Notes on photography

These photographs are work from yet another one of those days that I was totally bereft of any creative gumption. As I've mentioned before, on those days I often photograph a color, just to have something to do, kind of like whittling. Today, I chose the ever-popular pink. Go pink.

Rush Limbaugh is a ...

What's the difference between Rush Limbaugh and the Hindenburg? One's a flaming Nazi gasbag, the other is just a dirigible.

I think it's very sad that flaming Nazi gasbags have now officially taken over the Republican party. Whither the moderates? Will they form a third party? Come out of the closet and declare themselves Democrats? Become independents? Or will their families simply put them on a chunk of ice and float them out to meet their lonely fate?

Rush Limbaugh and his wife are divorcing and experts say this could get ugly. I'm confused, are they splitting up or having sex?

I still can't believe no one ever investigated exactly what Limbaugh was doing in the Dominican Republic with a bottle of Viagra. Of course he was whoring around, but with what kind of whores? The D.R. is a mostly black country where sex tourists go to make it with underage girls and boys. So was Limbaugh fucking little black boys? That's what it sounds like. Where's the moral outrage from the Bible belt faction of the party? Or was it just young black girls? The fantasy of every true conservative. To play master and slave with a nubile young thang.

Rush Limbaugh admitted that he is addicted to pain killers and I'm sorry to say, hoagies. Limbaugh blames his addiction on a botched back operation and lesbians.

I have nothing against people using drugs, but dude ratted out his supplier. Dude's a narc. Nazi gasbag racist pedophile narc. And leader of the party of morality, no less.


Update: Oh god, sweet jesus, merciful Rush, I am so sorry, so terribly sorry, I am crawling on my hands and knees, heartbroken if anyone were offended by anything I wrote. I'd be happy to let Rush put on black face and suck my cock while calling me master if only he would forgive me. Please, please, please, forgive me. Please. Forgive. Me. Oh, please. Ho, please. Forgive.

Recommended reading

Haruki Murakami in Israel.

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.

Hat tip to Jim Johnson.

Apotheosis now

There's an interesting interview with Laurence Fishburne in today's Guardian. What struck me about it was his repeated references to his intelligence.

“I'm black, smart and I don't hide my intelligence, I lead with it. I have very strong opinions about shit and I don't have a problem saying what I think. I'm thoughtful. But you know... I can't play dumb. A smart black guy is confronting for most people. But that's on them, not on me... And they didn't hire me because I'm a black guy but because of my intelligence."

Sounds to me like Fishburne had some bad experiences with people questioning his intelligence. That wouldn't surprise me. Wouldn't surprise me at all.

I don't think that anyone who knows the details of my life could accuse me of being a racist these days. I am about as color blind as one could possibly be without actually being blind. For whatever reason, genetic probably, I just don't spend a lot of time thinking about what people look like. Of course I notice superficialities when I first meet someone, but I quickly forget about those things and interact with people based solely on their personalities.

For example, I used to work with a severely deformed guy. His forehead was gigantic and malformed, each eye roved in a different direction, he was very short and had a hunched back. He was very smart and good at his job, albeit something of an asshole. We often clashed professionally and sometimes it degenerated into unprofessional shouting matches. I remember one day I went off on him in front a very nice, very liberal woman. Afterward, she asked me how I could talk to him like that. He was being an asshole I said, didn't you notice? Well, yea, but still. Still what? You know, his face... What's wrong with his face? I asked, genuinely not understanding what she was talking about. I had long ago forgotten what he looked like. And that's someone with truly freakish abnormalities. When it comes to something as superficial as the shade of one's skin, I forget about it almost immediately (culture is something else, but that's a different story).

But I was not always so blind. I come from a terribly racist time and place and as a child I was guilty of horrific racist behavior. I don't remember if I was actually racist in thought--I don't think so--but I was certainly racist in word and deed. Back then, pretty much all the kids in my little town and my little school were horrible little shits. Everyone tried to hurt everyone else almost all of the time. People were attacked for being black, for being blond, for being rich, for being poor, for being fat, for being skinny. Whatever a person was was cause for ridicule. Hurling racist crap at a black kid was just another way to hurt him. The words didn't have any meaning. Not for me, at least. Of course now I realize those words probably had all too much meaning. Although it no doubt hurt rich blond kids at the time, it's unlikely that being ridiculed for being rich and blond caused any lasting damage. But a black kid being ridiculed for being poor and stupid when that was what so many idiots thought to be the natural order of things was no doubt much more harmful. All of the black kids in my class ended up doing a lot of jail time. Some for stupid crimes like armed robbery and rape. I don't think it's crazy to suspect those outcomes were influenced by their sense of self worth which had to have been severely damaged by all the racist crap they suffered. The lives wasted and lost in that manner are uncountable. It's a terrible tragedy.

Laurence Fishburne is about the same age as me. Given his apparent preoccupation with people knowing he is intelligent, I wouldn't be surprised if he suffered those same kinds of taunts as a child. I'm sure that kind of thing makes some people stronger. Not most though. Not most.

I wonder how much of that is still happening out there in the boonies. It's hard for me to tell. I live in a liberal wonderland where everyone is nice. I know it's not like that everywhere, but I also have no doubt that things have improved significantly. Kids these days can't get away with openly hurling racist epithets in school. They would be counseled. They would be punished. And there are so many more role models now than there were back then, Laurence Fishburne being one of them. With so many incredibly smart, successful people on the tv, only a genuine idiot would believe the old racist tripe about intelligence. Hopefully, we've reached the point where the black kid who is called stupid and inferior realizes the obvious; that it is the racist who is stupid and inferior.