Daily Archive for March 5th, 2008

TV Hiccup

Published on March 5, 2008 in ..The Dude and Television. 0 Comments

Hiccup:

I need to sing some praises for Jericho before I move onto Lost.

Jericho rocks.

It’s only back for 7 episodes and then we’ll have to wait and see. I don’t know how the ratings have been. But the show really resonates to me. I can so see this happening. I love Lost. It’s my favorite show. But it’s all bullshit of course. It’s fantasy mixed with enough science and philosophy to satisfy the intellectual side of myself and make it ok to enter into a world where nothing plausible really happens. And they do it with style, good acting, cinematic scope, and solid writing most of the time.

But Jericho feels like a possible slice of the future. To be brief Jericho is a town in Kansas holding it together after myriad nuclear explosions across America have overturned our government and social systems. Even before we got some answers as to the origins of these attacks last season if felt like this is how small pockets of America would have to survive. Border wars over precious resources with towns that used to exist as a bitter high school football rivalry become life and death struggles. Little bits of intrigue from outside slip in and out of town. People are forced to reinvent themselves or be reduced to some pre civilized state.

And though we had hints last year it’s now pretty apparent that not only did forces within our government set up North Korea and Iran to appear to be the culprits they are backed by mercenary Blackwood type operations, in this case Ravenwood, who are using the ensuing chaos to implement their political objectives. Basically they are overturning the constitution and rewriting U.S. history. A new President has been chosen and the seat of power is in Wyoming which is trying to defeat the Texas based rival to power who may or may not know the truth about the attacks. All while the privatized military we see developing for real in our world is instituted and given power to do whatever they want. And of course turn a huge profit.

Just all feels very real and plausible to me. I would bet a fortune there are forces in our own government that have at least contemplated something like this. I think Dick Cheney has wet dreams about it.
So props to Jericho and CBS for putting it on, bringing it back, and letting them imply the things they’ve implied.

Lost: Desmond is going to die.
I fear this after last week.
I’m concerned about him being on that freighter with Sayyid but most probably not back in the world with Sayyid and the others that get back. I wonder if they gave us that nice Des/Penny moment so that we would have some culmination to our desire to see them reunited cause it feels so good. An actual physical reunion may now seem anticlimactic if we get it. So maybe this is what we’re going to get and they want to raise the stakes with Desmondo’s death. It may be the thing that sets Sayyid off on his course of revenge.
I think I’d rather kill Jack than desmond at this point. I still have Jack love but Desmond is the man. He’s that wild card that’s shaken things up since he was introduced. And Penny would be sad and i don’t want to make Penny sad.
As for his time travel, if they had to go there I like the way they did it. Even if it’s still probably ridiculous. Now I’ve never been a big fan of the time travel. Never brought it as being plausible. There’s always paradoxes and it never makes sense. The whole idea of a body being able to do that just doesn’t work on any level I can imagine. But they added a twist with the idea of consciousness traveling. This avoids some paradoxes and with the memory issues it seems to develop it can explain those gaps and sudden insights like Des had as he walked away from Penny’s apt and Farraday had when he searched his journal.
Of course I still don’t necessarily believe consciousness is anything more than the sum total of the physical brains operations. But I can divorce myself from that supposition and enter into enough disbelief to allow for at least that much in a world of mind reading smoke monster security systems that can take any shape, free floating cabins with invisible occupants, and the antithesis of nerd-dom having a myriad of pop cultural references at this disposal all the time as Sawyer does.
This last episode seemed to disprove my theory that the island is 3 years behind the rest of the world. There are time dilations of some sort. One was 31 minutes. Another was the better part of a day with the helicopter. But Penny was apparently on xmas eve and the calender on the freighter was 2004. Plus Kate’s mother’s comments the week before regarding her cancer.
This all seems to be hinting at time as a entirely separate mathematical/time theory. The Minkowski reference for one thing. The real Minkowsky, a math guy or something, posed the possibility that Einstein’s theories worked with time as a 4th dimension apart from the other 3. Farraday’s journal has references to imaginary space and real space and was filled with equations. Numbers have been a part of the show and it would be neat if the numbers factored into this some how.
I don’t think it’s the answer but I’m often put into the mindset of of black holes. It seems there is an event horizon somewhere off island. The sub had to pass through it which is why they knocked Juliet out, the copter went through it, Desmond, and maybe 815. It’s not only on the island because the hydra St island is inside of it and easy to pass to and from. Also the copter had to be a few miles out before they hit that storm. And I have heard of associations between electromagnetism as a barrier for lab created molecule sized black holes. Makes me wonder if turning the failsafe let this barrier drop and the powers of the hole are expanding as well as its event horizon. Thus the reason why Des was saving the world. And Black Holes have time dilation issues starting at their event horizon.
But of course inside a black hole there wouldn’t be a pretty island with relatively ideal weather. If the event horizon had expanded that far beyond the island everything inside should be annihilated and dark.
And it doesn’t appear that the island is stationary. That would explain North compass settings and high tide being off as well as Dharma Polar Bears in Tunisia. Maybe the whole thing is like Jacob’s cabin.
But one question I have is how this is being explained to the media and people after the rescue. The faked wreckage was found off the coast of Bali in the Indian Ocean. At Kate’s trial her lawyer confirmed that they were on a South Pacific island. How is that being reconciled by everyone? And wouldn’t the media be all over finding this island and going there to do on sight reports about where the famous castaways were?
Hopefully this will get a good explanation and isn’t another writing screw up.
Like the defense going before the prosecution during Kate’s trial.
And they’re going to have to explain why they didn’t want to remand her into custody because she’s such a flight risk until then despite the fact that she’s apparently been running around raising Aaron and living in a nice big house for a year or two.
And once again, Sayyid rocks, Has always rocked, And always will rock. His flash forward confirmed this last part.
I think Miles is in the coffin.
Apparently we’re finding out whoever it is this season.
Michael and Walt have got to be in flash forwards. Nothing else will work.
Hurley let himself be Scooby Doo’d by driving around in that van so much. He was in the mindset.
I think Jack will know Claire is his sister and it will be a reason he doesn’t want to see the little monster.
Charlotte is getting hotter to me.
When Farraday arrived he said, “I’m Daniel Farraday and i’m hear to rescue you.” An e mail gal pal pointed out to me that this may have been a Luke Skywalker reference. I should have caught that. Sawyer would have.
Could Desmond’s jewelry shop woman be in the same time travel situation as Des, Farraday, and Minkowski?
Did Desmond alter anything? When did Penny get a copy of their photo? Was she still at the stadium? Why would she if all there was was the scene at the door of her apt when he tells her he will call in 8 years and then the call. Seems as if there was always still contact in between. She tracked him to the stadium. He wrote those letters in military jail. She put that letter in his copy of Our Mutual Friend. What happens to all those moments now? They don’t work as well in the context of The Constant though I suppose his memory issues could have played with things and contributed to Penelope’s confusion regarding his feelings and her motivation in tracking him down at the stadium.

New South Park next week!
This is always a good thing.

Galactica soon. But apparently not the full 20 episodes. Do i care? Should I care? I don’t know yet.

If they keep telling us this is the strongest American idol field ever do you think we’ll start believing it?

Because they do.

It’s like they’re overcompensating.

Still i like that Cook guy with the guitar. His Lionel Richie take last night was cool. I’d listen to that again. But mostly these people have no taste in 80′s music. Fuck, they were born in the 80′s. That’s obscene. Fuck them and their birth certificates. I want to touch that one girl that does impressions though.
Musically I mean.
I want to touch her with song.
Before I fuck her.

No, no, no I would never have sex with her. Ok, the reverse is actually what I mean. But there’s no call for language like that. She is not an object I want to fuck. She is a girl I want to touch and penetrate in ways that under most circumstances would be considered rude.

Anyway she’ll probably be gone tomorrow and so will our love. Such as it is.

The Oscars mostly sucked again by the way. What I saw of them. Believe it or not I thought Casey Affleck should have won for The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford. Good movie too. Bardem was good In No Country For Old Men but I think his performance has been overrated. I think Affleck’s cloying and cunning Ford took a lot more subtlety to play well than yet another stoic and scary impenetrable villain. Seriously, it’s been done and done well. I don’t get the adoration over this version. He was good. The movie was good if not great. But seriously i think I’ve seen evil twins played as darkly on All My Children. And that’s not bad. Soaps have some very good actors. But quit acting like this Chigur character is some novel concept in evil.

The writer of Juno is kind of hot.
Anyone with me on this?
I still think she thinks she’s really clever though.
I like clever and sexy but taking your Oscar to bed and parading it around isn’t sexy and if you do so it should be taken away from you, melted down, and the proceeds given to some poor person.
Actually all the clothes and jewels these people parade around in should be taken and given to charity. It’s obscene. Some of these people are walking down the red carpet with more money on their bodies than most people make in a year. Maybe years. And I’m sure most are liberal types who talk about the poor, the homeless etc, or at least support their causes. And yet they flaunt their destitution in their faces in the form of designer dresses and priceless glamor bling. You would think we might be beyond the trappings of royalty and having them parade around in those trappings like the signs of divinity they often thought their wealth to be. But that’s how much most of these Hollywood liberals really care. Not enough to not elevate themselves to a higher level or find anything insulting in wearing chains, bracelets, and earings that could feed a family for a long time while millions of children don’t have basic health care.
Yeah it’s not their job to necessarily do anything about it. Some of them really do get involved. They can wear whatever they want. It’s America. It’s a free market and capitalist country. I still wouldn’t be able to do it though and i don’t want to hear them crying about the less benign aspects of that American system that allows them to parade around in such gaudy and disposable wealth. Don’t get on stage and say bring our boys home. Because they’re fighting for you. Not for democracy. Not for freedom or justice. They are fighting to keep the rich richer and the poor poorer and the starlets wearing all those millions on their bosoms are benefiting. If Diderot were alive today he might say he wouldn’t be happy until the last actress has been strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

Bile Filled Political Hiccup

Published on March 5, 2008 in ..The Dude and Politics. 0 Comments

Hiccup:
Hillary wins more big states last night.
The longer this thing goes on the less I buy into the notion of an historic race. So far there is nothing surprising in any of this. In every state the sociologically determined Hillary voters have voted for HIllary and the Obama ones have voted for Obama. And considering it’s only a democratic primary meaning dem voters have to vote for one of them, it’s really not all that impressive that neither of them breaks out of those demographics or has been able to pull away.
In my opinion this does not bode well.
As usual the Republicans are getting united behind their guy despite some of the base’s reservations about him. Mccain is building support while the Dem’s are dividing it. I’m not so sure all those white female voters or Hispanics that vote for Hillary are going to turn out for Obama if he gets the nomination. Nor am I certain that black and youth voters being hoarded by Obama will get over their disappointment and turn to hillary.
The fact that this is getting uglier and that more Republican tricks are being brought into play as both get more desperate may only alienate the losers supporters. The candidates and these absolutely moronic pundits that haven’t got half the clue they think they do as they over analyze every stupid utterance that comes from their mouths, can go on about how a continued debate is good for the country. But it’s bullshit.
They are not debating anything real.
Campaigns never debate anything real.
It’s all approved topics and never the underlying systems and beliefs that are put under the microscope. Has anyone asked any of these candidates where they stand on the Chicago School economics philosophy that has so influenced where we are today? No. Instead we get the safer and more innocuous Nafta debate. A debate that will never go anywhere. Obama and Hillary will not change a thing about Nafta. They have no intention to. This is why campaigning is a waste of time and money. Candidates tell the current group they are in front of at that moment what they want to hear. Not what they really believe.
History proves this categorically.
Just as the history of the candidates should be all we need to make a decision.
But we want to be wooed like lovers. Fed sweet words of nothingness that makes us feel like the most important idiot in the world at that moment and repress the reality we know will come when our suitor gets what they want and the blood rushes out of the romance. During a romance we don’t want to talk about anything too real. And these campaigns are no different.
Instead of who can get us out of Iraq in fewer months or years being debated like a contest of Name That Withdrawal why does no one ask how we reconcile the real reasons we went in there with the diminished expectations of the past 5 years? In other words let’s be honest and say we’re in as part of the imperial design of a small group of Republicans (related to those of the Chicago School and Friedmanism that has butcherd South America for decades), and ask how we accept turning those oil profits over and granting autonomy when we are so heavily invested financially after the bazillions we’ve spent there.
Don’t bother asking about the lives lost and what makes that worth it because we know none of them care about the lives lost. An unspoken truth of all political circles is that they believe in acceptable casualties. Pretty much all of them.
Unless it’s their kids.
But it never is, is it?
Not all but many of these circles believe social safety nets are bad because the weak should perish and we need a desperate work force.
But this will never be mentioned on a campaign trail or by a hack on CNN.
THey will never talk about how they believe corruption is the Darwinian proving ground by which the strong and more intent separate themselves from those that hide behind morality to mask a meekness born of no resolve. Many of them believe this. It is one of the ways they rationalize their selfishness. All tyrants and petty scumbags have these rationalizations. You and I have them as well.
Don’t think about it too much.
It is not to be spoken of. Nor questioned. The media is either too stupid in some cases or complicit in others. In the latter they believe the same things. By believing this they think they raise themselves to the levels of the men in power. They believe they have a nuanced understanding of things that most of us uneducated slobs don’t have.
They may be right. But a decision must be made on how to handle knowledge. What to do with it and how to apply it. And whether or not forces of knowledge should be martialled to serve the status quo or push the envelope a bit and make change.
You can guess the answers to these questions most of them have come up with.

And who fits that status quo better than an old white man like John McCain?
John McCain knows how to get things done. John McCain knows how Washington works. John McCain understands how they think. John McCain has been around. John McCain believes in force and war. And America’s economy is built on force and war. John McCain has learned how to play the game and pander to his audience. John McCain has never been more willing to sell a part of himself to be President. John McCain gets it. Even Hillary has basically said McCain is better suited for President than Obama.

The Dude says John McCain for President.

Who fucking really cares anymore?

Dead Air Hiccups From The Grave

Published on March 5, 2008 in ..The Dude and Life. 0 Comments

I break the pregnant pause of all this dead air for some hiccups of agitation from the repressed prison of my ribcage. All that trapped oxygen I’ve sucked on the past few days of swollen throat glands now rises up into these guttoral expectorations of air from inside my gnarled chest.
Hiccup:
For you see I have been dancing the dance of the little death the past few days. Been a bit sick. Couldn’t swallow for much of yesterday. Not without some drama. But altogether I still felt better and feel better today. But being sick reminds me of how the end will be. Even a relatively minor go round like this was. It’s always like a sneak preview of death and I hate it. And considering I am probably closer to death than birth at this point it’s especially troubling.
It’s like a movie trailer previewing the bodies inevitable failures, the weariness, the helplessness, and the ultimate aloneness that awaits at the end of the road whenever and wherever it may come. Unless of course I go quickly in some type of accident. But most go quietly, not with a bang but a whimper. Not everyone is as alone as I most probably will be at that final sickness. Not physically anyway. But mentally with the decayed memories many have, even loved ones nearby doesn’t always alleviate the darkness and desolation inside as your clock ticks down its final seconds.
Being sick has long reminded me of of what it will be like even though I’ve never experienced it first hand. It used to make me make vows to do things better. Oaths of greater effort, vigilance, and ambition would be weakly uttered through the layers of sick dust in my throat. Now I don’t even bother. Death is no longer a great enough threat or scare to make me change and I am less capable of change than ever. It sort of goes together it would seem. The slippery slope of dropping standards has been reached. And I can’t begin to describe how wonderful that is while working harder than ever to pay rent and utilities while still having no home and nothing that feels like mine.
One of my guys at work may be dying. He has alzheimer’s and has been a shell of his old self anyway. We don’t want to say it but I know everyone kind of thinks it would be best if he just went on his way rather than being in the nursing home he’s in at the moment, coming back, or even being switched to another home which is being talked about now. I guess everyone at work is technically sick. Except the cats and some of the staff. Which makes being sick myself even more palpably apocalyptic. As well as coming home to my father’s brand of sickness everyday after working hard. Wherever I turn there is sickness and hardness with no relief. Only the promise of more. And the need to explode continues to get sucked down deep into my chest, exhorted only in short hiccup bursts like these. Or when I run into the odd woman who I can fall into the illusion of softness and intimacy with with some moments of engagement even if only of a verbal nature.
And I miss the cats at work when i’m not there. To be honest they are the only kind, gentle, or soft things in my world on a regular basis. To reference Lost, they are The Constant. I want to abduct them and take them home but they are not mine though they feel like they are. I see why animals are considered important for old people as companions. Humans need some. Studies indicate they keep people alive longer. They lower blood pressure. On some quantum level I think they make a person more real by being the only living things left that is observing them anymore.
Animals are probably my destiny. I will perhaps leave all this and go somewhere where I can live among them exclusively. Now I’m not one of these people saying I like animals better because they’re pure, more honest, less judgmental, or more loyal. This is stupid. All those traits are abstract qualities of civilized and advanced brains. Animals are probably more selfish. They act more on base instinct. Their loyalty generally goes as far as whoever has the greater willingness to feed them regularly.
But I’ve loved them and gotten on well with them because I think we understand each other and what we need. We enter into that agreement and unlike humans they don’t have as much freedom to back out of it or as much knowledge that there are better options out there for them than me.
They are more easily content and amused I think is what it comes down to. And when i drop my standards enough, which i’m more willing to do for pets, so am I. The unconditionality of their love that many point to seems a bit suspect to me. Nothing is unconditional except in the way a desperate, abused woman may unconditionally keep giving more chances because she sees no other options or alternatives, and comes to rely on the familiarity of her abuser and the few good times which seem larger in their infrequency.
I’ve never wanted unconditional love. You have to earn it. And keep earning it. Anything really, not just love. Love, like freedom and justice is a concept. An abstract idea. These things have been earned where they exist and can be lost if not diligently guarded. I’ve never believed in guarding them with the possessiveness of many relationships but rather with the kindness, consistency, honesty, loyalty, and more born of considered decisions. Getting that back from people just doesn’t happen much. Animals may not make that choice as intellectually but it is inherent in their simple understanding of the world. And I think this is why we get along and understand each other.
I will continue to scratch their heads and necks in just the right places and they will continue to stretch out on my lap. I will feed them regularly and they can be counted on to purr or lick my face. I will proved them shelter from the cold and they will provide living contact and rub at me heels to show their continued appreciation. I will not hurt them and they will not crap on my bed.
Some of these arrangements take some time and training. Not much different than with people. But people change their minds and want different things as time goes by. They don’t want to be with the same person all the time for the rest of their lives no matter what they may say. Animals are easier to please. Simpler in their needs. The give and take need not be so nuanced and therefore lasts longer and remains in that bubble that will not be burst by outsiders or any of the other forces of both external and internal types which act to take the air out of most of our human relationships eventually.
And I probably can’t even have an animal at home due to my situation here. So that’ll have to wait. Ever get the feeling you’re waiting on living your life until you notice you’re running out of life?
All my congratulations to you if you don’t.
As Eddie Vedder once growled, “This is not for you!”

I feel another hiccup coming. Wait for it….