the Barstool Chronicles

FOR THOSE STILL LOOKING FOR GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT, OR ANY EMPLOYMENT FOR THAT MATTER

2011-08-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

Just a brief message from the submarine without a periscope:

For those unemployed unfortunates who occasionally hit this blog looking for a copy of California Standard Form 678, Examination/Employment Application, I've decided to offer up a little help in finding the damn thing. Just go to the following site and you'll eventually stumble across it:

California State Personnel Board

I need not point out the fact that one has about as much chance of landing a paying position within the California bureaucracy as, oh, I don't know, pensioned state retirees in the suburbs shutting the fuck up about how government employees are bankrupting everything in sight. But, hope springs eternal -- except, of course, when it doesn't.

So, good luck! You're going to need lots of it -- which I know all too well.

(Back to our regularly scheduled drooling torpor.)

CHUMMING

2011-07-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

Taking a well-deserved breather from blog-trolling and applying for jobs such as Chum Reintroduction Coordinator (who says that there aren’t any government jobs to be had these days?); while I’ve been put in mind of the atrocious employment situation, which I can hardly avoid, Chris Hedges administers the coup de grace, at least for today. He’s talking about his former bosses at The New York Times, but it’s far too easy to see the universality of his words:

When you allow an institution to provide you with your identity and sense of self-worth you become an obsequious pawn, no matter how much talent you possess. You live in perpetual fear of what those in authority think of you and might do to you. This mechanism of internalized control -- for you always need them more than they need you -- is effective. The rules of advancement at the paper are never clearly defined or written down. Careerists pay lip service to the stated ideals of the institution, which are couched in lofty rhetoric about balance, impartiality and neutrality, but astutely grasp the actual guiding principle of the paper, which is: Do not significantly alienate the corporate and political power elite on whom the institution depends for access and money. Those who master this duplicitous game do well. Those who cling tenaciously to a desire to tell the truth, even at a cost to themselves and the institution, become a management problem. This creates tremendous friction within the paper. I knew reporters with a conscience who would arrive at the paper and vomit in the restroom from nervous tension before starting work. If Rossi had examined the effects of this institutional hubris and the pathology of the paper’s self-infatuation, if he had looked at the paper’s large and small failures as well as its successes, he would have pushed past the myth of the Great Oz, peddled to him by the paper’s editors and minions like Carr, and uncovered its troubled core.

Now, that’s what I call motivational.

Back to the darkness.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPELESSNESS

2011-07-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

What I can’t figure out is that, for some reason, it all looks so “normal.”

That’s usually the first thought that intrudes, unbidden and unwanted, whenever I make one of these infrequent forays out of the existential mole-hole. I briefly poke my head out of the involuntary sanctuary in which it’s lodged -- an ambiguous limbo-land tethered to one or another of the socio-economic reality cracks designed and constructed by our obvious betters, the Masters of Everything -- and I marvel at the overwhelming “prosaicness” of things. The commuters, the atomized automatons, the properly enthused suburban media-consumers, the comfortable anti-union pensioners, the pseudo-Randian declaimers, the energetic youngsters doomed by their ignorance . . . They blithely go about their dubious business as if they didn’t get the memo concerning, you know, the imminent collapse of civilization and the end of the world . . .

Man, I just knew that resuming this blogging thingy would be a mistake. Jeeze.

***

OK -- take two: Six months of wasted motion trying to justify a return to this nonsense. It’s a tough proposition, and it’s not particularly surprising to see that so many bottom-tier blogger colleagues have abandoned the field. Ah, those were the veritable glory days in blog-land, weren’t they? The second coming of the post-modern version of the Bush Crime Family, circa 2006 -- no shortage of outrages from which to draw energy then, you know. The torrential output of snark and bile was truly impressive, even here; a maelstrom of muck, a deliciously vile shitstorm of vituperation, anger, and undifferentiated frustration; a wonderfully chaotic creative mess of pretty good writing, most of the time. Unfortunately, something happened to that scene, something unexpected, perhaps terminal. What a shame.

Well, we could argue endlessly about what that something might have been (I have a few ideas), if anyone seriously wants to explore that rhetorical cul-de-sac. I don’t especially. I mean, I know why I have been in cold storage the last couple of years -- as to my largely disappeared compatriots, could be just about anything. Presumption being merely one vital component of blogging (it simply wouldn’t function without it), I might venture that my friends’ recent experiences probably mirror my own, to a certain extent: unemployment, near-homelessness, destitution, hopeless despair, those sorts of things. A motivated sense of purpose in this weird virtual realm can’t hope to compete with such pressures. A certain amount of tension and conflict is indispensable to the process of creativity, I think most thoughtful people can agree; the sheer, stifling glut of such tension and pressure, salient features of present circumstances, is just fucking ridiculous.

***

So, the question begs -- why now? What’s the point in resuscitating this imposing monument to obscurity? I don’t know. Extreme boredom, maybe. Desperation, perhaps. It certainly isn’t the conviction that it’s going to solve anything; as a mild distraction from disturbing, indistinct impulses toward self-immolation, it might prove useful. Or not. Whatever. In any case, I’ve suppressed my “better” judgment and resolved to re-launch this audacious pea-shooter, this hopeless yapping chihuahua of a blog, and ride it as well as I can, as long as I can. Straight into the crapper, in all likelihood. At least I’ll have plenty of company on that particular trip, and I might even get some of the bad taste of despair out of my mouth in the process.

Like I said: I knew this would be a mistake. Oh well.

WRAPPIN' IT UP

2010-12-31T10:21:00.000-08:00

Since this entry will most likely be the very last one for the calendar year 2010, I thought it would be appropriate enough to summarize my attitude towards the twelve-month period just now limping to a finish. So, without further ado, here goes:

fuck, shit, piss, garbage, vomit, stench, noise, pain, dust, tooth decay, collapse, depression, assholes, smog, greed, arrogance, indifference, stupidity, anger, tension, blood pressure, flat tires, emptiness, failure, disaster, broken computers, disintegration, debt, bill collectors, 13% “official” unemployment (Sacramento County), snapped shoelaces, pot holes, gray hair, deterioration, dents, scratches, bruises, idiots, suburbia, unclipped fingernails, asphalt, perspiration, bad coffee, junk, ignorance, bald spots, rug burns, bankruptcy, war, dislocation, homelessness, deforestation, mass murder, gridlock, toxic waste, hollow spectacle, ants, plastic, deception, endless babbling bullshit, hidebound opinions, clueless certitude, the internet, public libraries, old people, young people, animal fat, monotony, monkey-motion, boogers, racism, Krazy Glue, beer, diesel fuel, seatbelts, Honduran underpants, rust, teabaggers, busted furniture, dogs, hot air, death, phony cordiality, hypocrisy, professional sports, bank charges, sheetrock particulates, bad breath, jury duty, sinus headaches, unconstitutional searches and seizures, cell phones, weight gain, dirt, grime, constipation, corruption, the Clown Train, crap-heads, fender-benders, larceny, propaganda, nitwits, halfwits, fucktards, douchebags, turd-eaters, consumerism, tee-vee, Romanians, suicidal tendencies, wasted motion, revulsion, hackery, lies, squalling toddlers, squalling adults, know-it-alls, know-nothings, snobs, pinheads, shitheads, bastards, spammers, rain, poverty, fraud, ass-gas, dope, hot mustard, heater cores, torpor, sloth, decadence, laziness, gag reflexes, online contests, pitch-correction, tonsil wash, cut-and-paste, crimes against humanity, birdshit, voicemail, debit cards, atomization, wood screws, hub caps, calluses, bitches, cutesy-hyper Valley Girl talk, parking lots, SUV’s, windshield ice, dead squirrels, dumbfucks, pretension, regression, compartmentalization, stereotypes, enormous gaping pie-holes, street signs, large noses, fat lips, giant thighs, scrawny asses, tailgaters, corporate chain coffee dumps full of spastic chittering cross-eyed chimps . . .

If I've left anything out, I sincerely apologize. Whatever.

WARM AND FUZZIES FOR YOUR HOLIDAY DELECTATION

2010-12-10T08:11:00.000-08:00

Gray, wet suburban murk; ugly gloom made worse (if that’s even possible) by the pinheads and dumbfucks who blight an already wrecked, blasted landscape with their dubious presence; non-stop christmas vomit-noise; thoughts of self-destruction clamoring for attention; myopic, infuriatingly insipid vocal-chord polish heaved around in great toxic waves, mostly about professional sports or various tee-vee shows (among other stupidities) . . . Just a normal December day at the bottom of the bottomless hellpit.

What a bloody-assed cluster-fuck of hobnailed asshattery. And that’s on its better days, which, believe me, don’t happen all that often. Makes one wonder just what my goddamned point is then. But that’s a problem pretty much all the time, so who cares? Honestly, I could just shit myself blind right about now. Hardy har.

***

Sitting in a public library on a weekday, and you’ve never seen so many desperately depressed people interspersed with the usual clutch of older folks who don’t appear to give a crap about much of anything, bless their little hearts. Overweight women with cell phones and squalling little monsters in strollers round out this weird tableau of profound hopelessness. Why am I here? It’s a mystery. Could be because habits are hard to break, and consuming free wireless internet bandwidth to no good purpose has certainly become an insatiable top-drawer habit that ain’t going anywhere, at least in the near term.

***

LATER: The coffee-dump zombies won’t stop talking; how is it that some poor, retarded unfortunates were born with their speech apparati up their noses (or some other, less flattering openings in their corporeal envelopes)? Were their parents crack addicts? Did their progenitors accidentally swill, oh, I don’t know, a steaming mug of lacquer thinner, instead of the customary discount beer or industrial vodka sold in plastic bottles? That might begin to explain a few things, above and beyond the superficially trivial (but no less enraging) flatly nasal delivery of apparently endless supplies of malodorous ass-wind inexplicably re-routed through the truncated confines of their fucking heads. But then, why would it matter? I just wish they’d shut up and go away -- the last thing anyone needs is to actually figure out what makes these untermenschen tick, for crying out loud.

We’ve all heard and read plenty of criticism of your average American and his or her unwillingness to engage in meaningful conversation (among an endless litany of outrages and perversions). This criticism is well-warranted, of course. However, I would posit that the only thing worse than suburban androids who don’t talk about anything are suburban androids who do talk about anything. The drivel is absolutely astounding; you’ve never experienced a more amazing melding of minds, a more confident public display of iron-clad self-righteous certitude than that provided, for example, by a garbage truck driver and a washed-out wad of fuck who picks up trash in strip-mall parking lots. What an impressive exhibition of brain power and sheer intellectual prowess -- what is it about suburban rubbish handlers? Who the hell knew they had so many opinions on so many topics of critical importance? I definitely didn’t. Seriously, they leave no stone unturned: corporate business practices, basic economics, the Oakland Raiders, governmental inefficiency and over-regulation, historical expositions on the surprisingly diverse evolutionary path of dumpster lids, opaque references to homeless people who sleep in cardboard boxes and how they’re all criminals . . . and all that is just for starters! In fact, they’re now standing out in the rain, right at this very moment, still flapping their gums! Unbelievable! To be so committed to the “removal of all doubt” about one’s abysmal ignorance. I’d be most impressed if I wasn’t already thoroughly disgusted by the whole fucking thing. AHHHG!

***

Still rainy-ish outside, still no good news to report on anything in particular; no jobs, no hope, no escape, no point, no reason. No nothing, except expanding gut-flab and backaches.

***

Happy holidays! Sigh.

AN "INDEPENDENCE DAY" MESSAGE

2010-07-04T09:43:00.001-07:00

I just wanted to raise my bruised head out of the glurp, the cloying, syrupy goo of unemployment and desperate destitution and stationary panic -- if only for a moment, to suck down a few pointless breaths before resuming the long, steady sinking into . . . whatever it is I (we) am (are) actually sinking into. Could be anything. Anyway, trying to reconcile the indistinct implications of “Independence Day” with the crumbling existential sewer in which we find ourselves is difficult enough; understanding how the noisy, stench-riddled expenditure of platitudinous bullshit and cheap Chinese-made fireworks fits into the picture is, well, quite beyond my rather limited imagination. It all must mean something, right? It must.

Then again, maybe not. Whatever. In any case, days like today always seem to put me in a mood. Particularly when said day is just another in an endless procession that has gone on way too long. I wish I had an answer to this nonsense. Anyhow, for reasons unknown I was put in mind of the following quote from Dalton Trumbo. I’m not sure if it has anything specific to do with the Fourth of July (probably not much), but it resonates with the times nonetheless, somehow, someway. From the introduction to Johnny Got His Gun, he writes:

“Why should I look, it wasn’t my fault, was it?” It was, of course, but no matter. Time presses. Death waits even for us. We have a dream to pursue, the whitest white hope of them all, and we must follow and find it before the light fails.

So long, losers. God bless. Take care. We’ll be seeing you.

Have a happy July 4th, everybody. I’m going back to sleep.

POSTING TO RECOMMENCE MOMENTARILY . . . REALLY

2010-05-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

Not that anybody actually cares, but, well . . .

New B.S. coming soon.

POSTING TO RE-COMMENCE MOMENTARILY

2009-12-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

Can't you just smell the anticipation?

FRANK McCOURT, 1930-2009

2009-07-20T12:52:00.000-07:00

I'M BEGINNING TO SUSPECT WE SHOULD'VE JUST HANDED THIS CRAPSTORM TO McCAIN

2009-02-04T12:47:00.000-08:00

I don't know, man. Obama's evisceratingly incomprehensible cabinet appointments, his copping to so-called "screw-ups," more than half-a-million more jobs poofed out of existence last month, my own disastrous unemployment crisis and financial disintegration ... maybe Lumpy McCain and his far-north Ho should've been elected instead. Obama owns the looming catastrophe, whether he wants to or not -- more and more people I happen to talk to can't even remember that there was such a thing called the "Bush Administration ..."

Sorry, people. Optimism is pretty much an unhealthy luxury I can't afford these days.

WE WILL GET BY

2009-01-31T10:54:00.000-08:00

This one's for Lee over at Captain Quahog -- tickets to see the Dead? You lucky bastard.

SURE WOULD LIKE TO GET BACK INTO THIS BLOGGING BUSINESS

2009-01-23T13:38:00.000-08:00

If anybody has any suggestions for jump-starting one's better blogging instincts, for re-vitalizing one's moribund snark glands, I'm all ears. Seriously. In the meanwhile, here's a nasty sample of the real reality I've been dealing with lately:

California unemployment rate reaches 9.3%

Happy days, happy days ...

WON'T GET FOOLED

2008-11-18T19:11:00.000-08:00

In honor of all the unreasonable expectations the incoming administration is already being saddled with, and the halfwits who are starting to gag uncontrollably on their misplaced, utterly empty illusions -- already.

I laugh ironically, painfully ...

A BRIEF ALTERNATIVE TO WATCHING THE WORLD FALL TO PIECES

2008-10-27T19:24:00.000-07:00

My niece Karmen and my brother Dan, "Still Early":

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM ...

2008-10-01T16:28:00.001-07:00

A PICTURE WORTH SWIPING

2008-09-30T23:01:00.001-07:00

A thousand pardons to profmarcus and company ... this is just too priceless to pass up.

SOON TO RETURN TO THIS BLOGGING NONSENSE ...

2008-09-02T14:08:00.001-07:00

Can you stand the excitement? I can't ...

Back to the inexplicably useless blogging phenomenon, sooner rather than later. The only question is ... why? Whatever.

LOOKIN' FER A JOB ... ON A TUESDAY

2008-08-19T14:07:00.000-07:00

It's been one hell of a long time since I felt even remotely motivated to yet again indulge this blogging nonsense. Too many real-world pressures pounding my attention span to a wimpy little pulp, you see, not the least of which is struggling with the unemployment thing in the dark age of Bush. Ick. Anyway, came across this from Mike Malloy's website today ...

Tuesday Afternoon

The song, not the time of day and day of the week. Justin Hayward wrote it, what? forty years ago? Oh, my.

Tuesday . . . . afternoon,
I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away.

Something, calls to me,
The trees are drawing me near, I've got to find out why
Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.

I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind,
It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind.
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love,
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of

Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon . . .

I thought of those lyrics when I checked out this morning's headlines. Quick advice: Don't check out this morning's headlines. Anyway, join me tonight - Tuesday evening - because it's just the kind of day to leave myself behind.

Whatever.

HELL OFFICIALLY FREEZES OVER

2008-06-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know -- it's been a hell of a long time since I paid a visit to this brain-damaged waste of time. Not that anybody gives a shit, I'm sure; I'm just between sloppy drunken episodes in the long-running and utterly hopeless job quest that has gone on for fucking months. Whatever. Anyway, I came across a blog post that (apparently) I never posted, and I'm just buzzed enough to stick it online. Yes -- I've seemingly resurrected this nonsense, and hell has officially frozen over.

My unposted blog-spew follows:

I've spent the last several months desperately attempting -- fruitlessly, pointlessly -- to ignore as much of what's going on as possible, to stop riding the wobbling see-saw of hope and despair, to unhitch Fortuna's debilitating wheel from the bent and greaseless axle of my troubled consciousness, by paying only so much attention as is absolutely necessary. I've tried to move myself even further towards the margins and fringes, not so much to garner perspective but obliviousness, to shut out what little awareness of things I might actually have. A psychic pit-stop, a mental safe-room, an extended breather from the immense psychological burden of giving a shit within a cultural milieu that prizes self-centered indifference above all else ...

Needless to say, this useless endeavor has been an unmitigated failure -- not to mention being misguided and ludicrously hypocritical as well.

Luckily (or not, I'm not sure which), I've been rudely jolted out of my self-generated torpor through the highly unlikely agency of what appears to be an endless troop of homeless people, purposefully rummaging around in the long row of garbage cans across the street from the grimy brewpub I happen to be sitting in. I seem to be the only quasi-alcoholic here who notices this interesting activity, occurring as it is but a few feet from the front windows of this tackily hip crap hole; from the neatly-dressed executroids in their SUV's, to plainclothes cops with guns, to the self-conscious grunge-fucks who ride up on their carefully de-engineered bicycles while smoking "organic" cigarettes (the basic clientele of this place), they're all pretending not to see the garbage can people they practically have to wade through -- or drive over -- just so's they can get their desperately needed booze fix. I watch this low-rent spectacle and I think: what's worse, that there are so many in the "wealthiest nation on earth" who must forage through the trash to survive, or that the people responsible for producing the trash in the first place act as if the rubbish-harvesters don't actually exist?

The irony of deriding confirmed consumerist assholes for actively ignoring the blatantly rising tide of poverty, homelessness, and all the other fun features of predatory capitalism, while at the same time complaining about how difficult it is to ignore all the grotesque ugliness myself, is not lost. In fact, "irony" is probably not the correct term -- "hypocritical stupidity" better approximates the situation here. Whatever the case, the idea that ignoring something will make it go away, whether that something be dumpster-diving street people or the neo-con appetite for destruction, is patently ridiculous and self-defeating. Leave it to a group of hard-case trash pickers to dish up an unexpected reality check; to remind me that, all the pseudo-snark and sophisticated cynicism aside, I'm basically no better than the disconnected money-worshiping corporate fuckwad in his Escalade, righteously plowing through the paper-thin fabric of this tattered society with nary a worry or concern, or a thought really about anything. What an eye opener.

Then again, I might actually have published this crap -- I can't remember. Who cares?

WHILE I'M TRYING TO DECIDE IF I REALLY WANT TO CONTINUE WITH THIS THING ...

2008-03-03T16:14:00.000-08:00

... why not scoot over to Vichy Democrats, a collaborative blog that has some of the best writing -- and just plain thinkafying (?) -- I've come across, in ever so long, among the sour sewer-spew and rotting brain-cabbage that most of the bogworld is. That includes my own, if anyone feels compelled to call me out on such an unfair characterization.

(Hey, Thersites -- sorry that I haven't had an opportunity to get back to you. The dramatically fuzzy imperatives of despair and unemployment have made their presence felt a little too strongly of late ... I haven't been able to keep ANYTHING up-to-date)

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE ...

2008-02-12T18:49:00.000-08:00

... before the Pelosi-lead "House of Representatives" injects the House version of the FISA travesty with immunity for corporate criminality? Tell you what -- I'll bet anybody, oh let's see, a pint of amber ale at the Rubicon Brewing Company (sorry, but my low-budget lifestyle is a bit truncated during these unemployed days) that the Vichy Democratic appeasers will successfully re-infect the House's FISA bill with immunity before a week is up. If you're in the Sacramento area, say, a week from today, and the halfwits in Congress don't do what we all know they will do, the beer's on me. I'll be there in any event, getting hammered. Anyhow ...

By the way: up to this point, I haven't had much of an opinion about the two officially-approved Democratic candidates for president; the fact that Obama voted against telecom immunity, and Clinton refused to actually go on record as either for or against ... Well, that's enough for me. I'm wholeheartedly endorsing Obama -- fuck Hillary.

A SPECIAL MESSAGE TO THE TROLLS AT "INFRAGARD"

2008-02-11T20:28:00.000-08:00

By now, all thinking people who actually care (you know who you are) are aware of this "Infragard" bullshit -- if you aren't, read this article over at The Progressive. Personally, all I can think of to do is, briefly, call off my self-imposed semi-retirement from the blogging sewer and dish out this message to the subhumans at "Infragard" ...

HEY INFRAGARD: GO FUCK YOURSELVES.

Just had to get that out.

A MUSICAL ADDENDUM TO THE PREVIOUS POST

2008-02-04T18:08:00.000-08:00

The Clash, "I'm So Bored With The USA"

SUPER SUNDAY, SUPER TUESDAY, MISERABLE MONDAY:

2008-02-04T15:34:00.000-08:00

What a deep trough of funk it all is: the bald, first-hand experience of a shoddy economy, constructed as it is on a foundation of fiction and bad intentions, doing the oft-predicted and inevitable dead-weight fall straight to the bottom of the proverbial crapper. Take it from me --going through the motions of the jobless routine, under current circumstances, is bad enough, but absent-mindedly switching on the electric tee-vee yesterday morning and getting an accidental eye-full of the horrible twaddle being broadcast by the local Fox affiliate is ... another matter entirely.

Luckily the sound was muted on my completely antiquated, rabbit-ear-equipped tee-vee machine, thereby partially deflecting the debilitating consequences of whatever "point" the dirtbags at Fox were trying to make in this particular instance. Frantic, rapid-fire, zero-attention-span image flashes of some of the "officially" sanctioned presidential candidates, interspersed with numerous examples of American football iconography and pictures of an empty stadium in Arizona; a short parade of severely coifed blowholes, the typically interchangeable animatronic wind machines for which Fox is so justly infamous, appeared to help tie these apparent incongruities together, in the usual big-media way of conflating and co-mingling and utterly confusing the deadly serious with the obnoxiously inane. That, of course, is Fox's primary function. In fact, they and all their corporate media cohorts have been so successful in befuddling the leaking brain-bags of the distracted masses, most people can't tell which of these bloated spectacles -- presidential politics and professional sports -- could legitimately be characterized as "deadly serious" and which is merely "obnoxiously inane." Even I can't figure it out sometimes.

One thing of which I'm reasonably sure, pretty much beyond doubt, is that I've come to despise both of these hollow circuses equally. "Super Tuesday" becomes an extension of "Super Sunday"; the systems and methodology by which democratic "self-government" perpetuates itself is debased, corrupted, and completely eviscerated, bashed and battered and shoehorned into the desperately empty straightjacket of commerce and "entertainment." Indeed, the electoral process is relegated to a position somewhere below the empty-calorie excitement of artificial extravaganzas such as the "Super Bowl," if the volume and tenor of attention paid to these things is any indication.

***

So, here in the trough of Miserable Monday, where the hollow hangover of yesterday's over-excited waste of time still lingers, and which leads directly into tomorrow's made-for-TV "Super Tuesday" diversion, I order another beer and try to think about these comprehensive frauds as little as humanly possible. What else is there to do? I know that my vote tomorrow in the Green primary -- and yes, there is such a thing, regardless of what the corporate flying monkeys would have everyone believe -- for Cynthia McKinney (Ralph Nader is on the ballot as well) doesn't have a prayer of changing the course of this stupid country, or having an affect on anything in particular. But, so the hell what? It's no more of a "wasted" vote than one cast for Obama or Clinton, or anyone else you can think of. I defy anyone to prove me wrong.

***

Where's my bartender ...?

A QUICK TRIP OUT OF THE HIDEY-HOLE:

2008-01-28T18:38:00.000-08:00

A brief peek out from under the ragged edge of my own personal hidey-hole blanket -- an archaic leftover from a long-departed era where people you knew actually made things with their bare hands; in this case, a preciously frayed knitted “afghan” that’s always exuded this inexplicable odor of yarn soaked in over-boiled tea -- shows me a mildly unexpected sight ... our brave Democratic Vichyite appeasers in the Senate have, again, surprisingly beaten back the little yappy chihuahua of retroactive telecom “immunity.” Not that it means diddly in the long run, since we all know that Reid will cravenly cave in eventually. But, for a brief moment at least, we can indulge the dishonest fiction that the Dem “leadership” actually stands for something. What a nice squishy fantasy that is.

Come on, let’s face it: the present clatch of Vichy Democrats in Congress have no chance, and even less inclination, to put the brakes to this runaway freight train full of pure vetch and bad intentions, otherwise known as the Neo-Con Experience. I welcome unexpected surprises like what happened today, as would anybody with an intellectual capacity somewhere beyond a bag of doorknobs and/or a box of rocks. But my desperation at the state of things is fundamentally tempered by a bottomless, cynical realism; in other words, there’s no way in fucking hell one tiny little tactical “victory,” if that’s even the proper characterization for this temporary telecom thing, can possibly make up for literally years of savage betrayals on the part of the Democratic “leaders.” They tell us what we want to hear in order to take control of Congress, then they rat-fuck us all every day since ... Are we just supposed to forget (not to mention forgive) this rather ugly, iron-clad fact? I can’t, at any rate. But a number of “liberal” and self-declared “progressive” bloggers and punditizers are doing just that -- I even saw one piece that deliriously celebrated the apparently re-discovered Democratic “spine,” which has been missing in action for god knows how long. Oh jeeze, give me a stinkin’ break.

I heard Pelosi’s introduction of Monkey Man and his “state of the union” vaudeville routine. Actually, the only time this catastrophe of a House speaker should be invoking the name of this giggling untermensch is when articles of impeachment are being introduced. Hah hah. But anyway, Pelosi’s gushing over this pimply little killer is enough for me -- I’m pulling the blanket back over my head. Wake me in a year or so ...

I GUESS HEAD COLDS SERVE A USEFUL PURPOSE AFTER ALL

2008-01-23T16:53:00.001-08:00

Clawing slowly out of the existential sump of one of the worst head colds in memory; gradually fighting off the residual after-effects of poisonous nasal goo and bucketfulls of brain pus; several days of guzzling sudsy cocktails compounded of Airborne and Alka-Seltzer; feeling almost human again, my temporary lapse of unreason irresistibly disappears along with the cracked block of cement lodged in the middle of my skull ...

It’s only within the context of a quickly retreating illness, a prosaic affliction that always has the power to surprise by its sheer unpredictability, that I realize just how little I’ve been paying attention -- well, to anything beyond over-the-counter cold medicine, cough drops, and my nearly complete collection of South Park and Absolutely Fabulous DVD’s. So how do I celebrate yanking my bleary and bloodshot head out from under the stinky wool blanket of sinus bugs and viruses from hell? By being bludgeoned by idiotic (but not particularly surprising) feces-duels between the two corporate-ordained “front runners” for the Democratic nomination, followed up by an unhealthy dollop or two of the stock market-driven economic fun-and-games that are soon to inflict a massive financial enema on the poor dumb masses ... Oh, and choking on NATO’s new death-clutch on its collection of nuclear-tipped wangs. For starters.

Anyway, I’ve come to the conclusion that a severe cold has its positive aspects -- I haven’t had to expend my well-being on impotent rages and temper tantrums. At least for a couple of weeks. Actually, I almost wish I’d catch another cold, so I could just drift away in ignorant, highly congested bliss. No such luck.

***

As far as the primary stupidity-fest is concerned, there are any number of venomous screeds I could concoct in response to such Republican jizz-juice as the Clinton-Obama self-destruction thing. However, I’ll let a real blogger -- the Rude Pundit -- deliver his pithy two cents; after all, the Rude One is, truly, the only real blogger out there. From today:

Clinton, Obama, and the Stink of Rove:

Our political landscape is haunted by the specter of Karl Rove, the bald, bejowled gargoyle who feeds himself on the viscera of Democratic candidates, his rotting gore-filled teeth emitting a stench that can be sensed from the Potomac to the Pacific. Rove is always there, in actuality or spirit, licking his sweaty upper lip at the possibility of dining on the next nominee. And as the race for the Democratic nomination gets nastier and nastier, the whole thing is spinning like a merry-go-round where Rove controls the levers. He may not be directly involved (although the Rude Pundit has his suspicions), but once you introduce a pollution to an ecological system, it's almost impossible to completely eradicate it.

For, at this point in the Barack Obama/Hillary Clinton kerfuffle, which Rovean narrative do you want? The battle of the white male fears: the castrating, vindictive bitch-hag (who, as an added sexist bonus, is constantly photographed in high-def as a way of highlighting her severe-looking wrinkles-how dare that bitch age) versus the angry black man (who, as an added racist bonus, is so handsome that it just looks like he wants to rape him some white pussy-how dare he have abs)? The white plantation owners slapping down the uppity nigger who wants to own some land? Or, just looking at Clinton, the wannabe strong woman who needs to have her man get her back? Fuck, it's like a script written by the man himself.

Rove himself has not been inactive here, penning articles where he advised Obama how to beat Clinton and then turning around and trying to bitch slap Obama for not beating Clinton and for being "trash-talking" and "lazy," like a stoop-sitting thug-lifer. Rove sees them both as spineless wimps, and, clearly, both are now attempting to show they are ready to tussle, which makes them reveal their weaknesses, which is where Rove will come back into the scene. Remember: This is the shit he's saying publicly. You can bet that behind the scenes, he's whipped off his pants and danced a little grotesque jig, yanking his tiny cock in glee for the coming battle. He's prepping the ground, man, like a malevolent farmer who knows you gotta get the equipment ready in the winter and do the planting in the spring so you can harvest in the fall. He had a shitty year in 2006, but that's just made him sharpen his plows and get more radioactive seeds to set those fields ablazing with turd blossoms.

Really, Clinton and Obama are playing into Rove's hand. Much of the blame here rests with the Clintons, who, truly, are campaigning as a single, buy-one-get-one-free unit, for when Bill says that he consulted Hillary on every decision he made when president, the implicit promise is that Hillary will consult him and, c'mon, don't we want Bill back in the White House? They are fighting a campaign that is better suited to 2000 or 2004. Someone needs to kick Bill Clinton in the nuts and say, "Down, boy." He's playing the short game, which used to be the way you win elections.

At this point, the Democrats could nominate a sock monkey or a slice of provolone and it would beat John McCain or Mitt Romney. As long as that sock monkey wore a "Bring the troops home" t-shirt. But the Clintons are waging the slash and burn war of tiny marginal advantages here and there that'll let them conquer 51% of the territory and declare victory, very much like the way Rove operates, very much like how Clinton adviser Mark Penn sees marketing. (Rove, by the way, must be chafing at the bit to go after consultant Howard Wolfson and other Glover Park Group members.)

That ain't the zeitgeist this time. The population craves unity. The citizens want someone they can rally around. Yeah, yeah, it's true that any nominee will face a fucking firestorm of negative bullshit from Republicans, that putting candidates through the paces now helps inure them to repeat attacks. But the Rude Pundit doesn't believe it's gonna play now. Not with this war, an economy in the shitter, and a bunch of desiccated corpses as the only options over in the GOP.

The question is whether or not Hillary Clinton can be that rallying figure. It's whether she and her husband are willing to shift their rhetoric to transform her into it. It is up to her. Obama is, for the most part, in reaction mode.

The way to real victory that leads to real potential changes in the nation is not to play Rove's game. He is the master. Win or lose the battle, who cares, the true master knows, the real essence is what happens during the arc of the war. Don't believe it? Ask yourself how much that thrillingly new Democratic Congress actually got done that wouldn't have been done under a Republican one.

Man, he says it all far better than I can, that’s for sure. Then, Mike Malloy chimes in:

Does anyone care? Anyone? Hello . . .????

The story appeared late yesterday from the Associated Press titled, "False Statements Preceded War."

It said, in part, "A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements [goddam lies!] about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks.The study concluded that the statements 'were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.'"

The article, by AP writer Douglass K. Daniel, continued. "The study counted 935 false statements [lies, goddam it; lies!] in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both."

Astonishing. Criminal. Nazi-like lies from the most corrupt regime ever to control the U.S. - the Bush Crime Family.

The article continued: "It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information [goddam lies!] that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."

Named in the study along with Bush were his then top officials: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.

The article concluded, "The cumulative effect of these false statements [goddam lies!] — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.

"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements [goddam lies!] about Iraq," it said.

And Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of the cowardly, complicit Democratic Party leadership refuses - utterly refuses! - immediately to begin impeachment proceedings against the murderous bastards who are taking the U.S. directly into its own destruction.

Really -- what could I possibly add? How about a few random quotes from my overflowing grab-bag of such painfully inutile gobbledygook:

There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you sick at heart, that you can’t take part ... and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels and you’ve got to make it stop.

-- Mario Savio

We must change
& we can’t
We never could
Individuals alone
can change
I can change
You can change
They cannot
You & I will
never be them.
They may be us
but never can
they be you or me.

-- Robert Hunter, A Strange Music

All worldly pursuits have but the one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow: acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings, in destruction; meetings, in separation; births, in death. Knowing this, one should from the very first renounce acquisition and heaping-up, and building and meeting, and ... set about realizing the Truth. ... Life is short, and the time of death is uncertain; so apply yourselves to meditation.

-- Milarepa, 10th century AD

Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by the vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their advertised glamorous shoes and stockings and underclothes off, staring through the sooty windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when the poses weaken, and the truth creeps in, the only truth that exists here, crying to heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and brick.

-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Given a choice between a folly and a sacrament, one should always choose the folly -- because we know a sacrament will not bring us closer to God and there’s always a chance that a folly will.

-- Erasmus

You only live twice:
once after you’re born
and once before you die.

-- Basho

OK, OK. Enough is enough. I think I’m going to French-kiss the next person I meet who has a sniffle -- I’ve found that I actually prefer a sickness-induced ignorance coma. Eegads.

*sigh*

ART AND THE A-BOMB

2008-01-11T19:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Mike Malloy for pointing us all here:

YOU ARE WHAT YOU IS

2008-01-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

2008 finds me in much the same circumstantial posture -- mentally, physically, and otherwise -- that was all too apparent at the ass-end of '07 (and '06, '05, etc). That's neither good nor bad, an intelligent person might conclude. Then again, an intelligent person would hardly waste his or her ever-dwindling attention span by offering opinions on a desiccated bonehead such as myself. That's reasonable, I suppose.

Bear with me, please. I have no idea where this is going, which itself is the most blatantly obvious personal characteristic carried over from the previous year(s). Sigh.

***

Whatever. You are what you is, as Frank Zappa once so elegantly phrased it. The human refuse who plague my usual beer outlets and watering holes -- mostly homogenized suburban slummers and artificial midtown sophisticates without an original thought in their pointed little heads -- is, naturally, disposed toward turgid and ridiculously credulous gum-flapping over totally transparent, made-for-TV trash like "The Moment Of Truth," Presidential politics, and/or something called the "Bowl Championship Series." I, on the other hand, is apparently fated to do little more than spit useless bile over this poisonous rash of chuckleheads, this existential eczema of halfwits marring even further the body politic's already grotty and highly questionable complexion. Somebody has to play the role of cheap, over-the-counter pore-flusher that doesn't really do anything. I just wonder why it has to be me.

Yeah, well, you can just keep on wondering, you dumb bastard. And while you're wondering about something you can't possibly understand, also try to clue in on the fact that your feeble potshots of pusillanimous puerility won't change a muck-stinkin' thing. Nope -- nothing. And, truth be told, it doesn't really matter, since expectation is merely one of a myriad of fetid effluvia incontinently spewed from the human ego machine. Give up on the reptilian imperative; divorce yourself from the narrow-field vision of profit and loss, domination and control, fear and loathing, desire and despair. Just sink your teeth into the cheesy fabric of 21st-Century existence, and chew all those gag-inducing toxins and lead-based paint like they was the yummiest thing you ever choked on. Just do your thing. Man. Like Frank said:

Do you know what you are?
You are what you is
You is what you am
(A cow don't make ham ...)
You ain't what you're not
So see what you got
You are what you is
An' that's all it 'tis

Ah -- pure poetry.

(Incidentally, if there's anybody out there who can authoritatively assure me that this post makes any amount of sense whatsoever, well, I'd like to hear from you. Seriously.)

A FINAL STUMBLING WORD

2007-12-31T17:07:00.000-08:00

What can I say about the (thankfully) expiring year of 2007? I mean, above and beyond the voluminous vomitus of words already out there, the sheer useless mass of which does little but crush our existential windpipes and choke off the ever-dwindling supply of psychic oxygen to our rapidly-shriveling intellects and identities as individuals ... ? Uh, the answer would have to be: absolutely nothing. Not a thing.

No, seriously.

Actually, not having anything to say has never been an effective impediment to opening my mouth and forcibly ejecting one collection of malformed opinions or another; small consolation lies in the fact that I'm hardly original in this regard. Whatever. In any case, here's a small dose of purposeless superfluity, or maybe gratuitous garrulousness if you will, the last such tidbit of twaddle you people will have to suffer through this calendar year ...

(Please excuse me -- the brewpub waitress just smells great ... my mind wandered for a brief moment. Sorry.)

As comprehensively awful as 2007 undoubtedly was, the unmistakable impression I have is that 2008 is going to be the make-or-break year for the senior republic on the North American continent. The conceptual idea of representative democracy will either burst out in a renaissance of revitalization, in an unlooked-for explosion of near revolutionary fervor; or it will finally see the ultimate realization of the long-range Bush-Cheney-Reid-Pelosi program of despicably self-imposed immolation, an enthusiastic and monumentally spineless self-interment akin to the French Third Republic. Those are the choices, stark as they are. The coming year will likely be the watershed moment of American democracy, possibly the final moment of individual liberty, the last feeble gasp of free thought before a monstrous deluge of darkness. Or not -- the choice, I suppose, is in our hands, the anonymous millions. Hope springs eternal, as they say, and as much as I desperately desire to swath myself with the intoxicating fog of optimism ...

Best leave that thought unfinished. In the meantime, I would remind everyone to keep your eyes and ears open -- New Year’s Eve being the ridiculous Amateur Night that it is. Watch yourselves, don't drink too much, and let's hit '08 consumed with a righteous determination to do something about the disease-riddled neo-con rodentia that would eat us alive.

Take care; I'll see you all next year.

BENAZIR BHUTTO, 2 NOVEMBER 2007

2007-12-27T18:18:00.000-08:00

At approximately the 6-minute point, she says: "... the man who murdered Osama bin Laden."

To which I say, huh?

Anybody else catch this?

WHO I WOULD VOTE FOR IF I WASN'T A REGISTERED GREEN

2007-12-26T20:28:00.000-08:00

For better or worse, I've been registered as a Green since before the (gasp) 1996 Presidential election. And yes, I did vote for Nader. Twice. If you have a problem with that, well, I don't really give a shit. Anyway, fast-forward to 2007: I realized that the only Democratic candidate I can stomach is John Edwards.

Not that my opinion means anything, I just wanted it on the record, as it were.

Anyway ...

A HOLIDAY GREETING, OF SORTS

2007-12-23T19:20:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I had sufficient energy to attend to this "business"; the miserable time of year goes a long way toward explaining such dereliction, while the ever-foul stench puffing out of the scaly armpit of political power that has all us poor dumb saps in a (seemingly) terminal headlock -- reaching unheard-of levels of noisome corruption in recent days -- is quite sufficient to push me completely past the edge into a petulant and infuriated silence. I'm there still, pretty much.

***

So, it's Christmas again. As would be expected, I started writing one of those patented Christmas Sucks Donkey Balls sort of posts, and I managed to come up with this gem:

... time again for the relentless, rapacious, bloody knuckle-dragging, brain-challenged monster known as Christmas to make its catastrophic appearance; smothering all with its hollow, wobbling bulk and sickeningly vapid halitosis compounded from stupidity and greed ... Crushing everything in its path, obliterating what little sense remains among the breathlessly dumb animatronic retards who comprise the moronic mass of American "citizenry," yanking the consumerist chains of blubbery halfwits and cloven-headed clodhoppers the world over. Here it comes -- over-dressed in obnoxious fakery and gulag-produced frippery, lurching and stomping and careening and caterwauling in a frenetic boogaloo of psychic and financial destruction. Gag me with a plastic Chinese Christmas tree; beat me with a rubber yule log; choke me with a half-off sale.

And so on and so forth, in a ridiculous display of prose-puke excess that was leaving even me a bit queasy and disoriented. I should remark that I've never claimed to be a poet, or a literary figure of any sort. As if that needed pointing out.

In any case, it isn't my intention really to indulge in what is likely the most shamelessly masturbatory activity to be found in all of blogdom: the self-quoting thing. How revolting. I can't imagine anything I might say actually improving with repetition (especially by me), or even being worthy of such nonsense -- and, now that I think about it, the same might be said for the pathetic debris that constitutes the vast bulk of the virtual world. Anyway, I'm only engaging in this questionable pastime to illustrate a point, of some kind or other. And that point is ... Wait a second, it'll come to me.

Well, the point would be something like this, perhaps: even I, the human heat-sink of snarky bile, a champion purveyor of vitriolic and incomprehensible frustration, one angry little pimple lost within an immense ocean of existential acne, the harsh bastard of uncivility and non-compromise ... even I am sick to death of the raging shitstorm of negativity that passes for discourse in this sad, blighted, terminally-ill epoch. Even your ill-mannered, foul-tempered, gutter-mouthed barstool jockey here has had enough of this repulsive bullshit. But then, I should say that this empty gesture (if that's the proper word), arguably reasonable and even noble in intent, applies only to Christmas -- to the memory of Christmas' past, when I was a kid and things were both simpler and made more sense. In tribute to times and places ... and people ... that are no more, I've decided to choke down my innate cynical nastiness for one day, anyway, and keep my unsolicited vomitus opinions to myself. For one day. The day after Christmas, needless to say, all bets are off.

What the hell.

Happy holidays.

ONE MORE DIVERSION (AT LEAST)

2007-12-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

Derek Trucks with the Allman Brothers, "Rockin' Horse"

Absolutely unreal ...

REAL POSTING TO RE-COMMENCE MOMENTARILY ...

2007-12-19T16:37:00.000-08:00

The Clash, "Train in Vain"

(Sometimes, simpler is better ...)

HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU SEE THE WORD "IMPEACHMENT" IN THE FOLLOWING MESSAGE FROM JOHN CONYERS?

2007-12-05T17:19:00.000-08:00

This is precisely the sort of "thing" that chaps my ass to no end: a ranking member of the official "opposition" party, the one single political animal in the whole corrupted menagerie of the House of Representatives who could easily put a stop to the revolting neo-con experiment known as the Bush administration, sending a long-winded mass e-mail to a nobody like me. Conyers could start the demolition process -- Pelosi be damned -- if he really wanted to. Guess he doesn't really want to.

Anyhow, see how many times the dreaded "I" word pops up in this masterful political epistle:

Setting the Record Straight on FISA

In recent weeks, there has been lot of conflicting information floating around about efforts by House Democrats to protect the country by adopting rules for intelligence gathering that are both flexible and constitutional. This week, President Bush suggested that my legislative alternative to this summer's hastily-enacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the "Protect America Act," would take away important tools from our intelligence community. He characterized as "obstruction" the skepticism that many of us have about granting amnesty to telecommunications carriers who may have cooperated in warrantless surveillance. I was disappointed that the President did not propose any concrete steps to improve our capabilities or protect our freedoms -- he just repeated his demand for immunity.

This comes close on the heels of a recent controversy concerning the House Democrats' FISA legislation stemming from Joe Klein's column in Time Magazine on November 21st, in which his Republican sources seem to have spun a tale that led Mr. Klein to characterize our efforts as "more than stupid."

I believe that it is time for a comprehensive and detailed response to the President's accusations of obstruction, the misinformation in the Time Magazine column, and the debate over warrantless surveillance. Below is that response. Please let me know what you think, and feel free to pass along to your friends and colleagues.

Joe Klein's recent column deriding the House-passed FISA legislation, along with his subsequent stumbling efforts to clarify its intent, and Time Magazine's failure to publish the protests my Democratic colleagues and I had regarding its many inaccuracies are only the most recent manifestation of disinformation put forth concerning the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance program and legislative efforts to modify the law. As the lead author, along with Silvestre Reyes, of the RESTORE Act, allow me to set the record straight once and for all.

First, contrary to GOP and media spin, the RESTORE Act does not grant "terrorists the same rights as Americans." Section 105A of the RESTORE Act explicitly provides that foreign-to-foreign communications are totally exempt from FISA – clearly, this exception for foreigners such as members of Al Qaeda does not apply to Americans. In cases involving foreign agents where communications with Americans could be picked up, Section 105B of the legislation provides for liberalized "basket warrant" procedures by which entire terrorist organizations can be surveilled without the need to obtain individual warrants from the FISA court. Again, this new authority is aimed at foreign terrorists, not Americans.

Mr. Klein appears to base much of his criticism of our bill on our use of the term "person" to describe who may be surveilled, based on the suggestion of a Republican "source" that this risks an interpretation that terrorist groups would not be covered. The truth is that under FISA the term person has been clearly defined for almost thirty years to include "any group, entity, association, corporation, or foreign power." It is also notable that both the RESTORE Act, and the Administration's bill passed this summer, contain the exact same language that Mr. Klein questions, yet we've never heard an objection to the Administration's bill on this score.

Second, I must strongly disagree with Mr. Klein's assertion that the Speaker "quashed ... a bipartisan [compromise] effort." As the Chairman of the Committee with principal jurisdiction over FISA, the House Judiciary Committee, I am aware of no effort to prevent bipartisan compromise on this issue. As a matter of fact, last summer, beginning in July, Democrats tirelessly negotiated with Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Mike McConnell, to develop consensus legislation to address the Administration's stated concerns about our intelligence capability.

We addressed every one of the concerns Mr. McConnell raised. He said he needed to clarify that a court order was not required for foreign-to-foreign communications -- our bill did just that. McConnell said he needed an assurance that telecommunications companies would be compelled to assist in gathering of national security information – our bill did that. The DNI said he needed provisions to extend FISA to foreign intelligence in addition to terrorism – the bill did that. He asked us to eliminate the requirement that the FISA Court adjudicate how recurring communications to the United States from foreign targets would be handled – the bill did that. McConnell insisted that basket warrants be structured to allow additional targets to be added after the warrant was initially approved – again, the bill did that. When this legislation was described to DNI McConnell, he acknowledged that "it significantly enhances America's security.''

Yet, suddenly, on the eve of the vote, Director McConnell withdrew his support after consultation with the White House. If the media wanted to identify over-the-top partisanship, they could begin by citing the declaration of David Addington, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, that "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious FISA Court," and DNI McConnell's assertion that by merely having an open debate on surveillance, "some Americans are going to die."

Third, the RESTORE Act legislation is badly needed to provide accountability to the Bush Administration's unilateral approach to surveillance. The warrantless surveillance program has been riddled with deceptions that only began to come to light when The New York Times first disclosed the existence of the program in 2005. The program itself appears to directly violate FISA and the Fourth Amendment, as a federal court, the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, numerous Republican legislators, and independent legal scholars have found.

The Administration has also mischaracterized the existence, degree, extent and nature of the program itself as well as how much information it has shared with Congress. For instance, compare the President's speech in 2004 with his admission that there was indeed a program of warrantless surveillance. When high-ranking DOJ officials found the program lacking, the White House went to absurd, if not comical lengths, to convince a dangerously ill and hospitalized Attorney General Ashcroft to overrule them. Even today, the Administration continues to obscure its own past misconduct with extravagant claims that the "state secrets" doctrine bars any legal challenges whatsoever - a position that has been rejected by the Court of Appeals.

The Administration's hastily enacted legislation, signed this summer, is little better. Instead of being limited to the stated problem of foreign-to-foreign electronic surveillance, it could apply to domestic business records, library files, personal mail, and even searches of our homes.

Against that backdrop, it is clear we need a new law with the critical oversight provisions included in the RESTORE Act, such as requiring the Administration to turn over relevant documents to Congress, mandating periodic Inspector General reports, and acknowledging that the Administration is indeed bound by FISA.

Finally, the Administration has yet to explain why offering retroactive immunity to telephone giants who may have participated in an unlawful program is vital to our national security. Under current law, the phone companies can easily avoid liability if they can establish they received either an appropriate court order or legal certification from the Attorney General. Asking Congress to grant legal immunity at a time when the Administration has refused to provide the House of Representatives with relevant legal documents for more than eleven months is not only unreasonable, it is irresponsible.

Civil liberties and national security need not be contradictory policies, rather they are inexorably linked. Perhaps nowhere is this interrelationship more true than in intelligence gathering, where information must be reliable and untainted by abuse to be useful. So when we discuss FISA, the first thing we need to do is drop the partisan rhetoric, and stick to the actual record. Under the RESTORE Act, the intelligence community has the flexibility to intercept communications by foreign terrorists without obtaining individual warrants, and the Court and Congress are given the authority to perform their constitutional oversight roles. The only parties who lose in this process are the terrorists, and those who want the executive branch to have absolute and unreviewable power.

Rather than being, in Mr. Klein's words, "well beyond stupid," the RESTORE Act offers a smart and well balanced approach to updating FISA and reining in the excesses of an unchecked executive branch.
Your Friend,

John Conyers, Jr.

Now, not to belabor the point too much, but it doesn't require a truckload of intelligence to figure out what the solution to this problem actually is. I know it, the two or three people who accidentally read this blog once in awhile know it, the microcephalic baboon living upstairs from me who loudly cheers on the Green Bay Packers by herself could probably get a clue about this. Why can't John Conyers? What the hell is his stake in the continuation of this gut-churning disaster?

Well, just another reason why the bloggerizing has been a little thin of late -- I'm sick to death of pointing out the obvious and asking rhetorical questions that can't be answered. I think I'll crawl back into my alcohol-soaked hidey-hole until this is all over ...

ANOTHER "CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE" SORT OF NON-POST

2007-12-03T17:41:00.000-08:00

Neil Young, "Unknown Legend"

MONDAY BLUES NIGHT IN THE NEARLY DESERTED BREWPUB ...

2007-11-26T17:28:00.000-08:00

The brewpub is practically empty, here at the drab epicenter of the late Monday afternoon dead zone. Not much of a surprise. Personally, my capacity for rage and indignation is much like the strangely bland atmosphere in this rather over-weened beer-hole: stupefyingly bloated, over-full and largely immobilized. Does that make sense? Probably not.

I haven't been myself recently, so please bear with me. I'm in the middle of starting up a business -- no lie -- and that sort of madness is more than enough to yank one's psycho-existential underpants up over one's head ... What the fuck?

Yes, well. This week's blues excursion features the incomparable Freddie King, complete with choreographed horn players and go-go dancers. Outstanding.

(Real blog posts to recommence one of these days)

RING THIS GODDAMNED THING ... AGAIN

2007-11-19T18:14:00.000-08:00

ON THE SUBJECT OF MUSIC ...

2007-11-19T17:09:00.000-08:00

As far as music is concerned, some horn-blowing of my own is in order, I guess. Here's a couple of songs I home-recorded with my brother and sister, and had reviewed by Recording Magazine. What the fuck, as they say:

"Vanishing Red"

"Kokomo Platter"

What does any of this have to do with, well, anything? Hmmm ... good question.

Minor note: I'm the bass player ...

TO NO REAL PURPOSE -- ALBERT COLLINS

2007-11-19T16:48:00.000-08:00

Drinking and web-trolling finds me this video of one of my all-time favorite bluesmen, Albert Collins. Nobody could get stuck in a blues groove like this guy; blues is a perfect descriptor for our neo-con pukefest.

I wish Albert was still with us ...

HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY

2007-11-12T16:55:00.000-08:00

"CROSSFIRE"

2007-11-08T22:26:00.000-08:00

Near closing time at the groovy midtown Sacramento brewpub; a song comes on the electric muzak machine, and strikes a chord, as they say --

CROSSFIRE (by Stevie Ray Vaughn)

Day by day night after night....blinded by the neon lights
Hurry here hustlin there....no ones got the time to spare
Moneys tight nothin free....won't somebody come and rescue me
I am stranded....caught in the crossfire
Stranded....caught in the crossfire.

Tooth for tooth eye for an eye....sell your soul just to buy buy buy
Beggin a dollar stealin a dime....come on can't you see that I
I am stranded....caught in the crossfire
I am stranded....caught in the crossfire.

I need some kind of kindness....some kind of sympathy oh no
Were stranded....caught in the crossfire

Save the strong lose the weak....never turning the other cheek
Trust nobody dont be no fool....whatever happened to the golden rule
We got stranded....caught in the crossfire
We got stranded....caught in the crossfire
We got stranded....caught in the crossfire
Stranded....caught in the crossfire
Help me

"Help me ..." No shit.

NOW, HERE'S ONE THAT REALLY PISSES ME OFF

2007-11-08T22:01:00.000-08:00

Via Crooks & Liars:

1 In 4 Homeless Americans Are Veterans

AP Via Yahoo:

Veterans make up one in four homeless people in the United States, though they are only 11 percent of the general adult population, according to a report to be released Thursday.

And homelessness is not just a problem among middle-age and elderly veterans. Younger veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan are trickling into shelters and soup kitchens seeking services, treatment or help with finding a job.

“We’re going to be having a tsunami of them eventually because the mental health toll from this war is enormous,” said Daniel Tooth, director of veterans affairs for Lancaster County, Pa. Read on…

Unspeakable fury ... Incalculable loathing ... I can't fucking stand it ...

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT ...

2007-11-05T18:56:00.001-08:00

Tangentially related note: how quickly do you suppose Kucinich's motion to impeach Cheney will be tabled ... by Democrats? Just wondering.

A WORD ABOUT FEINSTEIN

2007-11-02T17:32:00.000-07:00

Remember when the advent of two female Senators from the state of California was "noteworthy"? When it was "significant?" When it seemed to auger a "new era" in US politics? Surely I'm not imagining the whole thing: it was a big deal, wasn't it? I'm sure it was.

Perhaps those who, several years ago, thought we should "celebrate" the apparently flabbergasting fact of California's Senators both being women, might have spared a moment to ponder what it really meant, in hard-boiled practical terms. Which was ... not much.

Now that Feinstein has established her Lieberman-in-drag credentials beyond all doubt, by conspiring with Chuck Schumer to ensure that alleged human Mukasey will have no real problem becoming the next Attorney General, I wonder if those who think her sex is an important aspect of her political career might actually re-think their position. After all, this is hardly the first time Feinstein has savagely poked us all in our collective eyeball; as a noted war profiteer, she's supported the Bush wars from the start, and has been an enthusiastic neo-con enabler of the highest order. She's the quintessential large-D Democrat, with all that entails, here at the nadir of the North American republic. The irresistible imperative of being a monumental hypocrite and cringing coward, in the best 21st-Century DLC tradition, far and away trumps all considerations of gender having any role to play in the polluted political atmosphere in DC. Corporate-inspired corruption is, sad to relate, a gender-neutral phenomenon.

Alright -- you can all untwist your knickers and ratchet down the self-righteousness. I don't bad-mouth Dianne Feinstein because of any closet misogynistic tendencies; I bad-mouth her because she's a goddamned corporate shill in a Senator suit. This is something to keep in mind, all you Hillary diehards out there, you misguided halfwits who're convinced there's really a difference between male and female politicians. They are what they are ... the precise composition of their gonads notwithstanding.

But I do remember when having two women in the Senate seemed significant. It's just another Bush-era joke anymore ...

JOBLESS GIBBERISH AMONG THE DRUNK PEOPLE

2007-11-01T18:01:00.001-07:00

I'll say one thing for being gainfully employed -- it largely spares you the burden of having to pay attention to just how stupid people are when they're drunk ... OK, yeah, so they're just as stupid when they're sober, so what the fuck am I talking about?

I apologize. I keep thinking that my personal melodrama would have some value to anybody besides myself. How ridiculous.

Maybe you all could give me the benefit of the doubt, since I'm trying to re-orient myself to being out of work for the first time in almost thirteen years. I'm a little rusty at the jobless slacker wastoid thing, you see. With about five weeks worth of severance pay, and a soon-to-be cashed out 401(k) to fall back on, apparently I'll have plenty of time to adjust to my new (old) status as unemployed bar souse; I can already feel the sloppy allure and magnetic attraction of lazy indolence, even as I pointlessly ogle the shapely collection of waitresses that seems to congregate around this midtown Sacramento brewpub, to no good purpose. The stationary panic that lies bubbling just below the surface is screaming, most incoherently, that I should be doing the responsible thing and get out there and find a job. Apparently, I'm not listening.

Honestly -- why should I listen to the more commonsensical centers of my battered psyche, when we're collectively teetering on the precipice of ... whatever it is we're teetering on. I seriously can't fathom why I should strive and struggle and hack and tear and toil myself into a triple-bypass frenzy, merely so's I can re-enter the insane economic struggle I was only losing anyway. Well, living in the street is a pretty good incentive, I guess; I don't really covet starving to death either. But it seems like a losing battle one way or another, employed or not. No crap job ever solved anything, much in the same way a Democratically-controlled Congress is no answer to the dire political/Constitutional crisis that is eviscerating this country: like handing the Republicans their scaly asses after the last midterm election, it just feels good to be offered a new gig. But then, the stark frigidity of reality makes its presence felt all too soon, and you understand that nothing has changed, not really. What does that remind you of?

Jesus, sounds like I'm plumbing ever new depths of negative snark, if that were possible. Actually, I'm surprisingly optimistic, under the circumstances. I'm not destitute -- yet -- and I'm fortunate to have a tightly-knit family that simply won't let anybody sink out of sight ... in the meantime, I have time to think, and to tickle the ass crack of whatever muse is fucking around with my karma, at least a little bit. Things could be much worse. Or better, but that's neither here nor there.

So then, take care my friends -- don't work too hard. I'm going to order another amber ale, and learn how to groove with all the drunks I secretly despise. It's the least I could do ...

I FEEL LIKE THE ONLY PERSON HERE WHO GETS IT

2007-10-30T18:29:00.000-07:00

Evening at the brewpub -- it's been so long since I indulged this particular weakness, this unhealthy splurge of time, money, and mental capacity. Anyway, while the well-groomed midtown chuckleheads chatter non-stop about ... something or other, and the NBA game on the jumbotroid teevee overlooks it all, I'm sitting here like a gearheaded retard with my laptop, streaming the Mike Malloy show. It feels like I'm the only one paying attention. To anything. It's so weird.

Unemployment is such a blast.

HAVING MY EMPLOYMENT WOES SOLVED FOR ME

2007-10-28T09:39:00.001-07:00

A Sunday morning time-waster for everybody, not that it should actually have any actual resonance for you all out there -- wherever you are. Anyway, I was informed this past Friday that my lowly position, with the bloated trans-national corporation that shall remain nameless, is to be officially terminated. I've been "offered" a demotion and a pay cut; I intend to accept neither from these subhuman shysters, so for all intents and purposes, I'm heading into lay-off country. Frankly, it's been a long time since I've visited that drab wasteland ... I wonder if I'll even recognize it. At least they've solved my lousy job dilemma for me. How nice of them.

Anyway, now I can participate in the general strike being planned for November 6th without suffering any financial penalty. That's something, I suppose.

THE "DINO" DILEMMA -- ANOTHER HOPELESS SCREED

2007-10-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

I haven't spent much time online lately, for a variety of personal reasons that wouldn't be of any interest to anybody, I'm sure. The web thing gets all so tiresome anyway, particularly the blogs with their constant repetition and regurgitation of doom and snark and despair. And that, of course, applies perfectly to this blog, so I know what I'm talking about here. One topic that so many bloggers spout off about -- and one I usually avoid -- is the ridiculous three-ring circus of Presidential politics, and the relative merits of candidates and all that depressing bullshit. It's especially popular among self-declared "democrats" or "liberals" or (my personal favorite, in the irony category) "progressives," desperate to establish iron-clad rhetorical edifices that prove why their choice of Presidential contender is the only one that's legitimate and/or correct, or whatever. They're all entitled to their opinions, since in this ignorant and largely disempowered age, opinion is pretty much all we have. Public opinion plays no authentic role within the political sphere of things, however. Perhaps it never has.

Well. Staking out a position over a specific candidate, pro or con, is absurd. "Debating" the qualities of Hillary Clinton or Obama, or any of the others, does nothing but create the illusion that something important is going on. Comparing them is an empty exercise; whatever real differences you might manage to glean are, at best, superficial and unimportant, and they usually revolve around minor tactical questions about how to achieve the basic goals that all members of the corporate-political class are devoted to. It's akin to trying to dig up true distinctions between the Republican and Democratic parties -- fundamentally, there aren't any, not in the areas that matter most. The same applies to individuals within the parties, particularly those running for national office.

What seems to escape most "liberals" or "progressives" is that focusing all attention on their machine-politician of choice completely -- totally, disastrously -- misses the point. Hoisting the flag for a particular Presidential candidate, hollering over each other about Hillary’s war-pimping proclivities or Obama's lack of lapel pins or Kucinich's unelectability, and all the other dreck and drivel of this sort, serves only one purpose: like most media-driven distractions in this era, it helps to obscure the fact that the United States is a democratic republic in name only.

Might as well face up to this particular truth. What do we have to lose, really, in acknowledging a little reality? Very little actually, at this late date. Most would agree that real democratic self-government has a critically important participatory component; if there is no participation, it's a fraud. Of course, this is a reference to all the anonymous chuckleheads out there, the drones and clods and gridlock jockeys -- just ordinary folk trying to live their ordinary lives in the most ordinary ways. When have they -- well, we -- ever truly participated in the ponderous process of governing ourselves? But, one might argue, this nation is organized as a republic, where we elect others to represent us within a governing body. True enough ... in theory. Problem is, we don't even have that anymore, assuming we ever really did. Unitary George and his cringing Congress of Democratic enablers pretty much proves this conclusively.

Democracy in name only. This is where the choreographed fiction of a Presidential election "campaign" rears its ugly, and very empty, head -- in fact, it's the very epitome of the "DINO" dilemma in which we"re all such unsuspecting captives. All candidates for public office, wherever it might be, say certain things during a campaign, tailored to the particular audience to which they're delivered. They pander, in other words. Meanwhile, they solicit and accumulate massive gobs of corporate cash to fund their various drives for power, in return for an encyclopedic collection of quid pro quos. It's a highly-evolved racket, predicated on age-old American traditions of greed and larceny, that has no real connection to the theories or conceptual underpinnings of true representative government, much less participatory democracy. How the hell can anybody who claims to understand the basic problems and dysfunction of US electoral politics -- self-styled "progressives" and "liberals" seem to believe they do -- have any measure of faith in any fully-owned product of such a comprehensively corrupt system, as all the major Presidential candidates clearly are? It's quite a puzzler, to say the least.

Well, long-winded screeds that go nowhere are certainly no answer to anything ... you might think, after all this time, I would've figured that out. Sigh. In any event, to all those Obama mamas and Hillary hipsters out there, as well as any other frothing partisan of some hack machine politician: Give it up already. No single individual, particularly a well-heeled shill crippled by corporate dollars and overwrought ambitions, is likely to have your interests in mind. Slavish devotion to these quasi-personality cults masquerading as Presidential campaigns -- it doesn’t really matter which one -- merely accelerates the process through which the warped neo-con vision of a privatized authoritarian state on the North American continent is being inexorably realized. It hastens the final dissolution of constitutional government, as we understand the term, and its ultimate replacement by a lawless corporate kleptocracy under the ham-fisted rule of telegenic demagogues and charismatic whack-jobs ...

... I wish I knew what the answer was, beyond just spewing such poisonously depressing bile right in the middle of a pleasant Saturday morning. Maybe there isn't an answer; maybe I should just order a beer and say, fuck it already. Maybe I should stop inflicting this incomprehensible brain-dribble on everybody ...

COMMENTS ARE ALWAYS GREATLY APPRECIATED ...

2007-10-17T19:03:00.000-07:00

GORE SHOULD RUN AS AN INDEPENDENT -- PLAIN AND SIMPLE

2007-10-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

"Pin your ear to the wisdom post ..." So sings Tom Waits, in the tune that best explicates the confounding, infuriating insanity in which our so-called individual consciousnesses are imprisoned, Get Behind The Mule. This is, naturally, a matter of opinion. And that's fine. Really, where would we be if we didn't have the foul brute of opinion out there, fucking everything up beyond all hope?

There's no need to even attempt to answer such a stupid question.

***

So here we are, stumbling and staggering amid our flummoxed flounderings, hopelessly searching for even a glimpse of the wisdom post, which will probably never happen. Not in the deathly arid intellectual environment we've allowed to be imposed on ourselves, at any rate. Anyway, for what little it's worth, here's my latest foray behind the mule, a hope-deprived toss of a few pennies into the putrid wishing-well of despair we've been tap-dancing around for the past seven (very long) years. And it is this: now that Al Gore has won the Nobel Prize, he should immediately announce his candidacy for President -- as an independent. No party machine, no DLC, no corporate compromises, just Al. What a dramatic, seismic upheaval that would cause; a gonad-tightening, sphincter-clenching paradigm shift of epic proportions. It'd almost be enough for me to actually give a shit about the debased electoral system in this sad, ridiculous country of ours.

Ah, but the discomfiting panic that would overwhelm the feeble corporate hacks at the helm of the shabbily leaking garbage scow that is the Democratic Party, in the audacious face of an independent Gore run, would surely be a sight to see. The highly entertaining turmoil that would ensue among this crime gang, these closeted neo-cons desperate to inherit Bush’s "unitary executive" mantle -- what an utterly priceless spectacle that'd be. To see Hillary's towering ambition to wield the unconstitutional powers that have been so deliberately crafted for chucklehead George go up in a puff of smoke, like the existential ass gas that it is, at least would give us something to laugh about when we're finally all transported to the nearest Halliburton-approved concentration camp. Hardy har.

But, I can hear the Kosmaniac dead-enders bleat in a horrified ejaculation of dismay, an independent run by Gore would disastrously split the Democratic vote, thereby ensuring a Republican electoral victory next year! To which I answer: so the fuck what? The Democratic "leadership" in Congress has already shown, well beyond a reasonable doubt, that they're fully on-board with the wider neo-con project -- their adamant refusal, in the face of public discontent and an enormous mountain of rather obvious criminal activity, to remove the most thoroughly corrupt administration in US history, pretty much proves this to be the case. They want all this extra-constitutional power for themselves, to replace their Republican cohorts as corporate-sponsored arbiters of the privatized death-wheel profit machine, the primary motivating engine propelling this whole catastrophic neo-con experiment. Would a President Hillary, as completely and enthusiastically in the corporate bag as any American politician has ever been, seriously consider curtailing or rolling back the abusive policies and precedents set by the present administration? You don't really believe that, do you? Come on, already.

Logic would seem to indicate that Gore doesn't owe much in the way of loyalty to the Democratic Party; after all, it was the party that foisted Lieberman on him in 2000, and has been at the forefront of the Vichyite appeasement of the neo-cons ever since. He's more than proven that he hardly needs the debilitating albatross of a compromised political apparatus strung around his neck, dragging him back down into the filth and puke -- you know, the natural habitat of the political animal. Gore has achieved heaps more than he ever could have, or did, as a captive member of a completely wasted political system. That's why he would be the perfect anti-party candidate, in a manner of speaking: he's redeemed himself about as well as any major politician ever has, is involved with issues of critical importance to the very survival of the planet and its monumentally misguided human inhabitants, and has reached a plateau of personal stature that no machine politician can hope to match. He's the one person who might be able to yank this corrupted pustule of a nation back from the brink of extinction ... so long as he doesn't run as an "official" Democrat. If he runs as a Democrat, he's owned, again. It's just that simple.

Well, you can all relax, you supercilious sniffers of Hillary's bloomers, or you moronic miscreants who actually believe that Barack Obama or John Edwards or any of the other nitwits have something important to say: Gore won't run, under apparently any circumstances. More's the pity. Instead of the one individual who might possibly save this "democratic republic" from itself -- Gore would at least try to -- we’ll probably be afflicted with Unitary Hillary and her superficially modulated version of neo-con fucktardery. So will end the buffoon epoch, the Bush period of the neo-con make-over of America, to be replaced by perhaps the far more dangerous, much less intellectually-challenged Hillary edition. Al, shorn of the useless baggage of party affiliation, is -- or would be -- the only thing standing in her way ...

Oh hell -- so much for the wisdom post. Run Al, run. You're our only hope ...

WHATEVER

2007-10-09T18:57:00.000-07:00

Front page headline of today's Sacramento Bee: DEMS TO YIELD ON WIRETAP POWERS. The article hardly requires reading; I don't even touch corporate trash newspapers if I can avoid it. Why would I want to read about another vicious betrayal, another "off the table" rat-fucking, courtesy of the Democrats we put in control of Congress to put an end to such neo-con nonsense? How's it feel, all you Democratic partisans out there? Had enough yet? Ready to jettison your desperate, death-grip-like identification with pathetic authoritarian co-dependents like Reid and Pelosi? Are you convinced, finally, of the sheer folly of hanging your much-abused faith on a political apparatus that is thoroughly rotten to the core? How many times can you be so blatantly screwed by your Democratic saviors, and not withdraw your bizarre allegiance to them?

Yeah, I know: more rhetorical questions that serve no useful purpose. Whatever.

"Whatever" just about sums it up. Another sell-out, another nasty dry-humping by the diseased three-legged pit bull of incipient fascism ... I can already hear the wheels spinning inside the paper-thin skulls of Skinner and Kos and other Democratic Party diehards of their ilk, practicing their special brand of bandwidth-sucking monkey motion by telling us, yet again, why we MUST continue to unconditionally support the Democratic machine and elect more Democrats next year and why Hillary is better than Obama and Obama is better than Hillary and blither blather blah blah blah fucking blah ... Meanwhile, representative government in the United States continues with its spot-on and rather unearthly impersonation of the Weimar Republic, even as it ignores the brick wall that always appears at the end of such routines. The public issues a gaping yawn, the DLC laughs uproariously, and the neo-con fanatics ready the cruise missiles for launch against, oh, pick a country ...

Whatever.

AN UNEXPECTED REALITY CHECK

2007-09-30T05:18:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last few weeks desperately attempting -- fruitlessly, pointlessly -- to ignore as much of what's going on as possible, to stop riding the wobbly see-saw of hope and despair, to unhitch Fortuna's debilitating wheel from the bent and greaseless axle of my consciousness by paying only so much attention as is absolutely necessary. I've tried to move myself even further towards the margins and fringes, not so much to garner perspective but obliviousness, to shut out what little awareness of things I might actually have. A psychic pit-stop, a mental safe-room, an extended breather from the immense psychological burden of giving a shit within a cultural milieu that prizes self-centered indifference above all else ...

Needless to say, the more I tried to ignore everything, the more it all drove me into bouts of stationary batshit panic. This useless endeavor has been an unmitigated failure -- not to mention misguided and ludicrously hypocritical as well.

Luckily (or not -- I'm not sure which), I've been rudely jolted out of my self-generated, over-excited torpor through the highly unlikely agency of what appears to be an endless troop of homeless people, purposefully rummaging around the long row of garbage cans across the street from the grimy coffee joint I happen to be sitting in. I seem to be the only caffeine junkie here who notices this interesting activity, occurring just a few feet from the front windows of this tackily hip crap hole. From the neatly-dressed executroids in their SUV's, to plain-clothes cops with guns, to the self-conscious grunge-fucks who ride up on their carefully de-engineered bicycles while smoking "organic" cigarettes (the basic clientele of this place), they're all pretending not to see the trash can people they practically have to wade through -- or drive over -- just so's they can get their desperately needed coffee fix. I watch this low-rent spectacle, and I think: What's worse, that there are so many in the "wealthiest nation on earth" who must forage through the garbage to survive, or that the people responsible for producing the trash in the first place act as if the rubbish-harvesters don't actually exist?

The irony of deriding confirmed consumerist assholes for actively ignoring the blatantly rising tide of poverty, homelessness, and all the other fun features of predatory capitalism, while at the same time complaining about how difficult it is to ignore all the grotesque ugliness myself, is not lost, which is the point of this post. In fact, "irony" is probably not the correct term -- "hypocritical stupidity" better approximates the situation here. Whatever the case, the idea that ignoring something will make it go away, whether that something be dumpster-diving street people or the neo-con appetite for destruction, is patently ridiculous and self-defeating. Leave it to group of hard-case trash pickers to dish up an unexpected reality check, to remind me that -- all the psuedo-snark and sophisticated cynicism aside -- I'm basically no better than the disconnected money-worshipping corporate fuckwad in his Escalade, righteously plowing through the paper-thin fabric of this tattered society with nary a worry or concern, or a thought about anything really. What an eye-opener.

So, for better or worse or otherwise, I'm here for the duration -- that is, until the drab and most foul neo-con era runs its course, or we're all rounded up by Blackwater goons and locked away in some Halliburton-approved dungeon, or some such combination of the two. Or something else entirely. I know full well that this hosehead blog doesn't mean anything, but so what? Trying to ignore the world as it comes apart at the seems probably doesn't mean anything either.

***

Simply as an aside: "ignore" is the root of the word "ignorance," is it not? Enough said.

BREAK TIME

2007-09-14T19:42:00.000-07:00

Taking a breather, my friends -- I'll see y'all around. Maybe ...

THE "GOOD AMERICAN"

2007-09-10T19:29:00.000-07:00

Half a lifetime ago -- or very nearly -- I was a faceless enlisted nobody in the United States Air Force. I was stationed in Germany at the peak of the convoluted shadow-play known as the Cold War, well before the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Soviet-run eastern bloc collapsed like the sorry house of cards it was. We worked extensively with a character-filled gaggle of German civilians, there at our little flugplatz nestled in the pleasant countryside north of Kaiserslautern, in the federal state of Rheinland-Pfalz. An interesting period, to say the least, bookended as it was by the end of World War II and (what we always thought of as) the highly unlikely re-unification of Germany, encompassing huge chunks of US and European social, political, and military history. To have played even so small an anonymous part in such an unsettling, fermented cauldron of triumphant confusion and profound transformations was, if anything, a deep privilege I'll always appreciate.

A reasonably large portion of our German friends had been born before the war, early enough, in fact, to have rather vivid recollections of the Nazi era -- a couple of them were old enough to have actually fought in the war, as teenaged conscripts. These old-timers were, in effect, biological conduits to a radically different world, living representations of a cultural/political order far beyond anything our own relatively narrow and limited experience could imagine. As such, they were boundlessly fascinating to know.

I haven't really thought about these people for years, even though it would be impossible to completely forget them: Hans Felker, missing a thumb on his left hand and who looked almost exactly like Archduke Franz Ferdinand; Heiner Ultes, the gas-passing champion of the Rhineland, if not the entire Bundesrepublik; or Kurt Kniereman, he of the Bozo the Clown hairdo and the mad, cackling lunatic laugh -- to name just a few. An unforgettable cast of wonderfully weird crazoids and reprobates, particularly from the viewpoint of a nitwit fresh from the bland suburban sterility of the Sacramento Valley, such as myself.

Herein lies some sort of point, surely. I suppose it might be this: it was exceedingly difficult, if not utterly impossible, to really imagine the Germans we worked with, or any with whom we were acquainted for that matter, as having had anything remotely to do with the thankfully extinct Nazi regime, whether as active enthusiasts or not. The great bulk of them seemed to embody the stereotypical attributes of the "good German," and we dumb chuckleheads had no basis from which to discover what was real and what wasn't. Beyond the specific peculiarities of their "German-ness," they struck us warm, good-natured people, apparently untouched and unburdened by the frightfully debilitating baggage of their nation's recent history.

***

Fast-forward to the present. There's an existential dilemma facing Americans these days not unlike that which (I would imagine) beset the Germans in the years leading up to the Third Reich. Both 21st-century Americans and post-Weimar Germans are, and were, witnesses to the systematic destruction of the political order in their respective countries, in both instances by relatively small groups of bloody-handed thugs, animated by avarice and the aberrant intoxications of power. Both regimes, the Nazi and the Bushist, were (and are) composed of fanatical devotees to the rule of force, the cynical manipulation of the populations under their hob-nailed heels, and the proposition that any half-truth or deception or outright falsehood or act of murderous violence is justified -- whether before, during, or after the fact -- so long as the selfish interests of the powerful are served thereby. The dilemma derives, on the part of the Germans, from genuinely enthusiastic, largely across-the-board participation in the criminality fostered by the government; for Americans, it's the mind-bending depth and breadth of indifference to, and passivity towards, the same basic types of lawless excesses committed by our own "leaders" in the present epoch. The result is pretty much the same: comprehensive public complicity, guilt by association.

You just know that, in a generation or two (or less, even), there'll be an entire industry devoted to promulgating the idea of the "good American"; that when the disastrously defiling neo-con hangover finally runs its course, leaving the American body politic desperately gasping like a landed flounder with a hook in its eyeball, there'll be legions of academics and pundits and animatronic blowholes of all persuasions voluminously explaining that it was all a ghastly mistake. We'll be informed, non-stop, that the advent of the neo-con era was, well, just an accident, that it really wasn't a reflection of the deep-seated flaws in our collective consumerist psyche and the socio-political constructions that give it outward form ... There was nobody here but us anti-Busheviks! ... Always did think those neo-con fucktards were crazy ...

For those of us who are truly and legitimately opposed to the repulsive banality of neo-con politics and policies, and have been from even before the beginning, how will we fit within the rickety framework of apologetics that, even now, is in the early phases of construction? Will we have a clear and distinctive voice, easily distinguishable from the opportunists, blood swillers, and generic goosesteppers who will only turn against the regime when ultimate disaster looms? Or will we be marginalized, co-opted, and/or drowned out completely by the veritable army of diseased rats who're already fleeing the rapidly sinking tub that they, themselves, were so instrumental in launching? Will the respectable, official, public image of the anti-Bush "good American" be cobbled together and manipulated by these same verminous scum, desperate to obfuscate their own not inconsiderable crimes while establishing their "democratic" and "anti-neo-con" credentials, the better to strategically position themselves to take advantage of whatever opportunities might appear in the as-yet amorphous backwash of a post-Bush United States?

In the end, actually, the only question that counts is: What do any of these rhetorical questions matter, so long as our sickeningly compromised, seriously bent, and heavily damaged democratic republic survives this dangerous far-right misadventure in something resembling one piece? My old German friends would likely agree -- sure, the larger portion of Nazi criminals escaped justice, at Nuremberg or elsewhere, and most successfully rehabilitated themselves enough to eventually become pillars of the post-war versions of the German state, both east and west; all Germans, high and low, young and old, have been broadly slathered with the taint of their own past, fairly or not, but it hasn't weighed on them all that much. In fact, they'd probably make a fairly convincing argument that anything would be a vast improvement over a fascist dictatorship and catastrophic defeat in war, even an imposed political order that quickly fell under the control of the same "nodes" of power that benefited handsomely from the Nazi regime. The trade off? No Feurher, no swastikas, no bombs falling on their cities, codified civil liberties, a form of representative government, and a reasonable amount of economic prosperity for the past sixty years or so. Not bad, if I may say so.

***

Yes, well. I'm astounded beyond belief that we, Americans one and all, are in roughly the same equivocal moral position the population of Nazi Germany found itself in, circa 1938-39. Never would I imagine that we’d have anything in common with a fascist police state that, if you recall, was only brought down after the bloodiest, most violent war in human history -- something that has permanently stuck itself on the very front edge of my consciousness. Shit, will there even be any "good Americans" when this strange neo-con dream is finally over ... ? Does it even matter?

BRIEFLY: IN PRAISE OF BEER AND BREWPUBS

2007-09-02T20:26:00.000-07:00

One good thing about three-day weekends -- they provide your weakling chronicler here the rare opportunity of making four trips to the Rubicon Brewing Company in a mere two days, knocking back banger-and-egg breakfasts and steak sandwiches and about twenty pints of the best amber ale this side of the Mississippi River. Free wireless Internet access has allowed me to read so many blogs that I'm thoroughly sick of the whole thing, as well as being queasy and cross-eyed. Fuck, I think my liver AND aorta are both exploding ... ah, what a way to go.

Anyhow, just wanted to share a brief Who-Gives-A-Shit moment with all my brethren and compatriots out there. I think I'm gonna have to check into AA one of these days ...

THE KIND OF STORY THAT MAKES ME ASHAMED TO BE AN AIR FORCE VETERAN ...

2007-08-30T18:38:00.000-07:00

This is exactly the sort of sick and twisted story that makes me want to dig out my Air Force Achievement and Good Conduct Medals, roll them up in my Honorable Discharge certificate and my DD form 214, and smoke them ... Ah, the age of Bush -- you just gotta love it.

Via Raw Story (what else?):

CBS: Female airman claims rape, ends up on trial herself

CBS News reported Tuesday on a current case that calls into doubt the Air Force's promise, after a scandal four years ago, of better treatment for alleged rape victims. The case is that of Airman Cassandra Hernandez, who has stated that she was raped by three fellow airmen.

Hernandez gave an exclusive interview to CBS in which she admitted having drunk "a lot" at a party before accompanying three male colleagues to a dorm room. She acknowledged that her memory of events is fuzzy, but said she definitely remembers saying "No" and trying to push the men away. The three men allege that Hernandez started taking off her clothes and that the sex which followed was consensual.

A hearing was originally set on the rape charges, but after harsh pre-trial questioning, Hernandez decided not to testify. At that point the Air Force brought lesser charges against all four airmen, citing Hernandez for underage drinking and "indecent acts." The three men accepted minor punishments, while Hernandez refused. She is now facing a court-martial and could be jailed or expelled from the Air Force. At the same time, the three men have been granted immunity in their testimony against her.

It is that outcome that has so alarmed advocates for rape victims and raised a concern that -- regardless of whether Hernandez is correct in her accusations -- the case will have a chilling effect in the future. According to the Los Angeles Times, Hernandez' attorneys have released a statement saying that "'important, relevant evidence' was denied them during discovery and that Hernandez decided not to plead to the same indecent-act charge as the three airmen because 'she was told that she was considered guilty unless she proved herself innocent.'"

"The system failed Hernandez," one of her attorneys told CBS.

EXACTLY WHAT IS IT THAT WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO PAY ATTENTION TO?

2007-08-28T20:07:00.000-07:00

It seems that it's been all Gonzales, all the time among the vulturine bloodsuckers who constitute the corporate media (at least until the Larry Craig thing blew up); even the front page of the Sacramento Bee is pushing the story, complete with a photo of Torture Boy bravely holding back tears of shame, or constipation, or something. Not that it's particularly surprising that the "resignation" of such a morally bankrupt political flunky would top all the headlines, and give the blow-dried blow-holes on TV something to talk about -- or lie about, as the case may be -- but what always bothers me the most about these circuses is how they so comprehensively eclipse nearly everything of importance, scouring the public's not-so-robust attention span clear of any least bit of relevance, about anything. Not that that's a particularly difficult thing to do, but, whatever.

No. Several years now of felonious outrages, massive frauds, and official lying on a scale never before seen, have left me completely incapable of not trying to dissect the political reasoning behind the timing of Gonzo's removal. To my cynically jaundiced eye, that's far more critical than the mere fact of his dismissal, which was pretty much a not-very-important foregone conclusion in any event. To the coterie of crazed dystopiacs directing Bush and his artificial administration, Torture Turd Gonzales was just a politically embarrassing liability who had to go. But why now? What, pray tell, are we not supposed to be paying attention to? What is it, precisely, that must be ignored and obscured by a not-gay Republican Senator who loves a little hot airport bathroom lovin', beauty contest dorks with cottage cheese where their brains should be, and, of course, the trials and tribulations of the most corrupt Attorney General in the history of the United States ...?

Ah -- now here's something (via Raw Story):

Study: US preparing 'massive' military attack against Iran

The United States has the capacity for and may be prepared to launch without warning a massive assault on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities, as well as government buildings and infrastructure, using long-range bombers and missiles, according to a new analysis.
The paper, "Considering a war with Iran: A discussion paper on WMD in the Middle East" – written by well-respected British scholar and arms expert Dr. Dan Plesch, Director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, a former Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) and former adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament – was exclusively provided to RAW STORY late Friday under embargo.
"We wrote the report partly as we were surprised that this sort of quite elementary analysis had not been produced by the many well resourced Institutes in the United States," wrote Plesch in an email to Raw Story on Tuesday.
Plesch and Butcher examine "what the military option might involve if it were picked up off the table and put into action" and conclude that based on open source analysis and their own assessments, the US has prepared its military for a "massive" attack against Iran, requiring little contingency planning and without a ground invasion.

Be sure to click here to read the whole thing. I can see why we're supposed to close our ears and eyes to such fun-time diversions ...

CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR ...

2007-08-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

Torture Boy Gonzales is now free to cash out at some neocon think tank or PR company or lobbying firm, sure to escape the theoretical legal consequences of the criminality he gleefully commited on behalf of Cheney and Bush. Rumor has it that low-voltage vampire Michael "Of The Devil" Chertoff is to be proposed as the new Attorney General ... People are often asking the largely rhetorical question, How could things possibly get any worse? Well, here's your answer.

Before you bust a nut in a blinding explosion of schadenfreude at the seeming demise of Torquemada, take a trip over to Casey Lee Cobb's blog and check this out.

My oh my.

IT'S ALL SO BORING

2007-08-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

What level of perception, what fiction or fantasy, enters into policy-making? What wild flights soar over reasonable estimates of reality? What degree of conviction or, on the contrary, conscious exaggeration is at work? Is the argument believed or is it inventive rhetoric employed to enforce a desired course of action?

--Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly

I especially like the last sentence of the quote above, particularly as our corporate media stenographers -- and self-styled pundits of all kinds -- work themselves into an anticipatory cluster-fuck frenzy ahead of the already-written foregone conclusion soon to be delivered by the so-called US "commander" in Iraq. The assumed, apparently innocent, painfully earnest conviction that there must be some sort of suspense over what Petraeus will or won't say next month is almost touching in its simplemindedness; in fact, the only doubt inherent to this ridiculously absurd theater piece lies in just how closely Petraeus sticks to the script. Dutiful quasi-politician that he is, he isn't likely to stray very far.

But then -- who the hell cares?

Seriously. Why should anybody with a functional brainstem give two tiny craps about it? We already know what the "report" will say, and just how easy it is for Cheney to get others to parrot his words -- Petraeus being, in this case, the designated sock puppet. Water-carrying hacks who whore themselves out for a few measly crumbs tossed at them from evil despotic cyborgs? How unutterably boring.

It really is boring. Infuriating, disgusting, enraging, repulsive, frustrating beyond all measure ... but boring nevertheless.

And that pretty much goes for all of the toxic pollution the neocons have incontinently dumped into the turgid life-stream of this rapidly deteriorating society: it's boring because it's so patently obvious. But, the thing to remember is that the neocon crowd and its enablers -- ruthless, defiling grifters that they are -- haven't really brought anything new to the vapid socio-political maelstrom of bullshit that, like it or not, has always been the existential foundation of this rickety screw-shack of a country. Potential is one thing; the high-sounding philosophical framework of the founding documents represents an apparently noble target to which to aspire, within the realm of statecraft and government at least, but they never have completely obscured the fundamental weakness and astounding inequities that have plagued us since day one. The neocon monkeys and their slavering minions are, if anything, fanatical students of these weaknesses and inequities, dedicated to their thorough exploitation for personal gain -- no matter the cost.

But then, I was saying something about Petraeus, wasn't I ?

Actually, there's nothing I can say about this sordid circle-jerk, this fraud superimposed on a lie overlayed on a fiction ... other than to express my dismay that so many people, of nearly all political stripes and every conceivable side of the "debate" over the Iraq catastrophe, seem to take this upcoming Cheneyist vaudeville routine so seriously. Every bloated blowhole with an opinion to offer has assigned an enormous amount of significance to what Petraeus will say, even erstwhile members of the opposition "left" -- whatever officially passes for such a thing these days. What's conveniently glossed-over or ignored or spun is the rather uncontroversial fact that it's a sham, that anything that happens to pour out of Petraeus' thin-lipped gob is only designed to keep the blood and profits flowing. What's to be gained by believing otherwise? The next illegal war is already in the works, proletarian opinions don't amount to hill of donkey shit, and the neocon "revolution" is merely a logical outgrowth of structural processes and tendencies inherent to a fatally flawed political-economic system that's not long for this world. Personally, I think it's far more prudent to consider what the proper course to take might be when the paper-thin mask of "democracy" is finally torn off and flushed away, as all indications say it must be, rather than desperately clutching onto the seamy claptrap of a compromised scumbag like Petraeus. As if anything he'll likely spout might, somehow, bring an end to the neocon wars against Iraq or the American public or the world's population as a whole.

Yes, well. Tuchman writes, Is the argument believed or is it inventive rhetoric employed to enforce a desired course of action? Perhaps she was being facetiously ironic or tongue-in-cheek, but, in any case, the answer is so obvious it's ... boring as hell.

***

Where's my bartender?

KURT-SPEAK

2007-08-20T18:36:00.000-07:00

Staggering and stumbling through one of those periodic, anti-computer frames of mind; techno-overload, Internet indigestion. In response, I dig up one of my favorite Vonnegut quotes:

Don't give up on books. They feel so good -- their friendly heft, the sweet reluctance of their pages when you turn them with your sensitive fingertips. A large part of our brains is devoted to deciding whether what our hands are touching is good or bad for us. Any brain worth a nickel knows books are good for us.

Computers are insincere. Books are sincere.

And don't try to make yourself an extended family out of ghosts on the Internet.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Agnes Scott College, 1999

It's way past time for an extended -- perhaps permanent -- breather from the horrors of this mechanized madness ...

TRYING NOT TO READ THE NEWSPAPER

2007-08-18T10:23:00.001-07:00

As a general principle, I try not read newspapers, for reasons that are plainly obvious. Referencing a headline once in awhile is one thing; superficially scoping out the front pages of establishment rags like the Sacramento Bee, the San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, and of course the New York Times (all available in the vending machines just outside most of the coffee joints and beer holes I usually patronize), is about as far as I usually go. Yesterday morning, however, I splurged and managed to dig up fifty cents to waste on a copy of the Bee, only after an above-the-fold juxtaposition of a couple of stories caught my jaundiced and bloodshot eye.

My last two quarters gave me a soupy mixture of Jose Padilla being convicted of ... something or other, and another story of the Sacramento County District Attorney declining to prosecute a CHP lieutenant who awarded no-bid state contracts to a firm owned by his daughter and son-in-law. What do these two stories have in common? Well, nothing really, at least directly. Except, of course, they do function as the two sides of a "criminal justice" coin that's been debased and adulterated to such an extent, it hardly has anything to do with "criminal justice" any longer -- assuming it ever did.

Anyway. The Padilla case is sufficiently well known, among those paying attention, as to not need recounting here. It's enough to characterize it as the logical result of a co-called "justice" system run completely amok, political corruption settled in its gonads (and other vital organs) like heavy metals in a population exposed to depleted uranium. From what I understand -- and, naturally, I could be about as wrong as it is humanly possible to be -- the DOJ commissars never actually proved that Padilla really did anything, certainly nothing even remotely connected to the "dirty bomb" bullshit for which he was originally arrested and illegally held by the military, until his mind transmogrified itself into an especially rancid chunk of moldy roquefort. It was, from bogus beginning to pathetic end, a politically-motivated operation with a predetermined outcome; essentially it was an experiment within the wider project of eviscerating the United States Constitution, at least those sections of which that deal with "antiquated" notions of civil liberties -- you remember those things, don't you? Somebody had to be the precedent-setting sacrifice, the foredoomed rat in the diabolical neocon laboratory where the mad scientists attempt to alchemically merge the worst, most base characteristics of predatory capitalism with such fun-time concepts as Stalinism and the major tenets of National Socialism. Somebody -- in this case, Jose Padilla -- had to function as the procedural trailblazer for the rest of us, if you know what I mean.

In contrast to the Padilla case, this local tale of CHP corruption seems of little consequence. The mammoth chicaneries of, say, Halliburton and Blackwater, and other corporate monstrosities of their ilk, would seem to easily eclipse such penny-ante shenanigans as a Highway Patrol nitwit funneling the inevitable no-bid contract to his daughter. In dollar terms, that's certainly true. What's so significant to me is how the editors at the Sacramento Bee pinned this story next to the one on Padilla, actually sticking this article about low-budget CHP nepotism and thievery in the more prominent position, in the center above the fold. Clearly, they feel it's more important to emphasize how a minor public official is apparently entitled to escape criminal conflict-of-interest charges (in the words of Sacramento County DA Jan Scully: "The evidence does not show that [the CHP lieutenant] had any prohibited financial interest in any of the contracts at issue.") when a member of his family benefits from his decisions, rather than the sick story of how some poor dumb sap was railroaded into prison after being illegally held for years and having his brain turned into a rotten cucumber. A typically curious, but telling, mishmash of priorities on the part of the Bee's corporate hatchetmen.

Well, as I said, under ordinary circumstances -- whatever those might actually be anymore -- I usually avoid newspapers like a politician avoids the truth and/or his constituents. Looking at traditional conduits of news and information, such as newspapers, really has only two possible outcomes: the submersion of any and all issues into unfathomable depths of incomprehensibility, or the exposure of just enough of what's real to legitimize and solidify one's impending lunatic dissolution. That's precisely what I feel like is happening when a corporate ventriloquist's dummy such as the Sacramento Bee effectively declares that our sympathetic attentions should focus on the tribulations of an unindicted cop who broke the law, instead of a political prisoner who's merely a prototypical poster child for the right-wing dystopia-to-be. Ah, but such is the Bushworld zeitgeist, 2007.

*Sigh* Is it too early for a beer?

ACCIDENTAL FUN WITH A NEWSPAPER HEADLINE

2007-08-14T18:55:00.000-07:00

Most unintentionally hilarious newspaper headline I've seen in ages and ages -- from the Sacramento Bee, 14 August 2007:

Void left by exit of Rove

Say what you will about McClatchy, and its flagship organ, the Bee, but every now and again they do seem to display an inexplicably oblique sense of humor. What "void" instantly springs to mind, when one gives thought-space to our chimperiffic fake president? Yes, of course, the echoingly huge void in the center of his pointed little head, particularly since his "brain" has (ostensibly) decided to take a hike. Hardy Har. I'm sure that when the McClatchy brothers founded the Sacramento Bee back in the 1850's, they hardly could've imagined it would evolve into the silly comedy rag it's apparently become.

As far as Rove is concerned -- fuck that doughy-headed, pasty-faced, amoral lump of shit, that spiritual inheritor of Josef Goebbels' special brand of creamy evilness. I guess a few people see some sort of significance in Rove's so-called "departure"; he may be removing his foul, disease-riddled bulk from the physical proximity of his ultimate creation, the Commander Guy/Decider-in-Chief, but it's ludicrous in the extreme to believe he won't still be exerting his devilish influence on the Unitary Marionette. He'll just be more deeply buried in the maggoty woodwork, that's all.

Humorous headlines aside, here's an ominous implication to Rove's rather precipitous exit: he just lost out in the overt power struggle with his co-controller, Cheney ... Now there's some food for thought. All of a sudden, I'm not laughing anymore.

CLUB NOTES -- GETTING AWAY FROM ALL THE PUKINESS, BRIEFLY

2007-08-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

Time again for the extremely infrequent visit to Sacramento's oldest club -- opened in 1939 -- The Torch Club. Needless to say, I had to have a respite from the ugliness, the disaster that this nation has become, however briefly. So bear with me as I try to transcribe these nearly undecipherable scribblings in my beer-stained notebook ...

4:50PM. A typical scene: ten minutes before the "blues jam" is due to commence, and there's a grand total of seven people in the bar, and the four nearest are carrying on an overly-loud conversation about ... real estate. How exciting. Complementing the stupidity of it all are the well-stewed bikers who are now trickling in, wrapped in faux-leathers and carefully composed scowls; the outlaw aura is rendered slightly less convincing by their cell phones, and by the ubiquitous squinty-eyed over-concentration they display as they force their pudgy fingers to manipulate the tiny little buttons ...

5:00 PM. The "house band" should be launching their half-assed assault on the historical fundament of American blues music right about now, but so far there's only a drum set and an amplifier set up on the stage. It doesn't bode well, but then nothing ever does around here ... Four dollars for a pint of Guinness -- I find myself digging through the change in my pocket, hopelessly wondering if I have enough money left to buy another drink ... Tattoo people just walked in, so perhaps the afternoon isn't a complete wash after all.

5:05 PM. I'm disappointed to see that the bulbously curvy bartender is still sporting that stupid bobbed haircut. It's The Bicycle Thief meets T-Bone Walker in a dingy downtown club. How revolting.

5:30 PM. The bald-headed security guy just turned on the jukebox. Hmmm ... Ah yes, the harsh and beat-to-crap semi-street people have finally arrived, the Torch Club's primary clientele. The real estate buttheads are getting pretty drunk ... You've never seen so many pony tails and bald spots in one room -- I love this place.

5:50 PM. The "band" starts playing, only 50 minutes late ... somebody, anybody, please punch me in the head as hard as possible. Please! I can still hear this unconscionable affront to taste and decency. I do love this place, but I seriously wonder why I ever bother to come here. Jeeze, I can play 12-bar blues as badly as these fuckers ...

6:15 PM. To be completely honest, these guys are god-awful hacks, this bar is a funky nasty mess, the patrons have lived very hard lives ... but I haven't thought about NeoCon aggression or constitutional destruction or Presidential orders or the likelihood of being locked up in a Halliburton-constructed prison -- among other horrors -- for at least an hour. So, it's time well spent, I suppose.

6:30 PM. OK. I'm so bored I could spit. The idiots on stage are the drunkest people in the joint ... I'm done.

Well, that was fun.

THE BOSS KNOWS BEST -- A MINOR SKIRMISH IN THE CLASS WARS

2007-08-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

Not that this would be particularly interesting to anybody -- which is nothing new, really -- but I'm oddly compelled to relate a funny little story about a confrontation I had this week with the denial-ridden, deeply-closeted Stalinist Bushniks by whom I happen to be employed. It's a microcosmic explication, it seems to me, of the macrocosmic heap of existential dog-doo we all find ourselves in these days.

Anyway, it goes something like this:

I made the decision recently, for a variety of reasons, to return to college. No big deal, you know. Nothing earth-shattering, nothing especially original, nothing likely to dramatically alter the trajectory of human history; merely a moderately desperate, mid-life-crisis-fueled attempt to change, however fleetingly and/or delusionally, the direction of the gaudily empty merry-go-round on which every last one of us is so speedily heading towards oblivion. A tough bill to fill, and an ultimately futile one, but it's all about the journey, not the destination. As the more enlightened might put it.

Yes, well. In any event, all this modest project would've involved was one lousy class, twice a week, necessitating a minor alteration to the hours my fascist employers require me to toil for them. You'd think, perhaps, what possible problem could there be -- after all, this is a case of someone choosing to continue their education, and high-minded Americans place such a premium on education, don't they? Aren't we constantly being harangued and bludgeoned and otherwise battered with rhetorical shillelaghs about "bettering" ourselves, particularly when said "bettering" involves a school of some sort? Aren't the supposed economic rewards of a college education dangled before our over-credulous noses like radioactive carrots, starting when we're too young to understand what the fuck it's all about ...?

The shitwits I work for were obviously out sick the day they taught the critical, paramount importance of education. When I informed my would-be corporate "masters" that I would have to leave early a couple days a week, since there was only one section offered for the course I was taking, this is what they cobbled together, in what they euphemistically referred to as "seeing what they could do" for me: I would have to give up my present position, swallowing a $2 per hour pay cut in the process; I'd be re-assigned to the exact same work I was doing a full twelve years ago; and, best of all, they would alter my hours so I could leave earlier -- but not early enough to actually make it to school on time.

How's about that?

As my boss was trowling out, with an amazingly straight face, this ridiculous joke of a non-solution to my rather simple and prosaic educational dilemma, it required a huge effort on my part to keep my lip zipped and my opinions to myself. In the dank wake of this noisome managerial bilge washing over me, I couldn't help but think: if I was a sycophantic salary-earner there would be no problem at all, but since I come out of the hourly-wage monkey class I deserve no consideration whatsoever. I realized that this was just a very minor skirmish within the much broader class war -- you know, the class war that, supposedly, only liberal democrats and union organizers engage in, not ass-sucking Republicans who live in an area that repeatedly sends somebody like John Doolittle to Congress. That's the bottom-feeder I work for.

Like I said, there isn't much reason to think that this is of any interest to anybody, except maybe for those whose workplace environment is unduly influenced by the corrupting poison of present-day political culture, as is mine. If anybody has a similar story, I'm all ears; if anybody thinks there's something "actionable" here, I'm all ears for that, too.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just get on with the business of not "bettering" myself, since the Cheney fetishists I work for won't allow it. Surely they know best. Don't they?

TRYING TO PUT IT INTO PERSPECTIVE

2007-08-07T07:27:00.000-07:00

In the foul wake of the latest Congressional giveaway to the Bushniks, trying to digest this example of incomprehensibility is nearly impossible:

Via Raw Story:

Democrats introduce Bush, Cheney, Gonzales censure resolutions in House and Senate

Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced resolutions calling for the censure of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Sen. Russ Feingold sponsored two resolutions in his chamber calling for the legislative action against the administration officials because of they misled the country in pursuing war with Iraq and have undermined the rule of law, he said.

"These censure resolutions will let future generations know that Congress stood up to the destructive policies of this administration that have weakened our national security, cost more than 3,600 American lives, and undermined the principles on which our country was founded," Feingold said in a prepared statement.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) introduced companion legislation in the House.

“From misleading this country into invading Iraq to establishing a warrantless domestic spy program, this White House has continuously misled and deceived the American people while disregarding the rule of law that guides our democracy,” Hinchey said in a prepared statement. “The Bush administration has placed an extraordinary burden on this and future generations to recover from the damage done to our Constitution and national security."

I don't know if I should laugh until I upchuck my stomach lining, or rage until I faint, or what. The depth to which craven cowardice and authoritarian greed have become welded together is truly breathtaking ... If somebody like Profmarcus is seriously considering calling it quits, then the point of no return has, indeed, been finally reached.

Hard to imagine the circumstances under which this blogging business might actually seem like a worthwhile endeavor ...

TOO DISGUSTED TO COME UP WITH A TITLE FOR THIS POST ...

2007-08-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

I'm having a harsh time of it trying to reconcile the two most significant bits of political news from this weekend: Debra Bowen's shot across the Diebold bow, and Congress' official self-termination as the legitimate legislative body of the United States government. These two stories are intricately linked, if in a somewhat convoluted fashion, and making sense out of them should be a top priority for thinking people everywhere -- if there any thinking people left out there, that is.

It seems to be the epitome of cruel irony that, apparently, the long hoped-for beginning of the end of the electronic voting hoax finally starts to manifest itself the very same weekend the Congress shamefully surrenders more of its prerogatives and responsibilities, in the face of yet another pathetic Shrub temper tantrum. Just as the electoral process is, perhaps, reprieved from the corporate straightjacket the NeoCons have been desperately trying to stuff it into, the Democratically-controlled Congress essentially votes itself out of existence, for all intents and purposes. The very faction within the political class that has the most to gain from "election integrity" shows that they, themselves, have no integrity, and effectively negate the point behind the California Secretary of State's moves against the privatization of voting. So, great -- votes get counted more-or-less accurately, electronic election fraud becomes more difficult to perpetrate; meanwhile, we work to elect erstwhile opponents of the present regime, and they prove to be just as willing to ratfuck us as their NeoCon counterparts. Unglaublich.

The ragged DLC remnants of what was once known as the Democratic Party have just shot their last steely wad, nearly guaranteeing their ignominious defeat in 2008, and all but burying representative government in the US in the process -- "election integrity" be damned. What an unbelievable pack of stupid assholes.

***

I understand that members of Congress, in recognition of their fervent dedication to the tenets of constitutional law and democratic governance, are planning to vote on a pay increase for themselves after they return from their slightly delayed, but so well deserved, summer vacation.

Have we had enough yet?

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

2007-08-04T18:17:00.000-07:00

The ultimate rhetorical question: What are we waiting for?

Does anybody have an answer? I sure as hell don't, being so benumbed and exhausted by the endless death-grip minutiae of tedium imposed by corporate employers and forced participation in the consumer culture. Like most people, I guess. Within the framework of petty confusions and over-amped monkey-motion that constitutes daily life in this doomed and deluded society -- this penny-ante brain froth of trivial pursuits and programmed ignorance -- the question inevitably presents itself, fighting for attention against a colorful backdrop of spasmodic emptiness and hollow diversions: What are we waiting for?

I don't know. A collapsing bridge or two, the "war hero" who was actually murdered, the apparently never-to-end catastrophe in Iraq, Katrina victims being ram-rodded by the courts, the dictatorial ambitions of Cheney's sock puppet, George Bush ... Stir all this together, along with countless other galling ingredients of disgust and outrage, and you're left with a fetid stew of bubbling toxicity, every noxious whiff of which stakes this question more firmly to the forehead of my shredded consciousness:

What are we waiting for?

Maybe the more witless among us, if they even bother to devote brain space to such things, are waiting for the Democrats to boldly save the situation. These are the same Democrats, you'll recall, who've thanked the voters who put them back in control of Congress by betraying them -- us -- at every opportunity, proving themselves to be utterly incapable of overcoming Republican obstructionism and Chimpy's playground bully-boy schtick. Unquestioning, highly disciplined faith in Reid and Pelosi tends to stray into masochistic territory; the more you politely request that it would be greatly appreciated if the legislative branch at least went through the motions of discharging its constitutional responsibilities, hobbling an obviously out-of-control administration of thugs, the more said legislative branch seems to adopt the sour Neo-Con program for its own, competing with Cheney and Rove in how much pain and destruction they can inflict. That might be seen as perfectly sufficient in some quarters, such as virtual bastions of "respectable" opposition like Kos and Democratic Underground. A growing klatch of the disaffected and pissed-off believe otherwise.

Others are of the opinion that, faced with the reality of an enfeebled Congress implacably opposed to the one possible constitutional remedy for this cancerous Bush-Cheney affliction -- impeachment -- the only thing to be done is, well, nothing. After all, they argue, the administration has but a year and a half remaining in its term, and considering that whoever is the Democratic nominee for President in '08 is an iron-clad shoe-in, all we need is a little patience. Just wait out the next 18 months, and presto! All traces of the foul Neo-Con age are magically flushed away, happy days are here again, here comes the sun, etc. This Hoping-For-The-Best approach obscures a few critical points: electronic voting machines, a judicial apparatus crammed to the rafters with far-right corporatist ideologues, and the (nearly) unassailable fact that presumptive front-runner Hillary Clinton will (probably) never be elected President. Besides, even if she somehow does get elected, what's the fucking difference between a George Bush who violates the US constitution at will, launches blatantly illegal wars of aggression, steals from the American people on an unbelievable scale, and allows the nation's physical infrastructure to crumble into dust ... and a Hillary who'll do the exact same things, or worse?

Beyond the plurality of people who are at least paying attention, outside of the political dead-enders (both Democratic and Republican) and the angrily clamoring progressive minority, lies the great heaving mass of the citizenry at large. Unfortunately, and this just might be the greatest understatement of all time, they don’t seem to be waiting for much of anything. Granted, they don't have a particularly high opinion of the artificial Mensa Man President, or of politicians in general; they have vague misgivings about the catastrophic course along which this country is being goaded; they're going broke in record numbers, standing by helplessly while their jobs are shipped to China or India, and what little money they still have finds its way into the bank accounts of various HMO and/or oil company CEO's; but even so, they still inexplicably manage to maintain the sloppy-grin pretense of unbridled consumerist optimism, somehow ignoring the all but inevitable thermo-dynamic meltdown of our debt-addled dollar economy and Gestapo-infested civil society. Their indifference is as much a danger to what remains of this democratic republic as the authoritarian freak-sticks who're bent on destroying it.

Well. Sadly caught in the cognitive trough that always seems to form on the ass-end of these interminable screeds, it occurs that a much better question than What are we waiting for? might be: What the hell are we going to do?

I'll ask that one again: What the hell are we going to do?

READING INTO THE UPCOMING CONGRESSIONAL RECESS (AND GETTING BLOTTOED IN THE PROCESS)

2007-07-27T17:33:00.000-07:00

Not a day passes within this milieu of micturating morons, this tired tableau of tribulated trickeries and diversified dumbness, that I fail to thank [insert favorite deity-image here] for beer. We may be sinking fast down a murky right-wing rat hole, and there probably isn't a great deal we can do about it -- at least we can still patronize the local brewpub and, unaccountably encouraged by the cloying atmosphere produced by clots of neighborhood drunks and greasy food and AC/DC songs playing on the musak machine, gratefully toss up an alcoholic fog of blessed relief. The bare fact that said relief is illusory at best, and temporary in any case, is beside the point. Logic and reason are all fine and good in their respective places, but you have to set them aside every once in awhile. Right now seems like a good time.

It's especially appropriate to jettison the burden of reasonably linear, rational thinking when confronted with the notion of the US Congress taking a month off, leaving Cheney and Rove free to work their uniquely vulgar brand of deadly mischief unimpeded. Yeah, I know -- six months into the present legislative term and the Vichyite leadership has done very little, if anything, to hobble the Neo-Con juggernaut. However, their physical presence in DC, as feeble and ineffectual as it is, at least serves as a symbolic counterweight to Cheneyist ambitions; the thought that they’re going to abandon the capital to such a Stalinist-inclined administration, for an entire month, is enough to send me stumbling back to the bar, rudely shoving the nearly immobilized alcoholics and the ugly transvestite with the guitar out of the way, to desperately order another round of brewed forgetfulness.

Weren't some of these vacation-minded Congressional nitwits recently scolding their counterparts in the puppet Iraqi government for proposing pretty much the exact same thing that they, themselves, are planning to do? Oh yes, I forgot -- hypocrisy is not the exclusive property of the Republican party, as much as we'd like like to believe otherwise. DLC Democrats are just as brazenly adept in its use as any diaper-loving, prostitute-addicted "family values" GOP dirtbag could ever hope to be. In fact, riding on the hot wind of revulsion and anger and disgust among the voting public (at least those fortunate to actually have their votes counted accurately), the Dem leadership is probably more hypocritical than the Republicans, in that they pretend they weren't swept back into control of Congress with the express mandate to end the war and rinse the stain of this phony administration out of the US political system’s collective undershorts. Instead of vigorously moving forward with the urgent -- desperately urgent -- task of nailing these bottom-feeding bastards to the lonely wooden stake of their perfidious criminality, and hanging them out to dry while an aroused citizenry reviles them unmercifully, our Democratic saviors intend to indulge the one base instinct that even a chuckleheaded fuck like George Bush understands: they go on vacation.

I wonder if these paragons of the pathetic, these monumentally ineffective shills who, theoretically at least, function as "leaders" in Congress, ever imagine that this ill-timed recess could very well be the last one they ever take. The Chimp, prodded by the Neo-Con puppeteers fighting for finger room in his scaly ass, has quietly erected the legal foundations for the dictatorship to come; one carefully staged, sufficiently bloody and destructive "terrorist" attack, and the betraying Vichy Democrats won't have a Congress to which to return. I just wonder if that ever crosses the minds of Reid and Pelosi. I wonder.

A beer -- I need another beer! Quick!

SICKENING, BUT NOT PARTICULARLY SURPRISING

2007-07-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Seems as if the name of the game these days in Congress is to hold a hearing. I suppose it's better than nothing, but not much. I think we all agree at this point that impeachment -- right now -- is the only answer.

Anyway. From The Gavel (via Crooks and Liars) comes the tale of Henry Waxman's latest hearing, this one concerning Bush & Cheney's imperial embassy in the shattered, god-forsaken country of Iraq. It isn't enough to feed the degenerate Cheney bloodlust for violence and death; degredation and chattel slavery have their roles to play as well. Check out The Gavel site for the whole sick story. A couple of excerpts from C & L are sufficient to deliver the sordid tenor ...

Rory Mayberry, a former subcontractor employee for First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Company, gives opening testimony:

Rory Mayberry: "Mr. Chairman, when the airplane took off and the captain announced that we were heading to Baghdad, all you-know-what broke out on the airplane. The men started shouting, it wasn’t until the security guy working for First Kuwaiti waved an MP5 in the air that the men settled down. They realized that they had no other choice but to go to Baghdad. Let me spell it out clearly: I believe these men were kidnapped by First Kuwaiti to work at the US Embassy… I've read the State Department Inspector General's report on the construction of the embassy. Mr. Chairman, it's not worth the paper it's printed on. This is a cover-up and I'm glad that I've had the opportunity to set the record straight."

***

John Owens, a former employee of First Kuwaiti Trading & Contracting Company, gives opening testimony:

John Owens: "This was a man-camp, and by nature not the most pleasant of places to be. But the conditions were deplorable even beyond what a working man should tolerate. Foreign workers were packed into trailers tight, with insufficient equipment and basic needs like shoes and gloves. If a construction worker needed a new pair of shoes he was told 'no, do with what you have' by First Kuwaiti managers. The contract for these workers said they had to work twelve hours a day, seven days a week, with some time off on Friday for prayers. A few people from India told me they were making $240 a month…"

I'm so overfull of such disgusting obscenities, I can't think of anything to add.

"DEMOCRATIC UNDERGROUND" -- WHO NEEDS 'EM?

2007-07-25T16:16:00.000-07:00

Trolling around the interwebs today, ostensibly taking advantage of a day off from work by looking for a new job ... There certainly are a lot of online employment resources out there these days. Holy shit. Anyhow, taking a well-deserved break from such an irritating and odious pastime, I order another beer and point my laptop towards Democratic Underground, where I stumble over a post by Skinner entitled:

In case there is any confusion: You cannot use DU to support Cindy Sheehan’s third-party candidacy.

Well, that's more than enough to grab my feeble attention. He goes on to write:

As you know, Cindy Sheehan announced that she is going to run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi as an independent candidate. This post is to remind everyone that supporting Cindy Sheehan’s independent candidacy is not permitted on this website. If Cindy had chosen to run as a Democrat in the Democratic primary then you would have been permitted to support her campaign here, but instead she chose to run as an independent.

Now, honestly, there are so many things about this declamation that chap my ass, I hardly know where to begin. Skinner goes on to quote DU "rules," including:

You are not permitted to use this message board to work for the defeat of the Democratic Party for any political office.

It's all too clear, as if it wasn't quite before, that the "Democratic" in "Democratic Underground" is a reference to the "big-D" variety. In the world of Skinner (and Kos and Move On, among others), perceived loyalty to a corrupted, thoroughly debased political wing of the corporate class (commonly referred to as the Democratic Party) trumps all other concerns, and precludes any possible discussion of what the concept "democratic" actually means. Controlling the agenda, shoe-horning the range and character of the discussion to fit into a narrow, pre-determined ideological framework, silencing dissent and any hint of criticism, telling people what they can and can't talk about, and possessing a no-matter-what allegiance to a political machine -- well, fuck me with a branding iron if that isn't the M.O. of any number of anti-democratic wingnut pressure groups out there, working diligently to beat us all into submission and stuff fascism down our throats. Imposing no-compromise ideological discipline upon an online community with "Democratic" in its title makes Skinner and his cohorts fundamentally no different than the agenda-mongers at Fox News, or Drudge, or any other freeper-freaks irresponsibly polluting the body politic.

Skinner can believe any damn thing he wants -- if he's delusional enough to believe that the astoundingly pathetic and wretchedly servile DLC Democrats at the helm of the party, the Pelosis and Hoyers and Reids and all the rest, are the unsung saviors of the American Republic, that's his problem. It's a "free" country, as they say. On the other hand, censoring others who might not quite agree with you 100% of the time means only one thing: you're nothing but a toweringly hypocritical asshole. As far as I'm concerned, that applies to Kos and all the other Frankenstein monsters of the "acceptable" democratic opposition as well. Fuck the lot of them.

By the by, I realize it's a hell of a longshot, but I sincerely hope that Cindy wipes the floor with Pelosi's useless, corporate-owned, off-the-table ass. Take that, Skinner.

LOOKIN' FER SOME INSPIRATION

2007-07-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

In these increasingly brief moments of relative stillness, when the hard edge of the frantic, input-overloaded, aimlessly spasmodic lurch-fest of 21st Century consumer existence is temporarily blunted, I at least try to find some wordy inspiration within the pages of a good book. This week I'm re-reading The Grapes of Wrath -- it feels almost like a "prequel" to what's to be, when Cheney's jackboot utopia is finally established beyond doubt.

OK, well. Perhaps another work of literature is required. Tom Robbins' Still Life With Woodpecker maybe, or even some 30-year old back issue of Mad Magazine.

***

Monkey Man's executive order from last week, wherein the First and Fifth Amendments to the US Constitution were effectively eviscerated with one fell swoop of his turd-shaped pen, for some reason sent me scurrying toward my dog-eared copy of William L. Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Jeeze, talk about pumping too much hot air into one's already dangerously distended psychic innertube -- it very nearly qualifies as criminal self-abuse. Shirer explicates, in no uncertain terms, what always seems to happen to nations when hubris and/or psychosis becomes the animative principle of policy; if nothing else, his monumental history of Nazi Germany serves more than admirably as a cautionary inspiration, if you know what I mean, rather than as (one would hope) an inevitable blueprint of what we have to look forward to.

Speaking of Shirer: I highly recommend his almost-but-not-quite so well known work, The Collapse of the Third Republic. Read about the outrageous machinations of the hard core of defeatist collaborators -- Laval, Petain, Weygand, and others -- who single-handedly destroyed what remained of constitutional government in France, in the disastrous backwash of a lost war; for some reason, it always reminds me of a certain "opposition" political party in the United States, here in the sad Neo-Con era. Vichy Democrats, indeed.

Then again, logic and common sense would tend to indicate that larger, transcendent themes are much more the order of the day -- hard to imagine even attempting to superimpose some wider, encompassing perspective over the utterly trashy and base circumstantial footing of Bushworld, if one spends every waking moment wallowing in all of the filth and putridity. During these sober moments, when the essential futility of all human activities and aspirations is nothing but blatantly apparent, I usually reach for something like Nine-Headed Dragon River, by (in my opinion) the greatest living literary figure in America today, Peter Matthiessen. It's next to impossible to view the obscene foibles and criminal follies of the Neo-Cons -- and our constant knee-jerk reactions to them as well -- in quite the same way after reading passages like this:

I lower my gaze from the snow peaks to the glistening thorns, the snow patches, the lichens. Though I am blind to it, the Truth is near, in the reality of what I sit on -- rocks. These hard rocks instruct my bones in what my brain could never grasp in the Heart Sutra, that "form is emptiness, and emptiness is form" -- the Void, the emptiness of blue-black space, contained in everything. Sometimes when I meditate, the big rocks dance.

The secret of the mountains is that the mountains simply exist, as I do myself: the mountains exist simply, which I do not. The mountains have no "meaning," they are meaning; the mountains are. The sun is round. I ring with life, and the mountains ring, and when I can hear it, there is a ringing that we share. I understand all this, not in my mind but in my heart, knowing how meaningless it is to try to capture what cannot be expressed, knowing that mere words will remain when I read it all again, another day.

If only I could write so well, and apprehend the true nature of things to such a depth ... sort of makes the whole silly business of blogging seem, well, rather shallow and empty in comparison. No kidding, I hear somebody muttering.

***

LATER: I was going to interminably continue with this, but within the understandable yearning for inspiration -- literary-based or otherwise -- the above quote from Matthiessen seems to have inspired me just enough to want to shitcan this waste of a blog, once and for all, and do something authentic instead.

Hmmm ... food for thought, I guess.

HOW COME NOBODY'S TALKING ABOUT THIS?

2007-07-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

Bush signs another executive order (heard of this from Mike Malloy):

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,
I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:
Section 1. (a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported,
withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,
(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:
(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or
(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;
(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or
(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.
(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the
receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.
Sec. 2. (a) Any transaction by a United States person or within the United States that evades or avoids, has the purpose
of evading or avoiding, or attempts to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
(b) Any conspiracy formed to violate any of the prohibitions set forth in this order is prohibited.
Sec. 3. For purposes of this order:
(a) the term "person" means an individual or entity;
(b) the term "entity" means a partnership, association, trust, joint venture, corporation, group, subgroup, or other organization; and
(c) the term "United States person" means any United States citizen, permanent resident alien, entity organized under the laws of the United States or any jurisdiction within the United States (including foreign branches), or any person in the United States.
Sec. 4. I hereby determine that the making of donations of the type specified in section 203(b)(2) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(2)) by, to, or for the benefit of, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order would seriously impair my ability to deal with the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, and I hereby prohibit such donations as provided by section 1 of this order.
Sec. 5. For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets
instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.
Sec. 6. The Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, is hereby authorized to take such actions, including the promulgation of rules and regulations, and to employ all powers granted to the President by IEEPA as may be necessary to carry out the purposes of this order. The Secretary of the Treasury may redelegate any of these functions to other officers and agencies of the United States Government, consistent with applicable law. All agencies of the United States Government are hereby directed to take all appropriate measures within their authority to carry out the provisions of this order and, where appropriate, to advise the Secretary of the Treasury in a timely manner of the measures taken.
Sec. 7. Nothing in this order is intended to affect the continued effectiveness of any rules, regulations, orders, licenses, or other forms of administrative action issued, taken, or continued in effect heretofore or hereafter under 31 C.F.R. chapter V, except as expressly terminated, modified, or suspended by or pursuant to this order.
Sec. 8. This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right, benefit, or privilege, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers or employees, or any other person.
GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 17, 2007.

Does anybody have a comment? Anybody?

NEED A NEW GIG -- A GENERIC JOB APPLICATION

2007-07-16T07:13:00.001-07:00

Everybody could use a change now and again -- a change of scenery, a change in employment, a change of clothes; a new vice for an old one, a new opportunity for a stale dead one. You all get the picture, surely.

I certainly don't need any new bad habits, however, since those I have at present are sufficiently ridiculous and debilitating to last a lifetime or two. Don't need a new wardrobe either, or a car, or some such ephemeral consumerist pacifier.

What I seem to be in need of most is merely a radical, fundamental alteration of the vocational realm. In other words, a new job, a job that has a discernible depth of meaning, one that has a true public purpose, preferably something that serves the needs of the citizenry at large; or, failing that, at least a position from which to snipe, snarl, and snarkify at the entrenched criminal dinosaurs who've managed to transform this country into -- whatever the hell it's become.

So, if anyone has any (reasonably polite) suggestions for a disaffected bastard searching for something meaningful within the filled-to-overflowing and rapidly collapsing septic tank of the dollar economy, who's toiled at just about every conceivable crap job from punching keys on a cash register to fighting fire, from soil engineering and cartooning and cabinetmaking to being a full-time student, and back again -- I'm all ears. I can play the bass guitar a little, and I have a pretty good working knowledge of computer-based audio recording; modern-day political culture makes me both infuriated and sick to my stomach; and I like beer, for whatever that's worth. Like I said, if anybody has any ideas ...

Yes, well. Please excuse this sickeningly self-indulgent flapdoodle. We'll return to the regularly scheduled program of vomitus bile soon enough.

I am serious about the job thing, by the way.

UPDATE: Really, people. If you're seriously looking for employment information with the state of California (good luck), please go here. For crying out loud.

MISCELLANEOUS THINGS TO CONSIDER WHILE WAITING TO BE CHERTOFFED

2007-07-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

Just guzzling coffee and staring out the window, mildly considering the where and when and how we’re all to be Chertoffed this summer -- or is that Santorumed? Perhaps being “Cheneyed” is a more apt descriptor. Whatever.

***

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder: which is stronger, stupidity or fear? Ignorant dumbness must be, given that nobody I associate with seems particularly fearful about anything, really; on the other hand, the great majority is about as swift on the uptake as a sack full of claw-hammers. I suspect there’s some sort of connection here.

***

Congress passed a “defense” authorization bill that requires a withdrawal (of sorts) from Iraq, to commence in -- what -- a few months or so. I’ve always had a soft and fuzzy spot for Vaudeville, especially when it involves “elected representatives,” political apparatchiks, and thuggish goons lusting over dictatorial power. However, one of the problems with such cheap theater, as is the case with popular entertainment generally, is that the ending is, always, invariably the same -- in this case, Chimpy vetoes another feeble, largely symbolic non-check on his death-cult ambitions, his media enablers crank up the noise machine and brand TRAITOR on the seamed forehead of every Democratic “lawmaker,” and the Dems in turn bleat like goats with their gonads caught in a barbed-wire fence before they cave completely. Happens every time, it seems.

***

Is it just my imagination, or is the appalling, insufferable, overbearing, crap-vinyl-bound, bully-boy bullshit practiced by midlevel supervisor/managers -- ambitious mediocrities and sycophantic reamers promoted out of the grimy swill-pit of lowly wage monkeys, for the most part -- usually spewed forth in direct proportion to the pointlessness and/or uselessness of the work at hand? (If this comes uncomfortably close to a confession of the derelict nature of my “professional” life, I apologize.)

***

It could be worse -- I could be in the military, which is no place for thinking people these days. When I was an enlisted Air Force nobody back in the late 1980’s, I and my firefighting compatriots never could’ve imagined being stuffed into a bottomless sausage machine like Iraq, or becoming lost and abandoned in the lunar deathscape of Afghanistan; daily existence was trying enough, after a fashion, particularly in Germany, where the mostly fictional “Soviet threat” was hung around our necks like a dead pigeon on a string made from entrails and bad intentions. Within the framework of USAFE (United States Air Forces in Europe), we chuckleheads were burdened by quarterly “Operational Readiness Inspections,” periodic NATO exercises, endless fire training, far too much alcohol consumption, and an anemically weak US dollar against the West German Mark. To be perfectly honest, it was a semi-artificial, faux-military experience at best, particularly when compared to today: endless deployments, compelled participation in an ongoing war crime, Republican middle fingers, sudden violent death ... We had Ronald Reagan, that noted doddering old fuck. Now they have -- holy crap -- Bush and Cheney.

***

Oh, well. It’s now mid-morning -- time for a drink. Bottoms up, people!

OUR GREAT SENATE IN ACTION

2007-07-09T19:59:00.000-07:00

A snippet, a quick explication of mental illness; some of the serious business the illustrious United States Senate is bravely taking up this week (thanks to Crooks and Liars):

110th CONGRESS 1st Session

S. RES. 236

Supporting the goals and ideals of the National Anthem Project, which has worked to restore America's voice by re-teaching Americans to sing the national anthem.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

June 14, 2007

Mr. BAYH (for himself, Mr. CRAIG, Mr. KENNEDY, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. CRAPO, Mr. NELSON of Nebraska, Mr. CARDIN, Mr. BYRD, Mr. DURBIN, Ms. SNOWE, Mr. ROBERTS, Mr. LOTT, Mr. COLEMAN, Mr. MENENDEZ, and Mr. AKAKA) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary

RESOLUTION

Supporting the goals and ideals of the National Anthem Project, which has worked to restore America's voice by re-teaching Americans to sing the national anthem.

Whereas a Harris Interactive Survey discovered that of men and women 18 years of age and older, 61 percent of those surveyed did not know all the lyrics of the first stanza of the national anthem, and of those who answered the question affirmatively, 58 percent had received at least 5 years of music education while growing up;

Whereas an ABC News poll revealed that more than 1 in 3 Americans (38 percent) do not know that the official name of the national anthem is `The Star-Spangled Banner', less than 35 percent of American teenagers can name Francis Scott Key as the author of the national anthem, and as few as 15 percent of American youth can sing the words to the anthem from memory;

Whereas the national anthem, `The Star-Spangled Banner', holds a special place in the hearts and minds of the American people as a symbol of national unity, resolve, and willingness to sacrifice in order to preserve the Nation's sacred heritage of freedom;

Whereas the National Anthem Project has inspired the American people to have a greater appreciation of their patriotic musical heritage while learning American history;

Whereas music educators are the among the leading caretakers of this important piece of our Nation's heritage, in that many students learn the national anthem in music class;

Whereas our Nation's future is enhanced by the quality of the historic knowledge and awareness provided to children of all ages through learning about the national anthem, and that high-quality music education represents a worthy commitment to our children and our Nation's future; and

Whereas, the national anthem is the symbol of American ideals and freedom around the world: Now, therefore, be it

Resolved, That the Senate--

(1) supports the goals and ideals of the National Anthem Project;

(2) commends the American citizens who have participated in this project; and

(3) encourages the people of the United States to learn the national anthem, `The Star-Spangled Banner', and its proud history.

In the spirit of the previous post, I'll just add this: FUCK.

"WE ARE FUCKED!!" -- ALWAYS HAVE BEEN

2007-07-09T06:55:00.000-07:00

Web-meandering in recent days brought me to a blog post that ended, in about as emphatically opaque a manner as possible, like this:

“We are FUCKED!!”

Now, it’d be tough to argue with such a statement, as we do seem to be teetering precariously over the Neo-Con abyss, blandly awaiting the last good shove that finally sends us over the edge. By any objective method of measurement -- the existential “fuckedometer” that some people carry around in their heads, perhaps -- we are, certainly, stuck in the dark hole of extremity, rapidly approaching a multi-forked constitutional crossroad where every choice of direction is fraught with unspecified dangers, perils, and pitfalls. Fucked, indeed.

I’ve spent the last couple of days chewing on this expression of despair (among others), this bald declaration of anger and frustration at our sheer inability to affect the fundamental course of things. While it’s impossible to gainsay, at least in any intellectually honest way, it nevertheless starts to stick in my mental craw the more I give brain space to it.

Yeah -- we’re fucked alright. But then, when were we ever not fucked? When was there ever a human being who was ever spared the extreme discomfort of getting stared down by the harsh exigencies of reality? Who’s never, sooner or later, had to come to terms with the absurd fictions of permanence, security, and immortality? Name one individual who’s managed to avoid being terminally flashed by the drool-dripping, scythe-wielding, pervert-in-a-raincoat otherwise known as the Grim Reaper? When were we ever not destined for dissolution in the boneyard or ash heap?

In this vein, substitute nations and/or societies for individual human beings, and it’s rather obvious where this is going.

Believe you me, it isn’t as if I’ve suddenly broken-out in a rash of equanimity as far as the dangerously amorphous condition of “representative democracy” is concerned. Hardly. In fact, I blither and dither and howl and rage, kick shit around and break things in half, and become nearly immobilized with stationary panic as much as ever. More than ever, probably. But now, after much time spent allowing the perfectly flat, nuance-free declamation We are FUCKED!! to re-arrange the cheap plastic cognitive furniture on my psychic patio, I’m compelled to tack on an addendum, a qualifier, of my own, which I’ve basically already mentioned: ...and we always HAVE been!

That’s the hard crux of the matter. We’ve always lived an agenda that wasn’t our own, we simpleton Americans. Silly people! Of course most Americans are lazy, intellectually hollow chumps, easily manipulated by misinformation, disinformation, and outright falsehoods -- we’ve always been so. As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, Bush and Cheney and the rest of the hard-core Neo-Con Sturmtruppen haven’t really concocted anything of particular originality in their warped and polluted vision of a corporatized America; their only true innovation has been to drop the age-old and outmoded pretense that there’s any such thing as a “democratic republic” on the continent of North America -- and, naturally, they possess the ambition and ruthlessness to re-model, whatever it is, over in their own sick image. They bring nothing new to the table, the table that’s weighted down with the overflowing minced-meat pie that used to known as the body politic. They’re just more than willing to start carving it up, is all.

So, yes: We are FUCKED!! Always have been.

MORNING-AFTER BEWILDERMENT

2007-07-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

Plowing through the eerily deserted streets of Midtown Sacramento this morning, seeking solace in a cup of coffee and bitterly resentful that the weird emptiness is due to the fact that an inordinate number of people have the day off (and I don't), I noticed something rather strange. At least, stranger than the lack of traffic.

Anyone else notice this ...? Where are all the smoking piles of blown fireworks? Where's the burned detritus of garbage that symbolizes (what is commonly referred to as) the Freedom and Liberty which we know so well? Come to think of it, where was all the noise and clouds of barbecued Chinese gunpowder last night? It had to be the quietest, least stench-ridden Fourth of July on record, so far as I can recall.

I'm rather flummoxed, which comes as no surprise. It's almost possible to believe that a significant number of over-heated fellow Valley denizens actually had better things to do yesterday evening; that maybe their primitive nationalism, animated within the framework of unreflective "patriotism" and unquestioning obedience, is beginning to evaporate; that reason and common sense are finally starting to trump the overbearing, imperative qualities of the consumer culture; that the nitwits and flapdoodlers are, perhaps, coming out of their media/commerce-induced stupors ...

Is this really possible, or am I merely clutching at straws that don't exist?

ISN'T IT A PITY

2007-07-04T17:23:00.000-07:00

Isn't it a pity
Now, isn't it a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity

Some things take so long
But how do I explain
When not too many people
Can see we're all the same
And because of all their tears
Their eyes can't hope to see
The beauty that surrounds them
Isn't it a pity

Isn't it a pity
Isn't is a shame
How we break each other's hearts
And cause each other pain
How we take each other's love
Without thinking anymore
Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity

Forgetting to give back
Isn't it a pity
Forgetting to give back
Now, isn't it a pity

-- George Harrison, Isn't it a Pity

WHAT'S TO CELEBRATE, EH?

2007-07-03T07:37:00.001-07:00

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult.

--Erich Fromm, The Sane Society

It’s that unfortunate time of year when the tired, depleted landscape inexplicably sprouts rickety plywood-and-chickenwire shacks, manned by religionist fanatics and/or vacuously stupid college students peddling cheesy Chinese-made engines of noise and stink. Somewhere within this cloying reek of commerce and greed -- generating a palpable funk of enthusiastic ignorance that nearly gives the smog a run for its money -- lies, in all its dilapidated and largely unexamined glory, some notion that this spasmodic convergence of ear-splitting explosions, a stench not unlike (I would imagine) that which turgidly wafts from Lucifer’s underpants, and the pathetic accumulation of dollars, has something to do with “independence” or “political democracy.” The complex relationship between these things is enough to completely defeat the cognitive abilities of most people. Including my own, such as they are.

By all means, let’s “celebrate” American Independence Day with as much of a gunpowder-flavored racket as possible, swilling and gluttonously stuffing our already over-fed selves into rapturous stupors, spitting out drunkenly fulsome odes and sow-bellied declarations of undying loyalty to a nation-state that never was. Let’s not stoop to reflect on the actual nature of the Cheneyist hellhole trying desperately to give birth to itself; let’s just pretend that the Founders and their high-falutin’ documents still mean anything, if they ever did. Whatever you do, though, don’t allow the multitudinous victims of American benevolence and idealism -- not to mention our love of peace, freedom, and democracy -- to inject a note of discordance into our raucous symphony of self-indulgent excess. Drink up -- it’s not that difficult to shut your eyes and ears to the horror of Iraqi children covered with white phosphorous, or Afghani wedding parties blown to pieces, or the death rattle of young GI’s puzzling over the circumstances that drove them towards such a fate. Come on, people, you ignore this shit all the time. Just enjoy yourselves!

I’ll tell you -- if I actually had a US flag, I’d “celebrate” by burning the fucking thing. But then, since it would likely be made in China, the extra poisonous fumes produced by the uranium-soaked thread and the lead-based paint, and all the other crap that was supposed to end up as dog food or toothpaste, would probably waste an untold number of loyal Americans downwind. I guess I’ll just get loaded instead.

ABOUT A HUNDRED POSTS TOO MANY

2007-06-30T17:44:00.001-07:00

...This is, in all likelihood, not a controversial proposition. But then, I’m not on the receiving end of this sad waste of electro-chemical energy, so I don’t really know.

In any case, this is the 100th post of this infuriating joke of a crock of a multi-faceted chunk of virtualized toe-jam. Big fucking deal.

***

Now then.

Where were we? Oh yes: going nowhere in one hell of a god-awful hurry. Actually, I had something or other to say -- more shallow wisdoms and pithy worthlessness, certainly -- but I’ll be dipped headlong into a bucket of hogsnot and chimp-rot if I haven’t plum forgot what it was. Such laser-like intensity and sense of purpose have really made this blog what it is. I’m sure you all would agree.

“You all” -- that’s a good one. Hope springs eternal, don’t you know.

***

As the supreme court picks up steam, intent on doing its dingy and nefarious part to transport all us hapless wastoids to some dim, over-sized, over-surveiled version of an antebellum plantation; and as Cheney The Man-Sized Safe Man and his wind-up toy minions accelerate the process by which a deeply flawed, error-prone, violence-plagued, but nevertheless full-of-promise experiment in self-government is irreparably altered into ... whatever it is their stewed brain stems can conjure up, I’ve arrived at certain conclusions, or merely observations, or whatever.

Perhaps the only one that matters is that, for all intents and purposes, representative government -- however one might choose to define such a thing -- is as dead as stone. Or at least as dead as stone is reputed to be, which is pretty damn dead. In any event, there’s hardly any room for argument on this point. Cheney’s below-the-radar subversions, coupled to Bush’s programmed buffoonery and the “opposition” party’s astoundingly inept weakness, blatantly underscores the process by which the hollow shell of “self-rule” has been effectively hogtied, beat to a pulp, and (almost) smothered to death, as well as dishing up an ugly gray-washed preview of what the future could have in store. Of course, the body politic has been in critical condition for quite some time -- uncontrollably bleeding from the ears and rectum, splashing the antiquated life-support machinery with ever-diminishing supplies of various other sticky fluids and assorted viscera. The only new wrinkle in this sad tableau is that the Neo-Con cabal has its grimy hands on the plug, ready and oh-so eager to pull it.

And herein lies the hairy crux of the matter: maybe letting the helplessly diseased, near-cadaver officially expire is precisely what should happen. After all, employing artificial means to prolong the life of a terminal patient is never successful in the long run, as desirable as it is to entertain contrary expectations. I know, from personal experience. Dispensing with the medical metaphors (a difficult proposition, after having seen Sicko), it seems to boil down to two equally distasteful choices -- either bamboozle ourselves into believing that what is plainly happening to this country is, in fact, not happening, perpetuating for as long as possible the fictitious shadow-play of the “land of the free” and other such hyperbolic bullshit; or we accept the cruel reality of our precipitous situation, particularly when said reality is luridly glaring at us with its one dripping eyeball while simultaneously humping our collective leg and robbing us blind, preparing as thoroughly as possible for the radically-altered material circumstances awaiting us when, mercifully, the oily Bushist epoch comes to an end.

Ah, well -- more speculative gut-rot for everybody to wallow around in. I’ll tell you, though, that it’s a bit easier to at least try to accept the inevitability of what is to come, than to be completely immobilized by anger 24 fucking hours a day.

(Imagine -- it only took a hundred posts to rise to this level of advanced incomprehensibility. At least I finally found a use for that scanned East German 100-mark bill ...)

LOTS OF TALKING, NOT MUCH LISTENING (ANOTHER IN A LONG SERIES OF PATHETIC POSTS)

2007-06-27T07:42:00.001-07:00

Everybody’s talking, nobody’s listening.

At least, that’s the feeling pressing down on my bloodshot brain these days. Doesn’t anyone else get that impression? A quick, random stroll through the blog-spew and web droppings out there seems to leave little doubt that everybody’s just shouting past everybody else. Our reactionary buttons are all being pushed by the same NSDAP-inspired madness machine, and the nearly uniform response sounds like an especially off-key choir of the damned, bleating and squawking in all directions, blazing new trails through the conceptual undergrowth of pitch and harmony. Everything sounds oddly similar, though -- a cantankerous caterwaul of modulated outrage and carefully channeled (and largely co-opted) anger; everyone barks out the same pissed-off tune, more or less, paying little attention to anybody else, and the world of humans continues to fly out of control regardless.

I don’t know about any of you all out there -- if there are any -- but it’s starting to bore the hell out of me.

Now, I’ve had a rather obvious attitude of blatant skepticism towards this blogging business from the very beginning. No shit some might say, in an inelegant ode to the readily apparent. Really, it’s true. Honestly: what sort of cheesehead truly believes that the huge wash of atomized opinioneering that is the “blogosphere” -- insipid, inane, and badly written as most of it is -- really means anything or has a measurable impact on the course of things? Is Cyborg Cheney, Mr. Man-Sized Safe himself, likely to experience something approximating an epiphany-driven conversion to the side of goodness and light, simply because a gaggle of infuriated bloggers bloviate over his egregious bullshit? Maybe Bush will impeach himself, if only we, the upright ones, complain about it enough.

Oh yes -- been down this road before. Many times, in fact. Still searching for a reason, still looking for the critical point of it all ... vainly, it would seem.

***

I attended a sneak preview of Sicko this past weekend, and the experience was a concrete illustration of the debilitated nature of society in general; the feeble, echoingly empty virtual world of the blogs is a reflection of this as well (which is, obviously, the only reason I’m bothering to bring this up). Anyway, Michael Moore definitely has a knack for filling up a movie theater, and this largely unadvertised early showing of his new film was no exception. Packed to the rafters, it was, with well-intentioned individuals thoroughly convinced of their righteousness and sense of purpose. And therein lies the bur-infested, hairball-wrapped rub: a big movie auditorium full of individuals, momentarily galvanized by an extremely well-made movie that covers an issue of overwhelming importance, to be sure, but still really only a dispersed and scattered mob; the unmistakably warm, liberally-minded atmosphere generated by the serendipitous gathering of hundreds of correct-thinking people popped like a flaccid balloon once the film was over and the lights came up. A brief flicker of time when our shared humanity seemed actually palpable, as much more than merely a nice amorphous theory, was over all too soon, leaving us all in our little self-contained individualities and going our own separate ways.

The strange phenomenon of the blogs strikes me in much the same way. Divided and compartmentalized, incidentally “united” over some issue or other, but nonetheless pushing and pulling in our own disparate fashions -- and largely irrelevant and ineffective as a consequence. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been much of a “joiner,” in any sense of the word (excepting the military, but that’s not quite the same thing), so I’m hardly advocating the submergence of individuality under an ill-defined rubric of “common cause” or any such similar bat-squeeze. Hell, if that was the sort of thing I had in mind -- a vision of lock-step automatons mouthing slogans of undying loyalty to the subhuman scum who’re toiling so diligently to turn everybody into dog food and rat bait -- then I’d be little better than the insecure mouth-breathers who pump out mountains of pious bullshit in praise of the power apparatus and its enslavement tendencies. However, that being said, there must be a way to harness the gobs of latent and dissipated energy inherent to this end of the blogosphere, aiming it like a monstrous virtual sledgehammer against the chains and shackles of our corporatist massas and their disinforming whores and shills, while simultaneously preserving the individuality of each weird and quirky snark-monger. There has to be way.

Well, if there is some way to do that, it’s certain that I won’t be the one to figure it out. As a matter of fact, somebody surely has figured it out already, which is precisely (or not so precisely) my whole point: we’re all running our mouths off so much, we’re not actually paying much attention to what anybody is really saying. *Sigh*

(“Snark-monger”? Clearly, I was thinking of myself when coining that term. My apologies.)

RAGE FATIGUE, #2

2007-06-23T10:22:00.001-07:00

Still pissed; still encased in the wrought-iron rat trap of impotent fury; still stupefied by a debilitating rictus of extremely foul and ugly anger; still -- still -- overwhelmed by a sick, almost pleasurable desire to tear the living crap out of something, anything ... The quickly degenerating, adrenalized blur of an overly-energetic temper, exhausting and depressing as it is, is still obscenely tickling the reptilian sections of my unraveling brain sack, even as I mightily combat the nearly irresistible need to just take a nap for the next year and a half.

Oh well, at least the two praying hypocrisy-mongering dorks aren’t in my rapidly diminishing field of vision this morning, here at the groovy midtown coffeehouse. That’s something. Not much, but I’ll take what I can get.

***

Then along comes something like this, and the brief respite from destructive thoughts -- generated by the absence of the two religionist retards -- swiftly evaporates, not unlike campaign promises the day after an election. A headline from this morning’s Sacramento Bee:

Bush rejects secrecy limits

White House, like VP, says it’s exempt from oversight

Not that it’d serve any useful purpose, but let’s make at least a rudimentary attempt to understand this particular circle-jerk of hubris and misapplied ambition. Cheney the Cyborg isn’t subject to the rules regarding the handling of classified material because his office isn’t really a part of the executive branch; the Chimp now declares that the executive order he signed doesn’t actually apply to him, so the Congress, the Democrats, the American people, and the rest of the world’s population (outside of Albania) can all just go pound sand and fuck itself ... Umm, OK. Sounds about right. I suppose if they can establish that the executive branch of the Federal government isn’t, in real terms, a true branch of the government -- a secret, rogue agency, perhaps, responsible and answerable to no one -- maybe that’s an argument saying that they can’t be impeached or otherwise removed from office, under any circumstances ... Oh hell, I don’t know. I’m too tired and angry to figure out any of this crap.

Anyhow. I finagled a ticket to a sneak preview of Sicko tonight; maybe that’ll cheer me up. Ha Ha.

RAGE FATIGUE

2007-06-20T07:04:00.001-07:00

Rage Fatigue ...

Infuriated exhaustion seems to be much in fashion these days, at least among the more “enlightened” and able-to-think sectors of the great bulk of the American mass. Rage Fatigue. Over-inflated anger; flaccid fury; dissipated distempers and enervated disapprobation ...

I suppose it’s the price that decent people are expected to pay, just for giving a shit. I wonder if it’s worth it.

***

Just when it appears that it can’t get any worse, when the reserves of energy and purpose are at their lowest ebb, when the congenitally-defective twins Hope & Optimism drop their pants and make fools out of us one time too many, when the two nitwits in the far corner of this funky midtown coffeehouse start praying (yeah, praying) so loudly you want to pound them over the head with the wobbling shillelagh of their own phony piety ...

Just when your Rage Fatigue finally induces the blessed relief of sheer numbness, along comes a rude reminder that mere escapism is not really an answer to anything. From Rediff News, via Guerilla News Network:

Get Your Ringside Seat to the upcoming financial implosion of the USA

The skew in the global financial system—commonly called ‘global imbalance’—seems to be fast spiraling out of control.

For some time now economists have been engaged in the mother of all debates: whether the U.S. dollar would collapse by as much as 40% when compared to other currencies (some are even betting on the U.S. dollar going belly-up) or whether there would be an orderly devaluation—that is, a gradual revaluation of other currencies vis-a-vis the U.S. dollar.

In effect, the question that is confronting us is not ‘whether’ but ‘when’ and by ‘how much?...

(Read the whole thing here)

It’s sort of the toxic glue that binds together such travesties as the end of Posse Comitatus and habeus corpus, Halliburton concentration camps, and The Chimp’s recent directives gathering dictatorial powers to himself in case of a “national emergency.” Rage fatigue, indeed.

A RELUCTANT (AND SLIGHTLY BUZZED) FATHER'S DAY POST

2007-06-17T12:50:00.001-07:00

Thanks to The Prissy Patriot for providing a ridiculous drunk such as myself a picture-perfect image to so unashamedly swipe ... It actually induced me to order another beer, here in the wonderfully gloomy confines of this midtown Sacramento brewpub.

Happy trails, people!

UNTITLED POST, #95

2007-06-17T11:18:00.001-07:00

Hot weather in the Sacramento Valley during the summer -- and, often, before and after -- is so boringly common as to be completely unworthy of mention. Like humidity in the South and twisters in the Midwest, the dry blast-furnace of overheated smog that this heavily populated geomorphological oddity becomes for upwards of half the year is dully prosaic and inescapable; like it or loathe it, this is what it is. The only way to avoid the hot, seething vulgarity of it all is to live somewhere else. It’s perfectly simple.

Why, then, do ambulatory vegetables who’ve spent their entire useless lives here, rarely displaying the requisite initiative to travel as far as, say, San Francisco or Tahoe perhaps, always complain in lock-step regularity when the weather turns the least bit unpleasant?

Appearances and expectations to the contrary, this isn’t merely one of those I Piss On All Suburban Blockheads sort of posts, although the ubiquitous contempt that is such a critically important component of my rather ragged weltanschauung always seems to be percolating just below the surface of things. Anyway, it’s a valid enough question, this completely bewildered bewailing of the modern American predilection for pathetically whining about the vast panoply of stuff you really can’t do anything about -- in this case, the past week’s minor heat wave. Of course, the pointless tendency to constantly reiterate the obvious dovetails nicely with the overflowing sump of desperately vital muck and goo that some so studiously avoid, or of which they live in bland ignorance: the ongoing debacle in Iraq (soon to be expanded to Iran and elsewhere), the slow lingering death of representative government in the US and its replacement with an iron-fisted Cheneyist dystopia, Guantanamo, election fraud, Gaza ... and on and on, ad nauseum.

Well, duh. Clearly there’s a direct relationship between what people choose to pay attention to, and what they stay away from. How original.

Among the assorted collection of mouth-breathers, sycophants, gold-diggers, pinheads, consumerist geeks, and miscellaneous fucksticks whose awfulness is general and undifferentiated -- specifically, the majority of people I’m forced to associate with at work -- a spell of hot weather provides the perfect opportunity to see who, of all these stellar examples of DNA gone horribly wrong, obediently spends the most time, blank-eyed and slack-jawed, in front of their electric tee-vees. Bidding their credulity a hearty goodbye, giving no quarter to their common sense or whatever amount of native intelligence they might theoretically possess, they dutifully absorb the disinformation and misinformation and hollow entertainments relentlessly cooked up in the fly-blown kitchens of the corporate media combine. Properly programmed, brains thoroughly pickled by the poisonous brine transmitted through their telescreens, they parrot the lines provided for them; in this particular instance, the well-groomed blowholes who tell them that it’s going to be a bit hotter than normal, for a few days. This less-than-startling information becomes the existential pivot around which their miserableness rotates, the locus of ennui that -- until it’s replaced by something else, in a day or two at most -- trumps all other cares and concerns. They make themselves feel as terrible as possible by worrying themselves into a frenzy over the inconsequential, as the rest of the world goes up in a puff of smoke. Pure madness.

Oh well. Just another manifestation of the collective unconsciousness, this adamant insistence by the majority to be as stupid as possible and to actively -- enthusiastically, even -- participate in their own intellectual impoverishment and, indeed, the elimination of their very capacity for critical discernment. What’s the answer to this dead-ended puzzle? One response (I would never refer to it as an “answer”) is to madly dribble out interminable blog posts that go absolutely nowhere in a hurry; another is to explode in self-righteous anger, whenever some idiot in an air-conditioned office whiningly complains about how hot it is outside, and issue an aggressive question like How fucking hot is it in Baghdad, you dumb asshole? I toss around queries like that all the time, and usually the only thing I get in return is a sometimes wild-eyed look of utter confusion, frequently tinged with a verdigris of fear. As much as I enjoy eliciting such reactions, I understand it offers no solution to anything, unfortunately.

OK -- everybody together now: *SIGH*

(By the way, for anybody who cares -- and why should you? -- today’s forecast for Sacramento: 89 degrees)

***

A FATHER’S DAY NON-SEQUITUR: My father hasn’t the time for such sentimental hogwash as a “holiday” inspired by greeting card companies; he’s nearly 77 years old, and is in Nevada playing golf. Good for him.

FEINSTEIN POLLUTES MY INBOX

2007-06-11T18:45:00.000-07:00

Several days after signing one of those what-the-hell online petitions (yeah, I know, I know) -- this one about impeaching Cheney, which I frankly forgot about -- and having one of those canned letters sent to my two Senators, I get this today from that noted war profiteer, Dianne Feinstein:

Thank you for your letter concerning impeachment proceedings against Vice President Richard Cheney. I appreciate the time you took to write and welcome the opportunity to respond.

In our most recent elections, the American people expressed clear disapproval with the path this country was on. They are tired of partisan politics and of an Administration that pays little heed to the wishes of the American people. They want-and deserve-a Congress that holds the Administration accountable and fulfills its Constitutional responsibility to check and balance the Executive branch. I share this sentiment and am determined to work hard and across party lines in the United States Senate to promote issues that are of real concern to most Americans, including the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, homeland security, global warming, and lobbying and election reform.

At this time, however, I believe that impeachment proceedings against President Bush or Vice President Cheney will only divide the country even further, frustrating our hopes for a meaningful change in direction, while having little chance of success.

I have been deeply disappointed by many of this Administration's actions and have been outspoken in those instances. Nevertheless, given the challenges our country faces I believe that we need to focus on constructive and cooperative steps that would lead us in the right direction.

Again, thank you for your letter. If you have any further questions or comments, please contact my office in Washington, D.C. at (202) 224-3841. Best regards.

Sincerely yours, Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

It speaks for itself, I guess. At least it almost seems like a real message, in comparison to the bland form letter I got from Boxer.

*Sigh*

CRINGING BULLIES AND PINHEADED BABOONS

2007-06-09T13:33:00.000-07:00

It’s an amazing world we’ve built for ourselves -- a cacophonous brain-squonk of hollow stupidity, dominated by cringing bullies and overbearing cardboard cut-outs of simulated humans wallowing in the steaming, stinking puddles of their own pathetic servility. A microcephalic baboon cage most foul.

(Anyone who’s attempted to shop at a 24-hour Safeway at 5:30 in the morning, then followed up by having the shitheads with the pierced faces at the groovy midtown coffee house disconnect your wireless internet connection and change the channel on the electric Muzak machine to some “death metal” noise pollution, and then topped that off by unwittingly biting into a blueberry scone covered with mold, all the while being harassed by the largest mosquito you’ve ever seen ... knows exactly what I’m talking about.)

***

Seriously. The less-than-pithy term “cringing bullies” suddenly popped into my leaking brain-bag the other day at work, as I re-witnessed a modern ritual for what must’ve been the 10,000th time: over-officious demi-supervisors, scowling faces freshly removed from the nether cracks of their immediate boss/masters, “inspecting” the personal belongings of departing employees. Two things about such a scene immediately jump to the fore, competing to see which one will finally trigger that long-anticipated terminal apoplexy: that an employer assumes it has the right to poke around in your stuff, whenever the hell it wants; and the incredibly meek and subservient manner in which most of the nitwits and birdbrains submit to such outrageous perversions.

The deeply closeted Stalinists by whom I happen to be employed obviously assume they have the legal authority to violate the privacy of anyone they wish, under any pretext or circumstance, mainly because no one has officially challenged them on it; they do it because they can, as the old joke about a dog goes. Anyway, they claim that this police-state activity is necessary for reasons of “security,” which actually means, in their warped and twisted corporate view of the world, “security” for themselves and the “company” against their own employees -- since, as we all know quite well, any poor unfortunate scumbag who gets paid by the hour is simply not to be trusted. They’re thieves and liars and contemptible lowlifes, by definition.

I’ve always viewed these rather penny-ante control mechanisms -- which include, in addition to the “inspection” regimen, such gems as electronically-controlled locks on all interior doors and a “biometric” time clock -- as little more than a pale reflection of the times, inspired by the disinformation and carefully modulated paranoid fear-mongering so well practiced by the Neo-Con elite. It’s interesting to note that none of these artificial “security” measures were deemed necessary during the 1990’s; they’re a 21st Century innovation.

But getting back to the “cringing bullies”: as a term of derision and contempt, it’s applicable in a 360-degree circle, as it were. I pin it unreservedly to the morons who submit so willingly to all sorts of employer-sanctioned indignities, mostly swaggering twenty-something punks who wield their car stereos like bludgeons and who can’t seem to complete a sentence without artlessly tossing in a half-dozen superfluous f-bombs and other choice expletives. Wearing that assumed tough-guy attitude derived from the most egregious excesses of pop-media culture, they bravely turn into compliant piles of servile jello when confronted with each successive violation of their privacy, and their human rights in general. It’s difficult to understand, really, since the Junior Gestapo Enforcers who so gleefully sniff around in the darkest and most obscure recesses of various handbags, knapsacks, and lint-filled trouser pockets, are themselves the most ridiculous and pathetic “cringing bullies” of them all. The young, slave-mentality blockheads would be surprised to learn, probably, just how effective the judicious use of angry invective can actually be, if used intelligently -- just a couple of carefully-timed “Get your fucking hands off my laptop” and “If you place one finger on me, I’ll break your goddamn arm” and the ambitious mediocrities in their supervisor suits tend to sag and wilt, and pretty much leave you alone. At least, that’s been my experience with these dirt-suckers.

Is there some kind of lesson lurking around in the middle of this badly-written and typically amorphous screed? Perhaps, perhaps not. There might be something to be said for the idea of rudely calling the bluff of incredibly pretentious employers who lack the cojones and fortitude to back up their police-state proclivities; it’s something else entirely when trying to apply that to the desperate situation our constitutional republic has been, and is, facing these days. But, as somebody somewhere has surely said, one can always hope -- which is a statement that doesn’t come very easily to a cynical windbag like myself; maybe, at least as a catalytic starting point, all we need to do is shout “Get your fucking hands off my civil liberties” and things just might work out OK after all ...

Yeah, right, and I guess I’ll order another moldy scone and wash that mess down with a warm glass of beer and get stuck in another traffic jam with SUV-driving baboons who want to transform me into a biological speedbump. That seems much more likely.

WE NEED TO BE ATTACKED IN ORDER TO FEEL MORE SECURE ... OR SOMETHING TO THAT EFFECT

2007-06-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

Just the sort of hollow-skulled bullshit to kick off another dreary work-week, infusing it with all the extra gooey layers of eye-rolling despair and hopelessness we've grown to love ...

I'm sure everybody's seen this by now. Via Raw Story:

Arkansas GOP head: We need more 'attacks on American soil' so people appreciate Bush

In his first interview as the chairman of the Arkansas Republican Party, Dennis Milligan told a reporter that America needs to be attacked by terrorists so that people will appreciate the work that President Bush has done to protect the country.

"At the end of the day, I believe fully the president is doing the right thing, and I think all we need is some attacks on American soil like we had on [Sept. 11, 2001]," Milligan said to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "and the naysayers will come around very quickly to appreciate not only the commitment for President Bush, but the sacrifice that has been made by men and women to protect this country."

Maybe tonight, when I shuffle home after another pointlessly trying day producing profits for my corporate overlords, I'll be able to say something about this fucked-up untermensch.

What I want to know is: where do these people come from?

JUST TURN IT OFF

2007-06-02T17:59:00.000-07:00

I’m right there in the middle of the great heaving mass of the angry and conflicted, disgusted by the appallingly spineless performance of the Vichy Democrats in Congress, plumbing new depths of cynical loathing and contempt for just about anything and everything. Sheer desperation seems to have reached a new high in recent weeks, corresponding as it does to the completely expected -- but still thoroughly infuriating -- Democratic capitulation on the “war supplemental,” or whatever the hell it’s called. Between bouts of hair-ripping and garment-rending, the small “d” democratic consensus seems to be coagulating around variations of the question, What the fuck do we do now?

A good question. A really good question, in fact.

What sort of plausible answer can you dish out to (perhaps) a majority of the public who feel, rightly, that the party they worked so hard to return to the leadership position in Congress just pathetically piddled down their collective pant leg? Leaving aside the slightly obvious fact that relying on any establishment political machine to do the right thing is suicidal, about the only answer I can come up with is that I don’t have an answer. Nobody does, not really. Working to reform the system from within? Oh, come on. Electing third-party candidates, as a form of punishment for the Democrats’ blatantly crass betrayal? Well ... that might be feasible in the long term. Rapidly retreating as deeply as possible into the hollow excitements and phony promises of the mass-consumption culture? Seems to work for the sad majority of numbskulls I have to deal with on a regular basis.

What what what?

Like I said, I don’t have any answers to the pukefest we find ourselves wallowing in. Except ... well, perhaps one thing we could do, one tiny and modest “anti-protest” we could indulge in, would involve doing as little as possible. I know -- it sounds as if my beer-softened skull has finally, mercifully, caved in on itself, terminally vindicating the self-indulgent crudity of my decrepit weltanschauung. But anyway, the notion that miraculously popped into my tired head was this: just turn it all off. Turn it the fuck off. Rampaging consumerism provides the economic/political apparatus with its misbegotten reason for being; we are, in effect, the financiers of our own intellectual debasement and -- increasingly -- our physical restraint and coercion as well. Is it so ridiculously naive to think that refusing to participate in the consumerist meatgrinder, to whatever extent one can, would truly alter the tragically misfired azimuth this country is being prodded along? I don’t think so. Turn it off -- stop playing along with this empty charade, stop being the oh-so-willing and over-enthused monetary engine that’s propelling us all right down the proverbial crapper. Simply do nothing -- don’t spend, don’t consume, don’t do anything; bring the whole foul and stinking machine to a halt by ignoring it as much as possible, and make a far more impressive impact than any under-attended protest march or insipid online petition ever could.

Yeah, whatever. As passively silly as all this probably sounds, at least it’s no more absurd than waiting breathlessly for Reid and Pelosi to swoop down and save us, representative government and all.

Remember: just turn it off. The moneybagged bastards just might pay attention then.

"BUSH IS NO NAZI" -- A MEMORIAL DAY FLASHBACK

2007-05-28T09:41:00.001-07:00

This is one of many photos I snapped during a visit to the American cemetery in Luxembourg, way the hell back in 1987. Crap, I just realized that makes it twenty years ago -- now that makes me feel even more tired and old than I do already. Oh well, so much for ego and self-esteem. Who needs ’em? Anyway, it was the weekend before Memorial Day that year, and I was a US Air Force chucklehead stationed in Germany, doing my dubious best to protect the Western World from being over-run and brutally enslaved by the ruthless Soviet hordes ... or so we were told, periodically, by the hilariously uninformative propaganda commercials broadcast on the Armed Forces Network electric tee-vee.

A few hours on a bus brought me and a few compatriots to Luxembourg, where we guzzled beer and ate pizza and, basically, all the things that twenty-something GI’s overseas managed to do in that era. Tramping out to the American cemetery was part of the package; as a sort of “student” of the Second World War, admittedly my interest was peaked by the historical aspects of what the boneyard signified, not so much by the fact that thousands of soldiers killed in the war -- mostly during the Battle of the Bulge -- are actually buried there. Not that I didn’t appreciate that fact, but when you’re young and it’s more than forty years after the end of the war ... you understand.

Well, I was a generationally removed GI in Europe, and it was Memorial Day. I wonder what these poor bastards would think if they were here today and could check out this little video from Take Back The Media: what do you suppose would cross their minds if they were to discover that a descendant of Nazi sympathizers and war profiteers is now the de facto dictator of the nation that they served in the titanic struggle to destroy the Nazis? Would that be seen as cruelly ironic, maybe, or as a sick joke, or what?

About the only conclusion I can draw, on this Memorial Day, is that the Nazis actually won the war after all.

Again, take a look: www.takebackthemedia.com/bushnonazi.html