I have a confession to make—and I use that term in its original sense as well in the more colloquial one. As some of you (among the hundreds who must read this drivel) may have guessed from some of my not very subtle hints in previous posts, I’m a Christian. A liberal Christian. A progressive Christian. And I’m not alone. There are millions of us—arguably more than of the ultra-conservative fundamentalists who get all the press and attention and money. And if I were to apologize for this confession, I would be practicing apologetics in the original sense. But I’m not much of an apologist—and on bad days, not even much of a Christian.
But I do feel compelled to apologize, even if weakly, because the vast majority, perhaps all, of the progressive/liberal bloggers I read are unapologetically, almost militantly secular—or, to quote the Rude Pundit’s inimitable style, “dirty fuckin’ SP[s] (no, not ‘Sucker[s] of Penises,’ but ‘Secular Progressive[s]’).” They are unapologetic because they don’t see any need to apologize; it’s the dominant mindset. And from their secular standpoint, they engage in some occasionally brutal attacks on Christianity in particular and on all religion in general. And one of the reasons I’m a weak apologist is that I have to grant a certain amount of credence to some of their criticisms, in spite of their brutality. Yes, I know that from a rationalist viewpoint, some of the doctrines are, to put it kindly, somewhere between wishful thinking, quaint mythology, and utter nonsense, or, put less kindly, total bullshit. Yes, I’m aware that the Church is guilty of a horrifying amount of brutality itself, along with lots of stupidity, intolerance, perversion, and what must be frankly called flat-out insanity. Yes, I admit that some of their practices are mind-bogglingly bizarre. (Most recently, my guru has called my attention to the appallingly weird cult of worship associated with the relic of the supposed foreskin liberated by the circumcision of Jesus.) Yes, I admit that my judgment is doubtless influenced by the fact that I’ve spent most of my life (and still spend what little is left of it) serving the church as a musician, and therefore owe the greater part of my financial livelihood to it.
And yet, even acknowledging all this, I believe it must in all fairness be granted that the Church has accomplished some good in its history, and continues to do so today. The apology is similar to that for our beloved land of the free and home of the brave, which, for all its egregious, lamentable, scandalous faults and crimes, still has much virtue to recommend it. To defend the church on the basis of the good it has accomplished is not by any means to defend its weirder beliefs and practices or its blood-spattered history. It is simply to say that credit should be given where credit is due. (To argue, as John Stuart Mill does, that the good works might have been accomplished without all the incidental bullshit, is another matter.)
But note that I am apologizing specifically for liberal and progressive Christians, who actually share many, perhaps most, of the social, political, and economic ideas and principles of the SPs, but for different reasons, as you might say. This may come as a surprise to some, because I sense that many of the attacks from the SPs are based on the assumption that the ultra-conservative wing-nuts who are the putative target of their attacks are representative of legitimate Christianity (which they themselves certainly claim loudly), and may even be the only real Christians (which also they often claim loudly). And we liberal Christians, for obvious reasons, deeply resent this ruthless hijacking of our faith by a pack of raving lunatics who are frankly considered heretical by mainstream Christians. Indeed, some of the mouth-frothing jackals who run under the banner of right-wing media pundits probably could not even claim with any honesty that they are Christians themselves except when their hysterical rhetoric to that effect serves their purposes. Has Rush Lamebrain ever really claimed to be a Christian? Even among those who ostensibly are, certainly no one is more certifiably deserving to be locked up in a padded cell than that psychotic clown Pat Robertson, and yet millions of sheep hang on his every rant in the belief that it represents authentic Christian teaching. And the Mad Emperor has proudly confessed that all the catastrophically stupid and vicious policies under which he has essentially destroyed one country and threatens to destroy his own and most of the world, have been dictated to him by his Lord and Savior; to which we can only reply that whoever his Lord and Savior is, he is unrecognizable as being even remotely Christian. (Which raises the perennial question of whether the voices one hears talking to him are really the voice of God or are rather the voices of his own demons masquerading as God. It’s the oldest trick in the book, and many of the slimiest pages in the history of the Church could be examined under its merciless light.)
If, then, as I believe, the mainstream Christians outnumber the ultra-right-wing nut-jobs, why are the latter getting all the attention and political power? Please be so kind as to avoid asking me what I mean by mainstream, or how I suddenly started considering liberal/progressive to be synonymous with mainstream. Intellectual rigor has never been one of my strengths, and isn’t a requirement of ranting anyway. As Blow-job Bill would say, it all depends on what you mean by “meaning.” There is no statistically quantifiable group defined as “mainstream,” let alone “ultra-right-wing nut-job,” so I just use them as loose terms to state my personal biases, and on the basis of these biases, I can confidently claim, without any need for verification, that we outnumber them. So there. And the reasons why mainstream/liberal (a new clumping) Christians are voiceless and powerless are pretty similar to the reasons why Democrats (with whom there is a certain amount of overlap, even though you won’t find many Democrats admitting it) are also voiceless and powerless. We aren’t as well organized, we aren’t as well funded, we aren’t as united in our agendas (are, in fact, notoriously fragmented), and frankly, we aren’t as savagely ruthless and unscrupulous as our enemies. All too many Democrats are cringing, limp-dicked pansies who avoid making any controversial statement or taking any strong position for fear of drawing the wrath of the Political Correctness Nazis. Liberal Christians, on the other hand, are, at their prophetic best (vide Martin Luther King jr.), not at all hesitant to piss off the powers of this world and let the devil take Political Correctness. But there are no more liberal Christians willing to take the prophetic mantle of Dr King, perhaps at least partly because of that unpleasant little incident in Memphis which continues to haunt anyone who might dare to follow in his footsteps.
And so we languish, waiting for we know not what. Yes, Virginia, there are liberal Christians, but they are under-organized, under-funded, timid, fragmented, leaderless, voiceless—altogether a sorry lot. Don’t expect any more from them than you might from the Democrats who have “won control” of Congress. The christo-fascists, even after all the damage they’ve suffered from Ted Faggard, Mark Foley, and all the other fuckwad perverts and douchebag criminals who have discredited the Elephants, still have the power, and we’re still up Shit Creek without a paddle.
After-birth:
Apropos of absolutely nothing above is the story of redneck Anglos in Montana harassing Native Americans by yelling at them, “Hey, why don’tcha go back where you came from!” File that under “Unclear on the concept.”
Friday, December 29, 2006
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Books I'm reading
I admit it’s rather quaint for one still to be reading those things printed on paper and sold at bookstores (or through Amazon), but I am after all a rather quaint old antiquarian (which is not redundant, because many antiquarians aren’t old, they just deal in old things). Among several I’m reading concurrently right now are Michael Moore’s _Stupid white men … and other sorry excuses for the state of the nation_ (2001) and Al Franken’s _Lies, and the lying liars who tell them_ (2003). Both have the subject heading “U. S. Politics and government—2001—Humor,” LC call no. E 902 (I’m a closet librarian—fittingly, since my library would fit in a large closet), so there are obviously many similarities between them, but also some interesting differences. Since the similarities _are_ obvious, let’s start with the differences.
First the authors. Moore seems to cultivate an almost precious image as a humble, working-class dude who is rarely seen in anything but blue denim and often has an unkempt, if not slightly slovenly, ambience. Although evidently intelligent, he makes sure that nobody could possibly mistake him for an intellectual—maybe not overtly anti-intellectual, but close to it. His humor, consistent with his working-class image, tends to be a bit earthy, as in his admonition to men not to “place the bar of soap in body cavities to ‘get them extra clean’ [because] someone else has to use that bar of soap on her face.” Franken, by contrast, is impeccably dressed and unabashedly intellectual, having written the above book while a fellow at a Harvard think tank. His tone is much more urbane, and his humor has what I see as a distinctly Jewish flavor of snide sarcasm which appeals to me a bit more than Moore’s, which tends to get a little strident when he’s pissed off.
Then the books. Each of the terms in the title _Stupid white men_ is dealt with in one of the chapters of that book. “Stupid” is the subject of “Idiot nation,” which bewails the appalling, staggering ignorance of the American people regarding anything in the world outside the U.S. and even most of the history and polity of their own country; or, for that matter, regarding anything other than sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, and the witless drivel fed to them by the simpering clowns who do “newsertainment” on the mainstream TV networks. “White” is discussed in “Kill Whitey,” about racism, bigotry, and racial discrimination. “Men” are dealt with in “The end of men,” in which he admits that women really are superior to men in many respects, and men are such stupid slobs that they’re lucky women put up with them. Other subjects dealt with include environmental pollution (“Nice planet, nobody home”), our scandalously high rate of incarceration of minorities (“One big happy prison”), the many reasons why our arrogant jingoism is totally inappropriate and misplaced (“We’re Number One!”), and of course, in the first chapter (“A very American coup”), the process by which the Mad Emperor either stole the presidency in 2000 or had it handed to him by the Supreme Court, depending on your viewpoint. So the book basically consists of discussions of a number of separate issues (“sorry excuses”), not all of them overtly political. I will save till later his bludgeoning of the Democratic Party, and particularly Bill Clinton, in “Democrats, DOA.”
Franken’s book, subtitled “A fair and balanced look at the Right,” is basically a rebuttal of the right-wing pundits who had called him, among other things not nearly as civil, a liar, and the subtitle is an obvious parody of the motto of Fox News, which most people with any sense realize is anything but fair and balanced. In order to preclude any possibility of said pundits saying this book is full of lies, he has painstakingly and meticulously researched and documented every statement, with the help of his “Team Franken,” a group of fourteen Harvard students. The rebuttals consist of taking the previous statements of himself and others which his critics had said were lies and documenting their truth, and then taking the statements of the critics and documenting _them_ as lies (told by lying liars). Several of the chapters deal with individual liars: Ann Coulter (who gets two chapters because she’s not only a notorious, psychopathic liar but also an entertaining lunatic), Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bernard Goldberg, and the entire Fox News Channel. Other chapters discuss such things as Shrub’s environmental record (“Vast lagoons of pig feces”); Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (whom Franken thanks for being, like Coulter, entertaining lunatics who essentially destroy any credibility for the Right); the craven cowardice of the Righties regarding real battle, satirized in a dramatic skit (“Operation Chickenhawk”) parodying a scene from _Apocalypse now_; his attendance at a Weisshaus Correspondents dinner where he manages to alienate so many of the Righties that he almost starts a fight (Wolfowitz tells him to fuck himself); and his notorious visit to Bob Jones University under the pretext of wanting to enroll his son there (his own son refused to take part in the charade, so one of the Team Franken members stood in as surrogate), but with the real purpose of ridiculing them for their weird beliefs and practices.
Perhaps one of the most interesting contrasts between the two is their respective opinions of Bill Clinton. Moore has the most withering scorn and contempt for Clinton and, after a two-page list (in “Democrats, DOA”) of all the terrible things he did while in office, calls him “one of the best Republican Presidents we’ve ever had.” Not surprisingly, he has withering scorn and contempt for the entire Democratic Party, and suggests that, since there’s no important difference between them and the Republicans, the two parties merge into one, perhaps letting the Donkey and Elephant mascots mate to produce some unimaginably hideous hybrid. The _real_ second party would then be, by implication, the Greens, led by his hero Ralph Nader, for whom he once worked and whom he still clearly idolizes. The Green Party did not “hand Bush the presidency” in 2000 by drawing voters away from the Democratic Party; the Democrats themselves handed it to him by _driving_ voters away from the party. I heartily agree that Nader has and had a lot of good ideas and has done a lot of good work, and I even (I blush to admit) voted for him in 2000. But for all his virtues, I think everyone but Moore will admit that Nader would be a dreadful president, for somewhat similar reasons that the virtuous and brilliant Carter was a weak president—not a bad one, just weakly good.
Franken, on the other hand, with typically ironic humor, describes Clinton (p. 213) as “the greatest president of the twenty-first century,” because of his build-up of a good military which the Shrub then wasted and destroyed in Iraq. While he doesn’t actually say much directly about Clinton (who is not, after all, except about his blow job, a lying liar), he evidently has some respect for him, or at least sympathy because of the attacks on him by the liars on the Right.
And of course both of them deal, to a greater or lesser extent, from various standpoints, with the Burning Bush—not the bush that burns itself, as in the Mosaic story, but the Bush who burns everything and everyone around him. Moore, as I said earlier, discusses at length the process by which Shrub was made president, and Franken mentions only the tiniest fraction of the lies Shrub and his gang of thugs have told. For obvious reasons, the Mad Emperor and his psychotic shenanigans are at the center of any discussion about the sorry state of the nation, and humor is and always has been the best way to deal with such things, since the righteous anger which they deserve can too easily lead to violence which goes beyond mere rhetoric. And that’s the last thing we need.
Finally—after having rambled and blithered for far too long (one of the dangers of reading too much is the temptation to expect others to read yourself when you write too much)—I have to put in a word or two about Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, _How to talk dirty and influence people_ (1992, posthumous). Since his chief claim to fame is, not entirely fairly, for talking dirty, it is surprising to find how lyrical, almost poetic, he can be at times, and it is widely thought that the reason everybody concentrates so much on his dirty talk is because it takes their minds (_sic_?) off the impassioned social criticism which is the subject of his obscenity and his humor. He was one of the first pioneers to point out that all the four-letter words he used in his shows are not nearly as obscene as the daily news, and this is still a nation that can get more horrified about a brief glimpse of one of Janet Jackson’s tits on TV than about tens of thousands of civilians and military being injured and murdered in Iraq. One chapter has a humor skit presented as a hypothetical argument with a club owner who won’t put “Tits and Asses” on his marquee because they’re dirty, vulgar words (reminiscent of my own infamous career in the punk-rock band I mentioned in “Whence the name,” who could never get a booking in 1980 because no club owner would publicize “The Dancing Assholes”—there, I revealed the secret name!). “Tucheses and Nay-nays” would be alright because the guy isn’t anti-Semitic idiomatic, just anti-Anglo-Saxon idiomatic. Language is more important than the reality to which it points because language can be distorted to fit your particular view of reality. If you don’t call the bloodbath in Iraq a civil war, it isn’t one. If you call a blastocyst the size of a grain of sand a human being, it is one. _Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose_. (French quotes add a little class, don’t you think?)
First the authors. Moore seems to cultivate an almost precious image as a humble, working-class dude who is rarely seen in anything but blue denim and often has an unkempt, if not slightly slovenly, ambience. Although evidently intelligent, he makes sure that nobody could possibly mistake him for an intellectual—maybe not overtly anti-intellectual, but close to it. His humor, consistent with his working-class image, tends to be a bit earthy, as in his admonition to men not to “place the bar of soap in body cavities to ‘get them extra clean’ [because] someone else has to use that bar of soap on her face.” Franken, by contrast, is impeccably dressed and unabashedly intellectual, having written the above book while a fellow at a Harvard think tank. His tone is much more urbane, and his humor has what I see as a distinctly Jewish flavor of snide sarcasm which appeals to me a bit more than Moore’s, which tends to get a little strident when he’s pissed off.
Then the books. Each of the terms in the title _Stupid white men_ is dealt with in one of the chapters of that book. “Stupid” is the subject of “Idiot nation,” which bewails the appalling, staggering ignorance of the American people regarding anything in the world outside the U.S. and even most of the history and polity of their own country; or, for that matter, regarding anything other than sports, entertainment, celebrity gossip, and the witless drivel fed to them by the simpering clowns who do “newsertainment” on the mainstream TV networks. “White” is discussed in “Kill Whitey,” about racism, bigotry, and racial discrimination. “Men” are dealt with in “The end of men,” in which he admits that women really are superior to men in many respects, and men are such stupid slobs that they’re lucky women put up with them. Other subjects dealt with include environmental pollution (“Nice planet, nobody home”), our scandalously high rate of incarceration of minorities (“One big happy prison”), the many reasons why our arrogant jingoism is totally inappropriate and misplaced (“We’re Number One!”), and of course, in the first chapter (“A very American coup”), the process by which the Mad Emperor either stole the presidency in 2000 or had it handed to him by the Supreme Court, depending on your viewpoint. So the book basically consists of discussions of a number of separate issues (“sorry excuses”), not all of them overtly political. I will save till later his bludgeoning of the Democratic Party, and particularly Bill Clinton, in “Democrats, DOA.”
Franken’s book, subtitled “A fair and balanced look at the Right,” is basically a rebuttal of the right-wing pundits who had called him, among other things not nearly as civil, a liar, and the subtitle is an obvious parody of the motto of Fox News, which most people with any sense realize is anything but fair and balanced. In order to preclude any possibility of said pundits saying this book is full of lies, he has painstakingly and meticulously researched and documented every statement, with the help of his “Team Franken,” a group of fourteen Harvard students. The rebuttals consist of taking the previous statements of himself and others which his critics had said were lies and documenting their truth, and then taking the statements of the critics and documenting _them_ as lies (told by lying liars). Several of the chapters deal with individual liars: Ann Coulter (who gets two chapters because she’s not only a notorious, psychopathic liar but also an entertaining lunatic), Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Bernard Goldberg, and the entire Fox News Channel. Other chapters discuss such things as Shrub’s environmental record (“Vast lagoons of pig feces”); Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (whom Franken thanks for being, like Coulter, entertaining lunatics who essentially destroy any credibility for the Right); the craven cowardice of the Righties regarding real battle, satirized in a dramatic skit (“Operation Chickenhawk”) parodying a scene from _Apocalypse now_; his attendance at a Weisshaus Correspondents dinner where he manages to alienate so many of the Righties that he almost starts a fight (Wolfowitz tells him to fuck himself); and his notorious visit to Bob Jones University under the pretext of wanting to enroll his son there (his own son refused to take part in the charade, so one of the Team Franken members stood in as surrogate), but with the real purpose of ridiculing them for their weird beliefs and practices.
Perhaps one of the most interesting contrasts between the two is their respective opinions of Bill Clinton. Moore has the most withering scorn and contempt for Clinton and, after a two-page list (in “Democrats, DOA”) of all the terrible things he did while in office, calls him “one of the best Republican Presidents we’ve ever had.” Not surprisingly, he has withering scorn and contempt for the entire Democratic Party, and suggests that, since there’s no important difference between them and the Republicans, the two parties merge into one, perhaps letting the Donkey and Elephant mascots mate to produce some unimaginably hideous hybrid. The _real_ second party would then be, by implication, the Greens, led by his hero Ralph Nader, for whom he once worked and whom he still clearly idolizes. The Green Party did not “hand Bush the presidency” in 2000 by drawing voters away from the Democratic Party; the Democrats themselves handed it to him by _driving_ voters away from the party. I heartily agree that Nader has and had a lot of good ideas and has done a lot of good work, and I even (I blush to admit) voted for him in 2000. But for all his virtues, I think everyone but Moore will admit that Nader would be a dreadful president, for somewhat similar reasons that the virtuous and brilliant Carter was a weak president—not a bad one, just weakly good.
Franken, on the other hand, with typically ironic humor, describes Clinton (p. 213) as “the greatest president of the twenty-first century,” because of his build-up of a good military which the Shrub then wasted and destroyed in Iraq. While he doesn’t actually say much directly about Clinton (who is not, after all, except about his blow job, a lying liar), he evidently has some respect for him, or at least sympathy because of the attacks on him by the liars on the Right.
And of course both of them deal, to a greater or lesser extent, from various standpoints, with the Burning Bush—not the bush that burns itself, as in the Mosaic story, but the Bush who burns everything and everyone around him. Moore, as I said earlier, discusses at length the process by which Shrub was made president, and Franken mentions only the tiniest fraction of the lies Shrub and his gang of thugs have told. For obvious reasons, the Mad Emperor and his psychotic shenanigans are at the center of any discussion about the sorry state of the nation, and humor is and always has been the best way to deal with such things, since the righteous anger which they deserve can too easily lead to violence which goes beyond mere rhetoric. And that’s the last thing we need.
Finally—after having rambled and blithered for far too long (one of the dangers of reading too much is the temptation to expect others to read yourself when you write too much)—I have to put in a word or two about Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, _How to talk dirty and influence people_ (1992, posthumous). Since his chief claim to fame is, not entirely fairly, for talking dirty, it is surprising to find how lyrical, almost poetic, he can be at times, and it is widely thought that the reason everybody concentrates so much on his dirty talk is because it takes their minds (_sic_?) off the impassioned social criticism which is the subject of his obscenity and his humor. He was one of the first pioneers to point out that all the four-letter words he used in his shows are not nearly as obscene as the daily news, and this is still a nation that can get more horrified about a brief glimpse of one of Janet Jackson’s tits on TV than about tens of thousands of civilians and military being injured and murdered in Iraq. One chapter has a humor skit presented as a hypothetical argument with a club owner who won’t put “Tits and Asses” on his marquee because they’re dirty, vulgar words (reminiscent of my own infamous career in the punk-rock band I mentioned in “Whence the name,” who could never get a booking in 1980 because no club owner would publicize “The Dancing Assholes”—there, I revealed the secret name!). “Tucheses and Nay-nays” would be alright because the guy isn’t anti-Semitic idiomatic, just anti-Anglo-Saxon idiomatic. Language is more important than the reality to which it points because language can be distorted to fit your particular view of reality. If you don’t call the bloodbath in Iraq a civil war, it isn’t one. If you call a blastocyst the size of a grain of sand a human being, it is one. _Plus ça change, plus c'est la meme chose_. (French quotes add a little class, don’t you think?)
Blogs I'm viewing
This originally started out as a post about books I’m reading as well as about other blogs and web sites I’m viewing. But as brevity is obviously not one of my virtues, particularly when I’m talking to myself, it was getting ridiculous long, so I’ve decided to split it into two posts. The one on books will be sent later.
Let me begin by apologizing for saying, in “Krismus prioritizes the Apocalypse,” that I have “the greatest contempt and loathing for the whore [the U.S.] has become after being dragged through mud and filth by the Bush crime family and the christo-fascist ideologues of the neo-con movement.” I should have said, more accurately, that I have the greatest contempt and loathing for the verminous latrine-scum who have done the dragging, but I’m developing a renewed fondness and respect for the citizens themselves—or ourselves. And this is based not only on their finally waking up and kicking Elephant butt last month, but on the blogs I’ve been reading here lately. Of course I’m only reading liberal/progressive blogs; if I were to go slumming and read some of the conservative ones, I’d probably get depressed and cynical all over again, so I won’t. One of the comments on one of the posts on one of the blogs I read this morning actually thanked the thugs and idiots of the Bush crime family for doing such a catastrophically bad job that they’ve galvanized the liberal opposition and turned them into an articulate and increasingly powerful counter-force; which is, of course, precisely why the thugs want to control and suppress the Internet, which is the forum where most of this empowerment has taken place. Let me just list some of the sites I’m particularly impressed with. The earlier ones, which I’ve been familiar with for several months, are mostly web pages; the ones discovered more recently, several just a few days ago, are blogs. I’m afraid I have not mastered the art of highlighting an address so you can link directly to it from here.
“Muskrat Hunt” muskrathunt.blogspot.com – The blog of my Guru, who is directly responsible for ruining my life—sorry, I mean saving my life by waking me up and urging me to start this blog. So far as I know, he’s the only one who reads it, but as I said in “Yes, I’m dull and boring,” I’m used to talking to myself. The name derives from the fact that Guru originally started the blog as a forum for attacking Marilyn Musgrave (a.k.a. Muskrat; R-CO) in the hope of helping to unseat her. Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that she’s a raving lunatic, she managed to be one of only two Republicans from Colorado to remain in the House, but Guru got in some good punches during the battle.
“The White House” www.whitehouse.org – Actually a satire, as most people know, and a hysterically funny and wickedly scathing one. I sometimes think satire is a better criticism of insanity and absurdism than commentaries that take it seriously.
“PERRspectives: Bringing light to darkness” www.perrspectives.com – One of the more serious sites, but with some light touches, like the “Conservative Threat Advisory System” parodying the infamously silly Terrorist Threat Advisory System, and the “Avenging Angel” that “metes out punishment to the worst perpetrators of the vast conservative assault” on the U.S. (“so many guilty, so little time to punish them all”). Named after creator Jon Perr.
“The Rude Pundit: Proudly lowering the level of political discourse” rudepundit.blogspot.com – One which Guru turned me on to just a few days ago; in fact, he’s called my attention to several more since then. As hysterically funny and wickedly scathing as “The White House,” but on a more personal level. Some truly inventive insults.
“WTF is it now?!?” maruthecrankpot.blogspot.com – Usually short posts, often with quotes and neat pictures and graphics. Maybe not quite as good a bludgeon as some others, but still pretty scathing.
“Democratic Underground” www.democraticunderground.com – Notable primarily for its “Top 10 Conservative Idiots,” a weekly compilation of the latest insanity in the crime family, which I linked to from one of the other blogs. I haven’t looked at anything else on the site.
“Wonkette: The DC Gossip” www.wonkette.com – One of the ones Guru told me about just ten minutes ago (stuff moves FAST on the Internet), which he calls a “good general round-up with very flip tone.” Run by a woman, judging from the feminine ending and the drawing in the masthead, and, as she suggests, mostly gossipy as well as flippant, but with some interesting observations and (befitting gossip) numerous comments, sometimes as many as 23 on a single post, and sometimes as interesting as Wonkette’s original post.
So there you are. Democracy is still alive and well in our great country, even though furtively underground, and arguably powerful even from that position. Congrats and thanks to all you subversive pervert termites helping to gnaw away the foundations of Mordor in Washington. (Does anyone not recognize “Lord of the Rings” references?)
Let me begin by apologizing for saying, in “Krismus prioritizes the Apocalypse,” that I have “the greatest contempt and loathing for the whore [the U.S.] has become after being dragged through mud and filth by the Bush crime family and the christo-fascist ideologues of the neo-con movement.” I should have said, more accurately, that I have the greatest contempt and loathing for the verminous latrine-scum who have done the dragging, but I’m developing a renewed fondness and respect for the citizens themselves—or ourselves. And this is based not only on their finally waking up and kicking Elephant butt last month, but on the blogs I’ve been reading here lately. Of course I’m only reading liberal/progressive blogs; if I were to go slumming and read some of the conservative ones, I’d probably get depressed and cynical all over again, so I won’t. One of the comments on one of the posts on one of the blogs I read this morning actually thanked the thugs and idiots of the Bush crime family for doing such a catastrophically bad job that they’ve galvanized the liberal opposition and turned them into an articulate and increasingly powerful counter-force; which is, of course, precisely why the thugs want to control and suppress the Internet, which is the forum where most of this empowerment has taken place. Let me just list some of the sites I’m particularly impressed with. The earlier ones, which I’ve been familiar with for several months, are mostly web pages; the ones discovered more recently, several just a few days ago, are blogs. I’m afraid I have not mastered the art of highlighting an address so you can link directly to it from here.
“Muskrat Hunt” muskrathunt.blogspot.com – The blog of my Guru, who is directly responsible for ruining my life—sorry, I mean saving my life by waking me up and urging me to start this blog. So far as I know, he’s the only one who reads it, but as I said in “Yes, I’m dull and boring,” I’m used to talking to myself. The name derives from the fact that Guru originally started the blog as a forum for attacking Marilyn Musgrave (a.k.a. Muskrat; R-CO) in the hope of helping to unseat her. Unfortunately, in spite of the fact that she’s a raving lunatic, she managed to be one of only two Republicans from Colorado to remain in the House, but Guru got in some good punches during the battle.
“The White House” www.whitehouse.org – Actually a satire, as most people know, and a hysterically funny and wickedly scathing one. I sometimes think satire is a better criticism of insanity and absurdism than commentaries that take it seriously.
“PERRspectives: Bringing light to darkness” www.perrspectives.com – One of the more serious sites, but with some light touches, like the “Conservative Threat Advisory System” parodying the infamously silly Terrorist Threat Advisory System, and the “Avenging Angel” that “metes out punishment to the worst perpetrators of the vast conservative assault” on the U.S. (“so many guilty, so little time to punish them all”). Named after creator Jon Perr.
“The Rude Pundit: Proudly lowering the level of political discourse” rudepundit.blogspot.com – One which Guru turned me on to just a few days ago; in fact, he’s called my attention to several more since then. As hysterically funny and wickedly scathing as “The White House,” but on a more personal level. Some truly inventive insults.
“WTF is it now?!?” maruthecrankpot.blogspot.com – Usually short posts, often with quotes and neat pictures and graphics. Maybe not quite as good a bludgeon as some others, but still pretty scathing.
“Democratic Underground” www.democraticunderground.com – Notable primarily for its “Top 10 Conservative Idiots,” a weekly compilation of the latest insanity in the crime family, which I linked to from one of the other blogs. I haven’t looked at anything else on the site.
“Wonkette: The DC Gossip” www.wonkette.com – One of the ones Guru told me about just ten minutes ago (stuff moves FAST on the Internet), which he calls a “good general round-up with very flip tone.” Run by a woman, judging from the feminine ending and the drawing in the masthead, and, as she suggests, mostly gossipy as well as flippant, but with some interesting observations and (befitting gossip) numerous comments, sometimes as many as 23 on a single post, and sometimes as interesting as Wonkette’s original post.
So there you are. Democracy is still alive and well in our great country, even though furtively underground, and arguably powerful even from that position. Congrats and thanks to all you subversive pervert termites helping to gnaw away the foundations of Mordor in Washington. (Does anyone not recognize “Lord of the Rings” references?)
Monday, December 11, 2006
Well, what happened?
Yes, I’ve been in Blogosphere limbo for a while. Lots of Christmas concerts occupying my time (already! and more to come!), as well as the recent ecstatic thrill of my second colonoscopy—a subject I won’t go into deeply, since my gastroenterologist already has. But I did promise (or threaten) several weeks ago a more extended commentary on the particularly curious headline in the _Weekly Word News_ (obviously some time before 2000), in 2-inch-high letters: “Captured space alien’s grim prophecy: GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!” So far as I’m aware, Earth was not destroyed six years ago (a lot escapes my notice, but I don’t think that would have), and in spite of all the strenuous efforts of the lunatic christo-fascists to bring about Armageddon as soon as possible so they can all get raptured
_à la_ Tim LaHaye, it doesn’t seemed to have happened yet. (By the way, the word _rapture_ comes from the same root as _rape_; look it up. What do those who want it so much think of that? Raped by God? Well, it happened to that nice teenaged Jewish girl in the first century, didn’t it? Oh, but that was consensual—and immaculately clean—according to St Luke. . . . Sorry, I get carried away on these tangents.)
It would be easy simply to dismiss this as an unfortunate lapse in the usually impeccable journalistic integrity of _WWN_, but I am nagged by the uncomfortable question of why they ever published it in the first place. Of course, publishing the “prophecies” of Nostradamus is part of their stock in trade, but those of a space alien? Why couldn’t God tell us directly himself? Oh, some will say, he usually does use prophets to bring us bad news (never good news). Granted, but human prophets, not space aliens. And although _prophecy_ and _prediction_ are closely related (both coming from roots meaning “to speak before”), and Webster’s gives the second as a synonym for the first, I personally do not consider all predictions to be prophesies and bridle slightly at the confusion of the two. Prophecy is, strictly speaking, something of a sacred calling, and I doubt that space aliens qualify for it.
And why 2000? Because it’s the Millennium, of course! and all sorts of terrible things (like all the computers on earth crashing because they don’t know what year it is) are supposed to take place on these particular dates just because they end in three zeros. But only in one of several different calendars and chronologies. Most other religious traditions have their own calendars, dating from some event they consider as important as Christians consider the birth of Jesus, and the Jews (who are now in the year 5767) aren’t going around saying the world will end in their year 6000; nor are the Moslems (now in the year 1427 dating from the Hegira) saying it will end in their year 2000. Certainly the Jews (I don’t know about the Moslems) have their own rich and fascinating apocalyptic literature (particularly that of Daniel), but so far as I know, they don’t use it to predict a particular date for the end of the world. That seems to be a peculiarly Christian obsession—and only for certain sects of them. And obsession it certainly is, as amply shown by the appalling popularity of those hideous “Left Behind” atrocities.
Actually, it’s a much more complicated subject than I realized, and I’m beginning to regret I ever waded into it. Depending as I usually do on Wikipedia, I find that Millennialism is a specific form of Millennarianism, and neither has anything to do with the end of the world or with years ending in three zeros, and therefore nothing to do with the _WWN_ headline. This is why the millennialist wing-nuts can continue looking for the immanent Millennium even though it is now 2006, and why they expect the Earth to remain here as a place for all us “left behind” sinners to be forced to endure all the horrible torments which LaHaye’s readers get their jollies from. (Isn’t “left behind” a term for the buttock above the left leg?) But I doubt that any of this was known by all the people who in 1999 expected all kinds of shit to hit the fan the next year, and who thought it was predicted by biblical “prophecies” about which they either knew next to nothing or believed utter hogwash.
One thing I do know, however, is that all attempts to predict the end of the world or the Second Coming or Armageddon or any other event, in the year 2000 or some time next week or at any other specific date, are in direct defiance of the clear admonition of Jesus not to try to do so, and not to trust anyone who claims to do so. Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32: “About that day and hour, no one knows.” And somewhere else I don’t feel like looking up: “Beware of false prophets.” And yet whole sects, most notably the Seventh Day Adventists, have been founded on some fruit loop predicting when something big is going to happen, and thousands of witless sheep believing him. There are stories of such groups going up on mountaintops to wait for whatever they’re expecting at a quarter after three Friday afternoon or some such thing, and when it fails to happen, they sort of look at each other sheepishly (!!) and shrug, “Well – what do we do now that we’ve sold everything we owned?” It’s enough to make someone who’s perfectly enlightened like me shake his head in disgust.
And one more little soap-box sermon before I sign off: IT IS
*_N-O-T_ CHRISTMAS* YET!!! IT IS *ADVENT*!!! Do what the Grinch tells you and take down all your freakin’ decorations until the 25th, and then put them back up and keep them up until January 6th. F**king pagans!
_à la_ Tim LaHaye, it doesn’t seemed to have happened yet. (By the way, the word _rapture_ comes from the same root as _rape_; look it up. What do those who want it so much think of that? Raped by God? Well, it happened to that nice teenaged Jewish girl in the first century, didn’t it? Oh, but that was consensual—and immaculately clean—according to St Luke. . . . Sorry, I get carried away on these tangents.)
It would be easy simply to dismiss this as an unfortunate lapse in the usually impeccable journalistic integrity of _WWN_, but I am nagged by the uncomfortable question of why they ever published it in the first place. Of course, publishing the “prophecies” of Nostradamus is part of their stock in trade, but those of a space alien? Why couldn’t God tell us directly himself? Oh, some will say, he usually does use prophets to bring us bad news (never good news). Granted, but human prophets, not space aliens. And although _prophecy_ and _prediction_ are closely related (both coming from roots meaning “to speak before”), and Webster’s gives the second as a synonym for the first, I personally do not consider all predictions to be prophesies and bridle slightly at the confusion of the two. Prophecy is, strictly speaking, something of a sacred calling, and I doubt that space aliens qualify for it.
And why 2000? Because it’s the Millennium, of course! and all sorts of terrible things (like all the computers on earth crashing because they don’t know what year it is) are supposed to take place on these particular dates just because they end in three zeros. But only in one of several different calendars and chronologies. Most other religious traditions have their own calendars, dating from some event they consider as important as Christians consider the birth of Jesus, and the Jews (who are now in the year 5767) aren’t going around saying the world will end in their year 6000; nor are the Moslems (now in the year 1427 dating from the Hegira) saying it will end in their year 2000. Certainly the Jews (I don’t know about the Moslems) have their own rich and fascinating apocalyptic literature (particularly that of Daniel), but so far as I know, they don’t use it to predict a particular date for the end of the world. That seems to be a peculiarly Christian obsession—and only for certain sects of them. And obsession it certainly is, as amply shown by the appalling popularity of those hideous “Left Behind” atrocities.
Actually, it’s a much more complicated subject than I realized, and I’m beginning to regret I ever waded into it. Depending as I usually do on Wikipedia, I find that Millennialism is a specific form of Millennarianism, and neither has anything to do with the end of the world or with years ending in three zeros, and therefore nothing to do with the _WWN_ headline. This is why the millennialist wing-nuts can continue looking for the immanent Millennium even though it is now 2006, and why they expect the Earth to remain here as a place for all us “left behind” sinners to be forced to endure all the horrible torments which LaHaye’s readers get their jollies from. (Isn’t “left behind” a term for the buttock above the left leg?) But I doubt that any of this was known by all the people who in 1999 expected all kinds of shit to hit the fan the next year, and who thought it was predicted by biblical “prophecies” about which they either knew next to nothing or believed utter hogwash.
One thing I do know, however, is that all attempts to predict the end of the world or the Second Coming or Armageddon or any other event, in the year 2000 or some time next week or at any other specific date, are in direct defiance of the clear admonition of Jesus not to try to do so, and not to trust anyone who claims to do so. Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32: “About that day and hour, no one knows.” And somewhere else I don’t feel like looking up: “Beware of false prophets.” And yet whole sects, most notably the Seventh Day Adventists, have been founded on some fruit loop predicting when something big is going to happen, and thousands of witless sheep believing him. There are stories of such groups going up on mountaintops to wait for whatever they’re expecting at a quarter after three Friday afternoon or some such thing, and when it fails to happen, they sort of look at each other sheepishly (!!) and shrug, “Well – what do we do now that we’ve sold everything we owned?” It’s enough to make someone who’s perfectly enlightened like me shake his head in disgust.
And one more little soap-box sermon before I sign off: IT IS
*_N-O-T_ CHRISTMAS* YET!!! IT IS *ADVENT*!!! Do what the Grinch tells you and take down all your freakin’ decorations until the 25th, and then put them back up and keep them up until January 6th. F**king pagans!
Monday, December 4, 2006
Krismus prioritizes the Apocalypse
Two tangential observations before I get down to the primary subject.
(1) It turns out my host, Blogger.com, has another blog called “The boring made dull,” which a guy in Akron OH has been running since January 05. He has LOTS of posts, and I haven’t yet read enough of them to find out if he’s more boring than I am. I hope he didn’t copyright or trademark his name. Well, as I pointed out in “Whence the name,” I got the idea for my name 25 years before he got the idea for his, so it was obviously totally independent of him.
(2) I forgot to mention in the last post: space aliens were kidnapping U.S. scientists at one time. Actually, _Weekly World News_ posed it as a question: “WHY DID SPACE ALIENS KIDNAP U.S. SCIENTISTS? Experts warn full-scale invasion of Earth is about to begin!” Presumably this was before Earth was supposed to have been destroyed, since the aliens couldn’t very well have kidnapped anybody after it was destroyed. But since Earth wasn’t destroyed (we’ll get to that later), the question still remains. Well, the answer would probably depend on who the aliens were and who the scientists were. I mean, it would be one thing if the Zorpelgophians kidnapped astrophysicists, and quite another if the Gelbafraxians kidnapped molecular geneticists. These are important points to consider.
But I will consider them, along with all the ramifications of the _WWN_ headline I left hanging in the last post (“GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!”), in a later post, while I now deal with the joyous, fun-filled season of profligate, obscene spending generally known as Christmas. For a pessimistic, cynical, curmudgeonly, grouchy grinch, nothing warms the heart so much as the time of year when the incidence of suicides, domestic violence, and all other forms of social and psychological pathology is highest. Soon after “Dr Seuss” published “The Grinch who stole Christmas,” I was christened “Grinch” by my family, and this was later conflated with “uncle” by my nieces and nephews to make me “Grunkle.” It is a title I cherish and try my best to live up to. (Seuss’s book ended happily with the Grinch being reformed. So far, I have not been reformed.)
In addition, I have (or had) a long history, in the church where I spent 33 years as organist (ranging from among the best years of my life to among the worst), of composing doggerel parodies of hymn tunes and other tunes in celebration of birthdays and other events in the lives of various choir members. So it is in this spirit, and with this history as background, that I offer the following “Anti-Bush Krismus carols,” parodying carols which I hope will be familiar to even the most heathen of readers, from their ubiquitous blaring from speakers in stores for one and a half months.
Joy to the world! The end is near! Let Earth cash in her chips!
Let Bush the Psychopath bring on the last Apocalypse.
He rules the world with fear and awe, and makes the nations shit
To think that he could waste them all if he should think it fit.
No more may love or reason have the slightest good effect;
With christo-fascists in control, the whole thing could be wrecked.
Sucks to the world! Let’s all give up! Why should we even try
To make things better in a world that probably will fry?
O evil town of Washington, how all your leaders lie!
And when they get away with it, the people wonder why.
But when we seek impeachment, we’re told it can’t be done.
We’re stuck with you, so you can screw the nation just for fun.
How cleverly, how cleverly they all succeed in crime!
But when we seek for some redress, they get by every time.
We wait in desperation for meaningful reform,
But all we get is “No, not yet; corruption is the norm.”
Lest it be thought that Kismyass is the only holiday about which I am pessimistic, cynical, curmudgeonly, and grouchy, let me share with you a little snarl I wrote on the chalkboard of the choir room in one of the churches of “God and country” civil religion during Fourth of July weekend a few years ago. Let me hasten to preface this by assuring you that, like many true patriots, I have the greatest respect and love for the country that was founded 217 years ago (dating from the Constitutional Convention of 1789). and that survived, in spite of some rather serious mistakes, up until about six years ago; and the greatest contempt and loathing for the whore it has become after being dragged through mud and filth by the Bush crime family and the christo-fascist ideologues of the neo-con movement.
O pitiful, for specious lies, for ruthless greed for gain!
For democratic travesties amidst the widespread pain!
America! America! May God forgive your sins,
And save you from still worse to come, before your end begins.
Merry Kismyass and happy Revolution Day. What we need now is another Savior and another Revolution. One is promised by Christian theology, but in the indefinite future; the other is prevented by neo-fascist repression and popular lethargy and indifference. Where did we go wrong?
(1) It turns out my host, Blogger.com, has another blog called “The boring made dull,” which a guy in Akron OH has been running since January 05. He has LOTS of posts, and I haven’t yet read enough of them to find out if he’s more boring than I am. I hope he didn’t copyright or trademark his name. Well, as I pointed out in “Whence the name,” I got the idea for my name 25 years before he got the idea for his, so it was obviously totally independent of him.
(2) I forgot to mention in the last post: space aliens were kidnapping U.S. scientists at one time. Actually, _Weekly World News_ posed it as a question: “WHY DID SPACE ALIENS KIDNAP U.S. SCIENTISTS? Experts warn full-scale invasion of Earth is about to begin!” Presumably this was before Earth was supposed to have been destroyed, since the aliens couldn’t very well have kidnapped anybody after it was destroyed. But since Earth wasn’t destroyed (we’ll get to that later), the question still remains. Well, the answer would probably depend on who the aliens were and who the scientists were. I mean, it would be one thing if the Zorpelgophians kidnapped astrophysicists, and quite another if the Gelbafraxians kidnapped molecular geneticists. These are important points to consider.
But I will consider them, along with all the ramifications of the _WWN_ headline I left hanging in the last post (“GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!”), in a later post, while I now deal with the joyous, fun-filled season of profligate, obscene spending generally known as Christmas. For a pessimistic, cynical, curmudgeonly, grouchy grinch, nothing warms the heart so much as the time of year when the incidence of suicides, domestic violence, and all other forms of social and psychological pathology is highest. Soon after “Dr Seuss” published “The Grinch who stole Christmas,” I was christened “Grinch” by my family, and this was later conflated with “uncle” by my nieces and nephews to make me “Grunkle.” It is a title I cherish and try my best to live up to. (Seuss’s book ended happily with the Grinch being reformed. So far, I have not been reformed.)
In addition, I have (or had) a long history, in the church where I spent 33 years as organist (ranging from among the best years of my life to among the worst), of composing doggerel parodies of hymn tunes and other tunes in celebration of birthdays and other events in the lives of various choir members. So it is in this spirit, and with this history as background, that I offer the following “Anti-Bush Krismus carols,” parodying carols which I hope will be familiar to even the most heathen of readers, from their ubiquitous blaring from speakers in stores for one and a half months.
Joy to the world! The end is near! Let Earth cash in her chips!
Let Bush the Psychopath bring on the last Apocalypse.
He rules the world with fear and awe, and makes the nations shit
To think that he could waste them all if he should think it fit.
No more may love or reason have the slightest good effect;
With christo-fascists in control, the whole thing could be wrecked.
Sucks to the world! Let’s all give up! Why should we even try
To make things better in a world that probably will fry?
O evil town of Washington, how all your leaders lie!
And when they get away with it, the people wonder why.
But when we seek impeachment, we’re told it can’t be done.
We’re stuck with you, so you can screw the nation just for fun.
How cleverly, how cleverly they all succeed in crime!
But when we seek for some redress, they get by every time.
We wait in desperation for meaningful reform,
But all we get is “No, not yet; corruption is the norm.”
Lest it be thought that Kismyass is the only holiday about which I am pessimistic, cynical, curmudgeonly, and grouchy, let me share with you a little snarl I wrote on the chalkboard of the choir room in one of the churches of “God and country” civil religion during Fourth of July weekend a few years ago. Let me hasten to preface this by assuring you that, like many true patriots, I have the greatest respect and love for the country that was founded 217 years ago (dating from the Constitutional Convention of 1789). and that survived, in spite of some rather serious mistakes, up until about six years ago; and the greatest contempt and loathing for the whore it has become after being dragged through mud and filth by the Bush crime family and the christo-fascist ideologues of the neo-con movement.
O pitiful, for specious lies, for ruthless greed for gain!
For democratic travesties amidst the widespread pain!
America! America! May God forgive your sins,
And save you from still worse to come, before your end begins.
Merry Kismyass and happy Revolution Day. What we need now is another Savior and another Revolution. One is promised by Christian theology, but in the indefinite future; the other is prevented by neo-fascist repression and popular lethargy and indifference. Where did we go wrong?
Thursday, November 23, 2006
The Alternate Reality wall
The wall of my kitchen/dinette is covered with headlines clipped from the _Weekly Word News_, a unique gem among checkout-lane tabloids. Most of the other shit-sheets are full of scandal and gossip about celebs—sexual affairs (straight and gay), weddings and divorces, terminal illnesses, domestic abuse and other crimes, that sort of thing—about which I care much less than I do about the geology of the moons of Jupiter. But WWN is devoted to such bizarre, surrealistic absurdity that I consider it my window on an alternate reality—and as a sci-fi fan, I not only firmly believe in alternate realities and parallel universes, I also believe most of them to be far preferable to the one we’re stuck in. I’m particularly impressed by WWN’s coverage of news stories about space aliens, and over the 15 or more years I’ve been collecting these, space alien news predominates (although their coverage of this seems to have declined lately). Following are some of the better headlines, with notes and comments by me.
FIRST-EVER INTERVIEW WITH A SPACE ALIEN! Wish I’d saved what he said.
“I KILLED THREE SPACE ALIENS FOR THE *CIA*!”
IS SATAN A SPACE ALIEN? See Arthur C. Clarke’s _Childhood’s end_, in which members of a benevolent and superior alien civilization subjugate Earth (for our own good, to save us from our own stupidity) and actually do turn out to look like devils.
NEVADA HUNTER SHOOTS SPACE ALIEN! What was a space alien doing in Nevada?
SPACE ALIEN REMAINS FOUND IN DINOSAUR’S BELLY!
SPACE ALIENS ARE STEALING OUR FROGS!
SPACE ALIEN ESCAPES! From jail, presumably. I forget what he was arrested for. Perhaps for stealing frogs.
WASHINGTON THINK TANKS ARE RIDDLED WITH SPACE ALIENS! That would explain some of the ideas that come out of them.
YOUR DOCTOR COULD BE AN ALIEN! That might not be such a bad thing, particularly if his fees were reasonable. An alien couldn’t be much worse than a lot of human doctors, and would probably be considerably better than some. Remember, E.T. could heal with a touch of his glowing LED fingertip. And human anatomy and physiology would be a snap for them because they’re depicted as being about 95 percent humanoid themselves, except for weird eyes and skulls.
ALIENS THINK EARTH IS A BAD NEIGHBORHOOD! Well, no surprise there; so do a lot of humans. But this one, which is at least 10 years old (I’ve neglected to date any of them), is particularly interesting when compared with one only a few weeks ago that says “REDNECK ALIENS TAKE OVER TRAILER PARK! ‘There goes the neighborhood!’” Notice that at first, aliens think the neighborhood is bad before they get here, and then it’s the aliens coming that ruins the neighborhood. Notice also that the neighborhood is a trailer park, which is often considered so bad to begin with that there’s not much that could ruin it. Notice also the clever and subtle way WWN exploits the current paranoia and xenophobia about illegal “alien” immigration: space aliens equal illegal immigrants equal trailer trash. And of course there’s the fact that probably a lot of readers of WWN are rednecks and/or “trailer trash” themselves. (I can afford to be insulting because _I’m_ “trailer trash” myself.) And a common idea in sci-fi literature is that of alien civilizations sending their criminals and misfits to Earth precisely _because_ they think it’s a bad neighborhood to begin with. Remarkably sophisticated, multi-level writing for a rag that’s supposed to appeal to nitwits.
And several good headlines have nothing to do with space aliens:
A PTERODACTYL BIT MY ARM OFF!
ADAM & EVE’S SKELETONS FOUND—IN COLORADO! Well, of course—where else? Probably in Colorado Springs. I found out later that the picture WWN printed with this, showing two skeletons lying in a primitive burial site, was ripped off from a _National Geographic_ article about an archaeological dig somewhere in the Middle East or Africa. Or maybe Mt Vesuvius; I forget.
GAY CHIMP FALLS IN LOVE WITH CIRCUS DWARF! I guess it’s a toss-up as to who would be more insulted by this, the chimpanzee or the dwarf.
“Glowing image of Virgin Mary appears on radiator hose!” Well, she’s been seen on taco shells and toasted cheese sandwiches, why not a radiator hose?
“It’s a well-known fact that General George Washington lived on hamburgers while he was fighting the British.” Picture of the standard dollar-bill Gilbert Stuart portrait (painted about 15 years after George fought in the Revolution), on which is superimposed a picture of a lady’s hand holding a hamburger with a bite taken out of it. One source says the “modern” hamburger as we know it (and as depicted) was invented around 1916. (You mean Yorktown didn’t have a McDonald’s in 1781?)
“Was my husband reincarnated as a tarantula?” This was probably a question asked of the staff psychic, who is called something like Serena. I forget what it was about the tarantula that reminded the questioner of her husband; maybe they both had hairy legs. In terms of the Hindu doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the guy must have had some pretty bad karma.
“FACE ON MARS IS TRYING TO TALK! The lips are moving! say stunned scientists.” Get HAL to read it. Of course it’s talking in English. My note on this says Mars is saying “Get these dinosaurs off me!”, so there must have been a headline that I failed to save, about dinosaurs being found on Mars.
ZOOKEEPER SUFFOCATES IN 200 POUNDS OF ELEPHANT POOP! Picture shows an elephant squatting over a 3-foot-high pile of what we’re supposed to believe is shit, with human arms and legs sticking out from underneath. I’ve recently been interpreting this metaphorically as referring to the GOP suffocating the nation under six years of their shit, but WWN published this years before the Christo-fascist Republicans came into power, and the paper has a decidedly rightwing slant anyway.
However, my favorite one, which raises so many issues that I’m saving it for a separate rant: in 2-inch-high letters on a double-page spread: “Captured space alien’s grim prophecy: GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!” (This is not the same alien who escaped after being arrested for stealing frogs.) Well, the most obvious question in 2006 is: what happened? What does this say about the journalistic integrity of WWN? Stand by for breaking news analysis and commentary.
Although I’ve spent several days writing this, it’s being published on Thanksgiving (or, as I fondly call it, Emu Day), even though it has absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving or emus. I could say a lot about Emu Day (like the Pilgrims telling the Wampanoags, “Gosh, thanks for saving our miserable, stupid asses from starvation; now I think we’ll return the favor by stealing your land from you and genocidally murdering most of you.”), but I may save that for later, too. And I’m not going to wish you, dear reader, a happy Emu Day. You can just be thankful that I’m finally signing off.
FIRST-EVER INTERVIEW WITH A SPACE ALIEN! Wish I’d saved what he said.
“I KILLED THREE SPACE ALIENS FOR THE *CIA*!”
IS SATAN A SPACE ALIEN? See Arthur C. Clarke’s _Childhood’s end_, in which members of a benevolent and superior alien civilization subjugate Earth (for our own good, to save us from our own stupidity) and actually do turn out to look like devils.
NEVADA HUNTER SHOOTS SPACE ALIEN! What was a space alien doing in Nevada?
SPACE ALIEN REMAINS FOUND IN DINOSAUR’S BELLY!
SPACE ALIENS ARE STEALING OUR FROGS!
SPACE ALIEN ESCAPES! From jail, presumably. I forget what he was arrested for. Perhaps for stealing frogs.
WASHINGTON THINK TANKS ARE RIDDLED WITH SPACE ALIENS! That would explain some of the ideas that come out of them.
YOUR DOCTOR COULD BE AN ALIEN! That might not be such a bad thing, particularly if his fees were reasonable. An alien couldn’t be much worse than a lot of human doctors, and would probably be considerably better than some. Remember, E.T. could heal with a touch of his glowing LED fingertip. And human anatomy and physiology would be a snap for them because they’re depicted as being about 95 percent humanoid themselves, except for weird eyes and skulls.
ALIENS THINK EARTH IS A BAD NEIGHBORHOOD! Well, no surprise there; so do a lot of humans. But this one, which is at least 10 years old (I’ve neglected to date any of them), is particularly interesting when compared with one only a few weeks ago that says “REDNECK ALIENS TAKE OVER TRAILER PARK! ‘There goes the neighborhood!’” Notice that at first, aliens think the neighborhood is bad before they get here, and then it’s the aliens coming that ruins the neighborhood. Notice also that the neighborhood is a trailer park, which is often considered so bad to begin with that there’s not much that could ruin it. Notice also the clever and subtle way WWN exploits the current paranoia and xenophobia about illegal “alien” immigration: space aliens equal illegal immigrants equal trailer trash. And of course there’s the fact that probably a lot of readers of WWN are rednecks and/or “trailer trash” themselves. (I can afford to be insulting because _I’m_ “trailer trash” myself.) And a common idea in sci-fi literature is that of alien civilizations sending their criminals and misfits to Earth precisely _because_ they think it’s a bad neighborhood to begin with. Remarkably sophisticated, multi-level writing for a rag that’s supposed to appeal to nitwits.
And several good headlines have nothing to do with space aliens:
A PTERODACTYL BIT MY ARM OFF!
ADAM & EVE’S SKELETONS FOUND—IN COLORADO! Well, of course—where else? Probably in Colorado Springs. I found out later that the picture WWN printed with this, showing two skeletons lying in a primitive burial site, was ripped off from a _National Geographic_ article about an archaeological dig somewhere in the Middle East or Africa. Or maybe Mt Vesuvius; I forget.
GAY CHIMP FALLS IN LOVE WITH CIRCUS DWARF! I guess it’s a toss-up as to who would be more insulted by this, the chimpanzee or the dwarf.
“Glowing image of Virgin Mary appears on radiator hose!” Well, she’s been seen on taco shells and toasted cheese sandwiches, why not a radiator hose?
“It’s a well-known fact that General George Washington lived on hamburgers while he was fighting the British.” Picture of the standard dollar-bill Gilbert Stuart portrait (painted about 15 years after George fought in the Revolution), on which is superimposed a picture of a lady’s hand holding a hamburger with a bite taken out of it. One source says the “modern” hamburger as we know it (and as depicted) was invented around 1916. (You mean Yorktown didn’t have a McDonald’s in 1781?)
“Was my husband reincarnated as a tarantula?” This was probably a question asked of the staff psychic, who is called something like Serena. I forget what it was about the tarantula that reminded the questioner of her husband; maybe they both had hairy legs. In terms of the Hindu doctrine of the transmigration of souls, the guy must have had some pretty bad karma.
“FACE ON MARS IS TRYING TO TALK! The lips are moving! say stunned scientists.” Get HAL to read it. Of course it’s talking in English. My note on this says Mars is saying “Get these dinosaurs off me!”, so there must have been a headline that I failed to save, about dinosaurs being found on Mars.
ZOOKEEPER SUFFOCATES IN 200 POUNDS OF ELEPHANT POOP! Picture shows an elephant squatting over a 3-foot-high pile of what we’re supposed to believe is shit, with human arms and legs sticking out from underneath. I’ve recently been interpreting this metaphorically as referring to the GOP suffocating the nation under six years of their shit, but WWN published this years before the Christo-fascist Republicans came into power, and the paper has a decidedly rightwing slant anyway.
However, my favorite one, which raises so many issues that I’m saving it for a separate rant: in 2-inch-high letters on a double-page spread: “Captured space alien’s grim prophecy: GOD WILL DESTROY EARTH IN THE YEAR 2000!” (This is not the same alien who escaped after being arrested for stealing frogs.) Well, the most obvious question in 2006 is: what happened? What does this say about the journalistic integrity of WWN? Stand by for breaking news analysis and commentary.
Although I’ve spent several days writing this, it’s being published on Thanksgiving (or, as I fondly call it, Emu Day), even though it has absolutely nothing to do with Thanksgiving or emus. I could say a lot about Emu Day (like the Pilgrims telling the Wampanoags, “Gosh, thanks for saving our miserable, stupid asses from starvation; now I think we’ll return the favor by stealing your land from you and genocidally murdering most of you.”), but I may save that for later, too. And I’m not going to wish you, dear reader, a happy Emu Day. You can just be thankful that I’m finally signing off.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Now what do we do?
I'm not going to say I hate raining on the rather hysterically triumphalist parade of the victorious Donkeys, because actually I'm going to enjoy raining on it. I'm a pessimist, cynic, curmudgeon, grouchy grinch, Eeyore, and insofar as possible, a pus-filled zit on the face of every cheerfully grinning sweetness-and-light imbecile. So I'd just like to ask: After six years of the so-called Democrats acting like sniveling, gutless, spineless, castrated patsies who let the forces of evil bring this country and most of the world so perilously close to disaster without making the slightest effort to impede them and in many instances happily cooperating with them, how can anyone realistically think they're going to suddenly start growing some guts, spine, and balls (metaphorically speaking for women, of course, Nancy) and stand up and do what they're supposed and expected to do? (Prize-winning train wreck of syntax there. I've been reading John Stuart Mill lately.) On the contrary, they seem all too ready, after being insulted, lied about, kicked, bludgeoned, raped, and generally brutalized, to come crawling out of the emergency room waving an "olive branch" of reconciliation and "bipartisanship," of all things! This is NOT what we elected them to do. We elected them to KICK ASS!!! and they're obviously not going to do it.
Years ago, before things had gotten anywhere near this hopeless, Jim Hightower made a statement which has become one of my favorite quotes: "Some people think what this country needs is a good third party. I think what we need is a good second party." And after all the blood, sweat, and tears we spent getting them back in the driver's seat in Congress (though not yet in the Weisshaus), we still don't have it. It was N-O-T for this dismal, disgraceful, disgusting, fucked up mess that Jefferson, Washington, Adams, et al. pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. They're looking down on us now and weeping.
Years ago, before things had gotten anywhere near this hopeless, Jim Hightower made a statement which has become one of my favorite quotes: "Some people think what this country needs is a good third party. I think what we need is a good second party." And after all the blood, sweat, and tears we spent getting them back in the driver's seat in Congress (though not yet in the Weisshaus), we still don't have it. It was N-O-T for this dismal, disgraceful, disgusting, fucked up mess that Jefferson, Washington, Adams, et al. pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. They're looking down on us now and weeping.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Whence the name
In my first post, I said I might tell where the name "dull dull boring dull" came from, aside from the fact that I am.
Around 1979-'80 I became briefly involved as keyboardist in a nihilist-anarchist punk band whose name I hesitate to mention on the web for fear the web Nazis may find it and visit me early some morning and take me away to a re-education camp. We could never get any public gigs because no theater or club would publicize our name outside their place. This may lead one to surmise that the name was scatological; more accurately, it was proctological; that should give you some hints for speculation. (My involvement with the Church of the Subgenius began about the same time, which may give a clue that I was in a somewhat unstable mental condition. I usually describe the period as a combination of a nervous breakdown and midlife crisis.) My association with the band was brief because I was the only one in the band who could read music - a quite unusual skill in garage bands, and, as anybody can tell who hears most of them, quite unnecessary. Certainly the other members were competent enough, in total absence of any formal musical training, to do what they wanted to do, which was to make as much ear-splitting noise as possible. But I think they secretly resented me for my elitist skills and eventually found a devious way to nudge me out of the band: they held "practices" without telling me when they were and then told me I couldn't be in the band because I missed practices - as if what they did needed to be practiced anyway. This was among the nicer things they did. They were all (4 others besides me) mental and physical basket-cases in one way or another, the most extreme being so psychotic that she'd become violent if she forgot to take her meds and would come roaring out of her disgusting hovel of a room in a paranoid frenzy and run around the house screaming hysterically and waving a knife. I count myself lucky that they simply marginalized me and didn't seriously maim me and burn my house to the ground in a fit of pique. In fact, the "band" completely disintegrated soon after they booted me, simply because the members were too screwed up to keep together even such a minimalist act as that. Actually, although the talents were minimal, the equipment was anything but. The "leader" was a techie-freak who spent a small fortune amassing a huge battery of equipment in order to maximize the amount of ear-splitting noise they could make. It was an interesting group, while it lasted.
Anyway, enough about the band for now; I may expand their history later, and will probably at some point discuss the one member I stayed in contact with after the band folded, up until he died recently. The relevance here is simply that "Dull dull boring dull" was the name of one of the "songs" in their repertoire. I can't even remember the names of many of the other songs, it was so long ago. One, for instance, was called "Kill your parents"; they were all, in one way or another, about violence, mayhem, alienation - all the lovely things which psychotics pride themselves on. Oh, and incidentally, at the same time I was associated with this pack of raving maniacs, I was organist in the most conservative, uptight Episcopal church in Boulder - what might be called leading a double life. It was an interesting period.
Around 1979-'80 I became briefly involved as keyboardist in a nihilist-anarchist punk band whose name I hesitate to mention on the web for fear the web Nazis may find it and visit me early some morning and take me away to a re-education camp. We could never get any public gigs because no theater or club would publicize our name outside their place. This may lead one to surmise that the name was scatological; more accurately, it was proctological; that should give you some hints for speculation. (My involvement with the Church of the Subgenius began about the same time, which may give a clue that I was in a somewhat unstable mental condition. I usually describe the period as a combination of a nervous breakdown and midlife crisis.) My association with the band was brief because I was the only one in the band who could read music - a quite unusual skill in garage bands, and, as anybody can tell who hears most of them, quite unnecessary. Certainly the other members were competent enough, in total absence of any formal musical training, to do what they wanted to do, which was to make as much ear-splitting noise as possible. But I think they secretly resented me for my elitist skills and eventually found a devious way to nudge me out of the band: they held "practices" without telling me when they were and then told me I couldn't be in the band because I missed practices - as if what they did needed to be practiced anyway. This was among the nicer things they did. They were all (4 others besides me) mental and physical basket-cases in one way or another, the most extreme being so psychotic that she'd become violent if she forgot to take her meds and would come roaring out of her disgusting hovel of a room in a paranoid frenzy and run around the house screaming hysterically and waving a knife. I count myself lucky that they simply marginalized me and didn't seriously maim me and burn my house to the ground in a fit of pique. In fact, the "band" completely disintegrated soon after they booted me, simply because the members were too screwed up to keep together even such a minimalist act as that. Actually, although the talents were minimal, the equipment was anything but. The "leader" was a techie-freak who spent a small fortune amassing a huge battery of equipment in order to maximize the amount of ear-splitting noise they could make. It was an interesting group, while it lasted.
Anyway, enough about the band for now; I may expand their history later, and will probably at some point discuss the one member I stayed in contact with after the band folded, up until he died recently. The relevance here is simply that "Dull dull boring dull" was the name of one of the "songs" in their repertoire. I can't even remember the names of many of the other songs, it was so long ago. One, for instance, was called "Kill your parents"; they were all, in one way or another, about violence, mayhem, alienation - all the lovely things which psychotics pride themselves on. Oh, and incidentally, at the same time I was associated with this pack of raving maniacs, I was organist in the most conservative, uptight Episcopal church in Boulder - what might be called leading a double life. It was an interesting period.
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Yes, I'm dull and boring.
Really, reeally, REEEALLY dull and BORING!! Excitement makes me nervous and edgy. In conversations, people sometimes interrupt me as if I weren't talking at all; they don't seem to hear me. In the musical "Chicago," one of the characters sings the poignant song "Mr Cellophane" because people look right through him as if he isn't there; I'm Mr Cellophane. I often talk to myself because I'm the only person who seems to pay much attention to what I'm saying. That may be why the idea of blogging appeals to me. Blogging is tantamount to talking to yourself, since you have no idea, in absence of any feedback, whether anybody is reading you. I talk to myself a lot anyway because I live alone. I talk to my dog, too, and although he sometimes answers me in dog-language, it doesn't make for scintillatingly intellectual dialogue. Blogging is quintessentially narcissistic because not only is it basically talking TO yourself, it is also to a great extent talking ABOUT yourself--another reason it appeals to me, since I'm notoriously narcissistic.
It is also quintessentially narcissistic to think anyone should give a flying bleep what I think about anything, but as I AM narcissistic, this is not the first time I've made such an assumption. Back in the period 1986-'89--back before the Internet, when we communicated by impressing cuneiform characters on clay tablets--a sort of predecessor of blogging was something called rant-zines. During this period I edited and published about 10 issues of a rant-zine called "The Occasional Journal of Nothing in Particular" (short title, OJNIP), and like most rant-zines, it consisted of narcissistic ravings about the fascinating ideas of my marvelous mind. Before the Internet, of course, publication meant snail-mail, and although postage then was nowhere near 39¢ a piece, it was enough to add up when you had a mailing list of about 20 or 30. OJNIP did have, if I may be so modest, some rather interesting articles, my favorite being a scholarly discussion of shit called "The Summa Scatologica." Slightly below that were things like a take-off on Henry Adams' "The Dynamo and the Virgin" called "The Dynamo, the Virgin, and the Dobbshead." OJNIP was a spin-off of my brief infatuation with the Church of the SubGenius, the mythical leader of which was "Bob" Dobbs. (I blush to admit now that I was naïve enough to be infatuated with something so stupid for as long as I was.) In fact, most of the mailing list, outside my own small circle of weird, psychotic friends, was taken from a SubGenius publication called "High weirdness by mail," which consisted of a directory of, among other things, other weird rant-zines. Oddly enough, OJNIP died of its success. To my great surprise, a number of the recipients gave me enthusiastic and voluminous feedback, as well as copies of their own rant-zines, and as the mailing list and feedback grew as a result of coverage in "High weirdness," I actually became a little nervous about being so successful, as well as more burdened by the mushrooming postage costs, and I ceased publication in 1989. But it was fun while it lasted, and has now emboldened me to try my hand at new and far more boring narcissistic blather via the Bloggosphere. So here I am. Bow down before my vast and fascinating intellect and tell me I'm wonderful, ye plebeian masses!
Over and out.
It is also quintessentially narcissistic to think anyone should give a flying bleep what I think about anything, but as I AM narcissistic, this is not the first time I've made such an assumption. Back in the period 1986-'89--back before the Internet, when we communicated by impressing cuneiform characters on clay tablets--a sort of predecessor of blogging was something called rant-zines. During this period I edited and published about 10 issues of a rant-zine called "The Occasional Journal of Nothing in Particular" (short title, OJNIP), and like most rant-zines, it consisted of narcissistic ravings about the fascinating ideas of my marvelous mind. Before the Internet, of course, publication meant snail-mail, and although postage then was nowhere near 39¢ a piece, it was enough to add up when you had a mailing list of about 20 or 30. OJNIP did have, if I may be so modest, some rather interesting articles, my favorite being a scholarly discussion of shit called "The Summa Scatologica." Slightly below that were things like a take-off on Henry Adams' "The Dynamo and the Virgin" called "The Dynamo, the Virgin, and the Dobbshead." OJNIP was a spin-off of my brief infatuation with the Church of the SubGenius, the mythical leader of which was "Bob" Dobbs. (I blush to admit now that I was naïve enough to be infatuated with something so stupid for as long as I was.) In fact, most of the mailing list, outside my own small circle of weird, psychotic friends, was taken from a SubGenius publication called "High weirdness by mail," which consisted of a directory of, among other things, other weird rant-zines. Oddly enough, OJNIP died of its success. To my great surprise, a number of the recipients gave me enthusiastic and voluminous feedback, as well as copies of their own rant-zines, and as the mailing list and feedback grew as a result of coverage in "High weirdness," I actually became a little nervous about being so successful, as well as more burdened by the mushrooming postage costs, and I ceased publication in 1989. But it was fun while it lasted, and has now emboldened me to try my hand at new and far more boring narcissistic blather via the Bloggosphere. So here I am. Bow down before my vast and fascinating intellect and tell me I'm wonderful, ye plebeian masses!
Over and out.
O gawd, not another blogger!
Yes, another blogger. Why? Because my guru told me it would be good for my soul or mental health or some such thing, and he is my master and I do everything he tells me to--within reason. Why "dull dull boring dull"? Because I am, although the name actually derives from something in my history, about which more later, maybe. Right now it's almost 2:00 in the morning and I'm tired and cold. Over and out.
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