Monthly Archive for February, 2006

Screaming In Binary

Published on February 24, 2006 in ..The Dude, Irritations and The Ill-Literates. 19 Comments

[image:98:l] I hate to whine about myself, preferring instead to whine about politics and other things that effect others who I realize don’t care about my personal stuff, but I’ve been rambling a bit more on here lately and getting used to it. Since it has its cathartic elements and is becoming one of my only forums of personal venting, I’m off again. If you don’t care by all means move on. If you’re one of the people who prefer this kind of stuff to the relevent political and cultural stuff (like a certain entity who doesn’t like me complaining about the Bush administration), maybe this is more your thing. It’s Dead To Me without a coherent theme, it’s stream of consciousness without the editing, it’s the end of another lousy day at the office. You’ve had glimpses before in Late Night Rambling and Life As A Plebe type posts, but here’s a personal welcome to the personal side of The Dude.

I’ve made it through a week and a half with an IRA fund set up. That’s 10 days closer to 60. The pressure is building. Work is not helping. I feel sick to my stomach being around so much corruption and prevarication. I’ve had this throbbing above my left eye since a little after 3 today. That’s when I opened a letter at work. The throbbing is still there. The state may take my money as they’ve taken my soul. More on this and the nature of my scream in a moment. But first some less important things that must be said.

Chicken and egg. Which came first? I never got this joke or riddle, or metaphysical conundrum or whatever it is. Don’t you need two chickens to make an egg? Is there such thing as immaculate poultry? If so is it organic so I can eat it?

If Osama dies of old age or dysentery or something does Bush get credit?

I’m just starting to admit publicly how much I dislike George Thorogood. And The Destroyers. Though the Destroyers thing is probably just by association. I’ve never told anyone this before. Classic rock stations play his long rambling psuedo-macho odes to testesterone and booze far too often. I apologize to any of you who like them, but I suspect most of their fans hang out in bars and not cyberspace so we probably are ok there.

I miss the kid saying Dude.

Baseball camps are open and Barry Bonds says he’ll retire after the year. Strikes me that after his curious knee issue last season and now this he’s purposefully trying to keep himself from breaking Aaron’s homerun record. He wants Ruth’s because everything is racial to Bonds. But he knows as he would near and break Aaron’s HR record the spotlight on his cheating, the debates, and the boos would be real bad for him. Baseball wouldn’t look to good either. Potential for real messy situation. Don’t cheat kids.

David Wright of the Mets continues to be a worthy idol and my favorite player. He now says that with his new perks as a star comes great responsibility, somewhat echoing the words of Spiderman. As my favorite superhero I’m glad he’s a Met with a guy like Delgado who takes a stand.

Speaking of taking a stand. It was great of the guy who Dick Cheney shot in the face to apologize for being shot in the face by Dick Cheney. This is what happens when you wed yourself to an ideology and the power mongers who stand in control of it. As a major conservative contributor and a man in thrall to the administration for his place in things, this Whittington fella is so cowed he’s truly sorry Cheney has had to suffer like this. Cheney who admitted to drinking a beer at lunch before shooting him in the face. Cheney who disappeared for a day before talking to authorities for some mysterious reason. When people admit to a cop they may have had 1 beer doesn’t it usually man they had like 6?

That Dutch paper that ran the mohammed cartoons that have touched off such a furor rejected some Jesus cartoons last year. This makes me less than supportive of them and their free speech/press argument. They have a right to offend but others have a right to be offended and originally their protests were lawful and peaceful. Yes they’ve gone too far and I’ve got no love for their repressive phallocentric religion but it sounds like the paper was almost baiting them as is much of Europe’s press which has some definite racial issues. For all they have going over us I’m mostly glad I dont live in Europe because in the racial-religioous area they’re still a few decades, if not centuries behind.

And run Jesus cartoons already. Or is that religion already such a cartoon it’d be redundant?

Heard something about an Israeli paper, or maybe just a Hebrew one, having a contest to beat Muslims to the punch and run their own cartoons making fun of Jews. This is why i love them even if don’t particularly like Israel. And it’s why they rule the comedy world. Jews are just funny and smart and we may as well just deal with it. We need more diffusing of this stuff with humor and self deprecation.

I really think being surrounded by 2 oceans is one of the main and few reasons we’re better off and don’t have as much upheavel and tribulation as Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. That’s why it’s hard for me to get all uppity about being proud to be an American. We got lucky. It’s what we do it with. Right now we’re not doing so good. at least as far as the whole democracy, equality, justice, and peace thing goes. Maybe it’s humanity but I think America is a country of liars more than most. It’s everywhere and it just goes through me like a spear to the skull. Particularly one to my left eye area. Maybe its that isolation afforded by 2 oceans. When indiciduals dont feel they can be called on anything they’ll take the easy way and lie their way through life. Whether it’s Cheney or my boss, it just flows from their mouth so effortlessly, like silver mercury shite pouring forth.

And everyone feels like they’re lying for a cause. Whether its the conservative ideology, making a relationship work, or the great plan to make the state agency where I work function better. Justifications abound but at its root is just people lying for the cause of their selves who are now too tied to a job, movement, clique, or what have you, that they must defend to defend themselves. Everyone’s a superhero in their own minds and superheros dont lie without the greater good being at stake right?

Bullshit.

I am only remotely calm right now because I have this Sunday and Monday off to go along with the follwoing two days I normally have off. A three day workweek suits me. Much easier to get through. After today its really a good thing or I might be going postal. I need to have fun those five days starting saturday evening. Anyone of my peeps on here interested let me know. Next week wil be different though. Anyway.

I’ll try not to get off into too much of a rant here but I got to get this off my chest.

Those in the know understand my feelings about liars and ethics and how the state agency I work for is surfeit in the former and seriously lacking the latter. Well today I walk in there after a couple of days off and get a letter saying they are eliminating my 10-6 weekend position which the letter claims does not fit the master schedule’s needs and was created due to a special need at the time. Now it will be 8-4 to suit our sceduling needs. But it just so happens that the position was created with and fully integrated in our master schedule about 6 years ago and was one of the main reasons I agreed to give in and go full time with these monolithic scumbags. In fact it is special needs that make them want to “eliminate” it. Not alter it due to temporary needs as would normally be done and as I was asked to do, but “eliminate.” But if our master schedule is changed this should call for a rebid of the entire programs schedule with me as second highest in seniority having a chance to make some people very unhappy.

But this is not what they want to do. They want to circumvent all this to make an unjustifiable change just to screw me as revenge for speaking up against their unethical O.T. practices recently and for refusing to willingly change that 10-6 to the 8-4 they are changing it to now. I told them a few weeks ago I didn’t want to do it because I didn’t trust them to keep it temporary and was in no mood to help and was in my rights to demand a months notice of the need. I said give me a mandate with my months notice and I’ll do it. But I’m not going to indefintely do so. But the civil service mafia would have none of me dictating or refusing their needs de jour so I get a taste of their hateful passive aggressive ways.

But there is no need for it. I worked over the scedule and found no way this is saving them on overtime which would be the only justification. The need that was there when they asked me is gone now. What this is is V for Vandetta and it almost made me do some bad shite at work tonight.

I’ve wanted to quit before but never been as close as I am now. Problem is I can’t afford it and have a partially dependent father to consider. This is a lesson for kids to go to school early in life and stay there until they have enough credentials to not have to put up with mediocre scumbags with so little joy and identity that they have to manufacture it through hierarchical cliques that give the illusion of elevation by squashing those around them.

And of course all their passive aggressive slights are someone elses fault. As I opened the letter today the manager of the house was already blaming someone else named Shaune, herself a product of agency insleeping and favoritism like so many, who has been rewarded with some newly created scheduling sinecure. Just like the managers stealing O.T. from staff was the coordinator and team leaders fault for making him. On and on it goes. I phoned the union and left a message. No one available until Monday. We’ll see where that goes but if history is any guide it wont help much. The manger already warned me today that our CSEA rep is close to this Shaune woman. I will mention this to my rep and tell her she is dirty if true, or more likely that Wayne the manager is playing more mafioso games to scare me off grieving this. It’s the kind of silly ass high school mentality I have to put up with regularly. And quite frankly, and maybe even arrogantly, I’m just not operating on that level and have a real hard time being around those who are, whether personally or professionaly.

Jesus people is there any one outside of a few radicals out in the wilds who want to raise the bar on our behavior, ethics, responsiblity, decency, justice, or honesty? I guess it starts at the top and when we have a political landscape like we have now, and to some extent have always had-though these guys are like caracatures-why should we think that people with less importance adn who make less of a difference would be capable of taking their game to another level. It makes me absolutely crazy! Am I too sensitive? You make the call. I just don’t know how to make the throbbing go away.

And what kind of name is Wayne for a person anyway? There’s only 1 real consonant in there since W is a consonant the way ketchup is a vegetable. It’s such a wishy washy amorphous name which fits him and his feminine energy perfectly. And the self denial is really amazing. Just a couple of weeks agao as i complained about the lack of ethics in the agency and what a manager of very disreputable history and character in another program may have done to sabotage someone he doesn’t like in our place, he sat there agreeing and shaking his head at how bad it is really having no conception of being part of the problem after the better part of two years of stealing our money, uncountable lies and contradictions to all of us, a personal relationship with a woman he’s showing very unprofessional and unethical favoritism towards, and taking our credit and making us appear incompetent to make him and this other woman appear brilliant.

But I really dont think he sees it that way. I guess very few bad people do. No one sees the bad when its them. They see the reasons. The rationalizations. I honestly think people like this are too weak minded for introspection or perspective. Sort of like our president with a small p.

Speaking of which how does he go from saying he’ll veto any blocking of the port deal with Dubai by Congress, to saying a couple of days later he just heard about this deal?

This whole deal is another piece of proof that this administration doesn’t take a terrorist threat against the U.S. seriously and has in fact been using the idea and planting the fear post 9-11 to get away with murder. 9-11 was a fluke people. They let their guard down and know normal pre Bush type security and intelligence measures will keep another such event from happening. I said it then and I’m reaffirming it now. I’ll accept your apologies later after another mountain of evidence exists to back me up.

Besides the fake terror alerts choreographed to divert attention at key times, and the fact that we took all these resources away from Afhganistan where there was an actual connection to terrorists and put them in Iraq which had none until we let them in, you’ve also got a refusal to make private airlines, nuclear reactor and port area companies take responsibility and put some money into securing these supposedly vulnerable spots and the administrations refusal to start a dept of Homeland Security that when forced to do so they employed with cronies and incompetents and seriously underfunded. But now they want to let a company from the United Arab Emirates watch our ports.

These are the same countries that supported the Taliban, funnel nuclear components to Iran and N Korea, laundered money to 9-11 hijackers, and maybe this is the only part that really matters, are major funders of our stock market and economy. A CNN poll today said respondents felt Bush puts commercial interests ahead of security to a rate of 98%. Votes from the White House and Congress could easily account for that lunatic fringe 2% who apparently think this administration has got it going on.

And get this, There was a report that Bush is all proud that he got the Arab company to agree to cooperate in any potential investigations in return for their getting the contract.

Uhhh, shouldn’t this be par for the course. We’re giving you billions of dollars and we got to get them to give a little to be subject to us cheking into whether or not they are maybe shipping Al-Queda cells into the country or laundering money back to Osama bin Laden? What kind of bitch to the Arab world is Bush? The Arab world is a large 30 to life con sharing a cell with a pissant incestual pedophile with a lisp. We call that incestual pedophile George Bush. The Arabs call him their bitch.

As Aimee Mann sang, along with much of the cast of Magnolia, It’s not going to stop until you wise up. And I’m not just talking about our country but my own aforementioned issues.

It makes me want to scream. It made me throw a chair at work. Well not throw. It was a rolling chair in the office and I slammed-slid it across the room pretty hard. Still. I’m not sure if I can stay sane amongst all these disapointing people. Maybe I’m doomed to be disappointed always because I’m too sensitive and my expectations are too high. I would counter that anyone who feels expecting complete honesty, non-hypocrisy, an ability to make rational decisions that deny self interest when others are involved, is too much, has set their own standards too low. But they’re also probably happier than i am.

But I can’t let it go. I’m disillusioned and hurt by what i see around me. I’m Hamlet without a kingdom or a false king to blame…well except for the false king we have in the White House…my sense of idealism and desire at war with my means and my birthright. I even dated a crazy person like he did. She didn’t kill herself though she claimed she stood on that bridge in Mt Marion many years ago poised to jump. But she was also a pathological liar. Seems to be alot of them around. Alot of children in adult bodies causing adult harm because they are afraid of growing up and growing old, and growing dead. I am too. But you can’t lie your way to immortality. But that’s the rationalist in me. And it feels like I’m dying alone out here.

Stuff About Jack Bauer

Published on February 17, 2006 in ..The Dude, Lists, Television and The Ill-Literates. 12 Comments

[image:95:l] Add your own Bauer stuff. As an example here’s one the owner of the Mets site The Metropolitans put out there. “Jack Bauer once lost his car keys and proceeded to torture himself for a half hour until he gave up the location of the keys.” Now for my Bauer stuff. Let the manlove begin.

Jack Bauer had a daughter because he was bored saving complete strangers.

Jack Bauer is his super hero name. No one knows his real one.

As a child Jack Bauer never went out on Halloween. Not because he was afraid but because local ordinances forbid it.

Marvel Comics has started a comic book titled The Adventures Of Jack Bauer. Each panel is blank because depicting Jack Bauer satirically is considered a sin in some cultures.

Jack Bauer kills more people by 9 a.m. then most people kill all day…Combined!

Dick Cheney once shot Jack Bauer in the face. Jack Bauer said, “Thank you sir,” and immediately decided to vote for Cheney. Twice!

Jack Bauer’s efficiency is why the show is called 24. Originally the show’s season’s were supposed to cover 6 months. Jack told them they were pussies.

A sports beverage company needed a high octane drink that gave people energy for short durations. So they bottled Jack Bauer’s sweat and called that drink Gatorade.

Jack Bauer only sweats to complete his contractual obligations to Gatorade.

Jack Bauer is not happy- has never been happy, and stays that way so that we might live.

Jack Bauer does not eat, sleep, or use the bathroom. It has nothing to do with lack of time. Think about it.

Jack Bauer can only be photographed with a special gravitas filter lens.

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Megadeth is a Jack Bauer tribute band.

As a child Jack Bauer tortured a fellow Cub Scout because he suspected he was a mole from another den.

The word intensity was redefined in Websters due to Jack Bauer. It’s previous applications are now defined as nonchalance in comparison.

Jack Bauer can not ride The Hulk roller coaster. This is not becaue he is afraid of the ride. The ride is afraid of him.

Virgins exist only because they hope to preserve themselves for Jack Bauer and because Jack Bauer is very busy.

Jack Bauer has always completed all things in 24 hours. This includes but is not limited to school semesters, getting over measles, recovering from drug addiction, and driving from any point in the country to any other.

Jack Bauer was stranded on the island from Lost. He solved its riddles and got off of it in 24 hours. He did this by not pausing for flashbacks. Jack Bauer thinks reflection is for pussies who don’t have a country to save.

Jack Bauer thinks we are all pussies, but doesn’t tell us so. He has no time for small talk.

Jack Bauer was once crucified for the sins of man, died, and returned. He didn’t bother to tell anyone about it or make a big stink though.

Jack Bauer can drive an SUV because he extracts his own oil from Middle Eastern fields and smuggles it back to America by himself.

Bad guys call things that go bump in the night Jack Bauers.

Jack Bauer has broken men. Literally.

Killing Me Softly was written about Jack Bauer.

James Bond remains alive and in some repute because England is an ally of Jack Bauer’s country.

What do you know about Jack Bauer?

By the by: There is actually a band called Jack Bauer. Go there to see.

More Late Night Rambling

Published on February 14, 2006 in ..The Dude, Irritations and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Some randomness for today.

I opened a Roth IRA. Cost $1000 to start up. It’s a kind of retirement fund for those not familiar. I can’t get it and future contributions until I’m around 60. That is unless I close it for certain special needs like first time home buying or college tuition. But the idea of having done this fills me with dread. Now i feel more pressure to live to be 60 and beyond, in order to enjoy some benefits from it. Being as optimistic as I am and prone to stressing such things, this makes me more sure than ever that I wont live to be 60.

That would mean that the money will have been wasted like a lifetime in a convent. Not only that but right now my mom and dad are the benefactors if I die. After that there is no one. This means that not only am I horribly alone but that one of two things will happen if I don’t make 60. One is that they will die before me and then if I don’t make 60 that fund will go to the state. I work for the state. They have taken my soul. I don’t want them to have my money too. They already have my ERS 401k type retirement fund I get through work. They’ve taken enough of me.

The other thing is it now puts pressure on me to die before them in order to have somebody benefit. But it won’t be worth much for a long time and my dad, with his emphysema is for all intents and purposes, dying (aren’t we all I guess?), so unless my mom can hang in there well into her 70′s we’re all screwed here. But I guess at least what’s in there when I die can be taken after closing the account by one of them. Not sure how that part works. But it’s alot of pressure and from the moment I wrote the check to a very hot financial investor at Banc Of America, I felt like I may be clogging arteries, developing an aneurysm, and or having heart palpatations. Of course the latter symptoms could also have been precipitated by the hottie investor. Investor-financial people shouldn’t be allowed to have bodies like that. I can’t talk finances under normal conditions. i need that kind of pressure too?

I did ask if I could make my benefactor a charity or something worthwhile and she said i could. So at least there’s that. Accept I don’t trust charities. I could leave it to Scientology as a joke. Maybe ask for a shout out in the acknowledgements of future editions of Hubbard’s Mission Earth series. Not that they’ll need my money. Neither would the Bush family but i could leave them as benefactors, with the express instructions that W has to suck my cold dead dick to collect it. Obviously he wont, but the point is they’ll have to offer, and he’ll know I told him to suck it even after I’m gone. It would be nice if my dick could reach beyond the grave like that and be more in death than it was in life.

God that last comment amused the crap out of me. I had to stop for a minute to laugh. I’m laughing now. Feels good. Hell it feels immortal. I’ll outlive all you sons of bitches and sip pina colada’s on the beack throughout my 60′s until I download my brain into a clone or android.

But still it would be nice to have someone to benefit if I don’t quite make it. So from here on in I’m taking applications for the role of my benefactor. You may not cash in big time but you’ll get more than you’d have anyway and all you have to do is act like you like me.*

And where’s the damn Hockey in the Olympics. how much friggin snowboarding are we gonna get before someone plays a real sport? Man that Curling is sweeping the nation isn’t it? Literally I mean. it’s bloody sweeping. I don’t get it. Never have. There’s something really wrong there and i think people are afraid to ask questions for fear of looking stupid. Curling gets by for the same reasons Opera survives. People are afraid pretentious people will snark haughtily at them for not getting it. So they watch, or allow it to exist, without acknowledging to each other that it sucks arse. Well I’m putting it out there people. Curling is stupid. More stupid than Opera. Some Operas are even ok. at least parts. But maybe I’m afraid to say otherwise.

And opening ceromonies in the Olympics are just gay. G…A…Y…GAY!

Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face this weekend. Alexander Hamilton was the last Vice President to shoot a guy. It was during a duel. It was with Aaron Burr. Cheney mistook a real guy’s face for a bird. So he says. I guess it’s possible. He mistook Iraq for Iran. N’s and Q’s and all that. I think Jack Abramoff was involved somehow. He may have lobbied against this guys face. He and the V.P. were close. Cheney can do whatever he wants apparently. If there was ever any doubt about that it is now gone. Don’t criticize this administration or he will personally shoot you in the face.

Rob Corrdry’s take on the Daily Show was awesome. Basically it goes like this. After learning he shot the guy in the face Cheney insisted it was the right decision, and he would again, shoot the man in the face. In a post 9-11 world America expects decisiveness like this. Daily Show is having much fun with this tonight.

On edit here is the whole Cordry-Stewart exchange:

Jon Stewart: “I’m joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: “Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

“And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington’s face.”

Jon Stewart: “But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?”

Rob Corddry: “Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak.”

Jon Stewart: “That’s horrible.”

Rob Corddry: “Look, the mere fact that we’re even talking about how the vice president drives up with his rich friends in cars to shoot farm-raised wingless quail-tards is letting the quail know ‘how’ we’re hunting them. I’m sure right now those birds are laughing at us in that little ‘covey’ of theirs.

Jon Stewart: “I’m not sure birds can laugh, Rob.”

Rob Corddry: “Well, whatever it is they do … coo .. they’re cooing at us right now, Jon, because here we are talking openly about our plans to hunt them. Jig is up. Quails one, America zero.

Jon Stewart: “Okay, well, on a purely human level, is the vice president at least sorry?”

Rob Corddry: “Jon, what difference does it make? The bullets are already in this man’s face. Let’s move forward across party lines as a people … to get him some sort of mask.”

Daily Show is so indespensable to my life and sanity now and really for the past 5-6 years now that I think about it.

Ms Pac Man continues to task me. All these years after her birth, she has a hold on me. I can’t quit her.

I’m reading Assasin’s Gate” America In Iraq. Great blanced look at the ideologies leading up to the invasion and both good and bad of the occupation. However nefarious the motivations of the loons in charge were for doing this there was a chance that good could have come of it but gross incompetence, and lack of scope or vision really turned many Iraq’s against them. Still I get a sense that there is a chance, but it will come at a far greater price, as it already has, due to the rigid and limited thinking of Cheney, Rumsfeld and alot of lasser known names that had alot of power to shape these events and were chosen mostly for their ideology and not their competence or credentials. Or rather chosen, or already part of the team because they shared an ideolgy that told the powers in charge what they wanted to hear and reiterated what they wanted to believe. It’s not unlike many of us who like to be around people who think like us. Problem is when you make a decision to take on great power or responsibility you should be prepared to rise above those needs and honor the systems of checks and balances and foundations for debate and dissenting opinions the founding fathers gave us.

From the White House on down to the agency I work for I just don’t see that. There is no ability to seperate themselves from personal goals and beliefs and be manifestations of justive and democracy. They are not hanging out at a diner. The higher up you go the more you need to have a broad spectrum of opinions and expertise.

This is not really what they book is about per se but it’s one impression I get as I reach its halfway point. May or may not do more comprehensive review on site but for anyone interested in history, only here its taking place now, and who wants a balanced, even at times complimentary look at America that does actually make some decent agruments for having gone into Iraq, I highly recommend this dense but very readable book.

Check out the Illzine people. Bob worked like a savage on it and it looks good. But we need your contributions. Not money. Your creative exploits. I wish i had more time to write and less of a cluttered mind. Or could find much of the shorter stuff I’ve written. Hopefully I can manage to squeak stuff out there that wont embarrass the Dude name. A short story titled Zombie Jesus in an expanded mode from what those who have already read should be up in next week or so. Brandonicus and Bob have a little something on there now. Short but amusing in Bob’s case, and short and a little sad in B’donicus’s. Maybe I will make them my benefactors someday though I’d rather have one I want to sleep with and have romantic nights in Manhattan with. And as cuddly as Bob may be, or as good of a kisser as donicus is, I just don’t see myself with them in that way long term. Sure we’ll always have our Brokeback Mountain moments over the years. But society is against our kind of love. Mostly just because its not pretty and shouldn’t be condoned. I’m against it too.

For those of you eligible women out there not to worry. Both Bob and B’don are straight and we’ve never cuddled or kissed. But B’don is taken. Lovely lass named Megan has stolen his heart. They are engaged even. he is a power monger who would destroy you anyway as he destroys the low life’s of those who work for him. you are better off. Unless you are part of his secret society.

Bob is, to my knowledge, single. Have a go at him and tell me what you think.

Arrested Development’s final 4 eps all buried this past friday by the almost dead to me Fox network, were brilliant. Did a great job tying it up quickly with wit and symmetry. Truly great show. The stuff with nellie references and Tobias were awesome. Bumped off mondays for celebrity ice sating (dead on arrival to me), they even got a shot in when Gob said Celeb skating was his favorite show. Lots of cool in-jokes right up until the end when our beloved narrator finally got some screen time and threw out an interesting suggestion. Arrested Development the movie?

I’m going to go watch 24 now at 2 a.m. and hope Jack commits some atrocities for me tonight.I have a sinking feeling Kim may be on tonight. I dont watch previes for this or Lost anymore, nor do I look for internet stuff about them. I find it much more enjoyable for everything to be new and a surprise. But I did manage to hear something about Kim coming back, though I don’t know for how long and last week Jack asked Audrey to phone her once he made the decision to come out fully and aid Logan in stopping the terrorists. Audrey left messeges on her machine. Kim wasn’t home. She’s probably caught in a Lion’s cage at the Zoo or trying to get control of a car with no brakes. Sooner or later she’ll get to the phone though and Jack will have to save her. hopefully she’ll be wearing a tight sweater when it happens.

I liked her in Girl Next Door by the way. Decent little flick that reminded me of Risky Business which i loved in teh 80′s before Tom Cruise died. And her cameo in Love Actually was cool. I love and hate her, but for better or worse Kim is coming and may god help innocent bystanders.

*women from Saugerties are exempted from this offer.

Brokeback Mountain

Published on February 10, 2006 in ..The Dude, Films, Reviews and The Ill-Literates. 1 Comment

[image:84:l] Ok, I’ve made my “I wish I knew how to quit you,” jokes on this here very site over the past couple of weeks, and though an open minded friend of the gay community found myself reluctant to go see a movie about gay cowboys. Part of the blame for this is South Park’s gay cowboys eating yogurt indie smash at the South Park film festival a few years ago. You know the one where Mr Hanky washes away all the pretentious movie types with a flood of excrement. I’m sorry but that left an impression, and a movie about gay cowboys became, at that moment, the apotheosis and symbol of indie film pretention and emptiness. But hey at least Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall don’t eat yogurt in this Ang Lee directed film. I suspected there might be more though and was finally drawn in. My suspicions were realized in Brokeback Mountain which is alot more than a gay cowboy movie, and worthy of being considered more than, and not being stuck with the label of, a gay cowboy movie. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Brokeback could be about alot of relationships between people that share some kind of forbidden love. Call it a modern day Romeo And Juliet. I’m not even sure these guys are gay. There are various interpretations of just who or what Ennis and Jack are. Bisexual, homosexual, heterosexual, all may fail to define them. They are convincing both in their hetero and homosexuality. Though they both have marriages that are not ideal or fulfilling to them, and that is surely at least partly due to their past together and their quiet longings that they take with them throughout the twenty years this film covers, I’m not sure that is all because they are gay.

Most marriages are filled with these tensions, past lives that impose themselves with unfulfilled regrets and other choices and destinies that might have been. Far too many “normal” marriages fail and exist in a strained, wordless limbo between two people not at home with each other. I think part of what this movie does is to try and shatter definitions and labels. Cultures create labels to box us in and easily identify who we are and what purpose we can serve. Though these two guys are homophobic, repressd, and dedicated to all that their world, and millenia of evolution, dictate constitutes manliness, they are both sort of living outside the box. I don’t think they are necessarily gay, bi, or straight. Or at least it’s not that important. They are Jack and Ennis. And Brokeback Mountain is where Jack and Ennis go to no longer be boxed in. It is the Paris of Bergman and Bogart in Casablanca, that they will always have despite all the problems and regrets the world outside that time piles on. But here it’s a place I think modern people can relate to more whether gay or straight, as we try to forge identity in a world of focus groups, mass marketing, and demographics, all labeling and defining us into our sociological niches. Maybe its why this movie is transcending the gay film genre and doing so well even in many of those red states you might now expect a film being publicized this way to be successful.

Brokeback Mountain itself, the place where they go to be together periodically over the years, is both timeless and outside of time. It’s stark and open beauty never changes from the pre sexual revolution early 60′s when the film starts to the androgynous early 80′s when it ends. It’s far from the world’s expectations and viccissitudes, a place to be closer to man’s original and natural state of hunter gatherer, great outdoors existence. It’s a manly rugged outback for real men, (and the sheep they love), and a place outside of societies stigmas and classifications; it’s the one place they can be together and be the kind of real rugged men they are and want to be, while still released from its other obligations. They are the Marlboro Men complete with phallic chain smoking before and after they meet on the mountain herding, fighting, and doing whatever real men do with sheep alone in the mountains. It doesn’t necesserily seem that when they fight that this foray into the subconscious of red state rage, is a manifestation of sexual desire quite yet. At least it seems no less so than quite heterosexual jocks whipping each others asses with wet towels in locker rooms.

But of course it becomes sexual and on Brokeback Mountain they can do it without becoming the kind of guys they themselves would still probably call queers and deviants. They are different. In Brokeback Mountain they are existing outside the box and beyond the limits of the borders of their own minds. This is especially true of Ennis as played by Heath Ledger. His excellent performance reveals to us a man at war with himself, deeply repressed, gruff, and fearful, and who can not get past his own conditioned thinking patterns no matter how much it hurts him to not do so.

Though there is a sense in this movie of two men sharing a bond of passion at once uniquely their’s, one that transcends sexual orientation, Jack is certainly a bit more open in his gayness, while Ennis is a prototypical and softspoken cowboy who you can imagine under certain circumstances doing himself a little gay bashing. Though Jack gets married and has a child too, he is at one point willing to try and take the relationship beyond Brokeback Mountain. He seems less afraid of what it means and how the world would react. By movies end we get a glimpse into just how much he had to overcome to get there and how much he cared for Ennis. Jack is the one of the two to sleep with other men, though it is possible that this was because he was looking for an Ennis surrogate. He is less practical and careful than Ennis and this comes with its plusses and minuses for both of them. For Ennis he does have a moment when he realizes all the implications of the way he has lived and thought, and what Jack meant to him, but it is still quite possible that his prudence was still the far safer bet.

Their particular love is of course doomed, and it is at least partially due to societal norms. As Ennis tells Jack, “If this thing takes hold of us in the wrong place, we’re dead.” But whether Ennis’s self-denial and repression is at least partly self-imposed is another debatable point. As a boy his father took him to see the mangled corpse of a local man known to be carrying on a gay relationship to show him what becomes of such men. His father may have even been involved in the killing. This becomes Jack’s standard and the unspoken fear haunting his relationship and driving his marriage and attempt at normalcy. It’s also probably an early root of his grumpiness and simple living, characteristics that become larger definitions of who he is as he gets older. The film offers an explanation as to why this happens, as well as an interpretaive ending about how far this will define him in his surrender or growth, depending on your interpretation. But is it Ennis’s own, and not all societies repressed concepts of masculinity, that doom him and Jack? For Ennis especially, Brokeback Mountain offers freedom from those personal boundries that box him in and keep him at an emotional distance from not only Jack, but his wife and daughters.

Some people have wondered why the two men just didn’t up and move to a more tolerant place like N.Y. or S.F. The obvious answer is that when the movie starts in 63 it is still pre Stonewall riots and hippie movement even in those big cities, and by the time they do occur Jack and Ennis are locked into a life of committed obligation to family and work. It’s not real practical at that point to pick up and open an S&M shop specializing in saddles, spurs, and lassos in the middle of Manhattan. (Humpback Mountain would have made a great name for it though). But that would be repulsive to them anyway. The repressed and silent Ennis certainly could not have done it. not to himself and not to his legacy in his daughters minds. His is the culture of the Marlboro Man. They are simple guys living in a simple area apart from what goes on in big cities. They are cowboys with a notion of maleness that is very much part of the norm. Certainly in later years, they could have gotten together permenently by perhaps escaping from the midwest to N.Y or another more open city, but how informed they are about social changes in the world is another matter. One would guess they have a clue about what’s out there beyond the borders of their home states in Wyoming and Texas. But the borders of their own minds are possibly the bigger obstacle.

There are questions as to these guys fates I wont mention so as not to spoil it, but maybe if anyone sees this and is interested we can discuss on the forum. The repressed fears planted in Ennis by society and particularly when his father took him to see that body is probably the decisive event in events that happened many years later. It’s a sort of unspoken white elephant in the room between them. There is some great imagery dealing with a literal in the closet juxtoposition between different realities and consequences of choices at the end of the film. Despite Ennis’s distance, semi redeemed at the end, we get a clue to how much he sacrificed for whatever relationship they did have over the years. He tells Jack he’s responsible for who and what he is, and indeed his whole destiny is altered, ironically by trying not to have it altered by entering into a full relationship with Jack.

I’m a big believer in art, especially t.v., music, and cinema, having a transformative effect on the culture. There is an idea of something called a cultural meme out there I don’t want to get into, but I think movies like this carry that meme forward and help evolve the species of homosapien. It’s great to see a cultural image that has come to represent so many negative qualities like that of the Marlboro Man redefined in the image of the culture which has paved the way for this movie with the likes of Queer As Folk, Will And Grace, and Queer Eye For The Straight Guy. They too had their progenitors, all working to open minds of most people and humanize those that are different from them. It’s an example of how pop culture evolves and leads from one step to another. Unfortunately for Jack and Ennis they lived in a world that ironically gave them a place to escape all this but not one that put them in touch with a changing culture that could have offered them Stonewall riots, hippies as hope for alternative lifestyles, or Elton John moving them to sing. And we all know that every cowboy sings a sad, sad song, now don’t we? But culture evolves slowly and not everywhere at once. That might have been enough to make a difference for a few in its early stages in places like N.Y. and S.F. but not in America’s heartland, in the red states before they had a color.

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If Jack and Ennis have the happy ending even those who have not seen this movie are surely aware by now they don’t, would it really be that happy? Maybe the sweetest love is always the one that got away, or that we didn’t take every chance on. Once two people settle in to domesticity the bad stuff starts to rise up and distance them. Stuff that comes from millions of years of evolution in which monogomy has not been naturally selected for, takes on many forms as people get naturally bored with each other and wistful about what could have been or what might still be out there. But for most of us, there is a sweetness about the stuff that didn’t have to stand up to the rigors of the world and biology, a sweetness that for Jack and Ennis, and metaphorically for us from this point on, that can be called Brokeback Mountain.

Perpetual Beginnings VIII

Published on February 9, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

A Dude Enry:

Murdoc dropped to his knees and buried his head in his hands. He let them find their way back to that spot on his head where that unnatural pain seemed to emanate from. He looked up at Thorn and said, “Kweijulkak.” He felt like retching but couldn’t. He thought a seizure was coming but it hovered just close enough to remind him of its power, but backing off to let this somehow different force exert its authority over his head and mind.

“Kewijulkak!” he screamed.

He looked up at Thorn who was coming towards him. He stopped and looked down. Things got blurry, like a bad station fading due to old rabbit ears antennas. He thought Ackerman got up, was pulled up by Peter, who patted his shoulder and looked at Murdoc and laughed.

“Julelbaketix!” he screamed at them.

Thorn looked at Murdoc with disgust as he lurched closer to him. Charles could make out a retreating arm that quickly entered back into his field of view until it was all he could see. They he drifted into blackness….

….He came to in an antiseptic room with white walls and metal tables that felt cold beneath him. he realized he was naked and that a man in a white labcoat stood a few feet away away, watching him with curiosity.

“Welcome back Charles.”

“His voice was slurred but he made himself say, “where?”

“All in good time I presume.” He picked a phone up off a stainless steel table and told someone, “He’s back.” Then he came closer to Murdoc and asked him how his head felt. Murdoc mumbled, indicating it wasn’t so good, but to himself he thought it felt better than it had in a while. The Dr seeming man poked and probed for a moment before a door slid open and Nathan Constable walked in. The tall, imperious looking man who had commanded the faith of millions stood over Murdoc with a look that expressed both pity and contempt. “Jesus you fucked everything up pretty good this time didn’t you Charles?”

“Ackerman,” he moaned.

“Don’t you worry about him. He’s less important than either he or you realize. It is perhaps your fatal weakness to make more of everyone around you but the two people who hold not only your destiny but those of many others in their hands.”

Murdoc nodded towards Constable indicating that he was one of the two presumably. Constable nodded affirmatively. Murdoc waited and managed to strain out, “who else?”

“Ohhh Charles. Are you still so ignorant. you’re here because of her. You spent the last day writhing in pain, re-experiencing seizures, and taking part in a cultish assasination plot, all because of her. Well, because you killed her anyway.”

“Sarah.”

“Of course stupid. But not to worry. She will be fine in due time. As will you.” He saw the prostrated mans confusion, his pain, and nodded for him not to try and talk or understand. “Rest my friend. Despite your arrogance and stupidity I will have my work seen to fruition and you will escort our lovely anti-heroin into the sunset. It’s how all good stories end…You little shit.”

Murdoc awoke some time later feeling better. He remembered slipping off into unconsciousness with the impression that something was missing. It was missed time and something more. But he could not name it. He ate some soup and was given a robe to wear out into Constables living area. Nathan was waiting for him. He gestured to a seat across from him. A plush love chair that Murdoc sank into. He wished he could disappear into it and find what was missing. Dive down deeper into the rabbit hole he felt so close to.

“What did you do to my head?”

“We fixed it.” He smiled at Murdoc’s frustration and growing anger. “Your Sarah settings have been tweaked Charles. You really screwed yourself when you shot her. For god’s sake haven’t you payed any attention to the past 20 years?”

“The seizures?”

“Figured that part out at least.”

“She kept them away?”

“Yes and no. The neural implant we put into your cortex kept the seizures away. Sarah was the reason we put it there.”

Murdoc’s mouth widened along with his eyes. He made a grimace of shock, dismay, and outrage. He didn’t know yet what the predominant emotion he should be feeling was but he knew that it called for him to get up and beat this other man a yard shy of oblivion. But he knew he didn’t have the strength yet.

“I see your anger Charles but if it weren’t for us and Sarah you’d have never made it. Among other things that chip in your head balances out electric impulses. If it weren’t there you were on pace to a gran mal that would have ended you eventually. There was no cure.”

“I know about implants. But that kind of thing…in the 70′s?”

“Ahhh yes. A bit ahead of its time. At least to you. Bit of a glitch there I’m afraid. Though you met Sarah in the mid seventies originally all your memories of personal conflict with her, of killing for her, took place in the new millenium. You killed for Sarah in the year 2000 Charles. Not the eighties. You think you killed Ackerman in 2011, not 1986. It is now 2031.”

This was too much. He began to exhale and inhale quickly as he grasped the arms of the chair for support, an anchor to keep him from being pulled away into chaos. “What the fuck is this Constable?”

“This is your life.” He paused and in an overdramatic voice added, “And I am your father.”

Murdoc smirked with reassurance. He knew this wasn’t true. None of it could be true.”I remember growing up you bastard. I remember Disco, the miracle on ice, the hostages, Cambodia. I remember my father.”

“Well they did all happen Charles.”

“I don’t remember anything beyond 2000. If you’re telling the truth I’ve aged damn well.”

“You did grow up in the 70′s, met Sarah, stopped having seizures, came of age in the 80′s, joined the DSP in the 90′s and met Sarah again in 2000 when you started experiencing seizures again. Then you went away for awhile.”

“Away?”

“Your implant operates on many levels. You were a bit of an experiment Charles. You’re not exactly all you anymore. You’ve been improved. You were chosen and in that decision, in the sense of the creature you have become since your last memories, you are indeed my child, if not my biological one.”

“What creature?”

“One with your life expectancy. Your immunity to disease. Your potential.”

“You’re crazy.”

“You’ve got nanobots inside of you Charles. Their main control comes from the implant in your head. I control that implant with this.” He picked up a small keyboard from the oak end table beside him. He flipped its lid tapped around the keyboard in a way that seemed too light and unreal. “You look like you could use a laugh Charles.”

Suddenly Murdoc started chuckling. It built to a laugh before Constable mercfully brought him back down to an emotional level he was more comfortable in. Murdoc just shook his head, partly in astonishment, and partly in denial of what he had just experienced.

“How about shedding a tear for our beloved Sarah?” He moved his fingers across the board and Murdoc’s throat started to swell with emotion. His eyes became blurred as he tried to fight what was happening. He could not. The tears came and he let out a little whimpering cry. “Sarah why?” he moaned pitifully. Constable returned his settings to normalcy.

“You son of a bitch!”

At seeing Murdoc start to get up with anger and clenched fists, Constable said, “How would you like to experience suicidal feelings Chares?” Murdoc plopped back in the seat.

“Why don’t I remember the future then?

“When we last reset you a mistake was made and you proceeded to Sarah’s place on Easy St with a large portion of memory gone. Your mind needed a place to put the memories of Sarah and found spaces in the 20th century.”

“Why would I remember her then? If not everything else. Why didn’t other memories need a place?”

“I’m sure some did, and you would notice them given time. But your memories as concerns The Path and her, including your recollections of Stan, have an override clear of the normal channels of memory. We couldn’t take a chance that some injury would wipe those away. They are far too valuable.”

Murdoc pushed back at passing waves of vertigo and nasuea. It felt like he had been plopped down in the middle of a strange science fiction story. A bad one. He half expected animals to run up and talk to him, or for Constable to morph into an alien. But was any of this really all that divorced from his past? How much less crazy was years of killing for Sarah without retribution, a religious cult based on a book that was bent on world domination, or a government agency that declared Martial law at a whim? This is the stuff of the future Charles, he told himself. and on some level he knew things weren’t quite right. “What is sarah to all this? Peter said I was to be taken dead or alive and that I was carrying something very valuable and dangerous. All I had was her. Why did you want her? Why all these times? Why didn’t you just get what you needed all the times she was yours?”

“Oh my boy, Sarah was not the object of value. That chip in your head was. In there is the inscribed details of every encounter with her you’ve ever had except the very first from 1975. That chip is based on an evolutionary algorithm Charles. It learns as it computes. It is not merely a source of control of your body and its defenses. It is a way of understanding you, and…”

Murdoc saw where he was going.”And her.” Constable nodded. “Then this is about her. You love her.”

The man laughed delightedly, his angular features becoming more drawn as his mirth seemed to close in on itself. “Not precisely as you mean Charles. You see Sarah is the only other person in the world fitted with the same algorithmic chip as you. Yes I and Ackerman have versions that keep us safer from harm than most people, but what you two possess is far too dangerous.”

“So this means…” he was afraid to think it through much less say it.

“Yes she is alive. But her microscopic physical accoutrements were not meant to withstand that many bullets. She is tentative at best. This is a very precarious situation for all of us.”

“You said she wasn’t that important.” He tried not to think about how this news made him feel.

“No not in and of herself. But your implants were designed to work together Charles. You cannot survive without each other.”

Murdoc was silent. He was not surprised though. He knew it was true.

“And if those implants don’t complete their evolution, and get the data we need, I’m afraid all of us are doomed.” He waited for Murdoc to catch on and then elaborated. “You two are my Adam and Eve Charles. There is a great sickness spreading. The virus in Port City is an attempt to later offer a psychological cure, but this thing has been all around the globe the past two years. People are dying everywhere.”

“Surely with this technology,” he pointed to his head,”we’ve got the capacity to cure anything.”

“Perhaps if it was a biological or viral disease. What is killing humanity is psychological Charles. People have been told its origins is in the body to hold out the hope of a panacea to cure their minds. That’s what Peter hoped to offer in your capture along with what was to be a very public discovery of an antidote you were to leave us with. They are dying of hopelessness. Mankind is sick at heart. Population numbers have fallen drastically the past 25 years. A solitary and isolated culture has erupted and triggered some kind of psychological self destruct mechanism in humanity. Relationships have gone bad, work has become mundane and overly specialized. You and sarah are designed to change that.”

“By being together,” he said with a strange mix of hope and repulsion.

“More than that. The algorithm evolving inside you both is processing a cure Charles. There is a precise equation based on the nature of your actions and their equivilent alterations in your neurons and synapses that can be programmed into everyone else. One that will tell us how to be happy again.”

“How can all of them…”

He understood his confusion. “Not them. They are hopeless. They were meant to fund the cure as they have through their faithfulness to my cause. It is their children, still young enough and in few enough numbers that can receive the implants able to help them bypass all this…this detritus that so many minds are sunken under.”

“You mean to let them die then?”

“They’d die anyway.”

Murdoc was starting to feel an adrenaline rush that helped push him to the edge of the chair. “There’s no psychological virus you bastard. This is just an excuse to genetically engineer the future into being acolytes of yours. you let loose this virus!”

“Charles, please stop denying what you know. Come let us go down and visit Sarah, it will help you put things in perspective.”

“I’ll kill her again!”

“Then you doom them all.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I told you Sarah in and of herself is not that important to me. But they may feel differently. If you finish her they will hunt you down like Thorn wanted them to. He still hoped to save them by offering them you. Sarah was to be their hero, the fulfillment of the legacy. There’s something else about the past quarter of a century or so I’ve failed to mention.”

“You finally learned how to blow yourself you sick fuck?”

“No Charles. No, in the past 25 years Sarah has become the face of the movement. Sarah is their prophet incarnate. Sarah is god. Sarah was supposed to bring you to justice and offer tham all a cure. That was Peter’s idea. Sacrifice you, the vinum you wanted to be, so that they may live. But none of it would be possible if Sarah was not herself the summation of all things holy and prophetic. In every way she has always and always will hold your destiny in her hands.”

Murdoc grited his teeth not sure what to believe. he pushed himself up to follow him down to see her. As he did so he decided that whichever was true, Constable’s version of all this or Murdoc’s own suspicions, there was something fundamentally sick in humanity, certainly in him, and that something was going to kill her again, cut her up into so many little pieces until no little nanobots could piece her back together again.

Dead To Me

Published on February 3, 2006 in ..The Dude, Lists and The Ill-Literates. 5 Comments

[image:78:l]Yes it’s time for another list. As you can surmise from the title, the inclusions on this list are of a dubious nature. It’s not merely stuff or people I don’t like. It would be easy to fill this up with much of the stuff on the illiterati’s previous Hate List. No, this is about those people or things that were formerly of some value to me and have crossed a line that has Fredo-ized them. Yes it comes down to this…this…Sicilian thing.

Ok, so with that explanation obviously ruling out Bush, Rove, Cheney, FOX “News,” Rosi O’Donnel, the Dallas Cowboys, Terrel Owens, Tom Delay, Ray Romano, Brittney Spears, the last American Idol winner, alcohol, drugs, Pat Robertson, the Pope, neo-nazis, the Three Stooges, and so much more, let’s see who was on notice and now has passed over to the other side.

John McCain.
He was one of the few Republicans I could stomach. i even said I could see myself voting for him for President someday. He took stands against the Bush administration and showed a committment to ethics and beliefs that was not afraid to laugh in the face of the religious right. But now, as he prepares to make himself more palatable to the GOP powers that be, he has made moves to garner their support. He talks about how proud he is of the great job the Bush admin is doing. He wants to stay the course in Iraq. He’s saying he’s for Intelligent Design alongside evolution in schools along with other conciliatory gestures to the right’s fundamentalist base. There’s still alot I like about him, and much of what he’s doing now is probably just a line of appeasment to get elected, but though those tactics are normal I want more from people of privelege and power. The bar needs to be raised on our standards and politicians could raise it by putting truth and their beliefs in front of focus groups and spin to woo voting sectors. That’s enough reason there. But he also just might believe some of this stuff too. So John McCain, you who used to be a cool pool on the Republican deserts edge, you were a mere mirage sir, and…YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!!

Oprah’s Book Club.
Never read them to begin with. Even made fun of her little book thing. But I never condemend it. At least she was encouraging people to read. But right or wrong I’ve always perceived it as selecting books that are feel good tales of spiritual hoo-hah meant to help bored housewives escape into places like Madison County to be romanced by guys that don’t exist anymore than princesses do. ok so there may be some closer to that ideal than i and I dont like it, but those women are not going to find them. And now that longing to just feel good leads her group to the uplifting memoirs of former street junkie turned hero James Frey’s Million Little Pieces. Turns out he lied about most of the stuff he passed off as real and now Oprah’s group is booing him when he tries to explain and apologize. Hey he gave you guys what you wanted. A fantasy wrapped in a non-fiction impramatur. You don’t want truth. you can’t handle the truth. Read books from Iraq, or street literature, not melodrama if you want truth. Now I understand this choice was a bit of a departure in some respects for Oprah in its supposed grittiness, but it still revolved around everything turning out ok, appreciation of the power of women, and spiritual redemption. And I do respect alot of stuff Oprah does and works for. I also appreciate that this mini-scandal has made people cry out for truth and get a bit more hardline about it. That’s a very good thing. But I need stuff to kill off on this list and for its usual Maya Angelou type of ingratiating soapy drivel (some of it very well written and great literature, but still…), and for making a lier into a number 1 bestselling author not to expose him and make truth king, but rather to feed their ego’s and expectations, Oprah’s book club YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!

Tom Cruise. [image:81:l]
I used to stick up for his acting skills. Thought he was great in Rain Man and Born On The Fouth Of July. I defended him upon breakup with Nicole to the point of distrusing her. I looked the other way when I heard about his little Scientology affiliation. But in the past year we’ve seen him get rid of his old publicist so he can be free to express the real Tom. This person has jumped all over Oprah’s couch like a retarded man in order to express his singular and special love for his 3rd movie starlet in about a year or two’s time. One that is about 20 years younger. It is a year where this real Tom has castigated Brooke Shields for taking pills to help with depression. Real Tom has said psychology and all medications are useless and part of a giant scam. Apparently the only thing that really exists in our heads are the Scientology aliens that will hatch when we are ready. Or is it when we are bad? Either way he’s based a belief system on the words of the guy who wrote Battlefield Earth. I don’t like real Tom and from here on in, Tom Cruise…YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!!

P.E.T.A.
As a kid I thought these guys were idealists who just loved animals. But now they are involved in more and more acts of violence and hypocrisy that make you wonder if these folks would wipe out humanity if they could. They kill thousands of pets a year and use bullying tactics to recruit people to their cause. Much of their euthanizing comes out of economic utility rather than humane treatment of animals. They are becoming the enemy. You could and should be more, but for using tactics best left to terrorists, and for giving activists a bad name, PETA, YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!!!

[image:75:l] Anna Benson.
She’s the hottie wife of Mets pitcher Kris Benson who is somehow famous despite not having any particular skill. She doesn’t sing badly like Brittney and she doesn’t even act badly like JLo. She has a website and does some spreads here and there I think. But she’s outspoken and silly. I never minded it. She went on Howard Stern often and said things like that if her hubby ever cheat on her she’d sleep with the whole Mets team. This prompted Pedro Martinez to make the joke upon signing with the Mets last year, that he’d have to try and fix Kris up. Pedro is funny like that. Anna wasn’t particularly funny, but I didn’t care that she told everybody about all the places in various ballparks she and Kris had sex in. Fine. I don’t care, but it’s no biggie. Honesty is nice and why should she be repressed like me. But now, upon hearing rumors Kris may be traded out of the city that’s helped her career, she lashed out at the Mets for getting rid of them because of her antics when they bring in a guy like Carlos Delgado who turned his back on the flag and was a traitor to this country.

First of all, this is not what happened. Delgado didn’t like standing and singing during God Bless America because it had become a political statement after 9-11 and he wasn’t fond of our policy regarding Iraq or in test bombing an island near his home in Puerto Rico. Delgado actually thinks for himself, is educated, an arts lover, and activist back home where he still lives in the offseason and he made a simple choice to do something I myself would have done. I applaud him and welcome him to NY. It’s good to have a ballplayer on the team who I can respect off of it. Plus he said he would comply with any team policy regarding anthems. The guy is class. Always has been. And this nobody with a hot bod plays Bush’s patriotic card? Uh-uh. Anna Benson, YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!!
p.s. since writing Benson was traded as expected as photo and caption suggest.

Hillary Clinton.
Never her biggest fan but i thought she might be in the mold of her husband and take us back to those halcyion days of the 90′s when Bill was selling us out to the corporate culture of globalization, bombing aspirin factories, and moving the Dem’s to the right. But now she’s part of the pro war group calling for more troops rather than a reduction and doing right of center things like sponsoring anti flag burning laws. She probably doesn’t believe in any of this stuff, but is rather positioning herself to appeal to conservatives in 08, but when you live by the lie you die by the lie and its all I can judge her by. So from this point on, Hillary, who never really had a chance to be President in this country anyway no matter how her Hollywood cronies try to pave the way with badly written shows like the Gina Davis as President thing that’s out there now, whatever hope she had of winning my heart is gone…AND…YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!! [image:82:l]

Rudy Guliani.
He helped clean up N.Y., had mob ties, and did his duty on 9-11 as our President ran the other way. So he got more credit than he deserved for the crime thing, but he had me at, “More than we can bear.” But now he takes lip service about the good to come out of the 3000+ deaths that day and becomes a hack for his party and President. He went out of his way at the pre election convention to try and forge the non-existent link between Iraq and that horrible day, which to me is spitting on the bodies of all those people who were crushed in those buildings or jumped to their deaths. He yelled about how the barbarians who attacked us had now heard from us thanks to Bush, knowing as well as everyone else that they had not. He most probably lied about Bush’s words at ground zero as well. There’s alot of cool Republican stuff about Rudy but for this betrayal of those who died on that day, and in fully throwing himself behind the forces of evil who have turned that attack and its aftermath from a source of pride and international sympathy into one of shame and international hatred, Rudy G, YOU…ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!!!

Joe Lieberman.
Nuff said.
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Celebrity Couples.
Never cared all that much about who was dating who, but I think somewhere along the time the media started combining the celebs names they took this pop cultural contrivance and hooked it up to life support. From Beniffer to Bradjolina, the media and the egos of the pretty people have created these montrous hybrids that threaten to consume us with attention corrupting jaws that have no sharpness. Instead they just slowly naw at us until we become numb and desensitized to what matters and what doesn’t. And slowly we get to feel more inadequate, our relationships so not beautiful and perfectly sculpted in comparison. And if they can’t make it why should the rest of us less than perfect specimens have any hope? I don’t want to know any more about a celebrity except that Harrison Ford was a carpenter. That remains the only salient and worthwhile inside info on an actor’s personal life I’ve ever heard or care to hear. Well that and Jennifer Conelly’s upstate origins and the state of her marriage to actor Paul Betteny. Excuse my while I go google them and see how it’s working out. And if it doesn’t work out between Jen and me she, and irregardless, all celebrity couples and those that report on their mutant atrocity relationships ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!

Public Figures Who Use The Words Freedom And Democracy.
These words are too easily exploited to suit nefarious purposes so loaded with easy escape hatches for thought are they and thusly used by evil people to create a reality that is the opposite of what they mean. This is the kind of thing Orwell predicted and what the Bush administration excells at. Soon I may advocate for us calling them Frenchocracy and Frenchdom. Bush used the word freedom 17 times in his SOTU. It’s calculated to lull the masses. It’s using baby talk words to go along with the baby talk manner in which politicians of both parties talk to people. So in the context of the public forum these two words and the people who use them ARE…DEAD…TO…ME!

On notice: The NY Times, Communism, Socialism, Capitalism, books on tape/cd, Omar Minaya (the Mets G.M. for non Baseball people), Democrats in general, weekends, non Baseball people, holidays, hurricanes, half my coworkers, my penis, rock n roll, non England living humans, Winona Ryder, Christopher Hitchens, Fox t.v. (non-news), anyone who didn’t watch Arrested Development, soccer moms, yellow cars,
and Metallica.

Off notice: Bears, Hockey, and whoever read this whole post.

Props to Steven Colbert for the On and off notice ideas for this type of list though Dead To Me has been that very sincerely Italian affectation I’ve used on my own for quite some time.

Capote

Published on February 2, 2006 in ..The Dude, Films, Reviews and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

[image:73:l] Based on the 4 year period Truman Capote spent researching and writing the book In Cold Blood, Capote, as its title indicates, is more about the man writing the story than the story itself. That fact also offers a peek into the films subject matter and the character of the man it studies. Capote was a self absorbed dandy more consumed with getting the appropriate ending for his book than the books real life subjects who he has a strange and ambiguous relationship with. It makes for a great performance by Phillip Seymour Hoffman if not a great movie, since Hoffman captures the attitude, mannerisms, and complexities of a man, who though interesting and watchable, is not himself a drama as big as the one that made for the fodder of his final work and an experience that hastened and contibuted to his literary and physical demise.

The book In Cold Blood eventually became its own movie that didn’t focus on Capote’s part in the lives and various stays of execution the two killers under scrutiny go through over a period of 4-5 years. Both book and movie, as well as this film are of course all based on the real events of the murder of a family in rural Kansas in 1959 and Capote’s research into the case. Originally he wanted to write a story about the consequences of the town before the killers were found. The killers started off as inconsequential to the story he goes to Kansas to write for an article in the New Yorker. When Perry Smith and Dick Hickock are captured Capote’s focus changes.

He then sets out to write and pioneer the territory of the non-fiction novel, which has since become commonplace. He proceeds to attempt to get into the head of Perry Smith in particular who Capote, a homosexual, seems to be enamored of. Capote is full of efete qualities and affectations of speech and mannerisms, and it seems as if these qualities carry over to his psyche as he tries to see himself as so much like Perry because a few characteristics of their unhappy upbringings are in common. But these bits of information are not that unusual for alot of people, and it appeared to me as if the author was trying to aggrandize his own pain at the expense of his subject. In his humanized portrayal and sympathy for two horrific killers he was perhaps foreshadowing our more modern sensibilities, so natural for us now, to look behind the face of apparent evil and see the social, cultural, and psychological roots of so many hard to explain or forgive actions. But to me it also offered a look into a similar foreshadowing of our modern victimized culture where people make up abuse stories for sympathy, and so many carry on as if the world owes them something because they didn’t grow up in the Brady household.

In this sense it is a look into the ego of an artist we get in this movie. As events unfold Capote has some kind of real connection however superficial to this man, an affection that seems more based on his physical presence than anything else. But he also grows more and more impressed with the ramifications he and his publisher know the article turned novel will have on the literary world. Already the center of attention at Manhattan parties and gatherings where Hoffman does a great job showing Capote holding court, holding everyone in thrall to his every word, telegraphing his puchlines and practically starting the laugh he knows they owe his greatness for them. But of course one needs to always build on reputation and he and his publisher knew this would be a best seller, and that, as his publisher played by the ubiquitous Bob Balaban indicates, will change writing forever. Problem is he needed an ending and couldn’t have one until the confessed killers who had originally gotten bad legal representation that Capote ameliorated by finding them a better lawyer, were put to death.

Clearly Capote tries to distance himself from their case and further assistance as he lies to Perry about it, and lets himself slide off into a very morally ambiguous place. He and his book have become more important than anything. That includes one of his best friends Haper Lee. Lee accompanied him to Kansas in the early stages of the investigation to act as a buffer between Capote and the towns people who he realized may not respond to someone who talks and dresses like he does. Lee was at that time writing To Kill A Mockinbird. As the film passes the 5 or so year period it encompasses Lee of course has the book published, wins a Pulitzer prize, and has a huge movie made of it. Capote seems to notice none of this so consumed with his own greatness and literary status. Near the end of the movie Capote attends the movie premiere of Mockingbird and is interested only in himself, perhaps repressing having to acknowledge greatness besides himself in his midst. He is no longer the only focusof the Manhattan literary elites. But he knows his book can change that if only the two killers he has used to write such an original story would finally die.

The non fiction novel idea he lays the groundwork for sort of serves as a kind of allegory for Capote’s own blurred lines between reality and fiction. He becomes more consumed with his book, its reception, and his ending, than in the real lives of those affected. Nor does he care to help the killers who’s demise he had forestalled when he needed material, but who he cares less to keep alive when all he needs is that ending.

It is implied that this moral disintegration and the revelations of such a case as the one he wrote about may have played a part in the subsequent decline of Capote’s writing career. Though In Cold Blood was received as well as expected and went on to all its subsequent success-including a theatrical adaptation where Robert Blake played the murderer Perry in one of the great non stretches in movie history ranking right up there with O.J. Simpson playing a bungling idiot in the Police Gun movies-Capote never wrote another novel and left only shrter unfinished works behind before drinking himself to death in 84. His mostly posthumously revealed drinking problems were not really covered in the film, and maybe were best left suggested since its more than enough to watch a man so drunk on himself that alcohol could seem no more than another affectation for him to display as a society room standard of the tortured artist.

On an off note: Hoffman and the movie have been nominated for best actor and film Oscars. It’s an ok movie but not one I would probably have given that distnincion to. Hoffman on the other hand is one of my favortie actors and is great as usual, though I’d have rather seen him win one for various other things he’s done. He’s not undeserving here, but I actually thought, as far as playing real life figures goes, he was at least as good, if not better in Almost Famous as Lester Bangs. That was a supporting role of course, as most of Hoffman’s gigs seem to be, so it is good to see him get a starring role and some acknowledgment since I’ve long felt he is debatedly the best actor in the country.