A PERFECT SUMMARY OF THE SAD YEAR 2006

I can think of nothing else to say, as the grim year of 2006 prepares to give way to what may prove to be an even worse 2007.

Happy trails, people!

SCATTERBRAINED POT-SHOTS AT AN ANCIENT DRUIDIC/CELTIC MIDWINTER RITUAL TRANSFORMED INTO A PHONY CHRISTIAN SHOPPING CIRCLE-JERK

The title of this post pretty much says it all, so there’s actually no point in continuing with this miserable monkey-motion. All people who still possess functional brainstems know full well what’s wrong with the Christmas thing, at least as far as it concerns its appallingly empty modern-day permutation. My overwrought, semi-misinformed opinions and bloviated generalizations have nothing to offer, in any sense of the word; but, as is the case with the millions of other unimaginative morons and deep-seated cynics and purveyors of sheer inexplicable bullshit out there -- in other words, the great bulk of all the yahoos in blog land -- being a half-baked ignoramus with nothing polite to say about anything is no reason to keep your trap shut. So, here we are.

Now that I think about it, I’m fairly well sick of my own particular brand of viscous negativity, as I’m sure everybody is. I’ll leave it to the following quotes to place this “holiday season” in its proper context, from historical thinkers a whole hell of a lot smarter, skeptical, and cynical than I could ever hope to be ...

I am sorry to have to introduce the subject of Christmas ... It is an indecent subject; a cruel, gluttonous subject; a wicked, cadging, lying, filthy, blasphemous, and demoralizing subject. Christmas is forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers and the press: on its own merits it would wither and shrivel in the fiery breath of universal hatred; and anyone who looked back to it would be turned into a pillar of greasy sausages.

--George Bernard Shaw, Our Theatres in the Nineties, Volume 3
January 1, 1898

Yeah, that’s a good one. Then there’s this:

Or consider Christmas -- could Satan in his most malignant mood have devised a worse combination of graft plus buncombe than the system whereby several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop-clerks die of exhaustion while selling them and every other child in the western world is made ill from overeating -- all in the name of the lowly Jesus?

--Upton Sinclair, Money Writes!, 1927

Merry flippin’ Christmas.

I REALLY SHOULD STOP HANGING AROUND ALL THESE DRUNK BASTARDS

I regretfully admit that I don’t devote the necessary brain space to the plethora of disasters the Bush junta is constantly manufacturing for us, as perhaps I should. There’s small consolation in the fact that I’m hardly unique in this rather shabby regard; the chattering gaggle of disgusting drunks, big-screen TV sports dorks, and worthlessly generic barstool monkeys -- my sadly degenerate circle of acquaintances in this foul epoch -- if anything, seem more determined to obscure the ugly, doom-filled implications of present-day reality than I’ve ever been. I guess they wouldn’t be the mildly entertaining alcohol-soaked wastoids they are, otherwise.

You know, these pathetic nitwits force me to consider that maybe, just maybe, indifference might really be the ultimate coping device. We’re all just trying to cope, in one way or another, so I wonder: turning yourself into a self-willed ignoramus, soaking up beer and artery-busting bar food like a disease-riddled biological sponge, and rabidly and loudly declaiming about televised sports as if they actually mattered ... is that any less legitimate than being “engaged” and/or “informed,” as most of us on the left-leaning edge of the blog world like to think of ourselves? In such a ridiculous era of public disengagement, where democratic participation is a fiction and corporate subversion rages virtually unchallenged, is there any real value in the assumption that our commitment and dedication will turn things around? Does it make any sense at all to work ourselves into a frothy lather over the prospect of a Democratically-controlled Congress and all its “off the table” bullshit, when the season premier of “American Idol” is merely weeks away? Why give thought to war and death when we have credit card limits to stretch beyond all recognition, in the pseudo-celebration ritual commemorating the supposed birth of the Christian messiah?

Criminy ... I may never actually give properly serious thought to the temporal catastrophes glaring at us like bloody vibrating tumors, but I must at least stop patronizing these bars full of stupid people. It doesn’t seem to be doing much for my already shredded state of mind.

SLOPPY RUMINATIONS ON THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP

Here on the blasted extremity of the last dribbling remnants of the American dream -- as strained through the spasmo cheesecloth of California “culture” -- thinking people have little choice anymore but to rage and scream and holler and howl and break shit into tiny pieces ... The fact that very little overt screaming and howling and breaking actually occurs speaks gobs about the rather fossilized nature of the human thought process itself, here at the “golden” ass-end of nowhere. Oh, I know, the voters “spoke” and managed to elect a Democratic Congress in defiance of Republican voter suppression and Diebold. What the hell does that really prove? While doing their part to temporarily disable the Repug monopoly in Washington, as welcome as that is on the surface, the nitwits and knuckleheads here also sent Schickelgruber back to the governor’s office, by a ridiculously wide margin. How’s that for “thinking”?

Whatever. Examples of the all-too-common tendency of a woefully misinformed populace using its collective head as an ambulatory hat rack are legion; the re-election of a former Austrian steroid-abusing Nazi-wannabe as the governor of California is truly a somewhat minor, if unduly high-profile, permutation of this sad proclivity. No, of all the myriad manifestations of dumbness stomping their way relentlessly across our bruised and bleeding sensibilities these days, one in particular has propped itself up directly in the foreground of my rapidly deteriorating vision, like a vibrating tumor with a hair growing out of it: the so-called Iraq Study Group, or ISG.

To be more precise, it’s the anticipated reaction to this nebulous travesty of misinformation and confusion, this Iraq Study Group, that exemplifies the predilection of human beings to gleefully extend the boundaries of their own stupidity whenever they can, rather than the mere existence of the ISG itself. Many corporate media dispensers, pundit-apologists, and assorted gum-flappers are fairly gushing all over themselves as they eagerly await the public release of this PR-front’s “recommendations.” In an excellent article by Larry Chin, at the Centre for Research on Globalization, the ISG is aptly described as

another official damage control apparatus, spearheaded by notorious Western political and corporate elites, former military-intelligence officers, and “experts” from right-wing and intelligence-connected Western think tanks ...

The list of some of the ISG’s more top-rung members, including such proto-NeoCons and Iran-Contra-era retreads as James Baker, Edwin Meese, and Lawrence Eagleburger -- among others -- should effectively disabuse any normal person with a functional brainstem from harboring any illusions whatsoever as to what the Iraq Study Group is all about.

But, yes, I know: the two or three people who accidentally trip across this blog occasionally are already among the ragged rabble of cynical loudmouths and liberty-minded skeptics that make the left end of the blogosphere so exasperatingly entertaining, and are about as likely to take the Iraq Study Group seriously as a Republican insider does Nancy Pelosi ... so they certainly don’t need to be lectured by the likes of me about yet another fraud being perpetrated on us by the power structure. My concern, as always, lies with the vast heaving mass of molting morons out there -- TV addicts, cell-phone freaks, Vichyite Dems who help re-install Repug governors -- who refuse to see what’s going on right in front of their doughy, over-fed faces. You know that the sheeple will take whatever pours out of the misleading maw of the ISG at something approaching face value, if they deign to take notice at all. I’d say it was all so depressing, if such a statement wasn’t so utterly obvious. Anyway ...

Disjointed postscript: for Lee over at Captain Quahog -- I apologize for the “cynical loudmouth” crack.