POSTING TO RECOMMENCE MOMENTARILY . . . REALLY

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

New B.S. coming soon.

POSTING TO RE-COMMENCE MOMENTARILY

Can't you just smell the anticipation?

FRANK McCOURT, 1930-2009

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

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

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

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

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

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

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM ...

A PICTURE WORTH SWIPING

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

SOON TO RETURN TO THIS BLOGGING NONSENSE ...

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

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

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 ...

... 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 ...

... 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"

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

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

SUPER SUNDAY, SUPER TUESDAY, MISERABLE MONDAY:

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:

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

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*