Monthly Archive for August, 2005

Fomenting Terrorists?

Published on August 28, 2005 in ..The Dude, Politics, Religion and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

I love the English. Let me make that clear. I fantasize about moving to London someday, kneel at every ironic and haughty utterance that comes from their humor and film, and think women with English accents (well i guess any accent really) exponentially increase their sexiness quotient. But what’s up with all the hating going on?

Hate crimes are up 600% in England from this time a year ago due mostly to the fallout from the July bombings there. Tony Blair and co have passed legislation to deport Arabs. Home Secretary Charles Clarke has published a list of activities, that like our own Patriot Act, has been crticized by civil and human rights groups, and leaves alot of leeway for abuse. These rules will encompass articles and websites that preexisted the bombings and target their authors. Arabs like Mohammed al-Massari with websites carrying images of attacks on British troops in Iraq will likely face deportation under the new guidelines. Said Clarke, “Individuals who seek to create fear, distrust and division in order to stir up terrorist activity will not be tolerated by the government or by our communities.” Hell, War Of The Worlds kind of does that doesn’t it? Under that provision I guess Bush wont be visiting England again anytime soon huh? Kind of exactly what he did to the red states to get them to hate Iraq and Democrats.

Clarke added that, “preachers of intolerance and hatred,” will not be tolerated. Imagine that here? There goes Christian fundamentalism. Pack your bags Falwell. Want Chavez assasinated Pat Robertson? How about we deport you to Venezeula and you two can work out your difficulties together? Imagine how many local churces would be looking for help. Without intolerance and hatred they pretty much don’t have a function until they get to gloat on Rapture day.

When does someone take a look at history and find out what really foments their hatred of all us “infidels?” Could the decades of the U.S. making Israel thier largest source of foreign aid which helped subsidize the extermination and occupation of Palestinians possibly be a factor? Might not out current soiree in Iraq have similar effects? Sayyid Qutb is regarded amongs many as one of the fathers of radical Islam. Where did his awakening occur and when? While going to school in the U.S. where he arrived in 48 when Israel was created. He attributed much of his thinking to seeing American racism at work and watching the world turn a blind eye to what was being done to the Palestinians at that point. Later he was tortured in Egypt for his beliefs and associations and came to see the torturers as subhumans who were expendable. These mutated later into the infidels, of which most of us now fit, according to him and his descendents.

I don’t defend this guy. He was as much of a nut as Robertson and the growing lunatic fringe making up the hate groups that hide behind different religious denominations and those unwatchable cable channels where ugly people with bad makeup and big hair do alot of praising while they make more money. But what makes the nuts? Sure their own religion is as faulty and poisoned as ours, maybe more so, but it has always been Western interference, oppression, and aiding of Israel that has been a prime recruitment tool for terrorist groups. With England’s reactionary response as well as our own continued oblivious disregard for reality and facts on the ground, more and more people realize we’re not even getting safer in the short term, much less the long. Al Qaeda now uses footage of our work in the area including Abu-Ghraib to lure more people into the fold of player hating. While our own military’s numbers go down, Bin Ladens troops prospered not only in Afghanastan where their fearless leader was most probably on the ropes until we pulled forces out and ran to Iraq, but worldwide.

The London non profit and non partisan think tank IISS, a leading authority on global conflict and military matters, wrote last year and printed at Salon’s site, that Al Qaeda, has more than 18,000 militants in its ranks from 60 countries and that ranks have grown since Iraq. Here’s a quote from the report:

“Overall, risks of terrorism to Westerns and Western assets in Arab countries appeared to increase after the Iraq war began in March 2003. With the miilitary invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States sought to change the political status quo in the Arab world to advance the American strategic and political interests. Al Qaeda seeks, among other things, to purge the Arab and larger Muslim world of U.S. influence. Accordingly, the Iraq intervention was always likely in the short term, to enhance jihadist recruitment and intensify al Qaeda’s motivation to encourage and assist terrorist operations.”

Now long term who knows for certain how this will all go? But if things go accordant with history there are many young Muslim kids watching their families die and suffer brutally as they go without basic amenities, seeing the worlds racial and religious intolerance of them grow, heard about or seen images of our troops desecrating their holy places and gunning down innocents, incarcerating and torturing their people, and generally interfering in other people’s homes. The unspoken neo-con justification is most probably that by the time these kids get older they’ll be under Western control, bathing in our amenities and the glories of globalization. That or they’ll just be under contol. I agree that people will generally forgive alot and sell out for profit and comfort. Beliefs are as strong as the deprivation that breeds them, for the most part, but I’m not so certain our efforts will produce such joys. Have they here? How much hate permeate the hearts and minds of militia members, religious fundamentalists, racists, gang members, skin heads and many more in America? Doesn’t matter where propaganda and brainwashing end up directing it, it’s there, and in the Arab world those inevitable pockets of hate and deprivation will not breed those who rail out about terrorists, blacks , Hispanics, godless liberals, or their wives, but will instead be directed at us. And only us.

For more on Qutb and his revelence to this issue see another great Naomi Klein column from The Nation.

The Poll Tolls For Thee

Published on August 28, 2005 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

A slew of new poles are emerging this week that put His Fraudulency’s approval rating at numbers between 36 and 40%. THese include tha Harris pole and American Research Institute studies. This is pretty damn low and almost unheard of for a standing President. Washington Post.

Alot of this has to do with Iraq according to those polls. Some is the economy. Now I seem to remember us America hating liberals warning some of these new dissenters from the ways of the Bushmen over just these areas over the past few years. Do liberals learn faster? Do some folk just vote for the incumbent in times of war and yearn to complain about it later though they would change nothing? The facts were there all along. Common sense and history was there to warn us all along. Speaking of historians click HNN to see how more than 8 of 10 of them rate this administration a failure.

As much as liberal haters bemoan our negativity and lack of what they think is patriotism, its amazing how much time backs us up. That adherence to pesky facts over emotional reactions has a way of winning the day. The truth will out, as the Bard once said.

But to put these rating in perspective think of this: during the summer of 73 and the Watergate scandal Nixon had a 39% approval ranking! Tricky Dicks got W beat. Last time prince George was sagging emarrissingly low in approval ratings it took a terrorist attack to make him look appealing. Watch your backs America. Well watch your back in the blue states anyway. Ironic that the states no one could care less about targeting were the ones crying about keeping his royal highness on the throne he inherited with an 8 year delay so he could protect them from Muslims presumable hitting such highly volatile spots as monster truck rallies. And yet those red states also get alot of pork with their share of funding for homeland security. Well they do have a closer relationship to god in them parts so maybe the muslims will want to take the battle directly to his followers and cut out us middlemen.

Unfortunately this wont end like Nixon since the press is far more corporate than ever. There won’t be impeachment proceedings because even Democrats don’t have the stomach or the principles to stand on adn fight. Plus by going after Clinton the way they did for a cum stain the Pubs have declawed that tool and will turn it into a tit for tat Dem form of vengeance. As far as i’m concerned treason should be the debatable charge here and impeachment a given.

Can it get lower than 36%? That’ll be hard. If so we’ll be watching something special taking place and it will be interesting to see how the cons (sans the neo), handle it.

Suffragette City

Published on August 26, 2005 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Well today is Womens’ Suffrage Day marking the 85th anniversary of women getting the right to vote. In honor of this check out Ellen Goodman’s annual sexism awards at the Boston Globe. Among it’s highlights are these:

The International Ayatollah Prize. This year it goes to the Islamic clerics in northwest India who ruled that a woman raped by her father-in-law not only had to leave her husband but had to marry his rapist father. To those profamily clerics we issue a fatwa: Don’t just blame the victim, marry her.

Is this that much different than life in Saugerites?

Could Tom Cruise chill out too? He wins the Raging Hormonal Imbalance Award for trashing Brooke Shields because she took medication for postpartum depression. We send him our home-brewed antidote for testosterone poisoning.

I can’t begin to apologize to Nicole Kidman enough for my years of supporting this lunatic at her expense.

What, then, should we give Rick Santorum, who worked so hard this year to grasp the much-coveted Backlash Award? First he blamed the problems of families on ”radical feminists,” and then he opposed ”artificial birth control” as harmful to women and encouraging sex out of marriage. We send Rick to remedial sex ed class to learn that you don’t have to be single or female to use birth control.

I hereby and henceforth dub thee Remedial Rick.

But guess who is next at bat? We award John Roberts, nominee for the Supreme Court, the Let’s Hope He Grew Out of It Prize. As a teenager, Roberts editorialized against admitting women to his parochial school because he didn’t want to study Shakespeare’s racy passages with ”a blonde giggling and blushing behind me.” Ruth Ginsburg, beware!

Besides being a throwback it seems our SCJ nominee is also gay (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Finally, our Knight in Shining Armor Prize goes to George Bush for so many reasons, but especially this one. He didn’t follow his wife’s advice to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court, but he did let her appoint the first woman chef to rule the White House kitchen. Who said there wasn’t progress?

Wonder if they have a Presidential taster?

And let’s not forget influential leader of the influential right wing think tank the Project For The New American Century Marc Garecht who said, on “Meet the Press” last week, that since America had done okay as a “democracy” for almost 150 years without women voting, that was proof that democracy-building in Iraq does not require women’s suffrage. Mother Jones Blog.

Also from today’s MoJo blog: Kansas State Senator Kay O’Connor in 2001 said:

I think the 19th Amendment, while it’s not an evil in and of itself, is a symptom of something I don’t approve of. The 19th Amendment is around because men weren’t doing their jobs, and I think that’s sad. I believe the man should be the head of the family. The woman should be the heart of the family.

What’s wrong with Kansas you ask?

And let us not forget how our beloved Pres has fought against reproductive rights for women and opposed International laws for violence against women at least in part because it didn’t promote a free market ethic. And our own Violence Against Women act is under assault as it comes to a vote again next month as well.

Is that you Ward? Dinner’s on the table and the Beaver needs a spanking.

The Continental Candidate

Published on August 25, 2005 in ..The Dude, Films, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 5 Comments

The following quotes come frrom one of the candidates for President of the U.S. in 2008.

“Our great country is in a terrible downward spiral. We’re outsourcing jobs, bankrupting social security, and losing lives at war. We need to focus on what’s important– paying attention to our children, our citizens, our future. We need to think about improving our failing educational system, making better use of our resources, and helping to promote a stable, safe, and tolerant global society. It’s time to be smart about our politics. It’s time to get America back on track.”

And this: “If you want how to learn how to build a house, build a house. Don’t ask anybody, just build a house.”

Is it Barrack Obama? Hillary Clinton? Maybe Russ Feingold?

No. none of the above. Before I tell you, let me ask you if the above quotes inspire you or make you want to hear more about what this person has to say? Yes? No? Not sure? Ok maybe this will help: The candidate, from whose official campaign website this comes, is none other than officially declared Christopher Walken.

That’s right kids. Now imaging the above quotes coming from his inimitable staccato, semi-lucid delivery with just a touch of barely suppressed anger and dimentia. Want to hear more now? Of course you do. I had no idea this was going on until quite recently. Suddenly the dark clouds are lifting and the idea of a campaign with Walken saying stuff like this, “I believe in saving money. I believe in having a house. I believe in keeping things clean. I believe in exercising,” is making me giddy with delight. That quote and all the above ones can be found at his official site..

Now am i supporting him? Of course not. Do i fear he may make liberals seem even more ridiculous than Rove and his media bitches have managed to? Yes. Ccould he be any worse than Arnold? Of course not. But liberals don’t have the ability to make their insanity obvious and play in Peoria.

Still I just want to hear Walken make a speech in that Walken way. Perhaps his mind would stray just a bit and his language could wander off into the profane as he refers to the Republicans as, “those fuckin’ assholes,” in his Walkensian manner. Or maybe a talk about Social Security and aging could slip creepily into his exercise routine and how long he can perform sexually at his age without Viagra. The possibilites are endless and well worth destroying the country over I say. So raise a glass of Champagnee and toast, Viva la Walken!

Perhaps posters can suggest thier own ideas for unlikely candidates and why in this thread and the one I’ll start over on the forum.

Oh and by the way, the whole Walken for President thing and the website are all quite possibly an internet hoax. Wikipedia.org is reporting that anyway and it’s probably correct. The possibilities of him and further odd but somehow imaginable candidates is still worh discussing though.

Why Democrats Suck Too

Published on August 22, 2005 in ..The Dude, Politics and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Oh let me count the reasons. But today I’m going to talk about one in particular that’s connected to the greater shift towards the right that has lost Dem’s their core.

Case in point: The statement from the DLC policy wonk from on high where his boss Will Marshall corruscated the traditional Democratic core for being America haters.

By dwelling obsessively on U.S. misdeeds while ignoring the far more heinous crimes of what is quite possibly the most barbaric insurgency in modern times, anti-war critics betray an anti-American bias that undercuts their credibility [...]

Patriotism is the ultimate values issue. Democrats need not be embarrassed by it. And they ought not to let Republicans monopolize the emblems of national pride and honor. Democrats need to be choosier about the political company they keep, distancing themselves from the pacifist and anti-American fringe. And they need to have faith in their fellow citizens: Americans will accept constructive criticism of their country if they know the critic’s heart is in the right place.

Dailykos

It’s as if Karl Rove were driving policy and statements from the most powerful branch of the Democratic party. As a matter of fact this echoes Rove’s comments regarding Dick Durbin to the NY Conservative PArty a few weeks ago. The Nation.. It also help demonize the Michael Moore’s and Moveon.orgs which, Rove and his cohorts in the right wing media have been doing to create an easy catch all comparison with a propaganda campaign that will enable average American’s to immediately mistrust anyone associated with them as they once did with Communists. Fox News commentators were doing it with Cindy Sheehan. They’ve made a point that she hangs out with the likes of Moore as if this somehow negates her horrible loss and pain, or her opinion. They also mention that she writes for blogs with a liberal agenda. As if they are the slatwarts of neutrality. How do they keep a straight face?

But we have this to counter the DLC and Rove:

Vets see the opposition as a protest against policy, not them or their service.
During the Vietnam War, many returning U.S. troops felt taunted, humiliated and treated with little or no respect. In contrast, today’s veterans say they don’t encounter animosity from people who don’t agree with the U.S. military presence in Iraq…Army Reserves Lt. Col. Alice Bell, 46, who spent 10 months in Kuwait in support of the Iraq invasion, said she has heard nothing but praise since returning home.

“It’s not like in Vietnam, when they spat on troops coming back,” she said. “Some people don’t agree with the mission itself. But even if they’re against the war effort, they’re for the troops. They realize we’re doing what we have to do, what we’ve been ordered to do, whether we agree with it or not.”

Pensacola news journal

Many of the troops get it. Protesting foreign policy and demanding accountability from elected officials is not a show of non support for the troops. As Jason Crawford, a soldier who was shot in the face in Iraq said in the above article, protest is a healthy part of a democracy.

Where it becomes a problem is when you have a zeolots in control who bring all the myopic fervor and need for control of a religious crusader into the debate. The last administration to be this secretive and paranoid about criticism was Nixon’s which just happens to have had Cheney and Rumsfeld as 2 of its members. Usually you have to go to someplace like Zimbabwe wher Mugabe is in the process of disenfranchising all his political opposition by relocating them. Here we marginalize through media campaigns and the the manipulation of sociological studies and polls which let civilized maniacs like Rove convince millions to set aside their financial, intellectual, and bodily best interests to march in goose-step to the rythmic cadences of buzzwords like patriotism, and give the middle finger salute to names and ideas which men like this have purposefully and decidedly set about stigmatizing.

As Noam Chomsky said. Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

But when the DLC continues to have the backs of men like these and repeats their silly propaganda the whole point of our country and its system of checks and balances is being lost and replaced by the nefarious calls to unity and oneness that screams totalitarianism. I for one will contine to support not only independent politicians like Bernie Sanders but real core of the Democratic party now in the hands of Howard Dean at the DNC where the word liberal means more than what neocons have turned it into with the help of a passive press and cabal of pundits whose many cases of discrediting and proven lies don’t seem to be a cause for concern of their employers or the corporations who own them.

For more on the myth of a liberal media and the growing trend in the opposite direction see many of the columns by Eric Alterman in the Nation, his regular posts at MSNBC,com, and his bood What Liberal Media?

For more on the fight to preserve real Democratic values, an oppositional second party, and the fight to make the traditional liberal qualities of equality, compassion, activism, justice, freedom, and progress resound truthfully again, follow Dean’s branch of the party at DFA and at this Dem site.

The Aristocrats

Published on August 21, 2005 in ..The Dude, Films, Reviews and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Saw the Aristocrats tonight. If laughter is a good measure of a films success then this is a damn good movie. If creative comedy writing that need not resort to vulgarity is your measure than this is merely an ok, or for some even unwatchable flick. For those that don’t know it’s a dockumentary about comedians and their interpretations of a joke that has been around for ages. They all have the same beginning and end but yield their middle grounds to the particular perversity of the comic telling the joke. Actually they don’t all have the same end. There is some slight variation there and even very funny inversions of the joke.

I know someone who said people walked out in the theater they saw it in due to the obscene nature of the many colorful tellings of the joke. I’m guessing these pople didn’t really do any research and had no idea what kind of movie this is. Once you can accept that this is a movie that will feature comedians at their most vulgar, obscene, coarse, innapropriate and politically incorrect, there is very little chance you won’t laugh alot during it. Penn & Teller are in it, Jon Stewart, Gilbert Gottfried, Bill Maher, Robin Williams, and a host of others, but perhaps the most noted and eloquent of the personages who ramble about horrid physical acts of brutality, beastiality, incest, eviceration, defecation and more, is family favorite Bob Saget. Seems Saget is well thought of by other comedians for his blue qualities including his spin on The Aristocrats joke. This brings me to one of the potential flaws of the movie.

It’s quite possible that Saget’s version has greater effect because he’s so notable as the dad on Full House and the ringleader of all that funniest American near death experiences that family members watched on with a camera, show. Saget even says at one point that he’d like a tape of his telling of the very ribald joke sent to the kids from Full House. It’s in this context as dad to pre sex-pot Ashley twins that hearing these horrible crimes against nature is all the more funny. And likewise the setting for such a joke and a film is important. There is something about hearing this kind of language with suggestions about levels of carnality in a room full of people that makes it much funnier. Told to you alone, or if you watch this in your bedroom on DVD months from now it may not be as funny.

For those that don’t know here’s the basics of the joke”
Man, wife, his 2 kids walk into talent agent office to pitch their act. Agents says what do you do?
Man either describes or family acts out a series of maneuvers that includes defecating in mom’s mouth and turning it to diarrhea with a splash of golden showers, dad fisting his pre teen daughter, family rolling in their collective shit as various levels of sodomy, incest, and even necrophilia occur, often incorporating grandma and grandpa, and describing the quality and nature of grannies privates.
Talent agent says, “Wow, what do you call yourselves?”
Father, “The Aristocrats.”

Even many of the comedians in the movie admit its not a funny joke in and of itself. It’s greatness and longevity come from comedians trying to one up each other over the years with the levels of filth, bodily fluids, body parts, familial transgressions, pedophilia, and more that they add. One comedian was noted for managing a 90 minute version. Besides Saget you get Kevin Pollack doing the joke as Christopher Walken which for those of us who love every creepy moment we can get with Walken, is sweet. To add to the import of context many in the film agreed that Gottfied’s performance at a roast for Hugh Heffner in NY 3 weeks after 9-11 was the all time classic telling. The place, the audience, the cameras, and the solemnity of the city all played to the level of outrageousness necessary to make the joke more than the sum of its parts.

Of course comedic timing and tones play a huge role as well. Seeing Drew Carey’s flourish of a snap and gesture at the punchline is just funny. George Carlin’s inimitable style makes it his own laugh as opposed to that of a similar telling by someone else. One of the finest moments comes when a comedian who’s name I didn’t catch did his version as Liza Minnelli. Another featured an accompaniment of a deck of cards to make it special. And even a Mime hater like myself enjoyed seeing one act out the joke without words.

The nature of the punchline itself is of course meant to be ironic. What’s funny about the joke has nothing to do with irony. There is no concealing of meaning or things not appearing as what they are. It is delight in pure unadulterated ludity and perversion against all norms that makes the joke. What is perhaps ironic is that one of the funniest moments is when the joke is turned inside out and we get something like this:

“What is your act?”
“Well my wife marches around in the finest silks and jewels while my daughter and her recite opera passages as my son and I play chess while our maidservant brings us strawberries and cream which we feed to each other.”
“And what do you call yourself?”
“The motherfucking cocksuckers.”

Bullshit

Published on August 19, 2005 in ..The Dude, Irritations and The Ill-Literates. 5 Comments

You know how we’ve gotten to a point in our culture where we brush off lies, deceipt, false advertising, political spin, bosses and coworkers condescending and selfish mistruths, the opposite sex’s relationship games and manipulations, as all being the way things are? What can you do? That’s just how things work in the “real” world right? Yeah you know what I’m talking about because everyone who reads this has been on both sides of the dishonest give and take that keep things spinning. Some of us are worse than others. Some of us are more easily offended by it all than others. Some of us may even have made noble strides towards disengagement from these societal trends. But you know what?

IT’S ALL BULLSHIT!

All of it. The spinning, the convenient deceptions, the propagandized corporate claims, the half truths we tell our partners to maintain the status quo. All pure and undiluted bullshit. But so our the lies we tell ourselves about how unavoidable it all is, and how we’ve got special justifications for our less than golden relationship with truth. It’s bullshit when we sit and complain about it in others even when we aren’t instigators in it. Even if we just nod gamely when we know our boss or a cop is bullshitting us so we can go about our lives, we are enabling the bullshit and therefore perpetuating it and are ourselves bullshitters too.

It’s become all too easy for us to cozy up to our bullshit over the decades. We work less by ourselves and more in service industries where we have to learn ingratiating skills. We have mega corporate advertising and P.R. firms who exist for the sole unadulerated purpose of creating bullshit to sell us something they know perfectly well we don’t need and doesn’t do what they claim. We’ve become numbed to the steady progreession of lies and crap thrown at us that we’ve learned to wade through it and tolerate the stink until we’ve adapted to it. Another politician lied? Oh well that’s what they do. It’s part of the job. Lawyer got that criminal off again huh? Oh well, damn lawyers. That drug caused unreported side effects the pharmaceutical industry covered up? Hope they get sued for a bunch. Steroids gave him an unfair advantage over opponents and false glory? Any player could do it and it really doesn’t make that much of a difference. Minorities in key demographics were blocked from voting in Florida and Ohio? Other guys wanted it more. People are dying in an invasion based on outright lies regarding WMD’s and terrorist ties? What’s gonna happen with Social Security you think?

And the escalation of bullshit continues until we don’t know truth from lies and we’ve created generations of bullshitters who treat life and relationships like a political campaign or a formal cocktail party. Being truthful upfront human beings just seems too far beyond the capacity of most people’s egos and materialistic needs. But we don’t examine the price it takes on our spirtits, which negates whatever short term benefits we get from playing the game. As the bullshit filters down from demagoguering President’s, to outrageous claims of fair and balanced reporting from a propaganda tool owned by a proven bedfellow of the powers that be, to the actor plugging a movie he knows is a piece of shit, to the accumulated imagery convincing you that a beer will get you laid, jeans will make you cool and complete inside, your slight heartburn because you eat like shit is acid reflux disease and your Dr is fucking you if he doesn’t prescribe Prilosec for you, to discredited psuedoscience making a case for creationism and a lack of global warming being given its equal room to debate, to your boss making himself look good at his emplyees expense, to your girlfriend throwing the powerword love around to keep you in thrall, and right on down to your kid promising she’s out practicing for cheerleading when she’s having unprotected sex with her drug source.

And we are all responsible. But can we stop?

I honestly don’t know at this point. I can say I’m a more truthful and honest, non-hypocritical person than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve always sensed bullshit since I was a kid and it was one of the reasons I suspect I was a withdrawn and untrusting child. It’s made me very aware of it in myself. And yet I did my share of self serving lying in my younger days. As i grow older, even more introspective, able to encapsulate higher ethical philosophies to provide further motivation to live honestly, and see the results of others lies and bullshit, I find bullshit more and more distasteful. But am I bullshit free? Most probably not. When i look at my boss who I know is lying to me and nod numbly and walk away without calling him on his lie I am enabling and engaging in the art of bullshit. I’m playing the subordinates roll in the game. I’m pretending I don’t know he’s a self serving jackass with a grin. Worse than that I’m quite possible leaving him with the impression that I’m not pretending, but really am as stupid and gullible as he likes to portray his staff to be in order to fly his own flag higher so his superiors will salute. So not only have I bullshitted him back, I’ve lowered myself by allowing the mistaken illusion that I’m too dumb to catch on to this idiots obvious lies, unethical practices, and manipulations.

And why? So I can keep my job and survive. The normal justification so many of us use. And it’s true and I can’t stop. not right now. So I too am dirty with bullshit. When I heard the outrageous things my ex girlfriend would say or do and not say, “that’s fucking horrible,” or “You really need to get more therapy,” was I not complicit in relationship bullshit? Sure there were valid reasons at the time and she hid from truth by throwing up obstacles to divert from it and make intrepid examination difficult for any prolonged period. But I could have forced it and risked it all. But hey why ruin a good time right?

I am proud of the fact that I engage in so little bullshit and am a pretty honest person but I am also disgusted that I am not more so. I could give more seemingly benign examples of my own imperfection, but you get the point. It’s all this kind of stuff. At least I’m not getting kids killed, depriving people of medications, poisoning food and water, or aggrandizing myself at others expense. But maybe it’s all just different levels of the same thing and most of us would also do whatever it takes to survive at that level. Which takes me back to the culture and our collective easy acceptance of bullshit in so many areas of our lives. What if looking the other way at work is associated however distantly with the self serving bullshit that says capitalism is the foundation of democracy? What if accepting the provable lie that America was founded on Christianity and its principles is inextricably intertwined with convenient dismissals of environmental warnings and the faith that god will take care of the trees and sky? And what if this is also connected to the bullshit rationalizations that lead people to lie and cheat to get a candidate in who professes to believe that same bullshit they do? And what if that results in destroying proven sex-ed and protection programs in favor of faith based abstinence ones that statistics prove lead to more teen pregnacy? And what if that leads to the bullshit lies your teen daughter tells you to keep you from having to face what you know deep down about her having unprotected sex becasue the truth for you and the effort for her to use a condom are too much trouble? So you all bullshit each other until the pattern is passed on to your 16 year olds daughter kid who bullshits his or her way into similar situations and the lousy relationships that usually accompany them 16 or so years later.

It’s a terrible oversimplification to say that all the world’s problems come down to the word bullshit. But our tendency to engage in it goes way back and seems to be getting more selected for in this new culture. There is hope in a super observant media culture and instant awareness society that bullshit is exposed more and will eventually be left behind in favor of a technological cultures natural favoring of facts. That is my hope anyway, and like many of our self serving hopes maybe it’s bullshit. This is what worries me. I don’t want to watch it happen one way or the other. i want to choose truth. We are all products of our environment and we also help shape it. So where does the change need to come from?

In a nation of phone surveys, telemarketing, focus groups, and spin doctors is there any hope? And who gave birth to who? The growing field of evolutionary psychology has made a good case for certain unsavory human traits developing over millenia as survival aids. Men who rape and kill, impregnated more women and survived to impregnate more so that the violent traits that characterized those males were naturally selected. Ipso facto, we get modern man at war with his anger and rage in a more civilized world of laws and restraints. Women who slept around and ultimately nested with the strongest and most protective male passed those survival traits on so that women to this day bring that covert agenda of self protection for her and her offspring to the dating arena. This all extends to the art of bullshit where as we developed language those that could manipulate and abuse it had an advantage over those that were straight shooters. Lying without compunction, deceiving without remorse, favored those that could do it and get richer and better fed for their dealings. So their types passed on that rich inheritance of bullshit skills. So it would appear likely that we’re fighting human nature when we try to be honest. It is perhaps these flaws we’ve always sensed in ourselves that gave birth to notions of original sin and the fall in the garden.

The thing is we’re still evolving. It doesn’t stop and we have to decide in what direction we want to go and what heritage we want to pass on. I don’t want to be part of the evolution of humanity into game show hosts or airline stewerdesses blankly smiling and saying, “buhbye now.” I want to be the guy in Network screaming, “I’m fed up and I’m not going to take it anymore!” I don’t want to be a passive consumer who has to play the home version of Make Ends Meet with your witty host, Wayne Newton. I want to tell the host to fuck off, he’s an unalented Vegas loser, and not care about losing the gig. I want to tell women exactly how I feel and not care about their reactions. I want truth to permeate upward as bullshit filters down and feeds the grassroots movement to make truth king and crush the empire of lies we all serve day to day.

But hell man, I can’t afford to lose my job.

Rob Schneider

Published on August 17, 2005 in ..The Dude, Films and The Ill-Literates. 5 Comments

And while on the subject of Schneider and my entreaties not to support the kind of crap he’s routinely a part of check out this Roger Ebert critical burn, and I mean burn baby burn.

Here’s the juicy parts:
The movie created a spot of controversy last February. According to a story by Larry Carroll of MTV News, Rob Schneider took offense when Patrick Goldstein of the Los Angeles Times listed this year’s Best Picture Nominees and wrote that they were “ignored, unloved and turned down flat by most of the same studios that … bankroll hundreds of sequels, including a follow-up to ‘Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo,’ a film that was sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic.”

Schneider retaliated by attacking Goldstein in full-page ads in Daily Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. In an open letter to Goldstein, Schneider wrote: “Well, Mr. Goldstein, I decided to do some research to find out what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind … Maybe you didn’t win a Pulitzer Prize because they haven’t invented a category for Best Third-Rate, Unfunny Pompous Reporter Who’s Never Been Acknowledged by His Peers.”

Reading this, I was about to observe that Schneider can dish it out but he can’t take it. Then I found he’s not so good at dishing it out, either. I went online and found that Patrick Goldstein has won a National Headliner Award, a Los Angeles Press Club Award, a RockCritics.com award, and the Publicists’ Guild award for lifetime achievement.

Schneider was nominated for a 2000 Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actor, but lost to Jar-Jar Binks.

But Schneider is correct, and Patrick Goldstein has not yet won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Goldstein is not qualified to complain that Columbia financed “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” while passing on the opportunity to participate in “Million Dollar Baby,” “Ray,” “The Aviator,” “Sideways” and “Finding Neverland.” As chance would have it, I have won the Pulitzer Prize, and so I am qualified. Speaking in my official capacity as a Pulitzer Prize winner, Mr. Schneider, your movie sucks.

Great dis.

Schneider really comes off as a twit in this exchange. He may be a great guy, tender lover, and generous philanthropist, but dude, when you make yourself a Hollywood whore trying to get your payday before your 15 minutes run out you run the risk of this kind of exposure. And you sure as well better stay out of journalistic debates no matter how trivial they are.

By the by: the really good themovieblog.com site also has a mention and due appreciation of this exchange and many other cool daily movie rantings.

Summer Of The Penguin

Published on August 16, 2005 in ..The Dude, Films and The Ill-Literates. 6 Comments

Director Michael Bay has a good Onion piece on the surprise summer hit March Of The Penguins. His facetious trashing of a movie without the usual Hollywood merits goes something like this:

“Big set pieces? Hell, this movie didn’t even have sets! Has anyone ever heard of production values? It’s one of the most vital aspects of the filmmaking art, and you don’t get it by just showing up on an iceberg and filming whatever happens to be in front of you. Frankly, for real icebergs, they looked fake. This film is an insult to the great men and women who spend countless hours in front of computers creating incredibly realistic CGI icebergs”.

I still haven’t seen this yet but have heard great word of mouth from 2 friends who have. It gives me hope that moviemakers will get clued in on the fact that doing something different and real strikes a chord with audiences that their usual formulaic dreck can’t touch. No matter how much of a built in audience there is for simple minded date movies that give couples a chance to, “go out,” without actually having to talk to each other, they will never generate the long term viability of unique films that engage our senses or minds. We can lament the dumbing down of the American public but it’s a chicken or egg problem. Are Hollywood studios (and entertainment in general) catering to our collective stupidity? Or are we stupid because we’ve been fed a lifetime of their inanity?

I would guess the latter because when something well written or different and enlightening like this or last years nature epic Winged Migration comes along it creates a stir. It’s not Lucasian in its buzz or grosses of course, and surely some of its intake comes from the inevitable merging of the literate movie audiences all coming together for a flick that defies the cult genres of these types of moviegoers. But it’s still out there playing in malls and getting viewers who would have gone to The Dukes Of Hazzard or Rob Schneider’s latest attempt at proving that merely appearing on SNL will get you numerous cinematic chances to prove just how unfunny that show has become the past, oh say quarter of a century!

So please go see good movies. Rent them. Buy them on DVD. And don’t encourage the entertainment industrial complex to ignore talented filmmakers who can contribute to the culture by spending your money on those that degrade and belittle it.

Br’er Arrives As Does The Dude

Published on August 16, 2005 in ..The Dude, Irritations and The Ill-Literates. 1 Comment

Uhhh, Br’er rabbit can finally access his website but can do so little. Still trying to figure out how to do anything with it and even if he could may not know what to do, where to do it, or who to do it to. Password problems may be gone but technical naivete remains, as does the spirit of this post which I repost as more than comment and less than kind.

Back to my techincal simplicity and my quetion of Karma. God I hope Karma is a real thing because there is a certain person out there who needs to have some lousy things happen to her. And since lousy things have followed her around her entire life no matter the convenience of her Christian shell, and since regrets at the way she deals with me have been a fundamental part of her existence off and on for the better part of 6 years, i have little doubt that she will continue along that road.

The deeper question is of my own Karmic energy, or perhaps it’s just plain old patterned behavior and not so mystic as we’d believe, but what what have I done to create this place I exist in and how is that all connected to my inability to access my website to change or add content, and my own technical incompetence that might prevent me from doing so anyway?

This is truly one of the great questions of our time, well my time anyway, and time keeps on slippin, slippin, slippin, into the future. But as they say back at the academy, the future is a dish best served in code, and since I was kicked out of the academy due to the enormity of my dark secret and don’t know code, do not I have a future? Or at least a valid password? To code or not to code? This was Hamlet’s larger question. His nutshell desire to count himself king of infinite space merely a precursor to our own to rule infinite cyberspace. But Hamlet died in the throes of indecision,, but at least he knew what monsters they make of us as they jig, amble, and list and make their wantoness their ignorance. It made him mad. Not like Angry Bob mad. Like madness in great ones must not unchecked go. Code has made me mad, madder than the woman for she was never as real or coherent and perhaps that is why code’s dominance of our lives maddens me. I understand the ephemeral, unbalanced, materialistic, and poisoned girl like a square peg I can fit into a warped world that will accomodate any shape even as it twists and damages it beyond recognition as something human. And yet code alludes me.

Where am I Angry Bob asks? Where are my priorities I ask back?

I am Br’er, the Dude who abides, Hamlet without a kingdom, and Mark. I shall return with or without code, a Kingdom, a girl, or Karma, though I hope the latter real and as fitting in its punishments as a Dante-esque circle, or rewarding as a fairy tale’s peasant who wins the the princesses hand.