbecue and transmogrified into sooty carbon vapors.

So no holiday commentary from Mr. Black. But travel! Ah, travel. Me sooo trunky. I bought Lord Wife some 2007 calendars of Island Paradises, so she can put them up on her wall and long for them while slaving away on her keyboard editing documents like a washwoman over other people's torn, soiled, and hopelessly ugly clothing. The closest she's going to get to the Caribbean this winter is her corkboard, and hopefully we can set another all-time record for rainfall along about February. Like we just did in November. Me, I'd like to get to Italy. I long for Toscana and the topless beaches of La Spezia, the marble palaces cut out of the hill quarries of Enraux. "Fat chance, you imbecile," and some muttering under his breath was all I could get out of Santa when I brought up the subject. But Lewis Black, now, he made it to Italy:

"I got to Italy, I'd never been there, it's extraordinary. If you've not gone: unbelievable. I didn't know this--but Jesus Christ, he's, like...hoo-hoo, he's big there! Everywhere I turn there's Jesus! There's Jesus! There's Jesus! There's Jesus! He is like the Coca-Cola of Italy! And I'm Jewish, and I have to say, after three weeks there--I started to think he might be the Real Thing."

The inspiration for this blog, other than the need to go on the record about how messed up things are before I keel over and die like a canary huffing gas fumes while caged in a mineshaft, was how difficult air travel has become. (Our last family trip was during this summer's past Extreme Terrorist Scare.) I've lived in a bunch of places I remember with fondness, and like to talk about, and more that I don't but lived through ok, but you can say this about going Other Places: if the scales don't fall off your eyes pretty quick, you are one dumb and lost S.O.B.

Congressional Chicken

On the surface, something rather momentous has just occurred. The Senate Judiciary Committee has agreed to subpoena the White House, specifically the Office of the Vice President, after formally requesting the same set of documents nine times. The docs discussed legal implications of warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying. Since there is no legal basis for it, only practical precedent, they must say something along these lines: "Oh, the heck with it. Let's just go ahead and do it!"

It's impressive that uber-con Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, Warren Commission fixer Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Chuck Grassley of Piggsylvania (alright, Iowans, just a little joke there) finally gave Vermont's Pat Leahy their votes to go after the White House (the resolution passed 13-3). Remarkable. These are veteran politicians who must know what they're going up against. Now, I have one big question, and one prediction:

Question: What is the committee going to do when the White House tells them to go to hell?
Prediction: Cheney's spying apparatus is at this very moment being intensely trained on Senators Hatch, Specter, and Grassley, and the phasers are being clicked to the "Stun" setting. Details of their previous communications and their personal lives including those of their families are being combed through for leverage. I hope their houses are in order.

If this sounds unnecessarily paranoid to you, you might want to consider opening a history book once in a while. Or Wikipedia. Look at the entry for J. Edgar Hoover, then tell me about paranoid. Anyhow, I kind of doubt that Congress is going to win this game of chicken with Dick Cheney. It's encouraging, but one has to be realistic. In the picture above, Congress is metaphorically represented by the water craft on the right. Cheney is represented by the oil tanker on the left. At least on this one issue, Congress is going to lose. Maybe that's fine, because it seems like they're trying to force him to cite Executive Privilege in refusing to hand over the documents. And that greases the impeachment skids.

No one seriously thinks Cheney is going to sit in front of the nation and say, "Gosh, you were right. I was trying to do what was best for the country, but I can see now that I was out of line. I'll stop spying on everybody. Oh, and I'll comply with all your oversight requests from now on. Rahm Emanuel and I talked, and frankly, he rattled me. We don't want him to cut off our funding. The Office of the Vice President will do whatever the former ballet dancer says."

I don't know what Congress is up to, exactly, but this may be part of a wide, well-organized End Game being played on Cheney. They're going to have to go at him from multiple angles. From spying. From refusal of oversight. From corruption. From running 9/11 (whooops that one just sort of slipped out). From jigging up false reasons for war. From outing CIA agents. From kicking his hunting dogs. From being ugly. The cool thing about impeachment is that it doesn't require a good reason. Just a motion, and the votes. If everyone hates you, and stops fearing you, that's good enough. Hopefully that's where this is going.

Courtesy of Think Progress:

Breaking: Senate Judiciary Committee Authorizes Subpoenas For NSA Domestic Spying Documents

The Senate Judiciary Committee just voted 13-3 to authorize chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to issue subpoenas for documents related to the NSA warrantless surveillance program. Sens. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) voted with the Democrats on the committee to authorize the subpoenas for any legal opinions and advice the Bush administration has received regarding the NSA program.

The Center on Democracy & Technology has released a list of the seven “most wanted surveillance documents.” See the full list here.

The confrontation over the documents “could set the stage for a constitutional showdown over the separation of powers.” The Senate Judiciary Committee had previously scheduled to authorize subpoenas last week, but Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) blocked the Judiciary Committee from voting on the subpoenas.

On May 21, the Senate Judiciary Committee made at least its ninth formal request for the documents, but the Justice Department continued its stonewalling. Leahy issued the following statement about today’s vote:

This stonewalling is unacceptable and it must end. If the Administration will not carry out its responsibility to provide information to this Committee without a subpoena, we will issue one. If we do not, we are letting this Administration decide whether and how the Congress will do its job. […]

Why has this Administration been so steadfast in its refusal? Deputy Attorney General Comey’s account suggests that some of these documents would reveal an Administration perfectly willing to ignore the law. Is that what they are hiding? […]

Whatever the reason for the stonewalling, this Committee has stumbled in the dark for too long, attempting to do its job without the information it needs. We need this information to carry out our responsibilities under the Constitution. Unfortunately, it has become clear that we will not get it without a subpoena. I urge the adoption of the subpoena authorization.

The House Judiciary Committee has also threatened to subpoena the NSA documents. In a hearing last month, Principal Assistant Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Steven Bradbury refused the committee’s request to turn over the papers, but refused to assert executive privilege in doing so.

Current Reading: The Art Of Learning

Learning is hard. It's mostly a lonely, unsparing endeavor. It involves hard struggles with your pride, your cruzzled ego, the ugly things in your soul and the nearly unwinnable arguments with your giant, excuse-filled demons. Not learning is easier at first, but it gets progressively harder. Someone said that the definition of insanity is performing the same failed behavior over and over again while expecting a different outcome, that is a successful, result. It's true that lotteries can be won on rare occasion, and I don't discount the hope that buying the tickets provides. But real learning is a more reliable way up, even if it proceeds by a shovel strike into hard ground followed by each excruciating shovel pull. Learning is a conscious decision to countenance heartbreak face-to-face.

Josh Waitzkin, the subject of the film 'Searching for Bobby Fischer,' is one of the best learners on earth today. My great friend and prophet Still Life Living (SLL) sent me The Art of Learning as a present. And probably as a curse. SLL is on a spiritual quest which I respect and have sometimes shared, and he has sprinkled more than a few grains of sand into the incompletely clamped shell of my oyster crevice. I have so much to thank you for, V. And thanks for this book.

Josh Waitzkin was a chess prodigy. Chess caught his imagination while walking through Washington Square with his mom when he was 6 and he saw the park denizens playing speed chess. He sat down at a table and didn't look back for a dozen years. He drew Gary Kasparov in an exhibition when he was 13, the youngest player ever to do so. He was the US Chess Champion 8 times before he was 16, was the youngest International Master, and his style of play thrived on chaos and intuition. He was very much like Bobby Fischer, only more sane and better socialized. His parents were loving and ideally supportive, and that was a tremendous advantage. But even so, his quest for excellence drew him to the edge of sanity, and he wasn't ready for celebrity. He turned back from Bobby Fischer's path.

After turning away from chess, he sought peace and refuge in a martial art. Tai Chi. It turned out to be like chess, only with his body and neurons. There are two championships of Tai Chi held in Taiwan every couple of years, and in relatively short order, by learning from each loss, he went on to win both Taiwanese titles in 2004. This is as unlikely an accomplishment as a city in Japan fielding a team to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl. Waitzkin re-wired chess moves into his body, rapid-fire, reading the smallest moves and intents. He addressed his weaknesses to become the top martial arts gladiator in the world. Like with chess, only better, he learned numbers in order to forget numbers, and learned forms in order to leave those forms behind. He learned the rules so he could break them. He was able to read the minds of his opponents, and despite their greater athletic gifts, he achieved the impossible in Taiwan, and won their Super Bowl.

In another discipline some time ago, I had the privilege to know a virtuoso. He was possibly the best in the world at what he did. His code name was Krull. By working within the rules and being aware of my weaknesses, I came to be his leader, but I wasn't as good as him. Not anywhere near. He was always great, and could master situations I chose to avoid. He was a martial artist, and his talent was pure. Head-to-head, he would probably have beaten me seven times out of ten. I short-changed myself by fearing his skill, and then compounded it by accepting a role as his manager. I'm not beating myself up for doing a good job or working the system. I only wish I'd left my ego at the door and had been brave enough to learn more from Krull, because he had so much skill to teach.

Paris Hilton Leaves Jail

She was happy, radiant, and left in her mom's SUV to go back to her family's Bel-Air mansion, while behind them trailed a hundred paparazzi. I'm telling you, this woman could end up running the country someday. Oh, and she lost a few pounds while in the impromptu spa, and managed to line up an interview on Larry King for tomorrow night.

After tiring of lampooning her cultivated persona as a clueless child of privilege, she's going to announce an interest in spirituality. She may save the politics for later on. But maybe not. (If you think I'm kidding, here's a test for you: can you think of any other self-lampooning clueless children of privilege who went far in American politics after multiple scrapes with the law? Any beer-swilling, cocaine-snorting, vodka-injecting party animals come to mind??)

In the boring news today, a bunch of Republican Senators led by Richard Lugar said the US should get the hell out of Iraq:

"In my judgment, the costs and risks of continuing down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be achieved," Lugar, R-Ind., said in a Senate floor speech. "Persisting indefinitely with the surge strategy will delay policy adjustments that have a better chance of protecting our vital interests over the long term."

The White House responded by putting up a huge sign on its lawn, which read: NOT DOIN' THE HEARIN'-THING.

Collioure

It's true that when you travel
there's no avoiding Woody Allen.
Every sidewalk artist knows him, and the four
score and seven more sketch-worthy actors
who ambush you from here to Thailand;
transmutations of the monoculture from which we come.

Such harbingers. It reminds me how the prophets
said all the ends of earth express a single sum.
A few foretold of molten glass and crystal seas;
others were happy with brimstone and great heat.
I want to agree, but the spare visions seem to me
like airports in which we find ourselves undone.

Asphalt we may all become. Finally on vacation,
in Provence with Caitlin, all the ancient prophets
can kindly make a pilgrimage to kiss my ass.
We're staying in the backside of a decrepit hotel.
It has stood longer than our country, inconveniently
near a shifting border in a forgotten city,
where fortresses decay in dignified ways.

The Templars fled here, kapice? They hung 2,000 paintings
by pointillists and Fauvists who knew Picasso and Braque.
Painted for drinks and dinners, they were traded on this spot
for the famous fish soups of Rene and Pauline Pous.
I don't see 2,000, but Pauline was a beauty; Picasso
often did her justice in the hallways, and the rooms.

O'Brian the author chose wisely, and Machado
the poet presaged refugees who've not forgotten.
Above the alleyways before Mediterranean mornings,
we'll make love two or maybe three unhurried times.
I'll throw open our creaking, bleached-blue shutters
to admit insistent suns, and invite ascending diesel
fumes and fresh baguettes to join our breakfast.

I'll inspect them for guilt and disinfectants.
Listen, you prophets, this is no Disneyland.
Many were the hidden hands that plied genocides
and silenced honest speakers. You see that hilltop castle,
which floats alight on nothingness? It was once bewitched,
and much besieged. Real heads and bodies rolled on down
to where the Irish band plays 'Ghost Riders' on the shore.

Here is where we exported our most sacred
acts of oral sex to Britain. Here is where we formed
the words for cold and hot. It's where we made soap
from old enemies, and fed tobacco to circus goats.
This is where we ate the last bodies of Neanderthals.
Do you see the hilltops? Those are the same peaks
our forebears fled from, and never stopped to tell us why.

The goats ask for more. We had our first fight,
and miles take long to drive. Towns stagger.
One is named for a dead pig at Carcassone.
Another, near Cahors, for a brilliant whore.
But in Coillure, tonight, there was a gentleman
selling lighters deaf and mute in cafes outdoors.
He left a note with his predicaments at our table;
we bought it, and achieved an absence of America.

I still have it. It's curved like an Algerian dagger,
a shiny cerulean blue. When we tried it then,
and once again at 3AM, there shot out two plumes
of honestly dangerous flame. One jet for each cigarette
of the addicted couple we had become. We smoked,
and began to immolate the unframed paintings.
The paintings hissed like dying Cathars, and splaying
flames admitted the existence of a Great Horned One.

Hmmm...What's Up Doc?

Values are not, and will not be, inculcated by the family, the church, or other social institutions in either the present or the future. They are, and will be, inculcated by the visual and electronic media.

Lester Thurow, 1996

It's all about what you see and what you hear when you is a young-un. As a geometric proof, Bugs Bunny is my role model. My exposure to opera came almost entirely through the Looney Tunes, and specifically 'The Rabbit of Seville.' I must also give some credit to running late at night through the streets to the opera houses of Munich, Vienna, Berlin, Basel, London, and Belgrade. But Bugs Bunny had already had formed my artistic ideas of all the operas I ever saw. My wife and I should probably start making lots of cartoons. And plenty of pictures, videos, podcasts, and blogs. The true language of our tribe. We must overwhelm the visual and electronic media presented to us with something better.

They Never Taught Us What Was Real: Iron and Coke, Chromium Steel

Our grandparents had work, more work than they could handle, and then the work stuttered and was gone. We knew that every child didn't have a very good shot to get as good as their old man got, and we knew we had to leave. Some of us are still waiting for the promises our teachers gave, the rewards for working hard, the promised lands we'd reach if we behaved. And here we are today-aaaay-aaa-aaa-aaaa-aaay-a-ayyy-aaay!

Well we're living here in Allentown
And they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem they're killing time
Filling out forms
Standing in line.

Well our fathers fought the Second World War
Spent their weekends on the Jersey Shore
Met our mothers at the USO
Asked them to dance
Danced with them slow
And we're living here in Allentown.

But the restlessness was handed down
And it's getting very hard to staaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
aaaaaaah aaahhhhh ooooooooh ooooooh ohhhhhhh.

Well we're waiting here in Allentown
For the Pennsylvania we never found
For the promises our teachers gave
If we worked hard
If we behaved.

So the graduations hang on the wall
But they never really helped us at all
No they never taught us what was real
Iron and coke,
Chromium steel.

And we're waiting here in Allentown.
But they've taken all the coal from the ground
And the union people crawled awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaah.

Every child had a pretty good shot
To get at least as far as their old man got.
When something happened on the way to that place
They threw an American flag in our faaaaaaaace, oh oh oh.

Well I'm living here in Allentown
And it's hard to keep a good man down.
But I won't be getting up today-aaaa-aaaaaaa-aaaay-yyyyyyy
aaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaaaah aaaaaaaaah.

And it's getting very hard to stay-aaaa-aaaa-aaay.

And we're living here in Allentown!

The Land And The King Are One

It's all connected, brothers and sisters. The secret of the Holy Grail is that the land can be no better than its king. When more than 4,500 letters and packets aren't delivered to gravely wounded soldiers at Walter Reed hospital, as Hope reports at Deep Confusion, it's part of the kingdom. When a woman begs for help in an Emergency Room, falls to the floor and vomits blood while while nurses walk past ignoring her for three hours and she dies, it's part of the kingdom. The secret is simple. It comes down from the top. From the King's attitude.

Updated: 2:41 p.m. PT June 22, 2007

LOS ANGELES - When Edith Isabel Rodriguez showed up in the emergency room of an inner-city hospital complaining of severe stomach pain, the staff was already familiar with her.

It was at least her third visit to Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in as many days. “You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do,” a nurse told her.

Minutes later, the 43-year-old mother of three collapsed on the floor screaming in pain and began vomiting blood. Employees ignored her, and she was soon dead.

As the article makes clear, many nurses walked past the vomited blood, ignoring the woman writhing on the floor. It's what is deemed permissible, it's about what the overarching King or Queen-conscience calls good or bad. Because the current occupants don't give a damn, there are no consequences. Maybe the woman didn't have health insurance, so of course it was ok to not see her. Hospitals have to make a buck, after all, and the profit motive is all-powerful. But even if she had the best health insurance, I suspect the same thing could've happened. I've seen similar things with my own eyes.

Once, years ago and not too long after 9-11-01, Lord Wife got blood poisoning from a bite inflicted during a freak dog-sitting accident late one night. It was spreading up from a puncture wound on her wrist, spreading by the minute up her arm as we sat in an ER the next morning, a Saturday morning in New York City. Starting at dawn, you could see the redness start to travel in an ugly inflamed red up toward her heart. Because it was a weekend, there was no place else to go but to an ER. While we waited in the ER, during the first of our 4-5 hours there, a pregnant woman staggered up to the desk and begged, "Please, I'm going to have a baby, the pain is so bad, please help." The desk clerk yelled at her and pointed back to the chairs, "I told you once and I'm telling you again, ma'am, go sit back down until we call you." The woman leaked her baby's fluids on the floor next to us, hoping for help on a Saturday morning, and like her, we waited helpless. The desk staff were waiting for their shift change at noon, and no patients were being called. The staff was clicking on computer keyboards.

Unlike the woman about to give birth, and paradoxically, we were taken into a spare pediactric room where we waited for a couple more hours. An Indian internist came by and told my future wife by that afternoon, "We might be able to save your arm." Relieved a doctor was finally there, I asked for a bathroom, and he pointed me to the main lobby. I went left and right and left and right again, and was at the bathroom off the main entrance to one of the more reportedly competent hospitals in the US.

I entered the restroom off the main lobby, and upon entering I saw a sixty-ish man, probably Latino, leaning over the sink. He was in shock and leaking steady streams of blood from the left side of his upper chest down his formerly white shirt. He also had a head wound over his eye. I desperately had to pee, and did so. While I did I watched him. He stayed patiently bleeding, moaning, ans swaying unsteadily over the sink. I think he intended to wash his face and shirt, but wasn't up to the task; it might have been a knife. It might have been a piece of a steering wheel, or, less likely, from a small-caliber gun. I tried to talk to him, but we couldn't communicate, and by his moans and by pointing I held his body and he led me back to where he had come from, towards the main entrance, retracing the blood from his wounds which had spilled a trail on the floor from the main doors to the the admittance desk, and then to the bathroom. He had walked to the desk and been sent away.

I marched him up to the admittance guard and said, "You take care of him now. Help him. Your problem." The guard also apparently didn't speak English, and was angry, but saw the blood, coursing, and pushed some buttons. I gestured to the dots of blood coming in from the entryway, pressed the bleeding man in shock to the desk, stared daggers, and shook my head. Then I left. No one took him from me. I don't know if he got care. There was no one there who gave a damn. I couldn't help wondering who did, but had to go back to my fiancee.

There were no sheets or blankets when we finally made it to the hospital bed, and antibiotic IV dripping from her arm at 11PM. The bed was utterly bare to the mattress, and the nurse at the night-station ordered me to go to the linen closet to make it up. In the closet, there were no blankets, and there were only a few sheets. I made the best I could do with 3 sheets, and slept in a chair by the foot of the bed. About then, someone vomited in the hallway outside the nurses' station, where it stayed for 8 hours and I traipsed around it 3 times during that night, while I kept checking the state of my wife's festering fore-arm.

A 92-year old woman raved incoherently in the bed next to us. She finally received some special treatment after the next morning's visit from her Russian mafia son from Brighton Beach, who looked like Tony Soprano and seemed to effectively threaten and bribe the nurses. Her treatment improved immediately, and the nurses became very sweet. Ours didn't, and we still owe more than $4,000 which our insurance hasn't paid, and which we refuse to pony up. On one instance an intern was sent in, looked at my fiancee's chart, said not a word, and left. That chart note was charged out at $770.

Update: Our last trip to the ER was with our baby son, who had managed to fall on a windowsill and put his tooth into his upper lip. I was holding him at admitting, writhing and shrieking on my lap, impatiently answering questions and transferring insurance information to a thoroughly immune, keyboard-tapping clerk. Then she asked me a question which sent me 'round the bend: "What is your religion?" I responded: "Religion?? Look! Are you going to give my son care or not?" As it turns out, they did not provide care. The doctor in the ER, fearing liability, literally dared not touch our baby. The doctor promised him a painkiller, but then did his best to disappear, and in two hours there my son received not so much as an ice cube while the doctor cowered behind the nurse's station. At some point my son's tooth finished pushing out through the front of his lip, and that relieved his pain somewhat. The hospital, known as one of the best in the country, had decided to call a pediactric othodontic specialist who was coming off shift from another hospital in a couple of hours, so rather than deal with us at all and risk liability, they let us wait. Failure to provide care is a liability, too.

We are locked in systems which, more and more, day by day, view us as cattle. The only things which matter are the organizations which have become immortal. The MSNBC article about Edith Rodriguez says the hospital "may" lose its license. Somehow I doubt it will. The rot pervading every system in this country is coming from the top.

The Cheney Entity: Vaporous Apparition? Or Skeksis?

They're not even bothering to write memos to claim power anymore. They're just making stuff up. Government is gone. It has been replaced by the Skeksis, the corrupt, vulture-like rulers of Planet Thra. In case you're not familiar with Thra or the Skeksis, they're from 'The Dark Crystal,' an allegorical movie about the Bush Administration. They inhabit a castle and feed off the world's energy and churn out ruin and decay. Dick Cheney is in the Skekna, or slave-master, as you can plainly see in the photo above.

Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino defended Dick Cheney’s claim of existing outside the Executive Order (EO) that governs the preservation of classified data, a directive which applies to all Executive Branch officials.

Dismissing the topic as “a little bit of a nonissue,” Perino said President Bush “gets to decide whether or not [Cheney] should be treated separately, and he’s decided that he should.” She then suggested there was textual evidence in the 2003 Executive Order to support the claim that it was not applicable to Cheney:

PERINO: If you look on page 18 of the EO, when you have a chance, there’s a distinction regarding the Vice President versus what is an agency. And the President also, as the author of an EO, and the person responsible for interpreting the EO, did not intend for the Vice President to be treated as an agency, and that’s clear.

Last night, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported that his staff fact-checked Perino’s claim, looked at page 18 of the order, and found Perino’s claim to be false:

OLBERMANN: No exemption at all for the Vice President on page 18. So we emailed the White House, which referred us to section 1.3 — which is about something else altogether — and 5.2 — which makes no mention of the Vice President. In fact, there is no exemption for the President or the Vice President when it comes to reporting on classified material.

Watch it:

Sec. 6.1(b) of Bush’s 2003 executive order governing classified material explicitly states that it applies to any “‘Executive agency…any ‘Military department’…and any other entity within the executive branch that comes into the possession of classified information.” Olbermann concluded that Cheney’s defiance must lead to the following conclusion: “He’s no longer an entity of any kind.”

(Courtesy of Think Progress and Keith Olbermann)