Archive for the 'Literature' Category

The Best Things Ever

Published on March 29, 2008 in ..The Dude, Films, Literature and Television. 0 Comments

There’s some stuff I’ve liked a lot lately and think others should like a lot too.

On TV
The HBO series John Adams.

It’s a 7 parter. 3 have aired. I’ve seen 2 so far with the 3rd waiting for me on the greatest invention since electricity was harnessed. The show looks great. It does a great job of feeling like a real 18th Century colonial/revolutionary America. You can really just slip into the time period surrounded by vivid architectural imagery, clothing, and an overall sense of newness, growth, and quaintness that must have been such an intoxicating mix to those who were part of the grand venture that was this burgeoning English colony as it erupted into an independent country and power.

That venture brings to mind what many still think of as the American experiment. And the idea of that, or rather maybe even the Idea of America in the Platonic sense is something I feel vibrating through the shows words, images, and music. Already it has had its moments to stir the emotions and make one proud, or at least feel lucky to be connected to such a project. You can feel the import of the decisions made at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The ethical principle Adams defends during the trial of the soldiers accused in the so called Boston Massacre is brought to life and in some moments vividly captures the best of what we would like to believe we are.

There are moments during the first 2 parts when i wish I was a politician so i could fight more closely for some of these principles that were amongst the strongest and noblest of our foundations. This gets stirring enough that a higher principle is evoked, a brighter passion stoked, and a desire to see the great experiment to a worthy future awakened. Surely I’d want to also kick out those weakest hypocrisies also so much a part of the experiment. Because of course there those dark elements in the American soul and character. Some are touched on here and some are not. Even in some of the nobler and most complete portraits of the period I don’t get that sense of yet another war or revolution that is more about the middle to upper classes clamoring for even more rather than the lowest classes. And yet it’s often those lower classes paying the price as far as blood shed and lives lost.

While men like Adams seem to have a real concern for the less fortunate lives they are inevitably sending to their deaths for this fight I’m not sure there was ever that practical awareness of the aristocratic divide that continues to widen in this country. But there was a balance in that there was a George Washington on the front lines even if he wasn’t put in positions of most danger and there were generally agreements regarding the shooting of officers. But there was still a much higher ethic and nobility to a man like him and a sense of being much more deserving to preside over a nation. Those ideals he possessed and that people around him in positions of power recognized and rewarded are that much more accentuated and blown up in the face of the chickenhawk pieces of shit sending others to die for them in this country now.

There were noble elements to the revolution and noble men with grand ideas and evolved sensibilities even if they weren’t aware of some of their own hypocrisy. Not that all of them weren’t though. For instance the slave hypocrisy was something they were aware of. There’s a scene in part 2 when Jefferson shows Ben Franklin and Adams his first draft of the Declaration and though it is apparent all 3 men want this eloquent document to stand as a voice for humanity rather than just the free colonies they know it is not an argument that can be won in that time and place. Basically it came down to one battle at a time. Whether they could have fought harder and still presided over independence from Britain and a successful growth of the American economy and helped avoid the Civil War a century later is debatable.

We also get a good look at Ben Franklin. At least in part 2. Hopefully more to come. He figures in something else I’m going to recommend in this post. To me he’s a quintessential American figure. I love his sense of humor, his pragmatism, his skepticism, and many other qualities that made him who he was and helped shape America more than the religion he scoffed at and which so many today try to fool people into thinking this country was founded upon.

There’s a scene in part 2 where Adams is trying to get his vote on declaring independence and he asks Franklin if he ever says what’s on his mind. BF says something to the effect that he’s very much against doing that and that people thinking out loud is a habit much responsible for most of mankind’s misery.

I really get and relate to that. BF was a guy who could read things including his own powerlessness to effect some of those things. But he knew how to maneuver within the framework of the way things were or were going. This doesn’t mean he went with the prevailing winds. He was a rationalist who clearly believed in the scientific approach and derided the ignorance and superstition around him but he knew change came in stages and he made practical and considered decisions. He was the kind of man who looked at the evidence and made a decision based on those circumstances rather than wedding himself to any school of thought, political faction, religion, or group.

I kind of see him and Mark Twain as the best of pre 20th Century America and though I see them as quintessentially American I take liberties in doing so since unfortunately their way of seeing the world and examining it is not exactly the norm in this country. But their inspiration and influence is still there. Despite everything we still may be the funniest, most satirically advanced, and maybe even the most practical country in history. The Ben Franklin’s are the foundation of that even as they battled against some of those other scarier traits instilled in us by racists and the Puritans.

And watching this series combined with other historical pieces I’ve seen and things I’ve read I’m starting to believe the key to these generations, the qualities that separate them from ourselves and our own leaders, was the wigs.

I always wondered why everyone wore them and I think I know. They conferred super mental powers. What if they equalized everyone physically so that the mental could operate unencumbered worrying about how they looked. Let’s face it, most of us are almost always aware of how we look and at least a little conscious of how we are being perceived physically by others around us at any given moment. It takes a lot of mental energy and focus away from us. But those generation from our Founding Fathers going back to England and France of the Baroque fixed it so everyone in a non physical job category had the same hair. No one had to sit there in a meeting thinking “how does my hair look.” It looked like the guy next to him with the bad wig. And since everyone looks kind of bad with a bad wig who cared? They could concentrate on founding democratic systems and cool stuff like that.

Brilliant deduction on my part?

Or brilliant observation on my part?

You make the call.

Anyway, John Adams. Watch it. First 3 are on On Demand so those with cable have no excuse.

Jericho.
It’s over now. The final show ever though there are rumors of a possible sci fi channel pick up. Pretty satisfying ending though certainly with room for more if they have an opportunity. Basically the next segment would detail the next American Civil War as a new history is carved out with guys like Hawkins and Jake being our Adams and Washington’s.

I stand by the shows realism even there are many who feel it was silly and preposterous at times. THis show was so much a reality I can see this country facing someday. They had to rush somethings at the end that could have stood a more reasonable and lengthy set up like the way they got that nuke to the Texas faction. And though the involvement of Ravenwood, a Blackwater type private fighting force wreaks of reality to me, I think the person they ultimately gave responsibility to for the original country wide attacks doing it as an anti Ravenwood/corporate government move was a stretch. But that was part of what felt rushed. I’m not sure they would have gone there in such a tidy way if they had a certain future.

The frightening thing is that he was right in that a Ravenwood and their Government lackies don’t have to effect such drastic changes to remake America in their image. They’re already doing it slowly but surely. And while blowing it all up from within didn’t stop them it might be all that’s left if things keep going the way they are and if there’s anyone left in such a position who wants to change things.

But I thought it was kind of stupid of this nuclear scientist guy to think Ravenwood and their political faction would be weakened by such chaos. They would and did thrive. IF you really think about it and the Blackwater’s and Halliburton’s continue to become a private DOD, FEMA, police force, etc what happens when opportunity overseas dries up?

American Idol:
I’m not so much talking about the show itself as far as something I’m high on right now or recommending. Rather there’s one guy on it who actually kicks some solid ass. David Cook. He’s done 2 or 4 covers I’d actually put on a disc and listen to again. His “Hello,” “Eleonor Rigby,” and “Billie Jean,” were really frakking good. Very unique and original. And he plays some guitar which is always nice to see with someone trying to pass themselves off as a musician as most of these Idol mariah Carey/Whitney Houston want to be losers try and do.

Books
The Last Withfinder by James Morrow.

I love James Morrow.

Few know who he is even within the sci fi community even though what he does has been mostly categorized as satirical sci fi. Copies of his books are hard to find in book stores. But he kicks ass. He has a new book called The Philosopher’s Apprentice out which i did see at Barnes & Noble the other day. But I’m here to talk about his previous book which I just read after it his paperback.

Morrow has always been great at satire and thoughtful philosophic/theological humor but shows in TLW that he can do historical fiction just as well. Even with my expectations for a Morrow book being dashed as I read on and realized I wasn’t meant to laugh as much as in previous works, by about 100 pages in I started to revel in the book’s prose and purpose just as thoroughly as I’ve reveled in Morrow’s previous works of satire.

The story takes place in late 17th and early 18th century England and America with a stopover on a Carribean island and includes a heavy presence of the aforementioned Ben Franklin. Morrow does a nice job mixing Franklin in a major way that could actually coincide with known real events in the mans younger years though obviously don’t really represent real events. The main character is Jennet and we follow her throughout her life as she goes on a licaraesque journey through a time that represents a sort of nexus from superstition to rationality and enlightenment. Her fight to end witchtrials and the killing of mostly women accused of witches is the crux of the book. Morrow makes an interesting choice to have the story narrated by another book. It is Newton’s Principia Mathematica that takes us on Jennet’s journey and the device leads to some nice interludes dealing with the importance of books and the evolution of thought.

A great thing about Morrow is that he has a clear purpose in writing his books. While you might suggest that every author has one as well, I can’t say that they link a greater purpose with an interesting narrative in a syncretic fashion very often or very well. And with TLW I felt a clear a sense of meaning. This is a book with a purpose. And for a book with the conceit of being written by another book and making much of the evolutionary growth and connection of books, much like blocks of DNA in a sort of natural selection of thought, saying this one is worthy progeny of the best qualities and purposes of earlier works is probably the best compliment I can give it.

But i must also add that besides its themes Morrow deserves a lot of credit for utilizing a writing style that was a departure for him. Not only does he get away with it but he created a flowing narrative that was not only readable and more epic and rollicking than past works, he did so in what I found to be an addictive manner. The language and style he uses was compulsively readable in its ability to be direct, to invoke the era, and to find a poetic groove that was neither too arch, nor too trite for the subject matter.

One of the best books I’ve read in years.

For anyone interested in his more satirical works check out Only Begotten Daughter about Jesus sister, the daughter of god living in Atlantic City in the modern era.

The Godhead Trilogy starting with Towing Jehovah.

And, This Is The Way The World Ends.

I need to reread all of them and check out the couple of his books I haven’t read plus the new one though I want to spread out new Morrow since it’s rare. So i may wait on The Philosopher’s Apprentice for a bit.

Movies
Into The Wild

First off, though most know the basic story this is based on and there might be some who don’t. For those this is a spoiler. i will tell you how it ends.

I was skeptical heading into this. I wanted to see it when it was out in theaters but didn’t go out of my way because I thought Sean Penn, who directed it, and Eddie Vedder, as much as I love him, who did the music, to take part in a version of the Chris McCandless story I figured to be too one sided and sanctimonius. Sure If I knew anyone who was willing to do see it I would still have gone but though going to movies alone has become a regular staple in my dotage I generally avoid it unless it’s something i really want to see.
So I Netflixed it. And I’m here to say I was wrong. Not only was I wrong but some of the media and internet opinions I’d come across indicating it was indeed too biased were wrong. I had read much of the book written about Chris and found him naive, arrogant, a bit stupid, and frankly full of shit. I sympathized with aspects of his character but I thought he went too far and took himself too seriously.
But to my surprise Penn made an even handed movie that mixed youthful passion and idealism with it’s attendent arrogance and naivete. I don’t think it accounted for its leads lack of preparedness quite enough and an opportunity for a wonderfully symbolic paen to it was neglected at the end in a final shot that could have given us a piece of information Penn left out. That info being that Chris died pretty close to a waystation that he’d have known was there if he bothered to bring a map.
But not only is this the best looking movie I’ve seen in a while, but I think overall Penn did a good job creating a sympathetic character many of us can relate to at one time in our lives but one that has a mental journey as well as a physical one and in so traveling discovers some truths about life and society. And they’re not always the truths I expected. They may not even have been the truths Chris himself found before his end. There were writings of his found but Penn does take some liberties in interpreting some things and imagining exactly where Chris was at at the end. But as a movie character traveling within a narrative with begenning, middle and end, he takes a satisfying journey even though it winds up where anyone with a little information going in knew it was going to end up.

The Assasination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.
I think i’m the only person who thinks Casey Affleck should have won best supporting actor over Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. But I really do. Bardem’s performance was good but overated. I’ve seen similar portraits of stoic evil before. But Ben’s little brother creates a portrait of cloying opportunism, jealousy, cowardice, and false humility that was really unique and masterly portrayed.

And the move, though maybe a little overlong was generally riveting and interesting. Like Into The Wild it was also a great looking movie. There Will Be Blood and No Country For old Men got a lot of hype for how epic in scope they were with portraits of large and grand vistas. Indeed they were cinematically good looking movies though neither stood out in that regard to me. Into The Wild and TAOJJBTCRF did stand out. These are both beautiful lookoing movies that had much more more breadth of viual scope to them.

While NCFOM may have been the most interesting movie overall last year the 2 mentioned above may have been better. I thought they were certainly better than the other movies nominated for best film.

Mr Brooks.
Not getting into too much. But a good little film noir flick with Kevin Costner playing a stalwart community icon who likes to watch couples have sex and then kill them. not a great movie but a much better one than i expected.

Baseball:
It’s back. Mets open Monday.
Yes they will ost probably be dissapointing. I think Willie is fired by mid season. Probably before the end of June.
But it’s comforting to know there will be meaningful Baseball games going on almost every day until the end of OCtober.

Obama:
I’ve been over the reasons in prior posts so i’m not going into all that makes him one of the Best Things Ever. But he just keeps on rising above and having a great response to whatever Hillary throws his way. Meanwhile Team Entitlement, which is what I call Hillary’s campaign now, continues to look pathetic and desparate. Last week Hillary got exposed in her embellishing of that Bosnia visit even though the contradictory evidence was right there on tape. Then she tried to play it off as sleep deprivation. Which brought to mind her 3 a.m. phone call campaign that took voted from Obama in Texas. If she starts getting facts wrong and losing her mind when she’s sleepy is she the person we want getting up for that late night call with the fate of the world hanging in the balance?

And then there was her constant contradictions as she continues to tear her opponent down, even to the point of praising McCain over him and then when she’s asked about polls indicating these tactics would hurt whoever wins an is sending some democrats to McCain she begs people not to make that mistake. Then the next day her and Bill are right back out there putting her and McCain on a different playing field than Obama.

She sucks and Obama keeps rocking. Relative to her suckage Barack Obama just becomes so much more The Best Thing Ever.

Manhattan:
Spent a day there Tuesday at and around MSG. even though i was working and seriously stressed out I am in awe of that City. Being thee at night is like being in the middle of an epic production. It’s almost unreal.
And girls in hockey jerseys and baseball caps are The Best Thing Ever.

It is unfortunate that I can’t live there or date any of these girls.
But I can still appreciate their BTE-ness.

Oops I Posted Again!

Published on November 2, 2007 in ..The Dude, Literature, Sports and Television. 0 Comments

Some sports items from the cyber ghetto.

Joe Torre is ok but is this Yankee-Dodger thing really worthy of the superlatives and hype?

Every NY news outlet has covered every aspect of this, especially his departure from NY like the deaths of Lady Di and insert dead Kennedy name here.

Torre was just as much of a Yankee shill as the next guy at times over the years like when he backed Roger Clemens defense for throwing the bat at Piazza in game 1 of the World Series in 2000. He actually wanted us to believe he believed that juiced up herpes encrusted Baseball whore Clemens actually thought it was the ball he was throwing at Piazza for christ’s sake. And now him and other brown nosing Yankee madia shills like Mike Francessa are carrying on about Torre masterminding an enormous rebuilding of the team the past 2 years. They integrated 2 or 3 young pitchers into the mix this year. That’s not rebuilding. You don’t rebuild with a $200 million payroll full of All Stars. Give the Yanks credit for drafting guys like Joba and Hughes from a low drafting position. Part of that is having the money to go out of slot but I wish the mets had the smarts to do that. But Torre had little to do with that and it does not constitute some drastic overhaul of the roster and master rebuilding project.

I like Torre and think he did the right thing. But stop martyring the guy. He has not suffered grievance wounds. He is not Baseball’s Jesus and contrary to media opinion he is not one of the top 10 human beings to have ever walked upright.

And now thinking he brings some magical managerial acumen to L.A. is silly. Where was the magic when he managed the Mets, Braves, and Cards with average or below average payrolls? IF Arod goes with him and they get a starter they’ll be scary good. Might now be better than the Mets irregardless. But Torre, as with his Yankee days, hasn’t got that much to do with it.

He was lucky here and he’s getting lucky again now because the Dodgers do have some good young talent. Even with Arod this is a team with enough there and enough chips to move to be prime players for a while.

But the enforced resignation of their manager Grady Little seems very much in reaction to Torre’s availability. So Torre took part in manipulating for a job that another man held even while Torre talked to the Dodgers. Then after Torre accepts, Little announces he was planning on resignation? Sounds like they allowed him to save face. And Torre played the game and did this to a decent guy. He campaigned behind the scenes to take another mans job. There is strong reason to believe Little wasn’t going anywhere unless Torre or maybe Girardi was coming in. It’s considered pretty classless to lobby for someone else’s job. In my opinion it stinks as bad as anything the Yanks did to him. And yet not one media person has questioned this scenario. So trained are they to accept all things Torre and smell his shit and inhale deeply its redolent aroma.
________

Seems as if MLB in conjunction with some of those whacky-ass Christians is sending mislabeled or dud team clothes to African people in need. What this means is that when stuff like championship hats and T’s get printed for a team that loses and the teams can’t sell them, they give them to poor Ghanaians. This includes division champ shirts. What this means is that there are people in Africa walking around with Mets 2007 Eastern Division Champs T shirts and hats and quite possibly believing them to be representing reality. A reality much different than ours. A reality in which the Mets did not suffer an historic and ignominious choke that let a piece of garbage team like the Phillies become the actual nL east champs before succumbing in 3 straight to a lousy Colorado team full of born agains. A team who will find out something about real Baseball in the World Series against Boston. (I wrote that before the Series started by the way and kept it in to show my genius. Actually it shows how obvious it was that the Mets are pathetic for not even getting into the playoffs as part of such an inferior league).

All the nL incompetence only exemplifies how putrid the Mets are. I mean not only couldn’t they even make the playoffs (as predicted by yours truly I might add), but they had to choke like motherfuckers in a display of incompetence, gutlessness, and stupidity virtually unmatched in Baseball history to not make those playoffs.

But in Ghana they are the Eastern champs.

And Christians continue to perpetuate lies and fantasies.

____________

I expect Manning and Brady to battle out mano a mano this Sunday, the 2 of them flying high above the field and having at each other the way Peter and Sylar should have last May. I know this will happen because the media is always right when they hype these things up like this. It’s never disappointing.

Disappointing like a motherfucker.

Go Colts!

_________

2 championships in 4 years for the Red Sox and yet we still have gravity and linear time. THe earth has not opened up.

This may be because of the anti curse of Alex Rodriguez. When he almost went to Boston before the 04 season but wound up with the Yanks, something happened. Reverse the curse. The curse of Payrod was born. And it was best symbolized in game 6 of the alcs as the yanks were undergoing an historic collapse of their own blowing a 3 zip lead to their archrivals. Gayrod tried to slap the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove running down the 1st baseline. It was truly a moment. Seeing him with his hand open and bent so gaily in its little girl posture was revelatory.

And now he is gone seeking a 10 year deal worth around $30 million a year. And the Sox win again.

This will probably help the Yanks. Wherever Arod has gone bad things generally happen and when he leaves teams traditionally get better. Jon Stewart said it to David Wright on The daily Show the other night while asking Wright if he’d switch positions for His Gayness. He said his karma is bad and he infects teams in a bad way. Called him the Dick Cheney of Baseball.

The Mets could have had him 6 years ago. They passed because they thought his demands for things like a personal tent, plane, offices, etc were selfish and that he was a 24 and 1 type of guy on a team. So now that he’s 32 and most likely headed into his non prime years we’re going to talk to his agent.

Typical Mets.

Welcome to Losersville Arod. You’ll fit right in here.

But odds are he’ll go West. NY is too much for this guy. He needs California Baseball to pursue his records in. That’s all he really cares about anyway. Announcing his departure during the final game of the World Series was another indicator of what this guy is all about. Himself. MLB chastised him for that. He upstaged the WS. A big no-no in Baseball. But that’s Arod and his agent Scott Boras.

Detroit and Florida could be wild cards here. He’s from Florida. Big surprise there being flat, glossy, artificial and without personality as he is. Detroit might not be close enough to celebrities for him. God knows it’s not for Torre who could only go to LA with NY out of the picture. That guy needs star approval to bask in like a dog needs to be pet.

Arod is damn good. But 10 years? And how much do the stats make up for his blatantly insincere and phony personality? He’s karmically challenged like a motherfucker.

But after the choke the Mets do need to start making some bold moves and there’s no pitching out there they can get. Getting him would put them in the national spotlight and consciousness in a way they haven’t really been. That’s a place only Boston and the Yanks have really occupied. And breaking Bonds HR record at out new stadium some day as he’s capable of doing at this point would help give Citifield an identity apart from the mostly crappy I.D. Shea has. And whatever his faults he’s no Barry Bonds. There wold be a lot more goodwill surrounding his chase of the record. It would likely be much more celebrated if only because it removes Bonds from the top. There would be a more auspicious air about the whole thing that the Mets have never been a part of.

But who cares if you don’t win and committing that much payroll to one guy is never a good way to go about winning championships. If you do you got to be prepared to go somewhere in between Red Sox-Yankee levels of payroll and fuck the rules like they do. i’m not sure I want the Mets to do that but i also don’t want to watch them become more and more obsolete again.

So though I lean away from Slappy McSlappicuddy I’m not ruling it out as something I’d do. But I would be more inclined towards it if he were the one switching positions and not Wright. Wright will get killed at 2nd. He doesn’t have the body type to play there and turn the deuce. Arod at 1st eventually is the only way I see things working out and I don’t think that’s going to happen.

Like A Motherfucker!

Published on October 24, 2007 in ..The Dude, Literature, Technology and The Future. 1 Comment

I want to talk about a word. A compound word I guess a truly literate savant might call it. It’s become a much used piece of slang and profanity. Slanganity. It marks an evolution of the classic “fuck,” which was flexible and universal in it’s applicability and appeal. It too functions as verb, noun, or adverb and can be used in positive or negative modes to convey so many ranges of emotion.

And yet it doesn’t make sense.

The word is motherfucker.

Despite not making sense I still use it constantly now as if it does. Because it feels right. It’s irrationality only seems to make it more appropriate. And truthful. Like love.

Like a motherfucker.

That’s how it’s usually used. As a simile. “He hit that ball like a motherfucker.” “I’m gonna hit that ass like a motherfucker.” We gonna do this diner like a motherfucker.”

You see how crazy it is.

It’s more than a word though. It’s an idea. It’s the new fuck as far as I’m concerned. A catchall expression for our times. But what is it that makes me love and use this expression so much? I mean I use it everywhere and all the time. It has become the universal analogy. Like a motherfucker. “That song rocks like a motherfucker.”

It can be bad too.

That’s some motherfucking bullshit right there.

The Mets choked like some big old motherfuckers.

But how many of us really know any motherfuckers?

Or what one is really like?

One who fucks their mother would seem to not be something so worthy of comparison. Someone that so many cool things can be paralleled to. And yet motherfucker has become the analogy of coolness to many. Not just myself. What does this say? What does it mean?

It’s stupid like a motherfucker.

You see sometimes it does make sense!

Fucking your mother would be stupid. So being stupid like one is right on target. It hits the spot.

Hits it like a motherfucker.

See?

Now it doesn’t make sense again.

I use this term in some form or other quite regularly now. At work, at home, in my car. Especially at work. I do those time sheets like a motherfucker. I watch as the cats attack that bird like motherfuckers. I return e mails to motherfuckers though I still use their legal names. I make a meat sauce fettucine like a motherfucker. We get in and out of Home Depot like a motherfucker.

And yet I have no idea if a man who fucks his mother makes a good meat sauce for his fettucine.

Or a woman for that matter, though I’m not quite sure it can be faithfully dubbed motherfucking when a mother and daughter try and do it.

Do male or female fuckers of their mothers do paperwork like I do it?

Do they rock like the Jerry Cantrelle solo album I discovered this past Summer rocks? Because it rocks like a motherfucker as I’ve noted on quite few occasions.

It’s all some motherfucking crazy ass bullshit.

But I got to go. The Red sox are finished beating the Rockies limp asses like a motherfucker and I want to watch Pushing Daisies. THat show kicks TV ass like a motherfucker it does.

Like a motherfucker.

That’s all I’m going to say about this for now.

Time Magazine Acknowledges My Contributions: Finally!

Published on December 18, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature, Technology and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

[image:203:l] That’s right Time has announced their man of the year and it’s me. Well technically it’s You But when read from my 1st person perspective it’s me again. And it’s about time.

Time has acknowledged that I am at the forefront of the media revolution and properly credited me for “seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you.”

Granted they attribute some stuff to me that I have no memory of doing. Stuff like making YouTube movies, developing Linux, and doing podcasts. But I certainly did alot of the blogging, commenting, My Spacing, and reviewing they gave me credit for so it’s quite possible that in all that “digital democratizing,” I was apparently up to I forgot some of the other cool stuff I did. Hell this very website that exists in my name goes on changing with me having no memory of any of the technical innovating or codewriting I must apparently do. It’s just that easy for me I guess. But the site works, is interactive, and ever changing so i must be doing something right.

Like my namesake pictured above now I too am immortalized as an icon of my time. But where’s my picture? Where are my quotes? How about a check for changing the world?

Now I realize that if I turn that Time article to you and you read it, or I use my revolutionizing internet media skills to e mail you the article or link, it’s like you’re looking in the other Jeff Lebowski’s mirror. Or am I the other Lebowski? The Duderino (I’m not into the whole brevity thing), doesn’t own the mirror. He’s just passing through. And sometimes I feel that way about this whole internet thing that I’ve seized the reigns of. I mean I’ve actually considered severing my ties with the net for awhile due to ISP issues I’m having with the people at peoplepc who won’t send me my software for security upgrades I was supposed to get a month ago, even though they’ve started charging me the higher monthly rate. And whn I e mail them they want me to call their service hotline which is 2 bucks a minute. my guess is the call will take more than a minute. Despite my grasp of this bold new global media thing I’m guessing it would take alot longer than that just to navigate their menu.

And I don’t want to spend alot on broadband. I have bills to pay and have been hemmorhaging money lately.

But I’m not making that phone call.

So this could potentially strike a bit of a blow to this “massive social experiment” thing I’ve been recognized for being such a huge part of by the good folks of Corporate Enemy Mag…I uh, mean Time Magazine.

But I want to thank Time for putting me in the same class as Bono who was last years Man of the year along with the Gates’s. I bet Bono got laid though. So far I’ve yet to be approached. Perhaps I can use my newfound, I mean newly recognized, web status to hook up with a nice professional girl.

Oh and feed starving kids too.

That’s cool when Bono does that.

I’m digressing from my point about how others fit into this whole revolution. Frankly I’m a bit worried you’ll let this go to your heads. Our culture is already pretty myopic and self centered.
Do you really need magazines telling you you’re more powerful than the mainstream media? Or than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? Or Dick Cheney? Are you all going to start shooting me in the face or starting your own nuclear weapon program? Most of you are tough to deal with as it is. I don’t need you running around drinking and waving guns at me or scheming for weapons grade plutonium.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m worried about the further egoifying of the American. I made that word up. Egoifying I mean. American was made up by someone else. I think it was Rush Limbaugh. But with all the reality shows aggrandizing your stupidity and venality, with therapy books telling you all how great you are, with parental upbringings that lavished every poop you took and every B- with the ceremony reserved in different times for guys who walked on the moon, ended Fascism, or won the 69 Series, and with so many of you getting lost in your Ipods and blogs, it worries me that you’re all becoming just a bit too hard to live with.

The first one of you to get linked to Jack Abramoff, cry on American Idol, become a Scientologist, or mess with your page, nay the first one of you to get a page, goes on my list. And you know what list I’m talking about.

You’re all a troublesome lot as it is. You don’t spend nearly enough time worrying about the things that really matter like me, death, starvation, me, global warming, eroding democracy, me, genocide, overpopulation, and me, Al Franken. Seriously you never listen to reason. So sure are you that you all know it all. And whose always right? Who said there were no WMD’s years ago? Who said there was no connection to Al-Queda and Iraq before we invaded them? Who predicted civil war and quagmire? Who said Republicans used religion and were social Darwinists who wallow in immorality and lies? Well alot of sources on all the above actually. I just know facts and lies when I hear them, and can tell credible information from bullshit. I’m not sure about the rest of you. You trouble me. You had no idea the Mets would come up short and not even get to the Series or that Pedro was shot? I did. You tried to get me to believe Chris Doughtry would win on Idol. I knew he wouldn’t. You thought Lost would progress storyline. You thought that guy killed Jean Bonnet Ramsey when it was obvious from the get go he was just a weird ass pedophile looking for attention. Hell some of you even thought O.J. was innocent way back when. And I know you were going to watch that Fox “If I Did It” show. Weren’t you?

Weren’t you?

What am I to make of you all? Can I trust you now that you all think you’re being glorified on the cover of Time? Can I trust you to not be un-Dude? I think we’d all be better off just making like the article is about me. I can handle it. I know things the rest of you don’t. And I need the attention more. Come on people! I don’t ask you for much. I’m renouncing the creature comforts except for my TV and it’s accesories. I might be getting rid of the very internet I helped create after Al Gore got it off the ground when he uploaded it from his lock-box using his patented fiber optic technology (I love you Al). I have let go of desires for companionship, kids, success, or ideal health and fitness. But I can handle the burden of being your man of the year. Alone I can carry us into the year ahead with purity of heart, conviction in truth, and openness in mind. I’ll protect you all from Intelligent Design, the wrath of Tom Delay who now runs loose amongst us, global warming, Evil Jesus, Rocky Balboa, Bill O’Reilly, steroids, Hillary’s folly, the Others, Michael Jackson’s next album, and Tom Cruise.

For a country so good at pretending can’t we make this happen? I promise I’ll be the best pretend man of your year ever. Let me be your Dude. I know the right rug can tie a room together and I know what you want from your global media vanguard. You want truth even if you can’t tell the difference anymore. You want to be reminded that the brain is the biggest sexual organ because you want to be mindfucked. And waht better mindfuck in the era of George Bush than truth. And that’s what this internet thing is ultimately about. Making information more accesible. Letting people weed out the lies and progress at the exponential pace technology allows for. So let’s have a Caucasian together and toast me and my accomplishments of the past year even as we look forward to the next year. Together we can also remember how the great Jeff Lebowski responded to being told the brain was the largest sex organ. Because deep down we’re all doing this media revolution for the smae reason mankind has done everything else. To show chicks our other large sex organ.

Time Magazine want me to show you mine.

I promise I’ll be gentle.

Assasin’s Gate: America In Iraq

Published on March 14, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature, Politics, Reviews and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

[image:104:l] This is probably one of the more balanced and “non-partisan” tomes written about the post 9-11 fall out and invasion of Iraq. That’s a bit of a mixed compliment because if someone is right and has the facts on their side who really cares if their partisan. That’s one of the right’s favorite tactics. To discredit an argument simply because its coming from a “liberal,” and move people away from the fact that the person is armed with an unguarded Iraqi munitions dump full of facts. But I do mean it as a compliment in author George Packer’s case for bringing not only an introspective American eye to Iraq but one that examines the conflict from the street level eyeview of ordinary Iraqi’s and U.S. soldiers who run the gamut of emotions and points of view regarding an occupation that whatever its nefarious motivations, had a chance to be successful, but got bogged down in the usual incompetence, ideological rigidity, and arrogance of an administration becoming all too known for those characteristics.

Packer starts the book with one of my favorite chapters that deals with the ideological underpinnings of the neo-cons including their historic roots in liberal intellectual history dating back to the far leftist movements of the 30′s. More recently, then Secretary of Defense under Bush Sr, Dich Cheney, commisioned a paper called the Defense Planning Guidance which Paul Wolfowitz oversaw. Parts of it were leaked to the N.Y. Times and drew criticism so Bush, not too happy with it anyway due to his more “realistic” foreign policy philosophies, ordered it changed. But it’s heart remained intact. It said things like, “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival,” and talked about stuff like American preeminence and discouraging competition by increasing defense spending. Once it was toned down the clueless media of 92 gave Cheney credit for bringing a cooler head to things and reigning in the rambunctious Wolfowitz. Then in 02 came Bush Jr’s National Security Strategy which basically said all the same stuff as the 92 paper outlining the Bush Doctrine, which Cheney, as everyone now knows, used as a vessel for his belief system.

These were clearly guys who didn’t believe as Bush Sr and other realists like Kissinger did, in balance of power and acting in vital national interests. The real tipping point in the balance of power was when Reagan got power. In him people like Jeane Kirkpatrick, who criticized Carter for his committment to silly things like human rights because it undermined our friends like Nicaragua, South Africa, and at that time Iran, had their ideological love child. Sure those authoritarian despots weren’t perfect. They tortured, had death squads, openly practiced segregation etc etc, but hey at least they weren’t Communists. And if we didn’t protect them they might become red some day. Reagan wet his pants when he heard that and hired Kirkpatrick as UN ambassador right after he was elected. Reagan then had one more cohort that would stand by and allow his crimes against the country including his illegal dealing with the Contras and attempting to help El Salvador whitewash mass murders, including the El Mezote incident. Bonzo’s favorite president had people around him who would wink and “get it,” when Ronnie would pretend to not know any of this was going on or that he didn’t remember any of what he did know.

Packer gets into alot of the connections between right-wing players, their influences, and concerted efforts to silence those who weren’t on board with their worldview. It’s all interesting stuff, as is most of the book I can’t begin to get into here, but one of those key groups of interest that provided an ideological excuse to the invasion was of course former Iraqis who hadn’t been anywhere near the country in decades.

The Iraqi exiles such as Kanan Makiya and Ahmad Chalabi were at the forefront of the push to invade. Packer gets deeper into their influence, or at least their beliefs which gave the administration another sector they could claim showed how easy this invasion would be. The ultimate goal was to plug many of these guys into key roles once in Iraq. Chalabi especially was set up as the heir apparent head of the new government. Of course the administration never bothered to look at things like Chalabi’s absence from Iraq for the better part of half a century, his chance to gain personally by feeding the U.S. reports of flowers and candy waiting to be thrown at us, and the fact that he’s a wanted criminal embezzler. Or maybe they did.

But they were one of many policy friendly chickenhawks who had all the pull in the decision making and who wouldn’t challenge the idea that American interests and values always go together. This is an idea Bush has hinted at before and which comes from a head of the think tank the Project for the New American Century, Robert Kagan, who had formed many of his beliefs in the crucible of the Reagan years where he wrote speeches for administration officials and helped developed S. American policy. He is one of those key roots in the corrupted and dessicated tree of neo-conservatism Packer traces for readers. He, along with guys like Paul Wolfowitz affirmed a more proactive American foreign policy that would no longer condone those that Kirkpatrick had once called for coddling. We should shape the world and bring democracy everywhere . No more putting up with bad guys anywhere.

Packer is critical of left and right in the book, often chastising liberals for their naivete and pointless griping, which I actually enjoyed. Some of it was warranted and some I thought, not so much. But mostly I grew agitated with his selective criticisms of the right. When he writes about the above policy he does so with a certain reverence, or at least respect, but calls no attention to the fact that the only places we ever want to bring democracy too are places where we stand to gain economically. I’m sure he would answer such criticism with more brushing off like flies the liberal tendency to believe we live in a perfect world where there is no acceptance that some bad things have to happen to get some good results. While I don’t disagree with this sentiment entirely it is a bit too glib and pat, and for all its realism, it still comes up short in the ethics and morality department where people in Darfur are dying and dying, wishing a few of those troops getting killed in Iraq for ideological reasons were there to keep them from just plain dying. And I bet they wouldn’t throw IDE’s at them.

Packer gives the case for the more learned side of the right-wing argument for invasion while himself questioning the administrations motives and sincerity. But for those he paints as true idealists like Wolfowitz I still have to wonder how it jibes with some of the right’s anti-intellectualism. There’s alot of nice intellectual rationalizations for this whole thing that are out there, many served up nicely and succinctly in this book, but it still sounds like people with pro war motivations who stand to gain looking too deep for a reason to cover their pure pragmatism and greed. Even with Packer’s balanced look there is still a strong sense of evidence being overlooked purposefully while user friendly evidence was cherry-picked based on the predisposition the lookers with a long standing interest in invasion brought to the search. Some of the searchers may have even been consciously unaware of their manipulations of reality as they gravitated naturally to outrageous sources like Chalabi and other ivory tower detached personages with an interest to be gained like the exiles and the Pentagon warhorses invested in themselves and companies profiting from the war.

Packer acknowledges much of this but sometimes I felt a bit too cavalierly, perhaps he himself vested too deeply in the world of detached intellectuals he offers a critical look inside of.

A large section of the book takes place in Iraq where a picture is painted of a liberation that had a chance to succeed but became a hated occupation because of bad planning and that very tendency to ignore those who didn’t tell them what they wanted to hear and listen only to those friends who did. Guys like the State Department’s Drew Erdmann in Iraq working for the Coalition Provisional Authority were ignored when they dared do some research and provide expert analysis as to why the U.S. couldn’t succeed without international support and more troops. Pre-invasion we had seen many goverment employees fired for not getting in lock-step with the administration. Men like Army Chief of Staff General Shinseki were fired for testifying to the Senate Armed Services Committee that we need far more troops that Rumsfeld was telling people. The admin economic advisor met a similar fate for tellling them how much more the war would cost than what they wanted people to believe, or maybe even believed themselves in their neverending incompetence and committment to delusion.

But in Iraq the troops, the CPA, and Iraqi people were seeing firsthand in frustrating after frustrating example how incompetent and detached the administration really is. The book is full of departments and agencies with vague purposes, unclear intent, and misapplied personnel. There’s one exchange as CPA officials are literally entering Iraq and looking at each other in a sort of comedy routine as each is asking what the plan is and hoping the other guy had the plan. It’s more interesting than it sounds because Packer tells the stories from the ground interspersed with the trials and evolution over the first couple of years of the invasion of different American and Iraqi people and families. Seeing the way these people live, and the kind of commonplace torture that was life under Hussein does give one pause who wishes we weren’t there. Alot of hate and ignorance pervades Iraq, but there are also alot of bright and hopeful people with an amazing amount of perspective for people so isolated and oppressed for so long.

But those sectarian differences we see erupting into a potential civil war now, one which Packer foresees as a possiblilty, offer a real testimony to how far even the more enlightened Iraqis have to go. The lack of imagination of many of both the educated and non-eduacted is really striking. Everything is so ethnically and sexually identified to them that even having been aware of this before the invasion, it’s first hand accounts made me feel a new sense of hopelessness.

We’re talking about a nation where whole agencies and departments of forensics in women’s virginity exist due to a females status in that area playing such a role in murder investigations and disputes of various natures. All forms of creativity and passion seem to be funnelled through these objectifications along with the ethnic-religious differences seperating Kurd from Arab from Shia from Sunni and from Turkman. This seemed to me to create displays of passion equivalent to stick figure drawings-fine lines-nevertheless without subtlety or complexity that signal the arrested development of cultures stuck in adolescence.

Packer does a good job of getting close to real people on both sides of this, even on the same side perhaps when all the political and ethnic garbage is taken away. He offers an insightful and erudite look at the most important story out there the past few years and does so with balance. It’s hard to come away from reading this with a good idea at what Packer’s political affiliation is, which is probably a positive testimony. It’s one that’s deserved for a book I enjoyed alot and highly recommend to anyone looking for a meaty political piece of modern history that may go down as one of the better and more important chronicles of these times were in and this war a relative handful of white guys who have never fought in a war made happen. Packer had hope it could be for the better no matter what the motivations but seems, by books end, to feel that it will probably be for the worse. Certainly it has been to this point, but he offers some legitimate hope, mostly through the auspices of the Iraqis he interacts with, that there’s a still a chance to pull this one out of the fire.

I get the impression he’d agree that it won’t happen because of any of the people who got us there though.

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.

Perpetual Beginnings VI

Published on January 24, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature and The Ill-Literates. 1 Comment

A Dude Entry:

Murdoch slammed his foot on the brake as the first wave hit him. The car screeched to a halt in the steady downpour as he flung his head back against the seats support and felt cool liquid filling his mouth as his teeth bit down into his tongue. He managed to fling the door open and swing out of the car and onto his knees, He was screaming and holding his head, imploring the heaven’s who’s direction was unfathomable to his scrambled brain right now, to please make this pain stop.

He collapsed onto his side, rolling on the wet road as his body twitched and convulsed. The heels of his boots slammed against the cars front tires and his nails tried to grab at asphalt. Foam started spilling from his mouth and mixing with the rainwater in a frothy soup. One car drove by, slowed to confirm someone’s duress, and quickly moved on. You didn’t get to living near Easy Street by being a good samaritan. Murdock continued convulsing for another minute or two that seemed like forever, before he he finally got control of himself. By then a nasty stew of vomit made up of the half digested hamburger and cheesefries had banished his frothy foam to a more acceptable physical inconvenience and mess.

He hugged himself as he rolled towards his car, moaning pathetically, waiting for the nausea to subside anotehr couple of minutes before reaching a hand into his car and grabbing hold of the interior of his front seat to pull himself in and up behind the wheel.

“What the fuck was that,” he said out loud. He remembered the stories about the seizures of his youth. He remembered none of the experiences. Even doubted their existence. But her remembered this and was quite sure he’d never forget it. But why now he wondered as he put the car in drive and slowly slid back onto the road and towards a half remembered confrontation with Peter Thorn. It seemed a bit far fetched that this would happen minutes after finally eliminating Sarah from his life. If the stories were true he hadn’t had a seizure since the early to mid 70′s. He hadn’t known Sarah then. He met her…in…in 75.

“What the fuck,” he said again.

He was shivering from the shock and fear as well as the fact that he was sitting in rainsoaked clothes. He tore his shirt up over his head as he continued driving. The streets were emptier and emptier the closer he got to the outskirts of Port City and the tri-point luminary. He could see the flashing of red and blue lights bouncing off the low clouds, carried through obstacles by the driving rain. Squad cars and ambulances. In the confusion of his physical duress he had almost forgotten that he was a wanted man. The wanted man. He had to get off the road and get to Peter on foot. There had to be some explanation for this. Peter knew he didn’t do any of this.

He left the car in a mostly vacant lot and walked shirtless through the rain. His head hurt. There was something unnatural about the pain. He didn’t remember past seizures, but he felt intuitively that a pain like this was somehow abhorrent. He walked for fifteen minutes before coming to a familiar looking building. He didn’t remember how he knew it but felt like he had subconsciously been heading for it since he got out of the car. He felt even more confused when he rememberd that he didn’t own a car.

He went around the back of the building and noticed a basement entrance that jogged his memory. He had been here with Sarah. This is where he was introduced to the Path. He had followed her here a long time ago and later engineered a meeting with the meetings host who had been eagerly receptive to Murdoch’s clued in idea dropping. He borrowed from Sarahs lunatic ramblings and elaborated as only a prophet can until the man had practically wet himself to bring him as a new acolyte. Stan Livingston was the mealy little man’s name. He hadn’t heard of him in years. Murdoch outgrew his benefactor quickly. He had outgrown Sarah as well.

He went down the descending steps and snuck a peak through the front window. The room was dimly lit. He heard a low rumbling noise and the sound of soft music. It was the kind of calwing spiritual stuff guys with names like Yanni played. It was meant to pacify. To uplift the spirit and transcend. They listened to it alot in the Path. There were two sects and they could almost universally be divided along musical lines. The new age group that listened to music like this. The others were the fundamentalists. The old school. They listened to Murdoch’s type of music. Fusion classical stuff with electric guitars and techno rythmns. It was jazzy, it was loud, it had attitude, and it rocked. This was the sound that inspired the bible thumpers as they were in the Path. Men and women who had grown up on death metal, goth, and punk. They had attitude to burn and they joined the Firey Path crushed to burn them.

Stan wasn’t one of those kinds. And he was still leading the life judging from what he was hearing. But then again there were so many Pathers in the Luminary now it’s possible he’d hear sounds like this on a night like this coming from any given apartment. But somehow he knew it was Stan in there. The little weasel who first offered him a cup of immortality and a way to make Sarah love him. The first man who tried to molest our naive hero, and who offered him his first real chance to destroy Sarah. A man who thought John Tesh was talented and that the world could become a utopia if everyone followed a simple rule. Maybe the two characteristics went together. All Murdoch knew was that he and almost all the Pathers who listened to this spiritual stuff seemed to seriously lacking in that department.

But maybe he still enough in thrall and on the outskirts of the Paths many levels of indoctrination that he didn’t know all that had transpired in the many years since he’d last seen him. Maybe then he could get some help. A place to get warm. The soft candlelight was warm and inviting to a half naked man in the pouring rain who had just had a grand mal seizure. He knocked on the door and hoped Stan hadn’t seen the news in the last hour. And if he did, he hoped he had the stength to end him quickly and painlessly. It wasn’t physical power he worried about. He had never killed when it wasn’t for Sarah and somehow he wasn’t sure he could.

He rubbed the area of his head aching so ubnormally and waited as he heard a scurrying to the door. He heard a chain unlatch. This fool wasn’t even going to ask who was at the door. How had he survived this long?

The door opened. Stan stood there, balder, a little heavier, somehow incongruously happier.

“Charles,” he beamed. “I’ve been expecting you. Come in before you catch your death. We’ve got some planning to finish.”

Murdoch stood there in disbelief before letting himself be ushered inside. He smelled licorice in the air, Mixed with something musky. He looked at the incense burning in the middle of an altar and thought they smelled of Pouchilli. He felt a new wave of naseau. “Expecting me?”

“Of course silly man.” He guided Murdoch through the main living room and through a beaded archway that led into a room somehow out of place in an apartment due to its largeness. Murdoch quickly realized a segment of the basement and celler that had previously sat next to Stan’s apartment had been knocked out to extend the apartment into a vaulted sanctuary of some sort. He noticed the glyphs and inscriptions all along the walls, the candles forming a pathway throughout the cavernous room like that old Police video. He thought of the line from that song, “Trapped between the Scylla and Charybdis.” He knew exactly what it meant. Knew that Sarah had went from master to student in his version, but that she had still formed part of a Sympleglades that had enmeshed and entrapped him. Here was perhaps the other rockwall. Or maybe they were his Argonauts. Was the DSP the creature of lore?

Whatever or whoever they were they flipped back their hoods and rose. A group of about twenty of them. They turned to face him as he proceeded through the candle path of fire. He suddenly got the idea to search the faces for Constable and to run at him and snap his neck before anyone could think about it. But he wasn’t there. What was more alarming was that Peter Thorn was.

Neverwhere. A Semi-Review And Follow Up To Plebehood.

Published on January 20, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature, Reviews and The Ill-Literates. 5 Comments

[image:43:l] Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere is not what constitutes what i would consider my kind of reading material anymore. Still, in the search for a little escapist fiction I came across the book and its cover picture of a foggy and dim London, and being the Anglophile in need of escape that I am, I picked it up and gave it a go between heavier books. It’s lack of both physical and literaryweight was both its downfall and saving grace. I like more meat in my books, but at least it didn’t pretend to be something it was not. But where the book really affected me was in a waking dream as it came like the god of the 3 a.m. watch to show me a world that can never be for me and yet, as begun to be related in my prior Life As Plebe post, is all too close.

Gaiman’s best noted for his aclaimed Sandman graphic comics and the more recent novel American Gods, though Neverwhere was apparently made into a mini series in Britain. The book is sort of a modern fantasy combining elements of Narnia, Alice In Wonderland, and various other fantasies. Here it takes place in a darker fantasy world where the rabbit hole leads to a literal underground of societies outcasts, and the wardrobe closet leads not to pristine snowscapes and talking cnimals, but to sewers, catacombs, and a world populated by murderers, thieves, angels and demons and a select few who can talk to rats. The last seem to be major power brokers in this world where Richard Mayhew enters when he tries to help a girl maned Door that he finds lying bloody and unconscious on a London Street. He gives up his obnoxious fiancee to help her and then starts to disappear, noticed only by those who have fallen through the cracks of society.

The rest is pretty typical unknown world fair, all of which borrows from standard mythological archetypes. I found the writing to be somewhat superficial making for a quick read and some passages that made me cringe and hate myself for reading them, and hate myself more for not being paid to write sentences that couldn’t be any more trite or clichéd.

But I was left with an impression when done. A not altogether bad one. It may have been because I read the last 100 pages on overnight end of a double shift, and due to the kinds of thoughts my lst post on plebiosity touched on. But there was something enigmatic about this simple and timeworn idea. Even though Mayhew is in no Oz, Narnia, or myriad other fantasy worlds so many real world contemps have been pulled into in voluminous sci-fi and fantasy books, there was something more appealing about being a part of a seedy “London Below,” with its scavengers, psychopaths, and beasts. Not to mention the proverbial woman in need with a paranormal ability to open doors that are not there. The overall metaphor of the unseen street people slipping though cracks of society and entering into what may or may not be a real subcivilization or inner madness, has its resonance to anyone like myself who sometimes feels the cracks forming beneath their feet.

As far as the question of what is real or whether Mayhew may just be in the process of becoming another loony street person goes, Gaiman handles it pretty well. One segment in particular acts as a test and crucible that he passes through with both renewed affirmation as well as the suggestion of insanity. It reminded me of a Buffy episode where the whole series is called into question as Buffy goes back and forth between her Sunnydale Slayer persona and an insane teenage Buffster in an instititution. This is handled differently, but is also done well and with subtly as it was on Buffy. Gaiman makes it a stop and think moment, not only about the character, but about those we’ve seen and ignored on the streets of N.Y. so many times.

Of course it is modern society and its effects on Mayhew that is a factor in the events that unfold and the need to escape. Likewise the personal ennui mentioned here and in the sister post, is a partial product of environment. The inconsequence of sheer numbers, of civil service, the technological dehumanizing, the cynicism of a former romantic who can’t be loved. All threaten oblivion. Some like a person alluded to in prior post, look for the underside, the seedy element of life to find succor and acceptance. Perhaps I would too without my responsibilities. Maybe its genetic. Maybe I’m just not there yet. But the danger of being swallowed up by those spreading cracks, from being sucked down from below and being invisible to most, is all too real.

How nice it was to drift into waking dream at 4 a.m. on that double shift after finishing the book and feel myself a possibility not for oblivion, but only for obsolescence in above world while a world of freaks, outcasts, and magic powered called to me with the hope of being a Prince among them as Mayhew becomes a warrior. Of course I still have hopes for the real world. Still like following its many convolutions and blogging about some of them. Still hope I can find balance and undo some of the mistakes and be rewarded for some of the good decisions. But if the fault lines open up and swallow, it’d be nice to have a door into another world even if its always dark and full of villains and treachery. I’ve always liked outcasts and felt comfortable with the abnormal. Most of us feel abnormal but not all of us live on the fringes of normalcy. As normal and seemingly stable as I can seem, I have a long history of freakdom. Those who society looks down on have been friends for much of my life. For many of us the term “weird,” is a compliment. It is for them this book was probablt written. I may have changed alot since those days, but I will probably always be one of those who is more at home in the dark anyway.

Perpetual Beginnings IV

Published on January 10, 2006 in ..The Dude, Literature and The Ill-Literates. 1 Comment

Tag Team Fiction: A Dude Entry.

Murdoch grabbed the clicker and put on the cable news. It was an automatic action. The rote habit of a man who has lived his life alone. Sarah kicked her shoes off into a corner and laughed spitefully. For her this was the oft repeated routine of a woman who hadn’t. Murdoch sat down and gave her a ‘what the fuck’ look and turned up the volume.

“You’re going to watch T.V. now? You’re such a goddamned loser Charlie. A real loser.” She disappeared into a bathroom as Charles watched intently until a knock on the door announced the arrival of Cool with two plates full of greasy hamburgers and cheese fries. “Thought you could use these. There’s some soda in the fridge.”

“Soda?”

“Yeah soda. The spiritual kind.” Murdoch smiled and took the plates, setting them down on a battered wooden table with the dried stains of various careworn effluents.

“Don’t get used to none of this black on white serving arrangement. I’m not here to serve the man.”

Charles smiled and took a bite of the burger. Grease slid down the corner of his mouth with sweet grittiness. It flowed quickly, warmly, like Mercury. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was. With mouth still half full, he said, “Don’t get all self-righteous while standing there wearing a Yankees apron.”

“I’m traditional in that way.”

“So’s slavery.”

Cool pulled a shotgun out from under the side of the Apron and handed it to Charles. “Batter up.”

“You baseball hooligans.” He checked to make sure it was loaded and took the cell phone Charles then pulled out of a pocket hidden by the apron. “I got to find Marcus.” He dialed and got nothing. No voice mail, no ring tone, just black noise. He sat down looking up with weariness as he ran his hand over his close cropped brown hair. “I don’t like the sound of this Cool.”

Cool heard the shower start, looked closely at Murdoch’s expression and the way he squeezed the cell phone with one hand while caressing the rifle with the other, and said, “You going to be done here soon?”

“Yeah Cool. I just want to send them a decoy. I need them to think we’re headed where we’re not.” He smiled nervously. He saw Cool was uneasy. “Did they really rattle you that much when they were here?” He laughed falsely, trying to convey the absurdity of such a notion. They didn’t call him Cool for nothing.

“Not to sound like the cinematic cliched cop on the edge of retirement, but I’m getting too old for this shit Murdoch. Too much death. Gracy hated it all. She hated you for bringing so much of it around. And all for her.” He gestured with his chin towards the shower.

“I’m sorry Coolie. But I think it can be different this time.”

“Man it ain’t never been different. Not since Ackerman.”

“Oh shit! He’s fuckin’ alive Cool.” He almost choked on his burger remembering this as he peered a bit too intently at the T.V. He saw Cool’s expression which read an analytical combanation of skeptical and concerned. “I wasn’t sure at first. Back at her apartment. I mean I thought it was him but I only saw a shadow. Got a feeling from a silhouette like from a faded old photograph. But she confirmed it before we got here. I made out like it was nothing. Common knowledge. But she knew!”

Cool shook his head imperceptably. Unknowingly. He looked dissapointed. “Charlie…” He trailed off in a hush of sad resolve.

“What Cool? I know it’s unlikely and all. What Cool?”

“You called Marcus,” he said matter of factly. “You said you had to call Peter downstairs.” He started backing away towards the door.

“Well i can’t just yet now can I?” He nodded towards the T.V. and took the rifle in both hands. “Got to finish here first.”

“O.k. Charlie,” Cool said quietly. “Ok. I’ll just leave you to that.” He took a larger step towards the door before Murdoch said, “hold it,” and took the rifle in his left hand and pointed at Cool.

“You son of a bitch.” Cool’s head tilted with just a slight gesture of appeal. His lip curled as he readied to let loose something less imploring and more final when Murdoch smiled and pointed the rifle at the T.V. Will you look at this you asshole and stop being some dimestore novel easy mark.” Cool looked slowly from Murdoch to the television. Seeing what was on it for the first time. Still not listening, but at last seeing.

It was Peter Thorn.

He was standing at a makeshift podium at the scene of some kind of event. Cool could make out sirens and flashing red lights. The lights were still, but the sirens were headed away from the scene. Whatever had happened was in cleanup stage. He saw Thorn’s name on the screen with his title of Director DSP and a location subtitle which said, Port City. He listened for the first time and heard Thorn say this:

“This order comes from the President and will be strictly enforced. Until further notice Port City is under Marshal Law. We have no choice left in this matter. All violators will be treated as operants of the enemy.”

“What the…?” Cool trailed off and looked for clarification from Murdoch.

“I’m not sure. I knew he was headed out in that direction. What the hell is in Port City right now?” He heard the shower shut off and swallowed 3 cheese fries. “When I put it on he said something about responsibility and survivors statements.”

“Responsibility for what?”

“For civilian deaths apparently. Something about poison I think.”

“Oh shit. Terrorists finally hitting us with chemicals like they always said. Jesus what the hell is going on tonight. Between you seeing dead people, the messengers, terrorists. Damn you’re bad luck kid.”

Murdoch looked at him painfully. He squinted back at the image of Thorn. He was wearing a light blue jacket over a white collar shirt. He looked grave. Peter was always good at looking grave. Murdoch suspected he practiced. Then again it was no easy life having so much gravity on your plate. It wears a man. Brings his features low. His oulook even lower. Not only did he have to deal with Murdoch and the Path tonight, now he had some kind of attack and maybe even anarchy. A lesser man would drop one of the balls he had in play. The Path Of Fire was a small potato he juggled along with national security and technological espionage. He couldn’t be blamed for forgetting Murdoch or handing off this part of the operation to someone else. But he had no doubt that Thorn had not forgotten him and would be immediately accesible once his press conference was over.

Murdoch held the cell phone in his hand waiting to dial the number as soon as Thorn stepped away from the reporters.

Sarah walked into the room with a towel on. She gave Cool a dismissive look and took a bottle out of the small refrigerator. She came over with two glasses, pouring one for her and for Murdoch. She noticed Thorn and calmly said, “Oh did it begin already.”

Murdoch threw a cheese fry down on the plate and asked Cool to leave. “We’ll be out of here within half hour. I promise.” He saw Cool hesitating, looking back from the T.V. to Sarah, to him, and back. “I’ll fill you in on the way out. If I can figure it out.”

Cool left and Murdoch said, “What’s started?,” he demanded before the door closed all the way.

“The Legacy, my hero.”

“What does any of this have to do with us?

“When you altered things at my apartment you decided the rest Charlie. You tell me?”

He looked at the screen as Thorn’s look become more severe. This was quite an achivement. He looked directly into the mass of cameras. Murdoch felt like he was looking directly at him. He felt a momentary chill. A picture came up on the screen and Murdoch felt awash in vertigo for a moment. He wondered for a second if he was about to have his first seizure as an adult.

The picture was of him.

Image went back to Thorn peering harshly at him. The picture was minimilized so that it took up the lower corner of the screen. Thorn continued. “The suspects name is Charles Murdoch and he is to be considered not only armed and dangerous, but hostile to the interests of the United States. If anyone sees him and cannot contact law enforcement officials they have, from this moment onward, legal permission as granted by President Brewster and ratified by Congress, to do whatever is necessary to apprehend and or stop this man.”

Reporters shouted out, wanting to know if this included killing. “Once again, Charles Murdoch is responsible for the deaths of over 20,000 people in just the last 24 hours. He is in possession of a very valuable and dangerous device. Due process is no longer a factor in such a case. All Americans must unite to stop this man now! This means doing whatever it takes!

Dude Haiku’s For The Day III

Published on January 6, 2006 in ..The Dude, Humor, Irritations, Literature and The Ill-Literates. 0 Comments

Sad to lack Croutons
Bread turds ferrtilizing me
Salad without hope

Tax time nears for me
Duty as a citizen
Stop blowing things up

The nurse laughs with me
Always get along with them
This ones taken too

Immune to your barbs
Implications turned around
I look deep do you?

Should I stay or go?
Train in vain I look for you
Tea can’t cure the pain

Sleepwalking through life
Alert to need to change this
Want to get more sleep

Clowns haunt from inside
funny until they kill you
tears are painted on

Sickness in the air
Caughing caughing everywhere
When it stops what next?

Aliens in heads
Left by galactic warlord
Tom Cruise is crazy