Let’s see. I’ve had one hell of a past twenty-four hours.
First the File Transfer program I utilize to update my website (Ipswitch Pro 2006) decided to up and quit. More fool I for downloading the damn thing off isohunt. The search for a freeware program that would do the same thing consumed several hours. Fortunately, I discovered Smart FTP, a reasonable facsimile of Ipswitch that’s offered free of charge to poor bastards like myself.
Unfortunately my search took me far into the bowls and back alleys of these here internets, allowing my computer to contract several malicious Trojans, viruses, and a veritable shitload of adware. Their combined might overwhelmed my poor, outdated antivirus program, forcing me to update it’s sorry ass before I could do a blessed thing.
The program, I must tell you, is the shiz-nit. Its name is Panda. Panda Titanium, and while that would make a wonderful name for a band it makes an even better piece of anti-malware. Now, I’m a fairly anti-consumption kind of guy. I’m fairly stingy when it comes to praising this-or-that produce (just look how long it’s been since I gave a movie a five-star rating). Apart from the latex condom (which has save my life many a time) I’ve rarely found a piece of modern technology worth as many of my kudos as Panda.
I could’ve saved myself the trouble and just asked Nathan, my webmaster extraordinaire, where he got a-hold of his copy of Ipswitch…but that would’ve marked the third time I’d troubled him for the damn thing. Third as in, Third time’s the charm. Third as in, Three strikes you’re out. Third as in, I’m neurotic, okay? Gimmie a frickin’ break. I’ve got viruses coming out the woodwork.
And dear Lord its time to shut this thing down and go to work. Outside my window the sun is shinning bright enough of bleach the sky. I’m staring down the belly of an hour long commute, plus eight hours of sitting around on my ass. Only the promise of air conditioning holds any solace for me.
I know this is fascinating. The Adventures of a Neurotic Internet Film Critic. It could be a sitcom, a monthly column, or a comic book.
Somehow, in all of this, I managed to review Shaun of the Dead. Another three-G film. What a surprise. Makes you wonder: are these movies really three-star shows? Or have I been doing this so long, run so much movie-related verbiage through my brain, that I’ve sent whatever shred of perspective I once had ass-over-teakettle?
I’ll be thinking about that over the course of the next eight hours. Because I certainly won’t be thinking about work.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Monday, June 26, 2006
Monday, June 19, 2006
Hopeful Words From Noam Chomsky
"Organizing against the occupation is far easier now than it was at comparable stages of the Vietnam war. The Iraq war was unique in hundreds of years of history of Europe and the US. It is the first act of aggression that elicited enormous mass protest against a war before it was even launched. The spirit of opposition remains alive and widespread, far more so than in the 1960s. And as then -- or in the earlier civil rights movements, or the later women's, environmental, anti-nuclear, solidarity, global justice movements and others -- small sparks can ignite large-scale commitment that may seem dormant, but is just below the surface. That is how every achievement for justice and peace has been won in the past, and there is no reason to suppose that the future will be any different."
From chomsky.info
Sunday, June 18, 2006
Watering Netroots
There is no subject more depressing, more spent, more trod upon than politics. At least, for me. I’m a current events junkie. And an absolutist. As such, mine our opinions widely held by other current events junkies, radical activists and arm chair political quarterbacks from here all the way to Daily Kos…where I’ve just registered for membership.
Why the hell not? I figured. The worst that could happen: I waste hours of time reading through hundreds of largely short, largely sweet, and occasionally grammatically incorrect postings on a wide variety of issues. And do…what exactly?
Nothing. Except reading and writing, posting back. I feel like I’m fifteen again, when the Internet was green a good, before the Millennium came and went without bang or whimper and the crystal cracked.
The Internet is a glorious thing. James Burke saw it coming, and like so many voices other voices throughout history his was lost in the wilderness. Drowned out by the sound of timber company chainsaws. Because who watches BBC, anyway? And even if they do, who takes something they can use from the experience?
Apart from me, that is. I’ve gone out and got myself a shinny new world view, complete with its own overarching socio-political philosophy. It is an anarcho-radicalist vision of the present backed by a real politick understanding of the past. Unfortunately I am no Karl Marx and cannot offer some glorious utopian vision of the future. Our old friend Karl (and this is one of those statements that’s so idiotically obvious it seems almost a waste to mention) was a product of his particular time and place, and according to the reality he made for himself, History was the glorious story of the proletariat’s inevitable rise to power.
We saw what came of that. We saw what Mao, a century later, made of it. Their little red books glare out from my bookshelf, along with dozens of others, and mock me in my literary impotence.
I am not Karl, or Father Mao, and do what they have done. Nor do I want to. Their ideas have killed more people than Hitler’s. I read the words inside those books and see the gulags of Siberia, the closed universities of Manchuria. I see young men and women torturing their college professors. I see writers dying for daring to critique the words inside these little red books and I know I cannot be Karl, or Mao, or Ho Chi Minh. I won’t have others killing for me…more than likely, I’ll be killed myself. Purged like Trotsky and barely remembered, found face-up in some ditch by the side of the road.
And besides, the world has moved on, as Roland of Gilead says. Books no longer have the power they once held. Since when have you seen the disheveled youth of this or any country rallying en masse with books over their heads? The Cultural Revolution only worked because, back in the sixties, people actually read. More importantly, they carried the words with them, into the streets. The same is true for the American nineteenth century Labor movement, and for its twentieth century protégés: Civil Rights, Feminism, Environmentalism…every –ism under the sun.
Yet, that was then. This is now, and this is the year of Yearly Kos. Thousands of bloggers gathering in Las Vegas meet, greet, chat and (of course) blog their way into forging a distinct, organized political movement.
And it appears to have worked, oddly enough.
Yet, as abysses go, this one’s gaze is mighty arresting, particularly at times when it appears to degenerate into a dialectical (or, worse, ideological) circle jerk. In my lurking and my thinking I’ve come to the (admittedly unoriginal) conclusion that political debate in this country is a dead road to nowhere, on both sides of the isle.
In case you haven’t noticed, Mid-term elections are coming. And so far everywhere, from Montana to Virginia, California to Kansas, Vermont to Rode Island to my own adopted home, the story is the same. Low voter turnout. Apathy. Greed. Corruption and misuse of power. No hope. We hear that the American public has woken (as if they’d been sleeping for six years) to discover the horrible ineptitude of those who hold sway over the government. Presidential and congressional approval ratings have tanked in the high thirties. Congress has responded in a glorious display of total ineptitude by giving themselves raises and more vacation time. This Congress will be in session fewer days than the famous Do-Nothing Congress of 1948. They’ll add insult to injury by wasting our time (for we are the ones paying them) debating gay marriage, flag burning, and other red-meat, froth-at-the-mouth non-issues of our day.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party strategists and concerned citizens across the net are scratching various body parts, trying once again to debate and define the stances, philosophy and coherent narrative of “our” party. As if it is, somehow, “ours”.
Yet, it can be, in a way. Thanks to this “glorious” technology real live direct democracy is actually possible for the first time in human history. Any citizen of with computer access (that is, access to a library) can waltz in, sign up for a blog, and send their voice into the digital wilderness. They can sign up for free email and fire off correspondence to all four hundred and thirty-six Congresspeople in minutes (or hours if, like me, you are easily distracted).
It’s not too radical to say this internet is the best tool for democracy since the invention of the printing press. Like Guttenberg’s gold letters, this Internet provides an open forum for the continuous discussion and dissemination of ideas. Ideas that spark action, that spark movement and organization. Indeed, it seems a lot of this country’s problems stem from the replacement of actual political organizing with cocktail party gossip mongering by the same (increasingly smaller) group of people with disposable incomes and pretensions of a social conscious.
They (like the rest of us) are too busy caught up in the day-to-day rat race to really care about politics. Their social action is a veiled attempt at social climbing, smoozing and boozing. They are the campaign consultants and their rich friends, the contributors. We’ll get nowhere waiting for that cavalry to come and save us from the proto-fascist mess we’re in…or, worse, we’ll get what George Custer got while he waited in vain, that is, we’ll get dead.
Yet I’m depressed. As I said, Mid-term elections are coming (already here in some cases, see California’s 50th District) and the great debates of the most often generate (or de-generate, depending my mood) into discussions of tactics. Most specifically, the tactical question of Karl Rove. More specifically still, a tactical question that comes down to one phrase so insidious it cannot even be countenanced: That is, how many of our enemy’s tactics can we used? How do we “win” (which, in these times, amounts to “how do we game shattered, debased, poisoned political system”) without becoming what we hate?
The simple answer is, We don’t. We can’t. We are too moral, too conscientious, and too damn poor to do what our nemesis Turdblossm has done. Nor should we want to. His divisive, debased tactics have only piled shit upon the already fragrant compost heap that is our political discourse. And they work. They (combined with selective gerrymandering and the occasional outright fraud) win elections, as they will again this November.
I do not write that without some pause, for it is an ugly fact, and I will do my best to change it. That is, I’ll vote, and knock on every piece of wood I can find in the hope it will be counted.
And in the mean time, I’ll suggest that the great debates of Daily Kos be realigned, brought outside the box of everyday politricks. We, like the conservatives who so despise us, do not need to waste time defining ourselves for the American public. We have a wide and varied history of political writers (mostly from the last century) who’ve already done the hard work for us. We hear about Lee Atwater, George Will, and William Buckley. But fuck them. We’ve got JFK (Profiles in Courage) John Dewy, George Lakoff, John Rawls…hell, we’ve even got Noam Chomsky if none of those can sate your palette.
We also have the harsh fact of a disaffected, unmotivated, apathetic populous that considers itself “too busy” or (worse) too stupid to get involved in the political process. As Chris Hayes says in his excellent article on Yearly Kos,
But as I explained to the man I buy my cigarettes from yesterday, “You can understand anything, so long as it’s explained well enough for you to understand.”
We must go out unto the people, just like Jesus told his homies, and explain the situation to them. We must do it without spin, without rationalization, without sloganeering or unabashed bullshitting. We must do it to as many people as possible. Our friends. Our neighbors. Our fellow citizens and human beings. We will get nowhere waiting for some “charismatic” leader to pop out of the woodwork and save us all. If we are a movement we must move, and it can be as simple and as easy as moving two steps down my sidewalk to knock on my neighbor’s door and ask, Hey, how ‘bout a beer and little chin wag about politics. That is the key to any form of victory. It is the glue that’s held together every mass movement in history. It also the only thing that has ever really changed the world.
Think about it. Then do it.
Why the hell not? I figured. The worst that could happen: I waste hours of time reading through hundreds of largely short, largely sweet, and occasionally grammatically incorrect postings on a wide variety of issues. And do…what exactly?
Nothing. Except reading and writing, posting back. I feel like I’m fifteen again, when the Internet was green a good, before the Millennium came and went without bang or whimper and the crystal cracked.
The Internet is a glorious thing. James Burke saw it coming, and like so many voices other voices throughout history his was lost in the wilderness. Drowned out by the sound of timber company chainsaws. Because who watches BBC, anyway? And even if they do, who takes something they can use from the experience?
Apart from me, that is. I’ve gone out and got myself a shinny new world view, complete with its own overarching socio-political philosophy. It is an anarcho-radicalist vision of the present backed by a real politick understanding of the past. Unfortunately I am no Karl Marx and cannot offer some glorious utopian vision of the future. Our old friend Karl (and this is one of those statements that’s so idiotically obvious it seems almost a waste to mention) was a product of his particular time and place, and according to the reality he made for himself, History was the glorious story of the proletariat’s inevitable rise to power.
We saw what came of that. We saw what Mao, a century later, made of it. Their little red books glare out from my bookshelf, along with dozens of others, and mock me in my literary impotence.
I am not Karl, or Father Mao, and do what they have done. Nor do I want to. Their ideas have killed more people than Hitler’s. I read the words inside those books and see the gulags of Siberia, the closed universities of Manchuria. I see young men and women torturing their college professors. I see writers dying for daring to critique the words inside these little red books and I know I cannot be Karl, or Mao, or Ho Chi Minh. I won’t have others killing for me…more than likely, I’ll be killed myself. Purged like Trotsky and barely remembered, found face-up in some ditch by the side of the road.
And besides, the world has moved on, as Roland of Gilead says. Books no longer have the power they once held. Since when have you seen the disheveled youth of this or any country rallying en masse with books over their heads? The Cultural Revolution only worked because, back in the sixties, people actually read. More importantly, they carried the words with them, into the streets. The same is true for the American nineteenth century Labor movement, and for its twentieth century protégés: Civil Rights, Feminism, Environmentalism…every –ism under the sun.
Yet, that was then. This is now, and this is the year of Yearly Kos. Thousands of bloggers gathering in Las Vegas meet, greet, chat and (of course) blog their way into forging a distinct, organized political movement.
And it appears to have worked, oddly enough.
Yet, as abysses go, this one’s gaze is mighty arresting, particularly at times when it appears to degenerate into a dialectical (or, worse, ideological) circle jerk. In my lurking and my thinking I’ve come to the (admittedly unoriginal) conclusion that political debate in this country is a dead road to nowhere, on both sides of the isle.
In case you haven’t noticed, Mid-term elections are coming. And so far everywhere, from Montana to Virginia, California to Kansas, Vermont to Rode Island to my own adopted home, the story is the same. Low voter turnout. Apathy. Greed. Corruption and misuse of power. No hope. We hear that the American public has woken (as if they’d been sleeping for six years) to discover the horrible ineptitude of those who hold sway over the government. Presidential and congressional approval ratings have tanked in the high thirties. Congress has responded in a glorious display of total ineptitude by giving themselves raises and more vacation time. This Congress will be in session fewer days than the famous Do-Nothing Congress of 1948. They’ll add insult to injury by wasting our time (for we are the ones paying them) debating gay marriage, flag burning, and other red-meat, froth-at-the-mouth non-issues of our day.
Meanwhile, Democratic Party strategists and concerned citizens across the net are scratching various body parts, trying once again to debate and define the stances, philosophy and coherent narrative of “our” party. As if it is, somehow, “ours”.
Yet, it can be, in a way. Thanks to this “glorious” technology real live direct democracy is actually possible for the first time in human history. Any citizen of with computer access (that is, access to a library) can waltz in, sign up for a blog, and send their voice into the digital wilderness. They can sign up for free email and fire off correspondence to all four hundred and thirty-six Congresspeople in minutes (or hours if, like me, you are easily distracted).
It’s not too radical to say this internet is the best tool for democracy since the invention of the printing press. Like Guttenberg’s gold letters, this Internet provides an open forum for the continuous discussion and dissemination of ideas. Ideas that spark action, that spark movement and organization. Indeed, it seems a lot of this country’s problems stem from the replacement of actual political organizing with cocktail party gossip mongering by the same (increasingly smaller) group of people with disposable incomes and pretensions of a social conscious.
They (like the rest of us) are too busy caught up in the day-to-day rat race to really care about politics. Their social action is a veiled attempt at social climbing, smoozing and boozing. They are the campaign consultants and their rich friends, the contributors. We’ll get nowhere waiting for that cavalry to come and save us from the proto-fascist mess we’re in…or, worse, we’ll get what George Custer got while he waited in vain, that is, we’ll get dead.
Yet I’m depressed. As I said, Mid-term elections are coming (already here in some cases, see California’s 50th District) and the great debates of the most often generate (or de-generate, depending my mood) into discussions of tactics. Most specifically, the tactical question of Karl Rove. More specifically still, a tactical question that comes down to one phrase so insidious it cannot even be countenanced: That is, how many of our enemy’s tactics can we used? How do we “win” (which, in these times, amounts to “how do we game shattered, debased, poisoned political system”) without becoming what we hate?
The simple answer is, We don’t. We can’t. We are too moral, too conscientious, and too damn poor to do what our nemesis Turdblossm has done. Nor should we want to. His divisive, debased tactics have only piled shit upon the already fragrant compost heap that is our political discourse. And they work. They (combined with selective gerrymandering and the occasional outright fraud) win elections, as they will again this November.
I do not write that without some pause, for it is an ugly fact, and I will do my best to change it. That is, I’ll vote, and knock on every piece of wood I can find in the hope it will be counted.
And in the mean time, I’ll suggest that the great debates of Daily Kos be realigned, brought outside the box of everyday politricks. We, like the conservatives who so despise us, do not need to waste time defining ourselves for the American public. We have a wide and varied history of political writers (mostly from the last century) who’ve already done the hard work for us. We hear about Lee Atwater, George Will, and William Buckley. But fuck them. We’ve got JFK (Profiles in Courage) John Dewy, George Lakoff, John Rawls…hell, we’ve even got Noam Chomsky if none of those can sate your palette.
We also have the harsh fact of a disaffected, unmotivated, apathetic populous that considers itself “too busy” or (worse) too stupid to get involved in the political process. As Chris Hayes says in his excellent article on Yearly Kos,
YearlyKos made it clear that the netroots is a vanguard—a smart, savvy, compassionate and courageous vanguard, but a vanguard nonetheless. There's nothing wrong with vanguards, but they do not a majority make.
But as I explained to the man I buy my cigarettes from yesterday, “You can understand anything, so long as it’s explained well enough for you to understand.”
We must go out unto the people, just like Jesus told his homies, and explain the situation to them. We must do it without spin, without rationalization, without sloganeering or unabashed bullshitting. We must do it to as many people as possible. Our friends. Our neighbors. Our fellow citizens and human beings. We will get nowhere waiting for some “charismatic” leader to pop out of the woodwork and save us all. If we are a movement we must move, and it can be as simple and as easy as moving two steps down my sidewalk to knock on my neighbor’s door and ask, Hey, how ‘bout a beer and little chin wag about politics. That is the key to any form of victory. It is the glue that’s held together every mass movement in history. It also the only thing that has ever really changed the world.
Think about it. Then do it.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Slice of Cheap, Wheat Life
I'm outside, smoking, thinking of gods and monsters while our neighbors walk past me on the stairs.
There's a skinny black man with a cardboard box spilling out of his arms. I get up to let him past and he sets it down on the concrete. He says, "Nah, that's cool. I'm goin' back for more stuff."
I nod. —Whatever man. Don't wanna ash on your stuff.
I step aside as he moves back to the parking lot. Upstairs a window opens and the sound of a TV at full blast fills our non-courtyard. Stirring strings of music, unheard since my childhood, float down and I know the TV is playing a trailer for that new Superman movie.
There's a low, scraping sound. The sound I hear through our ceiling. For the thousandth time I wonder what the fuck they're doing up there.
Then a girl comes down the stairs. Skinnier than the man, and lighter. She's got coffee for skin and black satin for hair and I try not to look too hard. I don't want her to see me checking out her teeth for signs of the dreaded Meth Mouth.
She speaks to the black man, who's got another box in his arms. She tells him where to put it and I know its *her*. That it's her voice I've heard screaming out of open windows in the night. That she's the one who's kept me awake and broken the flow of words with her inarticulate imploring.
I try to think of the most personable way I can tell her, "Hey, you know you're voice carries, right?"
I crush my smoke into the dirt and gather myself. She and the black man are walking up the sidewalk. She's talking at him and not offering any help in carrying his load. Not even looking at the cardboard box of assorted household crap he's already placed beneath our spruce tree.
As they're approaching the stairs the girl is on my side. I think back to my canvasser training. I make eye contact. I stick out my hand. I've got a smile on my face and a snarky comment in my mouth, waiting to get out. I stick out my hand.
And she walks right past me. Doesn't even break stride. My presence doesn't even make a dent in her world as she tells the black man exactly where he can set up his armful of stuff and that he'd better hurry. They (whoever they are) are moving furniture up there and the need his hands.
The cardboard box is still there, underneath our tree, when the door to Number Eight slams shut.
"Bitch," I say. Louder than I wanted to, with the windows open and all. The sound of a new Jimmy Olsen telling a new Perry White to look, up in the sky, seems to drown it out. No one cracks open Number Eight to peer down and wonder who would dare to besmirch our neighbor's name.
No one does and I go back inside. Back to my gods and monsters.
There's a skinny black man with a cardboard box spilling out of his arms. I get up to let him past and he sets it down on the concrete. He says, "Nah, that's cool. I'm goin' back for more stuff."
I nod. —Whatever man. Don't wanna ash on your stuff.
I step aside as he moves back to the parking lot. Upstairs a window opens and the sound of a TV at full blast fills our non-courtyard. Stirring strings of music, unheard since my childhood, float down and I know the TV is playing a trailer for that new Superman movie.
There's a low, scraping sound. The sound I hear through our ceiling. For the thousandth time I wonder what the fuck they're doing up there.
Then a girl comes down the stairs. Skinnier than the man, and lighter. She's got coffee for skin and black satin for hair and I try not to look too hard. I don't want her to see me checking out her teeth for signs of the dreaded Meth Mouth.
She speaks to the black man, who's got another box in his arms. She tells him where to put it and I know its *her*. That it's her voice I've heard screaming out of open windows in the night. That she's the one who's kept me awake and broken the flow of words with her inarticulate imploring.
I try to think of the most personable way I can tell her, "Hey, you know you're voice carries, right?"
I crush my smoke into the dirt and gather myself. She and the black man are walking up the sidewalk. She's talking at him and not offering any help in carrying his load. Not even looking at the cardboard box of assorted household crap he's already placed beneath our spruce tree.
As they're approaching the stairs the girl is on my side. I think back to my canvasser training. I make eye contact. I stick out my hand. I've got a smile on my face and a snarky comment in my mouth, waiting to get out. I stick out my hand.
And she walks right past me. Doesn't even break stride. My presence doesn't even make a dent in her world as she tells the black man exactly where he can set up his armful of stuff and that he'd better hurry. They (whoever they are) are moving furniture up there and the need his hands.
The cardboard box is still there, underneath our tree, when the door to Number Eight slams shut.
"Bitch," I say. Louder than I wanted to, with the windows open and all. The sound of a new Jimmy Olsen telling a new Perry White to look, up in the sky, seems to drown it out. No one cracks open Number Eight to peer down and wonder who would dare to besmirch our neighbor's name.
No one does and I go back inside. Back to my gods and monsters.
Wednesday, June 14, 2006
Monkey Killing Monkey Over Pieces of the Ground
Since it is Wednesday, and I have to write about something, I’m going to squander a few words endorsing Tool’s new album, 10,000 Days.
Incidentally, I hate music reviews. Movie reviews, I can stomach, even appreciate from a professional standpoint. But who are these sorry sacks of shit reviewing rock shows and album releases in my hometown papers? Where do they come up with all those nonsensical, say-nothing descriptions? Do op-ed music columns come their own magic phrasebooks? Or is there only one? That would make sense, as all the music reviews I read in print have the nasty habit of sounding exactly the same.
I’ll try not to employ any of their tired tropisms. None of that, “The Maynard Machine has done it again,” crap. None of that, “The American five-some once again delivers steaming hot piles of rock in their latest [insert name here]-[insert suffix here, particularly if it ends in an “ism”] offering.”
This is Tool, you bastards. This is Literate Rock. These are not songs about the girl you lost, or the drug problem you’re developing. This is a collection of songs about heroes and angels; about kangaroo courts, getting abducted by aliens and watching in awe the absurd stupidity of the human condition. It is exactly what I expected from the good people who brought me my favorite song, “Ænema”… which if you don’t know, is about California falling into the sea, based loosely off a joke from an old Bill Hicks routine called, “Arizona Bay.”
You see what I mean? Literate Rock, the kind of rock who’s culturally specific double-meanings have inspired gigs of internet traffic. I’ll not add to those any further.
Incidentally, I hate music reviews. Movie reviews, I can stomach, even appreciate from a professional standpoint. But who are these sorry sacks of shit reviewing rock shows and album releases in my hometown papers? Where do they come up with all those nonsensical, say-nothing descriptions? Do op-ed music columns come their own magic phrasebooks? Or is there only one? That would make sense, as all the music reviews I read in print have the nasty habit of sounding exactly the same.
I’ll try not to employ any of their tired tropisms. None of that, “The Maynard Machine has done it again,” crap. None of that, “The American five-some once again delivers steaming hot piles of rock in their latest [insert name here]-[insert suffix here, particularly if it ends in an “ism”] offering.”
This is Tool, you bastards. This is Literate Rock. These are not songs about the girl you lost, or the drug problem you’re developing. This is a collection of songs about heroes and angels; about kangaroo courts, getting abducted by aliens and watching in awe the absurd stupidity of the human condition. It is exactly what I expected from the good people who brought me my favorite song, “Ænema”… which if you don’t know, is about California falling into the sea, based loosely off a joke from an old Bill Hicks routine called, “Arizona Bay.”
You see what I mean? Literate Rock, the kind of rock who’s culturally specific double-meanings have inspired gigs of internet traffic. I’ll not add to those any further.
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Friday, June 09, 2006
Short and Sweet and Sour
Pure house cleaning today. In the real world I did dishes. I have one final paper to write for this term of school and then it’s off to the Semi-comatose Clock Watching World again. Ah, the summer job, how I hate the already.
In here I completed that latest in a long line of surveys that modern technology has given me: the User Profile on your right. I know I’m supposed to fill these things out in that first mad rush of enthusiasm that’s supposed to follow any initial sign-up period. But, frankly, the things bore me. No, worse…they offend me in some far off, needling way. They’re so asinine these things, and so boringly regular. If I see one more Javascript form asking me to list my “Favorite Music” I’m going to spit right through my annoying neighbor’s open car window.
And lookee here. Fourth question down under the extraordinarily Freudian Extended Info heading. As if I, or anyone in the world, can rattle of some spontaneous list of my “favorite” music. Are we, as Americans, patriotically compelled to keep these lists of (ten? Twelve? Thirteen?) different musical artists at hand in case of terrorist attack? Should I add my old Lenard Cohen LPs to the Emergency Preparedness Kit? They’d fit in great next to the liquor and the spare ammunition.
People are dying as I write this. It’s something I can’t seem to get over. Yet every day I go to campus and see the same kind of urban multitude you’d expect to see at a college. Hundreds of students, if not thousands, going about their lives, seemingly oblivious.
And that’s the hell of it. We keep hearing in this age of rampant technology that we’re better informed now than ever before. Yet in the areas of our lives that so vitally require us to be informed (like, say public policy) we remain woefully in the dark, leaving decisions to be mad by the slobbering idiots who manage to worm their way into our minds and our public offices.
Like Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who said on last weeks 60 Minutes that we should spend “billions more” to wall off the entire border. Or William Jefferson (D-LA) who kept ninety thousand dollars, cash, stashed in tin foil in his freezer. It’s the latest in investment strategies from our nation’s capital.
Better than hiding it in your mistress’ thong.
In here I completed that latest in a long line of surveys that modern technology has given me: the User Profile on your right. I know I’m supposed to fill these things out in that first mad rush of enthusiasm that’s supposed to follow any initial sign-up period. But, frankly, the things bore me. No, worse…they offend me in some far off, needling way. They’re so asinine these things, and so boringly regular. If I see one more Javascript form asking me to list my “Favorite Music” I’m going to spit right through my annoying neighbor’s open car window.
And lookee here. Fourth question down under the extraordinarily Freudian Extended Info heading. As if I, or anyone in the world, can rattle of some spontaneous list of my “favorite” music. Are we, as Americans, patriotically compelled to keep these lists of (ten? Twelve? Thirteen?) different musical artists at hand in case of terrorist attack? Should I add my old Lenard Cohen LPs to the Emergency Preparedness Kit? They’d fit in great next to the liquor and the spare ammunition.
People are dying as I write this. It’s something I can’t seem to get over. Yet every day I go to campus and see the same kind of urban multitude you’d expect to see at a college. Hundreds of students, if not thousands, going about their lives, seemingly oblivious.
And that’s the hell of it. We keep hearing in this age of rampant technology that we’re better informed now than ever before. Yet in the areas of our lives that so vitally require us to be informed (like, say public policy) we remain woefully in the dark, leaving decisions to be mad by the slobbering idiots who manage to worm their way into our minds and our public offices.
Like Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who said on last weeks 60 Minutes that we should spend “billions more” to wall off the entire border. Or William Jefferson (D-LA) who kept ninety thousand dollars, cash, stashed in tin foil in his freezer. It’s the latest in investment strategies from our nation’s capital.
Better than hiding it in your mistress’ thong.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
And You Shall Know Him
The Beast shall slip loose his chains and walk among you and you will not see him. Unless you turn on your television.
--D
--D
Monday, June 05, 2006
Dream
I'm on a city bus heading towards a play that is also, somehow, a Democratic Party fundraiser. My roommate, my roommate's girlfriend, and a goodly collection of my roommate's loose social circle are on the bus with me, all dressed for success. I am not in the play and am on the bus only because of them. It is my roommate and her girlfriend and hold my attention. These other people are phantoms. Shades.
So I talk to them as our bus draws further and further from the side of town I know. We enter a place of gentle, rising hills and enormious houses. I know this is no part of my adaopted city and yet keep on.
The bus arrives and the social circle begins to depart. My roommate's girlfriend stands up and I'm face-to-crotch with her in the bus' isle. They have preperations to make because the play's the thing and they are only players. "We'll see you," my roommate says. Then they're gone.
I disembark and find myself on a green lawn that slopes down to someone's lake. There are few lakes around these parts so I do not know its name. The ground is half lawn, half highway rest stop because I find a wooden table and have a sit in the dream sunlight. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and her daughter, Chelsea (now blonde, for some reason) spred a towel across the grass. I think of introducing myself the New York's junior Senator, telling her this is no time for anyone to give a shit about flag burning, least of all the hotshot law school peacnick from Illinois I know sleeps, somewhere, within that centrist, professional shell.
I turn to think about what I'd like to say, only to turn back and find the Clinton females gone. They've retired to the house.
The dream house is two parts palatial mansion, one part the apartment I'm staying in now, and like all dream houses it is as maliable as the dream itself. I sneak my way in through an open door and the interior resembles an aging school office. Desks squat on all sides, filled with papers. Papers crowd out ever flat surface--even the wide, polished oak banister that cradles the staircase. I run my hand over them as I make my way downstairs, trying not to knock them off an annouce my presence to whoever might lurk below. I am uncomfortably aware that I have no business being here. No business chasing down the junior Senator from New York...or her daughter...no matter what I might like to say to either of them. (Most of what I'd say to Chelsea falls into the, "Hey...nice shoes...wanna fuck?" category...thankfully this is not one of those dreams.)
Below the desk farm is a long, cement corridor that reminds me of the labyrinths under my high school gym, gone but not forgotten. There are people there. Too many people, seated in the benches that, improbably, march up the side of the wall. Who in their right mind would put a gym inside the bottom of their house? I wonder as a rustle moves through the crowd. Bill is comming. Our Man from Hope is about to arrive and in these times we so desperetly need hope.
All I need is a bathroom, and an escape route from the impending mob scene. So I turn down a corridor and find carpet under my feet. The corridor leads to a spacious, white den, big screen TV, couch and all. A woman glides by me (the way dream people do) and tells me, "It's to your right."
I thank her and take a left, finding a spiral staircase leading down. I wonder where it goes, unconcerned my need to pee has vanished. There's a sound behind me. Voices. Whoever they are, I suddenly know they are on their way for me.
So down I go like I'm two thousand flushes, taking the spiral staircase in one leap. I find myself in what could be a hallway next to the open door of what could be a child's room. There's a green couch in there, one end propped against the wall, so long it almost touches the ceiling. Who the hell would lean their couch against the wall? What kind of children live in a crazy place like this?
"He went that way."
Indeed I did. And whoever they are they certainly saw me. Thankfully one wall of this hallway is made of sliding glass doors. I open them and fine myself back in the yard. Enormious flowering plants bloom, supported by wicker trellises. I crawl beneith one, my dream heart pounding, as two men in red suits exist the house, looking for me. The suits are lycra--running costumes--and the men are fat. It's not a pleasent sight. They look around and shake their heads. The Uninvited One has escaped them. The elite are safe from class conscious interlopers...for now. The men in the red suits move away. And just as I'm about to leave my hiding place among the green and the dirt I wake up.
And that's that.
So I talk to them as our bus draws further and further from the side of town I know. We enter a place of gentle, rising hills and enormious houses. I know this is no part of my adaopted city and yet keep on.
The bus arrives and the social circle begins to depart. My roommate's girlfriend stands up and I'm face-to-crotch with her in the bus' isle. They have preperations to make because the play's the thing and they are only players. "We'll see you," my roommate says. Then they're gone.
I disembark and find myself on a green lawn that slopes down to someone's lake. There are few lakes around these parts so I do not know its name. The ground is half lawn, half highway rest stop because I find a wooden table and have a sit in the dream sunlight. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and her daughter, Chelsea (now blonde, for some reason) spred a towel across the grass. I think of introducing myself the New York's junior Senator, telling her this is no time for anyone to give a shit about flag burning, least of all the hotshot law school peacnick from Illinois I know sleeps, somewhere, within that centrist, professional shell.
I turn to think about what I'd like to say, only to turn back and find the Clinton females gone. They've retired to the house.
The dream house is two parts palatial mansion, one part the apartment I'm staying in now, and like all dream houses it is as maliable as the dream itself. I sneak my way in through an open door and the interior resembles an aging school office. Desks squat on all sides, filled with papers. Papers crowd out ever flat surface--even the wide, polished oak banister that cradles the staircase. I run my hand over them as I make my way downstairs, trying not to knock them off an annouce my presence to whoever might lurk below. I am uncomfortably aware that I have no business being here. No business chasing down the junior Senator from New York...or her daughter...no matter what I might like to say to either of them. (Most of what I'd say to Chelsea falls into the, "Hey...nice shoes...wanna fuck?" category...thankfully this is not one of those dreams.)
Below the desk farm is a long, cement corridor that reminds me of the labyrinths under my high school gym, gone but not forgotten. There are people there. Too many people, seated in the benches that, improbably, march up the side of the wall. Who in their right mind would put a gym inside the bottom of their house? I wonder as a rustle moves through the crowd. Bill is comming. Our Man from Hope is about to arrive and in these times we so desperetly need hope.
All I need is a bathroom, and an escape route from the impending mob scene. So I turn down a corridor and find carpet under my feet. The corridor leads to a spacious, white den, big screen TV, couch and all. A woman glides by me (the way dream people do) and tells me, "It's to your right."
I thank her and take a left, finding a spiral staircase leading down. I wonder where it goes, unconcerned my need to pee has vanished. There's a sound behind me. Voices. Whoever they are, I suddenly know they are on their way for me.
So down I go like I'm two thousand flushes, taking the spiral staircase in one leap. I find myself in what could be a hallway next to the open door of what could be a child's room. There's a green couch in there, one end propped against the wall, so long it almost touches the ceiling. Who the hell would lean their couch against the wall? What kind of children live in a crazy place like this?
"He went that way."
Indeed I did. And whoever they are they certainly saw me. Thankfully one wall of this hallway is made of sliding glass doors. I open them and fine myself back in the yard. Enormious flowering plants bloom, supported by wicker trellises. I crawl beneith one, my dream heart pounding, as two men in red suits exist the house, looking for me. The suits are lycra--running costumes--and the men are fat. It's not a pleasent sight. They look around and shake their heads. The Uninvited One has escaped them. The elite are safe from class conscious interlopers...for now. The men in the red suits move away. And just as I'm about to leave my hiding place among the green and the dirt I wake up.
And that's that.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Random Quote of the Day
Both The Daily Show and Colbert Report are off this week, and if there's one thing I hate, it's re-runs. The whole appeal of these shows is that they deliver on their promises. They are the anti-Nightly News for millions of slobbering current events junkies and whenever they take a week off something horrible seems to happen.
Hurricane Katrina, anyone?
Therefore, I present this (from the Onion AV Club)
Hurricane Katrina, anyone?
Therefore, I present this (from the Onion AV Club)
Truthiness is tearing apart our country, and I don't mean the argument over who came up with the word. I don't know whether it's a new thing, but it's certainly a current thing, in that it doesn't seem to matter what facts are. It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that's not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It's certainty. People love the president because he's certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don't seem to exist. It's the fact that he's certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?
--Stephen Colbert
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)