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.

Middle passage

Those of you who pay attention to my photography may wonder why I haven’t shown any work lately. The reason is that I am taking a seaon off. For the past five years or so, I have shot the same events: The Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Memorial Day and Fourth of July at Coney Island, Chinese New Year, the Jouvert parade, and the Middle Passage Ceremony. Now I’m going to attend these events simply as a participant.

A large part of the reason I'm taking time off is because I genuinely dislike photographers, especially here in New York. The Mermaid Day parade is the most egregious example. There are 10 photographers for every participant and by the end of the day everyone is pretty much traumatized, especially the scantily clad women. And if I were the type who got dressed up and paraded around, or performed a sacred ceremony, in public, I wouldn’t want assholes sticking their cameras in my face. For me to photograph these events, I have to believe that I am serving a larger purpose. I have to believe that my artistic rendering of these events will serve as an important record of a special time and place. Of course there are thousands of photographers at the Mermaid parade or Chinese New Year and a few of them do work as good or better than my own, but I am just about the only serious photographer who attends the Jouvert parade or the Middle Passage Ceremony. I hope it proves important that I have recorded these events.

Yesterday was the Middle Passage Ceremony and that was my first real test. I was at Coney Island on Memorial Day, but this year it was no different than any other weekend, and the light wasn’t good, so not taking photographs didn’t bother me in the least. Last evening, however, the light was beautiful and so was the ceremony and it hurt, really hurt, to leave the images to the ether. And for long stretches I was working as a photographer, though without a camera, anyway. Framing shots. Noting the ceremony’s progress. Identifying photogenic participants from the past and remembering them for the future.

But I was alternately able to drop that baggage and absorb the spirit of the event.

The Middle Passage Ceremony is to remember the African slaves who died during the transport to the new world. Participants dress in white, wade out in the surf, throw flowers, then walk backwards away from the beach. There is a lot of drumming and dancing before, during and after the ceremony. The flower throwing part is a solemn affair. A few people seem to experience religious ecstasy. Many of the images are incredibly beautiful.

This year my wife and young son came along. We’d noticed the event our first year in New York but didn’t know what it was. We heard the African drums and saw people dressed in white walking backwards from the surf, but there were few of them then. The drumming and walking backwards creeped out my wife. She thought it was some kind of voodoo ceremony.

The event has been growing exponentially. Now there is stage area with a PA system and many chairs up on the boardwalk and I’d guess three hundred or so people. We set down a sheet off to the side and sipped wine until the festivities moved down to the water. My wife was still creeped out a bit by the drums and ceremony. She knows quite a bit about central African secret societies and thought she recognized elements from one of them. Although this is an American thing, it’s not a farfetched possibility that it has real roots in Africa.

My son, however, totally got into the spirit of the event. He’s eight years old and they teach modern dance at his school. He was moving in and out of the crowd, jumping up and down in the surf, doing his Martha Graham and Bill T. Jones interpretive moves. I had to laugh like hell until I noticed a little Mark Morris seep into his choreography. I hit him with a small rock to put an end to that.

As is not unusual, sharing a bottle of wine with my wife meant that she had a glass and I drank the rest of the bottle, so I was feeling pretty good by the time the ceremony was over. My son, we’ll call him John Bob, wanted to go on a ride so we said goodbye to the wife and stayed in Coney Island. I had a beer while he went on the Saturn 6, then we went and saw the freak show where I had five more.

If you’ve never been to the Coney Island Freak Show, I strongly recommend it. The acts aren’t that great, but it’s a hokey good time, plus it’s a nice place to get out of the sun or the rain and the amusement park din and have a cold Heineken. My dirty little secret is that I have a crush on Insectivora. Insectivora is a totally tatooed woman who eats insects and fire. John Bob was getting bored by the time the freaks were into the third rotation of their acts, but I couldn’t tear myself away from Insectivora. And when I did finally stumble back out to the Coney Island night, I was feeling pretty high.

John Bob wanted some cotton candy, so I bought him a bag. There were three large balls of it, blue, yellow and pink. He ate the blue and I ate the yellow and pink. Somehow, the thin wisps of spun sugar made me ravenous. I bought us a corn dog and french fries, but that only made me more hungry. I ate a hamburger, then a gyro, clams on the half shell, fried shrimp, fried chicken, a regular slice, a slice with pepperoni, then sausage and peppers, a brochette, a candy apple, a caramel apple, and three boxes of popcorn. My stomach would not fill but my body began to grow, 7 feet, ten feet, twenty, then thirty feet, I waddled down the boardwalk eating small children, teenagers, pretty girls, fat girls and gnarly old women. Then, and I don’t know to say this politely, I hurled and passed out on the beach.

Um, dad, said John Bob, kicking me in the head. Shouldn’t we go home now?

Thus ended another typical day at Coney Island.

Animals r us

From CNN:

Debate evolves into religious discussion

Story Highlights

• Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, defends biblical creation narrative
• John McCain, an Episcopalian, says "the hand of God" made us what we are
• Sam Brownback, a Catholic, says religion and reason are not at odds

Reading further, we find that Huckabee went on to say that people who wanted to believe they were descended from a primate were welcome to do so.

He then contested the relevance of the question:

"It's interesting that that question would even be asked of somebody running for president," Huckabee said. "I'm not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book. I'm asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States."

Even if we leave aside the question of whether a president of the United States should have at least an eighth grade education (humans are unquestionably primates, so what does he think he is?), these Republican debates expose an ignorance so vast that it qualifies as insanity.

The general belief system of Huckabee, a total moron, is shared by literally millions of Americans who have had at least a modicum of education and uncounted millions, if not billions, of poorly educated people throughout the world.

Science be damned. We’re gonna believe what the preacher says. We don’t need no stinkin’ books, not even the Bible, though it helps if you know how to read it.

Common sense tells us we didn’t descend from no apes. Common sense tells us an all-powerful being created the universe, us, and everything else. Common sense tells us we’re special.

And if common sense fails, we have John McCain:

"There's no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and [I] believe that God loves us."

Or Sam Brownback:

"I believe we are created in the image of God for a particular purpose, and I believe that with all my heart," said Brownback, a Roman Catholic. "I am fully convinced there's a God of the universe that loves us very much and was involved in the process.“

This common sense view that there is a super being who created the universe and has a special love for us humans (primates as well as Huckabees) is shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans -- liberal, conservative, and politically apathetic -- and most of the rest of the world as well.

Well-meaning people may differ on which God created the universe and how exactly it cares about our individual lives, and they can certainly disagree on how it did it, whether by evolution, incantation, a twitch of the nose or a nod of the head, but everybody simply must agree that common sense tells us that some all-powerful super being somehow, someway, did the deed.

But of course that belief is not common sense. With what we know about the vastness of space and time, as well as the evolution of life on earth, it is ignorant.

It is insane.

The universe we know is something like 17 billion years old. There are something like 200 billion galaxies each containing 200 billion stars. Our planet is what a grain of sand is to the Sahara, if that, in the big picture. Modern human history is more like a molecule in a grain of sand compared to the vast Sahara of time.

The idea that some super being set all that in motion, created the vast and incredible universe, then waited 17 billion years to focus on us as individuals represents stupidity on a scale nearly as vast as the cosmos. And that’s not even considering the fact that even if that were true, the all-powerful super being is an idiot who botched it badly. For billions of humans, this is a world of shit, with little peace, and less justice.

Common sense, based on what we know (science), tells us there is no God. Common sense should tell us that the continued belief in an all-powerful super being who cares is nothing more than primitive baggage from the early days of human evolution.

Beyond that, common sense also tells us that the fact that we still have serious contenders for presidency-- not to mention the president himself -- who believe such utter nonsense demonstrates just how close we are to our chimp-like ancestors.

And it’s equally, if not more disturbing to note that the major media refuse to accurately report the facts about religion and science. In this case, the reporter alluded to the fact that humans are primates, but failed to say so directly. The enlightenment is dimming. The future looks dark.

On a related note, this article in the Guardian argues that we should stop respecting religions and those who practice them, at least when it comes to public policy.

I’ll agree with that and suggest we go a step further and stop using the word “religion.” For what is religion if not a belief in the supernatural?

We have a word for belief in the supernatural. We call it superstition.

We also have a word for people who believe in the supernatural. We call them superstitious.

I know what you are, but what am I?

I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago when I was in high school, so I recognized that the Bush Administration was using Soviet-style torture techniques on prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as secret prisons throughtout the world.

Reports of U.S. torture techniques also reminded me of a guy I new in Washington state. He trained U.S. Air Force pilots who could possibly be captured by the Soviets to cope with KGB-style interrogation. He was an American specialist in Soviet torture techniques. He seemed an okay guy, very well-read and thoughtful, really into hardcore punk, a bit harder than the rest of us, and he could be very intense. He described his job as fucked up way beyond my ability to imagine. He spent many days playing the KGB interrogator, torturing American pilots. They all inevitably broke, he said. He hated his job.


This article in the Times confirms that the U.S. does indeed use Soviet-style torture and refers to what I'm pretty sure is the Air Force program in which my long ago acquaintance tortured our troops. Yes, it's true. We are not only using Soviet-style torture, we are doing it consciously, by the book. How's that for nauseating absurdity?

Nauseatingly absurd, that's how. Or should be. At least for those of us old enough to remember the Cold War.

Of course a lot of people these days aren't old enough to remember the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 so pretty much everyone born after 1980, 1985 at the latest, did not grow up hearing about how evil the Soviet Union was, in large part due to their use of torture. Today's conservative kids did not spend their formative years being constantly reminded of how good the United States was compared to the Soviet Union, one of the important particulars being that we did not torture our prisoners. These younger folk were not constantly told that torture was morally wrong. Not only morally wrong but ineffective. And not only ineffective, but counterproductive. They were not told that the Soviet Union provided ample proof that torture was stupid on every level save the sadistic.

So the age thing may at least partially explain why the stupid right wing kids can so blithely condone atrocities that the United States stood against for so many years, but what about the older Republicans?

The older dead-end conservatives who still support George W. Bush and every single one of his war crimes are the same people who loudly denounced the Soviet Union for torturing prisoners in secret prisons during the Cold War. How can they forget just about every single principle they in which they believed?

Of course it's only speculation, but I'd guess they never held any real principles. Those 28 percent or so who support the conservative agenda no matter how criminally insane it becomes, are not principled people. They simply believe what they are told to believe. Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter if it changes. Doesn't matter if it's the opposite of what they were told to believe the day before.

Talk about nausea. Since we now know that Bush & company actually are using the Soviet manual on torturing prisoners, what other manuals are they using? A lot of people have sarcastically suggested their playbook is right out of George Orwell's 1984. Perhaps it really is.

More ammo

In other under-reported news, a Saudi Arabian company is purchasing GE Plastics.

This may surprise you, but chuckling knows a thing or two about GE plastics. They contain phosgene, a terribly dangerous chemical that was responsible for most chemical warfare deaths during World War I.

So is it wise to sell chemical weapons factories to Islamic Sunni extremists who support the insurgency in Iraq?

Personally, I don’t think it’s so much of a problem on those grounds. Not because we don’t actually know that those who control the company support the insurgency in Iraq. Apparently all Saudis do that. But that company already has plenty of phosgene plants so I don’t think selling them a few more particularly adds to the danger, unless they fire all the American workers and bring in bearded minions from afar, which wouldn’t go over well with the locals. No, I trust they just want to make money. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to sell off our few remaining manufacturing assets to foreign companies.

But that’s a different conversation. If you click on the above link, you’ll see that the Saudis are saying all the right things about how they value the local employees and don’t plan to change a thing. Perhaps that’s true, but probably not. That particular plant is old and dangerous and a lot of people in th know believed that GE was going to shut it down anyway.

But maybe not. The comments on the linked article are interesting. There’s a lot of talk about phosgene and how dangerous it could be to sell a chemical plant to A-rabs, but there are quite a few knowledgeable rejoinders from GE employees hoping to keep their jobs. Perhaps the Saudi’s will use it as an opportunity to build goodwill in middle America, just as Toyota does in the same general area.

Southern Indiana is a hotbed of ignorant nationalism, but they are acutely aware of who signs the paychecks. A few years ago anyone driving a Toyota was accused of being a traitor, but since they built the Tundra plant, Toyotas are the most popular car on the road.

If the Saudi’s play their cards right and keep the paychecks coming, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a lot of people in the midwest converting to Islam.