Mama & Papa

This is where the spoiled north side homeless sleep. 'Mama' Patty with her portable grill and her husband 'Papa' who calls himself Manic and insists that this is the legal name his mother gave him. Other pillars of this community are Purvis, a gay blond black man in his fifties, struggling with cocaine and attention whoring, and Mama Dee, divorcee and formally abused wife in Muscatine Iowa; half of her eight children our gay and she has been elevated to a saint in the Halstead bars. The recession dried up her maid business and forced her onto the street. She owns an ipod that one of her children bought her two Christmesses ago, and also a $2500 laptop that she keeps hidden at the bottom of her basket. She's fifty one, same age as my mother, told me that she has a son named Josh in New York, tall blue eyed and long blond; she trusted me with the secret of the Dell almost as soon as I met her. She told me Purvis likes blond white boys, don't give an inch and he won't take a mile.

Mama and Papa regularly get their hands on grillible meat, charrities and such, so it's usually barbeque chicken for the ones who can't afford gas station pizza or can't stay sober long enough to get portable food from a pantry. The couple has been uptown for a long time and will often attract the housed to their barbeques as well. Last night a group of about ten of us, homeless and otherwise, Liz and I among them, martched with Mama and Papa to a spot along the lake in Lincoln Park.

I'm spending my days with Liz at her recovery home in Cicero, ran out of rent money for my hotel room. Hers is a reletively liberal place that lets significant others stay nights over the holidays. Tonight is not a holiday. I must find my own way tonight. Last night I could have stayed but I told her it was the fourth and we must go out. She said she would have to be back by ten, no weekend passes on the holidays, temptations to great. Come with me until than darling, I'll see you in the morning. Mama and Papa had a stereo with Patti LaBelle and Aretha, and we danced until she had to ride back to the suburbs with a friend.

Mama kept giving me chicken three or four times after I refused the next piece, until I stopped looking at the chicken on the grill. The fireworks from downtown were powerful enough to be seen from around the meandering shoreline. There was a party a few feet away from us who was getting reckless with their explosives. One shell went off barely six feet in the air covering us in a black cloud. The girl named Briona would grab me whenever a boom went off. I gave her my jacket when she complained of being cold. (Freakishely cold for the fourth, rained nearly until dark)She has a boyfriend and I have a girlfriend. We winked at each other is all, strictly "Lost in Translation" and innocent. I said it was cute how she was afrsid of fireworks and she said she loved to fuck white men. I told her she smelled nice and she asked me what makes pussy good to me anyway?

And that is a damned fine question. It disturbs and amazes me how much I lack self-reflection in these matters. What does make pussy good to me, besides willingness? Can't honestly say, it's a question I should be able to answer without this sort of trouble. Why do fish need to swim? No. No. Why am I so much more attractive here than I was in Nebraska with stable housing and a reletively stable income? They keep mentioning the eyes and the curl of my hair; maybe you could add my slow hinterland accent and relative bashfulness regarding sex to that. There seems to be something of a Tom Petty fetish among some women here and it will do by me. I can work on my 'evenin mams' and drawl out my diction even more and have a fine old time for as long as the eyes stay blue. Briona came from the Carabian when she was seven. She has a Jamaican accent that she'll stratigicaly drop in with her standard Midwestern black. As I walked her home she was talking to her kid sister in Creole over the phone and could see me smiling and leering.

I couple hours later Mama Dee bought me a Starbucks and showed me where I could charge my phone anytime as long as I had the money for coffee.

Could Stand for A Drink

I told her about New Orleans and and she asked where WE were going to live there. She seems perfectly confident. If she talked even half as much it would be better. If she stopped sending me the sort of chain texts that you could just as easily find on a bumper sticker or a shot glass it would be a lot better. If I gave her a copy of "Gravity's Rainbow" and made it an eighth of the way through I would be much heartened. Dad after all still hasn't touched "The Stranger" since I bought it for him for Christmas.

Or maybe she could just keep telling me how pretty my eyes are and that will do. When leaving the airport I asked a nice Scottish girl for a cigarette, wondered my way to the el station, called her, and told her to tell me how handsome I was. Just a man after all.

I walked Addison from the Kennedy all the way to Halstead yesterday. A solid three miles, never once felt tired. Maybe I could hoof it from my place to the loop or back at least one way.

This Weekend

Went to see the vigil at the former Jackson house in Gary on Friday, the saddest sack of shit this side of Pine Ridge. The town with a literal facade. Two blocks of nice looking convention center facing the South Shore line and the Indiana Tollway. Step into the downtown and you'll quickly notice the lack of a shop that isn't boarded up for six blocks. Liz told me to be careful via text and I promised her I would be back to the city by dark. This was a half truth. Crumbling apartment buildings, vacant lots that haven't been mowed in years, some with footpaths tempting the suicidal into the brush.

A man named Big Sweat drove me the last mile or so to the place in exchange for seven dollars and than twelve. I think it was the mild hustle that innoculated me from getting more seriously jacked. I had three hundred dollars in my pocket. Don't ask me why. It's okay to let the world know now.

All the marquees and electronic sings proclaimed Gary's love for Mike Jack. The Jackson family got the hell out of course as soon as the Motown checks allowed them to, and they are of course the only people from the place to ever strike it rich in any way. Sad doesn't begin to describe. They still have the signs up celebrating the town's 2006 centenial. Mayor Rudy Clay sprays his name and acheivements about the place more shamelessly than a Kim, and of course the city still boasts loudly about being of the fuck-ugly U.S. steel plant along the lakefront. The same U.S. steel that went moribund and took the town with it. Gary takes daddy's beatings as obediently as Micheal and LaToya did.

And it's abundently clear that the Jackson's are a tribe of Black crypto-Catholics. It may even be that Micheal's famous color change reveals betrays them as Sicilians trying to pass as African. The abuse they suffered is apperent in the entire clan's social and sexual stundedness. I'm confident that it was no mere occasional slap from drunken daddy's belt that they suffered. They have the sort of hangups that can only come from ritual sadomasichism of the Papist school. The house where they lived in is obscenely too small for seven kids and their folks. It could of been built for migrent grape pickers. I could go on and on with this.

Every network news van in the metro was there. On the corner facing the house was a man selling ice cream and on the other was a man selling vienna beef dogs. The mourners were busy cramming themselves in front of hand held cameras and singing "I'll Be There" for Youtube. There was a stack of filthy used teddy bears and roses by the front door and some wag left a cardboard tribute to the actual Billie Jean 'Jackson'. I'm afraid that none of it gets to me anymore. How absurd I guess. Yawn.

I took a side street back towards the South Shore that started in what was a clean-enough looking neighborhood before quickly changing back to Bogata once I crossed a set of frieght tracks. I stopped by a liqour store and bought a 40 of "Wildcat" which wasn't at all distinctive. I reached the station to find I had just missed a train by ten minutes and would have to wait an hour and a half to catch the last one inbound for the day. I texted Liz to tell her I was safe and asked her to send me a pic of her legs. I napped mostly until I got back to Millenium Station and met her there.

Saturday we slept until three and watched the FOD's below my window celebrate Pridefest 09. I live just off of Broadway and Halstead and was unsure of just who's ethnic enclave this was until I got here. We lounged until five until the unmistakable strains of "Shake Your Love" reached my room.

My sister was thriteen when Debbie Gibson was hot. I'm familar, and it was pitiful to see her face stretched and dried out by cocaine or surgery or both. Still she put on a hell of a show. Drag queens were rushing the stage like rapists at an ICP concert. After her came Crystal Waters, (La da de,la de da.) The gay night scene is every bit as much of a time warp as any Motley Crew bumping dive in the Nebraska sticks. Thursday night at this place called Bobby Love's they played a newish video from old Gibson rival Tiffany, catering to the glass dick and Eurotrash set now. It was several minites of delirium before I could finally believe that it was THAT Tiffany. My sister dug her too.

I missed the actual pride parade on Sunday as I was in a vein search for a TV showing the USA/Brazil soccer match, which we naturally lost in the most calculatingly painful way imaginable. I called Liz to ask her is she could skip work on Tuesday. She said no and asked why. I said it was nothing and I'll let you know on the when.

The Object of Attacking is Attacking

President Obama is being criticized for having ice cream with his daughters on Father's Day. No, really.
"How in the tank is the mainstream media when we have people dying for the right to be free in a country like Iran that has been such a thorn in the side of America and the spread of democracy in the Middle East and the media thinks that covering Obama and his daughters having ice cream is news?! WTF!
This was, by the way, the day of the famous "Nedia" incident, in which an Iranian election protester with that name was shot dead by revolutionary guards. It is indeed enraging to see the woman lying on the ground, her eyes clouding and tearing as she sees the void and knows; a comrade forlornly trying to staunch the bleeding from a hole half the size of her chest. It is brutally effective propaganda for the democracy movement in Iran. Or you could use it to shit on the president for having ice cream. Whatever.

To the credit of the GOP, this trope has not caught on among that party's leaders. The top brass, at least, is not that stupid, knowing that attacking a man for having ice cream with his elementery-aged girls will win no votes. Still it does reveal a section of the far right that is consciously and deliberatly trying to be outraged by anything the president does. They are seriously going to go there. 'How dare the president have ice cream with his little girls.' If they really are that bothered by it, then I suggest they have some friendly congressman introduce the following resolution.

The president is hereby forbidden from engaging in recreational activities while there is somebody suffering/and or dying somewhwere.

Then again, considering the very noticible emphasis on "having been such a thorn in the side of America." Perhaps the resolution could be reworded like this.

Being that their are millions of human beings suffering and/or dying at every moment of every day. It is certainly too much to expect the president to personally address the pain of all of them. Nonetheless, the president is still forbidin from engaging in any recreational activities when their are people suffering at the hands of forces with unkind things to say about the United States, thus making their suffering trully important.

If middle aged-white men want to play the childish game of showing that they are not afraid of President Other, that they are perfectly willing to criticize him for quite literally everything he does and invent drama out of thin air when need be, fine. So long as they aren't downing a case of Keystone Ice and rolling to the Unitarian Church with their AK's, than we on the left are most profoundly unafraid of them. It would be easy to say that their behavior is that of a bully, but that wouldn't be right. Bullies tend to straighten out after getting smacked in the mouth once or twice, as conservatism certainly has been. Bullies are not religiously commited to believing themselves martyrs. Sara Robision at Orcinus does a fine job of explaing what's going on here on her 'blame the parents' blog post..

"... you learn that you're not entitled to have any physical or emotional boundries. The authorities have an unlimited right to intrude on you're thoughts, feelings, personal space, and even your body perimeter at any time, for any reason. You are not your own; you're entire being is at the mercy of those set by God to rule over you. You must trust that whatever they do, they do for you're own good, even if the reasons arn't clear to you right now, and in fact may never be explained to you. They know best. Just go with that.
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On yet other fronts, they learn that they do have boundries, but only to the extent that they're personally able to fight and defend them. The far-right affection for pugnacious rhetoric and a strong defense comes straight out of this---


It is the soldier, not the minister, who has given us freedom of religion
It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press
It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech
It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us freedom to protest.
It is the soldier, not the lawyer, who has given us the right to a fair trial
It is the soldier, no the politician, who has given us the right to vote
It is the soldier who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag.
- Charles Provience.

That was a little ditty I saw taped to the old Nebraska U. credit union next to ads for used cars and bastard puppies. It always did piss me off something fierce. Apparently there is no such thing as civil society. Saul Bellow would have never written a word on his own don't you see? His Russian-Jewish heratage, study of Hebrew, comprehensive education, time in the Merchant Marine, and stint of living in Paris would have never inspired him to create a thing. No, it was not until some specific set number of Nazis were killed, say 298,123, that his talent magically came to him.

There is a place for self-defense, both personal and national, and I can agree that part of national self-defense is defending the free thought and culture of a nation. But in order to defend a nation's culture the military must neccessarily be the servant of that culture, and they had damned-well never forget it.

There is nothing neccesarily wrong with a solid, tangible brain that shuns abstractions. I could not float away on this blog if some sharp and caffinated brain had not invented the microchip. Still it is understandible that the tangible mind would have trouble with grasping the etherial human liberties; freedom of speech, expression, belief, etc; freedoms that, at some level, exist independently of the person exercising them. It has of course long been noticed that one can record some controversial belief that one later dies for, and that after death somebody else can hear or read the idea and maybe agree. Many are inspired by this fact, others may be disturbed by such negation, unable to accept freedom beyond my freedom, will beyond my will. So among the far right, which loudly and proudly loathes the abstract and intangible, there are two methods for attempting to make the ideal of liberty into a physical thing.

1. The emphisis on property rights. Property is the primary, and perhaps even the only means, of determining a persons freedom and dignity.

2. The exercise of liberty is the violent defense of it, and nothing more. Freedom cannot exist unless it is imperiled. any violent crime commited anywhere absolutely must be a personal threat. Whatever the tax rate happens to be, it must be outragously high, any dispute with or threatining gesture from a foreign country absolutely must be the equivelant of the World Wars.

This mindset is mostly just irritating and amusing until taken to its absolute extreme, where the desire for tangibility reaches the point to where one convinces himself that the truth of his political opinions are as obvious to everyone as the color of the sky. There isn't really any such thing as disagreement. There are only those who pretend to disagree for reasons either foolish or evil, preferibly evil. It is this mindset that brings truckbombs.

She Seems to be Religious.

Like, seriously so. In the ghetto way you understand, the sort of religion that does what it wants but can't stand to hear impieties. I like impieties. She doesn't have Facebook I don't think. Doesn't have regular internet access, doesn't know I have this blog. Shhhhhsh.

I can do with it. She's a white girl from the South Side so she's probably Catholic, ummmm ummm.

I Met a Part Irish-Englishman

Kyle is his name Touring the US over the summer. Down the west coast from Vancouver to San Diego, up to Chicago on route 66, then east to New York. Got in an argument with his travelling buddy and hit him. Travelling buddy hit him and Kyle refused to hit him back. "Talk about love but don't live love. I hate that." He says he's from Manchester. That's not what I've heard about Manchester.

She's Been Waiting for me All Along

There was no cholora epidemic that killed a tenth of Chicago in the 1870's. Even a lot of people who live here think there was. It is an essential American trait that we need to be reminded that a hundred and thirty years ago was only a hundred and thirty years ago, that if there had been a plague that killed seventy five thousand people, there would still be quite a hell of a lot of evidence of it.

It's never been proven that Daley Sr. stole the election for JFK. He just probably did is all. Writers are sexually attracted to knowing what other people don't, and there's a reason why so many come from here. The layers of what you know and others don' what you don't yet know, and what you don't even know there is to be known, are inumerable. If any serious thinker grows tired and old here they were never a thinker at all. I know secrets you don't. I know the crack fiend who loves NPR and has a knowledge of city politics as encyclopedic as a librarians. The gays are more preternaturally kind than ascetic saints. The lesbians not so much.

When and where the buses run is a secret I still need to learn. The el station nearest Hyde Park is a mile and a half away. Vacant lots, condemned townhouses, a twelve-year old boy ruling his block with a 40-oz for a scepter. Not Hyde Park. Today the 'Sun Times' told me that the place where the Green Line stops over Garfield is the second most dangerous neighborhood in America. A man there asked me for change five times over a course of ten minutes. He followed me into the chicken shack where they put this thick hot sauce on the chicken and fries and it's delicious. I finally told him that not every white man who comes to his block is a Kennedy. But upon learning this new information that might actually be so.

Hyde Park is a jewel of a spot. You can see the South Side's downtown and the idol smokestacks of Gary from the beach. Lake Michigan is cleaner than people back home would think, cleaner than I thought, certainly better than the mudholes on the high plains. The water was so cold that I felt my blood pressure drop but it was humid and it was good. I was safe in the president's neighborhood. Thirty dollare in cash stuffed in my shoe guarded by nothing but a dirty sock. His house looks nice and unlived in.

I hope I never find out all of the secrets that women have. I hope there's always something about them that I don't know. The one right here. That one over there. That working girl last night. Yes I did.

The new one. The one who wants a straightforward thing, something solid and exclusive, without the mental S&M games. The one who came to me. The one who, I'll be damned, this one wants me right back. 'Im Liz. I like you. You got a girlfriend?" Harsh and quick. The Chicago bark. Just a hint of East Coast blending into the cadence. Just a hint, because we're not there. This is still the Midwest. Ask a stranger a question and they'll answer you with contrived annoyance condensation, but they'll still give you directions. The I-love-you's are flat and to the point, like how my Mom says it to Dad.


It's been claimed by many, Bouvier comes to mind, that men tend to equate cities with women. This is very much true, painfully obvious even. There's quite a hell of a lot of Joan Beran in you Chicago. You're a good fun broad who knows everyone and can handle grunt work just fine. Still you're stratigically soft to the ones you can trust, the ones you know you can rely upon. A city to mother me so the women don't have to. It comes so much easier now. Men and women alike are so direct that it can't help but bleed unto me. So I'm straight and real right back. The people I talk to seem to like me. I've been worse.

Here in the downtown library is a man who spends his whole afternoon looking at foot fetish porn. He's free to do so. This is a city library, and he's a citizen with a library card. He just needs to keep it softcore, and that's easy enough to do. The pussyfoot is just a myth.

Lost My Fedora in The Move

Nobody here knows how I walk the fed.

Shaved my mustache too. Grows in too unevenly.

I thought the summers were supposed to be milder here.

Quick notes as Guest Internet User From Logan Park Library

1. Shared the train with a bonafide Amish couple yesterday. There were at least a dozen people more boring than they were.

2. Train showed up to Lincoln just twenty minutes late. Pulled into Union Station three hours late.

3. Rained hard last night. Humid. Not much wind.

4. I've passed by no fewer than eight Chicago cops without being savagely beaten. Daley Jr. is a pussy. No redlining the blacks by freeway, no verbal smackdowns of Jew motherfuckers. So weak.

5. I'm riding the train to Hyde Park today. Going to see the First Family's private home. Drink Old Style with Bill Ayers.

6. There's a bar uptown called "The Closet." Gay bar names really are as obvious as "Police Acadamy" makes them out to be. Who knew?

7. I have a most sincere hope of walking into a Polish Church and hearing an eighty-year old woman prophesy my future in backwords tongues.

8. Hell yes the food is good! You should see the condiment selection for a gas-station hot dog.

9. Italian fucking beef motherfucker.

10. I'm thinking White Sox over Cubs. Cubs fans have too much Plains-style mildness to them. Gotta go with the edge.

top 10 FC's as of right Now

1. Barcelona.
2. Man U.
3. Chelsea
4. Inter Milan
5. Porto
6. Liverpool
7. Real Madrid
8. Wolfsburg
9. Sao Paulo
10.Marseilles

I put A Joke Ad on Craigslist

It was supposedly for naked mole rats. But in truth it was a ploy to draw attention to my car for sale. I've received one phone call and three e-mails for the mole rats in the four hours since the ad went up. Nothing on the car.

So...

I seem to have had a bit of an episode last night. I won't go into details, because in truth I really don't know what they are. Let's just say that I've become accustomed over the years to avoiding pressure, ambition, and burying my emotions in liquor or whatever else was available, and I've recently decided that I'm not going to do that anymore.

I really am better this way, overall. It just takes some adjusting, and being stranded in Lincoln for an indefinite period is quite literally maddening. But no need for any mates reading this to worry. Through it all I've always maintained a perfectly sincere love of myself. Rest assured that I won't do anything more foolish than I already have.

Crackpot syntax: Army of God Vs. DPRK News Service

Note how in both cases clarity and smoothness are sacrificed for the sake of cramming in slogans that denounce the enemy or praise the cause into every possible nook.

"JUSTICE AND RETRIBUTION

In the particular capital crime of murder, God has required the death of the murderer. The very principle, the “image of God” in man, both prohibits murder and commands that the murderer be executed. Just as men are required to refrain from murder, they are required to execute those who commit murder.
As with all forms of injustice in the world, God, who loves justice, will bring judgment in due time and right all wrongs. Those wrongs of which we have knowledge but are unable to prove in court will not go unnoticed or un-addressed by God. Vengeance is His and He will repay and He delegates to human authorities the task of executing vengeance (Romans 13:4). That which escapes His earthly courts will not escape His Final Judgment Day. In this we can find some comfort and hope whenever we see wicked deeds go unpunished before our eyes. But this sad delay in justice does not leave us indifferent to it. We are to love and to seek justice.
Temperance of justice may be afforded the offender by the injured party in the case of civil wrongs; e.g., one may forgive a personal debt and thus extend godly grace. But the case of first degree murder is another matter. There is to be no mercy shown. No judge has the right to reduce the sentence to prison time or flogging or fine. Because human beings are created in the image of God, those who murder them must forfeit their lives (Gen. 9:6). There is no alternative for execution; no substitute for the blood of the murderer (Ex. 21:12,14; Deut. 19:4-13; Josh. 20; Num. 35:27-30). “You shall not take ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall surely be put to death” (Num. 35:31).
The question of duty arises. Who is responsible to see that the guilty one is executed? In civilizations with developed legal systems, the answer may seem to require no thought: police, prosecutors, jails, courts, prisons, and electric chairs all compose modern justice systems so that responsibility never is in question. But in ruder or simpler societies, the question of duty might be less obvious. Tribal Israel was informed by the Law of Moses that the “avenger of blood” (goel ha-dam) was responsible for administering the justice. In a murder case this “avenger” is traditionally understood to be the nearest male kinsman of the victim though some scholars have argued that he may be a representative of the elders of the city, an official of government.
On the assumption that the duty of executing murderers resides with civil authorities whenever they are functioning legitimately as just authorities, what happens when such authorities flagrantly fail to carry out justice? When is “vigilante justice” tolerable?
This theme is popular in literature and the cinema. Gresham’s A Time to Kill featured the drama of a father sitting by as a court was poised to slap the wrists of two men who had raped and murdered his daughter. No reader or movie watcher reacted against the execution of the two men by the father when he grabbed the rifle from the sheriff on duty and blew away the two murderer rapists in the court room. Justice was served; it was only for the court to bless it after the fact when the jury acquitted the avenger of blood. One could find countless examples in popular literature from Homer to Shakespeare to Dirty Harry. And even in those instances of popularly accepted vigilante justice, it is not even so grievous a crime as murder for which retribution is countenanced. Ulysses executed the suitors of Portia for insolence: hardly a capital offense. And Hamlet took vengeance on his uncle on the basis of quite crude evidence: the testimony of a nocturnal visit from a shade.
So what if, in such a matter of murder, surviving kinsmen took it as their responsibility to see that just vengeance was executed upon the murderer of their relative regardless of the hand by whom the death blow should be rendered? And upon the failure of the authorities to execute the murderer, what if the obliged kinsmen believed it their duty to do what the civil authorities were derelict in performance? "

http://www.armyofgod.com/MikeBrayFathersRights.html



"The U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppets perpetrated at least 200 cases of aerial espionage against the DPRK in May or 30 cases more than those in the same month of last year by mobilizing strategic and tactical reconnaissance planes with various missions, according to a military source.

The U.S. imperialist aggressor forces committed more than 110 cases while the south Korean puppet army at least 90 cases.

On May 28 and 29, the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces' overseas-based five RC-135s flew into the air over south Korea and were busy with aerial surveillance and photographing and electronic espionage against all areas of the DPRK.

South Korea-based U-2 made shuttle flights from the east to the west all day long on May 30 to spy on the DPRK. The number of cases of aerial espionage perpetrated by this plane reached 25 this month.

The U.S. imperialists and the south Korean puppets let more than 40 strategic and tactical reconnaissance planes fly in the air over the front areas to intensify the espionage against the DPRK side in the period from May 7 to 13 when they were busy with combined air battle exercises in the air over areas of south Korea.

In the meantime, the south Korean bellicose forces let two or three tactical reconnaissance planes make shuttle flights in the air over front areas in the East and West seas and the areas along the Military Demarcation Line day and night every day on spy missions."
http://www.kcna.co.jp/index-e.htm

There is believing in good and evil, and than there is thinking about absolutely nothing but how we are good and they are evil.

Pour Your 40 Shorty

Tales From North Platte

There have been sporadic studies and news articles about the difficulties of being a first-generation university grad. Let me boil it down for you. My two best friends are currently living abroad. My mother has never ridden the subway. Neither has my sister or most of my cousins.

"Living in this town is like being in high school forever."

So saith Brian Keith, first cousin via our common maternal grandparents, Ivan and Shirley Beran, still alive and dying. It was far and away the wisest thing I've ever heard the boy say, and possibly the smartest thing he's ever done, unless one counts the times he resisted the urge to quit some especially unpleasant construction job for a day or two for the sake of feeding his children. It was the sort of line that puts a writer to shame. How many hours have I spent typing how many characters to describe how and why the rural life is bad for you? And all it is is a spontaneous line spoken by a high school dropout.

But who am I to question Brian's judgement? I'm emotionally closer to him than any other releative save the folks; and biology gives him an advantage over Dan for the title of surrogate brother. More to the point I am coming down from cocaine and am fresh home from a two-man three-way with a forty-year old single mother who has miraculously kept her beauty dispite her habits. What can I say? There is a brief moment in late spring when the Great Plains is the most gorgeous place in the world, and the poison of North Platte and every place like it becomes strangely alluring. And I have always known how to play this place. The game is very simple. Joshua D. Beran is North Platte and Madonna/Whore. Take that away and all you have is some mindless imp fellating Ernie Chambers.

My mother is about three inches shorter than me; lacks mustache and goatee, breasts noticibly more protrusive through her shirt than mine. Hair color exactly the same, parted through the middle. We went to work on my ailing grandparents yard both dressed in olive green Nebraska-logo shirts and black sweatpants. Some fellow at a gas station we stopped at on the way said I looked just like her. This was both unnessesary and unwanted. I had already noticed and was already writhing in primal disgust. I was wearing proper work shoes while she was wearing those God damned Crocs of hers. That makes all the difference in the world.

An older friend of Mom's from the VFW auxillery told us that her husbands lung cancer had spread to his brain. My mom asked if there was anything our family could do and the matron said that she couldn't thin of anything. Mom is fifty two and smokes a pack-and-a-half a day. Grandpa takes too much radiation therapy to handle sunlight anymore. I will ride the subway in their name. They will be blurbs in my biography forever, or else I will be a blurb in my childrens, or else they will be a blurb.

It's True What They Say About Eating After Midnight

I slept from 10:30 until 2:30 and then 5:00 till eight. In between I had leftover ribs that my mother made, I hadn't eaten much in the past two days. True nightmares, looming and inevitibility. Material and romantic disasters, unstoppible acts of a vengeful and jealous hearth God. I'm leaving. I returned back to North Platte to leave forever. I'm seeing my grandparents for probably the last time. Testosterone rush. Trolling for random women on Craigslist. Danger. I have a friction burn on my middle finger that comes from I know not where. Danger. A sense of power bent and distorted like a midday drunk. I don't give a damn. This time the flames will lead somewhere. Perfect confidence for nothing in particular.

Goodbye

"I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I'd sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He'd tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown

In '65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown
My hometown
My hometown

Now Main Street's whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more
They're closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back to your
hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I'm thirty-five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around, this is your hometown"

Last Night

I was walking through the intersection of 11th and F. A married couple driving by in an SUV were nonchalantly smoking a joint, waiting for a man wearing a suit that costs more than his 1987 Buick Sable to pass through. Lincoln you magnificent bastard. I would of missed you like this, on your own terms, a few short months ago. Now I see what a cheap narcotic you are without her.

The protective masks of fifteen years are all gone, what is left now is the naturally intense man I've always been. Intoxicating clarity. Passion of all sorts but especially the moral, as after Whiteclay. I mind full of I must and we must and I want not spoken but screamed.

I have always been able to have my grandest dreams whenever I would have them, whenever I would accept the intensity and learn to act on it, live with it. I realize that now. I simply realize. There is no epiphany. No release or rush of revelation. The grandest dreams bring no solace. For it is spring and the time has come for the shy and timid to burn for what we don't have. The only solace is knowing that she will always have her own company. She can never possibly know what an acid burn it is to miss herself. My interior protection was always poison and a lie. Hers is real. I know that she will be safe and then I am calm again. She taught me that it's good to want. Now I see, as never before, that anything I could want is available to me in a tangible way . She is not. It's been so God Damned long since she's even been here. But she is safe.

Just Read This Old Goody

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2003_08_03_dneiwert_archive.html#106036491786412912

"Rush, Newspeak and Fascism" by David Neiwert, written back in of August 2003 when the right was in firm control and looked perfectly willing to do whatever they had to do to keep it. Thankfully the spell of post-9/11 panic-authoritarianism slowly wore off to the point where the GOP was soundly defeated at the polls in 06 and 08, and though they were and are petulant and stunned about these defeats, (they truly believed that we really were that stupid) they did of course submit to the will of the voters without violence.

2003 was indeed about as foul of a year as the United States has suffered through since Jim Crow. The war in Iraq was fresh and hot, and it was horribly clear to every peace protester violently derided as a terrorist-loving commie that the nutcases had taken over not just the Republican Party and by extension the federal government, but the popular culture. Of course, controlling pop culture for any amount of time requires the ability to have and provide fun; and since the far right's only idea of fun is to mock the different, and since everybody but them eventually grows bored with doing so, they lost the hold on pop culture long before they lost control of the federal government. So that those of us who were their Others had some space for ourselves to breath and endure. But at the moment Neiwert wrote this series the hard-right had that which they had always so openly lusted for; absolute dominion of every aspect of American society. It was hell and it was damned frightening. It was really starting to appear as if the screws were only get tighter and tighter from here on out. And though the peak of the Bush years turned out to only be a chaste grade school flirtation with tyranny, there were many like me who got a good enough whiff of its essence to know that we had better make it damned well-clear that we are not putting up with this shit again. It also became clear just who the 'they' to worry about most were, they are the same who publicly and without shame fein for the dominance they always wanted, had for a brief moment, and than so arrogantly (and, upon reflection, predictably) lost. It is the Real Americans, the ones who have always been among us, the smirking ones in the front of the lynching photos, and though they have always been a potent toxin on the national character, and though we have certainly had vicious and arrogant government before, the early years of this decade were the first time since Andrew Jackson that we were scared, angry, and stupid enough to put the Real Americans in charge. There was a time when they ran the whole show. The fact that we were lucky enough to pry them away and make it out is probably more than we deserve.

What makes the series relevant in 2009 is its detailed description of how extremist thugs were able to take over one of the two major parties at the time it happened to be politically ascendant. We can then in retrospect see how these same extremists ground the party into dust. Neiwert makes a convincing case that the current sorry state of the GOP can be traced back to Ross Perot; whose siphoning of the loony vote helped put Bill Clinton in the White House. The lesson that Republicans took from the 92 defeat was to always protect their right flank. This was the basis of Karl Rove's famed play-to-the base strategy, similar to the Nixonian Southern Strategy but not quite the same. Whereas the Southern Strategy plays on the latent bigotry and resentment over lost social status among rural whites, the Rove strategy calls for openly winking at those who don camos on the weekend and gear up for the black helicopter war. Energize the base. Rush Limbaugh was seen as a somewhat embarrassing figure by the mainstream Reagan-era GOP. He is what he is today because the party basis its strategy on his primal screams to all who are determined to defend their Purity Of Essense.

Then there is the link between conservatism and cockiness, though perhaps it is unfair to state it so simply. It would be better to say that conservatism appeals to those who view the world as essentially just and life as essentially competitive. A worldview like that tends to produce something of an attitude, and it is common for even the educated, 'mainstream' people of the right, the ones who sit in Congress and state houses, to overestimate their electorial advantages and underestimate the disadvantages. The famous nonsense of permanent majorities and such had actually been around since Ronald Reagan's 84 victory, and they were sincerely shocked by Clinton's 92 win. The foundation for conservative hatred for the Clintons is nothing more than this. It is the anger of a teenaged jock who sincerely believed that he was fated to win forever and has been betrayed by a world forever in his debt. It is the purest and most abiding of all hatreds, the rage of jilted entitlement, and it left mainstream conservatism open to radicalization. The scorn for Bill Clinton (and the bitch wife who dared to be more powerful than Real Men) wedded the Reagan coalition to the wackaloon segment of American society, (who could never totally unite behind Perot, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Vantura, etc.) George Bush Jr. "won" the 2000 election with the help of some screaming assholes in polo shirtys and/or cowboy hats. Karl Rove's Play The Base stratagy looked to have been proven right, and with the undying hubris of the eternal winner, Rove set about the work of building a governing coalition that would win 51-49 forever.

But then arrogant did what arrogant does when give responsibility, and when the resultant loss of Congress in 2006 made it clear that Republicans had lost the suburban center it was clear that they had no choice but to; well, continue to energize the base, apparently. And why would they carry on with a strategy that wasn't working anymore? Well there's the hubris of course. Even now we are being treated to the spectacle of a party supported by 28% of the public complaining that a president more than twice as popular as they has ideas 'out of the mainstream'. One side effect of the radicalization described by Niewert is an array of right-wing media outlets blaring their slogans at no one but each other, shadowboxing in a hall of mirrors, so that the old inflated sense of power and popularity has gotten even worse than before, to the point of being quite unbelievable.

Then there is the fact that nearly all politicians are conservative when it comes to the rules of their own game. The intransigence of the Electoral College, elections during the workday,one-state-at-a-time primaries etc. can be explained largely by this. Hillary Clinton was outmaneuvered in last year's primaries because she was playing the same game of "triangulation"; appealing to the white, high-school educated, socially moderate, and economically conservative, that her husband played a fifth of a lifetime ago. This segment of the electorate was indeed the key to victory in 1992, but since then their cultural dominance has waned. Levels of education are up. Levels of interaction between city and suburb, between white and otherwise, are up. It is in short now possible to win solely on the backs of dijon-eating elitists who look French. The Clintons, with a downright Republican level of hubris, consciously refused to accept this. The truth is that politicians are not that much smarter than the average person, in fact are often much dumber. (If you haven't noticed that by now, you may be one of them.) They play checkers, not chess. Even the most successful typically have one series of moves that they've learned to run like clockwork, take that away and they will simply stick to the plan unto oblivion.

And this is why the Republican Party is now in a graveyard spiral. The Reagan coalition is dead. The loss of suburban moderates has put the party even more firmly in the hands of the batshit base, who will naturally insist on continuing to appeal to themselves. And the radicals don't take to losing any better than they ever have, indeed take to it even worse after tasting that sweet sweet power juice and then letting it slip away. They will console themselves the same way they have before, by growing progressively angrier and crazier.

Finally you will notice that the word "fascism" is in the title of Neiwert's series. Neiwert was writing about latant fascist elements taking over the GOP. Considering that it controlled the government at the time and was very willing to use the military, this was indeed a bit worrisome. For the moment though it thankfully seems to be a problem for no one but the infected party. There have been many brilliant studies by brilliant people exploring just what fascism is. This post has gone on too long to get into those here. Basically fascism is love for power, hatred of those who, in truth or imagination, threaten that power, and adulation of combating the hated ones in defense of that power. Worst of all for whatever reasonable Republicans are left, fascism is openly scornful of reason and logic. To reason is to admit to the existence of doubt and vulnerability in the self. No. There is only unyielding belief, proudly proclaimed to the enemy, whether he happens to be in the room right now or not.

This then, is what the GOP will give us when asked why they should be back in power. Arguments that are intellectually insulting to blind newborn squirrels, delivered with full force and spittle, through the loudest possible forum. The Bush administration has indeed been the death of competitive democracy, at least for now. A new generically right-of-center party will develop in time and this is nothing but a good and necessary thing for free and honest government. but it's not going to be the Republican party of Lincoln, Grant, Theo Roosevelt, the Tafts, or Eisenhower, and I must say that's more than a little sad.

Well, surely now our majority is permanent. The dissenters need only be brought in line.

What A Plunge!!!!

It's commencement day, and the naval ROTC's are conducting a ceremony that seems to consist of nothing but standing still in front of their relatives. Quite disconcerting. Oh, and I'm living with drunken nihilists for the moment. We get along well, and to relive the feeling of living alone again I need only wake up before five P.M.

I found Mrs. Dalliway at the Novel Idea giveaway box. Read it twice before, took the copy purely out of vanity. At least it's not spinning rims on a Hummer.

R.I.P. Tracy Chips

Tracy and I had been friends since middle school. He was always a good one for getting me into trouble. His favorite drink was Sailor Jerry. I'll never forget that.

Tracy and I were playing beer pong one day when he asked me if I was getting bored with it. I told him that I was, and that in fact I never really liked this game at all.

"Me neither man." He said. "Every drinking game I can think of is a bunch of dumb bullshit. We ought to come up with something new."

"What would you suggest Tracy?"

Ideas were batted around and rejected for awhile until finally Tracy said, "You know Al Gore man?" I said that I had heard of him.

"Well check this out, how about you and I carry a bottle of Sailor Jerry everywhere we go and take a shot every time somebody cites their personal dislike for Al Gore as proof that global warming doesn't exist."

"I don't know Tracy. Sounds like a bridge too far to me."

"A bridge too far? Shit man that's the only way to ride!"

"Well, We really shouldn't. But all right."

The first night was great. We put the radio on Neal Boortz and the two of us went through a liter of Jerry in twenty minutes. Before I knew it we had the swingingist place in town. Our midweek Fox News parties became legendary. Local bars started copying our style. A popular favorite at Brother's was the "Al Gore drives a car bomb" which consisted of having half a bottle of rum poured down ones' throat while watching random Glenn Beck clips.

But it was only a matter of time before things got out of control, just as I had worried. I lost my job at the bank after making the mistake of reading the letters to the editor over breakfast and having to down ten shots. No need to describe the fool I made of myself when I stumbled into work. "Al Gore drives a car bombs" inspired so many downtown street fights that the city council had them banned, and after somebody invited a couple truck drivers to one of the ragers that Tracy and I threw the game spread among their colleagues and drunk driving deaths soared nationwide.

But it was Tracy who really fell hard. At started to let himself go, not showering for days at a time and letting his side of the house turn into a pigstye. Than came the incidents. Tracy Chips had never done a violent thing in his life until his girlfriend found him passed out on the bathroom floor one day and tried to switch the radio to the FM. The poor girl was in intensive care for a week. To this very day, whenever her little boy asks her who his daddy is or where his headaches come from, all she can do is send him to his room and weep bitterly.

The police got to know Tracy very well. He would get arrested for things like stealing back copies of "National Review" from the library, or driving to a small-town bar and grill, striking up a conversation with the chain-smoking eighty-year-old in the corner, and then running off without paying for the fifty dollars worth of Sailor Jerry's he had drank. Then came the day he told me I would have to find a new roommate.

"I gotta get out of here man. My life is out of control. I mean don't even recognize myself. I mean every time Hannity starts railing about Bill Ayers or Rosie O'Donall for five minutes it feels like these hot little bugs are crawling all over my body, and eventually I'll just start shaking and sweating all over until I start screaming at him to go back to demonizing Al Gore. I can't take it anymore man. I gotta get out of this scene before it kills me."

So far so good. But the words he said next gave me the sort of chill that you pray never comes again.

" I'm moving to Oklahoma man. I'm going to work for an uncle I got who runs an oil rig down there."

I knew then that this was the last time I would see my friend alive.

Things went back to routine. Over the next few months we all got used to Tracy's absence. Every now and again I would get a three a.m. voicemail from a strange area code consisting of incoherent weeping, and I had a pretty good idea who it was. But eventually these stopped coming and the only remaining trace of the was his learning-disabled bastard child. Everything I know about Tracy's last days is what I've been told by his mother Vicki. Vicki and I have grown very close since our mutual loss, she's a warm and lithe brunette of fifty five who doesn't look a day over forty and whose breasts have maintained a perfect round shape and firm texture without artificial enhancement. She tells me that I'm like her son now and it excites me in ways that can't be described.

Tracy came to his parents house in Council Bluffs three years after leaving Oklahoma looking tired and gaunt. He told his mother that he had stage 3 cirrhosis and was unlikely to live long enough to make it to the top of a transplant list. The noble and immaculate Vicki Chips was heartbroken but accepted her boy back into her bosom all the same. They settled into a sort of routine and for awhile it was like being a young family again. But of course the treatment regimen was severe and medical bills were sky-high.

Vicki could see how much Tracy hated being a burden on the family every time she looked into his eyes. It was clear that he wanted to let go, and the day she came home to hear "Rush Limbaugh" emenating from his room was no surprise. That Tracy was dead when the medics opened his door was a foregone conclusion. The doctors had told him, over and over again, that his next drink would be his last. He knew exactly what he was doing. He simply couldn't tolerate being twenty nine with an old man's body anymore.

In order to make sure that no experienced, exquisitely smelling mother ever again has to suffer what Vicki Chips did, she and I founded the Tracy Chips memorial foundation in June of 2008. Since then we have toured the country together, speaking at junior high assemblies and developing lesson plans warning children about the dangers of building drinking games around right-wing sloganeering. It is my fervent hope that tragic story might inspire some parent somewhere to teach their children that it might be all fun and games at first, but right-wing parrots have no shame, and they are never going to shut the hell up or embrace alternative boogeymen.

If you would like to know more about the Tracy Chips memorial foundation, or even make a small contribution, please call 1-800-la-la-la-I'm-not-listening. Again that's 1-800-la-la-la-I'm-not-listening. Be sure to hug your children tonight, and thank you for your support.

Top 10 F.C.'s (as of Right Now)

1. Man U.
2. Barcelona
3. Inter
4. Chelsea
5. Liverpool
6. Real Madrid
7. Sao Paulo
8. Arsenal
9. Juventus
10. Porto

Spring Reminds me of This one Time

It was a couple years back. I was pulling out of the Super Saver parking lot when a bearded man lost control of his shopping cart and let it crash into my car. He said he was sorry and I told him it was nothing. He offered to pay to have the dents and scratches fixed and I said no need. "Are you sure?" he said, "Oh I'm sure I'm sure" I said.

Later that day I had my people trail his youngest child home from school. When he reached a stand of tall trees that one couldn't see through my people pounced upon the boy and raped him to death, recording the incident on a small digital camera. That night we broke into the home of the man who had hit my car. He and his wife were worriedly eating dinner when we seized them at gunpoint. We blindfolded them, threw them into the back of my van, and drove them to a place that you must pray to your God you never see. Man and wife were each strapped to chairs in seperate movie theaters with their eyes forced open, and I'm sure you can guess what the feature presentation was.

It was about three weeks before the wife starved to death, the bearded man needed a month. In the meantime all they had for company was the footage of their beloved child being torn to ribbons by savage pedophiles being played in a never ending loop.
When it became clear that the bearded man was finally fading away, I made had the volume in the theater cranked up to its highest possible level, so that his son's screams for mercy would fill his entire being as he entered oblivion. The incoherent sobbing of his beloved would be the moment of his eternal return. This is my bliss.

The Terrorist Squirrel Scenario

The power of backwards or 'deductive' logic is something that is truly frightening to behold. Whenever a perfectly smart person has a self-evidently stupid or insane idea, it is usually because she is clinging to a predetermined 'truth' that she feels she must believe in order to legitimize herself as a person. Facts and logic are subservient to this supposed truth and exist only to reinforce it. Those facts that fail to do so must be written off as inventions of the liberal media, Jews, Freemasons, Hollywood, or all the above. This is why we live in a world where Antonin Scalia, associate Justice of the Supreme Court magna cum laude graduate of Harvard Law, indisputably brilliant; cited a television character in defense of state-sanctioned torture. This is why we can't have nice things.

It was unsleeping '24' ubermensch Jack Bauer that Scalia cited at a Canadian gathering of major Western jurists back in 2007. The major pretext of '24' is, or course, the 'ticking time bomb scenario' in which some major American city is on the verge of being nuked by a hidden bomb; year after year, over and over again. Bauer will frequently torture fictional subjects in order to find the bomb, and as if guided by the hand of a benevolent and all-powerful screenwriter the most visceral and telegenic means of extracting information always seems to work.

Another remarkable element of '24' is how often close friends and old flames of Jack Bauer manage to get themselves tangled up with radical Muslims. Yet Justice Scalia has not called for the forced detention of everyone who knows Keefer Sutherland.

The Obama administration's release of Bush era 'torture memos' brought to mind this lovable old nonsense statement from Scalia, because it illustrates perfectly my original point about backwards logic. Jack Bauer manfully provided evidence of what Scalia wanted to be true. The fact that the evidence itself was untrue was inconvenient to his predetermined conclusion, and therefore immaterial.

With the exception of Andrew Sullivan's passionate wailing on his 'Daily Dish' blog the reaction to the torture memos release has been surprisingly muted. Or perhaps not so surprising. I mean we knew after all didn't we? The information on waterboarding, sleep deprivation and the like has been available for some time. Extraordinary rendition, Camp X-Ray, the semantic fellatio that Bush legal adviser John Yoo gladly performed for his employer; the news of all this has been available for some time. It is up to the individual to stare at him or herself in the mirror and gather the strength to say that I Knew.

<span style="font-weight:bold;">The 'I Was Not A Nazi Polka

--As you travel through Der Schöne Deutschland,
--A melody will greet your ears.
--It's a melody that's been around in Deutschland
--For fifteen to twenty years.

Each and ev'ry German dances to the strain
Of the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
All without exception join in the refrain
Of the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

Göring was a crazy we wanted to deport.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
We all thought that Dachau was just a nice resort.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

The German is so cultured, he does not like to fight.
The peaceful life is what he most enjoys.
For years, the German people were utterly convinced
I. G. Farben manufactured children's toys.

I never shot a Luger or goosed a single step.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

--Was you not an SS guard? --I was not an SS guard.
I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
--Did you not love Ilsa Koch? --I did not love Ilsa Koch.
I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
--Did you not despise the Jews? --I did not; some were my best friends...
I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
--Did you not think Adolf great? --I did not. Adolf who?
--Adolf who! --Ja, Adolf who?
--Fritz, you're putting me on. --Was bedeuten dieses, "Putting me on"?
--Are you kidding me or something? --Nein, I'm not kidding you. Adolf who?
--Adolf Hitler. --Should I know him? Is he a folksinger?
--You don't remember. --Nein, I don't remember him. Who was he?
--Well,...

A little man, very mean, very loud and brash. --Mm-mm.
Not too tall, he never smiled, wore a black mustache. --Nein; I never heard...
He had a girl, Eva Braun, hair as red as flame. --Ah, ja, ja.
He papered walls for many years till his moment came. --Of course!

He's the one who clapped his hands, went into a dance. --Ja!
When the news came to him that we had conquered France. --That's him!
He once said, when our flag proudly was unfurled,
"Today, Germany, tomorrow, the world!"
...tomorrow, the world! ...tomorrow, the world! ...tomorrow, the world!
--I never heard of him. --Neither did I.

To our Israeli allies let us raise a toast.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
Sure there were some Nazis, two or three at most.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

We tried to throw out Hitler right from the very start.
That's what ev'ry hist'ry book should tell.
We hated Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, too.
We believe as Sherman did that war is hell...hell...hell...hell...
...heil!...heil!...Seig heil!...Sieg heil!...Sieg heil!

Germans are as gentle as flowers in the spring.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
Germans are a people who love to dance and sing.
Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.

--Wait a minute! Wait a minute! You there, you are not singing. Did you not like to sing? Tell me, you still have a family in Germany, nicht wahr? Sing.

Sing the I Was Not a Nazi Polka.
Sieg heil!

An especially forgiving person could easily emphasize with the general public's early acquiescence. There's no denying that 9/11 was a terrible blow, and it's long been known that everyone becomes more authoritarian and obedient when frightened. Of course we wanted to believe that our leaders knew what was best, and that furthermore what was best was best because they were the ones who said so.

But then there were those who gave the Bush administration another four years, just long enough to bring the republic to its current moribund state. These are the thuggish. The ones who reduce the whole of human existence to nothing but unending tests of masculinity and struggle against The Other because they are too stupid to appreciate anything else. These are the ones who overtly supported abusing terrorism suspects, the ones who profanely mocked the fortitude of those who objected to this obscene treatment.

And let there never again be any confusion that it is the treatment and only the treatment that is the issue here. It was utterly predictable that the patriotic thugs among us would cite the innocent blood on the hands of those being abused, actual or suspected, and claim that they deserved it, childishly claim that the only way one could possibly object to simulated rape or smearing a helpless and confined human being in his own shit was out of misguided personal sympathy for the suspected terrorist, or even approval of terrorism.

The concept of deserve is a funny thing. What courageous act of pure nobility have you or I done to deserve to be here? Not a thing. Daddy fucked Mommy and that was that. Now here we are as creatures with the strange ability to notice the way that the girl down the hall keeps staring at us, and we are neither deserving or undeserving of food, water, oxygen, the ability to trust that we will not be harmed by those around us, aspiration, or love. these are things that we simply need. Needs that come from nothing and are neither justified or unjustified by anything. Deserve does nothing but clutter up the mind and the dictionary.

The morality of an action is wholly independent of the person being acted upon. This is not to say that it is wrong to use force to defend oneself from attack, for the state to defend itself with its military, or for civil society to defend itself with its prisons. It is to say that anything that is not direct self-defense, anything that is punitive for the sake of being punitive, is savagery, and that savagery justified by your God or your flag is savage hypocrisy.

After dealing with those who are fooled some of the time and those who are fooled all of the time we turn finally to why Justice Scalia, and many others whose talent and intelligence should rightfully make them members of the leadership class, believe and abide so much patent nonsense. As I wrote before, it is chiefly because of deductive logic; Self-delusion, false consciousness, mauvaise foi, call it what you will.

In the judicial realm backwards thinking is officially known as "strict constructionism" This is the doctrine that calls for necromancing the 'original intent' of the writers of the Constitution,(which the historical record makes clear they themselves were in profound disagreement about) when deciding how the document applies to a case. If you know history, you might think that this would completely negate the role that Chief Justice John Marshall defined for the court in the first half of the nineteenth century: that of deciding how the Constitution's static ink on paper applies to different situations, new technologies, and evolving social mores.

That would be true. In fact it's the entire point of strict constructionism. At it's core democracy is nothing but a reversal of the traditional justification for social hierarchy. Those who have the power are responsible to those who do not. There are those who cannot accept this. For those who spend a lifetime accruing legal knowledge so that they may one day be able to say "I am on the Supreme Court and you are not" constructionalism serves as a stern-sounding rationale for refusing to acknowledge the civil rights of a filthy commoner who has dared to challenge his betters. It is a doctrine that lends itself very well to Jack Bauer citations.

And so I'll end this screed with a reflection on the "ticking time bomb" scenario that Jack Bauer specializes in defusing . The 'ticking time bomb' is the hypothetical situation cited by respectable, mullet forgoing think-tank conservatives such as Charles Krauthammer or Cal Thomas. If the authorities are aware that a nuclear bomb is set to go off at any time,(so the thinking goes), and they have reason to believe that a detained suspect knows where the bomb is, then it would be to not extract the vital information by any means possible.

The key premise of the argument is that there is some mystical power to torture that will make the victim spout pure truth. Torquemada believed he could justify his bloody hands before God by willing those he suspected of being secretly Jewish into being loudly Jewish, one spiked anal pear at a time. It doesn't work that way of course. The biggest motivation for torture throughout history has not been to extract accurate information but persuading false witness against the torturers enemies. Running a close second is the humanity-negating ecstasy of dominating another.


The truth is that there is nothing about torture that gives the human word any more or any less accuracy than it generally has, which is very little.


Go ahead and see for yourself. Have your best friend bash the shit out of both your knees with a sledgehammer and see if you magically confess your lust for his wife. My guess is that nothing but pleas for mercy would come out of you.

And there's the logical problem with the ticking time bomb scenario. It is of course an extremely unlikely situation, though I suppose that if civilization keeps chugging long enough something like it will eventually occur. What's unlikely to the point of impossibility is a situation where authorities would know enough about a terrorist plot to know precisely who was involved, what they planned to do, and where they planned to do it, without knowing 'where the bomb was' long before hand. I would think that would-be terrorists would be very careful to keep their baby close at hand, instead of burying it in some random spot and scampering away. Losing the bomb would hardly be any better than getting caught.





















There are consequences to diction. The way that pundits and politicians phrase themselves is highly strategic. Everyone knows this. Republican stratigest Frank,Luntz, among others, was famous for manipulating language in a way that seemed to legitimize selfishness and social animosity among the public, leading to big gains for the GOP. On the other side we have no one less than President Obama, who replaced the technocratic language of Kerry and Gore with emotive appeals to mutual goodwill and common purpose, and of course it caught fire after a decade of grim survivalism. The revivalist nature of his language also had the happy effect of illuminating the conservative counterattack for the petulant barbarism it was.

So in the much the same way that conservative talking heads refuse to add the suffix to "Democratic Party" I propose that liberals never argue against the 'ticking time bomb' scenario but rather the 'terrorist squirrel' scenario. This would be a far more productive means of countering arguments for torture than eight more years of long-winded moralizing. Right wingers get angry when they get laughed at, this causes them to make even dumber arguments than usual, and so they get laughed at some more, and the cycle continues until whenever they figure out the game for themselves.





Do you see what I'm getting at here?

Monday Observation

I saw a church sign earlier advertising a spaghetti feed tomorrow, five dollars for adults and three for children. I've had church spaghetti before. It is composed of noodles, water, and Ragu. The church dupes a few poor people into thinking that it's doing them a favor by feeding them their normal diet for twice the price.

I make this point to ease you into the idea that Karl Marx had a few good points. I'm fully aware of the trouble here (Marxism, boogadah) and I'm certainly no Communist myself. I'm fully aware of communism's tendency to empower psychopaths who think exterminating the literate is the way to utopia, and that life under Marxist regimes that aren't quite genocidal is still boring as hell. I'm not asking you to be a Marxist. You and I are both independent minds free to judge any individual point of a supposedly all-encompassing philosophy on its merit. There are people who think public schools are a bad idea just because Karl Marx thought it was a good idea. Surely you're not one of those silly bastards. You're a 'Mr. Heartland' reader, the very cream of intellectual froth.


Karl Marx thought that public schools are a good idea, and they are. Another good idea he had was that religion was a shell game for delusional optimists. So I told a little church spaghetti story to illustrate that point.

I'm sure that you, intellectual froth that you are, have heard the phrase "false consciousness" before. To put it simply, the instillation of "false consciousness" (through media, bad faith education, and especially religion) is the means by which the ruling class (No need to be a Marxist to admit that there is one) convinces the common people that their interests are one and the same. It's been noticed that one of the most effective means of leading common people to support the current power structure is to convince some large segment of the common population that they themselves are privileged members of that power structure because of something inherent about themselves. This is where we meet our old friends race and ethnicity, sexuality and gender roles, and oh yes don't forget religion. I love how religion always shows up at the party.

So who are the members of our own society that have been suckered in this manner? White male Christians of course! Who the hell else? You knew where I was leading you on this all along didn't you you frothy son of a bitch?



This is well-worn territory I know. I mean I do feel rather lazy for being yet another person covering this ground yet again. Yet the fact is that, just that there are a few silly bastards who think public schools are communist just because Karl Marx liked them, so must anyone who recognizes a false consciousness in society necessarily be Communist. I mean it does betray a certain lack of faith in society doesn't it. A lack of faith in this Godly/God fatherly/father that was put here just for you because holy father Amerigod loves you so much Joshua and he just wants you to follow the rules so someday you can be on TV and have a really big car and eat at Denny's anytime you want. Why do you like making daddy cry Joshua? Are you a faggot? Is being a real man too much for you?

Let us be reminded again that we or free to take or leave individual points of grand ideologies as we please. It is nothing but simple observation and common sense to recognize that false consciousness is real. Many of my fellow Nebraskans loudly boast the praises of Midwestern work ethic and frugality. There are even those among us who sincerely believe that we are the ones propping up the state of California instead of vice-versa. Isn't that funny? Right now you might be asking yourself if everyone but you and me is a moron . I know that's something I ask myself obsessively, except I don't ask about you. The answer to the question is yes and no. Our neighbors aren't morons per se. What they are is chemically altered, high on the idea of a mirror-image God and delusions of holding semi-autonomous fiefs in a mighty scrubland empire.

If all that was a little too purple for you, than just consider the above photo of Uncle Teddy. Ted Nugent is a sixty year-old man who thinks dressing in a sleeveless Confederate shirt, Old Glory guitar, and a motherfucking camo hat is a perfectly normal and dignified way of expressing his innermost beliefs. Draw your own conclusions.

Brent Bozell III Still Thinks You're Stupid

"The Family Guy's" Seth McFarlane was the subject of a human interest piece on "Nightline" the other day. When interviewed he took some potshots at the professionally offended and those who lobby for them, AKA Brent Bozell, so here's his response.

"Our cosmopolitan elites have embraced the smutty Fox cartoon Family Guy."

No, we haven't. I myself have delusions of being a cosmopolitan elitist, and I consider the show to be annoying and intellectually insulting. (Though I confess to giggling at a joke here and there.) As for those with undeniable 'cosmopolitan elite' bona fides, I seriously doubt that 'The Family Guy' is all that popular with Adorno scholars or post-Marxist theater critics.


A month ago, oh-so-sophisticated National Public Radio used their parody song "Everybody Poops" to report on Julius Genachowski (FCC), the incoming chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

NPR? Mildly upper-middle brow. Pacifica Radio is where you want to go for the 'cosmopolitan elites.' But whatever, go on and pimp those 1970's stereotypes you ol g.

"Now it's ABC's 'Nightline' paying homage to 'Family Guy,' and in the process telling us a lot more about 'Nightline' than about this stupid show".

O.k. I'm going to invoke my tenuous authority as a quasi-elitist here to state something that I'm sure you, dear reader, will readily agree with. If your idea of "oh-so-sophisticated" "cosmopolitan elitism" is network television news and Garrison Keillor, you are a fucking hick. You are the sort of fucking hick who will call an old school chum "faggot" for wanting to eat at Olive Garden instead of Applebee's. You are the fucking hick who your extended family reviles for screaming about 'Wetbacks' and describing your bowel movements in front of Grandma.

Is Brent Bozell the sort of fucking hick who is still dumbfounded by those newfangled news talkers wearing fancy suits on the teevee? Of course not. He is an educated man born to a wealthy family and has spent most of his life as a member of the East Coast upper class. Brent Bozell III knows full well that fucking 'Nightline' of all things is nothing approaching the domain of the 'sophisticated elite.' This mental abortion of an article he wrote is simply a naked attempt to appeal to the morons that do. He longs for the return of a Republican government that would restore a virgin majority at the FCC so that he can take his gynophobic complaints before the body and receive something more than derisive laughter in return. But the days of riding a wave of snake-dancing morons to electoral triumph are gone. Brent Bozell, among others, is either unwilling or unable to accept this. And this is the impetus behind my 'so-an-so thinks you're stupid' series.

"The reporter for this segment, titled "Seriously Funny," was ABC's Bill Weir, last seen goofily hailing Barack Obama's inauguration as a day when 'even the seagulls must have been awed.'Weir didn't come to this interview like it was time for a '60 Minutes' interrogation of an oil company CEO. Apparently, the more MacFarlane pollutes the airwaves, the more reporters like Weir will merely bow and scrape."

You mean he held a cartoonist to a lower level of scrutiny than the head of a strategically vital multi-billion dollar industry? The hell you say?! I surrender Mr. Bozell, you have conclusively proved liberal bias beyond all shadow of a doubt.

This is where ABC tossed aside any semblance of fairness in favor of a one-sided puff piece. Weir chose not to interview a single religious spokesman or parental watchdog. The only man given a voice was MacFarlane. Weir also went too easy when it came to chronicling how low 'Family Guy' can go.

There are many people who find 'Family Guy' to be vulgar and witless. I'm one of them. That's my personal taste, and despite the fact that you are in the business of pretending otherwise Mr. Bozell, personal taste in regards to low-brow humor is not a matter of public policy debate. Should 'Good Morning America' interview a 'Grey's Anatomy' hater every time Sandra Oh shows up, just to provide balance? Your imaginary culture war doesn't change the fact that this would be precisely the same thing you demand in regards to 'Family Guy', and every bit as asinine.

He (McFarlane) smiled as he said, 'I just started jotting some of the topics covered and some of the jokes made at the expense of paraplegics, the deaf, pedophilia, bestiality, AIDS. You've got an opera version of the Nicole Simpson murders. The JFK Pez dispenser, where candy comes out of his wounds. Where is the line for you? Is there a line, or is that the point?"
MacFarlane said he regretted the JFK Pez dispenser. Apparently, there is a line, at least when you're interviewed by ABC News: Don't insult the Kennedys.



Jesus fucking Christ you shamelessly pathetic bastard. First of all, 'Don't insult the Kennedys'? How strategically general. You know full well that MacFarlane wasn't talking about anyone from the drunk driving or sexually assaulting sides of the extended Kennedy clan. MacFarlane was,without any pressure or prompting from the liberal media interviewer, referring specifically to the regret he felt for mocking the violent death of THE Kennedy who was the popular President of the United States at the moment his head was vaporized in full public view. I'm afraid that it's been a very long time since a godly Republican president was blown away in public view. Though I guess it's possible that "Family Guy" did do a Bill McKinley joke that I didn't happen to see, and that the 'Nightline' reporter failed to objectively call him out on it. But I really don't think so, and at any rate, grow the fuck up.

<span style="font-weight:bold;">"Take the March 8 episode that featured the baby eating horse semen; that suggested Ronald Reagan had sex with Mikhail Gorbachev; that showed the 11-way gay orgy scene; and played it for laughs when a horse trampled a class of deaf second-graders at the race track. Weir left those trampled 'taboos' out of the discussion."

I saw that episode. Nothing described is anywhere near as funny as it sounds. I suppose Bozell is offended. Well that's what he does.

Fed these softballs, MacFarlane swung for the bleachers. "It's not like television is a God-given right. You hear the Parents Television Council raving about 'Family Guy' did this. Nobody is forcing you to watch this show. They say 'Is this taste?' No, it's not. It's terrible taste. That's what's funny."
Weir laughed and replied: "They make the argument ... with an animated show, a kid's going to stop the remote." MacFarlane insisted, "you can't hold a whole medium hostage" because animation appeals to children.
Instead, ABC allowed MacFarlane to make an unrebutted argument that the censors are arbitrary and ridiculous.

As a recently disenfranchised professional censor, Brent Bozell has also done nothing to rebut this argument. In fact this article of proving MacFarane's point than old 'fart joke and an 80's reference' could ever hope to do himself.

"Weir wrapped up the interview by warmly noting how "Family Guy" was a show Coca-Cola used to avoid with its advertising, but now "Baby Stewie stars in Coke ads alongside Charlie Brown and Underdog." Just like Coke, ABC is defining MacFarlane's deviancy down, welcoming his radioactive TV waste into the 'mainstream.'

And welcome to being stripped of any delusion that you were ever in the mainstream, Mr. Bozell. Now if you excuse me, I'm going to go home to watch some mainstream black-on-white lesbian pornography. Happy weekend to you all.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/uc/20090410/cm_uc_crbbox/op_239620;_ylt=AsVgojIKIMh1nyZOmk0XGHf9wxIF

Why Are There Still Creationists?

I was flipping through one of Dr. Matt Moore's books the other day, it was called something like "Biologists Tackle Evolution" I'm not sure exactly and I'm afraid I can't adequately cite it. One of the essays dealt with the motivation for creationist belief, why evolution denial has been more tenacious than, say, belief in Prestor John or anal menstruation in Jewish males.

The writer, who again I forget, examines the state of British and American society at the time that Darwin made his observations public. Darwin himself was very careful not to stir up any larger moral or philosophical crisis. He kept his own personal religious skepticism to himself and used his considerable political skill to eventually make evolution acceptable and even fashionable within the Anglican Church and other organs of the educated middle class.

But there's no stopping people from making symbols out of things, from using random bits of information to give tangibility to larger and more abstract concerns. Both Britain and the United States were undergoing industrialization and gradual democratization in the days that Darwin was alive. British aristocrats still had their titles, but the source of their supposedly eternal power, dominion over land, was losing it's vitality. Members of the vulgar middle class could now enter elite if they had the verve and wit to do so, and control of the urban industrial machinery could produce more wealth than inherited landholders could ever dream of.

Modern social mobility was born, and new money capitalists were glad to embrace evolutions emphasis on adaptation and luck. But members of the old order had lost what had undeniably been a hell of a good deal for them; a power hierarchy in which place was inherited and eternal. First-born sons destined to become their fathers, to rule over the peasants as God the father ruled over the universe, while priests under their payroll assured the masses that challenging earthly authority was tantamount to challenging the immutable Lord of an unchanging universe.

These were the people who first hated Darwin. In fact the history of evolution denial is filled with groups of people who were losing or are losing some old automatic social privilege. Who are the people in America who resist evolution today? White, Protestant rural or suburban, raised to believe that they are the eternal standard for normality in America while the absurdity of this belief grows more apparent each day.

And anti-evolutionism is no longer exists in the shadow world of the uneducated and the impoverished, as it was in the days between Scopes and Falwell. A generation of progressively more arrogant right-wing government emboldened creationists, prompting them to form echo chamber think tanks, flood local school boards with loyal candidates, and reap confusion with disingenuous notions of "teaching the controversy". The 28-year reign of the Reagan coalition was in some ways a reaction to the political successes of liberalism from the thirties to the sixties. More than that though it was a reaction against social liberalization, the same sort of democratization and breakdown of inherited privilege that was occurring in the mid-nineteenth century, and although the American ideal of progress is often exaggerated, it is safe to say that this democratization has been quite steady from the Jazz Age up until the present day. It is to the right wing's immeasurable rage that the long political ascendancy of the GOP, and all the idiotic grandstanding that it passed off as governance, has done nothing to stop this expansion of power and prerogative.

It is often said that the past twenty years have produced an economic revolution on par with the industrial revolution, that we are now in a "post-industrial" economy.
Nobody has much more than a vague notion of what this means, and some notions are vaguer than others. But it is clear that the economic restructuring (That is, over the long term and not necessarily relating to the current flame out)is causing the same sort of cracks to the power structure that the industrial revolution did.

America has, for the most part, always been capitalist in outlook, at least in the north, and so adapted to industrialization much more smoothly than Europe. (The obvious exception being the Civil War, brought on by old-fashioned aristocrats hell-bent on maintaining a feudal society.) So the old notions of physical property in general and land in particular conveying status remained proudly intact here. The suburbanization/ghettoization trends of the twentieth century was a means of maintaining this ideal of physical property conveying status. White flight to Timber Elk Water Estates was a means both of rewarding capitalistic achievement and maintaining traditional race-based inherited prerogatives.

Then along came this so-called new economy; the rise of a tragically hip new professional class that preferred the noise and ethnic complexity of the city, that had no use for giant back yards and, even worse, often no use for patriarchal religion. It is no coincidence that the rise of the new collar directly coincides with creationisms' spread to the megachurch, the suburban white upper-middle class and political respectability. Perfectly modern and educated people now needed assurance that the fathers in place were forever.

In North Platte there was this was this chiropractor who would often write crank letters to the editor. His favorite subjects were the evils of the United Nations, taxation, and Darwinism. When rural Nebraskans fret over why their brightest young people are leaving a common conclusion is that it must be because property taxes are too high. Some of these bright youngsters were kind enough to write home to inform the old folks that, no, this wasn't the case. They left because they craved the excitement and social variety of the city. They could buy a palace on the edge of their home towns for the same price with which they are now renting their studio apartments but have no desire to do so, thank you very much. The old folks back home read these letters, and continue to blame taxation. I don't think it's a case of not believing so much as being unable to comprehend.

So much of conservatism's Bonsai resistance to taxation is based on the idea that physical property is the means of judging ones worth to society and gaining access to the elite. Now there are many white-collar workers who have rejected "The American Dream" out of economic self-interest. Owning a home would only tie them down, much better to rent a place a cheaply as comfort allows so as to be available to whoever will pay them the most in any region the work happens to be. Many who could afford a new car have none at all, sometimes for political reasons, though those who peddle out of principle have always been among us, and have always been few. More threatening to the traditional ideal of success are those who ride the bus out of pure indifference, and their numbers are growing.

And what of the suburbs, the domain of the twentieth century ruling class? Crumbling and receding. The most ostentatious subdivisions empty and moribund even while Detroit still gives the occasional gasp, sheltering only coyotes and the occasional impromptu teenage kegger.

Whatever truth there may be in this "New Economy" idea, it is clear that the traditional means of gaining and conveying power have been thoroughly discredited. There will of course always be a power structure of some sort or another, and the rise of Barrack Obama would seem to suggest that the new-collars are firmly in charge now and will be the ones who will determine what the new power structure will be.
A structure that, with luck, will emphasize the best values of the post Apple 1 generation; creativity, openness, variety of interests, the ability to be fascinated by all and awed by none. Inherited privilege and social patriarchs dead once and for all. The old American pipe dream of true meritocracy finally and miraculously realized.

But I don't mean to gush. What I'm trying to do is warn of the harsh reaction to the threatened end of inherited hierarchy will surely bring. Denial of reality will be the glue that ties those cast into the heap by the new reality together. closely related to creationism are the crackpot tales of global warming being a socialist conspiracy, involving the entire field of climatology and all of academia; espoused from those who will never accept that uncontrolled industrialization can possibly lead to any ill effects, that there could possibly be anything wrong with buying the largest possible private vehicle to convey virility and power.

And of course that old time religion of anti-"Darwinism" will still be there for quite sometime, and is likely to get a renewed push in the remaining red states. Always there to remind those newly disinherited from undeserved power that the changes happening around them are not actually real. God is the eternal father of the universe. And the eternal fathers of this world are those whom he has chosen to rule over the non-white, the non-male, the unmonied and the unpropertied, the unchurched, the arrogant skeptics, those who reject or ignore the old customs. The hierarchy of the universe is forever, so long as we just teach the controversy that this is so.

A Little Ditty

Oh camo Budweiser hat
Stop Looking at that girl's ass (Hey)
Fifteen years younger than you
What the hell she gonna do
with your camo Budweiser hat. (Hey)

A Little Note on a Tweaker

I once met a man who stole a garage door opener.

He punched out the drivers window of a fairly new $30,000 van, stole a garage door opener, took nothing else, and left.

He said he could get some "street money" out of it.

I was telling this story to a few fellows last night. It had become just another thing in my list of experiences to me. I had forgotten how funny it was.

And there's really no denying that it is. I wonder if this incident could be stretched out into a movie?