humorlessbitch

The Center of The Hip World

2008-12-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

The most fabulous shoes she had ever seen ...

For some time now, certain Boulder-ites of my acquaintance have been arguing the case for their ... town? is Boulder a town? ... being the center of the hip world. Or is it hippie. I am confused. But aren't we all ... the adrenaline crash, well, let us just respect that adrenaline is a powerful, powerful drug. Kindness starts with the self.

But you can see how stressful this has been, living through a Historic Moment and all. People are handing the let down in all different ways. Some are listless, some depressed. Some are in wonder that Arianna can go on—I notice more celebrity crap turning up on her front page every day—but wasn't the Huff Po the perfect vehicle at the perfect moment.

Cranking up the ol' MacBook (Pro) first thing in the morning was faster and more fun—what in god's name did Sarah say this time—more comprehensive-at-a-glance than any five newspapers. I mean, so long print. And I say that as a writer. (Who used to dream of paper, but that's another story.)

But a fully linked newspaper is, admit it you geezer, the whole gobbet, the whole ... Wait—what was it McLuhan said? He said we would bathe in the media. He didn't know about the intertubes, of course, but he rather presciently said we would bathe in the news. Rather than poke along line by line.

And honey, we are immersed. Not that this takes the place of line-by-line. You know, reading. Sometimes one likes it big, fast and overwhelming ... and sometimes one likes the extreme pleasure of long, slow and careful.

Boulder. So I'm like, did Prince Charles* come to the school garden in Boulder? Did Maria Shriver step through the school garden in her exquisite stilettos in Boulder? I think not.

Oh, right: rest of world? The schoolyard edible garden is the brainchild of Alice Waters, our own little royalty. The garden was there before, but now it is ... meaningful.

My ten-year-old cousin was on weeding rotation, the day Maria Shriver came. The most fabulous shoes she had ever seen, appearing in her line of sight. Heels, she said, that kept sinking in the dirt, but Maria Shriver is nothing if not a good sport, and made no show of it.

We also have something called Slow Food. Which may or may not be patented by Alice Waters, but I am of the opinion it is crock-pot renamed. I could be wrong.

So. Boulder. The email. The argument settled, the question forever made moot. He sends this clipping (little dreaming what use I would make of it) (or perhaps he did.) Some woman in the paper for dying her poodle pink. Which is one thing. But that Boulder is a place where a one could dye a poodle?

In Berkeley, we are busy blocking troop trains—alright, that was a while ago—staging tree-ins, voting against the neutron bomb, and rarely dining at Chez Panisse. The poodle always stays home.

(*I believe Camilla was there too, but who gave a fuck?)

Before Everything Solid Melts

2008-11-29T03:05:00.000-08:00

Every island of life that exists without a profit motive ...

Seth Grodin talks about blogs: " ... the point is to start a conversation that spreads, to share ideas and to chronicle your thinking. That's the work of an author, and I think rather than kissing author blogs goodbye, someone should just start a new list."

When business discovered blogging, something of great value that existed just fine on its own was abruptly torn asunder ... with the click-tracking aid of our Master Google. When Google's wondrous graduate-student algorithms turned to links into currency, a world was lost forever.

Every island of life that exists without a profit motive is part of the precious, disappearing archipelago on which humans freely belong upon this earth.

You know, to make things up and pretend they're real ... confuses the mind, only worsening that massive sense of worthlessness, the attempted disguise of which fuels consumerist society. Feeds the nastiest aspects of patriarchal thinking, which believes that Power equals power over other people. By which method, of course, the Thought Leaders consume their own ass, in the great grinding circular machine.

One cannot help but believe the human animal was given consciousness, an inner being and life of the mind, to do something besides grasp and get rich. (Hey, book title.)

So, yes, what the web needs is a new list, a new word. Leave the term "blog" to business, to public relations, to the self-important Influential. (Influence whom.) They've taken it anyway.

My own Technorati rank now hovers in the high single digits. After nearly five years of writing here, humorlessbitch ranks three whole points above the Tumblr log I started last year. Why? Because I haven't enough fresh links coming in. Anyone who connected to this blog more than six months ago? Those links are gone.

If you believe Technorati, then, I have what is basically No Authority at all. Love that choice of words. When what I got is Authority coming out my eyeballs, hell, I had more Authority as a little girl than all the dweebs at Technorati. Popular posts, my ass. You little tools of capitalism.

So. Yes, a new word. I'm sick of the Blogger-blogger thing anyway. Whether or not one uses Google's free service (free if you don't count blood, sweat or tears) (whatever happened to David Clayton Thomas anyway, and why go on without him?) ...

... there are as many reasons to write freely to the web as there are hearts and minds that seek, that need the democracy of free expression.

Drive the thieves from the fucking temple! Don't Be Evil? Hello, corporate projective identification!

Maybe Google could start a mirror of this service that really is for the people (thereby restoring a tad of their wretched karma.) ... maybe call it Write. Write Here.

Greetings From Iraq

2008-11-26T01:06:00.000-08:00

giving thanks

Happy Thanksgiving from Mr. Fish, who brings us beauty and truth, when, really, we deserve neither.

"To Rag The Worthy"

2008-11-24T03:20:00.000-08:00

Who took took my brink away!

Since I haven't any willpower myself ... having, I suppose, held my breath for too long, from fear of the loss of it and at the same time, willing Obama into office ... and then, when election day came and went in way less than the time it should have taken ...limp rag. I are a limp rag, or perhaps more pointedly, what's left of my psyche. My own little, okay, not-inconsiderable will-to-power. Shreds.

Not that I shall achieve public power in this lifetime, which is to say, widespread recognition. And naturally, as a severely neglected girl and wife (one buys into the other, doncha know) this is the One Hunger. The one I thought I always wanted .., and thought and thought and thought. Ten or twelve years ago, I was so on-the-brink it ain't funny.

Then someone took my brink away. What happened? That's what I want to know, too. But I'll tell you one outcome of that beautiful rug, pulled out from under me: I have had to weigh What Life Means ...when you haven't any external tickets counted up. (And no, the links to this blog wouldn't feed a mouse.)

Oh. You thought I was going to tell some answers.

What I can do, in this strange and listless state is point to this remarkable sea-change ol' Mer's been going through—it changes a man,to become a father ... it brings out character.

Merlin writes: "What makes you feel less bored soon makes you into an addict. What makes you feel less vulnerable ... turns you into a dick. And the things that are meant to make you feel more connected today often turn out to be insubstantial time sinks ...

Don’t get me wrong. Gumming the edges of popular culture and occasionally rolling the results into a wicked spitball has a noble tradition that includes the best work of of Voltaire, Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde ... There’s nothing wrong with fucking shit up every single day. But you have to bring some art to it. Not just typing.

What worries me are the consequences of a diet comprised mostly of fake-connectedness, make-believe insight, and unedited first drafts of everything. I think it’s making us small.

How small children do inspire. I find this next very endearing ,,,

I have no plan to stop making dick jokes or to swear off ragging people who clearly have it coming to them. It’s just that it’s important to me to make world-class dick jokes and to rag the worthy in a way that no one is expecting.

A-fuckin'-men, bro.

Signed Sealed Damn He Delivered

2008-11-22T06:13:00.001-08:00

Crank up the blasters.

Oh, and hey, Repubbie-type haters? Eat your heart out.

We'll wait.

But Will She Stay There

2008-11-10T16:10:00.000-08:00

No cheekbones after all. Let this be a lesson to you.

link: Truthdig

"Wasilla Hillbillies Hit Nieman Marcus"

2008-11-05T16:53:00.000-08:00

explaining karma to Steve Schmidt

Well of course that line caught my eye. Too perfect a scenario, and all I have to say to the poor fuck Republican ops who had to mind her, is ... hell-o, this is regulation redneck behavior. And you didn't get that? You didn't foresee it? ... Hell, y'all just got taken for a big fat Wasilla ride.

Number one, we have read enough, now, about Bill Kristol, upon beholding Sarah, received wood for the first time in many a moon—and we wish to know no more. Ever.

Two, somebody needs to explain karma to Steve Schmidt. (Who maybe shoulda hired a Democrat from the start. Who coulda tol ya not to get mixed up with professional rednecks. Who were born to pick off Republican suckers like you, ducks in a row—born to it.)

See, karma is like a boomerang, what always returns from whence it was flang, so if you send shit out, it's shit that'll come back 'n' bite you on the butt. If I may mix my metaphors for a moment. (Rednecks don't give a damn about metaphors.)

Newsweek has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist.

... instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement.

One aide estimated that she spent "tens of thousands" more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast," and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.

I think, all in all, the GOP probably got off cheap.

But last night? Schmidt refused to allow her to say a single word. Didn't you wonder about that? And that, Steve-o, is what we call a grievous moral error.

If you knew the tiniest thing about the life of a woman like Sarah Palin. What it meant that you plucked her out of obscurity, you dumped her in a pool in which she hadn't skill to swim ... Or hell, maybe it was an intended cruelty.

Either way, I'd be watching my butt about noq, Steve, I was you.

Lucky Everyone

2008-11-05T04:07:00.000-08:00

I knew those were very old, painful tears; you can see that.

Wasn't til late tonight—it's 4 a.m. in California—I remembered, Jesse Jackson was there when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. Among many other things.

I don't expect he ever thought to see what happened tonight.

Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

And forty-odd years later, but an eye-blink in history ...

Hell, makes me cry too, Makes a lot of us weep. As well it might.

Zydeco Obama

2008-11-03T15:52:00.000-08:00

Oui, on peut

The Boss and The Boss

2008-11-03T02:32:00.000-08:00

Land of Hopes and Dreams

It's gonna be alright ...

With God On Our Side

2008-10-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Dude, I invented Sin. Ever heard of it?

Palin also thanked her supporters—including Dobson, who said he and his wife were asking 'for God’s intervention' on election day"

Thing is, I got down on my knees and God said to me, "What a fucking affront!" That's right—there are no bad words in His vocabulary, think about it.

"These people who pretend to speak for me, and in doing so reveal a spirit of hatred and divisiveness, what is up with that.

"When the very first thing I taught them was, You are all my children, I love you all, equally. There is no 'difference.' Some of you invent them, and base all manner of bad behavior upon that invention. Up here, I call that Sin, hell-o?

"Dude, I invented Sin. Ever heard of it? (He can be pretty funny.)

"Which is not to say I don't have mixed emotions about having done so, but it was the best way I could think of to give you higher primates a game of life."

So apparently, if I am to do God's work in equal fashion to Rev. Dobson or the Mrs., (this is hella embarrasing, I want you to know) I hereby also ask for God's intervention.

Please, Lord, may all those with hatred in their heart come down with a bad case of diarrhea on election day so they got to stay home. Let Obama win by a great hunkin' landslide, for, as You know, his plans and his spirit will be benefit everyone. Hate-filled ignorant fucks included.

Amen. 'kthxbai.

The Followers of Christ Speak

2008-10-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

Jesus
has got to do
something about Karl Rove

Oh, hell, you know and I know the web is woven with lunatics, this is by nature part of its ghastly beauty. I just happened upon the rat's nest described below, and oh my dear, Will Jesus when He Returns please make a special trip, just for these guys? (I don't see The Coming as a single event, but—holy crap, I just realized I am talking like one of the characters in my novel.)

You come to do this, in, ahem, maturity, you find you've developed the skill to both be yourself and, on another level, observe yourself, from almost an aesthetic point of view.

Or maybe this is me, and on this cool, peaceful evening, the usually separate trajectories relax and blend. What I write to you—my all-important reader—what my characters say to me ... I think there's a third meta-level hiding in here somewhere ...

Much of life demands a steady stream of ordered, linear and sequential thought. Totally not my native turf. I wonder if it really is anyone's, or if the thought disorders so prevalent on the web might not be a result of that kind of pressure. To think, to be, a certain way. Perhaps all dreaming is sweet, friendly ... and the barking-mad among us, in all their fabulous inconsistencies, might be healed by giving it a rest. If the unreal fears might not die down.

Though really, first, Jesus has got to do something about Karl Rove.

The Coming Thugocracy: Three things doth a people need to remain free: reliable, secure communications; an education grounded in history and basic moral philosophy; and a copious supply of weapons suited to individuals' hands.

I'm sorry, that was from the Book of ...? Chapter? Verse?

In the event of an Obama victory, especially should the Senate fall wholly into the hands of the Democrats, a final assault upon freedom of expression and the right to keep and bear arms will begin at once. In that case, we'd have less than three months to prepare ourselves. It would be wise to start now.

A colleague has forecast an Obama administration as 'four years of hell.' No doubt it would be; it's certainly an excellent reason to get braced. But even if he loses, the destroyers of American civilization, the only Christian-Enlightenment-based society remaining on Earth, will still be at work.

Enlightenment-based. Hoo-kay. What I wonder is, how and at what point weapons got so mixed up with Christ ... never mind that wingnuts like this lay claim to speak for Jesus, even as they manage to overlook that, according to His teachings, their asses would be the first to go.

How do I know? Versus the alternate, um, reality of the barking ones?

A certain sweet consistency. Really. As a woman, it's my right.

Projections Done Pretty

2008-10-18T15:32:00.002-07:00

An old war wound? A corset?

Just makes person feel good. After eight years of moral starvation. Sure looks like a human bein' ("be in"—get it? we thought it was pretty damn clever in 1968, yes we did) is going to occupy the Oval Office, and that is about as refreshing as it gets.

Used to be I was deeply excited that Obama is Black. Now, after further and I must say torturous exposure to poor John McCain—he wears a corset, right? Old war wound? Did you notice, in the previous debate, no way he could perch on that stool. Nope, he reeled from one prop to another, standing the whole time.

And what year was he was last a POW? Because for him, hey, that's fresh material—for cringeworthy "jokes" on David Letterman. Dave cringed, the audience cringed, this viewer cringed somethin' fierce. It is meaningful that John McCain knoweth not What To Say. Two issues: execrable taste and, get off my lawn, the man suffers from senile dementia. I'm telling you.

Here's a wake up: McCain's August '07, announcing on Letterman, some minimal sense of irony intact. And the McCain we have now, tics, leers, corset and all.

I don't know that he so much sold his soul as lost it, like losing your glasses, somewhere along the campaign trail.

c.f.Ken Burns: We in New Hampshire bear some responsibility ... Thinking we had the old McCain, we gave him a decisive victory in our primary.

Thanks a bunch, New Hampshire.

So at this point I'm happy out of my mind just to have a candidate with faculties intact.

Course then there's my other theory: that McCain realized, somewhere on the stump, NFW do I want to be president. So he calls up Sarah Palin ....

Vote For Hope!

2008-10-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

We need someone who understands the complexity of our time.
Obama '08 - Vote For Hope from MC Yogi

Oh go full screen, go full screen. Every frame so full of hope, so gorgeous.

Come Saturday Morning

2008-10-10T22:34:00.000-07:00

... if you're going to San Francisco

Come election day | bmo: I’m really fed up with the politics as it is being ‘fed’ to me. Especially the character issue. Which seems to me to be the end result of this personality/branding cult thing.

Truer words, people, truer words! It's not like I didn't tell you this personal branding thing sucks.

No, I mean literally, it sucks the existential marrow right out your bones.

And you wonder why you feel ... so empty. After you log out of FaceFeed, FriendBook, whatever.

After you perhaps, god forbid, perform a Shut Down. You really ought to get a Mac, the script-kiddies have contests how long they can stay Up. Oh dear, that came out all wrong.

But really. And I suppose it's Unix kiddies ... but the thing is, like the good little server-guts it is, the Mac, any Mac, just keeps running and running. Which I do sometimes resent, and I do Shut Down my machine at night.

Right before I dash into bed.

After starting up Mail again one last time. Just in case.

Okay, some nights I might do a Restart ... but that's only so I can run f-scky, also just in case.

Like, maybe there won't be time in the morning.

Oh the little lies we tell ourselves, just to get through this looong ennui-beset thing called, um, life.

These are very important things for people like Brian Moffat and me to put out. As an example to the Yout of America.

Who, if folks like us don't speak up, will think it is a normal and natural thing, branding yourself. Marshall McLuhan (for want of a better person) is spinning in his grave. No? Karl Marx?

Television is a terrible and insidious thing. Take my word for it. I know, because I was born Before Television. That's right. I am a Charter Member of the Mickey Mouse Club, neener-neener to you lot. Still got my card somewheres. (Wonder what it would bring on eBay. Course, it's got my photo firmly affixed. Maybe not so much.)

And we all know how much people learn from their elders who are smarter and more experienced than they can ever hope to be. Not to mention Cool.

Street creds: I was a Flower Child.

Alright, then, don't pay attention, but if you're comin' to San Francisco .. stay the hell off my lawn.

Newton Redux?

2008-10-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

... what am I going to do with all this left-over schadenfreude
I ask you?

"Many signs point to next week's laptop announcement as being the world-beater we've been waiting for," says The New York Times. Brian Hayashi: "Apple will come full circle with a mobile device that acts like an inexpensive laptop."

Something hot is going to happen. Though by god, the curves have been slow to meet. Okay, slower than I would have liked. I thought the time for a pocket-tablet-touch-internet-thingie was at least five years ago. Man, that Steve is a slow worker. However. He's got this thing about doing it right. Meticulous—the byword of a certain presidential candidate, too.

Actually it's heartening, in this piece-of-crap world. I'm surprised all those alleged McCain fans aren't even curious to see the New. The well-crafted President. Who takes his time and gets things right. What an organization.

It was inevitable that Apple be the one. If it ain't the world-beater this time, it will be, very soon. You're going to enter the cloud, and by god, Steve's got the device by which you will do so.

Sorry, PC fans (are there any left?) You think we've been gloating. Hell, not so long ago, Mac users took endless shit. We were trying to convert you to some annoying cult. Nooo, we were trying to say, Hey, this thing works!

Now you're all carrying MacBooks or want one. And what am I going to do with all this left-over schadenfreude? I ask you?

Inevitably, when we talk about excellence—of planning, of execution, of the happy meetup of function and form—we find ourselves at the doorstep of Art. And why not. It is an art to make fine things. It is art to have a vision and to slowly, over time, carry it out.

People who jabber about Steve's reality field, just like those who say Obama's appeal is his Cool, miss the fucking point.

I suppose, again, I describe the problem: How do people think? How do they perform the act of thinking, and, Do they do so well or poorly?

What thinking is. I read all of Hannah Arendt and it remains a stunning mystery, the ways in which the thing is or is not done.

There seems, not to belabor the obvious—I mean, we are here on the web, this is a blog—to be a layer of consciousness that apparently will paddle about in the shallows forever.

When there is so much more to life. Vast oceans, okay, accessible only inasmuch as the exploratory nature of thought shows them to the thinker. Experience itself being pre-thought-out. Envisioned. The mind must first imagine.

For some whose imagining capacities have ruled our lives, and not always as we would have wished, the question arises—just to pick a wild example—to those who watched the debates and liked John McCain's non-existent position... Because he said My Friends so many times. And after all: War Hero.

Who thought the two men were even on the same planet. One dearly wants to ask, What was going through your mind? I figure the most probable answer has got to be, Not much.

They were—and are—doing something else. Some activity of mind that resembles thinking but is not—that occupies the time. Swimming round and round in the shallows, not especially wanting more. Do the Dog Paddle! Hey, it's a life.

On The Bus With Cindy

2008-10-08T21:01:00.000-07:00

Perhaps this happened to David Foster Wallace. Perhaps he died of happiness.

I read with great interest David Foster Wallace: The Weasel, Twelve Monkeys and The Shrub. Just as I read a number of David Foster Wallace things recently. I don't know why his death was especially frightening and sad, but it was. Perhaps moreso for writers, for if he with his industrial-strength talent and his ability to nail a thing it never crossed your mind could be nailed ... Binding an existential wound you didn't know could be bound ...

It's true, his writing plugged some of the holes through which leaks one's vital matter, source of so much agony in life. Which suggests that pain is retrospective, but it probably mostly is. The courage to tolerate being in less pain, the wherewithal to live in full awareness what you suffered in the past... Perhaps this happened to David Foster Wallace. Perhaps he died of happiness.

Hard to excerpt from a DFW piece, as you can imagine, but I really wanted to talk about Cindy. It occured to me, she is probably, probably always has been an abused wife.

Another kind of captivity. Something binds them: her guilt, his temper. There is nothing so binding as the secrecy of abuse. Not that I want to go there, but neither do we want this woman as First Lady. I fear it would kill her. Perhaps kill them both.

Rolling Stone, April 2000: Behind the buses' digestive areas is another couch-intensive section, in which right now Mrs. McCain's personal assistant on the Trail, Wendy ... is using her cellphone to try to find someplace in downtown Charleston where Mrs. McCain can get her nails done.

... Mrs. McC.'s sedulous attention to her own person's dress and grooming is already a minor legend among the press corps, and some of the techs speculate that stuff like getting her nails and hair done, together with being almost Siametically attached to Ms. Lisa Graham Keegan (who is Arizona's Education Superintendent and supposedly traveling with the Senator as his "Adviser on Issues Affecting Education" but is quite obviously really along because she's Cindy McCain's friend and confidante and the only person in whose presence Mrs. McC. doesn't look like a jacklighted deer), are the only things keeping this extremely fragile person together on the Trail, where she's required to stand under hot lights next to McCain at every speech ... and stare into the middle distance ...

Eight years ago, people. Before McCain lost his mind—and, apparently, his soul.

The current Rolling Stone has, of course, the scorched-earth version , and it's hard to disbelieve a single word. As Saul Bellow so famously titled his last work, It All Adds Up.

None so blind. I figure that what the American public sees, when they look at McCain in the debate, as well as what they hear—is what they themselves want to see and hear.

Whereas Barack Obama has something to tell. His words carry meaning, little packages of sense for the ear to take in, the mind to unwrap.

That's a b-i-i-i-i-g bitchen divide.

Vent-A-Spleen

2008-10-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

I'm old, you damn kids get off a my lawn

Oh, there is a need.

To vent a little spleen, now and then, in a creative, personally fulfilling way.

A duty, as well, to enlighten little minds whereever we go.

I wish to formally thank Twitter Inc for providing the opportunity. Twitter and their new Election 2008 stream.

Really. It's wonderful, what passeth slowly before your eyes. Keeping in mind, of course, that 50% of the test-takers had IQ's under average. We do not pick on the unfortunate—well, we try not to—nor upon the very, very young.

But heck, you over 30? Over 40? 50? (Surfer numbers dwindle.) The task—the task and the vent, all in one, neat, isn't it?—is to Direct Reply instances of actual human thought, not to mention literacy.

Elitist? Hey, I got as much right to be lonesome amongst the commonwealth as any other fringer. (Fringe group member. Minority. One amongst a huge number of clods and knee-jerkers.) (Okay, take for example the nice young man who wrote an actual post (I clicked) on why he is voting for McCain. Because he was sick had a good health insurance experience. And wants to be in control, thusly, of future medical skirmishes. A right that Barack Obama is poised, you know it, to whisk away.)

Now, the levels of un-thinking in this not-stupid young man's political beliefs cry out for a more multilayered analysis—if only on the basis of mystery: how the hell can anyone survive a college education with that kind of narrowness intact?

However. We have work to do. For purposes of this post, we must ignore the red flag of "Control"—the young man has Issues, but what Republican doesn't—and choose the central astonishment: This is why he is voting for McCain!

Hello! It makes sense to grab onto one issue and mentally erase all the rest? It's okay that McCain is a drooling warmonger, what matters is that he will not "impose" some kind of national health insurance upon us? Which, among other things, seems a piece of thinking as wishful as it gets—how the hell does he know what McCain is going to do? Does he really believe that Republican "Less Government" shit?

Stooge. Wake up. At least if Obama stooges you, odds are, it will be in your own best interest.

And that's the trouble, isn't it. Who is the last person you met who had an idea, a clue of their own best interest? That which is every human's birthright, only to be spirited away by those who would profit by controlling you.

Must I trot out Marx and Hegel again? (I know, this is the blog equivalent of waving a flag, "I'm fucking old, you damn kids get off my lawn!")

But really! It isn't! I'm not! (Arguable.) I'm only telling you these things for your own good!

(Hey, what happened to my feed subscriber numbers?)

(memo to self: Good luck ignoring that male control issue. It hovers like a pterodactyl with very large wings that nearly darken the sky. I'm hitting Publish anyway.)

ibid. At least 60 genera of pterosaurs have been found to date, ranging from the size of a small bird to wingspans in excess of 10 meters (33 feet).

How To Park

2008-10-01T01:02:00.000-07:00

... just put the fucking car in the middle

The Brits check in.

Dr Tom Logan, head of species protection at the WWF, said: 'There is a series of white lines separated by spaces roughly the same width as a car, plus a little bit more. Let's think of that as the first Great Big Fucking Clue shall we?"

Who do this sort of thing so well, I don't know why we even bother.

As we approach, we then have to ask ourselves: "Do I park on the white line, do I straddle the white line, or do I get my huge, chocolate-covered face out of my fat, greedy, unwashed arse and just put the fucking car in the middle of the fucking space?"

I think we can all guess the answer to that, and thus closes another session of Take It From The Brits. And we do.

dailymash

Through The Looking Glass

2008-09-18T19:35:00.000-07:00

... until the rhetoric is wrested from the frighteningly capable hands of those who use it towards their own ends

Michael Tomasky, guardian.co.uk: "If you spent three years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a constitutional lawprofessor, spend eight years as a state senator representing a district with more than 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

On the other hand ...

If your total resume is: local weather girl, four years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with fewer than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive."

IMNSHO, until up once more becomes up again, and down, down—until the rhetoric is wrested from the frighteningly capable hands of those who use it towards their own ends—and no, I don't have a fucking idea ... Maybe simply electing a halfway decent person, maybe four years of something like the truth.

Just the usual Washington bullshit ... might do wonders for us all. Or is Truth gone? Has meaning, has the language been so bent, is it such a delicate moral instrument, that once corruption and rot have taken hold ...trust is irrevocably broken?

You do see. Without honor, with this any means to an end behavior ... The foundation of how we live with each other—the great web of social trust—when that can no longer be relied upon ...

I wish to say that Swift Boaters of any kind, in any walk of life, are engaged in criminal action. I wish to say that those who "appeal" to the working class voter via lies and insinuation, in order to get to power, are criminals. No more, no less.

Ha. George Lakoff was right. It's taken all this time for me to think my way to the roots of it ... largely because, it isn't pleasant here. I'm having my own little David Foster Wallace moment, may his soul rest in peace. There's recognition and then there's something more, something we all construct some level of barrier to, in order to remain alive and sane. I expect, given what he was able to write about, the barriers were ... maybe not Tough Enough. Which is not to judge. Artists walk a dicey path, as does anyone who thinks.

Awareness isn't fun.

"Just Like Me"

2008-09-14T19:26:00.000-07:00

... what is the ability to think in radical fashion?

I'm blogging one Salon article, here, but as you surely already know, these exact heartfelt remarks are all over the web, which means (unless Rove and his web operatives have been busier than I think) they are all over the America that goes to the Safeway, eats crap food and likes it, and works their collective ass off in order that the rich shall get richer.

The blue-collar life is for shit, it is physical labor connected to pay in a way most people reading this cannot or prefer not to imagine. In other words, the most vulnerable of lives.

Vulnerable in so many ways ... And to a man, or woman, resistant to the kind of knowledge that might inspire them to at least attempt kick over the traces like workers and workers before them.

Oh rue the day the Marxist critique departed American life.

Which must have been the same moment that advertising completed its dig into the American brain, most handily aided by the invention of television. A huge open tunnel into which are poured, categorically, the crappiest of goods and the desires to own them, the most patently false notions of need and of entitlement. Invent whatever profitable crap you want—it's as if some evil god said—they will buy.

One grieves.

Still languishing in my drafts folder somewhere is a heart-wrenching interview of a hairdresser from Alabama at the last RNC, by a British reporter, stunned and mystified at this woman's enthusiastic devotion to George W. Bush and his "base."

What is political awareness? What is the ability to think in radical fashion, which is to say, to step back from your own situation and see the structure of things?

Is there a cut-off, such as, whether you've had a college euducation? Perhaps there used to be, but now most everyone is stupid, in one way or another. Stupified, which I realize is not the same thing but, boy, are they ever joined at the hip. You do not have time to think, that I already know about you. You take your pleasure where you can.

"I think that she is a terrific role model for my daughter. She's a role model for me." Parker described her family as among the "working poor."

"She represents me. She's real. She represents real people," said flight attendant Charlene Bybee, 54, of Sparks, Nevada.

"I think that it's great that the American people finally have a candidate who they can relate to, with morals," said Tracy, who said the issues she cares the most about are pro-life and the right to bear arms.

....she's the first "common person" he's seen rise to this level in politics.

"I love her. Everyone can identify with her—a working person."

The mainstream media "doesn't understand that Palin represents the vast majority."

"I really do think that we have a candidate who is for the people."

"Isn't she inspiring?"

This is a litany, a prayer and response, though you do not hear the prayers. Women do not, historically, voice what they pray for. But what they imagine they see in Sarah Palin—someone, of course, who gives not shit number one about them, like all the rest—is what they do not have, what they wish to become ... though with tragically little idea how to get there.

Palin told them, "America is an exceptional country and you are exceptional Americans."

And women know way better than to give voice to their fears.

A lone sticker plastered on the concrete floor of the pavilion simply showed an unflattering head shot of Barack Obama with the word "Scary" written over it.

"Palin Would Support War With Russia"

2008-09-12T20:19:00.000-07:00

... has she, personally ever been to this alleged island from which Russia may or may not be seen?

There it was, big as life, front page headline in the San Francisco Chronicle today.

Hell-o? I think somebody just took a Giant Step towards handing the election back to Obama.

Anyone—anyone in their right mind—wants war with Russia?

Or need further proof she knows not of what the hell she speaks? This woman who (loosely speaking) governs a (loosely speaking) state with the population of a small and quite backwards city?

Who also told Charles Gibson, were you not watching, have you not read ... She has "insights" into US relations with Russia

... because "they're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska ... from an island in Alaska."

The real question is not whether Russia can be seen ... But has she, personally ever been to this alleged island from which Russia may or may not be seen? Are there witnesses to this? Does it appear green, brown? Maybe a faded blue? Were there reindeers? Siberians eating moss? And if you have to use binoculars, it doesn't count, you know. I don't s'pose anyone told her that.

Besides, what is this island crap? Oh, sure, St. Lawrence may belong to Alaska, but honey, it's floating way to hell out to sea. It warn't never really in Alaska, or did someone not pay attention in geography class, too busy combing up her hair in a beehive, missy?

"He gave his name to the Bering Straits. For $40, who was—" Buzz!

"Yes, Ms. Palin?"

"George Strait!"

Wake me when it's over.

The Shadow Knows

2008-09-11T14:21:00.000-07:00

...a terrible fear of living under the "governance" of a failed beauty queen

A friend sent this from a MySpace blog:

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that.

I'm not here to argue, but hello, no sometimes about that.

This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice ...Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure.

Governor of 700,000 souls. Worth keeping in mind.

Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses.

Exhorting people to follow their worst impulses. Somehow just seeing this phrase in print, as it were, so finite, so ... recorded, clears the mind, a bit.

... the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we areashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other."

For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings ... He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind.

Which explains a lot. Hard as it is to understand ... it's also understandable. I'm tellin' you, this piece is carving some space in my mind, some weird kind of peace I didn't know I had.

... In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Yes she did. "Yes we do not want to change a god damn thing." "Yes we are happy with the status quo. ... And get that damn foreigner out of here, this is America."

Look at what she stands for:

Small town values—a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.

Ignorance of world affairs— a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.

Family values—code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.

Rigid stands on guns and abortion— a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.

Patriotism—the usual fallback in a failed war.

"Reform"—in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.

Pretty damn good. And I'll tell you who wrote this in a minute, not that it really matters.

... The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. ...

Yes she can!

The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness

...So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light ...

Do I seem like a dunderhead, to have not thought this way already? Then dunderhead I am, and, irony upon irony, I have been one out of my own fear. A terrible, nearly unmanagable fear of living under the "governance" of a .... a failed beauty queen.

The social metaphors for which just pile up like one of those forty-car collisions on a California freeway in the fog. Everything from Jon-Benet Ramsay—and Patsy—to George Lakoff, whom I just want to smack in the face. George, with his comforting moral packaging, designed to make liberals think they understand.

Well they don't! You have to live among these people—the "Hell Yes I'm A Redneck, Where's My Gun I'm Gonna Shoot That Goddamn Dog" folks. You know the attraction of simplicity. The Good guys versus the Bad.

What the writer has pointed out here—the piece is by Deepak Chopra—is precisely what we would like to forget, whether in ourselves, in our beloved, or in national politics. And that is, this life is a whole. Barack is reaching, and stirring up the shit—look what beauty queen came out from under what nowhere rock.

If he loses or wins this election truly is up for grabs. Either way, we ought not—if we admit the whole of life, if we aim to live this life, both in dark and in the light—to be at all surprised.

Joltin' Joe!

2008-09-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

Whoo! Who knew? I mean ... Wow!

Hell In A Trailer Trash Handbasket

2008-09-03T20:42:00.000-07:00

...such an instant hit of bad

Palin Daughter’s Pregnancy Interrupts Script says the New York Times, and what the hell is that all about. Who can chart the Times anymore. Maureen Dowd gone insane, unable to compose a single column that makes sense, have you noticed. Anecdotes that have no point, hell, anecdotes that have no beginning, no end. Some reference to her father. I give up.

I give up on The Times tinge of Obama-caution, as if it might harm life, limb and circulation if they said something outfront positive about the man? Not bloody likely—and here we have what would be a bomb ... what is a supermarket tabloid nuclear bomb—oh, and at five months along, like, they just this minute decided to marry?

You betcha a "script" was interrupted—and how pathetic is that. What, we have "scripts" for the democratic process? I mean like, of course we do, but the tacit yet enormous downplay in that line. Who the hell is the Times for? Who knows? Who cares, anymore?

“They hold the kids pretty tight,” said Chuck Francis Baird, 52, a competitive snow machine racer who has known Mr. Palin for years. “They just don’t let the kids run wild, that’s for sure. They’re not trashy people.”

Which of course means that the very first word that springs to his mind to describe these people is "trashy."

Reason being: they are.

Me, I laid eyes on that woman's photograph—it's amazing, the amount of information an image can convey—and got such an instant hit of bad. I would say, based on my trusty gut, there's no integrity there. Like so much of her kin—and no, I don't think there's enough of 'em to get McCain elected—the truth is so way less important than a grasping kind of getting ahead and climb over your best friend to get there.

Ain't that what small-time beauty queens is all about? Oh, we—part of us—are a sad nation, come low indeed.

Or possibly John McCain isn't right in the head. Hasn't been for some time. Think?