Are you experienced?

Have you ever been experienced? Well, I have, but that’s a different story. For now let me tell you about the Patti Smith concert my daughter Jane Bob and I saw the other night.

In many ways, this has been my Patti Smithian year. Early on I discovered her recent work and have been listening to it a lot. Her cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Are you Experienced was one of our theme songs at Burning Man (I know it sounds hokey, but it worked out that way naturally). and now I saw her live in New York on what proved to be a special night. There are worse artists to focus on for a year. You can trust me on that. And I’m not so sure there are better.

The night began in strange and disturbing ways. Jane Bob and I went to a Sushi place in the East Village for a light dinner before the concert. I asked for a large Sapporo and we ordered the rest of the meal when the waitress brought the beer. Jane Bob asked for a diet Pepsi. So you won’t be needing that, the waitress asked. What? She pointed to a beer glass I hadn’t noticed she’d brought. What? She’s not having beer, the waitress asked. I was dumbfounded. She’s fifteen, I said. Apparently, they thought she was my date.

I admit that Jane Bob is a mature 15 and she was dressed in a concert-going outfit -- black and white checkered sleeveless top, tight black jeans and black leather boots -- and her hair was real big, but she’s still 15 and they shouldn’t be serving her alcohol. No doubt she and her little friends will be going out for Sushi some time real soon. And it continued when we left the restaurant and walked down St. Mark’s place. At a glance, you probably wouldn’t realize we are father and daughter. I have straight, faded blond hair and hers is black and curly. Guys on the street were giving me approving looks. One guy looked at her, looked at me and gave a thumbs-up sign. I’d always known that it was an ego boost for pathetic old guys to date young girls for the obvious reasons, but I was shocked by the public approbation. There’s apparently a lot more to the ego thing than just sex.

Anyway, we got to the Beacon Theater and Jane Bob wanted a t-shirt. There were four designs. Which one should I get, she asked. I’d go with the Radio Ethiopia one, I said. It was brown and had Aramaic scribbles along with a cool illustration. Or the Twelve. It was grey with the word “Twelve” and a peace sign. Or the green one. What did you get? I got the green one. I was going to get the Twelve but they were sold out of my size. Why didn’t you get Radio Ethiopia? I didn’t like the color. Why do you like it, she asked. I like the design, I said, plus nothing on it says Patti Smith and it’s an obscure album. Only true Patti Smith fans would recognize it. Ah, she said, you like it for the pretentious snob factor? Busted.

Patti Smith was the only act. She came out and told us it was a special show dedicated to her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith whose birthday it would have been. Most of the songs would have something to do with their life together and she would explain the connections as she went along. I knew this meant that she would be playing a lot of new stuff, which made me happy since I spent several months listening to it obsessively. Earlier in the day I had made a joke at Roy’s blog that I’d be yelling “play the old stuff. Gloria!” I was kidding of course, it was the new stuff that I mostly wanted to hear, but as the night progressed, there were plenty of idiots in the audience yelling for Gloria. Of course I wanted to hear it as well, and I was confident that she would play it during one of the encores, but I thought it was incredibly tacky to holler for it, particularly given the personal, reflective nature of the evening.

The highest of the highlights included a rousing, emotional rendition of Dancing Barefoot and an incredible version of Smells like Teen Spirit. She never did play Gloria, ending the concert (almost anyway) instead with a killer take of Rock and Roll Nigger. There were plenty of other highlights. Gone again, Gimme Shelter and We Three were incredible as well.

I had seen Smith in 1979 and Rock and Roll Nigger transported me back to that night. Back then she was wild and contemptuous of the audience. Her band was very loud and energetic. The feedback was intense, often grating and nearly constant. At one point she put on an electric guitar and played a guitar solo that consisted of one note repeated over and over again. At first it was cool. Then it was funny. Then it was irritating. Then it was excruciating. And still she played it, long past excruciating. That was the spirt. I was glad to get back into it for one song at least. She’s not the only one who is nearly thirty years older than Easter.

The evening ended with Libby’s Song accompanied by her daughter on Ukulele. Her son, who also played guitar (quite well) with the band came out for a group hug and the evening was over. I can’t say that it was a great show technically, but it was a truly great show emotionally and it was Rock and Roll of the highest order. Who gives a flying fuck about technicalities? I’d put it among my top three favorite concerts. On second thought, no, that would knock her 1979 show down to number four. It was a great show though.

And it was a great experience for Jane Bob. As I mentioned, she is a mature fifteen and that is scary when waitresses are going to serve her and guys on the street think she's much older, but she was rapt during much of the show and genuinely did appreciate that she was seeing a special moment in Rock and Roll history. Patti Smith in New York celebrating Fred's birthday. It was a good place to be.

A day in the life

Here is the long-threatened Burning Man photo essay. The attempt is to give a taste of most of the major areas, from dawn to darkest night. Recommended way to view it (if your internet is fast enough): put on some music you like, prepare a drink and/or smoke, click on the first image and sit back and watch the slide show.

Naked white people dancing

This is part of a continuing effort to give you some idea of what it's like at Burning Man. A lot of naked white people dance. Semi-nude white people at least.

These photos, courtesy of Barbie Death Camp.

Think of the children

In one sense, getting a top three Google hit is simply 15 minutes in the 21st century, but put those petty thoughts of fleeting fame out of your mind, I say, and take a moment to weep for the hard working school kid who stays up late at night doing research for the big term paper and comes across poor chuckling as an authority. Do we need any more evidence that computers should be banned from school?

You may think the editors here at chuckling on-line magazine spend our days hitting Google with combinations of words we've used in hope of seeing our name in RGB, but in this case at least, I was just trying to confirm a few facts about Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee before commenting on an article in The New York Observer.

The article goes to great length detailing Huckabee's rhetorical prowess to support its contention that he could emerge as a contender in the Republican primaries, yet fails to mention a single relevant detail about Huckabee's politics. I find that notable because Huckabee is a moral and intellectual cretin who supports torture and denies science, and no doubt embraces most of the rest of the right wing wacko creed.

One would have hoped that after the years of media debacle that enabled George W. Bush to become president, start a stupid war, gut the constitution, and so on, that the media would be at least a bit wary of smooth talking morons and/or nut cases. But the Observer's Mr. Kornacki is having none of that.

Time and again, Mr. Huckabee asserted himself as the strongest orator of the bunch, combining the superficial—but ever vital—charm of Mitt Romney with a remarkable ability, honed during his years in the pulpit, to address bloodless policy topics in a language that is accessible and appealing to the common man.

Yes, charm, a remarkable ability to appeal to the common man. That's what we need. Huckabee's supporters must have to bite their tongues to keep from chanting "four more years!" Meanwhile the media puts on a fresh pair of kneepads.

******

Since I'm on the topic of the Observer, I'll mention that their writing about the arts is often fantastic and share John Heilpern's take on Mel Brooks in this week's edition.

They say he doesn’t care about the little man, but I say Mel Brooks is a little man. There are those who accuse him of not caring about the real theater lovers of this proud city, but I say what’s the upper balcony for? There are even those who call him an opportunistic apostle of unacceptable greed. And to that I say, what’s an apostle?

Great stuff, eh.

Scorched

Chuckling on-line magazine went all out to cover this year's Burning Man festival and has yet to kick much of that fine white dust off our shoes. As a small on-line publication, our resources are limited. Alcohol is far and away the largest item on the P&L statement for each article we publish. Nevertheless, we managed to fly all the way across the country, pick up an entourage and camp in a beautiful desert for a week. We sent a writer, a still photographer and a videographer, as well as a couple Sherpa-like dudes to carry the drugs, light our pipes, fill our cups, call our attention to all the beautiful semi-nude women, find the best parties and generally distract us from our journalistic duties. We were in California much of the time and a California frame-of-mind just about all of the time, so we can say "dude" as long as it's in a sentence that contains some kind of reference to illegal substances.

Anyway, we'll be publishing the results of this project in the coming weeks and months. You can probably expect to see photographs regularly and perhaps a slideshow or two. We'll try to provide a little blog-style commentary to fill the dead spaces. And Chuck has a story to tell, but that could take a few weeks. Don't hold your breath for the video project(s) (unless you want to), but feel free to look forward to them. There is no possible way to understand anything at all about Burning Man without being there, but video is as close as it gets.

Goodbye cruel world

FYI, I'll be away until after labor day. I hear there's a big green guy out in the desert that needs a burnin and I'm going to do my part, whatever that turns out to be. On the off chance you are in the vicinity, I'll be hanging out in or around a large, bullet-riddled metal poppy. Should be some photos, perhaps a little video, on my return. Who knows? Maybe even a campfire story.

EULA-Gee for democrats

The New York Times reports that the Democrats are at totally clueless bunch of losers who pass whatever constitution trashing laws that the Bush administration tells them to pass without even bothering to read the fine print:

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18 — Broad new surveillance powers approved by Congress this month could allow the Bush administration to conduct spy operations that go well beyond wiretapping to include — without court approval — certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans’ business records...

...lawmakers, in a frenetic, end-of-session scramble, passed legislation they may not have fully understood and may have given the administration more surveillance powers than it sought.

Of course it’s not news that the Democrats are pathetically weak and easily fooled, if not outright collaborators playing the same role the Washington Generals play for the Harlem Globetrotters.

No, what’s interesting in this is the modernization their craven ineptitude. The Democrats have entered the 21st century! They are no longer ink stained wretches wielding rubber stamps. Now they simply click the OK button on the computer screen to do what the Republicans tell them, just like clicking Yes to the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) when installing software. Who the fuck has time to read that shit? Not the Democrats. And so what if they did? They'd click the fucking button anyway.

Murder inc.

I took an unexpected trip back to the heartland last weekend and found it very disturbing. Small town America, that mythical oasis of Christian family values, is becoming a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Most people have nice houses, multiple vehicles, and enough toys and gadgets to fill up their three car garage and 1500 square foot basement. Yet despite all their wealth, they are a deeply unhappy folk most of whom are on a never ending drug and alcohol binge. The great majority of young people’s marriages are ugly and the children suffer horribly. The elders, those who in idealistic times could be counted on to stand as moral paragons and provide wisdom are so tragically ill-informed as to render themselves functionally stupid.

To adequately describe the breadth of the tragedy is well beyond the limitations of chuckling on-line magazine, so for today’s installment we will limit ourselves to the question of how these elders have become so mind-numbingly ill-informed. I will offer these limited observations based on an extensive interview I conducted with the type of man typically referred to as a conservatard. He watches Fox News and listens to Rush Limbaugh and is in broad general agreement with whatever nonsense they peddle on any given day. Yet otherwise he is not a stereotype. In youth he studied economics and foreign affairs at a well-regarded liberal arts college. He is an active member of the Episcopal church and is on the gay-inclusive side of the schism. He is active in the local community, participating in many charitable and community organizations, including the local Republican party. And he is an excellent family man in just about every way you could possibly judge that kind of thing. So by almost any measure, this man--we’ll call him Grampa Bob for the sake of internet anonymity--is a very intelligent human being and a moral exemplar in so many areas of his life. Yet he supports the Bush administration’s insane murder spree abroad and destruction of the rule-of-law at home. Mass murder, torture, war crimes, horrible police state abuses, trashing of the constitution, and all other Bush fuck-ups ad nauseam--he excuses them all with the arguments of Fox News and hate radio. The Sermon on the mount rules Sunday morning. The rest of the week is more about Final Solutions. In other words, he is a moral monster in thought, if not in deed.

Normally we stay away from talking politics, but this time I debated him on a broad range of issues regarding the Bush administration's failures, particularly the Iraq war. For whatever reason (most likely an innovative combination of drugs and alcohol), I was at the top of my game rhetorically. I was unemotional, took nothing personally, was very eloquent, and my poor brain was able to recall and marshal an impressive array of facts to bolster my arguments without becoming the least bit angry or disrespectful.

The first, and greatest hurdle in these conversations is about factual matters. When you get into a discussion with a conservatard, it quickly degenerates into arguing about facts. They will cite things that are factually inaccurate to support their positions and challenge you on the accuracy of the facts that support yours. This in itself is normal, but it quickly becomes apparent that their “facts” rarely have any relation to reality. And these disagreements pile up fast and furious, turning an intellectual discussion into a schoolyard game of “is so!”--“is not!.”

This time I handled it by pointing out that I had neither the time nor the inclination to do the necessary research to prove him wrong on every single point (and granted, I’m sure I was wrong on a few). but that he could pick one thing that we disagreed on and that he was 100 percent was factually accurate and I would definitively prove that it was bullshit. The point of this would be to show how unreliable, to put it kindly, his information sources are and to get him to question his conclusions by proving that the "fact" he was most sure about was pure bullshit. So as the conversation progressed and he disputed indisputable fact after indisputable fact, I’d say “is that the one you want to choose? Is this it?” His pick changed quite a few times, but in the end he chose one, and then he was so sure I was wrong about something else that I gave him two for the price of one.

His first choice was interesting because it was currently being cited by the right wing noise machine and was as easy to disprove as an assertion that Robert E. Lee defeated Napoleon at the battle of Gettysburg and then marched on to take Chicago. He said that we had no choice to invade Iraq because Sadaam had thrown out Hans Blix and the U.N. arms inspectors. Well, no, the U.N. told them to leave after George W. Bush gave them two days to get out or face the threat of being bombed. I remembered this but it took all of five seconds to confirm it on Google.

That an intelligent, otherwise moral, and well-educated man can be so wrong about the recent historical record is a sign of something much deeper than one individual’s intellectual decline. I’m not prepared to go into it here but plan on writing about the phenomena in the near future. If you want to get a jump on it, I recommend Battle for the Mind: A Physiology of Conversion and Brain-Washing by William Sargant. It’s an old book, but it explains the “9/11 changed everything” mentality like nothing else I’ve come across.

His second choice was much more interesting. I made the point that if George W. Bush had simply accepted the Taliban’s offer to turn Bin Laden over to a third country for trial, that Al Qaeda would be little more than a bad memory. Grandpa Bob nearly burst a blood vessel when I said that. He was absolutely, positively, 100 percent sure that the Taliban never made such an offer. Why? Several reasons: Bush would have to be a total idiot to turn it down and even if Bush really was that stupid, the Democrats and liberal media would never let him hear the end of it.

Well, yes, if the Democrats were a serious opposition party and the major media were not corporate tools of the government, then of course, there would have been a very serious debate and negotiations about getting Bin Laden into an orange jumpsuit in the Hague without murdering 100’s of thousands of people, squandering 100’s of billions of dollars, and endangering our national security and financial future for the sake of an insane murder spree. But the sad fact is that sensible options were not to be considered. It was all about murder. Buildings were destroyed. People were killed. Therefore, we must destroy more buildings and kill more people. Justice has nothing to do with it.

Did destroying the factual basis of his arguments change his position? Of course not. The next morning I emailed him the evidence. He was very angry when last we met. His last words were that no facts could possibly change his opinions. What can you say to that? No facts can change their positions.

But as sad as that is, their opinions can easily be changed. Not by facts or reality. But a Fox News meme or a word from Rush Limbaugh? The memory keeps the memory hole well fed.

Unibomber babies

Today’s New York Times argues that we shouldn’t criticize President Bush because it hurts the feelings of his poor old papa. I can’t wait to see them drag out the putrefying corpse of Barbara Bush to try and stem Junior’s bleeding when the transparent gambit to get sympathy through doddering old dad fails to win over the general public.

The Democrats, however, fearing they might lose the Bush extended family vote and be accused of partisanship by David Broder, apologized profusely for criticizing the president, released a public statement saying that George Jr. is a very good boy, and passed legislation allowing the federal government to wiretap anyone who criticizes Republicans who have parents.

Although the Democrats can always be counted on to surrender without a fight, I doubt that the argument will fly with normal people. Being the parent of George W. Bush is like having a son who commits a heinous murder or molests a child. We can sympathize with the parents. We can even understand that they may continue to love their son and support him emotionally. But we would have no sympathy whatsoever for parents who believe that their murdering, child molesting son should be allowed to remain free to continue murdering and child molesting--and without criticism at that--which is pretty much the Bush family position as echoed so obligingly by the New York Times.

The Bush family dynasty is sick and so is everything it represents. Reasonable people agree that a just society would shackle them in the public square and encourage the townsfolk to drop by and throw rotten tomatoes. But since that’s out of the question, we should impeach the corrupt cretin and turn the lot of his administration over to the Hague for war crimes trials.

Not going to happen though, I know. Anonymous sources whisper that the Democrats are secretly considering legislation to extend Bush’s term by another four years, fearing they'll be accused of being weak on terror if they don't.

Sunday follies

The Washington Post reports that the Doormatocrats dropped their pants and laid down on the porch for Bush again.

The 227 to 183 House vote capped a high-pressure campaign by the White House to change the nation's wiretap law, in which the administration capitalized on Democrats' fears of being branded weak on terrorism.“

Yea, wouldn’t want to be branded as weak for standing up for freedom against the biggest loser in American history. Strength is capitulation. The Doormatocrats have that branded on their backs as a footnote to their motto”Tread on Me.“

In other news we learn that Denis Kucinich was booed at the Daily Kos convention for suggesting that there isn’t that much difference between the Democrats and Republicans. Wherever would he get that idea? Could it have something to do with the fact that the Doormatocrats have laid down for Bush on every single issue? Naw. It took great strength to support Bush in all his failures. Kucinich is craaaazy. Wiretap the bastard!

The New York Times Magazine chips in with one of the more mysterious odes to power we’ve seen in awhile. They argue that Hitler invented vacations and the French like to take them, so Americans should shut up and work harder. Americans, you see, don’t need vacations because they have it all just down the block:

Grasping the truth about why more Americans are taking holidays from their vacations is as easy as stepping outside your workplace (the lushest of which tempt employees to stay inside by offering lap pools, massage rooms and the like) and seeing that the recuperative promises of the old-style extended getaway — the cleansing, amusing, soothing, stamina-raising therapeutic interludes that Eleanor Roosevelt once touted as a way for Americans “to build up health and resistance” — are redeemable everywhere, in every form and so close by that it’s a wonder thousand-mile drives in gear-packed station wagons still take place at all.

Yea all you whiners, just go across the street to the spa, get a massage and get back to work. Chop chop.

It also includs this gem:

...or, perhaps, a complicated bitterness over the fact that surpassing France’s economy will never help us surpass its egotisms, so why bother aping the gourmet loafing that even most Frenchmen must sense has made them poorer?

Are the French poorer? Statistics say otherwise. Do they sense they are poorer? Perhaps, but in my experience with the French, which is not insubstantial, they do not consider themselves poorer than Americans. They ridicule us for our poverty. They work a hell of a lot less and have considerably more.

Michael Moore made the interesting point in Sicko that our powers that be attack the French so relentlessly so that we Americans don’t ask ourselves why we can’t have the same quality of life as the French. The answer is that we choose to have more billionaires. Nyah nyah. We’ve got more billionaires! And our billionaires' health care rocks.

On a similar note, I walked through the living room this morning and caught a few minutes of the Republican presidential debate. One of the loonies says that the federal government does not guarantee cradle to the grave health care and then states categorically that government-run health care has been proven not to work. The crowd, which is dumb as rocks, erupts with raucous applause. Of course he was laughably wrong about effectiveness. The opposite is true. Government sponsored health care works best. It’s cheaper, more efficient, and more effective for far more people. In fact, it is our system of private health insurance that has been proven not to work. Unless of course you are a private health care professional pocketing lots of cash for keeping people sick, ruining them financial, and maybe even hastening their deaths. It also works quite well for politicians pocketing their bribes, I mean campaign contributions, to keep the profits flowing.

He was right though that the federal government does not guarantee health care for all citizens. It could though. Hey Doormatocrats, how bout some government health care?

Hundreds of Democratic bodies simultaneously thud on the porch. Republicans and lobbyists wipe their feet. Hillary stuffs some bills down her bra. The press reports admiringly on her neckline. France sucks.

Elsewhere, the nation’s infrastructure is falling apart. But that’s okay according to the NYT:

Bridges, and their major parts, are graded on a scale of 0 to 9, with 0 requiring a shutdown. If a critical part gets a grade of 4 or lower, the bridge will be judged deficient. The I35W bridge was rated a 4. Dennis W. Heckman, the state bridge engineer in Missouri, offered an example in an interview. “If the paint has peeled off and you get not just a light rust, but rust where you have less steel than originally,” then a bridge is judged structurally deficient, he said. Such a condition represents significant damage, though it is far short of what it would take to make a bridge collapse.

Far short of what it would take to make a bridge collapse? Tell that to the suckers in Minnesota. And not to worry. There are only 70.000 or so similarly structurally deficient bridges in county. I would tell you the percentage of structurally deficient bridges in France, but that information is classified by the office of the Vice President.

And finally, a prominent Democratic strategist writes an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that the Democrats should stick their naked asses in the air and like totally glue their chests to the porch on the question of high crimes and misdemeanors.

In one of the more bizarre arguments we’ve seen since, oh, earlier this morning, he concedes that the Bush administration is a gang of criminals:

...the bill of indictment goes far beyond Bush's grave lies about Iraq. There's also the arrest and detention without trial of U.S. citizens, the violation of international treaties such as the Geneva Conventions at the prisons at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the "blatant violation" of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment "by secretly authorizing secret warrantless spying on thousands of American citizens by the National Security Agency."

...Bush and Cheney -- and conservatism in general -- have wrecked our civic institutions and darkened our civic impulses. Nothing is beyond politicization: not the Justice Department; not the worst terrorist attacks on our soil; not the scientists and nonpartisan experts who've been silenced or demoted because they didn't toe the right line; for goodness sake, not the National Park Service, which, in a sop to biblical literalists, was forced to offer pamphlets for sale at the Grand Canyon gift shop putting forth the "different view" that the great chasm was cut 4,500 years ago by Noah's flood, not 6 million years ago, as is the case here on Earth.

He then goes on to argue that the political case is another question entirely. Actually holding the Bushies accountable for their crimes would harm the Democrats’ chances in the next elections you see. Amusingly, he does a quick about face and makes the opposite argument, that when everything is subordinate to politics, civic institutions and impulses suffer. What should the Democrats do about it. Nothing. Subordinate everything to politics.

Yep, when everything is subordinate to politics, we suffer. So the Democrats need to subordinate everything to politics so they can win.

What the fuck?

Yea, what the fuck indeed.

Why we are losing - Part 7056

Below is another example of they type of right wing email campaign that targets the least sophisticated among us. I get them from a person who lives in a small town and belongs to the Moose Lodge. I don’t think people realize the extent to which this kind of virulent propaganda is disseminated among what we call the working classes. It is very effective. Just look:

This a REAL EYE OPENER!!

Hope these 14 reasons are forwarded over and over again
until they are read by the majority of Americans. Then they
will have something to yell at their U.S. Congress
members.

14 Reasons to Deport Illegal Aliens...

1. $11 Billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal
aliens each year. http://tinyurl.com/zob77

2. $2.2 Billion dollars a year is spent on food assistance
programs such as food stamps, WIC, and free school lunches
for illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

3. $2.5 Billion dollars a year is spent on Medicaid for
illegal aliens.
http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/fiscalexec.html

4. $12 Billion dollars a year is spent on primary and
secondary school education for children here illegally and
they cannot speak a word of English!
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

5. $17 Billion dollars a year is spent for education for the
American-born children of illegal aliens, known as anchor
babies.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

6. $3 Million Dollars a DAY is spent to incarcerate illegal
aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

7. 30% percent of all Federal Prison inmates are illegal
aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

8. $90 Billion Dollars a year is spent on illegal aliens for
Welfare & social services by the American taxpayers.
http://premium.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0610/29/ldt.01.html

9. $200 Billion Dollars a year in suppressed American
wages are caused by the illegal aliens.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0604/01/ldt.01.html

10. The illegal aliens in the United States have a crime
rate that's two and a half times that of white non-illegal
aliens. In particular, their children, are going to make a
huge additional crime problem in the United States .
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0606/12/ldt.01.html

11. During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION
illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as
many as 19,500 illegal aliens from ist Countries. Millions
of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroine and , crossed
into
the U. S. from the Southern border. Homeland Security
Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht

12. The National Policy Institute, "estimated that the total
cost of mass deportation would be between $206 and $230
billion or an average cost of between $41 and $46 billion
annually over a five year period."
http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/pdf/deportation.pdf

13. In 2006 illegal aliens sent home $45 BILLION in
remittances back to their countries of origin.
http://www.rense.com/general75/niht.htm

14. "The Dark Side of Illegal Immigration: Nearly One
Million Sex Crimes Committed by Illegal Immigrants In The
United States ". http://www.drdsk.com/articleshtml

So using the LOWEST estimates, the annual cost OF ILLEGAL
ALIENS is $338.3 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR! So if deporting
them costs between $206 and $230 BILLION DOLLARS, Hell get
rid of em', We'll be ahead after the 1st year!!!
Please pass this on. Americans need to wake up!

Please excuse the long quotation. I think it’s necessary to see the whole thing in order to appreciate its corrupting power.

Of course it’s not difficult for people like you or me to pick this kind of thing apart. The blatant logical fallacy of the close--the idea that it is even possible to deport all illegal aliens in a year--is ridiculous. But the 14 reasons that come before add up to more than just money. They provide a thin veneer of scholarship, of pseudo logic and statistics. They don't have to stand up to close examination to bolster the point.

What is the point, you ask. Actually following the links provides some answers.

For example, the National Policy Institute, which estimates the total cost of mass deportation, welcomes visitors to its web page with this:

WHO SPEAKS FOR US?

White Americans have been led to believe that "diversity" and "multiculturalism" are sacred. We're conditioned to be shy when it comes to standing up for our own beliefs. But doesn't every race, ethnic subculture, and special interest—from left-handers to lesbians—have all sorts of organizations working for them?

Isn't it about time someone spoke for us?

And the Dark Side of illegal immigration referenced in reason #14?

They are highly mobile, work in low skilled jobs with their hands, use drugs and alcohol, are generally promiscuous, have little family stability, and choose victims who are easy to attack.

Yes, of course, and they are unkempt as well. Dark side indeed.

But it could be much worse in the future. This link from rense.com that supports reason #13 ponders fates much, much worse than remittances.

If all 535 candidates for Congress were Muslims, and became U.S. senators and House members-- they would dismantle our Constitution in a heartbeat and install Sharia Law. How stupid are we as a nation? How naïve? How bankrupt in our apathy toward Islam and its prime directive?

Yes, that couldn’t be more true. If we elect radical Jihadists to every position in American government, the future will be dark indeed. And egads! That’s not the only danger! Ponder Rod Serling!

Although that's a loony link of the ages, many of the others are transcripts of Lou Dobbs shows or relatively respectable right wing sites. At least one clearly contradicts the point it is supposed to make.

But who reads that deeply anyway? Not the people who get these emails. They don’t click on many links and don’t spend a lot of time pondering them if they do. They see a bunch of statistics proving that they are being ripped off and raped by the dark folk. What's to ponder, ese?

The thing that makes this such a powerful example of why we are losing is that we have no equivalent strategy. Why don’t progressives target these same people with persuasive arguments for progressive positions? As is often noted, it is people living in small towns, the Moose’s, the Elks, the Kiwanis Clubbers, etc. who lose the most from Republican policies, yet they continue to vote for Republicans. We sip our wine and wonder how they can be so stupid out in Hicksville. Propaganda campaigns like the above example provide strong clues.

If the tide is ever going to really turn in this country, organizations like Move On need to put together mass emails targeting those same people, only instead of “14 Reasons to Fear the Darkies,” they’ll need titles like “12 Reasons why your jobs are being shipped to China” or “10 Reasons why your Health Care Sucks” or “15 Reasons why your kids are dying for Haliburton.” As is, only one side is fighting for the hearts and minds of common folk. Is it any wonder that they are winning by such a large margin?

Campfire stories

The French writer Michel Houllenbecq writes that at age 47 the only time he doesn’t feel depressed is when his dick is inside a woman. I don’t know when 47 officially became the new 50 but I know how he feels. I too pretty much constantly feel that hollow, empty feeling in my chest. Is that depression or just what it feels like to be heartless? I’ve never been sure.

As I mentioned in a recent article, I went on a trip to the mountains to complete work on a literary project. I’m writing an eight volume critical examination of the Studio Ghibli pictures but have had a difficult time getting started. I don’t think I told you that I would have to take my two sons along. Unfortunately, they proved to be very distracting, especially Jim Bob. For those of you who don’t know, I have three children, two boys and a girl. For the purpose of the internets I refer to them as Jim, Jane and John Bob, or the Bobs for short.

Although the distractions kept me from getting much writing done, I did make significant progress. I managed to solve the riddle of No Face, which made me feel better for a minute or two. I may be 47 but I’m not as dead yet as Houllenbecq. When I had my little insight about No Face, I felt as good as when I have my dick in a woman. Well, maybe not that good, but I didn’t feel bad for a few minutes. No hollowness. No absence in my chest. It was nice to lose that feeling and replace it with something substantive.

In case you haven’t seen Spirited Away, the No Face character first appears as an enigmatic spirit, then he’s standing in the rain, so the girl, Sin, invites him into the bathhouse. No Face becomes angry when Sin doesn’t accept his gifts. He becomes ravenous and eats everything in sight, even some other spirits, all the while dispensing copious amounts of gold to the toadies who run the bathhouse. Eventually Sin gets him to chuck up everything he ate, then tricks him out of the bathhouse and he becomes normal again. I understand him now, she explains. The bathhouse makes him crazy.

I could never figure out the meaning of all that. Finally, in the mountains, I realized that No Face was a metaphor for the failing artist. He comes to the city, tries to give away his work, but nobody he respects will take it, so he gets angry and over-indulges, becomes a ravenous consumer on a monumental binge. The only solution is to get out of the city. The city makes us crazy. Miyazaki uses No Face to make a powerful statement about the nature of art.

I thought getting out of the city would have the same effect on me, but the problems with Jim Bob drove me to distraction. He complained about everything - the packing, the drive, the stopping, the shopping, setting up the camp, the bugs, the food, the heat of the hikes, the cold of the swims, the smell of the toilets, the music of the campers next to us. It was non stop. He made me crazy. Or more accurately, kept me crazy.

John Bob was fine though. He is the good boy, never complains about anything. I often wonder how two brothers born so close together could be so different. The obvious explanation is that we wanted John Bob. Jim Bob was just an accident. Of course we tried to show him all the same love and affection as we do the good kids. But it seems that they can sense when they are not wanted. Even in the womb where they begin plotting the ways in which they will torture you. I wished, and not for the first time, that we would have aborted him. It was strange that we didn’t. We aren’t one of those anti-abortion wacko couples. We’ve certainly destroyed more than our fair share of fetuses. We don’t actually enjoy having abortions, but I have to admit that I do somehow find them fulfilling. I suspect that the Aztecs must have felt much the same way, albeit in their much more primitive fashion, when they sacrificed warriors to their Gods. Of course I’m against human sacrifice, or any kind of religion, but as a metaphor I can see it. We sacrifice these little gobs of goo, these squishy proofs of evolution, to the great God of secular humanism and we are repaid with free time and significantly more discretionary income. But unlike the Aztecs we are not superstitious. We do not believe that our acts of not-yet-human sacrifice will ensure that the sun comes up in the morning. Quite the contrary, we realize that the fact we sacrifice the little buggers and the sun still comes up in the morning is more proof that there are no gods. More proof that if we are to find heaven it will have to be here on earth. And as Houllenbecq teaches, heaven is not so hard to find. Dick in woman, just one example. Breakthroughs on the fourteen volume Studio Ghibli project, yet one more.

But now I’m here in the mountains sitting under a waterfall in a cold mountain stream on a hot summer day, happy and at peace. Poor Houllenbecq should get out more in nature. He’d find that there are more spirit lifting situations than dick in woman.

We headed straight for this swimming hole after checking into the campground and setting up the tents. The swimming hole is just a short drive down a winding mountain road and then a treacherous hike down the side of a cliff. I immediately noticed a big difference since last time we were here. The swimming hole is full of Mexicans. They have taken over the lower part of the valley. Their grills are smoking. Corridos are blasting from cheap boom boxes. Kids are screaming. Young girls are primping in their tight outfits. Chubby moms are stirring big pots of bubbling beans and swatting flies. Old guys drink beer and shoot the shit. Young tattooed guys are drinking lots of beer. Everyone just tosses their trash on the ground and leaves it where it lays. These are not the educated middle class Mexicans you find in the restaurants. These are the field hands.

The whites, who used to hang out in the lower valley where the Mexicans now are have migrated up to the top of the waterfall where they only have to look down on the Mexicans, not sit next to them. The whites drink beer but they do not cook out. Except for a few old guys like myself with kids, the family aspect isn’t there. They are just white kids in their late teens and ealry twenties drinking beer and getting stoned. One guy even has a gas mask bong. Haven’t seen one of those in action for a long time. These kids have a lot in common with their Mexican counterparts below. They too are working class, though their jobs are in the shade. They too drink lots of beer, though they pick up their trash. They too cover their bodies in tattoos, though with the Mexicans it’s only the guys. They too smoke cigarettes and listen to crappy music on a boom box, ruining the glorious silence of the mountain stream. It just makes me more depressed.

Many of the white guys look like marines, like little fascists, future brown shirts, I can’t help thinking. They have huge muscles painted with violent cartoons, close crpopped hair, and assertive jaws. They obviously spend a lot of time in the weight room. Why do these guys want flaming ghouls, dripping blood, fire and dragons, long knives and other violent imagery tattooed on their bodies? Aside from demonstrating an acute sickness of the soul, their body art is so unoriginal. What is it in our culture that makes kids want to look like that? Professional wrestling? Violent video games? Comic books? Scenes from Iraq? Are they taking steroids? Yes, no question about it, they are.

Anyway, I’m not here as a social critic. At this point all I care about is getting under the waterfall and that’s my immediate plan. But Jim Bob jumps in the water, swims out to the deep part of the pool, and sinks. Somewhat reluctantly, I go pull him out. He cries, and cries, and won’t stop crying. John Bob hops in and immediately makes friends with some Mexican kids. They splash around and have a good time. I just want to get my head under the waterfall but Jim Bob won’t shut up. He makes me feel so fucking depressed. Eventually, I just say fuck him and swim out to be in paradise with my waterfall and it feels good. But I’m unable to lose myself totally in the moment for more than a few seconds. I keep half an eye on Jim Bob. He’s still crying. I duck my head under the waterfall and keep it there as long as I can. Then I move my body back and forth under it, getting a deep, healing massage. Then I look up and John Bob is gone from the rock. I catch a glimpse of him sinking again in the deep end and have to go pull him out again. The next time, I tell him, I’ll let you drown. More crying. It just doesn’t stop. I take a few pictures, but the light is all wrong and my heart isn’t in it.

Meanwhile, one of the white chicks has gotten into a fight with her boyfriend. After a lot of drama she comes down and takes a swim in the pool. After floating and kicking around for awhile in the water she starts flirting with one of the Mexican guys. Her boyfriend up top is looking very uncomfortable. She starts touching the Mexican. The boyfriend and a couple of his friend start moving in that direction. I feel that familiar sense of despair hit me like a punch in the gut.

Time to go, boys, I say and we pack up and start moving up the trail. It looked like the situation could turn ugly and I didn’t want to have any part of it. And I was probably right about that. Two days later I heard that a Mexican laborer had been murdered near that very same swimming hole. It was a sensational story. He had been decapitated and after a week they had still not found his head. Some prominent local kids were suspected, but it sounded like the investigation wasn’t getting going to get very far. We went back to that swimming hole late in the week and already there were stories. All the locals were packing up as sunset approached. They told us that the ghost of the Mexican kid was haunting the creek at night, looking for his head. You could be sure he wouldn’t rest until they found it and justice was done. That would be the story anyway. Small towns are like that.



The next day was cold and rainy. You never know from one hour to the next what the weather will do in those mountains. So instead of hiking and swimming, I took the boys for a scenic drive and looked for things to photograph. Jim Bob, of course, was fidgety, and he complained constantly, and he cried a lot. We stopped at a diner for lunch. I ate an omelette and fell into gut-wrenching despair. Since it was too cold to get under a waterfall, no woman was available to put my dick in, and I had hit the wall on the Studio Ghibli project, I went back to alcohol to numb the pain. I had a beer with the omelette, then another. We stopped by the liquor store and I rewarded myself with a bottle of 10-year-old Laphroaig. I was hoping for the quarter cask, but what can you expect when you are out in the hills? Then I went to the market, bought some beanie weenies and a six pack that I iced down in the cooler.

By then it was late afternoon and the rain had broken by the time we got back to the campsite. I built a fire and laid into the scotch while the two Bobs went down to play by the stream. John Bob is very good at catching animals. In practically no time he had caught a bull frog, two toads, a couple snails, and a translucent orange lizard. He built a little zoo out of some cardboard he found in the trunk and they contented themselves with poking the animals and watching them move. I put on a pot of beans to cook and went off for a little walk in the woods. Again I felt the overwhelming despair recede as I enjoyed the quiet and solitude. Everything smelled so fresh after the rain and the trickling water in the stream was very relaxing. I took a few long swigs from my flask and despite the pleasant chill in the air felt myself overflow with warmth for the forest and all living things, especially the kids. I thought about how I had been in such a foul mood lately and criticized them constantly, especially Jim Bob. I realized that I need to apologize, to make amends, and to use the rest of the trip to bond with them. When I got back to the camp John Bob was crying. Jim Bob had taken his animals and thrown them into the pot of beans. He’s tortured and dismembered them first. He had even gouged the eyes out of the lizard. But I was in a good mood so I restrained myself from yelling at Jim Bob and comforted John Bob. There there, I said, you can catch more animals. Then I noticed that he had poured my bottle of scotch into the pot and a couple of the beers as well. My anger was so instant and overwhelming that I felt dizzy and darting lights seemed to play in my field of vision. I picked up the pot of boiling reptiles and started to throw it at Jim Bob but caught myself before I scalded the boy. Damn you to hell boy I screamed and threw the concoction in the fire instead. The whiskey made the flames shoot high up in the night and the reptiles crackled and smoked. How could you do something like that? I wanted to hit him, really hit him, but again I restrained myself. My wife and I have strong moral values and have never hit the children. I wasn’t going to condemn my soul over a bottle of 10-year-old scotch. Still, the night was ruined. We cooked the remaining hot dogs on sticks and I finished off the little beer that was left. It started raining again and we all went to bed mad.

The cold and the rain lasted another day. I awoke in a state of excruciating despair and we drove down the mountain to explore one of the tourist villages. The last time we were there two years ago the town had been booming. New restaurants, art galleries and fancy boutiques had recently opened all along the main drag. Now they were mostly shuttered. Everywhere we went the locals treated us like dirt. It reminded me of going to a concert where the once popular band failed to sell many tickets and they take their frustration out on the audience that actually did come through for them. I don’t deny that they’ve got a lot to be pissed off about. Service jobs are all there are around here, they are hard to come by and they don’t pay squat. Nobody makes things anymore. A few people commute fifty miles to work in factories in the nearest small city, but most of those factories have closed and shipped their jobs overseas and the ones that remain cut wages and benefits. With the price of gas so high and the cost of daycare, it’s hardly worth the effort. Serving the rich fucks from the city is about all they’ve got left and not as many of us are visiting as the chamber of commerce promised. It only makes sense that they would feel resentment. They see the rich fucks in their mansions and SUV’s casually spending money as if it’s just so many leaves of grass and they ask themselves exactly what did those people do that made them so much better? Everything in the culture tells them that they get what the deserve. Did they deserve being born in a small town to working class parents? Did they deserve having their decent jobs shipped off to China so that the rich could get richer? Do they deserve making $6 an hour while the fucks they grovel for make 200 time that? Are they really that worthless? They ask themselves. At least subconsiouslly. Well yes, society tells them. They are that worthless. Everyone is not special. Some people just don’t have what it takes. The marketplace tells them what they are worth just as the slave auctions in days of yore pegged the true value of the slaves of yore. Or is it nothing a little job training won’t fix? Job training for jobs that don’t exist? Did they deserve being born to parents of lesser means? Did they deserve the lame ass education they got? That’s a question they ask themselves but they fail to ask the relevant questions on the flip side? Do the rich fucks deserve what they’ve got? Do their children and grand children who didn’t do squat for their money? Do they deserve that compounded interest on the principal in their trust fund? Do they deserve that stock price windfall they got while sitting on their asses in that fine Italian leather? Do they deserve those legacy spots in the finest schools? Just what exactly did these people do to deserve their lives besides being born lucky? Not fucking much, that’s what. So what can the local losers do? Get out and get an education? Yea, theoretically and a few will, but the rest can only take it out on outsiders like myself. I doubt if that rudeness makes them happy, not even for a moment. It’s not like having the proverbial dick in the proverbial woman, or vice versa. Deepening the despair in others is not the answer.

I understand where they're coming from, but still, the hostility drags me down to the lowest levels of despair. That plus Jim Bob will not stop whining. Those things and I fill up the tank and it costs me fifty fucking dollars, over three bucks a gallon, and I have an economy car. So I head back up into the hills. I don’t know where I’m going. I take this turn, then that turn, then another turn. Whatever looks interesting. Then I see a sign that says Arboretum five miles. I like arboretums. I take the turn. But what I see on that road makes me sick. This little road smack in the middle of such economic devastation is lined with mansions. And they are ostentatious fucking mansions. Most of them are built like castles. They even have rook-like towers, apparently designed and built by the same architect. Makes me want to puke. It does.

The last bit before the arboretum turns out to be very steep and all the switch backs make Jim Bob sick and he pukes all over the back seat. That’s exactly what I need at that point. But finally we arrive and it’s a beautiful place, situated in a circular valley surrounded by enigmatic mountains. My spirits lift at the prospect of some peace and quiet in such incredible natural beauty. There is a parking lot with a little information center and maps for visitors. No one is there, but I pick up a map and plot where we want to go.

The walk through the woods looks nice, but it’s a little confusing. I’m not sure which trail is the right one. I take the wider trail and come to a house. An old woman is gardening near the edge of the woods. Is this the forest trail, I ask. No, you’re trespassing. Sorry, I say, we’re just looking for the forest trail. It’s back that way, she says nastily. Get off of my property or I’ll call the police.

Right, I say. Sorry, we were just visiting the arboretum. There should be a sign. But then I look around. I see her house, which is practically a mansion. I look at her. She’s all got up in the latest gardening fashion -- the khaki, the rubber boots, the cotton gloves, the gleaming sharp shears. I can almost smell the dirt under her fingernails. It’s probably imported from France. I can’t believe this rich bitch is being so nasty. What the fuck is her problem? I know what her problem is. A sense of entitlement all out of proportion to her value as a human being. The goddamned filthy rich. We go back to the car and start driving back to the camp. I’m so angry that I totally forget about the arboretum and I drive aimlessly among the mansions.. Then a plan begins to form. I’m going back at night and show the old bitch what’s what. I wait till after midnight then put the sleeping kids and the car and drive back there. I do donuts around the old bitch’s garden. I see her fucking flowers spitting up to the sky in the rearview and I feel good. Much better than having my dick in a woman, which isn’t anywhere near as rare, and even better than losing track of my mind under a cold mountain waterfall. But she comes screaming out of the house in a Victorian grandma-style white night gown, her grey hair disheveled and I feel the familiar drill in the gut.

But enough is enough. The old hag’s going to call the police and I need to get off the mountain before the cops block the way. I haul ass down the steep part and almost shit my pants when I see the old woman in the middle of the road shaking her tiny fist at me. I swerve and narrowly avoid her, then there she is again at the next switchback. The old bitch is running down a steep trail and beating me to the spot. How can she do that? I see her again on the next switchback and I run smack into her. There’s a loud thwank and she goes flying over the cliff. Man, I think, I am totally fucked. Now I have a real reason to be horribly depressed. Then there she is again, right in the middle of the road at the next switchback. I stop the car and we get out. I hold the Bobs close to me. We’ve obviously entered some kind of twilight zone. Might as well stop fighting it.

What do you want, I ask. One of your sons, she replies. Which one. Which one is damned, she asks. We all look at Jim Bob. And smile.

Soon we’re back on our way. Too bad about Jim Bob, says John Bob. Yep, I say. Too bad. But I don’t feel bad. It’s like a great weight has been lifted.

The next day I feel a tingle of regret so we drive back up to the arboretum. We find the trail through the woods, but when we get to the old lady’s place, the garden is just a bunch of weeds and the house is a ruin. We kick around the property and find an old cemetery. Among the graves we find one for Baby James Robert, born and died in 1865. Wow, says John Bob. Wow, I agree, half expecting the headless Mexican kid to wander by.

Anyway, the rest of the trip was great, at least from the perspective you get from being under a cold mountain waterfall. Coming back to the city sucked and, as you might imagine, my wife was initially pissed off about the loss of Jim Bob. But she calmed down and it’s been a lot more peaceful without him. The black cloud of despair and depression that engulfed our little family for so long has lifted. Now it’s back to work.

Lieberfrau 08

I’ve noticed the headlines about Hillary Clinton’s tiff with Obama regarding how they would handle basic diplomacy as president. Obama is in favor of diplomacy. Hillary, as usual, supports the Republican position and opposes diplomacy.

Of course she is way ahead in the polls, but you have to suspect that she is this cycle’s Ed Muskie--the front-runner with a seeming lock on the nomination who no one outside of big money actually supports--when no less than Charles Krauthammer comes to her defense and attacks Obama on the issue. Yes, Charles Krauthammer. That is the company she keeps.

Unless Obama proves to be as spineless as the typical Democrat, which I admit looks to be a good possibility, it will become more and more obvious that Hillary is the female Joe Leiberman. The editorial staff here at chuckling on-line magazine is willing to go out on a limb at this early date and predict that Republicans in droves will vote in the Democratic primaries to help her win. Hillary is the only Republican with a chance of being elected president. And if that trick fails, odds are good she would follow her leader and run as an independent with near unanimous Republican support in the general election.

Might as well start calling her Lieberfrau sooner rather than later.

Too drunk to fuck (whichu)

In political news, it's the same old same old. Culturally, more of the same. The weather is predictable. Summer. Hot. Chance of late afternoon thunderstorms. Wait, it seems there's breaking news on the event horizon. No ETA as of yet, but we confidently predict it will be nothing out of the ordinary.

A deathly hollowness

I just finished the Harry Potter series. I started reading The Deathly Hallows yesterday at about 4 p.m., read it late into the night, then finished up this morning. Seven hundred and fifty-nine pages. Sure, it should have been four or five hundred pages but still. Easy reading.

Those of you who follow chuckling on-line magazine may be surprised since my reading tastes are generally more literary. But I am on record as liking American Idol and you know I have three kids, so it shouldn’t come as that much of a shock. I also have read a lot of science fiction in my life and more than a few political thrillers, so get over it. I’m far more anti-hype than just about everyone else in this country, but I read the Potter books independent of all that. They are adventure stories. Page turners. Kind of like Orson Scott Card’s Enders Game only with a gazillion more words. If it’s any consolation, I realize that the movies suck.

Without the benefit of much reflection, I’d say this last book is the best. To be perfectly honest it’s the only one I liked, though I read them all the same way, practically cover-to-cover in as little time as possible. The thing that makes the last one easily the best is the fact that it ends. Did I mention that they are easy to read? I guess we can go beyond that and say they are hard to put down. At least for record shattering numbers of readers. I know some people can’t stomach them. I am inclined to be envious, but in the end I say fuck a bunch of that snob shit. Hallows is a good story well-told. And it had an ending, which makes it unique among the Potter books.

For those of you who have seen my comments on Alicublog, you know that I am able to separate art and politics. I generally decline to read political content into every book or film and do not judge a work by its politics even when it is unapologetically political. The story is 90 percent of what counts. The technical skill employed in telling the story accounts for the other 10 percent.

That said, Hallows, and the Potter oeuvre en toto, is a transparent comment on the current political scene. Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are obviously liberals and Democrats. Voldemort himself is a composite character consisting of the worst attributes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Barak Obama and Franklin Roosevelt. They are opposed to freedom, equality and economic opportunity. This is excruciatingly demonstrated in their opposition to Fred and George Weasely’s entrepreneurial activities. Harry Potter and his friends represent the neoconservatives. They happily stand up to evil and fight for what’s right. The wizarding government is representative of governments everywhere. They work with the bad guys to stop the good guys.

I, like everyone else, used to think that Harry Potter represented George W. Bush, which meant that in all liklihood Ron was Dick Cheney and Hermione Condi Rice. But now it's obvious that is not the case. Harry and his friends clearly represent the savior and his disciples who have yet to come and will fight the evil liberals, Democrats, and their Islamofascist allies across the globe just as Harry and his friends fight the Death Eaters in the novels.

Do they win? Well, I won’t give away the ending. I'll just say that in art, as in real life, the good guys always win. At least you can read it that way. Can’t you? Huh? Are you one of them? Is that what you’re trying to say?

Sucks to be back

My recent article on Christian porn dogs drew chuckling on-line magazine some unaccustomed attention. It seems that many good folk are praying for poor chuckling, or so they tell me in e-cards. Before being showered with so much benediction, I had spent a truly blessed week in the mountains, often being showered by a beneficent, though cold, waterfall. During this time I read no news at all. No newspaper. No computer. No email. No television.

So I am late in commenting on the good Senator David Vitter (R-La), a family values crusader who, unlike his sticky handed brethren in Christ, likes his pornography alive and kicking and role playing in kinky costumes for $200 bucks an hour.

Vitter and his wife, Wendy, a former prosecutor, have four children. On his Senate Web site, Vitter says he is committed to "advancing mainstream conservative principles" and notes that he and his wife are lectors at their hometown church.

Vitter, a married father of four, last month urged colleagues to devote more federal spending to programs urging sexual abstinence among teens. The best way to avert teen pregnancy, he wrote, is "by teaching teenagers that saving sex until marriage and remaining faithful afterwards is the best choice for health and happiness."

In a June 2006 Senate speech supporting a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, Vitter said it was "well overdue that we in the Senate focus on nurturing, upholding, preserving and protecting such a fundamental social institution as traditional marriage."

The 1999 Times-Picayune profile called him "the boyish-looking, straight-laced freshman state representative" who was "sometimes lampooned as a Boy Scout in adult life." It said he hammered everyone "who didn't pass Vitter's ethical muster.

By now it should be obvious to anyone with eyes who can see that the louder a Christian rails against the immoral acts of others, the closer it is to certainty that he is heavily involved in whatever he condemns. If they rail against adultery they’re fucking around. If they rail against pornography, they’re making, buying, or selling it. Like the former porn king Mitt Romney. If they rail against gays, they are dreaming of penis, if not hiring male prostitutes and firing up the glass pipe. If they are constantly railing against pedophiles, far more than normal people, keep your kids as far away from them as you can.

Meanwhile, the largest Christian church has sheltered pedophiles and protected them from the law for centuries. You have to be pretty sick and immoral to let your kid near a Catholic priest.

Lawyers for more than 500 people who say they were abused by Roman Catholic clergy members said last night that they had settled their lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles for $660 million

A settlement would require the archdiocese to make public its confidential files that could shed light on which church officials knew of the abuse accusations, and when they knew, Mr. Boucher said. Many of the accused priests had multiple victims because they were moved by their superiors from one parish to another when accusations arose.

I doubt if every single one of the Christian anti-sex leaders is a sex fiend of one officially disapproved sort or another. I’m sure a lot of them are only in it for the money. Hate sells. And some are no doubt just plain stupid. I don’t think any of them believe all that crap in the bible, only what specifically validates their world view. The haters don’t acknowledge the Sermon on the Mount. The King of Peace crowd doesn’t do Deuteronomy. They all like to fuck as much as normal, decent people. The only difference is that the fundamentalist fuckwads feel horribly guilty about it and want to legislate against their enablers to make themselves stop.

Anyway, I also got an email from godsgirl73, a pseudonym for one of the more effective Republican propagandists on the web. Her, if it is a her, emails circulate among the working classes in small towns across America. People from the Moose Lodge pass them along to people from the Elks Lodge and the Kiwanas clubs. People who maintain religious or humorous mailing lists propagate them widely. This network has escaped the attention of the national media, but it’s probably one of the more effective mediums for making people real stupid.

Today God Girl is upset about a “plagiarism” committed against God.

A man by the name of Ronald Bruce Meyer is a cyber criminal because he journalized false information a committed plagiarism. He has actually done it thousands of times on his web site, but in order for juristic accuracy I have narrowed my case down to the article that ticks me off the most. (And if you have a heart, it will tick you off, too.)

Many of you remember how old you where when the new started talking about the Columbine Massacre, in Littleton, CO. Two martyrs died that day, Cassie Bernal, and Rachel Scott. According to the FBI, before she died, Rachel Scott said "yes" to the question "Do you believe in God." Directly before being murdered. Ronald Bruce Meyer wrote this article saying that Rachel never said yes. This is a lie. And it is illegal. Read it for yourself at http://www.ronaldbrucemeyer.com/rants/0420b-almanac.htm

How do we get this article off the Internet? Congratulations you are now a witness to the crime committed. So, go to http://www.ic3.gov/ and file a report. Then share this information with as many people as possible. This is war. Don't let this guy win

Umm, yea, that’s a plagiarism all right. Just like George Bush said in his famous speech in which he came out as a homosexual whose favorite activity was dressing up as the gimp and getting beaten by Dick Cheney in panties. He mentioned the kids at Columbine who said Jesus was a twinkie and pledged their allegiance to Satan before being shot by a couple of Christian conservative gun nuts. It’s plagiarism to criticize God or President Bush, so shut the fuck up.

Ah, so good to be back in the news reading world. Where the fuck is a cold waterfall when you need it? Unfortunately, I know lots of answers to that question and they ain’t round here.

Truly spectacular!

The Washington Post reports that history will view George W. Bush's presidency as successful and George himself will be known for ever after as a "winner."

In other news, the Post reports that history now realizes that the Titanic's maiden voyage was a rousing success since everyone didn't die and only one ship sank. And history is also coming to terms with the fact that the Hindenburg was a successful airship. And Custer a brilliant general. And the retards--oops, history informs me I mean "visionaries"--who took the country on an insane murder spree after 9/11-- damn, history tells me I mean "patriots who sow freedom to the far corners of the globe"--are God's gift to mankind. Yes, visionary patriots they are. And so are the newspapers that continue to publish them after that crazay, reality-based history says they have been wrong about everything. Winners, all!

Simple twits of faith

Via this Alternet story exposing Mitt Romney as one of America's leading hardcore pornographers, we learn that a ChristiaNet poll last year found that right wing Christians are, as a group, a bunch of porno hounds.

The poll results indicate that 50% of all Christian men and 20% of all Christian women are addicted to pornography," said Clay Jones, founder and President of Second Glance Ministries... 60% of the women who answered the survey admitted to having significant struggles with lust; 40% admitted to being involved in sexual sin in the past year; and 20% of the church-going female participants struggle with looking at pornography on an ongoing basis.

Meanwhile, the idea of taking vows of celibacy is a big topic among Christian women.

why would I want to ruin the life of a king by leading him into the chambers of death / hades, because I chose to take him to bed instead of church? Why would I want to be the loose woman who is describe in the book of proverbs instead of the virteous woman instead?
---leandra on 7/7/07

There "could be" all kinds of explanations for these seemingly contradictory factoids, so Chuckling On-line Magazine conducted a comprehensive telephone survey to find out what's really going on. We found that women married to right wing Christians find their men so repulsive that they use the "vow of celibacy" tactic to keep the smelly oafs off of them, and if a porn video accidentally gets slipped into the DVD when nobody else is home, well that's just God's will, or Satan's. Whatever.

In related news, the NY Times reports that Hilary Clinton is a woman of faith herself. Commenting on the "vow of celibacy" and related pornograpy phenomena, she says:

“We all have things that oftentimes we’re upset about, or ashamed of, or feel guilty over, and so many people carry these enormous burdens around,” Mrs. Clinton said in a recent interview. “One of the great gifts of faith is to just let go.”

Laura Bush, poster girl for The Society for Christian Women Who Aren't Getting Any (SWCWAGA), was unavailable for comment.

Buffy says: Note to self: religion: freaky.

Christians: freakier.

A thousand light years from home

I regret to inform you that Chuckling on-line magazine will be going on a one week hiatus, maybe a little longer. The time has come when I must go out to the mountains and work on my 13 volume treatise on the films of Studio Ghibli. I’ve already drank the advance and still have roughly 4000 pages to write. I can hardly show myself in Manhattan.

My family has been trying to help. They gave me a stuffed Totoro for my birthday but the damned thing is freaking me out. It never blinks and that little package it carries gives off an ominous vibe. What I really wanted was a cat bus, but it’s probably a good thing I didn’t get it. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all with one of those freaks in the same room, much less write with it staring at me and flashing that fucked-up smile.

I was surprised to find myself fearing the little Totoro. There are some genuinely terrifying characters in Studio Ghibli fllms, but the Totoro’s are not among them. The movie itself doesn’t bother me in the least, not even the requisite little old lady. In Studio Ghibli movies, it’s usually the old ladies that give me the creeps. They are a big reason why I’ve gotten so far behind on the fourteen part treatise, well one of them anyway. I couldn’t bring myself to watch Spirited Away, which is undoubtedly one of the most terrifying films of all time, because of Yubaba, but I eventually sucked it up (or down to be more accurate) and got through it. I’ve watched it many times since. That’s the great thing about the Ghibli movies. They stand up to multiple viewings.

But even after conquering, or at least learning to tolerate my fear of Yubaba, I was still unable to get started on the 15 part series. The problem became ”how to start?“ I had to find an organizing principle. Most critics fall into the trap of the commonalities. Flying machines, pigs, little girls, little old ladies, nature, magic. Yes, those things are in most, if not all, Studio Ghibli movies, but they do not define them. That’s the problem. Nothing defines them, not in a storytelling sense anyway. They are certainly well-drawn, but that only defines them to a limited extent. The stories are the thing, and they are hard to grasp.

So I’ve scaled back my ambitions. Rather than tackle the entire ouvre from the start, I’ll begin with what I think of as the spirit trilogy -- Totoro, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. One could argue that Howl’s Moving Castle belongs in this group as well and perhaps it does. But for now I’ll leave it at that.

If you, reader, have not seen these films, I suggest you watch them in that order, then if you have any insights that would help fill out my 12 volume treatise, please feel free to share.

Flowers for algernons

Yesterday I went surfing through Blogger-land. Sometimes I like to click the “Next Blog” function for an hour or two and see what I find. I almost always discover great stuff.

It’s been awhile since I played that game. On a good day all it takes is a few clicks to find something wonderful -- great writers or at least great writing -- real people writing well about their lives.

But yesterday was not to be. Two hours clicking and all I got was commercial sites, maudlin family stuff, lonely guys and girls, and porn -- mostly in Portuguese. I don’t know if the blogosphere has changed that much or if I just had bad luck. There are, after all, two gazillion blogs out there. I only touched a hundred or so.

The only interesting thing I found was this photo at this blog which pretty much sums up everything I hate about porn.

I shouldn’t say that was the only interesting thing. Taken as a whole, the maudlin sites are fascinating. One thing I noticed (again) is how people like to take and exhibit photographs of flowers. Chuckling too, is a maudlin type. Chuckling too, takes pictures of flowers. What can you do reader? You are out there on the streets of Brooklyn, a borough world-renowned for its flora, carrying a camera. Do you just walk on by? I try, but I can’t. Just the day before yesterday I took pictures of flowers. I didn’t want to. But I did. Now I am exhibiting them. Just like half a gazillion other maudlin bloggers. I don’t want to do that either. But I am doing it for you reader. I am maudlin for you. But that’s what they all say, eh? All those maudlin people on all those maudlin blogs with all their maudlin flowers.

Although I, like just about everyone else, photograph flowers, I am not a flower photographer. I do not have the necessary equipment -- no professional macro lens, no ring flash, no high-end tripod. If you have all that stuff, it’s really not that difficult to get a fantastic flower pic. The only other thing you need is a light rain, or a mister.

Anyway, so I ‘m out walking in Brooklyn and see this harsh, interesting light behind some flowers. It’s the kind of light few flower photographers will ever see. The kind that breaks all the rules. The harsh light of the mid day summer sun. These are not good flower pics. If you are a flower photographer, turn away now.

And since somehow ugly porn creeped into this innocent little essay on flowers, I’ll show you how real hot sex can be portrayed in the classic mode.The last photo in the slideshow is a birds and the bees pic, which makes me wonder why they call it birds and the bees instead of the bees (or the birds) and the flowers. It’s not like the birds and the bees are fucking each other. Ah, but those flowers, so inviting they are.

Too many rats in the kitchen

I like Pixar. I’m not what you’d call a huge fan. Although all of their movies have been good, Cars is the only one I consider great. But I’m not a kid. Kids love them all.

It had to happen eventually. Ratatouille is a bomb, at least from a kid's perspective. It reminded me of Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. Disney had a run of great kids movies starting with Little Mermaid on through Beauty and the Beast and Lion King. But then I took my daughter to Hunchback on opening weekend and I’ll never forget the sounds in the theater when the film ended. Children were crying. Literally. They were crying. Very bad sign for a kid's movie.

It wasn’t that bad for Ratatouille, but my kid had trouble staying awake, which is bad enough. Children yawning is not as bad as children crying, but still, not a good sign.

As an adult, I liked Ratatouille, but then I liked Hunchback as well. Some of the animation in Hunchback was some of the best ever. In that case the animation drew its strength from its source. The problem with Hunchback was that the oafs at Disney tried to graft their trademarked silly sidekicks onto a powerful story about religious hypocrisy and repressed, along with a bit of the old raw, sexuality. Ratatouille, thankfully, doesn’t suffer from the Disney sidekick syndrome. Of course its provenance is hardly Victor Hugo, but it's still a good story.

Adults, for the most part, will like Ratatouille so I trust it will do okay at the box office even though the kids won't be dying to see it again and again. But it has a few things working against it. The thought of rats in the kitchen -- and touching food -- causes a visceral disgust and actually seeing it so well-depicted on screen is much worse, even shocking at first. And the culture nannies and demagogues will be upset that people -- gasp -- drink wine and even get drunk in front of the kiddies and that it is set in France and that the French are not mercilessly ridiculed. In these ridiculous times, I'm surprised it pulled off a G rating. Disney must have bribed the Guardians of Our Morals, or at least key Republicans. It probably doesn't cost that much. Chump change in every sense of the phrase.

More on the positive side, the technical aspects of the film, both visual and as storytelling, are flawless. Just about every frame is a marvel. The story arc is classic. The voice acting is very well done (you don't really notice the "acting"). The emotional denouement satisfying.

The character arc, however, is a bit out-of-the-ordinary for a well-told story, particularly in a kids tale. In a normal story, the main character has a flaw which he or she recognizes and corrects throughout the course of the narrative. Cars, is a perfect example of this classic character arc. In Ratatouille the main character has a trait that is perceived as a flaw by those around him, but proves to be a special gift. It is the secondary characters who change. The main character essentially stays the same. His only discovery, if you can call it that, is that yes, he really is special. That's about all the secondary characters discover as well. That plus the fact that they are merely ordinary.

The Incredibles told the exact same story as Ratatouille, which is not surprising since the same person, Brad Bird, wrote them both. Everyone is not created equal. Some people are more special than others. Each Bird movie has its own catchphrase to drive home the point. For The Incredibles, it was "If everyone is special, then no one is." For Ratatouille, the catchphrase is "Not everyone can be a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere," which at least makes sense. I thought The Incredibles came off with a whiff of Libertarian propaganda since the catchphrase was pretty much lifted from Ayn Rand and stood out as such in the movie. The "message" was handled much better in Ratatouille. It worked well within the context of the story.

Still, what was essentially the same story was handled much better in Cars, which managed to tell a far more nuanced version without the show stopping (in a bad way) effect of a catchphrase.

Cars, too, is about someone with special talents and grand ambitions and the ways in which he and those around him come to terms with those talents and ambitions. The closest thing to a catchphrase in Cars it is that the MacGuffin (the thing that everyone is after) is just an empty cup. Just the opposite of Bird's message that everyone can't be special.

Take another look at the illustration above. Take a long look. Go ahead, the last three paragraphs can wait.

See what I mean?

Again, I enjoyed Ratatouille. Sure, it could have been better, but it's a good story well-told as is. There's nothing inherently wrong with a story in which the individual triumphs over the community. Real life, as we know, is often like that. I just don't think it works that well for children.

All of the reviews I've seen, excepting my own, are incredibly positive. I thought A.O. Scott in the Times did the best job. His review made me like Ratatouille even more than I did after seeing it, but when you examine his reasoning, the review just reinforces my point that it’s not a good kids movie, not a great one anyway.

Mermaid Day 2007

Yesterday was the 25th annual Mermaid Day Parade in Coney Island. The weather was beautiful, not a cloud in the sky, temperature in the seventies. The crowds were the largest I’ve seen.

Given the impending development/destruction of Coney Island as we now know it, I couldn’t help but see this year’s Mermaid parade through the prism of its impending doom.

The Mermaid Parade is one of America’s last great bacchanals. Hundreds of people dress up like sea creatures, often with little more than body paint or glitter, and parade down the boardwalk, around the amusement park and carnival games, past the freak show and shoot-the-freak, and all the cotton candy, candy apples and other assorted attractions.

You see a lot of tits and ass, bare skin and the odd simulated sex act or swinging dildo. One of this year’s sea creatures sported a six foot green penis. But there’s a family element as well, though I imagine it’s mostly ultra-liberal artsy types that bring their kids or dress them up and put them on a float. I brought my boy (we’ll call him John Bob) this year. I’ve brought the girl (Jane Bob) in the past. Do I worry that they will see some T&A or a fake green penis? Not in the least. I think it’s healthy for them to see people having a good time and expressing themselves artistically. Television is far worse in every way. Television bad. Mermaid Day Parade good.

But how long can such a parade go on into the fast approaching era of pseudo-Disneyfication? Not long is my guess. Coney Island will become a family destination. Of course it is already is a family destination, but in the new and shiny future it won’t be just any old families who go there. It’ll be the right kind of families. The middle class. Mostly white, though hardly exclusive. People who go to church and salute the flag. Traditional values. More money. Lots more money. That’s the family spirit. No more semi-naked art shit. We might keep the tits but we’ll definitely lose the penis. Those people should be arrested. They can at least be banned.

* * * * * * *


The first time I experienced the Mermaid Day parade was by accident. I had taken the kids to the beach on a hot summer day. We were sitting innocently on our beach blanket. John Bob was playing with his sand bucket. Jane Bob was reading Nancy Drew. I was drinking beers I bought from the Mexican vendors on the beach. Then all of a sudden we heard the sound of an approaching brass band. Then we were surrounded by half naked sea creatures dancing in the surf. A big bearded Neptune with a trident waded out in the surf and declared it summer. The brass band wailed. The sea creatures danced. I lost the kids in the crowd. But that didn’t matter, I had forgotten about them anyway. taking photos. Then I realized they were gone and looked for them frantically. I couldn’t find them. I took more photos. Eventually I saw them in the viewfinder as they were being chased by a giant lobster. And then there were Mariachis. It’s all a bit hazy at that point, but I had learned about Mermaid Day and went back to photograph it every year after.

Until yesterday. This year I took no photographs. As I mentioned in a previous post, I am taking a sabbatical from (unpaid) photography. So I was just a parade goer much like everyone else. A witness to what I fear will be one of the last gasps of a truly special event.

For me, Mermaid Day always starts on the F train. You can’t help but notice the gaudy sea creatures, especially the females with their tits hanging nearly naked and their asses showing. But this year, even though the train was far more crowded than it’s ever been, there were no sea creatures in my car. Everyone was dressed pretty much just like me, which is to say unimaginatively, the guys in knee length cargo shorts with plain colored t-shirts and black sneakers with ankle socks, the women in shorts or blue jeans with modest-for-the-most-part tops. I took this as a very bad sign.

But when we get off the train there are a few sightings. Two girls with blue sequined fins and bikini tops, a naughty school girl with seaweed for hair and 50-something woman in fishnet stockings carrying a blowup doll.

But my fear that the parade would be taken over by the establishment thickens when I hear a prep school accent. “Someone brought their blow-up doll, ugh.” “No way.” “Ugh.” “Gross.” So that’s how it’s gonna be? No more blow-up dolls? First they ban the blow-up dolls. Then the dildos. Then the tits and the ass. Then the art. The progression seems inevitable.

So I’m seeing everything through dark tinted glasses. And I don’t see a lot of light when we get over to the float staging area on 16th street. This is usually one of the wilder scenes but this year in addition to the tattooed roller girl pirates and other old stand-byes, there’s the Brooklyn Cyclones painted car, the Brooklyn Lager corporate float (not handing out free beer, btw) and Marty Fucking Markowitz. There’s still a loud rock band, a bunch of asshole photographers, and still plenty of assorted crazies, but the vibe has changed.

When they start rolling out we make our way around Cyclones stadium to get to the boardwalk. I fear that the sterility of that soul deadening stadium is the future of Coney Island, but don’t dwell on it. Then we get a good spot on the parade route, one of the last remaining. There are at least twice as many people attending the parade this year. I don’t know if it’s due the weather, the impending death of the event, or what? It really doesn’t matter, I tell myself. Enjoy. Enjoy.

But it’s difficult to enjoy. The beginning of the parade is corporate crap. The Brooklyn Cyclone mascot. Keyspan (Climate is Everything). Marty Fucking Markowitz (again). Then the king and queen roll by. I’ve never heard of them. They should make David Johansen king-for-life. Then comes a black marching band working for some outfit called “The Future of Coney Island.” What the fuck is that? Must be the developer. Then grandma mermaid and some little mermaids in wheelchairs. A small group of older women in tastefully concealed bikinis with a boombox blasting California Girls badly bombing and basting in flop sweat. Then all of a sudden it’s over. Everyone starts walking up the boardwalk. I’m just sick at this point, and not from the beer. My worst fears have been realized.

But then the cops start yelling for everyone to get back. The parade is not over. The real parade begins to arrive. A brass band. The Flames of Discontent. Rides not Timeshares. The god Thor hammering the Wonder Wheel and the parachute drop. Women painted white with black eyes and black pasties. Giant styrofoam Starbucks cups. Gay guys in thongs pretending to fuck half naked mermaids. The Rude Mechanical Orchestra. Sparkles. Sequins. Fishnets. Plump girls in sailor suits flashing red undies. The bloody ghoul from Mermaid Days past. Goat horns. Bloody boobs. The East Village Sea Monster Marching Band. Semi-naked hula hoopsters. Blue men. Yellow man. Green man with six foot dick. The dawning of the age of aquarium. Dead fish. Uninhibited flesh. A blue woman with hanging penis obsessed with her image in a mirror. Sirens of the Sex World. The Main Squeeze Orchestra (girls with accordions). Overheard conversations. “Mommy, that’s my teacher.” “I thought you were in jail.” “Where are the police? Why aren’t they doing anything about this?” “Nothing is as it used to be.” “I’m glad I saw it when it was.” A giant fat guy covered in glitter wearing nothing more than silver shoes and a thong. Hellvis. Stop Starbucks and Red Lobster by any means necessary. A buff guy with eight giant snakes coming out of his jockey shorts. Bare stomachs wiggling in my face. Flesh, flesh, everywhere. And for the most part, it is not the flesh of the beautiful people. It is the flesh of the people you see on the busses and subways (albeit on the lower east side).

Eventually we make our way down to the beach to catch the official start of summer, but we are way too late. Apparently the corporate sponsors rushed front loaded the event for the evening news and let the real parade happen out of sight. But there’s a brass band splashing around and a few mermaids in the surf. It’s definitely the most white people you’ll ever see on Coney Island beach. But we missed the good part.

So back up to the Cyclone where the parade ends (if it doesn’t go on to the beach). That’s always a good place to Mermaid watch, though it’s often hard to see much through the throngs of asshole photographers. I too am an asshole photographer, officially since 2005 when I purposely took pictures of T&A for that year’s parade to make a point about asshole photographers. They are disgusting though. Usually middle aged men obviously taking close-ups of women’s tits or ass. The great majority of them don’t have professional equipment. Some even use cell phones. I don’t know if it’s due to the huge crowd this year, but the asshole photographers didn’t seem as onerous as usual. There were even quite a few women photographers showing much better taste by how they framed their shots.

Our Coney Island Day ended at Jimmy’s prime meat market where we picked up some of Brooklyn’s best hamburgers to grill later. “It’s a beautiful day in Coney Island,” said Jimmy, the white haired proprietor. “This’ll show em that Coney Island’s not going anywhere. This’ll show em we’re coming back.” As much as I like and respect Jimmy, I fear his idea of “coming back” is quite a bit different than my own.

A small window (closing)

Just in time for the summer blockbuster season, a very rough cut.