Let’s face it. Colorado Springs has some of the crappiest radio stations of any sizable city in the country. I like Spanish language music, but the reception is so bad that 101.9 hardly comes in. And their selection of music isn’t so hot anyway. So you might try checking out this site, especially with high speed access. There are many different styles of Latin music available here for free. Try cumbia, bachata, and baladas for starters.
Kill Bush! Kill, kill, kill. Let’s do it, Julia. In case people don’t know by now, Julia is a 14 year old school girl in California who had posted a photo of Bush with the words ‘Kill Bush’ onto her My Place website. Despite the fact that months went by and Bush had visited her city twice during that time unprotected from Julia, all of a sudden the Secret Service came by. Two big beefy ones, too. Julia had posted this material when she was 13 years old, so their visit was not exactly that of a speedy response team. And it seems that despite the Zillions already spent on Homeland Security bureaucracy, that nationally we still got basically what New Orleans has… which is A Confederacy of Dunces on the security job. So just who called the cops?
Well, we personally don’t know the answer on that one. No doubt, some self righteous super zealot of the Right, since they are all crawling out of the woodwork these days. We got the self-hating red diaper baby, David Horowitz, outing liberal professors all around the country. We got the racist Anglo ‘Minutemen’ calling up cops with info about people not speaking America’s official language, English without acent…. as they compare themselves to Neighborhood Watch, chuckle as you will. And Barnes and Noble has stacks of the excremental works of Bill O’Reilly as you go in. He’s watching you, American liberals! And we got lynch mobs here in Colorado trying to hang Ward Churchill from a pole. If they can’t do that, they’ll probably send him a blanket with small pox on it. And we got the airport security branch of the US military waging war everywhere on our behalf at the airports. Of course, they do do a little collateral damage from time to time. But heck, if you don’t like the gated community called America, then get out, ay?
Just 4 months ago, my high school buddy who I had lost contact with for years and I, reestablished a correspondence. But it got torpedoed for me when he got on the case against a University of Texas prof, an international specialist in lizards, no less! My friend was aghast that this evilutionist expert, Professor Eric Pianka, had just said in a university talk that bacteria deserved to live, whereas mankind really didn’t, since our species was working night and day to destroy the planet. Good Lord, what a crime!
MY high school buddy had heard about it on the Drudge Report. And they had heard about it from some Southern Baptist scientists (yes, unbelievable, isn’t it?) who had called the government alleging that Pianka was advocating biological warfare! And they had called all their Intelligent Design friends, and Drudge, too. So, Homerland Security again went to work. You see, they take our security quite seriously, so they marched out to the Univ of Texas to check out this liberal terrorist. And they examined, under a microscope, all his words of wisdom ever uttered about evolution and lizards. Clear it was, that this non-Creationist had a greater love for lizards and bacteria than he did for humankind. Yet he had not started a biological warfare lab at the U.
Well, in short, both Professor Eric Pianka and Julia remain free. After all, America doesn’t burn witches yet. But Homeland Security does take reports from an alert citizenry, and that’s a citizenry full of finks, evidently. And they do take seriously any jokes at the airport about bombs. We may even begin to see signs saying that ‘This School is a Gun Free School’ posted at our kindergardens. So, Liberals, please join me in my effort to give these nice folk all something to think about.
Kill Bush. Shotgun pellet Donald Rumsfield. Deny Habeus Corpus to Alberto Gonzales. Put Condaleeza in bondage… no… I mean a ‘stress position’. Nuke Washington DC! Go after them in their bunkers, and blow the whole crew to smithereens! Please, do it now.
Liberals, start advocating violence (including the violent overthrow of America’s government) everywhere. If you can’t beat them, then join them. Oops, you do that already by voting for the Democratic Party. So try advocating violence instead. Let it out of your Gandhian souls. Kill, Kill, Kill!
Kill Bush.
Yes, I know. I’m lucky. I was born under a lucky star. I have my health and my wealth. I have a big house, two fantabulous cars, and six exceptional children. I recently won the Filling the Deep End of the Gene Pool award. “Oh my goodness. I am so honored. I’d like to thank the Catholic Church, especially Father Foxhoven for his guidance during my difficult teenage years.” I have big boobs, a small butt (think upside down pear), and I’m generally considered a MILF, my daily affirmation. If you don’t know what a MILF is then (A) You don’t know any high school boys or (B) You don’t watch WEEDS.
My point? I am supposedly part of the elite….the people who have NO WORRIES….NO HEARTACHE….GOOD HAIR EVERY DAY. We wake up each morning and weep tears of joy at our good fortune. We drink mimosas before school and feel compassion for those who have less. “God, why? Why, oh why, isn’t everyone as blessed as I?”
Speaking of school. I am in a district with an incredible curriculum. We have a college prep program, Gifted and Talented programs, Science and Math Olympiad programs, Music programs, Advanced Placement programs that can get our kids into Stanford quicker than you can say “Will that be MasterCard or Visa?”
So what is my gripe? Well, the Ninth Court of Appeals recently ruled that when we turn our children over to the public school system, we check them at the door. THEY are in charge of MY children. My dynasty. They determine what my children learn, both in and out of the classroom. THEY? Who are they? Do THEY live on my street? Play golf at my country club? WHO THE FUCK ARE THEY?
Here’s who they are. THEY are the administrators who allowed a troubled little girl, out-of-district-but-we-do-like-to-be-inclusive, push my perfect baby boy off the top of the slide and break his arm with absolutely no punishment. THEY are the principal who suspended my perfect baby girl for writing a clever cartoon about how girlz can deal with pesky boyz by spraying them with freeze spray and framing and hanging them in the hallway–something about a specific threat against a named individual. THEY are the government fuckheads who make my perfect darlings walk through the halls with “safe hands” clasped behind their backs so they can’t threaten anyone. THEY are the counselors who called my children in during my very amicable divorce without my permission to tell them about how uncertain their futures are now that their parents have split up.
I am one of the fortunate individuals who has options. I can move my children to another school within the district. I can change districts. I can move to a private school. I can home school. Actually, I’ve opted to do several of these over the years. But since I pay my property taxes and abide by the Constitution, I would rather bitch. Bitch about government overstepping its bounds. Bitch about social engineering. Bitch about the NEA. Bitch about revisionist history. Mostly I want to bitch about people–people who control people. The unluckiest people in the world.
Who cannot but watch in horror as our language suffers the incursion of “like” into our every sentence? Insert everywhere: “I’m like-” He was like- “She’d be like-” It was like-
The onslaught has been apace for decades, from Val-speak in the San Fernando Galleria on to the Mall of the Americas. The like verbal tic has pervaded our grammar like a Darwinist barnacle, overwhelming our ability to visit the past tense without it. Are there anti-predatory lingual strategies to fend off or ameliorate this foreign invasion?
The French have L’ Academie Francaise to dictate which new words will be allowed into their language. They successfully regulate the French spoken in their media, in commercials and official correspondence, with fines for companies who offend.
Is it but a matter of assigning American teachers the responsibility of reprimanding students when the ugly motif rears? This would probably mean expecting something out of our educational system which we haven’t been getting for awhile, educated children. We can’t escape Ebonics, how are we going to escape Mall-speak? The trend it seems has been to dumb down the American child, to prepare him or her for a life of McDonalds, spectator sport and beer. To raise an intelligent, cogent, populace would mean, like, we’d be asking for our democracy back and stuff.
When you see luxury condos, they so often appear uninhabited. At least, you rarely see someone at the window, or on the balcony or in the drive. Seaside residences are like this too. Walk the beach, look up at the multimillion dollar homes, rarely anyone home.
Is this because those properties remain unsold? The real estate is too expensive for you, maybe nobody can afford them? Hardly. This phenomenon has to do with what separates affluence from the rest of us. Those who can afford million dollar lofts, condos, or estates, can afford several. They’re only ever 25% home. When they shop, they buy multiples of everything for each home, lest they have to pack between trips.
One of my favorite show-biz verite moments is captured on Randy Newman’s concert album Live at the Paladium. During an instrumental segue, Newman attempted to make small talk with Linda Ronstadt, with whom he was singing a duet. “How many houses do you have?” he asked her. Ronstad offered only a smile as Newman kept playing. “You know, most of these people only have one home.”
Do you remember the good ol’ days when we were reckless and free? Unencumbered by good sense and family responsibilities? When we were able to get together with friends on a sunny day, have some hot wings and cold beer, and play a dangerous little game called Jarts? Yard darts, lawn darts, whatever you recall, were steel-tipped weighted mega-darts that one hurled gleefully into the air toward a yellow plastic circle across the yard. It was truly a “team” sport because everyone at the party had to pay close attention to the action to avoid being impaled in the temple. The wayward dart was most likely tossed by the belle de jour in a polka dot sundress (oh! how we laughed!)…the “new girl” once again brought by Ashton Chase, our friend with connections to Chase-Manhattan. Dammit, Ashton. Stop it. Think about us for a change.
We were the only people with a kid at the time…a preschool-aged boy. I know for a fact that one of his fondest childhood memories (oddly, he remembers this in slo-mo) is of 6 adults dropping full beers in unison and racing across the yard to body check him into a fence to save his life. Kind of a boozed up backyard version of Swan Lake. Without the tutus. Well, except for Ashton.
Sadly, they have made the game of Jarts ILLEGAL. I don’t know who “they” are. Whose job is it to troll back alleys, looking for young people having fun, and then steal our toys and jump up and down on them in black Gestapo boots while we hold our blankies and our beers and sob aloud at the spectacle? Yes, them. They took our darts and our plastic rings and left us with no way to amuse ourselves.
That’s when we starting smoking pot. Dang it! They’ve got us here too. Not only have they made our harmless little substance illegal, they’ve made pretty little glass sculptures with rubber hoses and small pieces of very thin paper off limits as well. What a bunch of fuddy duddies. Puh-lease. Let us have our fuuuuunnnnnn! We are functioning members of society, doctors and lawyers and brokers and developers and financial analysts, all of us. Now we can’t smoke pot and play jarts in the privacy of our own yards? Well, then we quit. We are all going to go on welfare and stop paying our mortgages and and mowing our useless lawns and wasting our time volunteering with the PTA.
Actually, I have a better idea. I was on eBay this morning trying to buy a set of illegal lawn darts and I noticed that, instead of the $14.99 I remember, a used (vintage) set of crappy darts is going for more than $200 (and are to be used for nostalgic display purposes only). And, pot. Well, we all know what a nice sticky bud of Wowie Maui is going for these days (okay, I’ve dated myself and revealed that I don’t actually smoke pot but I still like it conceptually). Perhaps we should walk away from the rat race and make our fortunes selling reasonably harmless illegal things! Yes! We could each play a role in the family business. I, the CPA, could count the beans and file the tax returns (oh, wait, tax free! ha!). Tad, the broker, could invest the profits and set up retirement accounts for each of us. Ashton, the banker, could fund our start up costs. Betsy, the attorney, could get us out of trouble and Dave and Tim, the doctors, could act as money launderers. Chris, the developer, could find us a place to grow our inventory. The only thing we need is a horticulturalist to help us with the hydroponics. Horticulturalists? Any takers? Why don’t we know any horticulturalists? Dang.
Come to think of it, I think we’ll start manufacturing and selling yard darts as well. At $200 a pop, it won’t take long until we we’re ready to retire en masse and move to gentler climes. Sipping mai tais, swimming with dolphins, playing limbo. Just like the good ol’ days.
I hope they outlaw beer pong as well. Bora Bora, here we come.
I remember a ProFiles Magazine story published twenty years ago called Mouse Trap, about a fictional computer program developed to differentiate individual users based on their keystrokes, by identifying the pattern to the rhythm of their typing.
It should be no surprise that your typing signature can be as unique as your handwriting. Since that fictional story, researchers have of course patented exactly such a program. I describe this technology to illustrate that computers are recording more about us than we think we are revealing. Our own computers.
Computers with Windows Operating Systems are notorious for running stealth programs without the specific consent of the user. Microsoft still denies conducting behind-the-scenes activities even when they are observed and documented by computer users. However the internet has made every operating system vulnerable to computer surveillance.
Let’s be clear. Identifying who we are online is the least of the surveillance goals. We are already identified by our unique computer M.A.C. address, our connection IP, our cookies, and our own internet use patterns. It’s not who we are, it’s what we are doing.
By now we all know that our internet search activities are logged and studied. After the accidental release of some Google search records, it became clear that an accumulated history of search queries can be enough to determine a user’s identity. Perhaps this has made us all more careful about what we type online.
I’m going to guess that the sense we are being watched online has made us a little more apprehensive each time we hit the enter key. Let me say that such apprehension is misplaced. We are being observed BEFORE we hit the enter key.
The celebrated cross-platform language called Java, which adds functionality to our browsers and is indeed now required by many webpages, is giving uninvited observers a peek at what we type before we decide to submit it. You can see this in action a couple places.
A first example would be IM. Instant message interfaces record when you start typing, to alert your correspondent that a message is on its way. If you decide to backspace over what you typed, to the beginning for example, your correspondent will be updated that the forecasted message will not be forthcoming. Your IM buddy can confirm that your messages are not delivered until and unless you hit enter. But your computer knows what you’ve typed all along, and the IM interface knows it too. Even if you opted to rewrite your message, the IM interface has recorded every iteration, before you decided you wanted anyone to see it.
Another example would be search engines. I’d like to direct you to Answers.com where the Java enabled suggestion box descends as you type your query. When you first try to revise your search, Answers.com offers suggestions for related searches. You may think that the page returned to you by your browser came bundled with that list of alternative suggestions. But try typing a new query from scratch. You’ll see that you’ve got the full resource of all possible queries coming forward to help out. HTTP didn’t send those to you. Those arrive based on what you are typing in real time. Answers.com is watching what you are asking before you decide what you’d like to be observed asking.
There’s an option on the Answers.com drop down box to “hide suggestions.” At least that is truth in advertizing. Your option isn’t to turn off the suggestions box, only to hide it. Hiding the Java helper will mean it won’t assist you with suggestions. It will still be transmitting your keystrokes.
Ask.com is another search site which openly hopes to entice users with its search tools. These are the same kind of “tools” which record what you are thinking of doing before you’ve done it.
The option to “hide” Java tools should give you a clue about what the other search engines are already doing. With Google and Yahoo, for example, the Java tools are hidden. Unless you have Java completely disabled on your browser, any website can elect to monitor what you are typing.
When did message crawls start happening to the bottom of TV screens? Whether for breaking news or a weather travel advisory or the upcoming televison series, I have noticed that they interrupt only programming, never the commercials. The National Weather Service may think a thunderstorm warning is important, but Chef Boyardee doesn’t.
I’m giving sports spectating a try. It’s the World Series, the Tigers are playing. If I had a team to cheer, it’s Detroit. For me the Old Ball Game was Tiger Stadium with my glove hoping to catch a foul ball.
I thought in any sport I’d be cheering the underdog or whoever was behind. I find in reality it’s hard not to cheer for the better team. You can wish your team was better, but it seems awfully odd to hope the better guy messes up so yours can win. The better player can be scrappy or inelegant, but somewhere before the game is over, you know who it is.
What if you’re attending the game dressed in your team’s colors, with pennants and team paraphenalia, and yours is not the best team? It’s one thing to cheer encouragement to little leaguers, or rival high schools, but teams which recruit their talent? Free agents? Pros?
I like the Olympics because the audience advocacy distinction, on television certainly, is clear. We cheer achievement.
In the virtual world of Second Life you can have whatever you want. It’s a Sims world where you can show everyone what you’d like to have in your first life if you could afford it. It’s conspicuous would-be consumption.
The limit? What money you’re willing to fork over for a a virtual piece of the rock, and the time and skill you’re willing to put into showing off. SL is a perfect fit for graphic artists: designers, architects or programmers. Those of us in need of those skills in the virtual showcase can hire them. I’ve seen some incredible objects in Second Life, fantastic houses, super sleek planes, even a submarine. Super modern conveyances, but I haven’t seen the perfect car.
What would make the ideal car in SL, a virtual world without physical constraints, where you can’t even enjoy the ride?
In Second Life, transport itself is a non-starter. In SL you can teleport anywhere, you can breath underwater, and you can fly. The sharper homes don’t even bother with stairs or elevators, of what purpose is any vehicle? What purpose? the aforementioned got-one factor.
The ultimate SL ride is therefore no debate. It’s the Jaguar D-type. Only six were ever built. Fresh out of the factory they placed first, second and fourth in the 1956 Le Mans. The next year race organizers had to limit the engine size to prevent another Jaguar rout. The 12-cylinder D-type combined unbriddled power and unfettered racing lines, never to be surpassed. The Jaguar’s dark green paint job defined England’s Racing Green.
I bet when you close your eyes and picture the primordial race car, whether on a slot car track, a hotweels loop, or a cross-country rally, it’s the D-type off-center fin you see behind a helmeted man with goggles. The precurser to everybody’s favorite Jaguar, the (E-type) XKE, emulated by the Corvette, the Dino, the GT, the Viper, and the 280Z, was the Jaguar D-type.
If in Second Life you can have anything, what kind of male could you possibly be without that car?
A 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.
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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.
NMT. It bears discussing I think, and I hardly know what I’m talking about. Not My Tribe. It’s racist, it’s ethnocentric, it’s xenophobic, it’s human nature.
Avoiding males of another tribe coming your way is self preservation. Being attracted to a person whose physical traits match yours is self-propagation. Looking out for your brother is serving your blood line. Favoring others who look like you, who may be kin from somewhere back, is racism yes, it’s also tribal.
This TV season’s Survivor is catching flack for grouping its contestants into tribes by skin color. Is that appropriate? If the other aspects of Survivor reflected the human struggle, perhaps the tribal groupings would be intriguing. Instead I find the stunt rather distasteful.
For one, the “tribes” will be competing against each other. Is there any doubt that skin color has shown itself to be a statistical predictor of aptitude? Not human potential, mind you, physical aptitude. Are not the fastest runners dark-skinned? Are not most chessmasters light-skinned? In climates where people grow fair-skinned, do they not spend more time reading? Under the sun where people grow dark-skinned, is physical conditioning not more imperative? We should get over the platitude that all men are created equal. They are not. It’s doesn’t mean we can’t respect one another.
Second, what are called “racial” distinctions have little to do with tribe. Black Africans are no more from the same tribe than are whites. We all practice tribal eugenics when we size each other up. Eye color, skin texture, hair type, nose, shape, build. These are the traits which mark our tribes. That’s how we recognize our kin. We compete, but not in dead heats. We assert hierarchies over time, we do not breast-beat about far-reaching superiority. We co-exist.
I wonder if Not My Tribe has a place anymore in modern society. At last the planet has become too small to accomodate elements in the melting pot which resist dissolving. In the process however, I don’t see any benefit to lying about our differences. They’re there, they represent our personal culture, to celebrate and assimilate.
In defense of ABC’s docudrama The Path to 9/11. Near the beginning, when the terrorists were taking responsibility for the 1993 WTC bombing, “Ramzi Youssef – Palestinian Terrorist” explained why they had done it: because of America’s military and economic support of Israel.
The subject of Israel and Palestine never came up again, and never came up at all on Ted Koppel’s counter-ABC-straw-man The Price of Security.
We’ve got our boot on Palestine’s windpipe, they’re flailing their arms hoping to dislodge us, and we declare a war on arm flailing. Our media runs through what options America has to be safe from arm-flailing without looking at our boots to let American citizens consider how we might tread the earth with more humanity.
The US and Israel, it’s hard to say who is the master of whom, are actively killing Palestinians in a genocidal program every bit as calculated as the Holocaust or the extermination of the Native Americans. The US supported the recent slaughter of Lebanese peoples, also considered by the international community as genocide.
The US accuses Syria or Iran of backing Hizb’Allah. Those links are sketchy compared to our sending weapons and aid to Israel and other false authorities in the Middle East. When Israel was stepping up its bombing Lebanon in advance of the nearing ceasefire, we had to speed our resupply of Cluster Bombs lest Israel run out of time to use them. The US arms and defends the self-proclaimed kings and sultans who amass great wealth from the sale of their countries’ oil while at the same time subjecting their peoples to abject poverty. Bin Laden opposed our propping up of the Saudis. Youssef decried our support of Israel in Palestine. Arabs have cause to reject US strong arm policies in Egypt, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, and of course Iraq. Muslims have very good reasons to reject US policy in Afghanistan, Indoneasia and the Philippines.
The least ABC could do in its mockudrama was to set the scene with the Muslim extremists’ motives, and that was it. Even though the rest of the program was re-edited because of the criticism, there followed closely law enforcement characters endlessly lamenting they needed authority for warrantless searches, domestic eavesdropping and inter-departmental information sharing. Filipino police were depicted heroically for not waiting for warrants, female border agents were lauded for using their intuitive -read racial- profiling, suggestions were made of an FBI coverup, even that Clinton’s people were helping Osama.
The irrationality-mongering was so egregious it would take forever to enumerate. The good news is that the Stephen Bochco style shaky camera, the endlessly tight closeups, the jump cuts unto incongruous details lacking context, and the frenetic action going every direction, serve really like an alarm bell going off next to your ear. It’s not conducive to critical thinking, but it’s also painfully and obviously contrived.
I draw one fundamental conclusion. The 9/11 truth seekers have been right all along. We must diffuse the 9/11 lie because the establishment yahoos, both Republican and Democrats, plan to ride this vile deception as long as they can.
By comparison, Ted Koppel’s sombre contemplative piece was full of verbal obfuscation. Koppel began his report with “by now every adult in America knows what happened on 9/11.” What an innocuous way to brush aside the fact that what happened is known, yes, and disputed! His language got no clearer as the program progressed. Lots of “clearly” this, when of course it very clearly could be unclear.
Koppel asked critical questions of such criminals as the author of the latest definition of torture and the commander of Gitmo who declined to admit that detainees had ever been tortured, but Koppel let Bush cabinet officials off with softballs and setups. Koppel let Tom Ridge appear thoughtful as to hold a mirror to himself asking what America is about, he let effete Senator Hays tell everyone that nuclear bombs can be made from items purchased at Home Depot, and Koppel let an NSA software developer appear pro-civil liberties by rejecting racial-profiling. His solution? Eavesdrop on everybody.
By assuming the role of white knight, Ted Koppel is really an effective mouthpiece for the Time-Warner machine, a major player in upholding corporate dominance. What do you think of his “point well taken” technique? As if his smilingly elusive subjects have just trumped him with something other than a quacking canard!
The good news about Koppel on Discovery is that we got a close look at the Bush operatives. They are in charge, yes, and they benefit from being presented by a charming, deep voiced newsman, but didn’t you recognize Larry, Moe and Curly right down to the haircuts? These guys are dopes! In morals, self-reflection and speech. It makes me giddy to contemplate because it’s not going to take much thinking power to take them down. Call me gullible, call me idealistic. It’ll take effort, determination and sacrifice, but it won’t take nucular-chemical-rocket science.
Are you thinking that you’ve seen this helmet before? You’ve seen it on Nazis, you’ve seen it on Darth Vader. Space Balls’ Lord Dark Helmet was nothing but Rick Moranis in an oversized Nazi helmet.
In WWII the German helmet became the ubiquitous black hat. It was also regarded as perhaps the best designed military helmet. Maybe there’s a correlation to Hitler’s Volkswagen. The VW design was so utilitarian its lines are seen today in countless cars. The Nazi helmet may be said to have been similarly evolved, but no one has dared duplicate it because of its visual stigma. I guess until now.
Our modern Kevlar helmet follows the same lines as the German M35. While the armies of other nations have emulated the original GI or Soviet models, the US adopted a new helmet with the side skirt and squared top of the prototypical Nazi headgear. I’d like to postulate that this design was not chosen for the intimidating deaths-head symbolism. The Nazi/US helmet offers superior protection at the expense of a soldier’s peripheral view. I think this is purposeful.
Nazi paratroopers and elite shock troops wore a more practical helmet, a decidedly ordinary straight bowl. Their helmet resembles what today’s motorcyclists refer to as a shorty, which offers the minimal protection acceptable by state motorcycle helmet laws. Riders prefer shorties because they can see more.
The majority of military helmets appear to offer the more egalitarian view of the field. It’s hard to picture Yanks getting a lay of the land, excercising their American ingenuity, and maintaining their bearing in anything more encumbering.
The infamous German helmet kept their infantrymen’s eyes forward, unquestioning, in the direction they were ordered.
Who has lost hope that the artist behind Calvin and Hobbes is only on a temporary hiatus? Here’s an album cover Bill Watterson made for his brother’s band. Click on the image to look for updates on his whereabouts.
Doing some wiki research I learned not enough about yellow journalism.
You and I know about yellow journalism, the subject rose through the cracks of our otherwise expurgated American history texts. Yellow Journalism. Jingoist press rousing the rabble to war. Leading example, REMEMBER THE MAIN! rallying us to fight Spain and liberate her colonial possessions, Cuba and the Philippines. Chief villainous yellow barron, William Randolph Hearst.
We all know about Hearst and his newspaper empire. We know of Marion Davies, Xanadu -I mean San Simeon Castle, Fallen heiress Patty Hearst. We believe Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane was about Hearst, and thus we have a vague notion that Hearst suffered a tragic fall. But did he?
What I was hoping to learn about yellow journalism wasn’t there. History records nothing about a reprimand. Hearst may have lost his childhood Rosebud, but not his media empire and blood-soaked gains. In fact the other chief Yellow miscreant was Joseph Pulitzer. His name is lionized because of the newspaper award that bears his name. A Pulitzer represent integrity in reporting. Isn’t that ironic? It’s akin to Alfred Nobel the father of modern explosives being remembered for peace. Nothing unusual really. Rockefeller and Carnegie are remembered for philanthropy.
Unfortunately we’ve got similarly omniscient barrons today who are blazing new onslaughts with their brazen yellow banners. Rupert Murdock and the xenophobes at Disney have taken Hearst and P.T. Barnum several adages further. Leave no sucker alone.
I’d like to propose that Congress at long last address the villainy of Yellow Journalism. Let our lawmakers consider a proclamation, nay condemnation, a posthumous censure of William Hearst for his unpatriotic, bilious fearmongering with the intent to provoke war.
Let’s propose that should anyone BE TRYING it again, let them face fines and civil liability the likes of which will bankrupt their empires. Let State Reservists sue them for lost resources, let class action suits represent survivors and victims.
War profiteers must be made to turn over their ill-gotten billions to the victims of their yellow-baited wars. The military-industrial complex is guilty, but so too is its mouthpiece the MSM.
Israel bombs Lebanese power plant, unleashes oil spill over the coasts of Lebanon and Syria, an environmental disaster greater than the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
What does our media report? John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
The last couple hours before it must adhere to the cease fire, Israel pulls back its troops and litters southern Lebanon with thousands of anti-personnel cluster bombs.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
Israel shifts its military energies to increase raids and assassinations in the Occupied Territories of Palestine.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
In violation of the cease fire, Israel conduct raids against the Hizb’Allah who are trying to help Lebanese recovery.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
The US Iraq death toll climbs faster, for civilians and American soldiers.
John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr. John Mark Karr, John Mark Karr.
A 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.
A 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.
What’s insidious about Country & Western Music? I’ll tell you. I thought I was just incensed at its hypocrisy because it rewards multimillionaire entertainers for talking like hicks. Country singers pretend to be simpleton hillbillies, possessed maybe with down-home smarts, but really they are finely-honed corporate media assets.
That used to just burn me up. The lying tight-jeaned shits, selling America on poverty vices like alcohol, tobacco and firearms while appearing to champion the little man. Honoring the blue-collar joe while keeping him down.
The worse consequence of Country Music has not shown itself until recent times, now that we have conservative hayseeds -or appear to have- good ol’ boys in charge of everything. Pretty abruptly we can see the danger of idolizing dim-witted cowpokes.
Country Music elevates and ascribes a kind of wisdom to dumb in-bred kids who eschew school lernin. To them it’s all about thinking from your gut, hell, thinking while drunk. It’s drinking wisdom, commonsensical wisdom, the wisdom of seeing no further than your own holler, of black and white issues and ass-kicking diplomacy.
That’s the damn insidious result of worshiping a west that never was, and a motto that is not real. That’s the uncomplicated, eternally pubescent world of Country Music.
America is a nation dominated by a low common denominator. It gets lower every day as people grow dumber from pellagra malnutrition and being left behind by our education system. That denominator has an anthem: Country & Western Music.
It’s the same melody, the same guitar riff, the same build, the same harmony. You can hum it the first time you hear it because it’s the same song. And it always says:
I’m proud to be a [dumbshit],
Where at least I know [what do I know?]
Bla bla bla [we’ll shit on whoever we please],
Bla bla bla God Bless the [arian nation of dumbfucks]!
COLORADO SPRINGS- I had the pleasure Tuesday night to attend a membership recruiting meeting for a Minuteman border protection group. About fifty citizens turned up, with a collective IQ of probably about that. Lots of people eager to use their handguns against brown usurpers of American land, jobs and social programs.
Protect our border because the Federal Government won’t do it. Protect it against immigrants, Hepatitis B, Drug-resistant TB, drugs, rape & pillage (seriously) and terrorism. The pitch was big on the threat of terrorism, 9/11 and all.
We knew they were bigots because they didn’t care a lick about the Canadian border. My friend Mark Lewis and I were going to show up in Klan robes, to mix it up and mock their bigoted enthusiasm, but we got there late and copped out.
The meeting was held at a police station of all places. We were going to make a stink about that, but didn’t.
In fact I spent the whole meeting trying to think of pointed questions but didn’t say a peep. And worse, when a protestor stood up and disrupted the presentation I didn’t chime in with words of support. He was pelted with insults and led out of the room with his young daughter. I felt very bad that she would have been hurt by the universal condemnation of her dad’s heroism. I do so hope to run into the two again someday.
By the way, the man was called out of the room by the officer in charge at the Falcon Police Sub-station, Sargent Rob Kelly who had I guess appointed himself bouncer to the public meeting. The protestor’s comments were disruptive but not obstructive. The minuteman spokesman didn’t ask to be assisted, the officer abruptly jumped in.
Mark and I had decided our presence would be most effective after the meeting, providing an opposing voice interview to the TV crew. It worked out, the TV crew was just as repulsed as we at the presence of such trigger-happy white people meeting in a police station community room.
In hindsight, I might have some suggestions for effective communication disruptors, if the goal is to dissuade as many of the attendees as possible from signing up with the Minutemen. If you get a chance to attend one of these meetings, here are a couple tactics you might consider.
Don’t do the KKK robes, they won’t let you in the meeting and the satire will be lost on them. Instead wear a t-shirt with the vintage Klan poster depicting Uncle Sam saying “I want you to join the Klan.” Later in the slideshow the Minutemen have the same image but this time it says “I want you to join the Minutemen.”
The first thing the Minutemen do in their presentation is try to dispel the idea that they appeal to bigots. If you are motivated by racial or cultural hatred, they ask you to please leave. Now. I so wish that I’d chosen that uncomfortably silent moment to stand up and walk out, well almost out, before saying “just kidding!”
The rest of the meeting was just more cheap manipulation, with little room to question the truck-sized fallacies in their fear-mongering. Questions were only solicited well past the emotional appeals. Laughter might have cracked the reverential manner in which the audience absorbed the bombastic presentation.
A strange point: There’s a $50 fee for applicants who require a security check before being accepted. The fee is waived for anyone who has a handgun permit. I wonder if the Minutemen are interested in you if you don’t have a gun. How then would they expect you to shoot Mexicans?
Do you have any questions you’d like to ask the Minutemen?
Google it. “Ernesto.” See what you get: Ernesto the hurricane and Ernesto Che Guevara. This season’s brightest prospect for an action weather spectacular has been given a decidedly un-American name.
To me it’s reminiscent of the 2004 season when the National Weather Service would not conceal its election year partisanship. The 2004 hurricane names alluded to three countries which led the opposition to our planned Iraq invasion. Frances, Ivan, Karl. Not to say anything about last year’s villain, invoking a perennial nemesis, “Katrina.”
It’s coincidence no doubt, but as Hurricane Ernesto was downgraded to a Tropical Depression, Jeb Bush still kept Florida in a state of emergency because as he said, “a hurricane is a hurricane.” Doesn’t it sound like he’s talking about a commie?
The boogeyman looming in this hemisphere is the growing Latin American sovereignty movement led by Castro, Chavez and Morales. It’s the Red Menace at our shores.
What next from our Minutemen at the National Weather Service? Hurricane Fidel? Tropical Depression [Subcomandante] Marcos?
But let me share it with you!
The other afternoon I was crossing a quiet street on the West Side and heard behind me the thump of something dropped to the pavement, followed by a man’s surprised curse. “Shit.” I turned to see a broken twelve-pack carton and beer cans slowly rolling in all directions from their impact point in the dead center of a four-way stop. A man on a bicycle was stopped in his tracks above them.
A man above teenage years, riding a bicycle without a helmet or spandex apparel, has a DUI. That’s what he’s doing without a car.
| An otherwise scruffy man on a shiny kid’s mountain bike has been through the Salvation Army Rehabilitation Program. Working in their center or doing community service in a thrift store is an easy way to score a bicycle. Insiders get first choice, even if the donations are intended for impoverished children. |
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A grown man riding home from the liquor store at three in the afternoon carrying a case of beer has graduated from the recovery program and been assisted with his own apartment from which to make a fresh start. That’s my guess.
So it was with guilty satisfaction that I turned my head from watching as cars backed up at the stop sign to wait while this fellow scrambled after his booty without even a bag into which to gather it.
In an airport the other day I overheard Connie Chung making an announcement. Our national threat level is elevated to Orange apparently, further precautions are necessary, etc, etc, please report any suspicious activity to the TSA.
Was that Connie Chung’s voice? Why? What was wrong with the usual anonymous voice paging John Smith, paging Mister John Smith? Was a celebrity voice necessary? Did her publicist get Connie the gig, was it a court ordered community service, or did the Department of Homeland Security feel a familiar yet authorative voice was a necessary means to ease passenger suspicion that they are the dupes?
So here was Connie Chung doing her part to calm the travelling masses being led to their ignoble fate of unreasonable suspicion. I don’t know why, I thought of Judas Goats in the slaughterhouses. Does Connie have to Fedex a recording to the TSA at each elevation of the Threat Level?
Now I remember seeing Homeland Security TSA infomercials starring a variety of famous comedians, playing on monitors above the first post-911 lines awaiting the beefed-up airport security. So you laugh off, or shrug off while laughing, the indignity of being told to take off your shoes for the inspectors. Most people bring flip-flops to the gym navigate the few steps from the locker room to the showers lest they contract someone else’s athlete’s foot. These same people are being forced to share foot fungus with thousands more public soles than they are accustomed.
As I was about to board the airplane, I was called out for an additional search by a TSA officer. By called out, I do not mean approached, nor addressed. He simply barked “Sir. Step over here.” He may have said please, I do not remember it in his abruptness. Instead I was looking beside me to see to whom he might have been addressing his command. Maybe I had come in after he had begun with a salutation as is customary when strangers initiate communication. Having seen no one beside me, I looked back at the uniformed TSA guy in time for him to shout “STEP OVER HERE!”
I’m of course only about to respond “Who? Me?” but he’s already talking over me shouting his order again. I was left with no option but to offer my hasty compliance.
I’d have to say I was too startled to fuss about his manners, and I was eager to get aboard the plane, but I would otherwise have loved to mess with this little tin-pot jerk.
I had no objection to being frisked again, or to having my bag searched once more for whatever items I may have purchased from Southland Corporation in the terminal after the last security check. But I will not be shouted at. No.
And my thoughts return to the celebrities trying to facilitate our compliance. I’m reminded of Tadeusz Borowski’s memoir of the concentration camps “This way to the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.”
Did the Neocons flat out buy the National Geographic? It was a brilliant coup.
If you were to have asked yourself what periodical has been the most trusted and revered, it would have been the Geographic.
Right behind hobbiest zines like Popular Mechanics I suppose, and Hearst’s PM too falls suspiciously in the conservative think-tank stable.
With so much of the world, and the natural word ablaze, the Geographic has avoided showing the flames, maintaining it doesn’t want to take a political stand. (Besides its photogenic depiction of America’s war machine in Iraq.)
Everything, even nature, is political. These days, to be a-political means to endorse the status quo. That’s decidedly political.
I can see their upcoming take on authoritarian oligopoly: FASCISM: IT’S THE NATURAL ORDER.
Little JonBenet Ramsey’s killer has been found. How many stories like JonBenet are on the back burner, waiting for a lull in the news or for the need for a distraction from the news?
How fortuitous that just as a ceasefire is achieved in Lebanon and journalists can finally go back into the country and document the devastation and atrocity and humanitarian disaster and unexploded cluster bombs, suddenly there’s a story on the TV that overtakes every other practically twenty-four-seven.
And this one has an icky factor beyond credulity. A pre-op transgendered pedophile 2nd grade teacher, whose own father thought him dead “I thought somebody would have killed him by now,” who’s been harboring a JonBenet fetish, AS HAS THE REST OF AMERICA OBVIOUSLY, a macabre fascination with imagining a dolled-up mini-tyke in her death throes.
This guy tells the authorities that he was present at JonBenet’s death so he’s yanked out of a Thai jail were he was awaiting charges on some other perverse impropriety.
Now his motives can be pretty muddy. Maybe he wanted to escape the sordid fate of a Thai jail cell. Or maybe he wants to see himself finally linked to the object of his fixation. He gets to be the protagonist in his fantasy of JonBenet’s last breaths. It’s the old high school ploy, isn’t it? If he couldn’t have JonBenet, he’ll settle for the world thinking he had her.
I’m not saying Karr-creep didn’t kill JonBenet. I’m only suggesting that this story’s ick factor should have kept it from soiling our television viewing until something of the voracity of his claims were shown to be valid. And the ick-factor increases as we realize that the media circus is only bringing this gentleman closer to orgasm.
I’m saying that if you or I phoned the police or the media to say we knew where Jimmy Hoffa’s body was buried, we’d get a bite. But if we added that we kept Hoffa in our freezer between necrophilic bouts, or that we killed him because he did not address us by our proper name Napoleon Bonaparte, the cameras might have given pause to let mental health officials sort things out.
There’s plenty of ugliness out there, very little of it deserves front-page attention and for the most part it doesn’t surface. When Geraldo was standing in front of that basement brick wall in Chicago, the supposed site of Al Capone’s vault, ready to show the world what was behind it, he may not have known what he was going to find. But you can be certain his network had already made sure it wasn’t going to be a crack whore’s alley or heroin addict’s den.
Or a dog and pony sex act, unless there is a call for one.
8.28 UPDATE
Bill Mahr spelled it out last night. JonBenet was a diversion from Lebanon atrocities.
Now Jeffrey Dahmer Karr has been unmasked as but JonBenet’s aspiring rapist. But the public is still left slimed by having attended to his sadistic fantasy. People who read James Patterson or Thomas Harris ask to bathe their imaginations in dark pools of that ilk, the rest of us do not.
Don’t blame the Boulder D.A., blame the MSM pornographers.
Speaking of shit. Is it time to resurrect a prank played on our president when he visited Europe in 2003?
Before Bush paid his visit, clever Belgians and French took little party favor flags in Bush’s image and stuck them into the nearest available sidewalk tributes to his image.
You can do this too, or bring your own, to set around wherever Bush is travelling in his campaign against opposition voices.
It’s not feces-slinging, or calling our president names like war criminal, or idiot, or corrupt autist-maniac who steals from the poor to give to the rich. This is not like addressing Bush as the chimp-in-chief. It’s based solely on his misbehavior and his unseemly and uncaring motives. Even his mother would have to admit it’s a little bit true.
