Tag Archives: Film

PFOA & Mermaids’ Tears

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All the talk nowadays is about the threat that terrorism supposedly has on National Security. But reality is that Americans are more likely to be taken down by cancer or heart disease instead. Perhaps, companies like Dupont and 3M actualy pose much greater threats to our personal security than does al quaeda? Cheney would disagree, I am sure, but the evidence is not on his side.

Dupont, especially, is a company that has been engaged most recently in a tobacco industry style campaign of disinformation and cover-up about the dangers of PFOA, an artificial substance that has accumulated in 95% of us Americans. It’s produced by Dupont (and was also by 3M previously) for use in making fabrics and non-stick cookware, amongst other items. We’re talking Teflon and GorTex now. This is big moneymaker for Dupont, and they have been just a s stubborn about the reality that it causes cancer as Exxon-Mobil has been about denying that global warming is a world threat.

The headlines this week get yet worse about capitalist driven, factory production’s effects on life here on earth. It appears, too, that microscopic pieces of plastic are in ocean water in greater and greater concentrations and in the life forms that live in salt water, too. These are called mermaids’ tears. See the BBC article, Plastics Poisoning World’s Seas. Humans are filling up with PFOA, and sea life is collecting just plain old plastics in their bodies. Oh, along with mercury and numberous otehr toxins. I guess polar bears get it all, since they are finding PFOA in them, plus they also eat the fish filled with mermaids’ tears besides. Lesson. Don’t eat polar bear!

Both articles I linked to illustrate that capitalism does not self-regulate its production. To the contrary, capitalist enterprises deliberately produce harmful products that destroy the environment and destroy your health. The corporate management attitude is simply that if the product does not knock you over seconds after it you consumed it, then who cares about the longer term consequences? That can be hidden away from public view forever, or at least for centuries, oops but maybe only decades. But it can be hidden for the longest time, and by then, the consequences to public health have become enormous.

There simply is no effective observation of the dangers that these ‘free enterprises’ routinely put us in. It is if the meth lab next door was subject to no observation, no requirements to cease production, and the operators of it were also to be held in the highest public esteem even as they were cooking up a poisonous vapor for all the neighborhood. In fact, the neighborhood I lived in last before moving here, had both meth labs in the neighborhood, and a film production facility that did its dirty production at night, as vapors were then vented to float through our streets. Could I have called the police to check them out for safety and health? I think not. Our ‘botanical gardens’ there were run by the Benzene producing company that dominated the regional business community. Our big marine aquarium had a display where the enormous tank was filled with miniture oll derricks to explain to us the suppopsed benefits that the offshore oil rigs gave to sea life! The people effected by these criminal enterprises are nobodies, while the rich owners strut around as if they were the communities’ patron saints of benevolence.

The mermaids cry, the fish do die, and meanwhile, us humans keep dying of cancer. What a stupid way of ‘life’. All because we are taught to adore the rich, and to never, ever question them.

Look at it

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Suspended by feet pants offSomeone’s leaked video footage of an interrogation/torture session in Iraq. Information Clearinghouse has a short clip, thankfully not completely explicit. I’m of two minds about whether to look. Because the scene will haunt you, I advise not looking. On the other hand, what about the poor victims of torture? Are they given such a choice? Look at the outrage we are perpetrating. Be queasy. Live with it. So long as we permit torture, condone it, and subject others to it, the least we can do is have it haunt us.

A word about this clip. Is it real? Who are the torturers? Are those American shouts among the Arabic? Who filmed this session? Could these have been Saddam’s thugs at work previous to the US invasion?

I would submit that those details matter only to the voyeur getting off on the clip. I could care less. No matter what and who we are seeing, we know it depicts what we Americans are doing. We’ve approved torture for use by our military, and American contractors are conducting interrogation sessions beyond what even has been tacitly approved. We know this. We know that our Denfense Department’s definition of permitted duress is the infliction of pain which falls just short of causing organ failure. That’s a lot of pain. The guys in the clip are just getting started.

New evidence places 3 CIA operatives at Robert Kennedy assassination

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Three anti-Castro CIA covert-ops are ID’d in new pictures and film footage on the scene at the Ambassador Hotel, including Robert Morales who was already known to have bragged about having attended to JFK assassination as well.
 
See the 16 minute BBC news segment at InformationClearinghouse.

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature

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Product placementTalk about subverting mother nature. In the guise of an environmental message –stop overfishing for the sake of tap-dancing penguins– Happy Feet screws up everything. Forget ecosystems, it wants you to unlearn social systems. This movie builds upon our awareness of the selfless Emperor Penguins from last year’s Oscar-winning documentary and marches it straight off a cliff of ice. Calfs it right into the warming ocean.

Happy Feet is a Footloose attack on the seemingly dogmatic tradition of penguins to value an individual’s vocal heart song as opposed to tap dance. Although, such a presumed rigidity might not be unexpected from a society of birds which spends two thirds of the year balancing eggs on the tops of feet. Emperor penguins have no limbs with which to retrieve an egg should it fall by accident unto the ice. One of the heartbreaks of March of the Penguins was to learn that an egg succumbs to exposure within seconds of rolling upon the ice.

For the children perhaps, Happy Feet soft pedals the harsh brutality of Mother Nature. Getting past that, the movie befuddles us with what it means to work individually toward a mutual goal. Collectivity is portrayed here as mind numbing, spirit killing conformity, as opposed to biological imperative, genetic behavior.

But let’s address a real pop misconception. It’s not herd mentality. It’s herd. There’s nothing wrong with humanizing the animals, but don’t let’s pretend to learn something from them, the fiction of us.

There’s a preacher penguin in the movie whose head towers over the rest, the archetype of the sinister puritanical demagogue. This character keeps every penguin in line by shaming those who might stray. Do you recall ever seeing a penguin taller than the others? It’s one of the charms of penguins that they are all the same. Penguin behavior appears curiously random to us, yet at the same time it’s as mechanized as dominos. There is a deeper leadership somehow, and I think it’s what humans are seeking for ourselves.

Happy Feet is the message you get when there is no God but Coca Cola. When product placement rules, not even secular education is served.

The Lion King highlighted the Disney monarchist reordering of nature. It’s lovely to think of the lion as the King of Beasts, but it’s certainly very silly. No animal rules another except for interpersonally. Looking at man’s natural order, isn’t it rather silly to think that one idle fat man should lord over others who labor?

Ant armies are not led by ant generals. Queens may be the backbones of insect colonies, but they are not social architects. Penguins and ants may have something to teach us about how human beings can someday achieve balance with nature. It might have something to do with conformity and a sense of collective purpose. We know already it doesn’t come from Marx or Jesus, it’s something farther inside.

I’ll bet you right now such an inner compass will be more like a penguin’s heart song and less like a tap-dancing, individualist, obey your thirst, just do it, gotta be me, fool.

Borat Yakov Smirnoff

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Borat SmirnoffI recognize Borat. He’s Yakov Smirnoff Y2K, but I’m hung up on another parallel. Smirnoff was the yucks-mascot for the Soviet Empire near the close of the Cold War. If Borat’s Kasak buffoon is a similar Muslim foil, what is the comparable war?

Bush and Company would like to call this the War on Terror, but does that really describe this Christian-Muslim war? I’ve yet to come across a term coined to describe this conflict. Will historians call this the Bush Crusade? The West’s gambit for the Middle East? The New American Century Asserted? Did this entanglement began with Israel in 1948? Upholding white man’s last colonial aggression?

Forget the Gulf War, or Operation Freedom. Forget the Israeli-Arab conflicts. It’s all the same occupation. The US Zionist War.

A great embarrassment about Borat is that unlike Yakov Smirnoff who was a Russian making fun of Russians, Borat is actually a Jew who is making fun of Muslims. This adds insult to injury as measured by the ceaseless Muslim deaths every day in Palestine at the hand of Israelis, and in Iraq and Afghanistan perpetrated by Israel’s Mossad. Borat’s put down of Muslims is too insulting for words.

Racist Jew sweeps Christian America with blackface Borat

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Sacha CohenHollywood has a long history of producing and distributing films with antiArab racist themes and imagery. Shall we just say, that they are quite embedded with the Pentagon on this dehumanizing of the current official US ‘enemy’, the Arab Muslim. Standard Hollywood ‘action’ tripe goes where some lower class All ‘Merican Black and White US heroes together, take down shady looking terrorist Middle Eastern types, who are out to kill good wholesome Christian babies to drink their blood. They don’t like our freedoms, it seems, but our buffoon heroes always win after some big bang bang. OK, how many times can you run the same crap before it gets old, right?
 
Enter racist Zionist Jew, Sacha Baron Cohen. He does the Muslim-face comedy routine of showing Christian Americans just how backward those Jew hating Muslims really are. Ha-Ha-Ha. It’s not the same old Black and White, buddy action figure, GI Joe stuff, at least. So the film, Borat, is sweeping America’s cinema land, including right here in Colorado Springs. ‘Borat’ being the backward Negro, oh sorry… I meant backward Muslim that Cohen portrays.

If this sort of schtick was done by a White actor portraying a Chinese man, or a Latino, or a Black person, we would have a media world in outrage at the blatant racism. But have a Jew portray Muslims as backward, comedic, imbecilic, and anti-woman, well then…. aw shucks, them Jews just can’t be racist, can they? Look what Hitler did to them. So they get a free pass from God for eternity, we Christian folk feel so damn guilty ’bout it we do. Let’s laugh along with the Jew about those Muslim retards in the boonies we are abombing right now. AntiMuslim racism just feels so damn good! We’re America!

Here is the prototypical Cohen routine if you have yet to see it, Throw the Jew down the well.

Gaza shows naked face of Israeli-US terrorism

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The US uses Israel in the Middle East to fight their racist imperialist wars in a manner similar to how it once used the White Apartheid regimes of Rhodesia and South Africa against the majority Black population. This film juxtaposes an Israeli clip of the IDF in action last week with a clip from the Gaza strip that shows the results of the IDF firepower. Together, we see what our US tax money donated to the Jewish Apartheid regime is actually buying.

Oaxaca- the people continue to battle back

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Viva La Lucha PopularWhat a turnaround. The Mexican and US elites have underestimated the people’s will to resist in Oaxaca. People arrived from around the country in support of the embattled local population, and the result was a massive demonstration Sunday of possibly up to half a million people. The demonstration was said to stretch for 3 miles along the highway entering the city!
 
Here in the US, this was not really reported on, even though a tiny proPRI demo earlier in the week received exaggerated US media attention. The Gazette, for example, had a big article about this pro sicario action that made it seem huge, when it was certainly not that in the least. There is more great footage of this struggle online.

The turnaround for the people began when the students on the campus successfully beat back a military attack on their stronghold at the university on November 2. This film coverage is entirely in Spanish, but it is obvious what is going on. Once again, we can see that self-defense includes being able to respond in non-pacifist resistance. See the population’s necessary response to military attacks

Documentary about another current Mexican political crisis

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For those who have begun to follow the events in Oaxaca due to learning of Brad Will’s assassination there, I highly recommend this film about the conduct of the Mexican government in another community they have been repressing.

Be sure to watch all three parts of this documentary, and not just the first part, which starts out kind of slow. It is well worth the effort if you do, as this may well be the best documentary ever made about Mexico’s political situation. It records quite well the events that occurred at Atenco (a suburb of Mexico City) in May of this year. And understanding what happened at Atenco will fill you in quickly about what’s going on right now in Oaxaca.

(Parts 2 and 3 have been added in the comments.)

Let the dead bury their dead

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I know it’s Monday and I should be toiling away at my job, thinking about bringing home a large rasher of bacon, double-checking the kids’ Halloween costumes, deciding what to do about the brand new fake fingernails I bit off in a weekend fit of pique.

For some reason I am perseverating on the subject of death, especially the death of a child. I watched an interesting film last year about how Americans handle the dead bodies of their loved ones. I, of course, had never questioned how we do things until I saw this film and realized that we are one of the only cultures that whisks away our corpses, tags ’em, drains ’em, pumps ’em full of some other liquid, gives ’em a bad hairdo, an even worse makeup job, dresses them in their least favorite outfit, sticks them in an incredibly expensive and garish casket and dumps ’em in the ground really really quickly. In short, we turn our dead over to complete strangers, nearly instantaneously, and by the time we lay them to rest, still firmly in the denial phase, they bear no resemblance to the one we’ve known and loved. We give ourselves no real opportunity to grieve, to come to terms, to “give up” the body and take hold of the spirit.

Other cultures allow the deceased to take up residence in the living room. Propped up, perhaps, in their favorite chair, dressed in their normal clothes. Friends, colleagues, family are able to hang around, to view the body, to hold the hand, stroke the hair, feel the pain and the loss. I understand that after a few days, as the cheeks and eyes have become sunken and there is no sense of life whatsoever, those of us left behind are able to make peace with the fact that this body IS NOT our little boy or girl or father or mother or sister or brother. This is, in fact, a shell. An earthly vessel. We have time to grieve the loss, to let go of the body and embrace the spirit.

Of course, the funeral business, just like the wedding business or any of the other “ritual” businesses that are so ingrained in American culture, doesn’t want us to consider anything besides the norm. Five thousand dollar caskets are expected because, after all, we loved Uncle Joe and want only the best for him. What a fucking scam.

Note to anyone who knows and loves me……When I die, please choose a very simple pine casket, perhaps lightly distressed just for effect, dress me in my flannel pajamas, put my hair in pigtails. Give people a few days to come by to look at me, hold my hand, tell me how they’ve loved me, how they’ve hated me, whatever they’d like to say.

When everyone has had enough time to comprehend that the body is not me, that I’m waltzing with Jesus, or dirty dancing with Satan, or whatever people do in the afterlife, dump me in a hole that you’ve all dug together in the back yard. That would make me happy.

Brad Will presente

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The city of Oaxaca, Mexico is now under direct military assault. For days now death squads have been killing the people there who have been demanding the dismissal of the state governor, who is the guiding force and organizer behind that state’s death squad activity. One of those victims, murdered just a couple of days ago, was an American reporter for IndyMedia, Brad Will. He was dedicated to bringing to light, the fight for justice of the Mexican people against the US supported Mexican dictatorship. See the last film he ran as he was shot down in cold blood: Brad Will- Presente .

One might ask, just what does Oaxaca have anything to do with us here in Colorado Springs? The answer is simply that for us to intelligently judge our own government as it builds a Border Wall and talks tough on Hispanic immigration to this country, we need to know what is going on inside Mexico itself, and other Latin countries, too, like Nicaragua. And just what has been the role of our own government in its long standing propping up of Mexico’s institutional dictatorship? It has not been a very pretty story, and this history says a lot about how little our own elites actually have any democratic inclinations of their own.

For more info on the current situation in Oaxaca and Brad Will, go to either Narco News or IndyMedia

Blood diamonds

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Before it was a movie title, it distinguished a type of diamond. Blood Diamond was a diamond industry term, a Scarlet Letter, to characterize an uncertain, perhaps blood-tainted, provenance. To be specific, a diamond bought from a rebel controlled region of the third world where the diamonds are traded illegally, meaning outside the market share of the diamond cartel, because a diamond sold without profiting the traditional diamond merchants is an illegal diamond. Don’t you find that odd?

The price of diamonds is kept artificially high as a result of the diamond cartel. By a tradition of laws, the Antwerp merchants have managed to make anyone else’s trading of diamonds illegal, enforcing their monopoly. If you were to discover a diamond mine and did not want to do business with the Antwerp monopoly, you’d be considered an international criminal. In the turmoil of a civil war, if you seized a mine, by definition owned by one of their partners, the cartel would label your merchandise bloody.

The diamond cartel/monopoly is reeling, so we hear, from the Hollywood release of the movie Blood Diamonds. Not because it enlightens the public about the diamond market, but because the movie embellishes upon the unpalatable stigma of blood diamonds. Diamond sellers are worried that their business will be tarnished by their own ugly creation, in this case the severed limbs of the people of Liberia forced to work in the diamond mines by feuding rebels. The merchants are selling those same diamonds after all, it only depends on who sold which to whom.

Therefore the industry is stepping up its reassurances that showroom products are guaranteed not to be blood diamonds. There are stamps of authenticity, for example, which would be lacking on blood diamonds. Really? Do you imagine they hold huge bonfires to destroy contraband diamonds like so much unwanted weed? A blood diamond captured from diamond smugglers becomes a plenty-fine diamond, once again profitable to the cartel. The logic being that the diamonds were confiscated, thus no money went to reward their bearers, thus no bloodletting was given a monetary encouragement.

Even if this was true, it doesn’t address what blood diamonds are about.

The diamond cartel was a fortuitous monopoly to grow out of a few merchants’ control of the then known diamond mines. It’s a throwback legacy of the early trade monopolies granted by kings to encourage exploration and trade. The Portuguese were once given the exclusive right to trade around the horn of Africa, then later around the horn of America. The advantage was held later by the Spanish, the Dutch and the English. The Dutch East India Trading Company was a corporate example, the Hudson Bay Fur Trading Company another. We’ve long since outgrown the need to grant exclusives to conquering explorers. Except for diamonds.

The diamond monopoly upholds diamond prices which is sort of in everybody’s interest, the everybody who owns a diamond. Unregulated, it’s calculated that diamonds would lose half their value, maybe more were diamonds to lose their “a diamond is forever” allure.

There’s another common interest which I’ll address in a moment.

For now, imagine the cartel/monopoly concept if it had been granted for automobiles. Daimler Benz would be producing expensive cars for the wealthy and Henry Ford’s Model-T would be a blood-car. Only the rich would be driving cars and policemen would be chasing the poor in illegal vehicles.

Today’s monopolies are granted through patents and copyrights. Artificial rights which ensure high prices and that the poor are left out. As this applies to medicines and technology, the price differential becomes inhumane. Aids drugs are a tragic example.

The other important reason we tolerate the diamond monopoly is to maintain stability for the ownership class within the globalized economy. Diamonds are one of the few commodities which compete with a global currency. Drugs are another. The movement of value, as represented by diamonds, can fuel economic activity outside the control of banks and regulatory agencies. Commodities represent real value, as compared to currency which represents but a representation. As a result, diamonds which are easily concealed from government tax collectors, can readily be used to fund counter-government activities such as rebellions and emancipations. Bad for business.

Kill Bush, Part Two

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I wrote a commentary here a couple of days back, that was titled “Kill Bush”. It went something like this… Kill Bush, Kill, Kill, Kill! I also called for the violent overthrow of our American way of life. I did stop short of advocating that we spit on images of Christ, or that we batter down church doors with neon crosses. I would like to ammend that, and now call exactly for such things to be done (being an atheist, why not?) So far, my appeals to organize such mayhem have gone relatively unheeded.
 
Still, I feel it is just a matter of time before others, like Julia of California and the al-Quaeda organization of Karachi, Pakistan, join together with me to carry out our attacks on the cartoonish Bush Adminstration. They should be fleeing to their bunkers even as I write this. We will do all this without the ass..istance of the Democratic Party though. They too are in the bunkers, hiding in fear.

Some have told me, “Tony, you are breaking the law by saying KILL BUSH!”. I would like to assure them, that not yet. I am still waiting for the delivery of my surface-to-air missile launcher I ordered from eBay to be delivered. Some have said, “Tony, you cannot shout Fire! Fire! Fire! in the theater. You cannot call for the shotgunning down of Dick Cheney!” But this is the age of NetFlix, and indeed, shouting Fire! Fire! Fire! in the context of watching a film at home is not yet determined by the 9 wise farts of the Supreme Deciders Club.

Some have worried that maybe I am a government agent provacateur, seeking to bring doom down upon our planet of the scattered wanderers without tribe race? That may be. They are everywhere in our matrix of FASCISM these government sperm. One can truly only be safe at the shopping mall these days.

I have heard it said, too, that one can legally call for KIlling Anybody, except but not for calling for the killing of our sainted President from the heavenly state of Texas. In that case, I didn’t say it. But let me just add, that I think we ought to blow up the Exxon Mobil cartel, located in my hometown of Irving, Texas, and start buying more gas from Venezuela’s demon-led CITGO to do it with . Conspiracy buffs might note that Oswald also hung around Irving back when I was growing up there. And I too, have held a copy of the Militant newspaper in my hand. In fact, I went to the school by the Texas schoolbook depository. Coincidence that we both have turned to terrorism? I don’t think so.

So render me if you will? Neighbor, call a torture taxi for me right now! And what a convenient place to have me flyed off from; Colorado Springs. How dare you threaten the King, King George. Heck, we might have let you off if Slick was still in, but this is a crime of immense proportions calling out KILL BUSH.

KIll, Kill, Kill Bush! Shall I soften this for delicate folk and call out only KILL BUSH POLITICALLY!??? Nah. It just doesn’t sound right. And besides, you know you want to do it too, just like Julia and I have done. So stick with your IMPEACH BUSH shtick as you will, and let them call for the terror taxi for me and Julia. Free Speech was once protected in our country. It was allowed to shout OFF WITH HIS HEAD!, even Bush’s. And I think it still is.

Seriously, people. Check out this commentary about Julia and the Visit Counterpunch Maybe it says it better than I do?

Good food owes everything to context

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The best anything I ever had was a can of soda, thrown to me in the water where I’d been diving for the better part of a day. My mouth was salty from the seawater taste of my mouthpiece and the dry air from my regulator. The cool sweetness of the soda pop was an olfactory relief never to be rivaled. Ask me now, treading water next to an outrigger, negotiating the waves of the South China Sea, and splashing a Sprite over my mouth, nothing better.

I came to understand this context principle later while camping in the Ozarks with my uncle. After a long hike, making chicken and rice soup over the fire, by combining every freeze-dried ingredient we had, made the best meal I’d ever tasted.

This principle explains man’s imbibing of alcohol entirely. Drinking wine is nothing but context. Alone, wine is a tartish experiment. With a meal it’s chemistry. Ice water is irrigation.

I’ve since improved upon the ultimate repast. Spaghetti with olive oil and fresh Parmesan, shoveled into your mouth from a mixing bowl on your chest as you recline watching a film. I foresaw my destiny as a bachelor when I admitted this was my Saturday Night ne plus ultra.

How to improve upon such elevated culinary expectations? I tried that once too. Unfiltered pear juice, in a hot shower, while peeing. Probably it was just too easy to orchestrate.

About Eric

EricEric has been writing for The Black Dot, Crank Magazine, Aberrant Books, Armchair Commando, and his most recent blog.

A former member of the Pikes Peak Justice and Peace Commission, the Pikes Peak Lavender Film Festival, the Pikes Peak Independent Business Alliance, Citizens for Peace In Space, the West Side Democrats, and the antiwar action Camp Casey Colorado Springs, Eric organizes with Coloradans For Peace and contributes online to MyKRCC.org, an effort to bring community participation to a local public radio station, and diverse internet projects for which discretion plays the better part.

Among Eric’s community business contributions were The Bookman, a used-and-rare bookstore with a bookmobile which brought free children’s books to local primary schools and events, Toons Music & Film, a record store which specialized in videos of cultural interest, The Pikes Peak Passion Film Festival, an annual screening for local area filmmakers, and the online alliance Best of the Springs.

Niagara FallsEric is the product of Lycee Jean Sturm Strasbourg; International School Manila; O’Gorman High School Sioux Falls, Ernest W. Seaholm Birmingham Michigan; GMI-Kettering University Flint; and graduate dawdling at UCLA.

Contributors

Not My Tribe is published in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Brent thinkingBrent Green
Brent is a self-taught animator who was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His recent screenings include Chicago’s Sound and Vision festival; Chicago Filmmakers Presents When Autobiography is not the first person, curated by Chi-Jang Yin; Columbia College; The Pikes Peak Passion Festival in Colorado; The Chicago Underground Film Festival; the CMJ Film Fest in New York; Sundance; and the Getty. More >

JonahBrother Jonah
Honorably discharged air force. and proud of it. Proud of being out of the killing machine. Messed up in a preventable on the job accident, still having surgery after 14 years. Learned to play the recorder while laid up the first time. Christian Anarchist. Texan, but getting better… Computer fixer from the depths of Heck. Autistic, speech aphasia but I type one hell of a lot better than most people speak.
 
 
 
 

TonyTony Logan
I am a high school dropout, and have done every sorry job imaginable since I was 16. That includes cab driver, nurse’s aide, production machinist, garment worker, tamale maker, transporter of undocumented workers, drug pusher, sheetrocker, luggage factory worker, groundskeeper, vampire, and longshoreman. After a series of dead-end relationships, I have since become more stable as a family man during my 2 marriages. At times, I drink too much. In short, I am a typical American. More >
 
 

aka SpikaSpica Stolfus
Spica is a visionary poet, painter, sculptor, and performance artist. He teaches youth art programs at Future Self.

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EricEric Verlo
Eric has lent his wild speculation to The Black Dot, Crank Magazine, Aberrant Books, Armchair Commando, and up to recently his website (which now points here.) If you think Eric expresses himself like a know-it-all, consider that he doesn’t know near well enough to keep quiet. He harbors the not-so-secret suspicion that he is in reality not a little retarded for an idiot savant.

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MarieMarie Walden
Marie is not a white Rhodesian as previously claimed. She holds dual citizenship and would rather remain an enigma than be described here in a stoopid fashion.

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An Inconvenient Truth; Al Gore in the Balance

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This last Friday I headed over to see a herd of well-fed liberals that rodeoed themselves into the Unitarian Church for a free showing of the film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’. The corral was packed and after we were informed that a pastor was on the way from Denver to moralize to us later, the film began to roll. Another showing of ‘Al Gore, the Intellectual Politican’ was under way. Hey, it kinda of reminded me of the repeated US`showing of ‘Jimmy Carter, Born Again Liberal Christian’, too. Holy Mackeral. Why buy a used car from the other guys, when we got such a sincere team over at Slick’s Used Cars Emporium?

My daughter was one of about 5 church-like kids dragged into the Unitarian Church that evening. And she lasted only 30 minutes, and then I had to go. She had to go that is, since I actually kind of wanted to stay. The film had a ‘Don’t Feed the Bears’ ambience to it, that made me feel like I was watching a Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo Bear rerun from my youth. Plus, it had that feel of those professional ‘Why You Need to Join Your Local Union’ stuff the AFL-CIO occasionally puts out. But my daughter was demanding that I rent her some obscure foreign film from over at Toons Video instead of staying and watching more of the freebee.

So how the Hell can I review a film when I watched only 30 minutes of it? Easily. I have been watching Al Gore for much longer than just the 90 minutes the film lasts. Here is Mr Environmental Guru as I have seen him over the years.

1) Supported Poppy Bush’s so-called Desert Strom that resulted in the deployment of Depleted Uranium radioctivity across the region. It also led to further environmental catastrophe as Hussein retaliated by incinerating the oil refineries of Kuwait.

2) As VP, he later went on to head up an Adminstration that deliberately targeted Yugoslavia’s civilian infrastructure through a US bombing campaign. As a result, the Danube was totally polluted with highly toxic waste. He also supported 8 years more of continued bombing of Iraq during that time, which certainly did not improve the ecology already destroyed by US warmaking he had supported even when a Republican had been directing the effort.

3) He supported the invasion of Afghanistan, which has left entire regions there decimated by so-called ‘bunker busting’ weaponry. Hardly a major ‘green’ effort on the part of Gore.

4) Gore has sat quiet as Israel bombed a civilian installation in Lebanon, which is a country invaded with total Bush support and complicity. Result?… a tidal wave of petro pollution that is the worst spill ever experienced in the Eastern Meidterranean. It will take decades to repair the damage, yet ‘Green’ Al Gore is silent.

5) Al Gore holds large number of shares in Occidental Oil, the company that polluted the Love Canal in New York State. It is also a company heavily invested in Colombia where Gore has helped have tons of isecticide dropped onto rural areas under the guise of waging a Clinton made ‘drug war’. The company sold off its holdings from the area after their drilling in U’wa tribal lands came up negative. Despite U’wa protests against this drilling, the Gore family held its shares in the company. Too bad the U’wa’s note to Gore was not part of the movie.

We could go on, but why should anyone believe Al Gore is doing anything other than image restructuring for himself, and the Democratic Party? If you are depending on him to be pro-environmental, then I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. If you are depending on the Democratic Party to stop the Pentagon (which is the main danger to global environments), then you should have your head examined.

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Contributors:

JonahBrother Jonah
Honorably discharged air force. and proud of it. Proud of being out of the killing machine. Messed up in a preventable on the job accident, still having surgery after 14 years. Learned to play the recorder while laid up the first time. Christian Anarchist. Texan, but getting better… Computer fixer from the depths of Heck. Autistic, speech aphasia but I type one hell of a lot better than most people speak.
 
 
 
 

EricEric Verlo
Eric has lent his wild speculation to The Black Dot, Crank Magazine, Aberrant Books, Armchair Commando, and up to recently his website (which now points here.) If you think Eric expresses himself like a know-it-all, he harbors the not-so-secret suspicion that he is not a little retarded for speaking before thinking.
 

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America’s Pirates

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No, this is not about ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’, but about Microsoft and WalMart instead. Every year Forbes Magazine does its glowing presentation about the super-rich who rule us that really should be better called ‘Pirates of The United States of America’. Replace Johnny Depp with Bill Gates, perhaps, and have a great flick! Actually, a lot of liberal Democratic Party romantics already really seem to find him sexy, and if they flutter over Al Gore’s movie then certainly Bill Gates as pirate would be a blockbuster for them, if made into film. And YES go figure about some liberals’ personal taste? Throw in Hillary with Bill for yet more romance amongst the pirate super-rich. And the Democratic Party faithful will swoon.

So the gist of Forbes summary this year is that the top 400 people with big bucks gained another $120 billion over the last year. Yes, all through hard work. That gives these worthy pirates a total value of 1 and 1/4 triillion dollars. It broke my slide rule just calculating all that dough. Where did it come from, Folks? So hard to guess, ain’t it?

Hint, hint, hint, for the really thick. It came from theft. You got your pocket picked and still don’t know it! What could you do with an extra 1 and 1/4 trillion dollars those top 400 US pirates grabbed overall? And shoot, that’s not even talking about any Chinese, Japanese, Europeans, or dark seedy Arab pirates! How many pirates do you think the world’s poor can support? The Mexican poor support quite a few all alone, including ones’ called Hank, and another called Slim! And no doubt, America will turn out yet more next year.

Attention, All Pirates. Neiman Marcus’s Christmas catalog will be out soon! I hear there is even a yacht made out of solid diamonds for sale. How can it float, but it’s quite a sight to see? I love that catalog!

USAFA, I’m glad I knew ya!

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pictureAhhh, it’s September again….my favorite time of the year. Lazy Saturday mornings spent in oversized sweatshirts and fluffy slippers, drinking coffee, aspen trees on Cheyenne Mountain clad in autumnal glory, jets practicing for afternoon Air Force football games.

I’ve attended many such games. When the jets fly overhead without warning I feel an incredible patriotic stirring in my loins. The poor unwitting soul seated next to me invariably must endure my tongue in his or her ear and my breathy rendition of Lee Greenwood’s neo-national anthem, Proud to Be An American. Tears stream down my face as I stand up and shout PENIS! PENIS! PENIS! (I think I remember a similarly-named Japanese film from my youth). Could there be anything sexier or more masculine than an F-16 suddenly overtaking me from behind? A Blackhawk helicopter hovering over me quivering, gyrating, rotoring away? A sleek submarine slipping into the murky depths? MY GOD, I don’t even need to sit on the washing machine anymore. The military presence in our town leaves me FULLY SATISFIED.

Unfortunately, I was raised Catholic and was compelled by nuns and priests of dubious character to consider always the plight of my fellow man. Okay….sigh….I’ll give it a shot. I wonder what it costs the taxpayers to bring out the heavy artillery in the name of athletic superiority? How much jet fuel do we have to buy so that the flyboys can do their thing? Is this truly the most expensive pre-game show in the history of college athletics? Shit. At the bottom of my hill are countless families biding their time at Fort Carson while fathers are in Iraq fighting terrorists on behalf of the good ol’ US of A. Families are living paycheck to paycheck….moms are alone making breakfast, lunch, and dinner….helping with homework….singing lullabies….fixing broken cars, peeling paint, fractured bones.

Oh, well. That’s what they signed up for, isn’t it? If it wasn’t military service it would be incarceration. Really. They should just shut their fat yaps and be grateful that Uncle Sam has given them a job at all. Meanwhile I’m going to sit on my deck and watch my protectors doin’ their thing….for you, for me, for the team. Ohhhhh. Mmmmmmm. Ahh, baby….Yes. Yeeessss. TORA! TORA! TORA!

Wrestling with Steve Irwin

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Nine lives of the curiousA young friend reminded me today. “You know, I’m still really sad about the Alligator Guy.”
 
Me too. Steve Irwin’s death is sad, and a great loss, but I also feel we may be dishonoring Irwin to feel sad for him.

I wouldn’t pretend to speak for Irwin, nor certainly would I imagine that he wouldn’t have rather avoided the stingray’s barb. I will postulate however that the Alligator Guy died doing what he loved. I will speculate that while Irwin’s dangerous antics appeared effortless to us, no doubt he had a precise understanding of the odds and the risk.

An article written after his death quoted Irwin as having once joked with his producer: if ever one of his stunts proved fatal, “at least it will be on film.” I really have to believe that Steve Irwin braved the odds, and just as bravely met his fate.

I make this point because I think our culture is too ready to drown spiritual identity under the weight of a social mean. We can marvel at Steve Irwin’s individuality but we’ll discount his strength of character as soon as he is not around to surprise us again.

I asked my young friend about another of his heroes, Anakin Skywalker. Why ever would Anakin -with the power of The Force- have turned to the Dark Side?” He informed me: “Because he wanted Padme to live.” Really. Would his princess have accepted being saved if she knew that Anakin would sacrifice his soul?

To read any of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey in George Lucas’ Star Wars tale is to be full of shit. I do so resent this typical reduction of the heroic character. Humanizing the protagonist these days seems to require diminishing the human potential. We’re not talking about a tragic flaw in the Greek sense, we’re talking about the consumer’s creed: I me mine.

In these capitalist times we love the dictum “everybody has his price.” It seems carved in stone like “absolute power corrupts.” I believe it’s not very far removed from the crippling Catholic indoctrination of guilt, that we are all born sinners. I reject that handicap. We each may have our weaknesses, our predilections, our tragic flaws, but we are also what we want to be, and we can be good.

2.
Muslims extremists, I believe, are similarly belittled. A suicide bomber willing to give his or her life for a cause is not by necessity brain-washed or waylaid. Selfless motives do not register with our Culture of Self. Insurgents rising in waves against American firepower, rise against our comprehension. The determination of the Vietcong porters along the Ho Chi Min trail was likewise not something we could easily fathom.

A pacifist friend of mine has a pact with his wife. Both like minded pacifists, they agreed never to resort to lethal force to protect one another. Neither wanted to be saved at the expense of the death of another human being. To act otherwise, while promising a less tragic outcome, would dishonor the path toward which both were committed.

Our culture does not want to honor people’s moral selves. It teaches that everyone, even Anakin, is turnable, as if there is no such thing as a moral compass. We preach morality but fear letting it inhabit individual peoples.

Steve Irwin was not perhaps a moral leader, but he was a hero. His heroism was his irrepressibly adventurous bravery. Now, it may be best for young minds to believe that Alligator Guy died instantaneously without suffering, but I read something more happened. Irwin’s companions say that after he was struck, they watched him pull the barb from his chest and look at it as he slowly lost consciousness. I don’t need to see the footage, but I’d like to face the reality of Steve Irwin’s death as he did. With curiosity and bravery.

Dale Chihuly meet Brent Green

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Brent Green shortA friend of mine is a filmmaker and I’d like to crow about him a little. His name is Brent Green and I came to know him through the local filmmaker festival, The Pikes Peak Passion Film Festival.
 
Brent Green
Brent was from the East and settled in Colorado Springs for a while as he worked on his animated short films. He passed VHS copies through my mailbox with notes saying “please return asap this is my only copy.”

I was not impressed by the note and postponed having a look until he called me up and asked for them back. I told him I was having a public screening that night, did he want to join us? I felt my hand a little forced, but what the hell.

What the hell were my friends’ and my literal words when we saw Brent’s Susa’s Red Shoes. Amazing!

Brent featured prominently in the next two Passion Festivals and has since moved on to not surprisingly greener pastures. Grants, artists wanting to collaborate, shows in Chelsea galleries, a screening at the MOMA, a FilmMaker magazine profile, and a retrospective at UCLA. Brent’s third short Hadacol Christmas showed at Sundance this year. He told me it was incredible to watch a theater of 1000 people watch your film. I anticipated his fourth short to show at multiple festivals around the world, but Paulina Hollers has lapped the festival circuit. Its premier will be at the Getty. Yes. The Getty.

I’m relating this story, an indulgence obviously, not simply because it is invigorating and inspiring to me, but because of something I read recently in local art news. I read that our Fine Arts Center, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, has just announced that it has paid artist Dale Chihuly two millions dollars for yet more of his glass objects d’ crap. Their Chihuly show last year broke attendence records and they’d like to see more of that.

Dale Chihuly
Dale Chihuly makes giant glass tchotchkes which are just too ludicrous to behold, on pedestals even! He’s a performance artists too, chucking large glass balls into the sea (minus the traditional suspended fishing nets), as if it’s not industrial littering, and he hangs large bound glass droppings by iron exoskeletons over canals in Venice, a sight so superbly crass and dim-sighted. Then he can say his works have shown in Venice. Like Hasselhoff, big in Germany.

Christo, another single-named impresario, drapes landscapes but doesn’t pretend that the plastic wrap is the art in itself. He doesn’t sell pieces of it to provincial Fine Art Centers for two million dollars.

Dale Chihuly is an art director showoff who hires glass blowers to do his work and then sues them if they produce pieces of blown glass on their own. What? He’s copyrighted extruded glass? He’s trademarked giant hanging paperweights? This is fine art that someone thinks he’s patented. It’s a miserable waste of attention. And our city’s chief art center is wallowing in it.

My up and coming, once local, friend is at the Getty. We’re left with Chihuly.

Chihuly glass bottomed bottomA few years ago, our FAC was criticized for having sold off its choice Native American pieces in what appeared to have been an underhanded insider raid on its unmatched collection. We lost many irreplaceable pieces but the upside was that the FAC got some cash in exchange.
 
Now we see how they’re spending it. On Carnival glass. Do you remember why it was called Carnival Glass? Because it was all sparkly but wasn’t worth much. Carnival Glass was produced during the Great Depression when folk didn’t have much to spend. It was the poor man’s crystal. At least the price was right.

Digital reproduction of aluminum

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1. Aluminum Siding
In the German film epic HEIMAT, an unscrupulous brother brags about the lucrative post-war business of aluminum siding. Barry Levinson’s 1987 TIN MEN depicted the same competitive salesmanship arena stateside. In Germany the aluminum siding industry was more of a scam because the aluminum wasn’t covering clapboard houses.

In Germany the salesmen were offering aluminum siding to replace historic decorative trim. Modern aluminum doors and window frames were being offered to replace old-world crafted wood pieces. The same salesman installing shiny new aluminum were warehousing the original antique pieces for resale to more savvy consumers.

Aluminum has been the wonder material with the cache of being aeronautic light and rust free. But took a hit when aluminum cooking ware was linked to alzheimer’s.

Element Digit2. Digital a new aluminum
Is digital the new miracle element on the alchemist’s Periodic Table? Is it better than its representative predecessor, analog? A digital watch might be easier to read than an analog dial because you don’t have to learn how to convert the information. But digital time is not really as versatile from a distance, or at an angle, or upside down.
 
But so it began. Digital is cheaper to manufacture, no mechanical parts, and without it we would not have computers. Computers rung in the digital age. Thus the digital halo.

Next up for the consumer, digital sound, and next, digital visuals. That’s where digital’s ascendancy may stumble.

Are digital compact discs indeed better than vinyl records? Music audiophiles will tell you no. Let’s revisit that question in a moment.

Who is convinced that digital cell phones are better than analog? Cheaper to make certainly, cheaper to broadcast, the recordings are easier to archive. Better for the telecoms, but for you? Digital cellphone service means more drop-outs and degraded signals. Remember when you could say, “wow, it sounds like you’re in the next room”? That wasn’t digital. Digital is the age of “can you hear me now? Um, how about now?”

I am not sitting in judgment of the potential of digital representation obviously, merely of cheap digital representation. With the technology of digital processing came fuzzy logic and compression. Each innovation was designed to reduce the digital reproduction to its most efficient lowest quality necessary.

CDs reproduce music for the average not so discerning ear. Sony’s Minidiscs reduced the complexity of the signal for what they determined the average ear could discern in the midst of car or jogging noises. MP3s filter out further signals based on the user’s own sense of what quality is good enough.

3. Digital is unnatural
It turns out we’re all a little more discerning with our vision. We can easily tell the difference between film and video. The film image is richer, warmer and more lifelike. Video is higher contrast and more stark. On the Internet we can all recognize compression artifacts and noise, even if we don’t know it by name. We see it because it does not look natural. That’s digital compression and it’s creeping into TV and DVD products because it’s cheaper for someone along the line.

Do we mind digital images? I guess not. Do we prefer them? No.

Musicians prefer the more natural sounds produced by analog amplifiers. Of course everyone is trying to represent the original, natural sound.

We can see the unnatural aspects of digital imagery. It may hurt our vision or it may not. Perhaps we can deduce that our ears are being assailed with similar digital mediocrity. So far it’s only the discriminating audiophiles who liken digital reproduction to nails on a chalkboard. Until it’s linked to Alzheimer’s.

White Native Americans

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A branch of our local library is hosting a discussion about a recent work of popular fiction, One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus. I’m thinking of stopping by to puke.

The novel begins by alluding that its unspeakable historical premise has factual merit. ALLEGEDLY the author’s great great aunt, a “May Dodd”, left a journal about her life experience, hidden all these years in shame by her family. The author takes it upon himself to tell her repressed tale, and because it is the untold fate of 999 nameless more, we infer it to be one of the dark secrets of the American national identity.

The story concerns 1000 white women who were traded to the Indians in exchange for resettlement and peace. One thousand white women. The title does grab you. It has undeniable where-the-white-women-at? appeal.

Another prominant White IndianThe phenomena also shares something with the White Indian Series by Donald Porter. That’s a western series for readers who couldn’t be bothered to know about the lives of the Native Americans unless they were WHITE Native Americans. These readers can’t sympathize with Indians as victims, unless they are white Indian victims, and then preferably of course they should be white Indian victims of Indians.

The mythic white Indian abounds on film, and it’s not just Indians. The story of The Last Samurai had to be about a white man in Japan (Tom Cruise) or who would care?

Here you have the fate of 1000 women sold, sacrificed or let loose down the river to become Indian squaws. One part romantic fantasy, several parts feminist grudge, (1000 parts rape fetish?), all at the hands of red heathen.

To be fair, the author does provide a disclaimer that 1000 white women never changed hands. Fergus implies however that an original Cheyenne proposal to be given 1000 white women was real and asks readers to ponder, what if?

If true, it’s a piercing lesson on the embarrassing legacy that can come from sarcasm.

How deeply insulting is it to suggest that Indian tribal leaders would have asked the army negotiators for white women? And as a condition of laying down their weapons? I think it’s indescribably racist to be susceptible to thinking that Indian fathers and braves sought white mates with whom to raise new generations of their tribe.

Neither in-breeding nor poor education are excuses enough for this prevalent self-centered bigotry.