California This Afternoon

        

String Theory

Margaret Cho “I don't know where sorrow is anymore . . .”

Such a lovely, haunting line, makes a person want to draw out the novel behind those words. Oh, yeah, that's what it's like, you hear a title—in the world, in your head—and if you can catch the end of that string—not easy—and have learned the patient art of holding—pulling—it's rather like giving birth, in that you are an essential part of the process but not exactly in control. It's a whole lot like a birth. I had to deliver a baby alpaca once when her exceptionally dimwitted mother kept spinning around to see what in god's name was happening to her behind, the feeb. Fortunately she was a smallish animal—alpaca are not as large as llamas, nor do they spit as much. In fact, they reminded me, in style and personality, of nothing so much as cats.

So I had to brace her and work with the incredible power of the contraction. She certainly needed help—but you can only help in rhythm to the contractions. Which are expulsions. A series of expulsions, and she's whirling around, and somehow I got the baby out and the cord cut. But I'll tell you, if you've never been on the other end of a birth, you haven't touched the Power. And when you do, you will know forever that you have touched something bigger than words can tell. Are supposed to tell. The really fine things remain nameless.

We tied the cord with a piece of string. In two places, and cut it between. I seemed to be the only person involved who wasn't afraid. Afraid? Hell, been through it twice myself. I held still.

Tera Patricks Says I'm Getting A Mac PDA!

I'm convinced that QuickTime 7 sets the stage for an Apple-branded iMovie Store and a handheld iBook mini later this year or at Macworld 2006.

Just make it really handheld this time, 'k?

Oh golly, I'm so excited . . .

Ain't That America

In 1998, President Clinton was impeached over lying under oath in a sexual harassment case. The crimes of the Bush administration are orders of magnitude greater. Thousands of American lives have been shattered, tens of thousands of Iraqi lives ruined, billions of dollars of taxpayer money squandered, the moral and democratic reputation of the United States besmirched, and for what?

There you pretty much have it. The split at the American center, in a nu ... nevermind.

(in joke: I started to code this post, left angle-blowquote-rt angle ... )

link: kuro5hin

And The Schmucks Went

Reporters were invited to hang poolside with the president on one condition—that they not report on any conversations that happened there.

This is what has happened to the fuckin' media. If you wanna know what's happened to the fuckin' media.

Of course, in the larger sense—which I would be happy to explain—this is what has happened to all of us and furthermore, it is exactly what Marx said would happen. When exchange of capital replaced the natural exchange between men.

All he wanted was to peel off this monster layer that sits atop us, all he bemoaned was the way it becomes accepted as normal.

All he believed was that there was a natural human way, that humankind could be restored to itself, were the pernicious influence of capitalism removed.

But to see what that way might have been, might be, you have to look so far into the past . . . so deeply into Marx's dreams and into your own, where they sit silent, unrealized in your heart—almost no one bothers. Monks. Writers. Nutjobs. Therapists, (the good ones, very rare) inventors, geeks.

Just do this one little thing: just notice, as you go about your day weighing the worth of everyone you come across—I know you do, let's not waste time on that—and right after you realize why they are really, objectively unworthy, note their socioeconomic status. That's all.

The Buddha said, Do nothing. Simply notice.

Well, if he didn't say it, I'm sayin' it now.

Today's question: What personal beliefs would you set aside for a poolside lunch with the prez?

The State of Things

. . . as a former C.I.A. Middle East specialist, Reuel Marc Gerecht, said on 'Meet the Press,' U.S. democracy in 1900 didn't pllet women vote. If Iraqi democracy resembled that, 'we'd all be thrilled,' he said. 'I mean, women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy.

Bite me.

Please. Bite me.

Damage Done

Is feminist logic turning Asperger's Syndrome into an oppressive patriarchal psychosis?

Um, no, honey. Critique comes after phenomenon.

There really are limits to what one woman can spawn into being.

Condi Told Me

Pressed to explain how a constitution ‘rooted in Islam’ will end up ‘honoring the rights of women,’ Bush said he knew it would work out that way because Condoleezza Rice had told him.

‘I talked to Condi, and there is not—as I understand it, the way the constitution is written is that women have got rights, inherent rights recognized in the constitution, and that the constitution talks about not ‘the religion,‘ but ‘a religion.’

Okay, then maybe it's like the opposite of a learning curve, and when he becomes openly bone-headed enough so that even the least of us (thank you Jesus) recognizes Pitiful Ignorance, then the man is laughed out of office.

Oh yeah. Right.

His Own Private Atoll

Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over. ‘We will stay the course,’ he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch. What do you mean we, white man?

Frank Rich—when did Frank Rich get so funny—certainly knows that he takes to task a man who isn't there. Whom there is no task to take to, because he lives in a (very small) world of his own.

It would be like telling my ex, Run this country. You can be damn sure that was a microphone pack under the jacket, it would have been a cruelty to have done otherwise. Stand a learning disabled man up there in front of the world? With a presidential election at stake?

Perhaps you have to have lived with one of these men—which, if you are a woman, makes you automatic dogsbody for life—and heard the things that tumble out of their mouths not exactly unbidden, but not bidden either. Words, alright, but it's all rather Tourette's-like, in the general sense, which is the only way I see things and you ought to, too. A kind of generality that reveals astonishingly accurate information. The view from here is perfect: just enough blur so that the patterns stand out, a kind of hawk's eye vision of life. Show me something edible rustling the grass a half-mile away, and I am there. Otherwise, people, try not to bother me. (I speak in the metaphorical sense.)

(I speak the part of us that usually can't. The Being? And if I speak Being's narrative, what, then, is the ground? Did Wittgenstein know? Really?)

If you will notice, at either end of the spectrum is Silence. I'm trying to think what I mean by that. What I do know it that silence is the absolute pivot that gets a woman's life fucked and this country too.

One Life To Live

Dubya's

Oops, I'm sorry, the President said he has a life to live. A life.

Thanks, Ronnie!

Now I could have this all wrong—though offhand, I don't recall that ever happening—but it sure looks like normal people will never again be able to afford a second home, a cabin in the woods, a pile of dirt, at Tahoe. The Rich have descended, that swarm of wealthy locusts, and the price for even a pile of dirt, well, dream on. The thing about being one of the Not-Rich is, you cannot imagine how far money goes, its vastness all out of proportion to human life. Which Karl Marx said, but no, you wouldn't listen. And now you can drive around the lake, but don't touch. None of it will ever be yours. Maybe a motel room in Manteca. Those'll be the family memories.

Make no mistake, when The Rich buy up the land and homes where ordinary people used to live and play, they buy up great chunks of your experience. Your past and your potential future. They make your life smaller, more guarded, more fretful. And you pay taxes so they can! Is this a great country or what!

I think we all know capitalism sucks, in theory. But did you ever imagine that its truth would arrive on your doorstep, come into your house, sit down and change the channel this way?

Anyone, any single being among the Not-Rich who votes Republican ought to have his or her head extensively and professionally examined. It's unfortunate that the political parties are divided quite so sharply, but there you are. You could drive up to Tahoe and directly hand the money to a Rich Person. Same thing, though I think they'd prefer the indirect route.

The valley I lived in for twenty years, in a county north of San Francisco, used to be so much further away. Folks there were safe to be as backwards and out of step as they liked. Which was, believe me, a much easier life. Chasing after style is a neverending source of exhaustion and bad mood. All in all, the Rich are a testy lot, which is why they put many pictures in the paper looking jolly.

In time, as life and driving speeded up, even country people wanted, as people will, more. And the Eighties gave it to them. If you went into the Eighties with a little money, any fool could come out with a whole huge lot. There were tax loopholes you could drive a Mercedes through. Fleets of Mercedes Benz. And then some wise-ass farmer tore out his prune orchard—okay, maybe there wasn't a driving demand for prunes—and planted the first fateful vineyard.

Now there is a jet airport in that valley—for private jets—and I don't know where all the families went who had farmed that land for generations. I don't want to know—I left. The town square is four sides of boutique—christ, the town is boutique.

You have to buy stylish thing things.

You have to keep on buying them.

Those are the two main rules.

Though there are an awful lot of rules to being Rich, which is what makes it such a tiring life. But this one is central to the whole endeavor: We shall never think or speak of the family we displaced.

And really, why should they.

The sense of entitlement that comes with money ... is a wonderment. Money begets the sense of entitlement to more money, pretty soon those with less begin to look like so many chickens, there for the plucking, the chickens of course come to think of themselves as a bunch of dumb clucks—I mean, look, if you can buy and sell me, I must be worth shit. As Marx so famously said.

Viva la revolucion? Not gonna happen. Better the dwindling middle class get down on its knees and pray the economy keeps trickling on down.

The Wolfowitz We Have

If Rumsfeld is the face, mouth and strong right arm of the war in Iraq, Wolfowitz—the intellectual godfather of the war—is its heart and soul.

Says a close associate of the deputy's: “Paul asks himself every day how he can limit suffering by toppling another dictator or by helping people to govern themselves.”

Time's Person of the Year, 2003. I just came across this. Seems well worth carving in blog, if not stone.

You see, there's a whole phalanx of Broken.

Otherwise known&#mdash;not only by Colin Powell, but apparently this has been their nickname for, oh, twenty, thirty years around D.C.&#mdash;as The Crazy Fucks.

They all majored in Broken, at Chicago, all Strausserians. Some kind of autistic, imperialist crap that has not one atomic particle to do with the fluctuating nature of reality as we know it.

But the thing is.

The thing is.

Can you possibly, possibly imagine the tiny degree to which this troubles the Brokens?

Perhaps you can; I realize it's a step into unbounded craziness. I think Alice had more trustworthy guides in Wonderland, Through The Looking Glass, than this nation, than we have now.

The only odd and surprising thing about all of this is how far The Brokens have come, in life. But it isn't, really, when you think about, say, idiot savants. Think about a mind tuned to one channel, multiply by, let me see, Cheney plus Condi plus . . . Need I finish this dreadful calculation?

I think not.

If Only

RabbitBlog: You're the perfect blogger: smart, damaged, honest, dirty, and verbose.

What, you think women over fifty don't want cool shit like this said to us ?

Jeez. I certainly do. But do I get any? Noooo.

Look, we don't magically turn into ladies just cuz there's a few years on the ol' butt.

It's In His Hair

I only got one question.

Does this mean John Bolton is going to be forced into a real haircut?

And, ick, a mustache trim?

Perhaps not; I suppose it shall be a measure of his power, and what has he got on George Bush anyway, or, why is Bush just mad to get him in place? Are we not quite ruined in the eyes of the world, that we need our international representative to be a fractious pill?

He looks like a poorly-paid highschool biology teacher. Which is, as we all know, tantamount to an abusive sadist with a short fuse.

Somebody buy that man a decent suit.

The Bonfire of the Neocons

Vice President Cheney's office has specifically told the Pentagon that the military should be prepared for an attack on Iran in the immediate aftermath of 'another 9-11.' That's 'not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States,' notes Geraldi.

Can it get madder than this? The neocons' plans for a total reorganization of the 'Greater Middle East' have been plain for some time now. Many have been warning against the prospect of an expansion of the Iraq War into Syria and Iran. You'd think that reality would smack these guys in the face and they'd call off anything so stupid.

You people aren't getting it. Dick Cheney is one of the broken ones—broken is, like, across the board. Little stupidity, big stupidity—I must not be communicating this well—it's all the same! It's all on the same scale, because the human aspect of the mental apparatus is broken.

Not, works in some cases. Not, oh, gee, this crisis is soooo big, Cheney (Humpty) and Rove (you know) will come to their senses. These are senses that broken brains ain't got.

It gets scarier. Oh, man, if you had any idea, the ways you depend on the empathetic capacity, how deeply we depend on the mutual social trust.

By the time this thing is over, we'll all have had a thorough education in people without shading, without ambiguities, without the normal capacity for self-questioning.

Hey, G.W. said it best: "I don't make mistakes."

And Rummy: "It's all Turkey's fault.

Here, Chick Chick Chick

Some officials worry that any trial would risk putting the United States—and some of its questionable methods in the terror war—up on the stand right next to the suspects,' the article continues. 'They are particularly concerned about suspects whom the United States 'rendered' over to foreign countries known for torturing prisoners. Under public pressure, the White House disavowed the practice.'

Let Me Get This Straight, Ricky-Baby

Santorum said he's heard from ‘many’ women who tell him that it's ‘easier,’ more ‘professionally gratifying’ and ‘more socially affirming’ to work outside the home than it is to take care of their own children. “Think about that for a moment,” Santorum writes. “Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders.”

So. What you are saying, Senator Santorum, is that older women like myself, involved at the modest beginnings of Women's Lib, um, planted a concept in the minds of younger women (are ya with me so far?) that (perhaps a little chip, behind their ear?) now causes them to experience an “ease” and “personal gratification” ... which they don't really feel?

Golly. I command millions.

You flamin' frigtard. Make no sense whatsoever, just throw blame at wall, see what sticks. You know what that accomplishes, don't you. A witless accusation reveals the accuser to be ... witless. Say, wait a minute. Could it be, Senator, that you are what we used to call Part Of The Problem, oink oink?

And, let's see, being a mother at home gets no respect. Which would mean, some portion of society looks down upon or ignores the value of a contribution beyond measure. Whooo could that portion be?

Staying home, taking care of small children, can be monstrously difficult, draining, boring. Lord knows.

But what I've heard from women is, having a job frees them not from kids and home—it frees them from having to take a single ounce of crap from Mr. Breadwinner and Sole Controller. Who (it is to laugh) “shares” his earnings with the unspoken (or, under the tiniest duress, way spoken) expectation that, in return for this largesse, he will be flattered, pleased, and generally taken care of.

And on his terms, fuck mental, spiritual or psychological health. You do know what I mean. The god of Male Ego is an angry, Old Testament god, and I am here to say, sleep with him at your peril.

I was once married to a guy like that. Did I ever fail to make him “happy!” I realized later, hey! There's a whole profession that could have pleased him all along! But, see, he wanted it to look voluntary; he wanted it to look like love.


link: salon politics