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.

Connecting some dots

This morning’s New York Times breathlessly reports the obvious: Iraq has become a giant training camp for anti-American insurgents who plan to expand the conflict.

“The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist,” says a Saudi with vast knowledge of Jihadist networking.

Yes, well, duh, you think. Any idiot could see that coming, But our politicians and pundits aren’t just any idiot. They are stupid on a grand, historic scale.

Note how our Jihadist counselor in the above quote doesn’t require the United States to turn off the teevee and convert to Islam. He says until we “cease and desist.” Presumably he means cease and desist from conquering foreign lands, propping up violent dictatorships, and arming foreign oppressors. Is that really too much to ask? That we stop our senseless murder spree? I could see room for argument if it were doing us any good, but as the NYT article demonstrates, our violent meddling in other people’s affairs is creating an army of formidable enemies.

The very same article contains even more powerful evidence of how mind-numbingly stupid our leaders continue to be. Have they learned anything from the experience of providing arms and international support to the likes of the Ayatollah Khomenei, Sadaam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden? Well, no

Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.

The army called for outside support. By Friday, the first of eight planeloads of military supplies had arrived from the United States, which called Fatah al Islam “a brutal group of violent extremists.”

What the Times fails to report, in typical Times fashion, is that the Bush administration supported, at least indirectly, that very same terrorist group which we are now helping the Lebanese government fight.

Where will the next bin Laden come from? Follow our money, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of candidates.

So what would happen if we were to take our opponents advice and “cease and desist?” Would the sun come out from behind the clouds and spring flowers sprout overnight from the blood-drenched battlefields? Well, no. There would be a long period of fending off attacks and legally pursuing violent criminals, but over time what goes around would come around, just as it is right now, only in a good way.

But that is not going to happen. We have gone too far down the path of authoritarianism. With our Iraq disaster providing such a training and propaganda windfall for those who want to attack us, it seems inevitable that an attack will come. Do we, as a people, have the maturity to react intelligently to another 9/11? Not bloody likely. Our leaders, Bush and Cheney, are cowards and they will be replaced with other cowards. We have chosen our path. It looks like water rushing, downward, like a spiral.

The first day of summer

Friday after work the time and temperature sign across from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall reads 93 degrees. Saturday morning, 6 a.m. I’m lying in the familiar pool of New York summer sweat. Before that, I hadn’t given two thoughts to the beach, but by 10 a.m. the umbrella is planted, the kid is playing in the surf and I’m enjoying the cool ocean breeze. It’s a little known fact, but Brooklyn is a city on an island and there are miles of nice beaches. Of course we rarely go to a nice beach. We go to Coney Island.

Coney Island is what I call a people’s beach. By that I mean that real people go there, unlike the French Riviera or Malibu where the rich and beautiful pose in and out of their skimpy swim wear. More flesh can be seen on just about anyone at Coney Island than you’ll find on three or four fashionable types at the Cote d’Azur. The typical Coney Island bathing suit could be cut up to make forty or fifty bikinis or briefs for the beautiful people. Not that you don’t see a bit of eye candy among the pork bellies, but you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled.

In general, I’m okay with all that, and the fact that it’s one of the few remaining places in the U.S. where you can unashamedly get drunk in public, but so far this year I’m just not into it, I want to hear the crashing of the surf and maybe the high pitched squeals of the young’uns splashing each other. So I get irritated when not long after I plant my umbrella, a large Latino family plops down behind us and starts fouling the air with an endless stream of niggers and motherfuckers. Almost their entire conversation consists of those words. When they address each other it’s either as nigger or motherfucker. Except sometimes they get creative and call each other motherfucking nigger, or nigger motherfucker.

I’m not the language police, okay, and it doesn’t bother me in the least that my kids hear those words. They’ve been raised in Brooklyn and they hear them pretty much every time they ride the subway, which is every day. So they’ve heard 10’s of thousands of niggers and motherfuckers yet have never used those words themselves, at least not around adults. My son, in fact, is very uncomfortable with that language and often asks to move to the other end of the train when a crowd of nigger and motherfucker spewing specimens sit next to us. Same thing at the beach. We picked up our umbrella and moved.

But there was nothing we could do. Soon, the lifeguards arrived and they were talking loudly among themselves, nigger this, motherfucker that, then another family sat down near us and it was nothing but nigger this and motherfucker that, and we could still hear the original problem people yelling periodically, nigger this, motherfucker that, and it all blended together into a pulsing cacophony, nigger, motherfucker, nigger, motherfucker, nigger, motherfucker.

But for the most part we tuned it out and had a good time. I think it’s important to get the kids into the outdoors, away from the tv and video games, and even their regular friends. I watch my son playing in the surf, see him using his imagination to occupy his time, catching sand crabs, collecting shells, moving his body, diving into the waves, doing cartwheels in the sand, socializing with strangers. These things are good. These things are healthy.

Then later, we’re at the neighborhood playground. Here, diversity is more of a good thing. The whitest little girl is being chased by the blackest little boy who eventually hits her in the back with a water balloon. It occurs to me that southern conservatives would have murdered the child if he had done that fifty years ago, and not felt even a pang of guilt. Jewish kids are playing with Palestinian and Iranian kids, as well as Indians and Pakistanis. None of them -- black, white, Jewish, Palestinian, Iranian, or the other assorted nationalities seems to be considering the larger political realities. They’re just kids, having fun.

But it does get a bit weird sometimes. I know the Palestinian kids because they live down the block, my son plays with them and my wife tutors one off and on. Three families live in one giant house. They have a total of twelve kids all my son’s age or younger. They are very wild and violent among themselves. They’ve never included my son in any of their fights. I suspect that their parents must constantly warn them against fighting with outsiders. Still, when my son’s Jewish friends are visiting, I don’t let them hang out with the Palestinians. I’m afraid that there could be social repercussions if they beat up a Jewish kid. If that were to happen, I doubt it would have anything to do with any kind of Jewish/Palestinian nonsense. It would just be boys being boys, but still... I feel like shit for making those kinds of decisions.

So the night ends, as Saturday nights usually do, with the family movie. We were going to watch Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, but were unable to find it, so since it's the first day of summer, I suggest we watch Do the Right Thing instead, since it’s about summer in Brooklyn. It’s a great movie and I could go on about its palette and/or the ambiguity of its message, but it’s the pitch perfect depiction of summer in Brooklyn that puts such an appropriate ending on the day. There are several parts in which multiple people are screaming at each other, motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker, coming from left, right, back and forth, transcending to surround sound, a cacophony of motherfucker, the sweltering heat, the motherfuckers, summertime. Motherfucker. Brooklyn.

Only three more months of summer. It's gonna be a motherfucker.

Pelosi assumes the position

From today's NYT:

Pelosi stopped short of condemning the president's call for slowing the nation's growth rate in carbon emissions.

"In seeking solutions," she said, ''we need to shorten the distance between inconceivable and inevitable.''

Yep. The inconceivable is that the doormatocats will do anything beyond muttering incoherently in a way designed not to offend anyone -- not the people who vote for them, not their corporate masters, much less their republican overlords.

The inevitable is that they will lay down on the porch to facilitate those who enjoy stepping on them.

Speaking of stupid

I can't help noticing, despite the general silence of the leftish blogs, as well as my own efforts to avoid reading the news, that the doormatocrat party has suffered yet another humiliating defeat by Bush and the republicans. After threatening, and actually voting to withhold funding for military operations in Iraq, they totally caved, gave the idiot everything he wanted, and pocketed $20 billion or so in pork at the same time just to add a whiff of corruption to their aura of imbecility.

How fucking stupid can they be? They chose to fight a high profile battle which they had no chance whatsoever to win. The troops would be funded. They said so from the outset. The question wasn't if they would surrender, it was when? And how?

And Karl Rove must have devised the "and how?" The Democrats did't just surrender, they profited from it, lined their pockets, and/or those of their campaign contributors. Can they really not see that trap? Wasn't Dick Cheney daring them to walk into it a clue? It's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which huge blinking signs with the word "trap" point at a trap, yet Daffy Duck walks right into it anyway. They're a bunch of maroons, that's what they are.

It's not like Bush and friends are all powerful super geniuses. They are idiots, widely hated and ridiculed. Losing to them is like getting beat up by a mentally challenged 1st grader. Could the democrats be any more stupid and weak? I don't see how.

The only explanation is that they are not a real opposition party. They are not laying there on the porch with a sign on their back saying "step on me (only $20 billion}" because they are stupid and weak. Who could be that stupid and weak? They are to the Republicans what the Washington Generals are to the Harlem Globetrotters, a team paid to lose.

Poetics, the sequel

Another Sunday has rolled around with no original content on Chuckling, the on-line magazine. Since last week's poem went over so well, I will offer up for sacrifice the other one I've written. If you don't like them, don't worry. I've worked on each for about four years, so it will likely be 2011 before you see another.

It's kind of fun to tell stories this way, with more elevated forms of language, but I won't be putting out the requsite "slim volume of poetry" anytime soon. I don't even submit them to magazines, other than Chuckling, which will publish just about any crap I submit.

In response to several emails I recieved on Pan, although my soul may well be wracked with the tortures of the damned, these poems are just writing exercises for the most part. Pan, like much poetry, takes the perspective of a mythical personage, in this case a forest god tempted by the sea. On the Eleventh tells a similar story.


On the Eleventh

My heart
is confusion
together with my soul
It is desolate
like consuming fire

Conceal yourself for a little while
in the midst of these coals
where living creatures,
torches, as it were,
burn in place of my grief

A vision will come
Life and old age
Counsel and prudence
Secrets of all living things

The days will hasten on fast,
draw together, bone to bone,
joint to joint,
sinews come upon them

To those without sense
from the earth
there will be
nothing
For them, graves