please stop tickling me

Things To Not Do With Your Band Photo (probably part one of a series)

2011-12-10T14:46:00.001-08:00

It's been said before, in many places and at many different times, that the best way to show exactly how Ready For This you are is to contract a professional photographer to do a session with you.

Note the beautiful chiaroscuro late-afternoon light on the tree. The slanting carport roof juxtaposed with the more horizontal lines of the backyard fence. The whimsical inclusion of a Slinky.

And above all else, note how the photog in question definitely didn't make your band look like a bunch of idiot high-schoolers who have no idea what they're doing.

Nothing quite says you're ready for the big time like having your Look all planned out and taken care of.

From the right, we have Guy With Phone...Or perhaps Guy With Remote who thinks you're a t.v. and is trying to change you. We have KURT! Or perhaps we have Guy Whose Girlfriend Can't Figure Out How To Get Rid Of Satan Eye on her phone's camera. Guy Who Is Higher Than Jesus Right Now?

And finally on the left: One Would Go Dateless That Night! Also, the only guy with a van in the band.

I try not to make the same exact joke too many times in a row here. For instance: if I felt like it, I could have taken the majority of the photos I found doing a very brief search and just wrote, "Pictured: buncha dudes."

You'd think you specifically had to be a sort of half-ass lookin' dude to be in a band or something. But there's lots of ladies making music these days, and here's five of 'em.

From left: Stare-y, Simper-y, Going To Kill You, Disappointed In You and The Underaged-Looking One.

Well, so me and the rest of the boys just got done with a "gig" see, and we were on our way up the stairs at the Gigglin' Goose when our friend who's a semi-professional photographer stops us and says we should get a band photo done, seeing how we're trying to make it in this industry.

So we're standing there, and just as the flash goes off, AHH! TAMMY! She pops right out of Bob's chest (you can tell he's already dead by that blank stare in his eyes) and starts looking all sassy! She demanded that we hire her to sing lead, and frankly, what the hell could we do at that point?

You Are What You Are, and you will brook no compromise. You have the heart of a warrior, and these are times of war. Where the Blood Sacrifice is Legitimate, and the Eternal Crisis is Forevermore, a small clan of Serious Men shall step forth to provide the battle tunes we all must march by.

You stare meaningfully at us from a white room. With stark light. The solemnity -and again, seriousness of your mission is captured manfully in this image, this...this "photograph," as mortals call them.

What? No, I'm sorry: I just can't stop laughing at your brother's fucking facial hair.

You know, I just don't think you're trying hard enough. The off-brand drum set, the amps with the Dude, Kegger! red Solo cups sitting on top of them, how clearly Your Mom's Basement this is. It's just...I dunno. It doesn't even begin to live up to the promise you have as a band.

And your lead singer. She's gotta go. I know she's a relative of yours, but face facts: she can't fucking sing.

Things To Not Do With Your Profile Picture, Ladies Night II

2011-08-09T10:33:00.001-07:00

I felt that we perhaps gave short shrift to the ladies last time, in lieu of endless amounts of fella-ridiculing. What can I say? I'm a fella; I know of what I speak. But getting back to th' babes...

HIII!!! SEEEASHELLL!!!
So let's see: this would be one where you think you are being charming, your friends no doubt found this charming, and frankly it probably was charming in the moment. But is that the same thing as what a stranger will probably make of it out of context?

No, I'm kind of thinking that your average stranger will end up looking at this one a bit too long to feel comfortable about it. Crazy face. Forced smile. "Cute" hat and trying to be precious about holding a fucking shell on a beach. It's the kind of thing boring people do when they're trying to be interesting.

Now, this one breaks two immutable laws of First Impressions: one, The Ghost of the Ex. He used to be there, and man whatta buncha pictures he's in! Can't find one of me without him! Crop! Second, and far more importantly, this is a picture of that thing you do that everybody thinks is funny when they know you already. Or they act that way because they're secretly terrified of you.

Again, you get some points for being honest, anyway. It's not your pic from senior prom, you're not substituting a pic of your kitten, you're not looking like you're posing for a Glamour Shots (tm) hazy Vaseline lens photo with the bustier and the satin couch and so on. You're being Real! You're takin' a shit with the door open! You're letting us in on what the reality of the situation! But what is that, if broken down into real terms?

I mean, what is it exactly that you're saying to the stranger here? I ain't so girly! Or, I'm drunk! I can be as unattractive as I want, and still be attractive because that's how attractive I am, got it?

As it happens, she's doing this in all of her shots.

One of two things is happening here: either she thought it would be kinda funny to fuck with people's expectations on this one, and kind of make a meta-joke about profile pictures, or she really honestly thought that this would be a good one, and she is in need of the kind of advice a good friend would have already given her.

Other, more sinister possibilities present themselves: she has demon eyes because she is trying to say I'm a demon. Whatever you do, don't do me. I'm a problem. I'm going to be interrupting this exchange of keys between two willing parties any second now, because I'm Ka-raaazzzyyy!!! Hey guys, how's it goin'? Oh shit, Trisha! Oh yer not giving that tie-wearer your key, are you? Well let me tell you...

Now, I think I know what you were going for here. You were showing off your arty side. You didn't go to Clown College (accredited) for a half year just to spend the rest of your life not entertaining people and bringing a little light into this dismal little world. You like David Bowie in his 'Aladdin Sane' phase as much as the next girl! You're giving someone a mime-job! You're showing how you escaped from That Place they sent you! Er, charity...auction...

You know, on second thought maybe I have absolutely no idea what you were going for here.

I Am A person. First and foremost. I need not distract you with shallow things like how I look.

I know that you are the kind of person who traffics in ideas. That you are the person who wants to spend their time in a mutually gratifying partnership with An Equal. You are a Good Man who cares more about how I think than how I would look, because you can tell absolutely nothing about a person by their expression, their...lowly countenance.

And because you think like me, and because you and I just know better than the rest of those people out there, I know that you will respect me in my decision to choose to forgo a picture of how I look in real life and instead offer a picture of a trite-as-fuck bumper sticker.

Squeezin' Diamonds! Or, Aw c'mon you guyyys! Date Me! Or, I have Passion! I live out in this bamboo grove because it's so PEACEFULLL! I'm trying like hell to remember the name of the band that did "Send Me An Angel!" It's right on the tip of my tongue!

Let's see: most likely it's the Passionate Photo explanation. How do I sum up how Passionate I am about things? My friends -who signed off on this pic, probably, and would have had time to veto it, presumably- said that maybe I should do that thing I do when I'm working hard! Out in the bamboo grove because THAT'S WHERE MY PASSION LIES!

And how else can you say it without words? My one friend said you could do it by looking just like Melissa Etheridge's first album cover:

But I'm not really sure that I'd take Char's advice about issues of The Heart anyway.

But you don't know the heart that beats inside the Breasts of Honest Lady 1991.
She is Just Her, Here With You, well...Let's let her tell it:

I'm very brilliant, clever, nice looking, healthy and fun loving young lady.Above all,some of the character traits that l possess includes;good sense of humor,good and noble manners,very transparent and genuine and the ability to concentrate and to understand-To mention but a few..About who lam,l may say I'm very dependable and trustworthy,living all fears behind myself now and building on strength to compensate
for the weakness...

Is what average sexy gentleman is wanting for, suppose.

This is picture of Honest Lady in Casual. She can just chillax in Recliner as like One of Boys. She has ripped pants fabric! She can tell the jokes dirty! She is willing to go get you A Beer! Well, to let her continue to tell it...

In view of this,I'm friendly and attract others to me,I'm always happy,looking forward to meeting and loving someone who will love me in return,looking forward to a great romance and am preparing for it by being positive.I mean a romance and a true love that will love a lifetime.....

That's an awful lot of periods for someone who didn't mean what they said, don't you think?

Honest Lady with the Fashion Hat! And the Model Pose! When these pictures were first taken five years ago in Herzegovina, she was told that she was going to be Top Model!

Since that time, she has relaxed her expectations and wants to be with You:

I choose to ignore negative messages from the past and will focus on positive hope for the future which includes being ready for a healthy love relationship and I expect and hope to see happiness,security,trust,self commitment,freedom,tolerance,hope, etc at its best as long as sincerity is not left out. We are getting to know each other from now and l can see how thrilled and excited you're behind your PC.Alright,I believe you understand the feelings behind my words.

I think it's interesting that she knows what kind of computer you have, isn't it? It's also interesting that despite her profile turning up on a dating site that serves a Portland, Oregon weekly, her neighborhood is "Youngstown" because she lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

Or, wherever it is that Rich American Grooms live.

Further Album Cover-related Madness

2011-03-06T13:57:00.000-08:00

Episode six:

Episode seven:

Episode eight:

Episode nine:

Episode ten:

Many Non Sequiturs Do Not Follow

2011-02-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

There is a strange habit, certainly among Americans and maybe all people everywhere, of taking straightforward pieces of information and acting as if they were advice. Case in point: "There's No Free Lunch."
Once upon a time, your average bar would indeed have had free food spread out for you around lunchtime. To not have a free lunch would be an exception. One even may encounter free hors d'ouevres to this day at certain bars, circa happy hour. So if you were not offering any free food to your customers in those days, you'd need a sign to let them know in advance.

The first several hundred times in my life I heard this one, it was usually rendered as; "Like the sign says, 'there's no free lunch'." It was being offered as advice, but acknowledging its source as a commonplace thing that has no idea it's giving you life lessons. In years to come, it lost the modifier and suddenly became one of those faux tough guy things that Americans like to say.

There's a guy I know only by reputation, and as far as I can tell, he's an idiot. All I've got on him are stories from other people and what he posts on Facebook.
One time, in the course of a longer discussion about...Individuality, I suppose, he wrote "I would rather be hated for who I am than loved for something I am not."

Except for a few misspellings and occasional kitteh-isms like 'wold', that's pretty much how it rolled. Now, since I don't know the guy, I just couldn't bring myself to deliver the only comeback, which is: "You're in luck!"
But it reminds me also how often you're likely to hear shit like that from people who don't really mean it -I bet he'd be a freaking wreck if he knew what people really thought of him- and how it (like everything) is a mis-reading of Shakespeare.

Well? How likely are you to hear shit opinions voiced by idiots that do indeed back it up with words from The Bard, because they know that at least Once Upon A Time, that would be enough? So then you get dipshits quoting things like "To thine own self, be true," and "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

For the first line, you must remember that the person who spoke that is a fool. For the second, you must remember that the person who spoke it was joking. The removal of all-important Context makes it possible for your asshole neighbor who spends all his time being disproportionately angry at everything to use these to mean, respectively,
"I'm an asshole. GET OVER IT!" and
"Lawyers are bad. EVEN SHAKESPEARE THOUGHT SO!"
Which is to say; a fool, being true to his own nature as usual.

Somehow this always reminds me of the peculiar American habit (again as I say; I've never lived anywhere else) of deciding in advance that anyone who is accused of a crime is therefore guilty of said crime. The more heinous the crime, the more likely this reaction is.
Thing is, I've been on the receiving end of this one just enough times in my life to tell you: just because everybody thinks it, doesn't make it so. I've lived in just enough communities in my time where everybody was just one hundred per cent convinced that I'd done something that I had not done that I do indeed sympathize with people who Stand Accused.

The culprit as always is groupthink. Or what your cracker barrel philosophers will call good ol' horse sense. The easy and the obvious. Homilies and homespun wisdom. Handed-down misinterpretations of things. If it rhymes, it's true. If I'm lyin', I'm dyin'. It just makes good sense.

And all of this leads to me, stuck behind a delivery van the other day. The legend on the back read, "Many stops do not follow," to which I had to think, that's true y'know: they don't.

The Rules of the Ziggy Circus game

2011-01-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

Another day, another great time to switch the punchlines on our nation's two worst comic strips.

Again, all the other people in Ziggy's world (such as they are; they're not so much 'people' as they are walking punchlines) are constantly making references to a Daddy or Mommy who's nowhere to be seen.
And back in Cirque du Famile land, Dolly gets closer and closer to crossing that line that she would do well not to cross.

This one actually doesn't even need much juxtaposition. The upshot of all of it is that Jeffy drinks urine, but I think you knew that already.

I know I'm not the only one who has wondered about Ziggy's sexuality. I mean, does he have any? That would be only the first of many questions. But best of all, wouldn't it be great if he, like so many other amorphous man-blobs I've known in my time, could only get it on in a very very specific way?
Like -say for instance- forcing his partner to form himself into some sort of 'z' shape and call him "Daddy?"
Meanwhile, Billy doesn't make a goddamn lick of sense, is proud of same. He will grow up to be your typical American adult.

Frankly, this one was a problem for me even before I switched the punchlines.
I mean, randomly being asked for your food by a stranger who was walking by your house is odd enough, as is your retarded, melon-headed child clearly wanting to fuck your mouth out of some strange, feral instinct to just put it in the hole, dammit, first thing in the morning.
But when the kid says, "Are you going to eat that pickle?" it takes on even more sinister dimensions. What is the frequency, Kenneth?
And as usual, some hapless stranger has mistaken Ziggy for daddy, which could never happen outside the magical world of the comics.

Interviews, with a Bachelor and a Major

2011-01-13T13:39:00.000-08:00

This is more or less just to post these somewhere. They've been flying the flag on Facebook for a while now: but let's bring it on home.

Aaand episode two!

Thhhreee!

That'll do for now.
Oh, okay...

Five!

You and Your "Therefore"

2011-01-10T15:59:00.000-08:00

Back in early 2005 when I first started this blog, I went out of my way to engage people who didn't share my political views at all. I figured that everyone needed to keep talking, regardless of how we spoke to each other. I never shied away from calling them bigots, they never tired of reminding me that I was was going to Hell. And that's dialogue: to my mind it's better than silence.
It wasn't always name-calling, either. I went out of my way to let them know I agreed with them on the few occasions we agreed. I tried damn hard to show the places where our interests overlapped. I often spoke of how we had lots more in common that we were being told by the media. They rarely did me any of the same favors in return.

So why'd I stop? Well, aside from getting sick of batting away the same shitty arguments over and over again, I noticed early on that all those people on the Other Side were always damn quick to go to the "We Should Just Kill All Of Them" variety of joke. And it was never long before it went past jokes, and into the real thing.

Naturally, reminding them that they were being kept in a constant state of irrational, barely coherent anger by a well-funded media apparatus that sought to do so entirely for the short-term political gain of one particular political party never came off well. Turns out people hate to hear that sort of thing about themselves.

But in any case, I always went out of my way to remind anyone who would listen that this isn't a sustainable state of affairs. You can't have this many people this angry at each other for this long, and still have a country that works at all. What you have in that case is something more like Rwanda, actually.

After a while, I noticed the random appearance of the word "therefore" in lots of their arguments. Always in some sort of syllogism that didn't exactly work, like -"if (thing that isn't true) is true, then therefore (other thing that isn't true) must also be true." Like watching a class on logical fallacies, like first day in Philosophy 101.
I knew what this was, too. They had been made to feel bad by your science-y types enough times that they just wanted to throw a few "therefores" and "hences" of their own because that's what you get to say when you're right, or at least sound that way. It's a way of speeding past that whole having-to-prove-something part and just go, "I win!"

That's why I'm not terribly surprised that Jared Loughner had that as his favorite method of argument. And why those arguments were all loaded down with not just poor comparisons but things that didn't seem to connect to any thing at all. (Matter o' fact, here's a great interview with the guy's philosophy professor from community college. It's almost funny.) As if he only attended half of the class on logical fallacies, and was now actively trying to prove that bread really is stones.

So lots has been made of how he's basically too crazy to have a coherent political position. That may be, but he himself described what he was going to do as an "assassination." I'm pretty sure that didn't refer to the little girl who died, either.
Lots has also been made about how we musn't interpret this as some sort of failure of Arizona's gun laws. No problem AZ; you didn't fuck up colossally and see to it that crazy there was comfortably armed and actively concealing. Feel better now? Didn't realize you states were so damn sensitive.

I think I should get to have a gun myself. And I think that other people should get to have guns. But I think that even the staunchest gun-rights activist doesn't like crazy, stupid people having guns.
And if all these lone nuts throughout our history were never doing it for politics but simply because they were crazy (or "evil," whatever), then why is it pretty much always a liberal that gets it? Why aren't people shooting the Michele Bachmanns of this world? Why the hell hasn't anyone put three well-placed peach-sized holes in Glenn Beck?

Lots of reasons, I suppose: maybe those same people who want us to all be mad at each other all the time also want us to be scared all the time, and it scares us more when people who at least try to talk about us all being nice to each other end up gettin' got. Maybe it's something I've never even gotten close to considering.
(Also: I kinda forgot about George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. Yeah, they sort of got shot too, I guess...)

This is that thing I keep going on and on about: we have so completely let the stupid take over the argument at this point that we all have to speak their baby talk. It's our fault: wouldn't want to be seen as An Elitist, would you?
Well, as I often said to those nice people who told me I was going to Hell for thinking as I thought: you're the one who claims to speak for God, and you're calling me the elitist?

But there's nothing wrong with telling people who have nothing good to add to shut the fuck up. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise; they're probably doing it for a very bad reason. We pride ourselves on our inclusiveness and rightfully so: but, if stupid there just keeps on barking the same stupid ideas over and over again, it's your duty as a thinking person to tell them to fuck off and be quiet.

So these days if I want to go make fun of stupid people with terrible arguments, I go over to Yahoo! Answers and stalk the "Religion and Spirituality" boards. (Actually, I don't even do that anymore, but my year of experimentation with that lowest level of public debate is going to get a blog of its own, whose inaugural post is here. Yes, I know: because I'm doing such a fantastic job keeping up my other five blogs. )
Pretty much it's all bad arguments, skewing toward the pseudo-scientific, often just childish (because I suspect a lot of the questioners are actually children). It has given me way too many opportunities to begin my reply with, "You and your 'therefore'..."

Things To Not Do With Your Profile Picture, Gentlemen's Edition

2011-01-09T10:15:00.000-08:00

The problem with critiquing men's photos first off is that what really ruins almost all of their profiles is their text, and their photos only serve to make it worse.

But the bigger problem is that I often see things here that don't necessarily require a different photo selection, but a different guy.

I mean, this is who he really is, right? (Or, at least Who He Was In The '90's, Back When He Had More Hair.) This is an accurate depiction. And if all the advice I have is if you'd like to get laid, try not being you, well...I can see why that would be less than helpful.

Seriously though, the ladies are not wrong sir: Why yes I am a Wizard is not the best look for you. Or any of us. It somehow manages to make you look uncomfortably smug about being something that very few of us want to even be near. It's also kind of like winning The Ugliest Dog competition: I'm A Winner! Being the top of the dork shitheap is...What I just said it was.

But what do I know? There's a whole buncha LARPer girls running around out there, and they need relationships too. They, unlike the rest of us, would feel positively privileged to be the lady consort of The Dungeonmaster, here.

Sausage For One! Okay, this one is Hey Ladies, I can cook!, or maybe more like Hey Ladies! I can set the table! The problem being that you have set the table with what appears to be a largish bowl of guacamole to accompany the four lone, lonely sausages that adorn each plate. Your Fiestaware plates. And maybe no one else is there, but at least Mr. Snuggles is. (Hey Ladies! I have a cat!)

It gives the rest of us the perhaps mistaken impression that each and every night you throw yourself a pretend dinner party, in which you and your cat entertain all those friends of yours. Who aren't there.

But unfortunately, most of all it's Hey Ladies! I have this goofy light fixture growing out of my head! Look, I know that you didn't realize it at the time, but since then you've looked at the photo, right? And you had time to edit, or just not select this one.

(Actually, this isn't even the creepiest of his photos. No, that's the one in the hammock, where the Up-Shorts angle of the shot gives you an unwanted preview of what Sausage For One can really mean.)

The magic of Context, yet again. I imagine that you were in the middle of doing something that your friends found incredibly funny. But that doesn't come through here.

Thing is, here again is a case where I struggled to pick out which photo was Worst, and it was an epic struggle. You Can't Photograph A Personality, and perhaps you shouldn't even try. I say that because you've got several things against you that come out in all your photos.

The fact that you're not being exactly forthcoming with yourself about your male pattern baldness is not a good sign, and your dead, staring eyes aren't going to be melting any hearts any time soon. It's not your fault that you're no one's idea of a heart throb, but it will be your fault when you cause them to flee in panic.

The hardest part is that I suspect you're actually smart, and you probably actually are quite funny. Humor is how all the best people I know coped with growing up, especially the homely ones. Now you've got to stand up straight. Literally. Please stop doing that thing you're doing in this picture.

Remember that time when you were really annoying? Yeah, so do we.

This one's a triple-decker. The Magic of Context, You Can't Photograph A Personality (especially if most of said personality revolves around Irony) and Yes, This Is How I Actually Am, Unfortunately.

I don't know what else to say here. You probably do alright, actually. Lots of girls like douchebags, and unlike the resta these guys, you're okay looking, at least.

There will be a number of ladies, though, that will look right at you and see Exactly What I Don't Want To Grow Old With. That's the central tragedy of You. Well, that and your abysmal lack of self-awareness.

That theme continues here. Except this also introduces a brand new category: Must Love Hats!
I don't know what the hell it is anymore; used to be that we could make fun of the ladies for their slavish adherence to the fashion in hats (you know, back when you and I were growing up in the 1940's), now they're onto shoes and it's the menfolk who are weird about their headgear.

Looka this mack daddy! He's exactly what I think of when the term "Urban" is thrown around. Snoop Josh, The Iron Pimp Hand! Damn! How he be so sweet?

So...if you're being ironic, there's still too many of you in this world, and if you -against all reason- are being one hundred per cent serious, I'll say it again: there are women out there that do want this, and you should do the rest of us a favor and take them. But do the rest of us a much larger favor and Do Not Get Them Pregnant.

I forget whether or not this guy and the guy above him are actually the same guy. They may be. They're two sides of the same coin, in any case.

Must Love Hats! But this is a different kind: I Am Endearing Because I'm Too Real To Care That I Look Ridiculous.

And I'm outdoorsy! Or at least I was outdoors once! Or I'm a hippie, kinda, and this hat is really important to me because it was given to me by the indigenous natives of some place you've never heard of! It's their tribal colors! This is the primary focus of their primitive art culture: making stupid hats to sell to tourists!

No man; wear whatever the hell you want but...Well while we're at it, what's up with that shirt?

You might want to spend a little time thinking about The Subtext, too. It's hard to know what anyone who's Not You is going to be thinking at any given time, and it's unfair to ask that of a person.

So you must know in advance that you can never be sure. Can't know if you'll be seen as charming and whimsical, or just plain creepy.

And since at least some of the subtext is necessarily going to be sexual, know too that someone out there is going to read this as here is how my face will look when we put a camera in your cervix!

Almost as numerous as pix of men showing off their collection of whimsical hats (which certainly aren't there to hide their creeping baldness) are pictures of guys holding guitars.

You know, people really do find musicians sexy. God knows why, but they actually do. And that also carries a whiff of Rebel, you know, despite how fairly commonplace it is to play an instrument, have once upon a time been in a band, what have you.

Despite the fact that you're now an office manager, you've been there! You know what it is to live the rock n' roll lifestyle, what with being the...bass player and all.

Sure, all your other pictures are of what you really look like now that you're the owner of a small copy shop, but here is what you are At Heart: a guy who once upon a time had a very brief moment of relative stardom in his own mind.

But at least you look like you were in a Guided By Voices cover band. Most of the I Have A Guitar photos reveal their subjects to have been in metal/nu metal/whatever-bullshit-passes-for- "punk" these days type acts.

I have seen a disturbing amount of people's senior year high school yearbook photos while engaged in this project. Here's me looking Thoughtful In High School.

And it's only the men. Women never do this. I'm not sure what conclusions could be drawn from that. Maybe none. But I do know this: I see this a lot, and it's never a good idea.

I don't remember what else this guy had on offer in the way of photographic representations of himself. I seem to recall they were boring, which is how he looks here, even at his most philosophical. Gotta remember: one guy's Deep Thinker is another guy's Where The Hell Did I Leave My Phone?

Other things wrong with this include: the lady you would attract with this picture is the lady who wants to bang teenage dudes. Remember that.

Don't think I'm being unnecessarily cruel when I say: it's not really all that hard to make the software work for you, you know? There's really no reason for you to be all sideways like that.

I see tremendous amounts of these. Ladies and men. Not sure why, but it really bugs me. Perhaps because you're making us work overtime, stranger. You're suspecting in advance that we already love you as much as you love yourself, which just isn't true.

But there's still less of these than there are those My-Half-Of-The-Picture, hastily cropped, from your last relationship.

And last but certainly not least here is this man, who decided that Penilimplant69 would be a good profile name. He is seventy-six years old, and lives right here in the area. He sums himself up with the phrase "SEXUAL MAN JAZZ music."

Along with weeping in front of the television while enjoying a thirty-two ouncer of something, his interests include "sexual incounter with ladys and want to visit NUDIST RESORT."

He digs hanging out at FREDS (Meyer's, I'm guessing), DENNY'S (how did I know that?), SHILOW (Shilo Inns...You know, I feel like most Republicans I've met are elderly swingers, actually) and FISHERMANS (Supply, probably. Ditto what I said about Republicans for "fishermen." It really just means I want to rape you on my boat).

His dislikes include "politions" and phony people. Man, no matter what the age, gender or orientation, the Phonies just can't catch an even break in this world. He also can't discern between a comma and an apostrophe, judging by his use of words like "can,t" and "don,t".

He likes Portland for its "open mined" people, and the last concert he attended was "jazz." It's difficult to tell whether or not this is some incredibly cruel joke on the part of his buddies or just what, exactly.

Things To Not Do With Your Profile Picture

2010-12-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

A lot of controversy surrounds the selection of profile images for online dating sites. If you say that you don't care what your potential partner looks like, I submit that you are a liar. (And if you only care what your potential partner looks like, you're shallow.) Above all else though; the people who refuse to show you a picture of themselves have only themselves to blame.
I mean, if all goes well you're eventually going to be meeting face to face, yes? So why not go ahead and represent yourself honestly? And while you're at it, take a little time to represent yourself well, too.

So, I bet what is really going on with this one is that you just didn't have a decent picture of yourself anywhere. You decided that a webcam photo of the side of your face, middle of the night, is better than nothing.

But I think what you're really saying here with this kind of image is actually subconscious: I'm just saying in advance that you won't remember me. I will be a blurry, hazy, washed-out half-memory. You know; that girl I dated once. She had...eyes of some sort. Nose-shaped nose. Hair of indeterminate length.

Just like choosing "Insert Witty Title Here" for your screen name, you do yourself a massive disservice by going ahead and a little too openly acknowledging how little effort most people put into most things.

If I had to guess, you picked this picture of yourself because you think it makes you look pixie-ish and cute. I fink I'd wike a widdle snuzzle fwom you now, pweeeze...Besides, that's Your Look You Do! It always fucking works! It never does not work! And thennn, your Twenties came to an end, and things started to change.

What the astute observer sees in this image now is the look of someone who desperately wishes for The Look to still be working. What you can't help but see is that fucking Thing She Does With Her Face that she'll be doing for the rest of her life.

Now, this one gets points for honesty. Here's how I really look. Straining away at some unseen task, not trying to be pretty. This is how I'm going to look at you when I'm wondering just what the hell you meant by that, and perhaps when I'm crying, as well. And this is probably the look I have on my face when I'm being fucked.

So yeah; this is the face you're going to be looking at for the rest of your natural life, if all goes as planned. How do you feel about that?
I say: Madam, there is something to be said for mystery in potential relationships. Step away from the real.

Now, I can even see what you thought was going to happen here. She's whimsical! Fun loving! Not afraid to have a bit of a laugh, even at her own expense! She has a...BIG, TERRIFYING FUCKING SAWED OFF TEDDY BEAR HEAD ON HER SHOULDERS!

And I'm sure it's my fault, somehow; I don't know her. I lack context for this image, but that also is why...WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? PUTTING YOURSELF ON A GODDAMN WEBSITE WHERE YOU'RE TRYING TO ATTRACT SOMEBODY, NOT SCAR THEM FOR LIFE!

When all is said and done, what impression of you will people come away with? You should be asking yourself this question. You should seriously ask yourself this question shortly before selecting your profile picture.

Especially when the picture you are thinking of going with is heavily pixillated, and betrays an image of yourself as someone who yells a lot. Or is literally slack-jawed.

Best part of all, I bet you were doing something fun when this picture was taken. You were having a good time: "Oh, no you DI-N'TTT!!!" The problem is, the rest of us weren't there.

Women are mysterious, as is often noted by men. Women note this a lot too, somewhat mysteriously. Motives are hard to parse in anyone, I suppose, and we are all just big ol' puzzle boxes.

Nowadays, people can be all sorts of things. There is nothing at all saying that the chick on the Harley with all the tattooes will not make an awesome grandmother. That chick who you always saw blowin' dudes in the bathroom down at the Chunder Blow in the early '90's? Guess who grew up to be The Artist currently known as Your Mom?

Having said all of that, let's remember one of the great laws of advertising here and ask ourselves, now why in the hell would she want me to think of that jackass's underpants every time I think of her?

Now of course I'm pretty sure I could have charges of Being Mean levelled against me here. But look here: for one thing these are pictures of themselves that they chose to use on the Internet, and besides; I too have put up embarrassing pictures (as well as embarrassing remembrances) on the Internet so let's not bother with that line of inquiry.

Note too that I'm not going after people for being ugly, fat or anything you can't fix, really. I'm just saying about the choices they make. Also: plenty of them have the mistaken impression that putting up a picture of their dog is a good juxtaposition to make. It isn't.

Suicide and Outdoor Rock n' Roll Shows

2010-09-07T21:13:00.000-07:00

It should be of some historical note that the night before The Swell Season played here, at the zoo, some guy threw himself off the roof of the stage and splattered in a big, embarrassing puddle at their feet.
This was somewhere in California, I believe. Apparently the gentleman was distraught over recently being left by his erstwhile lady love-interest, and figured he'd express his feelings in language she -and all of us- could finally understand.

That's the thing I don't remember about the story: whether or not she was there. Because this is a story told by stagehands, to stagehands. I immediately Went There, and so did everybody else. We all envisioned the ex-girlfriend there, and the minute he hit pavement, was all like, "Randy, you're such an asshole!" or, "You never do anything right!"

Ha ha ha ha! Seems like it really freaked out the band though. They were "restrained," to hear a favorite bartender of mine tell it.

Meanwhile, sometime not long after the picnic that my union local hosts, a young fool also decided to kill himself. I'd never thought a lot of him, and in this he resembles what few other people I've personally known who've "committed" suicide.
He was walking home, and stopped on a trestle over McLoughlin Blvd. He most likely sat there a while, based on the pile of cigarette butts. And then he either fell, was pushed, or jumped onto the busy thoroughfare below.

Last conversation I'd had with him was on the subject of...Fuselage grind? Undercarriage wear?
Well, he walked up behind me at the Dew Tour build earlier this summer and asked, very frankly, "Rich, what do you do about Gig Nuts? You know, when your balls chafe?"
Knowing full well that he had a relatively new baby in the house, but also because this was the answer, I said, "Diaper cream. You know like Desitin?"

Sure, sure he knew. The next time I saw him, I asked how that method was treating him, and he said he hadn't tried it yet. Again, let it be said that I never thought much of the guy. His white supremacist tattoos pretty much said it all for me. 'Oh, good; you're an idiot,' I thought, and didn't really feel like I had to give much effort beyond that.
As much as other folks I work with might like to say, "Oh, those were just jail tats," oh no they weren't. They were way too elaborate and professional-looking for that.

But in his defense, Steve would say about them that they were just reminders of a bunch of stupid mistakes he made earlier in his life. But this was also before kind of putting one of the few black people we work with on the spot: "But you don't have a problem with them, do you?"
And no, no; surprisingly this black man surrounded on all sides by white people he has to be nice to said that no he did not. As is often the case with this local, I just stood there and shook my head.

And when his kid was born last year, I congratulated him. We all did, of course. He had some wanna-be-deep shit to say about how he had some pause at bringing another person into this world, "especially these days, you know..."
As some who have read my shit for a while know, this is one of the dumbest things you can say, in my opinion. Pretty much no matter how you slice it, right now is a better time to be a human living in Western Civilization than any other time.
Would you like a simple metric? How likely are you to literally shit yourself to death and there's absolutely nothing anyone can do about it? Yeah, that's what I thought. "These days..." sheeeiiittt...

And he didn't hear that, because he was an idiot. He really was. From his rarely-smiling countenance to his ever-present death metal shirts, dude was a fucking simp. Of the dead, only the truth.
I liked that history, happenstance and simple truth made him the son of a man who decided late in life that he always had been a woman, inside. Hundred per cent true: it was literally as quick as: oh, there's Steve and his dad, at one gig, to oh, there's Steve; and who's that lady he's talking to?

I never asked him what he thought of his dad's transformation. I imagine it was one more thing for him to just not get. But I approve of what The Universe was up to on that one: ah. Intolerant, are you? Love your father, do you? Well...
For the record, I have no indication that he was awful to his dad about this, but then again, it's been a couple years since I've seen the man who is currently the late Steve's mother, so I dunno...

So why'd he kill himself? I don't know. Like I said, I kinda made it my business to steer clear of him. He was No Fun. I imagine his wife and kid are overwhelmingly impressed at how deep n' brooding he was. He just had to do it, don't you know? YOU JUST DON'T GET IT!

Heh. Sleep well, asshole.

So let's see.
That all happened in the middle of the runoff from Lady Gaga/American Idol/ Dew Tour, but that also fell right in the middle of that run From Hell:
Chicago, Crowded House, Doobie Bros., Two days of Bob Dylan with John Mellencamp and a band comprised of Harrison Ford's son and Gabriel Byrne and Ellen Barkin's son. Vampire Weekend in the pouring rain, Pavement and a '90's northwest rocker's class reunion.

Those who were there for all of it will describe it in the apocalyptic terms usually employed by Civil War veterans who went all through the summer months unsure if they'd ever see sanity again. It's hyperbolic, but all the same, so true.
Little moments of beauty abound though, as always: late at night, we're all done, and signing out, getting ready to go home. We're all raiding what remains of the deli tray in catering, and I realize that right alongside me is this older Australian gentleman who is just as serious about getting the last of these coldcuts as I was: the lead singer of Crowded House. He smiles and says something comforting in Aussie. We're all just people clawing at the same buffet.

The Bullshit of Mothers, pt. 1

2010-06-19T21:48:00.000-07:00

So, in the course of this little-read and decidedly under-appreciated blog, one will occasionally go back and find little gems like this:

You wrote about my son Zhane Fulp and his billboard in your article. He has Autism and for him to be able to write this and have his billboard displayed makes me very proud. It has been a long road to get to where he is, just for you to have your say. I ask that you remove any mention of my son from your article.

And this is from someone who is one hundred per cent okay with her son's name being on the internet (and identifying him first and foremost as someone with autism, before anything else), but not if someone has something to say about his actual work, if it is something other than insincere praise for his being An Inspiration.

I would have had to view him as being Autistic above all else (which I couldn't, as I didn't know him, and only had his work by which to judge) to view him as being so Inspirational. What I saw instead was an embarrassing cluster of words about some media non-entity on Channel One that some kid somewhere had a crush on.

Now, I bet that's a lot closer to the truth than the picture his mother is trying to put across. She views it as An Inspiration (tm) that her Autistic is writing anything at all. I view it as Some Kid Is Working Out His Masturbatory Fantasies in ALL CAPS:

(Which, if you recall, read as...

"I HAVE TO SAY THAT JESSICA KUMARI IS MY HERO BECAUSE SHE HAS HELPED CHANNEL ONE NEWS ENTERTAIN THE HEARTS OF MILLIONS. I WATCH CHANNEL ONE NEWS EVERY MORNING AT CHESTNUT GROVE MIDDLE SCHOOL AFTER BREAKFAST AT THE SCHOOL CAFETERIA MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY. CONGRATULATIONS, JESSICA. CONGRATULATIONS. "

I'm more cracked up at 'CONGRATULATIONS, JESSICA. CONGRATULATIONS,' than anything else. It's just one o' those Show Biz Moments: Thank you, o thank you Media Figure for talking to Me And Only Me each and every day from Magic Box. Would die without you. Can't Live. Love You.)

So for whatever it's worth, I'd like to remind you, Claire, that if you open up your doors to the Internet, you won't necessarily always see or hear what you want to see or hear. That's basic, and in fact it's so basic that some person on the other end of the continent shouldn't have to tell you that.

But far worse than that is this idea you have that other people don't get to state their opinions about this thing that you have released into the public Marketplace of Ideas. You don't want your Son Who Is Autistic to have to hear unkind things? Maybe you shouldn't have allowed him to be on the Internet.

The fact that you wish to score some sort of sympathy points here makes you a rotten human being, in my opinion. Just for (me) to have (my) say, by the way, You're the one who writes like a person with autism. He just writes like a kid.

And fuck, who the hell Googles their kid's name?

A Journey of Self-Discovery and Shit

2010-04-26T18:44:00.000-07:00

The center of Oregon is this weird wonderland. In the very center of it, there's this multi-hued, throbbing heart of pure geological and paleontological weirdness. And it's fun to wander north from it, watching it slowly, slowly fading back into just plain old land forms.

But it is also home to towns like Friend, and also the town of Post, which is said to be the exact geographic center of Oregon. I've never been to either. So what are we doing talking about this?

Well, it's Spring again, or at least pretty close. So that means it's time for the lady of the house and I to head out east. This is, as we have explored before, a beautiful time to be in the desert.

As we've also noted before, actually very little of Oregon looks like the Willamette Valley. Hell, almost none of it does. But you get so used to depictions of it being more or less culled from around here: when you see a montage about "Oregon," what you get is shots of Mount Hood, the view east from the rose garden in Washington Park, Bonneville Dam, Haystack Rock...Probably Crater Lake, but anyway...

But in the center of it all, where not really all that many people go (except for Facebook, which has already started building its new center in Prineville), there it all comes together in this serious riot of colors, with a reminder of the giants in the earth that once were here.

There's that thing that sometimes happens in the best of all pursuits: someone actually hits the perfect note, someone actually cooks the perfect meal, you have the exact amount of the right chemicals going on where you see exactly, once and for all, where you stand in the universe and what it all means.
And the funny part is what happens afterwards, as you back away from it, as you inevitably will have to. Like I say, heading north out of the Painted Hills, you can see remnants of the geological mystery that made it all possible, fading fading back away slowly.

By the time you get to Condon, it just looks like the high plains again.

So anyways, we're either gonna go over Hwy. 26, over the top of Hood (my least favorite way of getting to Central OR, by the by), or over to The Dalles, down through Dufur, Maupin, Tygh Valley, etc.

Spend the night at The Riverhouse in Bend, maybe go over to Tumalo Reservoir, maybe go to drink Mirror Pond within walking distance of the actual Mirror Pond! Oh, magical place, yo.

Thence over to Prineville, over the Ochocos to Mitchell, where I suspect we'll get lunch and visit with Henry the Bear. After that, the Painted Hills.

Then we go up to the John Day Fossil Beds, and possibly over to the Clarno Unit, where basically Oregon's version of Arches National Monument is.

And spend the night at the Hotel Condon. Probably eating Painted Hills beef, just like you would in any decent restaurant in Portland, just fresher is all.

Maybe go to the only other location of Powell's Books there is in Oregon outside of the Portland metropolitan area. (If it's still there. Michael Powell was apparently wandering around Central Oregon ten or more years ago and decided that Condon was just charming enough that it needed a good bookstore. Go figure.)

So, four hundred-sixty miles, does Google Maps say. That's according to its route, which I think maybe will not be my route, exactly.

Coming back to what looks like a busy as hell month, which is good. More to come, from de road.

Some quick thoughts after spending an afternoon hanging lights in a high school auditorium

2010-04-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

I should just have a 'David Brooks' tag.

His editorial today about varying modes of leadership has lots of the hallmarks of Brooksiana: the on-the-fly creation of weird catch-phrases that somehow fail to stick and sort of make you feel a little sorry for him...The odd Greater Point I'm Getting At Here that comes from a series of 'well, I'm not sure that's actually so' moments...I ultimately like this one though, because he ends up going with 'The Humble Hound,' rather than 'The Lion in the Boardroom.'

The guy he is initially talking about, who says things like,

“I can talk about changing things for the better, even if I don’t know what it is we’re going to change. I’ll just say we’re going over there somewhere. And I don’t quite know what that looks like, but it’s going to be fantastic.”

is not specifically described as a delusional maniac you wish like hell wasn't your boss, but David does quickly go from there to a more introspective leadership style, which...Well, this is Brooksiana again...

"The humble hound leader thinks less about her mental strengths than about her weaknesses. She knows her performance slips when she has to handle more than one problem at a time, so she turns off her phone and e-mail while making decisions. She knows she has a bias for caution, so she writes a memo advocating the more daring option before writing another advocating the most safe. She knows she is bad at prediction...In short, she spends a lot of time on metacognition — thinking about her thinking — and then building external scaffolding devices to compensate for her weaknesses."

Okay, for starters let's assume you're a woman. In fact, let's refer to our nameless example here as a "her." He goes through a list of traits often attributed to women although generally at odds with the attendant stereotype of the ball-busting corporate cunt. The example of the Boardroom Lion is an actual person, The Humble Hound is a nameless woman.

This is why David Brooks Land is such a fun place to visit: he almost always distracts from his basic point by clumsy shit like this. It makes you stop reading his piece for content and instead start editing it.

He then (briefly) talks about being a stagehand, which is an oddly Collective Action and Teamwork thing for even a Thoughtful Conservative to be in like with:

"Being out when the applause is ringing doesn’t feel important to them. The important things are the communal work, the contribution to the whole production and the esprit de corps. The humble hound is a stagehand who happens to give more public presentations than most."

He then links to this article on actually being a stagehand. Note that 'applause not being important' thing. There's more of that. While the author, Peter J. Marks, gamely notes that it's just a stereotype that all stagehands are frustrated actors (or musicians), the fact remains that plenty of them are. They just happen to have a way more stable job in the entertainment industry.

If the point is that we're too centered and not-vain to seek the glory of the footlights and the adulation of the masses, I accept the compliment, even though it's often not true. I just decided a long time ago that I don't really want to hang around with actors. Or dancers. Or musicians.

Then too there's that thing I always come back to about stage-handery really being a refuge for lots of intellectually insecure people who want to have this one very specialized place in their life where they can lord it over other people. But really, that's any industry. I like the fact that there's a former theater critic who writes things very few people read on the Internet who is trying to impute some nobility to my profession, but it's still just a job, y'know? One I'm lucky enough to like, though.

But sometimes I still get a little misty when I watch all of us working together to build something, and the thing coming together beautifully. When we're all speaking each other's language, and having lots of laughs along the way. "The construction industry with less assholes," I've heard it called. It's the miracle of Cooperation, just like they used to tell you to about on 'Sesame Street'. Collectivist? Damn right it is.

And above all else, shit like this does indeed make me think that this would be the moment for a book that does for stagehanding what Kitchen Confidential did for restaurant kitchens, and The Immortal Class tried to do for bike messengers. Just seems like the blood's in the water.

But again, I'm unclear on what I'd call it.

Benny the Rat, and All His Pals

2010-03-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

I love Yahoo! Answers.

Benedict the Demon from Hell, why do you demand the resignation of your Bishops for your crimes?
It is well documented that you in your role as the Holy Lord Inquisitor of the Faith instructed all the Bishops of this Earth to protect the child abusing Priests in order to save the name of the 'Holy Catholic Church'
You should resign! You are the worst transgressor. You are a child abuser!. You are filth beneath the feet of the children of Ireland!
May you rest in Hell for a while until you are fully sorry for your misdeeds.

(These were the words of someone who called himself Gone Beyond. He got a lot of flack from Catholics -one of whom decided to respond with a lengthy list of Protestant worthies who had been found abusing children- and I responded with:)

Ah. Talkin' about Benny the Rat, eh? Well, let's see...

Okay; they (The Vatican) seem to have decided a while ago that they'd rather pay huge court settlements than fix the problem. Also, they're a sovereign nation whose ruler is also the head of the church: Benny the Rat, that is.

Now, while there's a longstanding tradition of mentoring that includes having sex with your charges that goes back to ancient Greece (at least), the last time anyone was dumb enough to use that as a legal defense was centuries ago. The point is, nothing will be done because the church rarely changes. Gonna convene a council against the big guy? Good luck with that.

But past a certain point they'll have to decide between wholesale bankruptcy and changing their ways. I suspect the result will be a schism between western and European Catholicism.

Not that you care; you're crazy.

And I meant all of it -just to forestall any suggestion of me being a little cavalier on the subject. (Ultimately I discovered that the author probably isn't as crazy as his/her writing style suggests, either: I'm pretty sure it's actually just very elaborate performance art, and said so, for which I recieved a 'Best Answer' award. )

I genuinely think that the Catholic church decided several decades ago that they would rather continue to pay massive out-of-court settlements with no admission of guilt (and let's take a moment to savor the paradox in that one: the whole point of Catholicism is standardized confession of sins) in lieu of doing any serious work in combatting the problem.
But now people are nowhere near as scared to come forward as they once were. So maybe it would be time to make substantive changes, rather than just doling out hush money you no longer really have.

But as it happens, they'll be set for a while, financially. The Vatican is the Mafia, basically, with everyone paying Up, and then some of it trickling back down to dioceses all over the world. They've been doing this for a very long time, and they're pretty set. I imagine that The Vatican's financial records aren't publicly available, but I've never gone looking , either.

Again as I say, The Vat is a sovereign nation. Unless we felt like a military invasion/occupation to topple its dictatorship (and we've been very fond of those lately), there probably isn't much that could be done in the way of official condemnation. Benny the Rat is currently the Pontiff of the Holy See, the Archbishop of Rome, and President of a Country that Professes to have Dominion over Souls. People still listen to him because he's a Double Threat (at least).

The church has also been a giant Closet for centuries, where families all over the world sent their children that they felt were probably homosexual, or at very least just weren't going to be fitting in so hot with society at large. And then there's the doctrine of Clerical Celibacy: so your reward for going into the priesthood or nunnery is that you will never be able to express one of your basic biological drives. As a member of the clergy, you could go wherever you wanted during Carnival and go back to your monastery or wherever no questions asked, but this practice ended in the 13th century, so now you don't even get to have annual sex.

So then these people who don't get to have sex are -for some fucking reason- given dominion over the children in their flock (when they're not delivering marriage counseling). As is often the case when big people are given charge over little people (or powerful people ruling over powerless people, anyway), abuses will occur. It seems that they've been doing so in this case for centuries, and the Church being what it is, they're only now starting to talk about something the rest of us have been nervously joking about for quite a while.

Lastly, the Church is almost certainly not going to discipline its own leader. The last time that happened, the guy was already dead. He'd been accused of everything from rape to murder while he'd been alive, but he was Pope, y'know? Not a lot you can do about that.

So they exhumed him, put his corpse up in a chair, yelled at it for a few weeks, found it guilty and stripped it of its papal vestments, threw it in the Tiber river. Justice was done.

(The problem here is that there have been a lot of crooked Popes. This makes research difficult to say the least. I was thinking of one of your Renaissance Popes -a Medici, a Borgia- but the only one I can find was Pope Formosus, who died in the late 890's. Here's a picture of him.)

And then this morning, Dan Savage quotes the same thing everyone else has been quoting for the last twenty-four hours: Pope Benedict isn't concerned by "petty gossip."

That's pure Chairman of the Board talking there: We Are Not Concerned With The Likes Of You. Have you trampled civilizations underfoot for the Glory of God? I thought not. Well, We Have. Have you been terrorizing small children and other simple-minded folk with other-worldly boogy-men for well over a thousand years, and have seen all of your critics go to their graves, largely unrewarded? No? We Have.

Boy, you always forget exactly how arrogant these fuckers are until moments like these, eh? It seems like some sort of cartoonish grotesque that you've dreamt up, until dude turns around and actually starts talking like this. And then you remember: oh, so this is why I hate religion!

Anatomy of A Meager Amount of Swag

2010-03-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

It was brought to my attention that I had won something in the form of an email:

Hey you won in our letters section this week. Send a physical address over to our office manager Brad and we'll get your prizes sent out. Thanks for keeping the comments coming.

Hm. I 'won.' I appreciated that, so I wrote back and said,

I appreciate it. I even sent my address to this...This "Brad".

But I gotta tell you; looking back through my comments of the last several days, I don't see a single one that would qualify as a best of anything if you ask me. I can't think of which one it would be. Anyway, thanks.

It was pointed out to me that this letter would be appearing in the print edition. But it was something I'd said on their site. Matter o' fact, here it is:

A point I'd like to throw out there is that I don't think so much that Campbell was killed specifically because he was black. It strikes me as more like the officers involved behaved stupidly, communicated poorly (a sniper with no radio contact?) and ultimately fucked up about as badly as a police officer can - and knew that they *could get away with it* because Campbell was black. So far, they're right.

What are we gonna do? The grand juries always side with the armed people, and there is no effective police oversight in this town. The cops themselves have proven themselves entirely unwilling to hear even the slightest criticism, but also factor in that Saltzman's attempt to discipline Humphreys was too little, too late, and arguably for the wrong offense.

So far, I'd say that Saltzman ought to step down, I'd like to see Westerman removed from his post (not that you and I have anything to say about that), and Rosie Sizer needs to rein in her rogue cops because she has lots of them. Then we can begin this conversation.

Alright? Because as it currently stands, you can kill someone in this town as a city employee and publicly call it persecution when the worst thing that happens to you is paid leave.

And what did I get? For all my trouble and pain? The equivalent of sixteen dollars cash.

That would be two tickets to a movie at the Laurelhurst theater (which would cost six dollars), and a ten dollar coupon to No Fish? Go Fish! , a restaurant I have never wanted to go to, and yes that's because of its name.

As to the Dramatis Personae in the letter:

"Campbell" is the late Aaron Campbell, shot in the back by the cops.
"Saltzman" is Dan Saltzman, city councilman with what certainly seems to be oversight vis a vis the police bureau.
"Humphreys" is Officer Chris Humphreys, who shot a girl in the leg with one of those bags of lead shot that is euphemistically referred to as a 'bean bag'. He also was one of the cops who killed James Chasse, by crushing him, basically. He received a (short lived) reprimand for the bean bag thing, until...
Scott Westerman, head of the Portland Policeman's Association, (until just the other day when he stepped down) held a protest march of uniformed cops that staked itself out front of city hall and made it clear that they wouldn't be intimidated by those who pay their salaries. Or supervised by their supervisors...
Like Rosie Sizer, who is Chief of the Portland Police Bureau.

So anyway...Fame! Uh, it's odd to note that just in the time since I first started writing this one (Fourteenth of March), there's been at least one more story about a cop who started firing at someone who had no possibility of killing him, rendering the suspect dead.
Or the fact that the particular controversy being discussed in my award-winning letter could have been written at any point in the last twenty years in Portland. I'm told, however, that San Francisco cops are worse.

Item, and Report

2010-03-02T15:15:00.001-08:00

(NPR recently ran their apparently annual contest in which you write a story based entirely off a single image. It is referred to as the Three Minute Story, and has a word limit of 600 words.

The deadline for submission was the last night of February. I blew it. But the reward, such as it was, was to have some poet read your story on 'All Things Considered', I believe. So I kind of don't care about the reward aspect anyway.

Anyway, there's the picture. Let's rumble.)

First of all, I would like to object to the obviousness in the placement of the drop. He is supposed to be a professional, not some sort of false-flag. If he thinks that it's acceptable to just get up, throw his empty coffee cup in the bus tub and just casually walk away from his "newspaper," then someone needs to speak to his superior. There are people watching who know exactly what this really means.

Now I am forced to sit here and actively ignore the thing. He did do an excellent job of not acknowledging my presence in any way, knowing as he probably does that the people who "work here" are probably Unfriendly. They ignore me too, except to serve me coffee that I carefully observe the preparation of, accept my money and a little too convincingly wish me a "good one."

But after he so cavalierly tossed away this drop, I cannot access it to see what the message was. It's too hot. Probably every fourth person in here is working for someone, and I can't even say if that was even my Guy. For all I know, that isn't a message at all, but a deadly virus delivery system, and every fourth person in here will soon get up, flee as casually as possible, as the rest of us are left to slowly expire, struck down by a silent killer.

I betray no outward sign of all this, though. I was trained by people who knew their business. Serious people. People who were so good at the basics of Turning and Instruction that they sounded like my own voice. Like they were literally in my head. I cannot thank them enough for the training I received, as it has probably saved my life more times than I can tell.

And this Operation, if I may say so, has been interminable. Seemingly as long as I've been alive. I have seen Operatives come and go. They never seem to stay very long. That is the nature of the game: they get reassigned, they get transferred, and yes, sometimes they are liquidated.

Worst of all, we who reside within the parameters of this game are never allowed to know its aims and ends. It's best not to ask, and just understand that each of us fulfills a vital purpose within it, but still it can occasionally chafe, even on the most seasoned professional.

For instance, I cannot even talk to my own family about this. My sister says that I am crazy, and unfortunately I can do nothing to allay her concerns in this area, since not only must I keep my silence on this, but she would scarcely understand anyway, were I to tell her. How could I? Some of us are watching out, while the rest of you sleep.

The battle goes on, and there is no one to help with this problem in my head. A growing doubt, a crisis of faith, that there may not be anyone watching anymore, or listening. What if my handlers are all dead? Or have turned their backs, as sometimes they must do? How will I know? How can I?

But I have the best cover of all. That's right: just some guy in a coffee shop. Pay no mind. It's just like I'm living my life. That is why I keep my silence, over here in this chair, staring but not so anyone would notice, at the headline on the page, UNEMPLOYMENT FIGURES SKYROCKET, and try not to look suspicious as the server comes over and asks how "everything's going over here."

Home of the Classy Boozehound

2010-02-18T10:35:00.001-08:00

It's sad that after all these years, you can hardly see the mural of Stars of Yesteryear at the Sandy Hut anymore. It's too dark in there, a Golden Tee machine covers most of the last panel, and while I approve of the archival thinking that caused them to put a sheet of plexiglas over the
damn thing, it's kinda too little too late, and now the reflection it causes makes it almost impossible to take a picture of it.

When I first encountered the Sandy Hut, it was dark in there like it is now. It was entirely the purview of old men and hookers. As the years went by, more and more people realized that you could get a brain-damagingly strong drink there for pennies, and they were none too diligent in their carding. So lots of young 'uns like me started patronizing the joint. The lights came up a lot higher, almost to industrial cafeteria strength.
This revealed exactly how nasty the place was. A fine sheen of brown gravy covered everything: years of neglect and airborne nicotine had made it so. At some point, a dancefloor that could house perhaps two and a half dancing patrons had been installed and forgotten. There was a shuffleboard table.

But of most interest to me was the mural. The way Sinatra is depicted says that it dates back to the early '50's, and the only sort of signature was the enigmatic tag line, "Color by Vera". Its conceit was that of The Bar in Showbiz Heaven, where all the great ones got sauced.
And I used to annoy my friends by asking them how many of these highly recognizable faces they could put names to.

The first panel actually starts out with an indistinct bit of anonymous customer and a waiter with his back to you, signalling an order. Then comes Danny Kaye, Adolphe Menjou ("The Best Dressed Man In Hollywood". His grandson lives in Portland, and we worked together for a while), Harold Lloyd, Bette Davis, Dame Edith Sitwell, Arturo Toscanini, Frank Sinatra sitting with Marilyn Monroe, someone that is either Clark Gable or John Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson and Marcel Marceau as 'Pip'.

The middle panel is given over to comedic stars o' yesteryear. W.C. Fields has an enormous bottle, while Buster Keaton has a tiny, tiny shot glass.

Charlie Chaplin has his back to you. Groucho and Harpo Marx are there, but no Chico. (Much less any Gummo or Zeppo.)

Laurel and Hardy are present, but does that rightfully cancel out any sort of Abbott and Costello presence? "Who's On First?" (like it or not) pretty much provided the template for most modern American comedy.

Exactly why Harold Lloyd isn't in this panel is anybody's guess. Or for that matter, George Burns, Fred Allen, Jack Benny...

(Or Bob Hope! Or Bing Crosby! Anyway...)

The final panel has Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong crossing clarinet and cornet over the action below, which happens to be an unlikely table at which Jimmy Durante and George Bernard Shaw might mingle, with Peter Lorre looking ominously on. Eleanor Roosevelt and Albert Einstein are also present, but so is Veronica Lake. Someone that is either supposed to be Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo is ignoring all of them.

Behind that stupid video golf machine is Pablo Picasso (that one stumped me for years, and then someone pointed out that both of his eyes were on one side of his face) and Kate Smith. It's easy to forget how much of a star she was, once upon a time.

I had the idea over the years that maybe someone should do the same thing on the wall opposite, but with stars of today. But who would that be? A bunch of people who you wish you saw less of anyway? People whose work you might appreciate, but frankly aren't especially distinctive looking?

Especially when in charicature, Tyra Banks would look like Beyonce who would strongly resemble Vivica A. Fox. You would recognize Obama, or Schwarzenegger, but do you want to look at them while drunk? I like Catherine Keener and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (for instance), but would they make any sense as cartoons?

And besides, to be really true to the idea, you would need to include statesmen and philosophers. Famous artists. (And, I suppose, any famous mimes you could think of.)

Funny too that the Sandy Hut ("Home of the Fat Man Sandwich," it said for decades on its sign, while having discarded it from the menu long ago) was probably never a classy joint, but the conventions of the day caused it to somehow need to present at least the cultural signifiers of classiness, because drinking alcohol is always to be presented as fun.

In short, it didn't promise you an evening with Garbo, just the idea that any evening spent drinking was going to be a romantic adventure. Even on a flatiron block at NE 15th and Sandy Blvd. in Portland, Or.

Smarter Than Einstein

2010-02-10T16:17:00.000-08:00

Bee has already written about Yahoo Answers, of course. It is every bit as awful as has been previously pointed out, and is served even better by the retarded behavior of those who administrate it.
The administrators seem to enjoy the endless parade of bigots and waterheads who comprise much of the traffic on their site. And if you have the temerity to tell people exactly what you think of their little question, your 'content' will be removed due to "insulting and demeaning language" or even your failure to "adhere to the question/answer format".

So let's review. Using insulting and demeaning (to say nothing of a-realistic and generally incoherent) language in your original question (which -nine times out of ten- isn't a question at all but some silly strawman argument like "Why do all women think that men R cashpockets and think they can laugh at me all the time?") : just dandy. But using any manner of pejorative to respond to said strawman argument -or worse yet, failing to "answer" the "question"- is enough to get the form emails a-comin'.
Above all else, I just feel dirty after using this section to vent my many frustrations. It went from Guilty Pleasure to Something I Don't Even Want Near Me in the course of about a week.

Naturally, when you get tired of the 'Gender and Women's Studies' section, it's a good idea to head right over to 'Religion and Spirituality'. I found a question ("Is atheism a religion?") that suited me as being one where you could answer very easily, call a fool a fool, and leave.

Then some guy named 'Jake' with a picture that showed him to be...Hm. How do I put this? He is attempting to look soulful, searching. But that doesn't change the fact that he's one of those guys who will say some half-clever joke and then stand there waiting for your mind to explode at all the profundity. He thinks this is his Big Scene In The Movie. And he answered the question with a much, much larger question.
Which I then answered.

He basically opened with Pascal's Wager: "... but if you don't believe in God and are wrong, you'll be punished eternally in hell..."
Well, according to all I've read, God is way less concerned with my lack of belief than the many, many other things I've done, so I'd be screwed if there were actually such a thing.

"You're only saying you're an atheist to rebel against authority. " Oh, okay!

"Why are you mad at God? God is love so something emotional is wrong with an atheist."
God spends a lot of its time acting in ways that are entirely un-loving, I'd say, based on what religious people have to say about it.
And why would I be mad about something that doesn't exist?

"Deep down you really believe in God." Do I? Prove it!

"You can't prove God doesn't exist. If he doesn't why are you trying so hard to disprove him. We all know what this means."
I have all the proof I need to form my own opinion about it. You can believe whatever you want, friend. I'm not trying to disprove anything because I Don't Care.
And that last sentence reminds me of how lucky I am to not spend my Sundays stuck in a building with other people like you.

"Without God there is no morality." How d'ya figure? It seems like *with* God there is only tribal taboo. Morality is the good that you do when no one's looking. And God's Always Looking, right?

"There is also no reason for living because that would mean there is no afterlife, which means there is no meaning to live and no point for you to ever be born if you will cease to exist forever when your life is over."
Actually, that sounds great. The fact that I am living right now is exactly everything that it should be, and some weird belief on my part that I should go on forever and ever would only mean that I'm some weird narcissist who thinks I'm (sob) just too special to dieee!
Which I'm not, and neither are you.

"If God didn't create humanity in his image, why isn't the world full of only wild beasts?" If sheer proportionality is the basis here, then God is a beetle.

"Christianity is big in the world and throughout history, and is the foundation of our nation, do you think billions of people throughout history are crazy? I'm sure you have a good answer for this."
I've got a Great answer for that: have you looked at history? Most people are crazy. And stupid! Just saying, 'Wull ev'rybody else wuz doin' it...' is bad reasoning and you know it. It is not the foundation of the United States, either. The Magna Carta is more like it.

"Jesus was either a liar, a crazy person, or the son of God." In this, he is exactly like lots and lots of people littering the Near East in those days. Or anywhere you look, today.

"He spoke against liars, and his behavior wasn't crazy because scholars and teachers marveled at his words of wisdom, there were eye witnesses that Jesus worked miracles and rose from the dead like he said he would, so the only remaining possibility is that he was the son of God."
Hey, I speak against liars, too! And you believe scholars and teachers from a couple thousand years ago, but got no time for that darn science now, I bet. Especially scholars and teachers whose words have undergone so many revisions and translations during the millenia that -unless you read Aramaic- you'll never know what they said.

"I know from personal experience that God exists." If a person said that because they were on LSD, people would either just laugh at them or lock them up for being crazy. What does it say about you that you're probably stone cold sober as you say that?

"You can't see air, but you believe in it. You can't see love, but you believe in it. You call yourself an atheist but you have 'faith' that God doesn't exist."
And I've never eaten dog poop, yet know with a great certainty that I don't want to. There goes that argument for what I hope is the last time.
And I don't have "faith" on the whole God thing; that's Your word. No, I just don't see the hand of a creator at work here. Just to pre-empt the follow-up: the universe looks ordered and planned to you because you lack another universe to compare it to.

"You say you don't believe that God exists, but the word 'God' is meaningless if there is no such thing, so you are admitting that God exists even as you deny his existence in detail. How can you describe in detail someone you don't believe exists?"
You should really stop trying to put words in my mouth, because you're not a good enough observer to do it in any sort of realistic way. Then you wander over into semantics. Yes yes...You cannot define yourself entirely in opposition to a thing without at least somewhat conceding that the thing you oppose exists. This is why I don't call myself an Atheist: even they are more doctrinaire on this subject than I will ever be.

" Why do atheists participate in religious things like marriage, funerals, Christmas etc? Isn't that being religious?"
No, it's being related to people. It's living in America. It's being nice to people that you like. And I do know atheists who won't exchange gifts around Xmas-time. I think they're silly. Who doesn't like presents?

"Einstein believed in God. Do you think you're smarter than Einstein? " Einstein was also wrong about quantum physics. BAM!

"How does humans evolving from monkeys make more sense than someone actually creating us? And how does the world just randomly exploding into something make more sense than someone actually creating it? I know this will make some of you think."
Actually, I've already answered this one above, so I'll use an answer that You would use: Learned Teachers and Scholars of The Past Believe It To Be True, So It Has To Be. See how silly that sounds?

"Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics." How so?

"And evolution is a theory and Creationist have already disproved evolution point by point." They haven't even come close. Unless they have scientific proof of God.

"Charles Darwin at the end of his life regretted even creating the theory of evolution and fellow scientists refused to let him say it was all bad science." Shaddap. He was probably just sad about all the trouble he caused.

"Besides, In atheist mythology how did the universe create itself?" Nuclear fission. Happy?

"There are so many wonderful things in the world that require a master artist, no random thing can create a hand, color, water, concepts of love sight, oxygen and a perfectly balance ecosystem all working in unison by precise calculations (some beyond what humans can understand), how can you say there is no God?"
Because there isn't one, and if there was, he would actually have some serious design flaws to answer for.

"What explanation is given to the questions, 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' and 'Where did it all come from?' As an example: If you say that the universe came from the big bang, well, where did the big bang come from? Surely it didn't come from nothing, right?"
Why couldn't it? And hey; since we got you here: why is there hate?

"Atheists do not pray. They do not observe feasts. fasts and ceremonies. They consider nothing either holy or unholy. Then where is discipline in their life? Where is scope for joy in the life of atheists?"
Actually, atheists do everything. Including prayer at various points in their lives, generally as an experiment to see what all the fuss is about. Where is my...'Scope for joy'? In everything, man! You're the one that seems all closed up and dour, not me.

"What is the source of math and logic?" Lots of people generally hated by the religious authorities of their time. Glad you asked.

"The existence of this remarkably fine-tuned universe aside, how is it that we have these 'languages of reality' to so elegantly describe and interact with it?"
You don't know the first thing about perception, do you? Like I said up there; the universe looks fine-tuned to you because it's the only universe you've ever lived in. Your brain takes undifferentiated stimuli and information and channels it into something it can use. If it didn't, you'd be schizophrenic. And the people who came up with math and science? They lived here too.

"Life looks dreary. Some times I feel like committing suicide. Why should I not? What is the atheist remedy? What is the purpose of life, if there is no other-world?"
What kind of crazy person would only live their lives on the basis of a life beyond? It looks dreary because you're no fun!
And what is the meaning of life? Dunno, but I'm living it right now.

"For atheists, there is no objective meaning and value to human existence. Yet your deepest longing is for your lives to count for something. Humans intuitively know that humans have rights and dignity. What is the atheist remedy?"
Took you a long time to come up with a decent question. (Or recycle it, most likely.) Well, the answer is solipsistic because the question is more or less unanswerable: the meaning and value are inherent within themselves. Except when they are not. The rights and dignity doubly so.
I would say again that the history of religion is mostly a long, depressing tale of people being denied their rights and dignity by some bastard who thinks he talks to God. My life will have some worth no matter what, but only in that limited way that all people do. I'm okay with that. Are you?

"Are you prepared to accept the idea that no one is really morally responsible for their bad behavior and, conversely, that virtuous behavior is not commendable?"
Not in the least. Good thing I never said that.

"In what way will you seek to convince me that I am really not a conscious and self-aware being; that"

And that's where it finally cut off. I notice that Jake's original religio-trivia challenge has since been deleted. It was probably Jake who did it, because unlike pretty much every other place on the Internet where I engage in debate, this one actually has the highest proportion of people that fold completely when they are disagreed with at all. They themselves lack the courage of what even somewhat passes for their convictions.
You also can't post multiple responses in single threads, so discussion is limited by that too. It encourages simplistic answers to what could be interesting questions, had they not been posted by dumb shits.

I really mean it: Yahoo Answers, along with providing a welcoming home to the dumbest fucking people this side of RedState, it is also a place where people pretty much never bother to defend their points, outside of (generally effectively) whining to get you "blocked".
If you say something to them at all, especially in a tone that is somewhat belligerent, they will totally fold. It's like they've never had a conversation, or that other thing about how the Internet makes playground bullies out of people who -if they were standing right in front of you- would be perfectly nice otherwise.

Hey, what can I do? I'm not God.

Adult Babies, Virgin Killers

2010-02-04T16:55:00.001-08:00

LARS LARSON IS A CHEAP LITTLE PUNK.

(Sorry. The experiment continues.)

Also, here is the Ziggy Circus that most recently caught my eye.
Yet again, Ziggy is mistaken for someone's father, and Jeffy's idiotic anger takes on ominous new dimensions.

And...Oh dear...

Well, this is an album cover image I've heard about for years, but have never actually seen. I have the album myself, but the photo on the jacket is a pretty innocuous one of a buncha German longhairs lunging at you, faux-intimidating-ly.

The Scorpions have a long history of banned album covers. Lovedrive features a man in the back of a limo with a shirtless woman. He is attempting to get a goodly amount of bubble gum off of her breasts. It was replaced by a big, blue scorpion on the U.S. release.

Love At First Sting had a lovely black and white image of a guy and a girl on a motorcycle. He has decided that this might be a good time to give her that scorpion tattoo on her thigh that she always wanted. She is smiling. In the U.S. release, they/we briefly panicked and replaced it with another black and white image of a buncha German longhairs walking faux-intimidating-ly at you while wearing leather. Then everybody remembered that there was absolutely nothing offensive about the original cover, and put it back like it was.

Animal Magnetism's cover features a woman and a German shepherd kneeling obediently in front of a tight jeans-wearing man who is enjoying a Carlsberg beer. In the U.S. release, it was exactly the same.

So that one up there? I found this picture of what certainly appears to be someone a great deal younger than 18 in an article about it not being viewable on Wikipedia, "despite the lack of obvious vulgarity."
Oh, I'd say that it's vulgar. Even "While the girl is clearly naked, her genitals have been subtly covered by the imposed image of cracked glass centring exactly between the legs."

(Dig the use of 'subtly'. Also, just so we can be certain of pure journalistic intent and no accusations of merely appealing to prurient interests can be made, the image itself on this page is fucking huge.)

And lastly, "The album’s original cover design has never been banned, and is still available to this day." Well, I've owned the album on both cassette and LP, and both had the entirely tamer cover. So despite being banned, apparently Mercury decided to police itself a bit -voluntarily- this side of the pond.

Virgin Killer is actually a pretty good album. It suffers from lyrics that are written in English by non-speakers of that language, but they have grown up with American and British rock n' roll and have lived pretty much all of their lives with a U.S. military presence in their country.

So that's why it's not hard to see where they got their bizarro-world ideas about what your average rock n' roll customer would view as An Ideal Life: "And you like the rock and roll-a/ a better life/ with whiskey-cola!"

It also features the talents of Uli Jon Roth, the "German Jimi Hendrix," or at least that's what he called himself. This leads to hilariously-overplayed songs like "Hell Cat," where embarrassing attempts at amazing guitar pyrotechnics sit alongside weird attempts at street-wise raps.

But best of all, for all who know, is The Message Song. Now again, I know that I'd embarrass myself if I tried to write an album in German. Lucky for me, most of the world's rock and roll is sung in my native language.
So up the ante a lot when you note that if you're going to release a rock n' roll album in the Seventies, you're going to need to do a Message Song. The Message Song is supposed to do many things: it should identify the problems that you -The Youth, that is- face. There should be a note of hope; a suggestion perhaps about what The Youth should do. There needs to be some mockery of Some Who Say. The song should be anthemic; it's okay if it's melodramatic.

"Crying Days" is all of these things, minus any sort of specificity as to what it is we are discussing here ("A question mark up in the skyyy!!!" notwithstanding. That would be a problem, though. I imagine it being purple and enormous, hanging over Stuttgart, say.)

And the condemnation of Those Who Say is kind of off, too: "Some people say we'll do it better/ some people say everything's goood!" Well, I'm gonna have to stop you right there. Nobody ever says that everything's good. Well, except hippies, but they don't really mean it.

Oh, I could go on. But anyway, now we have juxtaposed Lars' name with both an Adult Baby and a piece of what could easily be described as child pornography. Excelsior!

Fred and his Family

2010-02-02T10:58:00.000-08:00

Here's a bunch of wonderful shots of the counter-protests to the Westboro Baptist Church, courtesy of Laughing Squid. Apparently they were there to protest Twitter, which further confirms my idea that maybe they really are just a performance art troupe, because having a problem with Twitter (outside of its idiocy) is like having a problem with the ocean.

WBC Tries to Protest at Twitter from Ed Hunsinger on Vimeo.

In my own take, back in 2005 on these people, I suggested that it might be pleasing to stand outside the door of their church in Kansas, holding a sign that reads, "You Are Not Christians." And it would, but I think a sign that reads, "I HAVE A SIGN" is much better. It fights absurdity with absurdity.
And absurd they are! The Westboro Baptist Church, along with all of the other things they are, are a fine example of that subset of American society that will never be pleased. Even if, for some reason, we as a nation decided to erect burning pyres for all known homosexuals in the public square of each n' every burg n' hamlet in this great nation of ours, it would still be too late, according to these people, since God has already made up his mind on the subject.

In other words, they're not looking for any converts. So what are they doing?

Dan Savage is talking now about the commercial that will not be aired regarding a gay dating website, and the commercial that will be about how abortion kills football, or something. His thoughts, and my own nasty thoughts on the subject are over on the Merc blog. I didn't say very much, just because I am so tired of this shit.

Tired of how Being A Bigot is bucking for "protected class" status. And how corporate America, as always, is glad to give it to them. Tired of how whenever corporate America isn't screaming about the evil of regulation and the need for unfettered competition, it is whining for regulation to save them from what tends to come from unfettered competition (endless mergers and prices dropping through the floor).
Tired of the worst and least credible among us being put up as paragons of truth. Tired of football, too, but that's been there a long time.

Waaahhh!!!

2010-01-28T11:13:00.000-08:00

"Keep fuckin' that chicken!"- Ernie Anastos, anchor for Fox channel Five WNYW, New York: my vote for the best quote of 2009

So the AV Club has this little thing up about the lineup at Coachella this year, and we're all talking about it. Fella walks into the discussion and says:

Every band you like sucks, because I like a band even more obscure--and which I will abandon as soon as a wider audience discovers it. I can do this because I am anonymous on the internet, and nobody can see what a weak, pathetice, poorly endowed little twat of a man I am in real life.

Thank you. You may now resume acting like anybody gives a shit about what you say.

and I say:

"You also will get one of those, each n' every post. And the person who wrote it is a hundred per cent certain that he's the first one who thought of it."

and this makes him mad, so he says:

Unlike the followup post from the person who thinks he's terribly witty and original in how he points it out.
Yet he's still doing so anonymously on the internet, so nobody really gives a shit what he has to say.

so I say:

"And no one would give a shit if I posted under my actual name, either. So...Other than 'waaahhh!' what's your fucking point? I do this to have fun. What's your excuse?"

In my experience, after this, the whole thing crawls up its own ass, and will go on forever if you let it. This is one of the ways that we have of ruining this thing we got here called Discourse on the 'net.

Curiously, Cracked Magazine -after years of only existing as Mad Magazine's even less interesting stepchild- has a genuinely funny website. I think maybe that's all they are anymore, unlike Mad, which continues its reign of terror against Those Hollywood Phonies and The Kids Today in print. They've been on a roll lately with lists of the ways we all terrorize each other in increasingly pointless ways while discussing -say- how we feel about 'Avatar'.

There's a fine list here of popular internet argument techniques. Curiously, they have a nice way of describing what Janelle Jeffries was doing in her epic December rant ("The Hotel California Guest"). "She keeps checking out...But she never leaves..."

And I'm sure you know all these folks, most obnoxious internet commenters. "The Great Defender" being my fave. Although I sometimes adopt a version of that pose; that of The Great Compromiser: "no, don't you see? You're all assholes..."

There is something creepily straightforward about this piece of "humor" here: a list of personality disorders caused by the internet. The important observation there being, "The guy on the message board who just called you a shitclown for owning a different video game console than him probably would have been perfectly polite had you met in real life."
I've thought that too. Now, if only I felt any sort of need to put that into practice...

(No, I do. It's just that I hold that internet bandinage to be a different form of communication. Hm. I shall have to craft some sort of theory to back up why that's not just basic anonymity psychosis talking.)

Curiously, they ultimately think the law needs to get involved in ways to stop trolls from killing the internet. It includes the observation, "...for a normal person, the memory of getting called a fucktard in public even one time is striking enough to make them avoid the comments forever, even if it was accompanied by 10 non-fucktard comments."

Well, again I wonder; would you actually care if a crazy stranger you don't actually know or value the opinion of called you a fucktard on the street? If so, why?

Except I still get as mad as anyone else when trolls troll. The announcement of Howard Zinn's death on the AV Club brought out what few conservatives hang out there. Their points were mostly based on false dichotomies that they then went and built larger spurious arguments on top of.

So I sez:

"The level of anger that comes out whenever someone talks about Zinn or other writers like him comes as no surprise, but it's still disappointing.

Somehow we went from a society that understands that it needs to ask questions in order to preserve what's good and to remedy what's bad all the way over to a society where to ask the questions at all puts you somehow in treasonous country. If you want to point out here that Zinn takes a simplistic view himself, I'd be with you, except to point out that even there, at least it doesn't encourage bullshit behavior.

This is a country where pieces of shit like Jack Welch are listened to, and thought to be wise. Welch isn't being called names by me because he's rich, but that he -like soooo many- forgets that no one gets rich without legions of much lesser-paid people working under them. He acts like there'd be such thing as Management without Labor, and that's just stupid.

Hey; this is the same country that gets all mad when, once in a great long while, someone says that religion ain't all that great, either."

But that's what I always say.

The Ziggy Circus

2010-01-27T13:04:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned this before. Since 'Ziggy' and 'The Family Circus' appear right next to each other on the comics page in my particular paper, it has become the habit of me and many others in this town to see what you get when you give them each others' punchlines.

(I wish that I had the basic computer skills to just switch the punchlines over myself, but at this time, I just don't.)

Sometimes the juxtaposition is just surreal, like this one. The real star here is the waiter, who in his long-term bitterness at his neglectful childhood, has decided that Ziggy is his father, which as we all know, can't be possible.
Furthermore, under the parameters of this game, everyone in Ziggy's universe ends up getting called "Mommy," or "Gramma," or whatever.

And then sometimes the joke only works in one direction, in this case not least because of what a shitty, tired joke the 'Ziggy' panel has. But look how sad Zig looks as he informs his parrot named Jeffy of the death of Twitter.

But then I saw that Tom Wilson, author of 'Ziggy', had also written a book. "Oh good..." I thought.

Zig Zagging is exactly what you never, ever asked for: the guy who writes 'Ziggy' gives you some advice on life. It's about as good as it sounds, I bet, but even more interesting are the reviews...

"Ziggy cartoonist Tom Wilson didn't see it coming: after losing his beloved young wife to breast cancer, it's up to him to raise two children alone and keep the laughs coming in his cartoons worldwide—even as his own personal orbit is falling apart."
That is the Amazon review, written by someone who works at Amazon. Aside from the weird feeling it gave me when they pointed out how extra sad it is that someone's young wife died, that was pretty straightforward.

"Wilson's leg was crushed in a car accident, his wife died at age 44 of breast cancer, leaving Wilson with their two sons, and his father—both mentor and hero to Wilson—also had a serious illness. Immobilized by depression, Wilson's faith failed him, and he concluded that the mercy of God [was] an apparent fiction...With ideas like imagining Moses as the first Superman, Wilson delights with fresh, well-considered insights..."
That's the Publisher's Weekly review. There is what might very well be some concealed laughter going on around the office, based on some of those passages.

"Tom Wilson is a man who gets it.

"But there is a difference here: Tom IS love. That fact didn't come easily for him, and if anything he fought and resisted in even though he was a part of him the whole time and literally staring him in the face. But he had to go through this amazing journey to learn that. But in the end the result is a ménage a trois between Tom, Ziggy and God; an interesting relationship to say the least."
Now that is the work of one Ric Morgan, who is kind enough to provide us with some bibliographical information about himself:

Ric Morgan is the author of a power-packed, life-changing little book called The Keys: The Textbook to a Successful Life, nominated for a 2009 Pulitzer Prize and two Nautilus Book Awards...http://www.amazon.com/Keys-Textbook-Successful-Life/dp/1438202636/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207241325&sr=8-1

(And I imagine that he meant 'God' is love, not 'Tom', but who knows? Furthermore, I know I'm not the only one around here who got a terrible mental image regarding 'a menage a trois between Tom, Ziggy and God'.)

So really, it's just logrolling, his being here. Matter o' fact, let's look at some reviews of Ric's work...Well, aside from 'Sunsphere Lover' of Knoxville, the only other person to review Ric's work is one Elfreda R. Pretorius.

(Sigh) And who's that? Well, Elfreda Pretorius is the best selling author of Stop Struggling, Start Living, of course! Who likes it? "Tony Davies, Business Executive," that's who!

Now, for all I know, this is a totally worthwhile body of work being put forth here by these nice people who I do not know at all, but all I see is the logrolling, in which they all review each others' books, glowingly. If you Google 'Elfreda Pretorius', you'll find very little about her that wasn't written by Elfreda Pretorius. It's possible that the self-help scam is finally drying up, leaving a bunch of vanity press authors alone with each other, in a big, echoey room.

Speaking of a big, echoey room:

That poorly miked video there was Elfreda's co-author Mike O'Hare, "&nbspand I am the owner," he wants you to know.

He also wants you to know that "I want to provide you with the very best information about Internet markeing."

I admire his forthrightness. Here is a man who is one hundred per cent certain of what his spiritual path is. But what do I know? I'm a man who doesn't get it.

Lessons to be Learned from VH1's "High School Reunion"

2010-01-20T22:27:00.000-08:00

1. If someone walks up to you after twenty years and says, "I love you from the bottom of my heart, and I always have," the proper response is; Oh no you do not. Because if it were actually true, they would have pointed this out to you nineteen and one-half years ago at the latest.
As opposed to it just meaning; I am insane, and on television.

2. The bitchy women of twenty years ago remain themselves, but in the meanwhile, they have also learned the language of victim culture, so if you tell them what bitches they are, they will respond with endless amounts of counselling speak about how you don't even know them, and they would never judge You...And basically how you still don't have any right to speak either to them or about them. They will even try to appeal to your adult sense of fair play that you've no doubt acquired by saying, "You're judging us, just like we used to judge you!"
So what you need to do is say, "Ironic, isn't it? Ya' leathery fuckin' cunts!" and laugh in their orange-skinned faces.

3. The asshole of the class, i.e. "The Troublemaker" will almost never have taken that next step into being genuinely interesting or entertaining. He will, however, have developed some sort of ideological thing where on the few occasions that anyone challenges him, he'll be all like, "That's just your opinion! If you don't like me, that's not my fault. Move on. MOVE ON!"
In short, he will have evolved into a Libertarian. This means that he is now passionate about individual rights, as long as the rights under discussion are his own. What you need to do is remind him that shit like this is why he will never get laid. That oughta do it.

4. The one who was picked-upon, for whatever reason, will have never gotten over it. Actually, this is not true of life necessarily, but absolutely true of "Reality". When they confront their tormentors, they will do this in such a way as to make you care a great deal less about whatever relative amount of pain they experienced in adolescence.
The rest of the house will help out, though, by browbeating the asshole bully until he apologizes in some really unconvincing way.

5. The Late Bloomer, just like you always thought, while now some simulacrum of Hot, is actually kind of an idiot. This will go unremarked.

6. People who are Not White are basically there as decoration, just like they were in the Eighties.

7. The Nerd is not necessarily more mature, or even smarter than anyone else. Indeed sometimes their deeply-harbored resentments are the worst of all, and since they're no longer teenagers, this is no longer cute.

8. The Big Secret will come as no kind of surprise to anyone who has been paying attention.

9. Even knowing what you know, it will be difficult to believe that these people graduated from high school.

10. Jacuzzis are gross.

(Note: photos do not necessarily correspond to actual identity. As always.)

A Gathering of Eagles

2010-01-20T15:38:00.000-08:00

Oh dear...

Along with giving Gallagher something to do other than harangue interviewers, we seem to be including Ingrid Michaelson, who is one of those terrible results of major labels noting a growing market for Twee. And what is Aimee Mann doing there?

Well, and it's pretty clear that Lewis Black kinda got cornered on that one, and has a distinct look of 'who the fuck are you, and where's my money?' And then...Well, Daniel Baldwin. Let's just leave his name there, and think of what most quickly springs to mind.

Who would be bringing this cavalcade of...Stars-that-include-that-guy-in-the-hat to you?
This guy! Craig Marquado, who you may recall has done this before, is back as the premier entertainment...Guy who is around here in the local area!

There's not a lot to be found simply by Googling this one. Just something from Craig's magazine, and more opportunities to watch that fantastic commercial.

There's some pretty awful video there...I'm not bothering linking to it, actually. (If you go look for it, make sure to include the phrase "Jay Horton" in your search.) So really, there's very little to be learned from the Internet in this case, and what little you will learn seems to be in-house coverage.

There's still no real clear picture of what exactly Craig Marquardo does. As I've said before, the niche his magazine fills is also filled by every other monthly, weekly and daily around here. I don't believe that we were crying out for a local awards show either, but here we are. There's something compulsory-feeling about this fun I'm being asked to have here.

There is also a YouTube channel (put together by someone named 'Brett's Aunt') that features longer versions of the clips you see in the initial commercial, wherein the potential presenters attempt to come up with reasons why they should be there.
They reside somewhere on the border of funny, without actually crossing over. Nonetheless, you should at least go watch the Daniel Baldwin one.

(Little) Lars Larson wants Cheap airfare and Is dating A Punk tonight

2010-01-15T11:02:00.000-08:00

I have an ongoing experiment. A while ago, in these very pages, I made use of the phrase "Lars Larson is a cheap little punk." Because he is.
For a minute or two, that meant that if one happened to Google that phrase, my use of it was the only entry there. Then I went on Blogtown PDX and mentioned how proud I was of this. So then there were two entries.

Now there's five. Four of them are me, and then there's a page put together by some faceless spam engine somewhere.
Lars Larson is a cheap little punk is a page of shopping options for those who dislike Lars Larson, I guess you could say. Or more accurately, for those who want cheap airfare while dating Punks, and have no idea how to use a search engine. I can only wonder where this will go next.

And as to the site itself, it really seems to have nobody home. Follow it all the way to the bottom, and what you'll get is a place that dispenses free sub-domains. Fascinating stuff, sort of.
It also kind of makes me wonder if other things I've written are -completely to my surprise- being marshalled to the cause of helping people find cheap airline tickets. Is this a security issue for me and mine, or is it just what happens when you Google-bomb a phrase, in the immediate vicinity of the word "Google"?

Oddly enough, the one person I know who could answer this question is someone I haven't talked to in a couple of years.
Also, I like to go that one step further and juxtapose Lars' name with an embarrassing picture.

There.

Aggressively Wrong-Headed

2010-01-13T12:49:00.000-08:00

"Everyone's such a tryhard in this business. God help 'em, they just won't rest until they've outdone themselves in bringin' you some quality entertainment." -something I said this morning on the 'AV Club'.

So true. Let us pour out a 40 for Jay Reatard, who was a pretty damn talented musician, who happened to give himself a deeply stupid name. Of all the people in the neo-Garage scene, he truly was a person who stood out, musically. Also, he decided to call himself 'Jay Reatard'.

This led to a scene in which someone among those who called him a friend actually had to deliver the line, "It is with great sadness that we report the passing of our good friend Jay Reatard."

Hardly the dumbest thing I've seen in my life, though. As you can tell, I've been a little obsessed lately with the different varieties of stupidity.
Like that last post? I wanted to go somewhere completely different with that. I was going to remind congressional majorities exactly how one goes about exercising power. More on that later.

Letters To Phillipa (1937), by Dorothea Brande, is one of the books I found in a bag on the sidewalk. They were all books that had recently been withdrawn from the library at Marylhurst, a local Catholic college.
In it, an older conservative woman writes to her Goddaughter about those things to avoid in life, and that which to seek out. It is telling that most of the really great literature of the day is sternly thrown onto the Avoid pile. There is this ongoing flintiness and overwhelming sense of someone being Put In Their Place that makes the book a hilarious read.

But although I am fond of making fun of it in my finest Awful Old Lady voice: "It is a wicked book, and you must not read it. You must do as I say," actually it differs from similar screeds of the present day in that Brande actually makes an intellectual case for her dislikes. I may not agree with her, but she felt the need to make her case well, in case someone was paying attention.
In short, learning was not shunned as being inherently evil, even among those whose husbands proudly described themselves as "fascist". Now, you need to go a long ways to find someone who will try to make their case at all.

Another example of gloriously well-researched and relatively reasonably stated lunacy resides in the works of John Lilly, M.D. I read The Center of the Cyclone (1972) a long time ago, when I was reading everything I could get my hands on about psychedelics. In the years that followed, I apparently also bought Programming and Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer and Simulations of God, and forgot about them.
Go long enough in this world, and you will find a lot more people than you expected that literally believe in angels. Even odder than that though: there's a pretty large subset of them that will tell you with absolute certainty what colors and fragrances are pleasing to angels, and what their houses look like.

Now Lilly didn't do that. But he made a mistake I've seen lots of people make: your experience will be exactly like mine. This is a huge problem with those who write about spiritual and/or psychedelic experiences (Carlos Castaneda is notorious for it), because your trip ain't like mine, and the wise will already know that.
So where Castaneda will do the whole "now after you take the jimson weed, you will be flying. You will see a house. When you go inside, you will see a green woman..." John Lilly was more interested in formulating a large scientific framework with which to understand the oft-confusing and contradictory nature of what he was exploring.

And his central premise -that the human brain is basically like a computer, in that it all depends on what input it receives- is pretty sound. Almost immediately afterward, he falls off. Using words like "adultly", and phrases like "goodness of fit with the real universe", he goes further into the idea's natural next step: so if "mind" is computer, then one may install new programs/realities. And while this is -within limits- true, once it turns into a belief system, you have problems.
Before long, it turns into a mishmash of what is clearly just what he got out of it. What things became clear to him due to the filters through which he viewed them. Like any good scientist, he tried to make a workable formula out of it. Like most people, he set aside a place within his cosmology for a god.

What it ended up looking like (in excerpt) was this:
C*, [+]*, [-]*, L*, Z*, the five energies, the five sources.

and:
Plus star, [+]*, pure positive energy seeking, always seeking, the positive, the orgiastic, the orgasm, the fucking of the universe fucking itself, always doing the fucking.

(Have I, at times, tried to do my own version of Unified Field Theory? Of course I have. And Lilly is still to be admired for his work with dolphins.)

Check this out:

The great thing about Robert Gibbs in this clip is that out of all the things he could have said (all the way from "unfortunate" to "evil"), he picked "stupid," which is exactly the right word. Robertson says shit like this all the time (about 9/11, about Hurricane Katrina), and is only ever briefly made to feel like shit about it.
No doubt that it will be Gibbs who is made to apologize. And he will, since he is a press secretary, and not some rich bastard who lies to stupid people for a living*.

The point I didn't make last time was that there are people still alive now who remember how to push through highly unpopular legislation, from the perspective of the party in power.

One: go ahead and let a shitty version of your bill pass. I think something along these lines is already happening with the health care bill. Once you've got the legislative framework in place, and it gets a budget, and staffers, you have created something that will never go away, for better and for worse. The flawed product opens to door to the improved product replacing it later.
Case in point? The Civil Rights Act went through several much lesser permutations -that all failed- before finally becoming law in 1964.

Two: act like a majority while you have one. So, all those senators and representatives in 1964 who didn't want to pass the Civil Rights Act? You know; most of them? So what got them to change their vote? Withholding federal subsidies on wheat, cotton, and tobacco until it passed.
I mean, some horse-trading was done, but this was the kind of thing where the gentlemanly art of politics had been largely thrown aside, in favor of the bloody artlessness of ancestral hatred. Strom Thurmond tried to strangle Ralph Yarborough, to prevent him from voting 'yes'.
So yeah, the Dems played dirty. And rightfully so.

Three: be okay without those people you could do without. And when the '64 bill passed, Lyndon Johnson signed it, saying that his party had lost the South, for a generation at least, if not forever. Yep, and at times that has really hurt the Democrats.
I have said that the Democrats need to stop thinking that they're ever going to get the evangelical vote in this country, and far more importantly need to stop degrading themselves in trying to get it? Well, I hold it to be true, and at times it will bring pain, but shit: be reasonable. Not only will you not get them, you don't really want them, so be okay without them.

You know, unless you want to be the Unreasonable Jeebus Party. But that's just it: there already is one, and you, my friend, are not it. Not yet.

*(the author is unclear on whether or not he was being ironic there)

The Bargain

2010-01-05T13:43:00.000-08:00

"We’re not smart as a nation. We don’t learn from the past, and we don’t plan for the future. "

Wow, Bob Herbert. Really? Course, David Brooks made pretty much the same point, same day:

"Personally, I’m not a fan of this movement..." Yeah, I suspect he isn't. The more Teabaggy our public discourse becomes, the even less room there is for what passes for a thoughtful conservative.
But Bob, Dave; maybe you personally didn't do this, but your industry did. "You let them in, and now they're everywhere..."

I know what it is, too: you wanted to seem less elitist. It scared you when they called you that. You wanted to seem like you paid attention to the good common folks, so you might make some money selling them things. Like all journalists, you feel that in order to truly explain something well, you need to dumb it down to embarrassing levels. To reach all people and let no one feel bad, you need to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

So now the Loud and Stupid are everywhere on the march, because you continue to give them coverage. They could have marginalized themselves in peace, but no; you liked the numbers. To ridicule someone's gramma moaning, "I'm skeeered of OH-Bah-ma!" would open you up to criticism, something you apparently can no longer take at all.
But the ridiculous deserve ridicule. And to act like they are to be taken seriously just because they are loud is to steal from us all.

And Mr. Obama himself is the worst offender in this area. He wants to spread the blame around for his failures, and made certain to set out in every way possible to fail. Rather than take a solid majority and use it to govern or something, he felt it necessary to let people who don't think- and only yell- get their two cents in. Then they ruined everything, as stupid people usually do.

It would take a strong person in this particular climate to say it, but someone must: Hey Stupid! Shut the fuck up! The grown-ups 'r talkin'! Now would be exactly that moment when somebody needs to remind them: you're only here because the rest of us take care of you. Be stupid all you want, on your own time, but just because you feel bad about it, don't expect me to feel sorry.
Furthermore, that means the responsibility falls to the rest of us to lead, and not turn back just because Stupid there feels his awful bullshit is being ignored.

Americans, as I often say, are a nation of people terrified of the idea that someone somewhere might think they are better than them. It informs much of their belief system. Queers? Educated n' rich 'cuz they don't hafta git pregnint! Besides, The Bauble says...Giving a shit about the planet we're on? Dey tek yer jerbs! Not bombing the living fuck out of everything and everyone all the time? Why do you hate Our Troops? Ghettoes? Gangs? Poverty? Those colored people are just lazy!

I've lived in the United States my entire life, and I'm pretty sure that I can safely make some generalizations about it. Wanna know about stupid people? Lemme tell ya' about stupid people!

Stupid people beat and scream at their children, sure they're doing the right thing, because that's what their parents did to them. They believe in God, but it doesn't make them happy. It makes them feel somewhat better that here, finally at the end of life, is the possibility of Revenge on all those Smarty Pants who made them feel so small. It doesn't make them nice people: it makes them want to kill their neighbor. The fact that Wrath is one of the Seven Deadly Sins always eludes them; they weren't specifically told the words This Means You. They think they're the only ones who know anything, but people who know too much are dangerous. They cry all day long when they don't get theirs, but feel that no one else is entitled to anything. Torture's funny when it happens to somebody Brown, but if it happened to them or one of their Babies, it would be the biggest fucking tragedy in human history.
And they feel that the only pure form of expression is yelling. At this point, why would they feel any different? People keep pointing cameras at them!

So yeah; it's not like this is a new thing, or an uncommon thing. The stupid are with us always, and always have been. They comprise the majority of most crowds. But now, since being smart is no clear ticket to immediately clearing up the shitty decision making of previous stupid office-holders, it's somehow those int'lecshuls fault.
And it gets reported as if it is news. Hey; stupid people are incoherently angry! Imagine that!

But hey; you're right. The smart people have failed us, too. Not due to a surfeit of intelligence, though...more like that problem Bob mentioned earlier: they never learn. They will keep on trying things the same awful way we always do, fooling ourselves that the chiefs of industry who long ago abandoned American society will somehow come back and save us.
The whole while, there will be much milksoppy talk about listening to the other side's point of view...Let's find out what Shouty there thinks; no, no...Let the man ta-aalk...
As if they'd ever do that for you.

So real quick: two things we should do while there's still a Democratic majority...
Make campaign contributions taxable. Tired of watching you drunks get sloppier.
Penalize U.S. corporations that move offshore. Tariffs, taxes, whatever. Fuck them. They are the problem.
...Oh hell, while we're at it, tax the churches too. They never kept their side of the Bargain anyway...

And it's time the Democrats finally admitted to themselves that they will never, ever get the evangelical vote. Never. So stop degrading yourself trying to get it.

All the way back in a magical time called the Nineteen Eighties (the Reagan Years!), a band called Shriekback did a song called "Hammerheads," and it is oddly prescient:

our time has come
age of the hothead
this is our mission
to be the darlings of god
too late for silence
too late for anything
it's all too much for me
it's roots go down too deep for me

all-punishing fire
an animal frenzy
these hammerhead people
they know what danger is for
you let them in
and now they're everywhere
if it's vegetable or mineral
it's back a little up a little

Shout, push, hammerheads!
bold and resolute
marching, balancing
in too far to go back
Yes, yes, hammerheads!
swimming, kissing
we are big and clever
and we don't know anything

Onward, hammerheads!
bright and dangerous
jumping, running
in the fields and factories
God save hammerheads!
keeping going
we are sleek and special
and we're sure of Something

And just to see if we can Google-bomb this one again:
Lars Larson is a cheap little punk.

Best Internet Meltdown Ever

2010-01-01T13:12:00.000-08:00

"LIL TONY HAS A VAGINA" -sign on telephone pole, Columbia Blvd. (Also my vote for best random-shit-nailed-to-a-telephone-pole of '09.)

Internet arguments got it goin' on. I have 'em all the time. I'm having one right now. The best thing about them is how they're so public; they are happening on the legal equivalent of a street corner with a camera trained on it that is continuously uploading to the entire world.
And this means that when you go crazy there, people do not ignore you, the way they probably would if they were passing you on the street.

The origins of the longest comment thread ever on the Mercury really take us back to October 19th of last year, if you ask me. The original story was how a bunch of teabaggers went down to the offices of The Oregonian, stood there in front of the doors and sort of half-assedly protested that they weren't receiving enough media coverage.

A Mercury staffer was there, interviewed folks and brought us this picture. I said something about how I liked "the look on the face of that weasel-lady" down right. But; "I'm sure she's very nice, though. Realistic, too."
This, of course, brought out every person with half a point to make saying some variety of, wull, I guess you libruls aren't so tolerant as you say you are, huh?

They would later go bother the folks at KGW Pioneer Square, and have their asses handed to them. Turns out that they've received plenty of coverage, and in fact received plenty that day. The fact that they ended up looking stupid on television was The Media's fault. So they remained a group with something to be pointlessly angry about.

Better yet, the next day, the weasel-faced lady herself had something to say about it. Her email read:

Hi, Matt. I attended the rally Friday (Operation: Can You Hear Us Now?), and appear in the top photo of the online article. Would it be possible for you to change the photo to one that does not include me? At least so prominently? Thank you.

To which Matt Davis added:
Is it just me who's noticing the irony, here?

So someone who had been part of a public protest -not just someone who was walking down the street- that had sought more coverage for their movement found that sometimes being identified with something opens one up for unkind things being said.
We all yelled at each other for a while, coming up to a collected one hundred-seven comments between the two posts. I'm pretty sure that's where the record stood until...

On December Eighth, someone named Mary Volm announced that she was running for city council. She had been spokeswoman for the (city) Transportation Dept., and had been part of the (failed) effort to recall Mayor Sam Adams.
Thing was, at first the announcement only came in the form of a Facebook page organized by her fans, and this was the photo they chose to best represent their candidate:

Mmhm. Yup, that's the one. So, again we have kind of an unflattering picture here, and call it ad hominem if you want, but again most of the comments ended up being about the picture.
I would like to know the original context of the photo. I get the feeling it wasn't necessarily meant for public distribution.

But all that to one side, when the comments weren't about the picture, it was about who Mary Volm is or is not.
Her personal Facebook page is loaded down with friends in the Democratic party, both state-wide and federal. Also, lots of media figures. The Facebook page her supporters put together, on the other hand, had lots and lots of people that sort of pass for what you got in the way of any sort of conservative movement in Oregon, one of whom listed the webpage "Being Conservative" as something they were a 'fan' of.

So already there were a few cranks in the pile. After a bit of chatter about who this actually was, someone calling themselves 'Aqua Blue Studio' came in and said, "Mary Volm is an amazing artist and profound intellect with city issues."

To which I responded, "Although ya' gotta admit, o Studio: if she wishes to be taken seriously, that is one rotten photo."

Aaand we're off! Immediately after this, someone named Janelle came in and said, "Mary's photo is perfect. She's the "Cat woman" that's going to save Gotham City (AKA Portland, OR)." This was a double-post.
It was pointed out to Janelle right after this that Catwoman was actually a villain in the Batman mythos.

This was the problem from the beginning: Not only was Mary Volm good as a candidate, she was good in every possible way a person could be good, according to her supporters. This being a person I'd never heard of, I found it odd.
Or, as I put it, "I'm still unclear on whether or not this person I've never heard of is actually running for something. And her supporters are incoherent, to put it politely as possible."

So here, somewhere around comment # 25, Janelle starts to go down the road she never should have gone down. Her age, her astrological sign, her ending GPA (and the college where she earned it) were proffered by her at this point in the discussion, for no clear reason. This was shortly after she referred to herself as a "dumb blonde" (in quotes!) again.

Graham, who I believe is a Mercury staffer, chimed in with, "@ABS & Janelle: If the two of you represent the level of support and intellectual rigor that can be expected from Ms. Volm's supporters... well... I feel sorry for whomever her campaign manager turns out to be. It's tough when the most vocal people on your side come off sounding like insecure defensive wack-jobs."

True enough. But...
@ Graham (blogger profile showing him drinking at the bar) AKA “Graham cracker” and @ two squatting women (AKA oppressive profile name), I’m not sure how you both manage to type on this blog. You both obviously type just to make yourselves feel good and may not be all the way coherent.

(This is not the first time I have inadvertently taught someone a new word I shouldn't have taught them.)

Now, at the same time, other people were battling out leftover issues from the Sam Adams recall. This was still a very fresh issue at the time, with the failed recall then being taken up anew by a passel of rich Republicans with nothing better to do. Somehow, this weird press release that wasn't really a press release with the soft-core porn photo (that was taken down almost immediately after this debate began) had coalesced pretty much everybody who wanted to argue politics and personality in one place.

If you wanted to donate to Mary's campaign, by the way, you needed to go to a biker bar out in Southeast hell called the Queen of Hearts, whose logo appears here:

So I'd say they just had image-control problems, that campaign.

This too: Janelle (by her own words) was no kind of official spokesperson for Mary Volm. But like it or not, she was now the public face of the campaign.

And her tone was familiar. The tendency to over-share, the latching-on to some issue or person then idealizing them, and quickly heading to feelings of persecution. All of this reminds me of the many, many people with mental issues I've been around in my life.
People who've done a few too many hallucinogens, people with PTSD, people with organic brain dysfunction and just folks who got bonked on the head one too many times, I've talked to them all, and she sure as hell sounded like One Of Those.

In response to another poster, she said, "Matthew, I never made any comments to you and you are extremely disrespectful as is all the morons voting for any white, middle-class male idiot. I will not vote for whoever is a white, male, middle-class person who does the same stupid politics over and over again. As long as there are options, I prefer anyone but a white male; I will vote for someone who cares about the marginalized."

And I thought that to be a marvelous piece of random word generation. I reminded her of 1994, the supposed "Year of the Woman," in politics. That year, more women were elected to congress than at any previous time. They were almost all conservative Republicans, too. So just electing women isn't really the point, and...

This was described by Janelle as "a white-middle class male shenanigan. All you white-middle class males can not hide your oppressiveness, women-hating ideology."
I, for my part, was having the worst sort of deja vu. It's like it was the 90's, and I was back in Olympia again.

"@rich bachelor: You know, I'm sorry you can't read very well. Try Hooked on Phonics.
Here's taking some of my energy to tell you who I am: I come from a single-parent family raised by a mother and two other siblings. I have two-African American half-sisters (we have the same white mother, different father's)and my uncle is a homosexual in a longterm relationship. I'm a Libertarian and I'm not voting for whoever you vote for. Voting for members in the city of Portland is nonpartisan, anyways."

So again with the over-share. This would seem odd in light of later statements. To say nothing of irrelevant.

She was losing it at people left and right, most of her comments being nine paragraphs long (and again, they were long paragraphs) or so. Despite how this looks, she wasn't only talking to me.
But the reason I'm talking about this at all is because this thread finally reached eight hundred and one comments (I believe we passed six hundred on the evening of my birthday), which blows away all previous records on the Merc.

At some point this had been made to be more about Janelle than it was about Mary. Not least of all by Janelle. So someone did a simple Google search and found lots of stuff, actually, including this picture.
Who knows if it's her? Doesn't matter, really. This was the picture on her Facebook page (which has since ceased to be), in any case.

She just went merrily on, calling anyone who disagreed with her a misogynist (which was better than what she called them later, to be sure). Not a one of us had raised the issue of gender (except Janelle, of course).

So I threw out there, "So let's lay it out: I don't have a problem with either gender as a whole, actually; only a zealot does. I do have a problem with assholes, though. And I'm not as patient with the clinically insane as I once was, but that's my problem, really," in the context of a much longer comment.

Even before we reached 500 comments, she had gone from calling everybody a woman-hater-bourgeoisie to crying loudly about how her character was being assassinated. She also said that she felt that maybe her safety had been compromised by so much being said about her on the Internet.
But she just kept on going, and people kept on commenting on it. Somewhere in here, she starts throwing the word 'libel' around, and usually pairing it with 'slander', as if they were the same thing. She also has trouble with the difference between 'libel' and 'liable', often in the same sentence.

Sometime in the low 300's, she begins talk of filing a 'deformation suit', and several people come right back with "do it!" There is a fair amount of chat about what actually constitutes libel or defamation.
At this point, people also begin suggesting that maybe it would be in her best interest to stop.

Eventually, the litany of complaints that Janelle throws out include that people are using her entire name -Janelle C. Jeffries- and that anyone who is not there to talk about Mary Volm is "off topic," and should have their comments deleted. It is pointed out to her that the greatest offender in this regard is Janelle herself.
Janelle responds with several more posts of vague legal threats, reposts of other people's comments, etc. etc.

People are joking right back. They keep saying, "why do you hate freedom?", and "why are you bigoted against men?" This eventually leads to the ante being raised.
" There's freedom of speech, not freedom to defame. You obviously don't care about protecting women's privacy. You obviously don't care about women and their safety. I never provided my full name at this place--it was dug out, forced out and is a rape of my privacy. I provide my full name where I freely choose. Have you ever been a victim of Identity Theft? I have. Does it feel good to rape my privacy?"

There we have the first appearance of that deal-breaking word. Plenty of people -including me, including Bee, everyone, eventually- pointing out that when you start throwing the word 'rape' around too casually, you begin treading on seriously sensitive ground.
Of course, it wouldn't be long before she amends this to actual rape. And typing in all caps.

So then it becomes, "I am a survivor of rape," and therefore all who disagree with/dislike her (or just find her schtick hilarious) are not just raping someone's privacy, but also making a rape victim feel bad. Ante: raised!

She says, "It is apparent that you hate me, a woman," and I respond with, "No, we don't hate you, a woman. We dislike and distrust you, an asshole. We also note with a mixture of pity and disgust that you've now gone and undermined the value of the word 'rape'." At this point, I'm really not amused anymore.
Beyond here, she doesn't post another thing without the inclusion of the word 'rape'.

Everything after this is "...blah blah blah libel...gonna sue alla you..." plus lots and lots of unasked-for and immaterial shit from the internet about privacy on said internet for several hundred more comments. For a long while, she descends into ALL CAPS, all the time. Eventually it settles into the same very long post posted over and over.
And as time goes by, every cycle sees the addition of yet further crimes perpetrated against her.

And I said, "See, this is why I haven't talked yet about that bar we all drink at. Because soon she'll be making death threats, and will actually wander into the realm of legally actionable behavior. We may very well have driven a borderline personality right the fuck over said line. I'm not sure how to feel about this."
Why I felt the need to continue this is anybody's guess. I think we were in the middle of my birthday weekend at this point, which is to say that the thread had been going for SEVEN DAYS.

At some point or another, all of us asked Mary Volm what her thoughts on all this was. She never responded.
Janelle's posts eventually include as many as twenty-four paragraphs. Someone points out to her that cutting and pasting an entire article without the author's permission might actually be illegal, so perhaps she should stop doing it:

"Congratulations, zzzzzzz a.k.a. Janelle C. Jeffries, you have just lifted a copyrighted article and reposted it here. Unlike any of the other people here, who under the terms of the very article you just pilfered are NOT liable for anything, YOU may very well have just violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, unless you can show how reposting an entire article, rather than merely excerpting and linking, constitutes 'fair use' in this instance."

(That was by Bob R., by the way, who then went into a very long piece of slash fiction about Yogi Bear and Boo Boo, for some reason.)

"This is my protest for the raping of my privacy my last name and web link posted which included an obituary of my Grand Aunt listing all my family members: Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism.
Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Portland Mercury is Yellow Journalism. Pass it on."

She posts this, then reposts it again two minutes later. Then two minutes after that. And so on again, twenty more times until -I imagine- she fell asleep at the keyboard.
Around 1:30 the next afternoon, she starts up again, with a muuuch longer version of this spam, which she reposts two times, shortly before the 500 comment mark.

I had just pointed out that the whole affair reminded me of the teabag controversy of a couple months before:

"...And after some not-especially-nice discussion of her facial features (which I'm gonna take responsibility for), she quickly decided that she didn't want her face a) in the papers and/or b) linked to the teabaggers.
This led to a very similar discussion ala the one we're sort of having here: i.e. being in public means a de facto agreement to not use any Right To Privacy arguments if things don't go the way you wanted them to.

For instance, the lady in the photo could very easily have hopped on the blog here and said, 'Actually I was just walking down the street. I'm honestly not a teabagger, and I really hope that the photo doesn't give that impression.' Or: 'Hey fuck you Rich Bachelor for calling me 'pig faced' on the internet. Here's hoping you get cancerfireaids, y'shitmonger.'
But she didn't. She acted like it's everybody else's job to do exactly what she wants when things get a little too...Honest? Not sure what the right word there is. Plenty of us noted the paradoxical nature of a protest staged by people who wanted more media exposure who then got it, and found themselves looking like idiots, which they then blamed on the biased nature of the media."

(I had forgotten that I'd called her "weasel faced".)

Janelle threw out a blistering sixteen posts of the updated spam message, each clocking in at eleven (very long) paragraphs -and one broken hyperlink- on December Twelfth alone, saying the last one would be her last.

It wasn't. At 3:50 the next afternoon, she was back with an even longer one. As we rolled toward the 600 mark, I had devolved into a Jerry Lewis impression.
Around Eleven A.M. on the Fourteenth, she also made it clear that she'd never vote for anyone who was for abortion. This became the new first paragraph on the spam screed.

Later, as the 15th rolled on, she spent most of her posts uploading music videos, and saying repeatedly that she'd see us all in court. Somewhere in here, she said that specifically she'd be asking for December 28 as a court date.
And then she contacted an Officer Dunick of the PPB to make an incident report about this "Internet Bullying". (Incident# PP0912150865)

She kept on posting the same thing over and over, suggesting that every two-to-five minutes something just kept hitting 'enter', but often there were just enough minor differences to make it seem that she was consciously doing this.
Eventually, someone came to her defense, it seemed. Several people had, but not for long, and never doing that good of a job. This one was named Concerned Readers Allow Zero Yellow Journalism (or, "Crazy J").

At 800 comments, Steven Humphrey shut it down, finally. He said in passing that they were closing up shop "in hopes you all will have a peaceful holiday season."
Of the 801 comments, 169 were Janelle's. The whole thing took nine days.

And like that, it was over (although there was also a Questionland thread about it, which you may read here). It was almost sad: we'd all had this place to go for that period of time, and just as abruptly, it was gone.

(That took forever, and I know it. Truth be told, I needed to get this one off my chest, and it still wasn't as long as actually reading the entire comment thread, which you could still do if you felt like it.)

Here's Why Nothing Works

2009-12-31T11:28:00.000-08:00

You know what your life needs? A soundtrack. Something in the neighborhood of nine seconds long or so that just plays over and over again until you ask it to stop. In this vein, may I suggest...The 'Oh Brother' Punchline theme.
(That was entirely the work of The In Crowd, over at I'm Learning To Share!, who noted the passing of longtime Hanna-Barbera composer/arranger Hoyt Curtin by isolating the greatest bits of his work, and naming them.)

When I hear that tiny overture to failure, I consider the mendacity of Hollywood Lights. On Craigslist this morning, I see that they're hiring. This is odd, since they've been firing anyone with half an ounce of competence for the last year, while holding onto valuable people who happen to be related to the owner.

In this -of course- they strongly resemble the greater part of the American business community. For the last...Decade? Longer, surely. Anyway; this trend of continuing to cut labor while never ever getting rid of management is really making us all look like a bunch of goons who don't deserve to even be offered Nice Things. They keep eliminating Bone, until all that's left is Fat, which won't support you, if you're a Leg, say.
Thing is, all this cost-cutting that never seems to actually eliminate costs is done due to the bewildering vicissitudes of the market, y'know, which you'd think Management would be better at navigating. This is to say: it's their fault, but they never seem to lose their jobs, or even take a pay cut.

Now again, the Obvious Disclaimer: you can't run anything with only labor, or only management. It's cooperative; they need each other. But try telling that to some smilin' joe who thinks that only the people with the necessary capital should get to survive in this world.

Suddenly you'll be hearing that word 'Marxist' again, which keeps making a weird resurgence, especially in conversations that have nothing to do with economics. It's been a decade or two since I've met anyone who actually describes themselves as one, but any time you say you like da queeahs or something, you will be called this antiquated socio-economic term. To hear reactionaries tell it, we're surrounded with Marxists right now. And Leninists too, probably.

A popular trope among those with no discernible principles is to go on and on about how principled they are. And since you didn't ask, o Craigslist reader who is looking for a job in stage and event lighting, here's Hollywood Lights' principalia!

OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES:
* We lead with INTEGRITY. We are committed to doing what is right, even when there is great pressure to do otherwise.

* Our PASSION drives us: Be it our passion for creativity in design, our passion for providing innovative solutions to our client's challenges, or our passion for exceeding our client's expectations.

* We strive for a culture of DISCIPLINE. We desire to hire disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and disciplined action.

* TEAMWORK is encouraged and fostered through open communication, along with the knowledge that through collaboration we are greater than the sum of our parts.

* We embrace CHANGE and the opportunities it offers.

* We strive to grow wisely and PROFITABILY.

[A few notes about that:
1) I would hazard a guess that no substantial pressure is being brought to bear on this company to Do Wrong. But nonetheless they keep on stickin' up for what's right, eh? Go Team Integrity!

2) I've seen a lot of companies promise Passion. It's just generally not this embarrassing.

3) The inclusion of 'Discipline' here makes this lighting company sound like a leather daddy.

4) "Our approach to Teamwork is to get rid of most of the Team! This Works for us!"

5) 'Change', huh? Really? Good for you. You like the inevitable.

6) The word you want there is 'profitably', not Profitbily, which -with the addition of one more 'l'- would make an awesome musical genre.
Also: a company that wishes to make a profit, eh? Will the wonders never cease?]

So in closing: Christ, you people suck. I hope you fail, and you deserve to be losing all your business to Christie Lights.
I wish the same failure to Timberline Dodge, Jeep & Chrysler, but on the other hand, they're already heading there of their own accord, if I had to guess.

The Blurst of Times?

2009-12-26T13:47:00.000-08:00

"It has been said many times and in many ways that what the world needs now is another rock n' roll band."- the first line of the (uncredited) liner notes to Steely Dan's first album, "Can't Buy A Thrill" (1972)

In the interest of agglomerating all the things that get gathered in lists at the end of years, and especially decades, here's a list of what actually turns out to be the top 37 things of this rotten decade. Wonkette nails it, I think, especially; "Al Franken not only beat that fucking slimeball Norm Coleman, but finally compensated America for that long dull Lizard-People recount by making Joe Lieberman cry in the Senate." Yes.

It's nice that we're all so sadly in agreement on this one. We all agree that the Aughts sucked, including our inability to give them a decent title. While you'll see plenty of 'best of' lists, the 'worst of' lists are, as always, way more amusing.
And just to say it here, as far as all the things that happened that were good, I've already given plenty of thanks elsewhere. You know who you are. And this isn't the forum. Hell, I'm not even necessarily talking about the decade; I'm just talking about shit that annoys and disgusts me, which is more or less why everybody blogs, at one point or another.

Okay, so there's this...Um, some background: Bill Mack is someone I hadn't previously heard of, ere I came to know the wonder that is the Willie station on satellite radio. He had a career in early rockabilly, and is a country recording artist of some acclaim...He wrote "Blue", which was a hit for a young Le Anne Rimes...And -OH JE-SUS! DID YOU GO LOOK AT THAT EVIL FUCKING SONG YET?

Bill has -and I'm eternally sorry that I can't find an mp3 of this somewhere that you don't have to pay for: I've been looking for a month- a voice that is so flat as to be monotonous. He spends loads of his time on air thanking various D-List country stars that are currently plowing the fields of Christian Show Biz for making such a big difference in everyone's lives, and; "I love ya', pal!" This is all said with the same amount of emotion as the standardized FCC text that you read after the emergency broadcast signal is tested.

This is also the case with "God, Jesus & Me". Bill talk-sings his way through it to the strains of everything that is bad and maudlin about the country music there. One of the things that makes country so compelling when it works is how rooted in tradition it is. You feel like you're part of something that is at least on the road to being eternal. On the other hand, it's caused decades and generations of cheap little bastards to flock to it, knowing that they don't really have to try very hard. It leads to the kind of lazy marketing that gives rise to things like Mysticallie, The People's Horse.

And while "The angels are so cool" is an awful lyric, especially said in a flat, affectless tone by an old hack...When I didn't know the actual title of this song, and thought that it was "A Child's Letter from Heaven", what I found instead was something much worse: a similar poem titled "An Aborted Baby's Letter from Heaven". You know, I think I'll let you go find that one yourself, if you feel like looking at it.

The point is, I think I may have found the worst song of the Aughts. It takes its place alongside the worst Christmas song, which may be found here:

Ah, we're not done here. Tomorrow: my favorite internet argument of the past year.

The Treachery of Images

2009-12-07T15:37:00.001-08:00

You know how time passes? Yeah. Let's review the small brick of identification badge photos I occasionally wear around.
Although let it be said first that I am not one of those stagehands who never, ever take the damn things off. I don't understand this, as the damn things will almost certainly get in your way while working, and to those who practice this strange pretension, I inevitably make jokes about needing to "sniff each others' laminates" to identify one another.
They always act like they don't get it.

Now see, that one there is the one I use when I work at the Rose Garden. It is from three, maybe four years ago. Damn, that's a young-looking me, considering. And I might add that probably at the time, I spent not a little time looking in the mirror and sighing piteously. Even then.

Whereas this one here is from a year or two later. I use it to open doors at that shoe manufacturing concern that I occasionally work at.
Okay, it opens one door, and I haven't actually worked there directly for the company in over a year. Here, I have already started to gain weight, feeling weird about same.

Whenever I work in Seattle Center, I gotta use this thing. A few more years had passed, and I was a bit more okay with my perma-beard used to conceal increasing chin swag, further enchanted with my ever-so-subtly graying hair.

It also, of course, has a film flaw that makes it look like I've got a perfectly flat, white, horizontal scar that runs -strangely- over my moustache on the right side of my face.

It also just says RICH, in caps. No last name.

This one is my favorite, as I look like a murderer. It is the one I use when I work at the casino, and due to the exigencies of digital photography, my head is somewhat longer here than it generally appears. And both my moustache and eyes are drooping in a manner that I for one find sinister.

Would you employ this man? He looks like he's looking for ways to do something that will result in the mug shot that this already resembles being taken.

Speaking of casino work, let us briefly consider the career arc of one Harry Wayne Casey, who we know (and love) as K.C., leader of The Sunshine Band.

That's a pretty flattering photo. I know this because I spent last Saturday evening more or less forced to stare at him, as I was training a spotlight on him.

This act has always been a pretty good band fronted by a pretty bland singer that sings bland lyrics. He has decided to reinforce this by being embarrassing.

Okay; a whole three songs into the set, he stops everything. The band, the dancers all leave the stage, and K.C. engages in ten to fifteen minutes worth of the worst stand-up comedy I've ever heard. This even included the line, "What else is going on in the news these days?" This was followed by three maudlin ballads.

Then he got back into some crowd-pleasin'. This isn't hard, since there's at least ten songs they could play that literally everybody there would know. But again we stop- introduce the band! Okay, now we do "Get Down Tonight", but wait- you know what would be really appropriate? How about a disco-themed salute to Our Troops Overseas? God Bless America!

Yup. That's every bit as bad as it sounds. Mind you, Ronnie Milsap was a pretty funny show too.

Ronnie is also heavy on the god-and-flag love, but pretty much everybody on the casino circuit is. Not only are you inevitably playing to a house of Olds, but you also have the fragile egos of performers themselves to consider. The fragility is increased tenfold the morning they wake up and realize that now all they're good for is casinos and state fairs. They cry a bit, and then start getting religious.

Anyway, Ronnie's lighting director is also a longtime friend and Superfan, which I'm told he was being ridiculed for by the rest of the roadies. For my part, I can say that he was almost too busy laughing at Ronnie's jokes and singing along to call the light cues properly. Fortunately, Ronnie doesn't move much.

This show too, had a comedic element. It was opened by this asshole who apparently is also a longtime friend/superfan. He tells shitty jokes! Then he leaves, and heeere's Ronnie! When he did the inevitable "My record company is a buncha crooks..." type joke, lighting director Superfan says, "Oh, don't go there...Heh heh heh..."

Jeeezus. And when Ronnie made the joke later on that the spotlights we were training on him were "so bright that even I can see 'em!", the crowd turned around and glared at us, as if we were trying to hurt Ronnie, or make fun of him.

After the show, and the thank Jeebus, and Bless Our Troops, after Ronnie left the stage and house lights came up, a family of tanks came up to Corey and I and said, "Not your kinda music, huh?" Corey just shrugged his shoulders, and I said, "Drive safely."

Not allowed to Delicious Strawberry

2009-11-12T12:47:00.000-08:00

Gum: it pretty much sells itself, so whatcha gonna do with yer advertising budget?

(If I keep this up, I'll need to start a new tag for "favorite gum commercials". Maybe even a tag for 'Trident commercials', specifically.)

There's just something about the advertising industry. Gum, by its nature, isn't really all that exciting, and everybody who was on board with this commercial knows that.
So instead, they made a commercial about commercials. And I am the target audience for this sort of thing.

That ridiculous extreme close-up of the babysitter on the line, "Of course you can pay me with gum!", where her irises actually start to gleam with zeal. Then, the unheralded arrival of various workmen.
And that little easter egg again- for people like me: I had to go back several times to verify that the little girl acutally said the line, "We weren't allowed to delicious strawberry!"

If one were to watch this on teevee, it begins so abruptly that you can't even quite tell what's happening at first. Mom's laughter sounds like screams or cries, and that babysitter sure does seem like she was surprised in the midst of doing something she should not have been: "Mis-ter Jo-nes..."

So it's this weird, perverse, thirty-second thrill ride. Awesome, Trident. I wanna go again.

** ** **

Uh, I have started a blog just for pictures, with no captions or talking about it at all, which is strange for me. It is called Photeaux, and features completely out of order, out of context shots from the digital era in my life. Earlier (analog) shots will be scanned in eventually, and Oh What Fun we'll have then.
For instance, I may very well take a month and just upload all the portraiture I was once so fond of doing. In everyone's case, that'll be pictures of you that are at least ten years old. Prepare to be boarded.

Yeah, another thing that has changed for me is that I no longer wish to title my photographs clever things. Other people do that, and frankly, they can have it. These days I let the image do the talking for me, in general.

My flickr account is flickr.com/photos/richbachelor, and many things can be seen there.

Next time, that Ronnie Milsap show needs discussin', as will the Gladys Knight show tomorrow. Ta.

Makin' it Safe, Keepin' It Better

2009-11-07T16:39:00.000-08:00

The unsung, unmissed early '90's ABC show "Cop Rock" episode titles include:

'A Three-Corpse Meal'
'The Cocaine Mutiny'
'Oil of Ol' Lay'
'Cop-a-Feeliac'

Oh, man! Wouldn't you love to see a full-length movie called "The Cocaine Mutiny"? Anyway, it also famously included this sequence:

How could anything be called The Foundation For A Better Life be bad? And its domain name Values.com...It just sounds like a combination of wholesale bargains and unmitigated goodness.

So The Foundation For A Better Life, with that vaguest of names, what is it that they do? Well, they were responsible for billboards like this...

I have always recommended that one read this billboard with a different inflection:
"Quadri-plegic. A minus, Harvard!" As though to say, she was perfectly fine when she got here...

They do have a wonderful feature on their site that allows you to make your own billboard suggestions. Not unlike the church sign generator sites out there, you could just put whatever you want onto a blank template. So I went and uploaded my pic of Dean Martin, and -well...

(I had to take a picture of this with my camera. They won't let you export anything from their site, strangely. Just like the Scientology site won't let you copy and paste the results of your personality test.)

Other people's ideas in this category include:

"YOU CAN DO IT!", accompanied by a screenshot of what I believe is a test...It's the Unit Test Cover Sheet, which is Mandatory...Then, "ACHIEVEMENT"! Pass It On.

An entry from something named Jennaaa, who lives in Michigan, with a picture of her and her friend...I don't know, Brrrennndaaaaa? Sitting in a bathtub with big, striped socks on. The legend reads, "How Fun," and has a smily emoticon next to it. The value there being espoused was 'LAUGHTER', apparently.

One I really don't understand from a Laura Bunten of Washington, D.C. has a picture of her, looking drunk or something, with the legend, "Adds the Sway-eh, eh-eh, eh-eh's on a daily basis." The value is 'LIVE LIFE', because it could scarcely be anything else.

And one that I would normally assume was a joke, but I'm pretty sure isn't, from one Zhane Fulp (see?) from King, N.C., with a picture of a woman, and based on the past-tense wording, you would assume she's dead. But no, 'Thank You Jessica, You Made All Our Days Good' is followed up with this:
"I HAVE TO SAY THAT JESSICA KUMARI IS MY HERO BECAUSE SHE HAS HELPED CHANNEL ONE NEWS ENTERTAIN THE HEARTS OF MILLIONS. I WATCH CHANNEL ONE NEWS EVERY MORNING AT CHESTNUT GROVE MIDDLE SCHOOL AFTER BREAKFAST AT THE SCHOOL CAFETERIA MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY. CONGRATULATIONS, JESSICA. CONGRATULATIONS. "

Value itself sort of gets lost here. There's one with a picture of Abraham Lincoln, and the legend is 'Was A Good President'. 'INTEGRITY'. Pass It On. Another with a picture of a spooky forest at night, and the puzzling message 'Stand up for what you believe even if you are', which exemplifies 'BELIEVE IN YOURSELF', for some reason. A picture of three girls with their arms around each other translates out to 'Be a leader not a follower', which is intrinsic to 'CARING'.

It doesn't help that the treasured half-truths that Americans live by are here utilized in what has to be some class project somewhere, which then fail to actually inspire. Two in a row about Positivity lack the veritas to pull off even the simplest of ideas:

"You will learn in life that if you don't have a Positive attitude life will be hard but if you have a Positive attitude life will be easy."

(is followed by)

"If you will have a good attitude, and not get in a bad mood you can or will have a good day and noting will maybe go wrong for you ."

Both of these are from Rockingham, North Carolina, and both of these epigrammists are, I suspect, in for a big shock one of these days.

But all of their billboards and commercials are like that. They're in favor of controversial values like 'SPORTSMANSHIP'. Another homemade one lets you know that 'There is "Value" in valuable friendships.' Are you making fun of friendship? Are you making fun of Value?
There is one in which I am -I think warned- that 'You might just start a chain reaction'. And the value is 'COMPASSION', but in small print it looks like 'COMPULSION'. Another, I'm pretty sure, is encouraging me toward 'OVERREACTION'. Pass It On.

So yes; with all this benign fatousity and generalized sententiousness, one may wonder, So what then is the mission of this great Foundation? Behind all this bland goodness and basic Hooray For Everything-ism, who wants us to spend all this time polishin' the ol' apple?
Oh my god. It's this guy, who owns a company that recently bought a company that regularly provides me with work. He's a conservative christian, too, surprise surprise. His underwriting of The Discovery Institute certainly doesn't make me view him in a positive light. Doesn't seem t' like the queers, either.

In a basic Google search, one either finds people who immediately hate the whole thing because Conservatives Are Bad, or people who want to give money to this thing (which doesn't accept donations, actually) because they find it refreshing that someone is sticking up for things like 'integrity' and 'hope'. Both of those have been under strenuous attack, you know.

So yeah, it's probably a tax dodge/money laundering thing.

Oh, but how could anything called Keep America Safe be bad? Well, let's see...

What if Liz Cheney was the first name on their board? What if they chose to publish the thoughts of one Gordon Cucullu (because his birth name, 'Chthulu', has such negative connotations?), a worse-than-crank whose background with Special Forces I'm sure warms the part of every conservative that loves a Stern Father. To say nothing of being the current home of the man who was famous for being wrong about everything-Bill Kristol!
The site is a jumping-off point for the written content of every nutbag that currently strides, knuckles down, across the greensward. Charles Krauthammer. Robert Spencer.

I dunno. I'm having a hard time actually being amused at how fucking dumb pretty much all of my countrymen are. But hey.

All of these are fun, but lack the overwhelming awesomeness of Oregon's own The Foundation of Human Understanding. I first encountered the utterly insane Roy Masters in the heyday of talk radio -which I actually date to the late '80's, early '90's, shortly before it got too polarized.
And I hear this vaguely British sounding jackass talking about what a bunch of awful people his audience are, only to have it stated not long after that he represents something with the phrase 'human understanding' in it.

The basic thesis- "if you were all good and moral and having the same vision as I do," as he too tellingly puts it- is basically that the socialists are gonna come kill us all. He's been selling that same line for a long, long time, so I suspect that it's only gotten more intense.
I see on his website now that he has a whole bunch of books and so on that promise to make you more sexy, or something. In the great tradition of all scams, when you try to go to 'preview' on the book page, it tells you that that action is 'not allowed'.

Well, it's certainly no The Association If The Enhancement of Mallard Rubles.

Also too the one

2009-11-01T12:50:00.001-08:00

Not sure why I put that thing up there. Something new. Its actual name is 'subpage event wave', and is part of the layout on the Spirit Mountain Casino 'events' page. It's not even big enough -when reproduced- to be a decent header image here. So it sits there, looking like some sort of sparkly abstract whale-thing. Depressing.

Last night, I was running a spotlight at the Portland Erotic Ball. Let's get the obvious joke out of the way: boy, a whole lotta people sure did decide to dress up as "fat chick in a bustier and fishnets" this year! HAW! Anyway...

Anyway, amidst all the sexy nurse/cop/satans, there was one lady who decided to go really simple with her costume: a pair of jeans and no shirt. She had paint all over her chest in some sort of design, and was accompanied by a gentleman in jeans and a t-shirt that read, I think, I LOVE TO BANG WOMEN. I think; they were kinda far away.
Strangest thing about it? She just kinda hung out at the merch table looking uncomfortable while he ran around with a camera, either trying to get people to take a picture of him and his topless girlfriend, or perhaps trying to get pictures of other people. Again; they were far away. I decided that his costume was Shitty Boyfriend.

It sort of felt like a junior-high dance, but with way higher unrealistic expectations. My bulb blew -that's right- halfway through the first band, and there was no replacement bulb, nor would they have allowed me to get into the guts of the spot because it was a rental. A rental from a boss of mine, but a rental all the same. You could hear the broken glass inside, rolling around in the fan.
So my evening ended early.

The night before, it had been Rascal Flatts, with Darius Rucker opening up. Yes, The Artist Formerly Known As 'Hootie' has been trying to re-image himself as someone who plays country...Or 'country' in as much as Rascal Flatts plays country, anyway.
This led him to cover Hank Williams Jr.'s "Family Tradition", which he shouldn't have done for a plethora of reasons, but most of all for the chorus, with its cascade of "Hank, why do you..."(s). Even more curiously, he closed with Prince's "Purple Rain". The world, I have decided, no longer makes sense.

While sitting around waiting for this show to be over, I got news that Elton John has postponed his tour due to illness. E-coli, one person told me: I have no idea whether or not this is true. This effects my life because I was going to go up to Seattle tomorrow and begin what was probably going to be several days of tech-ing on the show, then do the actual show on Sunday, then turn around again and do it here.
Meanwhile, Billy Joel, who was co-headlining, certainly could have done the show himself, I guess, but isn't. I'm told by those who know that these days, he has a constantly filled glass of vodka and ice only, on his piano.

So for those keeping score, the drunk Long Island Jewish homeboy will not be appearing with the middle-aged gay cartoon character, at least not immediately.

Last weekend, it was 'You Who', which is a thing for hipsters with children, actually. It was the dream of The Decemberists' drummer (I think) and his baby mama (again, I think). It combines people in costumes doing skits -people dressed like giant owls, and I would have liked to include a picture of that here, but I think all the images belong to McMenamins, and you can't. That hyperlink up there takes you to their Flickr page- and your hip young local bands doing that thing that they do.

So, the twee factor backstage was pushed to near toxic levels, but above all else I think it is a very nice thing. I would very much have liked to have a place to go like this back when I had a young kid in the house: your friends say they'll babysit for you while you go out and have a good time, but they won't. So to be around a buncha other painfully hip people who are learning the usual eternal lessons of child-rearing? Yeah, that woulda been okay, I guess.

Up n' comin': Ozomatli at the Crystal, and Ronnie Milsap/Lorrie Morgan at Spirit Mtn. The image of Ronnie that they use on the billboards for this evening of '80's country is a prime example of the I'm So Happy To Be Blind (tm)! photo that I was making fun of in my last post.

There she is.

"Ha! Ha Ha! This also does double duty as my 'So Happy 'Cuz I'm Saved By The Lord (patent pending)' photo! HA!"

I mean, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder did it too, and I don't necessarily feel like it's only a blind fashion thing, but still...

Covered

2009-10-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

One may learn a great deal from album covers. I spend way, wayyy too much of my time looking at them, since I spend wayyy too much of my time shopping for used vinyl. This has led to the place where the ones you always see have a ritualized sort of joke vocabulary to them.

But also, returning like long-lost friends, I see the ones I saw as a kid, and could not make heads or tails of. I see now that there was good reason for this.

The duo of Hall and Oates have a spaceship. Maybe you'd like to take a ride in what we around here like to call the Halloatesamaship.

Along the way, we'll have some good times, maybe write a song or two, enjoy the upholstery on these couches, and be forever thankful that we stocked up on the proper supplies.

And what would those be? Oh, I don't know...Would you like a RITZ (tm) Brand Cracker? If you are going to be exploring in the Halloatesamaship, you're going to need nutrition, and there's no way to get as much nutrition as the nutrition in a RITZ (tm) Brand Cracker!

I now see that the Halloatesamaship actually is tiny. It's exploring a mixing console, or a series of them. Tiny Hall, Tiny Oates, and the tiniest box of RITZ (tm) Brand Crackers I've ever seen in my life.

You know, it never once occurred to me as a child that possibly this duo's name could have come from their last names. I looked at this record, and it seemed pretty clear to me that they were describing the harmonious blend of two very different types of people who could, under certain circumstances, get together and make music.

Because the guy on the left is very clearly trying to pantomime being a seal, right? And that means therefore that the guy on the right is a 'croft', right?

And what -just going on what little information I have here- do crofts do? They rock out, that's what. That guy is totally fucking rocking out.

Seals, on the other hand, are religious, or something.

Gordon Lightfoot's albums all have a big picture of Gordon Lightfoot on them. This is comforting, lest one were to suddenly forget whether or not one was listening to an album by Gordon Lightfoot.

It being the '70's and all, I became pretty fluent in the vocabulary of Gordon Lightfoot album cover art. Summertime Dream has a dreamy, blurry picture-that-is-made-to-look-like-a-drawing on it, of Gord, looking pensive; smoking. It looks like the logo on a bottle of Lightfoot: The Cologne. Sundown's picture features a somewhat surprised-looking Gord, seated casually on the floor of a barn.

But here, image and word fit perfectly side by side. Well, I mean, just look at him: he is gold, isn't he? Good God, it's Gold Gord!

This one always bothered me. Still does.

Is Billy thinking, man, where'd that stranger go? Is he thinking and how come strangers always leave masks? too? And beds. And boxing gloves.

Or is Billy the stranger? Is he strange because he sleeps with a mask? He looks like he's talking to it, and perhaps he is: "Hey what's happening, mask? Are you a stranger?"

Along with the rest of these ruminations, it occurred to my young mind that maybe Billy Joel had a very boring life, and seemed to have a nightlife about as exciting as my own.

If this was what being an adult was all about, I wanted no part of it.

In keeping with the singer-songwriter thing here, let us consider the case of Kenny. Man, does that guy love livin'!

He is completely ecstatic to be doin' what he's doin', ala all blind artists, who must be consistently photographed with beatific smiles on their faces, since it's so much fun being blind. But on the other hand, this is casual Kenny, just kinda, y'know, what the hell? Let's go put on a multimillion dollar road tour, what with the fireworks, and me looming impossibly tall over my fans! I'll bring my guitar penis!

This photo is possibly inaccurate in how willing or likely your average concert goer is in wanting to touch Kenny. Possibly that is a file photo taken at some other concert.

(By the way, that image of Kenny was found at Dagnabbitstubbs.com, which is a weird little site about what certainly seems to be a Ween-esque joke band. They suggest that perhaps they will attend a symposium on how to pose for an album cover hosted by Kenny!)

There have been more embarrassing pictures taken of Rod Stewart than pretty much any other person on earth, I think. Not just on his album covers, but pretty much every time I've seen his image captured on film.

And it doesn't help his case at all that these are pictures of Rod Stewart, if you follow me. It's just not much of a jump to go from "he just looks like he got caught doing something disgusting" to "Rod just got caught doing something disgusting again." His reputation has always preceded him.

If it were anyone else, you'd be like, 'hm. He looks odd. Probably just an awkward time for him.' But this isn't anyone else. This is Rod, and the whole thing just feels wrong.

Ah, mysticism and symbolic imagery. It says so little but means so much, you know? And when you're a little kid walking around Bi-Mart, and you encounter such deep symbolism that you'll never really truly ever figure it out, the first thing your mind goes to is that little kid is gonna poop.

Yup, him and all the rest of those naked children are crawling up those cold rocks, and god knows why, it probably means something about angels or something, and...I'm sorry, but that little pink kid is gonna take a shit!

Well, you try being a big shot designer some time. It's really hard, man...You want people to be happy, but not too happy, you know? You kind of want them to walk away going, "what the fuck was that?" a little bit, secretly, to themselves. And then feeling bad that they didn't get it.

And here, I think, is the very first album cover I ever came to truly know and love. Paul Simon tries out the first of many ways of calling attention away from his male pattern baldness, while caressing a shiny knob. Art Garfunkel's baldness, which was much, much more excruciating based on how his hair is/was, has not yet begun.

Even better though, is the fact that they were encouraged to smile on this cover, which they pretty much never did otherwise. Here, they trotted out those blazers that they owned but could never wear because kids would have thought them "uncool".

Here, we see how rock n' roll is for grown-ups and kids alike! These aren't gritty folk-rockers, these are the two nicest boys in debate club! The finest our school has to offer! Won't you please buy?

And of course, I took this picture one hundred per cent literally. How the hell'd they do that? How the hell didn't everybody die?

I was also obsessed with the name of this band, and thought it the most badass thing ever, leading me to attempt to form a street gang: The Daredevils. We were...In second grade, I believe, and had no idea what sort of things street gangs did. Mayhem, I guess.

We got in some trouble, though, for smashing a bunch of berries onto the across-the-street neighbor's bright, white garage door. We disbanded shortly thereafter.

About the cover, though? Well, it strongly resembles both Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors and Chicago's Greatest Hits. I like too, how you cannot mistake the goofiness. The goofy just won't let you go, and it's entirely because of the over-the-top mugging. As if to say, We're Joking! Ha! Ha Ha! Look at us Joke!

There's about twelve thousand more of these, of course. I just can't think of them all right now. Get back to this after my next visit to a record store.

Rotten, Rotten People

2009-10-15T11:44:00.001-07:00

Another winner from Donna Barstow. I really must ask: who the hell is she blowing?
I mean, this fails the Humorousness test by failing to be funny...It fails the Topicality test by not actually saying anything, though strangely including some up-to-date cultural buzz themes, which seem to make it be about something.

But even if we are to continue with the pretense of this being in some way a humorous observation about Life In These Here United States, what even would the observation be?

A) Gay men have iPhones and Houses? Lots of people do, in L.A. and elsewhere.
B) 'Gay' and 'Republican' are mutually contradictory? Well, I think so too, but what's with the rest of the padding in the 'joke'?
C) People in Los Angeles are a strange lot, and what they find important is alien to the rest of us. Although most people would be pretty strongly impacted by losing their house. And how did he 'lose' it? In a gay fire? Gay foreclosure?
D) Someone, somewhere pointed out to Donna that jokes take place in bars. Hence; in a bar=joke. This is the closest thing to an answer that I have.

But to return to the original question, whose polska kielbasa is she snacking on? I mean, to be this unfunny, surreally adrift in a world where there are familiar catchphrases and not much else...Artistically under-talented to boot, means that you must be at least very-close-friends with someone at the Syndicate.

On the other hand, here is her picture.

Is this, or is this not a picture of someone who has just noticed that look in the eyes of her friends at the barbecue? Oblivious to the idea that not only are her jokes tanking, but she's actually crossed over into something specifically unfunny, she has noticed that nobody's actually laughing anymore, not even courteously.

So this is the shot where she's saying, "C'MON, you guyyys! Doncha get it?" Because clearly they just don't understand you.

Meanwhile, fresh from his recent triumph over Chicago, Rush Limbaugh has encountered an Unfair Obstacle to his Completely Reasonable Wishes.

Let's step back a bit. You may recall that Rush was sort of disproportionately pleased in public recently when a city in the United States failed to get the nod to host the next Summer Olympics. This was because the main proponent of this idea was a person who Rush holds as an enemy of all good folks everywhere, the President of the United States.
So he -as well as a good many other childish morons- celebrated this games-not-getting. His personal political vision was demonstrated to be more important than his (you'd think) enthusiasm for a chance for some place in the United States to do something right.

Flash forward to yesterday, though, when he was told more or less to fuck off by the NFL. Rush had felt that the next best step was to purchase a football team. (Interestingly, the un-named protagonist of the Pink Floyd song "Money" had a similar thought process. They're actually ideological buddies, he and Rush.) The NFL, upon hearing this, said that they felt they could get along just fine without any of that. The right wing bullshit engine, of course, saw this for what it is.

"Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us… every man woman and child in this great nation of ours.

The enemy of this great nation, the enemy of you and me, Rush’s enemy… those on the left, inside and outside of this nation abhor success… and when faced with it will destroy it… by any and all means possible.

We all have our dreams in life… such as they might be. Rush dreamed of being an owner in the NFL.

Tonight the left proved that they will stop at nothing to end our dreams. Our dreams of success and happiness devastate their need to dominate and control you and me… and well everything and everyone."

What can I say? I love showbiz! This sounds like the beginning of a very bad documentary. Or the prelude to a pogrom. I like the unnecessary ellipsis before 'such as they might be'. Whose voice is reading that? Ah. Yes. Tom Selleck.

So...Yeah, when one of the first commenters asked the obvious question -are you joking?- the response he got was;

"You bailout whore, death panel loving, racist jerk. I would also like to point out that you have been accused of child molestation, and we would like to get your response to that before you post further."

Let the record show, your honor, that the right winger here was the one to begin with the name-calling. "What are you talking about?" gets met with "I'LL SKULL-FUCK YOUR DAUGHTER, YOU DONKEY-PUNCHING PORTUGUESE!"
And too, this is in response to some presumed joy on the left at Rush Limbaugh failing to purchase St. Looie's team, as opposed to the actual, well-recorded mass joy at an entire city failing to get the rights to an international sporting event.

Also, it is later suggested that those football team owners are a bunch of effete, left-wing pansies, which is just fantastic. This is strangely echoed in the thoughts of a bunch of -as far as I know- unpaid weirdoes who trumpet bullshit.
J'go over there and read it yet? Well, I'd only do it a great injustice by trying to encapsulate it, but I have to ask again: where exactly did all this childlike love for corporations come about in the more tender-minded communities in our polity? I mean, ideology can certainly cause a person to utterly disappear up their own ass, god knows, but this is what remains of the Populist movement we're talking about here. Just because you've been told to hate government does not mean that you love corporations.

Yet again, this is going on a bit long. Who else? Ah. Good. Mitch Albom.

Not just content to be that place you go to read the work of clearly fictional people like Marilyn vos Savant, Dotson Rader and Lyric Wallwork Winik, this thing-that-falls-out-of-your-Sunday-paper increasingly plays home to America's Favorite Guy Who Says Vaguely Comforting Things!

To be your generation's own Edgar Guest. Who ever said that wasn't something to aspire to?

Whenever I see that cute little plucky face with its determined chin and sardonic Grin n' Bear It! grin, I try to think of accurate ways to parody the guy. His writing style is so treacly, his conclusions so nauseatingly neutral-good, you could really just sit there all day going, things really are what they are, these days, you know? and probably nail it pretty good.

But here, Mitch takes on a Big Topic: hey guys, I know that maybe all of us formerly young types might sort of need a little something to turn to when things get tough. And they sure do get tough, don't they? Heh! I KNOW, right? Well, there's this God thing I just heard about, and...

Thing is, Mitch doesn't fit here because he isn't a rotten person (probably). He's just that fatuous bore at the party that we all know and tolerate, generally because they're a relative of ours. He will go on all day about how it's the little things, you know...that make life worthwhile, and we let him at least partially because this is actually true. It just sort of cheapens and diminutizes it to constantly be reminded of this mind-blowing fact by some feeb who can't just let it go.

One of my favorite objects around the house is this little red vase I got at a garage sale. It is small enough that space for one rather small flower is pretty much it in terms of its capacity. It is clearly homemade, and has a highly abstracted painting of a flower on it.
I like it because it's a nice example of the many small ways people go about prettying-up their little corner of the world. It's a nice, mute example, though it also sort of reminds me of country music.

Now, see Mitch, he would have turned that whole thing into a book that later is made into a Lifetime Television For Women movie. That is why he is awful.

Things I Have Said on the Internet

2009-10-13T00:29:00.000-07:00

"Oh Ed Helms, what won't you do a cameo in? He's well on his way to being the Ava Gardner of his time."

"Since we're so deep into inexplicable love of terrible bands, could someone try to explain why anybody at all likes Kings of Leon? They're so terrible they've almost wrapped around into Ironic Appreciation Land. Not yet, though."

"I mean hell, Anita Bryant's most productive years were the mid 70's, when we were all on quaaludes and cocaine while having swinging key parties."

"I'm still shopping around my own script titled, 'Unpleasantly Detained'. Try hearing the late Ed La Fontaine saying that one in your head."
(Ed LaFontaine who did every movie trailer voice-over for the last twenty years, it seems.)

"Five Dollar Footlong: Hounded out of his boy's wrestling coach job, Ray is forced to seek employment with a national fast food sandwich chain. Some mayonnaise slathering ensues (cc)."
(Each year, many hours are spent on the Internet, making up fake names for porn. In this case, a vehicle for Ray Romano.)

"I hold it as entirely feasible that my lack of appreciation in this area only confirms my lack of education on the subject. Wait, what the fuck are we talking about?"
(I'm gonna have to go back and actually see what we were talking about. Ah. Larry the Cable Guy. Of course.)

"Yeah...So true. How's the rest of your weekend going? Or am I looking at it?"
(This was in response to some asshole who took me to task at great length for not knowing the proper name of an Ethiopian dish.)

"Considering the mood of America at the time, it's amazing that a show about a trucker and his pet chimp was not universally embraced, and still on the air to this day."
(Clearly discussing NBC's 'B.J. and The Bear'.)

"Just like many non-comedic cinematic ventures could very well be improved by a stark black and white card that reads, "It was very sad, and they all died."
(Y'got me.)

"'America- it's where all my stuff is' certainly outshines the only slogan I've got for our landmass here, which is 'One nation. Inexcusable.'"

"I often refer to Idaho as 'The Albania of the Americas' for their similar love of killing tourists."

"Sure, but the thing about dreams and expectations is...Ah hell; go watch some old 'Twilight Zone' episodes. You'll get it."
(Responding to some young n' idealistic type, clearly.)

"Wouldn't 'her take' be staring at you crosseyed and bearing her two front teeth, as is her reaction to pretty much anything?"
(Referring to Anna Paquin, and her acting "abilities".)

"'Raise your game, clownshoe,' is something I'm going to start saying now. Thank you."
(Oddly, this comes from a discussion thread about the latest Dave Matthews Band release.)

"And just think: all this is happening in a world where Kings of Leon actually command respect. I think we all should die."

"(ahem) Would you describe self preservation as being the basis of existentialism? Or; what do you think of those damn kids?"
(A press conference with the Head Janitor?)

"When you were 'young with a great hook'? Songs of that 'error'?"
(Typoes, again, are comedy gold.)

"Well, both seem to be corpse-fucking of the worst sort, but what do I know?"
(Probably referring to remakes of something near and dear to us all.)

"I always kinda thought "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper" was an okay euphemism for shitting."

"Shana, that sound you heard a few minutes ago was the collective tumescing of the members of each n' every tortured geek in this here room."

"I would so totally watch a movie called 'Crimes and BURNING TO DEATH'."

"The point here isn't semantic; it's literal. You have rather stunningly missed the point now several times, and maybe someone else would like to take a crack at it."
(From a discussion about how 'not guilty' is not the same thing as being innocent.)

"Dick Cheney still walks the earth as well. And you know what? People will overstate his achievements and downplay his egregious missteps when he dies, too."
(This was from that firestorm couple of weeks in which lots of celebrities, for manifold reasons, suddenly died.)

"Good lord. Sorry I offended you. I keep forgetting how tender some of you are."
(So was that. I had been inadequately reverent in the passing of Farrah Fawcett.)

"Hey everybody come down here! Scrotum Jones is suddenly making sense!"
(He came, stayed briefly on the 'AV Club' blog, and left as suddenly as he'd come.)

"I'm trying to bring back use of the word 'scintilla', and the usage of the word 'queer' to denote 'odd'."

"Oh, and of course; being upper middle class in no way means you're not an ignorant, vapid piece of shit. Wealth ain't taste, folks."

"I heartily applaud the arrival of 'so I'm cautiously' as our new thing to say around here."
(People's inability to type is the source of many a cheap laugh.)

"Yeah, but it's pretty amazing that we live in a world where Ashton Kutcher is considered to be worth a shit, too."
(One may apply this line to so many discussions.)

"Yeah hell; I haven't done anything in earnest since 1992."
(In response to the usual cry of 'oh you hipsters are too cynical to actually care about anything...' that one tends to hear from tortured geeks.)

"But hey- we keep straying from the main point: this movie sounds really boring."
(Referring to the movie 'Humpday', which was filmed in Portland.)

"But not a one of you defends the magic that is Mexican Pepsi. In a glass bottle, cane-sugared...Also a fictional sexual position."
(I'm always amazed when someone actually starts up the old Coke v. Pepsi discussion.)

"Well yeah; the only thing more sad than sitting here all day discussing your opinions about movies and shit is cultivating this weirdly misplaced rage against those who do so. I mean really, sister; why all the sand in yer oyster?"
(In any truly long discussion thread, some brave soul will eventually wander in and do the whole 'WHYYY ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT THIIIS?' number, in which it is pointed out that there's so many more important things we could be discussing, like topics the brave soul cares about, for instance. They achieve this important end by trolling discussion boards on entertainment websites.)

"'Golden Corral' as a metaphor for 'death'?"
(Popular steakhouse, as well as uncomfortable imagery-producer.)

"Or for that matter, when did the standards for ass-busting get so damn low?"
(Internet trolls are also very likely to view themselves in a strangely heroic light for doing things like interrupting discussions about some damn movie or something. They just gotta bust asses; cocking snooks at We, The Establishment, i.e. people who sit around all day talking on the Internet about relatively pointless things.)

"Fowler's Modern English Usage: Full Tilt Boogie"
("What you would title the sequel to various things that will never have sequels.")

"In a better world, there would have been Pointlessly Vindictive Spice."
(Spice Girls jokes never really go out of style.)

"As is the case with lots of arena rock, the music's pretty damn good, and the lyrics are the product of an abject moron."
(Journey, I believe, we were discussing?)

"Back when I was a young 'un who admitted to enjoying -say- The Jefferson Airplane or something, and some wanna-be clever Boomer would say, 'Bit before your time, isn't it?', my stock reply was, 'You like Mozart at all?'"

"No no; a schooner is the little glass that looks kinda like the cooling tower at a nuclear power plant. Beer comes in it."

"Oh, being raised in Texas makes you not exactly American as far as I'm concerned..."
(For some reason, that one really pissed people off. I'm not sure why. God knows, if you talk to your average Texan long enough, they'll bring up the whole 'We could secede at any time!' thing, so I always say, 'Let 'em!')

"The protective demon of cosmetology!"
(The word verification word someone had had to enter was 'noslipra'.)

"Oh, they're thinking of children all right..."
(Joke about the FCC being a bunch of pedophiles.)

"Mad Magazine always held that the proper sound effect for a boob slipping out was, 'poit'."

"Better still, naming yourself 'Yusuf Islam' is more or less literally naming yourself 'Joe Surrender'."
(Cat Stevens under discussion here.)

"Somebody get this man to a Chinese restaurant!"
(A callback to an old Woody Allen line about where old Jewish people go when they die.)

"A lot of musical artists whose work I love are indeed crap human beings, as far as I've noticed."
(Someone else talking about Cat Stevens.)

"You fucking misspelled 'typo'."
(After a lengthy screed about how all of the rest of us are such grammar/spelling nazis, and we should all just relax.)

"Commonly Used Phrase: The Movie"
(Or, 'Adjective Noun' movie titles, as I often refer to them.)

"Shit Fucker IV: Double Pits to Chesty"
(Someone had noted that the crew on the video-game movie 'Street Fighter' referred to the film as 'Shit Fucker', and we were coming up with awful sequel names. I chose the most gratingly awful [and I think purposely awful] phrase used in recent advertising, which comes from an ad for an awful product: Axe Body Spray.)

"This convention sucks!"
(Someone had referred to our discussion thread as 'Cynics Con '09'.)

"Well, redneck fashion and gay fashion overlap at many points. They both tuck in their shirts, wear pleated shorts and feel that Tommy Hilfiger isn't embarrassing. So there y'go."
(Both redneck and gay: please excuse the gross generalization.)

"Well, at least you still have your poetry career to fall back on."
(Responding to a poster whose screen name was 'Rilke'.)

"Triumph is the even-more-Canadian Rush!"

"I always held that The Buzzcocks were what The Beatles would have sounded like had they made it to the late '70's."
(I actually believe this.)

"Well, Garth (Brooks) fits here because like it or not, there's a lot more of his type of country than the other kind, and this has always been true. Much as you may enjoy all those old country songs about drinking, fighting and fucking, murder and so on, the majority of them always were heavy on God, The Flag, the importance of Family, the Work of Your Days. Garth is the rule, Jerry Jeff Walker (say) is the exception."

"I don't think I'm being unfair when I say that there's no surer way to doom yourself to looking like a douchebag for the rest of your life than getting your fucking face tattooed.
For extra douchebag points, make sure to complain about the discrimination you receive for your tattooed face. Eeersh."

"Excuse me, but was the fictional band in that movie named 'Low Shoulder'?
If so, clever! That is all."
(In re: the movie 'Jennifer's Body'.)

"Oh dear NonServiam: way to be completely irrelevant to the central discussion and occupy the easiest space of unearned moral high ground simultaneously. You sound like a Reed student trying to get laid."
(In which sanctimonious douchebag gets all superior to Portland, which as we all know is racist. Then, content with themselves, offer no solid ideas as to solving said problem.)

"The dirty little secret of lots of hipsters is that they spent their early twenties/late teens following some jam band. I have endless anecdotal evidence for this.

Thing is, I've often been annoyed by the central argument here that entire genres just plain old cannot be enjoyed, when actually a true music nerd likes a little of everything.

So really the dichotomy isn't hippie music vs. cool music, it's simple vs. elaborate, ripping off The Clash vs. ripping off Frank Zappa."
(In response to Carrie Brownstein's 'Phish Project'.)

"I'm pleased to note that if you Google the phrase "Lars Larson is a cheap little punk", the only thing you'll find is a blog post of mine."
(Remember that one?)

"I believe I shall start a blog called 'Your Blog on the Internet'. It will be about Everything."
(In response to some asshole who wrote Wonkette about how 'ignorant your blog on the internet' was.)

More Lip Impressions

2009-09-05T15:01:00.000-07:00

Wayne Coyne apparently begins each show by crowd surfing in a big, transparent hamster ball. He seems to enjoy it immensely, and god knows the fans enjoy it. Here it is in test mode.

Again, there's this highly egalitarian thing going on (or at least great pains are taken to make it appear that this is the case) where they say again and again: we recognize that there's no difference between you and us, really.

Interestingly, the best song by far was 'Convinced of the Hex', which has the insistent chorus, "The difference between us...", and sounds like P. Floyd's 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun'.

That's something too; the music. I've never thought that their music was all that great, and this show left me feeling that they're still kinda lightweights. But that doesn't matter nearly so much when they have such a compelling live show. In that context, a song like the "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" makes all the sense in the world. Listening to that many people affirming something is really powerful.

Speaking of powerful affirmations, later in their set, the frenzy cooled down for a few as a lengthy piece was spoken. It concerned how...Well, I'm not sure how to summarize it. It kind of had to do with the idea that, while one may not necessarily agree with our various (and constant) wars around the world, one does need to accept that those are your brothers and sisters out there serving in -and dying in- them. Now, credit to Coyne for not making it into that terrible 'they're just doin' their jobs!' thing that everybody seems to make it into: it was a reminder of the human factor.

And how they chose to memorialize was this: as 'taps' was played on a single trumpet, all of us raised our hands in a 'peace' sign. Nothing but a sea of upraised fingers, for as far as the eye could see. Suspension of critical thinking required? A little, but it was surprisingly un-schmaltzy, this moment, and no more manipulative than any emotional event is.

The confetti. God, all that fucking confetti. Yesterday, as we tore down the stage at Edgefield, the further we got into the guts of the stage, the more orange and yellow slips of paper we found.
On top of the four confetti cannons, there was repeated use of the homemade balloon-inflation-device to blow up -first to size, then to explosion- enormous balloons that were also filled with confetti. The fans onstage were blowing all this around (along with the still-returning balloons, which were starting to either explode dramatically in the blackberry bushes, or lodge there where they would stay for weeks thereafter). Toward the end, there was so much floating paper in the air that I had to close my eyes. I was getting paper in my eyes, and was sort of fearing catastrophic amounts of paper cuts, yes.

This was chaos. It was good chaos, though, and much is to be said there, I guess, for the confluence of hipster and hippie. There's plenty of places where they flow together and don't mutually dislike and distrust each other. The Flaming Lips may not seem like an obvious example, but they do have that special place in The Middle firmly occupied.

The Lips have a mythos that they've been building for a while now, with stories and characters, songs that are easily sung-along-to with li'l life lessons that you might just go ahead and take home with you. The song "Do You Realize" is a dead ringer for The Dead's "Eyes of the World", in terms of lyrical content.

But they still have hipster cache leftover from those many, many years that they toiled in obscurity and didn't sound like they currently sound at all. I myself felt like being a pest and requesting that they play their stunningly gritty cover of Sonic Youth's "Death Valley '69". "She Don't Use Jelly"? Well, both hippie and hipster alike enjoy a song that is easy to sing along to, has a not-especially-concealed in-joke, is prima facie absurd...Something for everyone.

Above all else, I guess that the whole thing has a tribal aspect that I officially deem Nice. What I specifically mean by that is how rare and wonderful this particular tour is for this industry in particular. How they interact with their audience is great; how they interact with other people who put on shows for a living is fucking unheard of.
And dare I say that they seem to have actually meant all their utopian crap? I mean, even if it's a pose, what a great pose to have, as opposed to what recording artists generally say.

That they see a hole in the market that could be filled with, hey life's a funny thing, and there's songs and stories to be made out of all of us, and perhaps we could all be a bit braver, and nicer to each other, and it's not too late to halt this here decline shows an interesting prescience, at least.

Top Moments o.' the '09 summer concert season:
1. The Decembrists doing "July, July!" at the end of July, also their cover of "Crazy On You".
(Lesser equivalent: Actually watching Heart do "Crazy On You".)

2. Being thanked by Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal for doing our jobs.
(Much lesser equivalent: Carlos Mencia coming outta his dressing room after running two hours over time, with his cronies [with a midget, which is idiot shorthand for 'funny'] and saying, "Let's get a picture with the people who do the hard work and never get any of the credit." Then more or less forcing all of us to stand there grinning while a picture is taken.

Again, motherfucker was already keeping us there late. Secondly, this was just wasting more time, and besides, I hate the guy. He isn't funny, which is all that he need be to be a comic.
Lastly, all the credit I require for doing my fucking job is a paycheck, you asshole. )

3. Best show start to finish: Al Green.
(Wayyy lesser equivalent: Keith Sweat.)

4. Most visually stunning show: The Flaming Lips.
Runner up: The Decemberists.

5. Best in-between-song banter: Lyle Lovett.
(Worst: Sugarland. I had to watch two nights of that bitch pretending to be more southern than she actually is.)

6. Most difficult load-in: Miley Cyrus, as it was Day One of her tour.
(Simplest load-in: The T-Mobile tent outside the Blink 182 show. No really; The Pretenders.)

7. Coolest piece of swag: Hand painted, hand pulled poster for The Decemberists, Andrew Bird and Blind Pilot. Not many people got these. I'm noticing an increase in the practice of making a thousand kinda ho-hum posters that get distributed everywhere and about ten really cool posters that only friends of the band get.
(Weirdest piece of swag: A tiny piece of paper saying "feed me", with the Jonas Bros. seal on it. This was my meal ticket, and I suspect one day it'll be a collector's item.)

8. Best and worst crew shirt: The Flaming Lips are famous for this kind of thing. The shirt this year had an enormous pot leaf on the front, with the words 'FUCK YOU' above it, and the words 'I DO WHAT I LIKE' beneath.
On the back of the shirt, four vaginas with legs with the word 'band', and an arrow pointing to them. And in much larger letters, 'CREW', with an arrow pointing to this big neanderthal-looking guy wearing a shirt with a big pot leaf on it that says, 'FUCK YOU, I DO WHAT I LIKE'. Beneath all this, the legend reads, 'I LOADED IN WITH THE FLAMING LIPS, AND THEY WERE A BUNCH OF PUSSIES'. And beneath that, 'Thanks to all the great load-in/load-out crews of the world'.
All of the foregoing is in glow-in-the-dark material. I will probably never wear it in public.

(There is a partial picture of this, from the Flaming Lips naked video shoot up on Mount Tabor the other day. Said shirt is on the guy standing next to Wayne here. For some reason, I can't just reprint it here. Possibly due to Terms Of Service.)

9. Weirdest brush with fame: being waved at by Nicole Kidman. I was leaving the Keith Urban show for a few hours, and I see the runner van arriving. The van is driven by a woman I know, so I wave at her. But I notice that this thing with reddish-blondish kinky hair in the back seat thinks that I was waving at it, and...Well I can even see the whole thought process:
"Oh, yes yes...I still need to do this whole thing, don't I? I have to smile and wave to these people even when I'm just riding in a van with my husband. Ho ho; well, let's do this thing one more time for my adoring fans...Wave wave, smiiile...Yes. Ah, stardom."

At least I imagine that's what happened. That's what it suddenly appeared to be.

(Weirdest brush with fame not happening to me: Corey was standing backstage watching the Heart show, when Ann Wilson comes offstage briefly, blows a kiss at him. That was okay, but then she took a swig of dong kwai (or however we spell that) "for the throat", and threw the bottle at him, narrowly missing his head. The chief electrician shouted, "What the hell was that?" There was no explanation offered for this.)

(Heart, as viewed from the spot tower, September 25th, Edgefield)

10. Worst crowd moments: Heart (five brawls at Heart, causing me to say, "That kind of music just brings out the bad element, y'know?") and The Gipsy Kings, where...It's a long story, but those people sucked...

A list of all the shows I did, June to September, as taken from the notebook where I write down all such things:

Il Divo
Dionne Warwick
Jazz Attack
Jonas Brothers
American Idol
Steve Miller
Anita Baker
Decemberists (x2)
Sugarland (x2)
Lyle Lovett
The Fray
En Vogue
The Flaming Lips
Dave Koz & Brian Culbertson, with Peabo Bryson
The Pretenders
Al Green
Chris Isaak
Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal
Keith Sweat and Teena Marie
Gipsy Kings
Blink 182
Keith Urban
Miley Cyrus
Gov't Mule
Carlos Mencia
The Killers
Heart
Jason Mraz

[*(x2) denotes two nights of show]

Also, Microsoft Tech Ready, Nike Fall Sales, Portland Opera's production of 'La Boheme' and some band/performance art thing from Ireland that I did for PICA. I'm lucky I work so much. Hell, I'm lucky in general.

You, Your Fucking Life, and the Flaming Lips

2009-08-27T10:25:00.000-07:00

I think we could all tell it was going to be a good day when we saw the orange. Every crew member that greeted us that morning was wearing bright safety orange, with bits of pink and red mixed into their ensemble.

It was also an immediate good sign when we noted that Shane and Sam were part of the crew. Shane spent years at the Crystal, where I and many others toiled, and Sam was a soundman supreme. They've both been touring with the Flaming Lips for three or so years now.

Yet another great sign was that the bass player for the band is also a full-time roadie. He worked onstage all day long, played a show that night, and did load-out too. Wayne Coyne was onstage for most of the day too, which is to say; a lead singer that not only didn't just stay on the bus all day, but came out and oversaw the technical aspects of the show. This is -frankly- unheard of.

It was pointed out to me early in the day by Shane that the tour is scaled down to bare bones, and that all the band members are techs, while all the techs have a role in the performance. He was wearing a shirt that had a hammer and sickle on it.
I think Sam said it even more clearly: "We're commies!" -unless that wasn't Sam. I do know that Shane wore his commie shirt into a Lowe's a few days before this, and was more or less refused service by some old asshole who worked in the tool department.

Tools were very important to them, because the set -which "changes every forty days" according to Shane- is still sort of in the process of being figured out. The fact that I had a leverage tool (a spud wrench, actually) was of great interest to them.
I soon had a small crowd of orange-clad people around me, as was Wayne, who wore the same suit all day. "What is that?" ran the question, and I pointed out that every working tour should have at least one drift pin, malleck or spud wrench for making holes align in truss.

Especially when said truss is in a giant half-arc with lots of Versatube attached for video. There was lots and lots of little holes, all of which needed aligning.

They had a ton of staging, all orange. Truss, monitors, road boxes, instruments; all of it. Fortunately, lots of things can be bought that are already orange. For everything else, there's spray paint.

This led to an interesting contrast between locals and tour staff: the people in orange, and the people in black.

Not that those of us in black aren't any fun, of course, but one might look at it that way. I had this impression of a rolling circus, and it made me want to join. Later, when we were checking vocals at the beginning of a very long sound check, Wayne was saying something I couldn't quite make out along the lines of "you, your fucking life, and the Flaming Lips..."
For whatever it's worth, my life has changed a lot in the last several years, in ways I never would have envisioned, and most of which I can't quite quantify. There was something odd going on here; music always drives me deep inside my head, but this time even more so.

What all their money seemed to be spent on was a shit ton of confetti, and a whole bunch of large balloons. I've tried to give some sort of scale here (for instance, that dimmer over to the left comes almost up to my chin), and lets just say that this undertaking was a bit more involved than one might think.
It was done with another example of Lips improvisation; the device with which we inflated all those balloons was a leaf blower with the top of a two-liter bottle duct taped to it. I noticed lots of home made fixes like this throughout the day.

These balloons would be thrown by myself and others like me out at the crowd, later that night. I know that I was smiling my everlovin' ass off while doing so.

Ah. More on this later. Publish.

Cars with Girls, and Wrestling

2009-08-19T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was talking about this one yesterday; was unsure whether or not it actually existed. I last saw it while watching World Wide Wrestling. And smoking pot. It stands as a perfect example of both perhaps the most generic rock n' roll song ever written, and the terrible, terrible video editing style of the '80's. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy "Girls In Cars", by Robbie Dupree.

It's kind of like someone took every song ever written, and every video ever put with a song for marketing purposes, put it in a blender and then ran it through a centrifuge. The results? Awesome.

Apparently this song was on "Piledriver: The Wrestling Album II", and was used -for some reason- as entrance music by Tito Santana and Rick Martel, The Strike Force.

These Are Your Guys

2009-08-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

So...As we know, the dumbest among us have again seized the reins of public discourse. They are never far away, they are generally kowtowed to by the media, who wish always to be seen as sympathetic to the average guy in the street.

Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa wants to take credit for a completely sane and needed provision in a health care bill that hasn't passed yet being tossed, since its backers are currently afraid of being lynched when they go home. Good for you, Chuck. Let's see to it that Chuck doesn't go home without actually being lynched, eh? Oh! Just parody! Don't arrest me for threatening the life of a senator, as this is protected speech, just like these assholes suggesting that Obama should be killed is.

Now mind you; these people are just inept enough that they may very well be Democratic party operatives themselves, as I've often said about Fred Phelps.

But I don't really care. These are people who so love the insurance industry, they're willing to see to it that the people they live next door to can't talk, can't interact with their elected representatives. They so love the rich that they will gladly die from not being able to afford health care, lest someone somewhere think they might be a damned socialist.

So let 'em die! They want death so damn much, let 'em have it! But stop covering them! And hey; my Republican friends? These are your guys. This is what you have manipulated and grown in every election cycle since 1968 at least. Now it is all you are, and I can be forgiven for not feeling sorry for you.

Let's make a society in which Dick Morris doesn't get to speak in public without one of us directly in his face, screaming "LIAR!" and "INSURANCE INDUSTRY SHILL!". Where the stupid don't get the mike, just 'cuz they're somebody's gramma.

Tomorrow night, David Wu will be trying to talk to the people he works for in the town of St. Helens. I believe I shall be there to stare down any fucking crybaby that doesn't want people behaving like civilized apes. Who's with me?

August 14, 4:00-5:00

Columbia Learning Center; 375 South 18th Street, St. Helens

Can't Hear It On The Radio

2009-07-21T16:35:00.000-07:00

It's almost impossible to sum up how important R.E.M. once was, as opposed to the nostalgia show/alternative muzik While-U-Shop thing they are now. Long ago, back when Michael Stipe had hair, didn't look like Moby, didn't whine, for fuck's sake.

I'm talking about the entire period that is eulogized in the song "Nightswimming": I don't think all these people un-der-stannnd...Hell, even that sounded whiny, but it was referring to a specific time and place. He was talking about that dim and distant time when no reasonable radio programmer outside of the college radio ghetto would even think of putting The Only Band That Mutters on their playlist. That long ago and far away place where all these people who would, not long after, become quite famous played for small crowds of their friends and their friends friends in each others' basements, later -drunk!- goin' swimmin' in the Georgia night.

I need to say a little something about all that too. Just the music, though. That's all I can really take on here. That, and two of the greatest albums of the 1980's, which both happen to be by the formerly greatest band in Alterna-America, R.E.M.

It is a matter of some debate as to when they sold out. Many said it was 'Green' (true purists had said it was 'Document'), I personally date it to 'Out of Time'. Despite the great and wistful "Shiny Happy People" and the underrated "Near Wild Heaven", it was the album where they clearly did that thing successful bands do: they note what has worked well in the past, and determine to do it over and over again ad infinitum for the rest of their career.
What had started this process though, was 'Life's Rich Pageant'. It was the first album where they literally sang in a voice clear enough to be understood. I finally started to get it, young as I was. I hadn't really been able to get it before.

So that's just it; they sold out, which is to say the music had become explicable to young teenagers like myself. This is the paradox that we who dwell in the bargain basement of hometown heroes and Special Children get to live with: craft your message, you're pandering. Fail to be cohesive, you're engaging in willful obscurantism, and therefore can be dismissed.

What then might be those two best albums I was crowing about a minute ago? That would be R.E.M.'s 'Reckoning'(1984), which was their second full length album, and 'Life's Rich Pageant'(1986). Somewhere in those two years, they went from those people we knew, liked and wanted to see do well to those bastards who signed with a major label.
Way more importantly, they went from a weirdly organic, strongly personal point of narrative to a broader type of appeal that sounded not unlike a call to arms.

'Reckoning' is muddy where 'Life's Rich Pageant' is clear, strictly in terms of production values. Besides, Michael Stipe literally mutters throughout the damn thing, but that actually makes you want to pay more attention. The music is the sort of thing that infuriated classic rock enthusiasts back in the day, and now that seems so fucking silly. It's strongly anchored in the basic American rock idiom: it sounds like country rock, but several steps forward.

The lyrical point of view is rooted in the personal mythology of someone who is asking you to step inside and check it out with them. What's a "Harborcoat"? Well, you'd know if you owned one..."Don't Go Back To Rockville" is what Tom Petty would write if he was much smarter and ten times more original. "South Central Rain" is a parenthetical story you keep writing in your head, but never get down on paper. Its first line is, But you never called...

(Actually, the folks at songlyrics.com give that as being,
Did you never call? I waited for your call
These rivers of suggestion are driving me away
Which is maybe the better line, but here we get from the private dreams of the narrator into the private interpretations of -and connections drawn by- the listener.)

Pretty much all of these songs are sing-alongs, which is weird for an album where you can't clearly make out most of the lyrics. There's this certain ritualized nature at work here in these songs of love and confusion: Here we are...Here we are...Here we aaaaarrre...
But beyond that, there's these quasi-political statements, ala
The biggest wagon is the empty wagon is the noisiest
the Conestoga horse
Jefferson, I think we lost
Which could be or mean lots of things, I guess. Might not mean a damn thing, too.

(And again, I maintain that online song lyric sites are mondegreen generators. They give that line above as 'the consul, a horse', which it certainly might be, but when you're muttering for a living, it has lots more to do with what some teenager somewhere thinks it is, and I believe you're giving up interpretation to that.)

The music is restrained, yet earthy. The lyrics have to do with the editorial You and Me that the majority of rock n' roll is about. It namechecks Chinese folk tales, and the final song is an incoherent edit from what sounds like the middle of a jam they got into, but never quite made a song out of. It sounds like it was recorded in one of Athens, Ga.'s finer basements.

'Life's Rich Pageant', by complete contrast, even begins loud and clear. "Begin The Begin" is the first song by them I noticed that rocked. It is dealing in the subjective still, but also...
Well, it's like they signed with a major record label and decided that this implied a certain duty. If we're going to be making more money and reaching more people, this means we have to talk about the world at large, and encourage right action, good behaviors.

At least that's the way I interpret it:

Bir-die in the hand
for life's rich demand
the insurgency began
and you missed it...

and

Silence means security
silence means approval
I seen it on the teevee
tiger run around the tree
follow the leader
run and turn into butter

The '80's, as the legend goes, was a great time for activism. This tends to be the revisionist view of pretty much any decade where the prevailing norm was restraint and control. So in the sense of, "well, there was a lot to protest about," yes, it was. And the case could be made that, after the lazy '70's, people woke back up again.

The music reflects this. "These Days" is the second song off of 'Life's Rich Pageant', and is a stirring anthem that could easily apply to pretty much any cause you wanted to append it to:

All the people gather...
Fly to carry each his burden
we are young despite the years
we are concerned
we have hope despite the times...

I wanted to tell Howard Dean to adopt that as his song, once. The obliqueness of difficulty, danger and life is addressed in "Fall On Me", which basically is a big long prayer to ask the sky not to fall on one. But in the video, and the liner notes, the phrase "bury magnets" keeps popping up.
The next song is another barn burner. "Cuyahoga" is the name of one of those rivers that was so polluted it actually caught fire (the Willamette being another, natch), and it was also the name of a tribe. The lyrical conceit here is...If we were that tribe, and looking at the world as it is now, what would our reaction be?

Let's put our heads together
and start a new country up
the father's father's father tried
erased the part he didn't like...

and, ominously

This land is the land of ours
this river runs red over it
we are not your allies
we can not defend...

So maybe it's time we stopped behaving stupidly with the earth, too, huh? This was a newer idea in political discourse at the time.

"Hyena" is kind of a throwaway song, but it rocks, and it always makes me glad to hear it. Same goes for the largely instrumental "Underneath The Bunker", which is a kitschy faux-middle-eastern spy theme.

"The Flowers of Guatemala" is the resident tearjerker of the album. But it comes at it sideways. It doesn't write itself a nice easy anti-death-squad rant, it instead is all about setting the scene for what potentially is lost.
And by the time the chorus of flow-ers co-ver everything...You hear it as both 'this is a beautiful place' and 'flowers are blood'...It's awesome, and a perfect blending of R.E.M. classic and R.E.M. the sell out years.

But musically, I like the anthems here better. "I Believe" is exactly what it sounds like: a statement of of basic belief.

Trust in your calling, make sure your calling's true
Think of others, the others think of you
Silly rule golden words make, practice, practice makes perfect,
Perfect is a fault, and fault lines change

and

I believe in example
I believe my throat hurts
Example is the checker to the key

I believe my humor's wearing thin
And I believe the poles are shifting

I believe my shirt is wearing thin
And change is what I believe in

Right? Seems naive now, don't it? Or does it? Seems to me that someone recently got elected President promising something as simple and vague as 'change'.

"What If We Give It Away" sounds like a pretty straightforward song; no mistaking what something so simply named is about, right? Well, wrong. I have no idea what the fucking thing is trying to say.
Although I do occasionally say, here's the trailer, Tom for no really good reason.

Another anthem. "Just A Touch" was, I thought, about the new world openin' up for your small quirky bands, and how one day they might just change the face of popular music, including the iconic phrase, can't hear it on the radio...
But a look at what some guy on some lyrics website has to say puts me in doubt. For one thing, apparently it's 'Kevin heard it on the radio'...Which I doubt, and...

Well what in the world? Women in black
Don't you remember, Sonny's, Tyrone's, packed, packed
A day in the life well nobody laughed
Look to the days how long can this last

I can't see where to worship Popeye, love Al Green,
I can't see, I'm so young, I'm so god damn young

Um, yeah. And it isn't 'set it off, just a touch', either. Good lord, I'm confused.

"Swan Swan H" is a nice little ditty that would work well with some knowingly anachronistic band like The Decembrists playing it. I like the fact that the word 'hummingbird' is chopped down to 'H' in the title, like it's part of an old sign on the side of a building that is partially obscured by plaster and decades of grime.

Swan, swan hummingbird
hurrah, we're all free now
what noisy cats are we...

and

A pistol hot cup of rhyme
The whiskey is water, the water is wine
Marching feet, Johnny Reb, what's the price of heroes?

(I maintain that that's actually 'cup of brine', by the way.)

They end off with "Superman", which is a cover of a minor hit by an obscure '60's band called The Clique. I'm not sure why they did it, but I'm glad they did.

(By the way, for fans of lingering questions, that speeded-up tape thing at the beginning? RetroWeb.com gives it as:
(Godzilla doll opens in Japanese with "This is a special news report. Godzilla has been sighted in Tokyo Bay. The attack on it by the Self-Defense Force has been useless. He is heading towards the city. AAAAAGGGGHHHH!!!!!")

Which is nice. Anyway, I love 'em both, that's why they're here, these two albums, in a tie, which is rare for the Periodic Table.
One couldn't be without the other, I suppose?

A Place in Time

2009-07-20T16:16:00.001-07:00

Here is the stage set for The Decembrists, Andrew Bird and Blind Pilot. I realized then that I should have taken pictures of the actual musicians, later that evening, but everybody does that.
Seriously though; I should have shot the Decembrists at least. It was probably the most visually stunning show I've seen so far this year, with David Byrne being a close second.

(Taylor Swift gets an honorable mention third place, though, for the water gag. I'm sure it will be industry standard in a year or so, but for now it's novelty to have a machine that spells out words in falling drops of water. She'd sing, "oh," and the word 'OH' would appear amidst the waterfall. So this means that there's what amounts to a sprinkler up there that is controlled by a computer program that strictly polices each and every spout so that it shoots the exact amount at the exact moment.
Like I say, once upon a time not everybody had a video wall, either. I notice that the Jonas Bros. already have a water gag too, so get ready.)

I was getting ready to dismiss this entire two-day event as Twee Fest '09, and to be sure, it kind of is. But it was still good, goddamn it, and I appreciate that people working this particular angle can make money this way.
And that angle would be: pretty music, played on quirky instruments. Vaguely perverse lyrics and knowing archaism, but the general vibe being that everything's just fine. Ladies in pretty dresses and the men cleaned up just nicely enough. Whistling is allowed here, and the occasional weird breaks of classic rock are both ironic and one hundred per cent serious homage.

At first, I was sighing to my cynical ass self, noting that Andrew Bird's road guy was a hipster charicature right down to the Bianchi single speed he brought with him. Also, a light blue terrycloth shirt with enormous collar, turqoise belt buckle, feathered hair and cookie-duster moustache. I think I can actually be forgiven for rolling my eyes and saying, look at this fucking hipster...
On another level, I was kind of thinking of rock journalism of the past, and how so often the writer is right there at the right time; it's clear that they're right in the middle of a pivotal point in history. I was thinking; maybe ten years ago. Maybe when it was a bit harder -well, impossible- to envision that orchestral pop with strong countrypolitan tinges might sell out small outdoor venues.

But really, this is the moment. Colin Meloy is a total hipster superstar. He is exactly what those who sell things might very well enjoy selling you. His songs will be in quirky rom-coms. They may very well show up in a televised attempt to sell you a certain brand of beer. He writes really catchy songs, and knows when to get the crowd to sing along. He also will awkwardly sandwich in a plea for health care reform, and how we all oughta bug Ron Wyden about it. It was charming, as opposed to annoying.
And the fans worship him/them. The whole thing had a decidedly revivalist vibe to it. On one hand, they were singing most of a song cycle/concept album, so the theatrical elements had to be there, but I get the feeling that this is the way it always is. Certainly for home town heroes come back to roost.

They did a stunning version of "Crazy On You" by Heart as one of the encores. It was sung by the two lady guest-vocalists, who were undulating and pointing at the audience, drawing them in. It was the moment -hardly the first- where we crossed right over irony and into appreciating a kickass song that, y'know, I always did like...
And there even was The Crazy. That nice little piece between outright clinical insanity and where the rest of us live. Where we are in the mysteries, feelin' the magic. This tends to be a collective thing.

These are hipsters growing up and having kids; the audience certainly reflected this. These are the people with the day jobs, and for the first time in pretty much all of our lives, they were watching people on the stage who were the same age, and had managed to quit theirs, to just do this for a living.

A Visit to scenic, historic, downtown Bureaucratic Hell

2009-07-14T12:00:00.000-07:00

So...You call 'em "processing fees"; I call 'em "bribes". Wait. Back up.

After Steve Miller was done rocking (us) baby, on Sunday night, we had a couple hours worth of running around in the rain. After this, I was doin' my usual and flying back down Marine Drive.
One headlight, yeah I know. Windshield fogged up due to faulty defrost system? Certainly! Speeding? Well, probably, but not as rash as it may appear.
In any case, this caught the attention of a Port of Portland police officer, who gave chase.

When I saw the lights in my rearview, I thought I was just going to be getting out of his way. When it became clear that his lights were for me, I got ready to sit there a while.
But then I thought: oh shit. Tygh Ridge, a year ago!

Yeah crap; now here was where I thought I might very well be goin' to jail. Just south of The Dalles, on our way up to Sherar's Bridge and ultimately to Shaniko and Antelope, we were stopped on the crest just above Tygh Valley by some Wasco County deputy. I was roaring to the top of that hill in the neighborhood of 90, since I was in the middle of nowhere and all. Also, I saw him immediately and pulled over. He did a thankful u-turn in the middle of the highway.

So the problem ultimately came down to us not really having up-to-date proof of insurance. We had the actual insurance, but the piece of paper validating this claim was not readily available. The officer gave me a ticket, with a court date.

When I called the county courthouse to try to change the date, the hescher piece of shit old lady who answered the phone immediately took umbrage to the idea that I'd actually go to trial in her town: "That's what we put the phone number on the back of the ticket for!" she yelled.
She explained (bitchily, pointlessly vindictive, in a manner that was hostile far beyond any possible explanation) that really what needed to happen was that I needed to fill out a form that the nice old redneck lady was about to send me, putting her out to a great extent as she made quite clear, that 'proved' that we had, in fact had valid insurance as of that day, and now all we needed to do was pay the fine that Wasco County had decided we needed to pay.

I did it. After this, nothing. No word on how much was to be paid, or why, for that matter.
I went through the months that followed with a vague suspicion at the back of my mind that something terrible would no doubt come of this, as we had the twin forces of bureaucracy and small-towny bullshit at work. I was right.

So I explained to the Port cop that I was on my way home, explained that 'home' was St. Johns, and that I'd been working at Edgefield that night. And he took my license and registration, went back to his car, staying there so very damn long that it was clear something bad was about to happen.
This was further confirmed by the arrival of a second cop. In my right-hand side-view, I could see the furtive approach of a uniformed lady who had a flashlight that may or may not have also concealed a gun. I tried not to stare openly at her.

After an eternity, the first cop returned and asked me to step out of the car. For my part, I was waiting to be arrested, and was already turning my back to the guy. No, he said, not that, but did I have any weapons? As always, my pockets were stuffed with tools that could potentially be used as weapons, but no...We talked.
"You seem like a stand-up guy," he said, "but..." 'But' was that apparently I'd been driving around with a suspended license since April. And the law said he had to impound my vehicle, take away my license.

He also said that if I pled guilty and showed up to the court date with proof of having my license reinstated, he'd recommend that all charges be dropped. The two cops and I stood there waiting for the tow truck, making nervous conversation about the upcoming shows at Edgefield. The man of the two is quite fond of the Gipsy Kings.

They did not offer me a ride home. Bee sleeps like a series E government bond, but I tried...It was now 1:30 A.M., and...She was asleep. I tried Fergie, who I knew would be up, relatively sober and in possession of a vehicle. He came and got me, and I thank him.

All right, so this meant:

A trip to the Port of Portland Police Bureau, which is a hole in the wall on the third floor of the airport. This was to find out where my car was. $20.00.

A trip to an impound lot that, thankfully, wasn't all that far from the airport. Shitty, needlessly hostile hescher woman behind the counter refuses to conduct business with anyone but Bee, who will be driving my car back.
"Fuckin' heschers. Everything's gotta be a problem," I tell Fergie as we stand outside. This costs me $148.00.

To the DMV, where it is pointed out that I still owe Wasco County $219.oo. After this gets paid, we need to give the DMV $75.00...For some reason. At this point, they indicate that I need a copy of my birth certificate to prove that I'm really me.

This necessitates a trip to the Bureau of Vital Records, armed with an actual stack of valid proof that I am who I am. What they really want is $20.00.

Back to the DMV, who would like $25.50. My picture is taken, which is transferred to a piece of paper that most businesses I know would not accept. I apparently will be getting the actual license in two to three weeks, unlike other people renewing their licenses, who received them on the spot.

That would be an accumulated $507.50, as it currently stands. If I end up also having to pay a fine for the burned out license plate light, that will tack on an additional $145.oo.

I'm well aware that I should have kept on calling The Dalles and asking what the hell they actually wanted, and who should I shovel my money at...But I guess I kind of hoped for that rare thing that does occasionally happen; bureaucracy's inherent ineptitude causes them to forget you.

It did the opposite, and in spades. The letter -if any- informing me of legal action being taken for non-payment of the ticket would have been sent to my last address, which we vacated in February. The letter that supposedly informed me that my license had been suspended was apparently sent to my old apartment over The Troika, where I haven't lived for three years.

But that's my fault too, as I have failed to consistently update the DMV as to my address change status over the last three years. Everybody else seems to be able to find me; my bank, whatever creditors I have, my many employers. So I need to assume in advance that a state bureau will not be able to do what pretty much every other entity in society can?

Like I say, I understand that people like money, and it's noteworthy how many of these governmental bodies (The Port P.D., DMV, Vital Records) would only take cash, which anyone will tell you is easily embezzled.
I understand that ya' gotta pay to play, and we all hold our noses and do this. But the DMV in particular asked money for something that looked like a redundancy. Twice.

I don't have some whiny anti-gummint screed here for you; I even don't mind paying taxes. However, this one is beyond stupid, and I seem to have no real redress, and I just wanted to say so.

Had I not been a relatively polite person by nature, no doubt it would have been worse.

No Time Is A Good Time For Sarah

2009-07-08T11:38:00.000-07:00

The day before Sarah Palin resigned -or whatever that really was- Jonah Goldberg wrote a column more or less telling her to shut up.

Or:

Dear Governor Palin,

You’re blowing it.

Hm. Gee, but you seemed to like her so much. What could possibly...

There’s a reason why the Left and much of the media establishment hated you from day one. Some hated you out of the fear that you might stop Barack Obama’s unfolding coronation. Others because you seemed to expose the snobbery, arrogance, and ideological pieties of elite feminism. Your beauty, your status as a working mom, your blue-collar husband, your bravery in taking on the political establishment in Alaska, your proud status as a pro-lifer and mother of a special-needs child: All of these things were — and are — deeply threatening to a secular left-wing cultural elite.

Although your being an idiot, on the other hand: that we found helpful.

He then points out that she has become a laughingstock (all one word, by the way, which I'm pretty sure it isn't), and even though she has a large appeal to the base...People like Jonah can see how 'the base' is fucking the Republican party.

Having said that, he really, really likes her, but...

...peddling a few platitudes and truisms about free markets and limited government is no substitute for really knowing what you’re talking about. Yes, you can talk well about the stuff you know — oil drilling, energy, etc. — but beyond your comfort zone, you fall back on bumper-sticker language that sounds fine to the people who already agree with you but is useless in winning over skeptics.

But he is forced to admit that she really has no business holding elected office. Yes, Republicans: these are your deeper thinkers, and the kind of candidates they dream up.

Then again, this is from National Review Online, which thinks that this is an example of advertising that will really bring in the dollars:

("Catch The Burning Flag"? Who the fuck allowed that one to see the light of day?)

So, all she ever had was charm and charisma. They all admit it now. And as it happens, even the ol' c&c is getting a bit stale, as she seems increasingly charmless, charisma-neutral.

And whiny. Hey, speaking of whiny,

President Bush had the same problem you do, which is why there’s a hunger for Republicans who can effectively articulate and sell our policies and philosophy. That’s why the wonks have the upper hand. Mitt Romney, Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, and other hands-on types are what the party wants and, frankly, needs.

Wow. Bobby Jindal as an example of 'articulate'. Amazing. And yes please Republicans: please let Things-That-Should-Not-Be like Mitt Romney try to explain things to people. Our national comedy hour is always the richer for it.

So here’s my advice. Stay home and do your job and your homework. You’ll still be a national figure come the primaries. But if you can’t surprise your detractors with your grasp of policy when you re-emerge on the national stage, you won’t win the nomination. More important, you won’t deserve to.

And the next day, she quit.

I am unaware of how to pronounce Ross Douthat's name. I'm thinking our options here are 'do whut?' or 'douche-hat', and I'm goin' with the second one. Try n' stop me.
Anyway, he's one of those people who is for some reason still trying to make me like Sarah Palin. And uh...

I'M SORRY! I JUST CAN'T QUIT LAUGHING AT THAT FUCKING PICTURE! I mean, look at the guy! The look of deep insecurity that has morphed over the years into automatic defensiveness! The soulful, probing "serious" look! The neck beard ? The jokes write themselves!

So anyway, he...ARE YOU TRYING TO FUCKING KILL ME? JE-SUS! KNOCK IT OFF! He would like you to know that you really, really owe Sarah an apology.

Had she refused John McCain, Palin would still be a popular female governor in a Republican Party starved for future stars. Her scandals would be the stuff of local politics, her daughter’s pregnancy a minor story in the Lower 48, her son Trig’s parentage a nonissue even for conspiracy theorists. There would still be plenty of time to ease into the national spotlight, to bone up on the issues, and to craft a persona more appealing than the Mrs. Spiro Agnew role the McCain campaign assigned to her.

Well hey Ross: if you're going to go that far, why don't you add 'and the Republican party would have done a better job finding someone who is actually qualified'?
And what's your problem with Judy Agnew? I'm askin'.

A Sarah Palin who stepped down for the sake of her family and her media-swarmed state deserves sympathy even from the millions of Americans who despise her. A Sarah Palin who resigned in the delusional belief that it would give her a better shot at the presidency in 2012 warrants no such kindness.

I had a Sarah Palin once. Turns out I was allergic, and had to get rid of it. Anyway, no I don't really have to have any sympathy for someone who consciously sought the spotlight, and yes, used her family as human shields at every opportunity. So what else ya' got, Douchehat?

In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

That last statistic is a crucial one.

Yes; the stupid have been tragically underrepresented up to now. Wait; I don't have a college education...

Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

"And then do absolutely nothing substantive beyond there..." Besides: merit's bad now? In what way could she be considered a success story?

With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

Those are damn fine comparisons, actually: a nutsack redneck who is remembered as the author of the Trail of Tears, and a crooked machine politician who grew up to sell all our asses to the National Security Administration.

Here are lessons of the Sarah Palin experience, for any aspiring politician who shares her background and her sex. Your children will go through the tabloid wringer. Your religion will be mocked and misrepresented. Your political record will be distorted, to better parody your family and your faith. (And no, gentle reader, Palin did not insist on abstinence-only sex education, slash funds for special-needs children or inject creationism into public schools.)

Oh. Science! I need to do a little research maybe, but I'm not at all comfortable with a quick, categorical denial like that.
And again: she forced said family into the spotlight, and when we all failed to love her for doing so, reacted with a sharp whine about how mean we all were. Fuck that. Grow up.

Sarah Palin is beloved by millions because her rise suggested, however temporarily, that the old American aphorism about how anyone can grow up to be president might actually be true.

That 'anyone' can is indeed inspiring. That 'someone who doesn't have a fucking clue' can is terrifying.

Stop that!

Now we hear the plaintive harmonica from Starship's "Sara", and their disappointed observation that "no time is a good time for goodbye". But also, toward the end of the song, how -due to a lyrical conceit given in a round- they seem to suggest that "no time is a good time for Sa-ra...Sa-a-a-ara!"

Well, no shit. I coulda told you that ten months ago.

Fog and Drums

2009-07-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Robert McNamara, subject of the Simon and Garfunkel song "A Simple Desultory Phillipic, or How I was McNamara'd into Submission"*, is dead. He also, in his time, was head of the World Bank, president of Ford Motor Company, and Secretary of Defense under Lyndon Johnson.

On the Fourth of July, I was listening to an old mix I made, years and years ago. It had The Clash's "Sean Flynn" on it, which may very well be my favorite song by them. The song is about the son of Errol Flynn, who went to Vietnam during the war, and was last seen riding his motorcycle toward enemy lines. Whatever became of him remains unclear to this day.
A nice metaphor for the confusion and general psychedelic hell the whole enterprise seems to have been. The song itself sounds like a memory: all dub guitar wandering away into oblivion, echoing eternally. It sounds like something or someone that you're forgetting, with its repeated refrain of "The past is always a closing door..."

And:
"You know he heard the drums of war/ each man knows what he's looking for..."

Did we maybe go there seeking oblivion? Knowing damn well we were seeking it? No: we were entirely rational and mathematical about it, only to realize later that maybe our entire thing was going away.
Or as Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon put it: "If the Twentieth Century has taught us anything, it's that the white man is through in Asia."

I've compared McNamara to William Tecumseh Sherman before. Both were businessmen who were called to duty specifically to quickly finish a war. Sherman responded by going the absurdly reductive route: he destroyed and burned everything in his path until he hit the sea. Then he went back and did it all over again.
McNamara was a little different. He wanted to inject a lot more in the way of calm, cool analysis into the entire war thing, and thought that there was no reason why science couldn't conquer a guerrilla force. The generals who reported to him would have preferred a Sherman-like option, and soon learned that lying to the Secretary was the easiest way to go.

That was McNamara's excuse for the rest of his life: they lied to me. But if he was so damn smart, why does he seem to have suddenly lost his objectivity and incisiveness on this one subject? If you're very, very good at examining all angles of a problem, you also can tell who isn't being straight with you.
And indeed, he did have an adversarial relationship with the Pentagon. Pretty much a weird mirror image of what Donald Rumsfeld had going on later, except that Rumsfeld was the one that wasn't thinking clearly, and the generals have sort of proved themselves to be the sane ones lately.

And he made the entirely valid point that morality takes on a rather different face in wartime. If killing is traditionally viewed as wrong, but war and conquest are the rule rather than the exception in history, you have yourself a sticky philosophical dilemma right out of the gate. The same holds true for the doctrine of killing as many people as possible to effect a quick end to the killing.
So now you have a question for your fine, fine mind: how to kill as many people as possible, but quickly, so as to lessen the general horror for humanity at large?
And there's that other piece of history coming back to intrude: McNamara's relationship with General Curtis LeMay.

LeMay was McNamara's superior in World War Two. LeMay was also concerned with ending a war quickly. He felt that the easiest way to achieve this was by more or less making it impossible to be alive in Japan until such time as they surrendered. Endless amounts of incendiary bombs on all the major population centers. Constant fire from above on a society largely built out of wood. It worked.
Now, later on, LeMay had the same idea for Vietnam. McNamara thought it a bad idea. Ultimately, LeMay left, and later tried to become Vice-President. He also is often quoted as saying that had the U.S. lost WWII, he and his staff would have been prosecuted as war criminals.

But they weren't, because they won. The U.S., strangely, was not winning in Vietnam. They just kept shovelling more and more troops at it, but to no avail. There was a creeping surrealism: how could this happen? The further into the thing they all got, the less it made sense, and the more the military establishment and especially the military contractors wanted total war. The nature of the mission became unclear to the point of incoherence.

The Clash, again:
"Rain on the leaves and the soldiers sing
you never ever hear anything..."

This became McNamara's nightmare as it became everybody else's. He later came to see that whole Domino Theory was idiotic, but by then the whole thing had taken on a life of its own. He knew the thing was wrong, and knew it was un-winnable. He said nothing, was soon to be gone.
Later on, he saw the same thing happening with Iraq. He said nothing publicly, though was candid about it to some interviewers, off the record.

The "Surge" in Iraq was a fantastic shadow of "Vietnamization", in that it was widely credited with winning a war that had not yet been won. The generals -in the case of the Surge- had quietly decided that while military objectives were still important, all that "hearts and minds" shit might just be more important. That building a working relationship with what community remains is the true job of those who are forced to go kill by silly goddamn theorists and politicians who know that the only thing their polity asks for is more blood.

So maybe there's hope. Maybe people do actually learn from history. Not like I've seen much evidence of it, but...

In any case, "The Fog of War" still stands as the final word on this. Watch Robert McNamara crumbling, physically, as he belatedly says what he really thinks. Hell, check this:

As he crumbled, toward the end of his life, he saw what remained of the edifice of his self-delusion crumbling, too. Not just the things he knew were bullshit but he couldn't contradict; but the things he had told himself, to keep himself sane. People always apologize too late.

*(The S&G song is actually making fun of Bob Dylan, and all who would make lame stabs at being political while also being under-informed. Doesn't really have shit to do with Bob McNamara at all.)

Attack of the Meme, again

2009-07-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

George has hit me again with a list of questions. Many, many other people got this one too.
I like the fact that he included a list of "mandatory freedoms", which allow the respondent to mutate the question to their liking. It would play hell with the coding process were this actual research, but the human face of the thing shows so much more easily through.

So, let's answer...

25 Very Specific Questions

1. Greatest peak experience/s? (That is to say a positive or ecstatic experience/s that fundamentally influenced your life.)
Sheeit. They just keep getting higher and higher. I've learned lots, seen lots, and my advice is generally: do as many things as you possibly can before you die. Past a certain point, they're all peak experiences.

2. Nadir experience/s? (That is, a negative experience/s that fundamentally influenced your life.)
Well, I've spent a lot of my life alienating entire groups of people. Or being collectively shunned by them. Sometimes it was entirely my fault, sometimes entirely theirs, often a mixture of the two. And it learned me how? Be your own best friend, be at home with yourself. Don't think you're gonna do all that living and being yourself later. You can't not be yourself. People are either going to like you or not like you, and there's often fuck-all you can do about it. Be your own entertainment.

3. Had any paranormal experiences?
Yes, although I am often -even in the moment- noting to myself that this is still something that is happening due to my mind disagreeing with itself, or is the product of something that I don't understand yet.

4. Biggest irrational fear?
Not sure I have one. Can't think of one, in any case.

5. Biggest completely reasonable fear?
I really worry that I'll be brain-damaged in a completely random way. I fear this far worse than I fear death or even being crippled.

6. Biggest irrational aversion? (This is not the same as your biggest irrational fear.)
Which is to say a dislike, eh? Video games. I think they're stupid.

7. What are your core metaphysical belief/s? (N.B. By metaphysical belief I mean any principle that you think is true and live your life by but cannot be empirically or scientifically proven to others who don't believe it.)
Nice to see somebody finally define that one. I don't have one/those as such; I'm more of a "you're living in it" kind of a guy. Every time I've ever tried to codify it, it collapses on me. There are some key tenets, but that's all they'll ever be: I've found that it's safer that way.

8. What do you think is the ultimate fate of humanity?
To finally make this fine place somewhere that can no longer sustain humanity, I fear and strongly suspect.

9. What do you believe will happen to you after you die?
Dirtin' in th' ground, to quote the nice Mr. Waits there. And this belief, as I've said before, comforts me in what I suspect is exactly the same way someone who believes in an afterlife is comforted by their belief.

10. Which do you trust more, science or religion?
Science. Although -and this is a big one- science can also be dogmatic at times, and that is where/when it (and its pal Rationality) fail.
Religion though; I understand the comfort it apparently provides to lots and lots of other people, but I just think it's disgusting and wrong, and brings out the worst in a species that doesn't need any further justifications for the rank inhumanity in its ranks.

Now, it wouldn't be inaccurate to point out some hypocrisy on my part here: I'm willing to dismiss good works done by religious people and organizations as being more due to the innate goodness of people, and the manifold atrocities attributable to religion as being all religion's fault. I don't really think that people are innately good, although their self-interest coincides with the well-being of others, and that usually is motivation enough. Heh. There's a lot to this subject, of course...

11. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 2500 BCE and 1 BCE?
I wanna say the Tao Te Ching, but I'm not sure. Surely somebody Greek belongs here...

12. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 1 BCE and 1000 AD?
Probably Suetonius' The Twelve Caesars.

13. Favorite book (fiction or non-fiction) written between 1000 AD and 1800 AD? (There have been enough lists of favorite books that were composed mostly of things written between 1800 and the present so we'll skip that.)
This is a rough one. Most of the really good Sufi parables were written in this time, and we just narrowly miss being able to include Mark Twain. All the great Enlightenment thinkers fall in here, plus lots and lots of fantastic political treatises.
So anyway, I don't know.

14. What is your philosophical grounding? (If this is the same as your metaphysical beliefs then give your core ethical principles.)
I tend to be sharply reductionist, and I recognize that this often makes me a pain in the ass to deal with. Sorry, everybody. Actually, for a quick intro, see my answer to #2.

15. What political opinion do you hold that is most inconsistent with your other political opinions?
Well, the death penalty does no good in the area of deterrence, and we have decades worth of data to prove this. It is vindictive, pointless and often guided by shit reasoning regarding what our lesser minds insist on calling "race". However, the outlet it provides the victims' families seems to have some kind of closure effect, and I can think of far greater injustices being perpetrated in greater numbers...So yeah, it's dumb and unnecessary, but I'm not per se against it.

16. What makes a good person good?
I often boil it down to 'a quality of easygoing sanity'.

17. Aesthetically speaking which is more important, audience reception or creator satisfaction?
They're of equal importance, and take on or lose value dependent upon what you're trying to achieve.

18. Favorite painting/s?
Probably 'View of Toledo' by El Greco. Turns out The Greek there had something seriously wrong with him, and he really actually saw things that way, and we're all the richer for it.

The thing is, there's plenty of Impressionists and early Asians and Caravaggio in general I'd like to throw in here. Turner. Bierstadt. I can't really pick. And you should go do an image search of James Lavadour. He's an Eastern Oregonian by birth, lives here now. He does masterful pairings of the completely abstract with the wholly organic. Listen at me: I sound like an asshole!

19. Favorite living hero/heroine?
I'm not being flippant or dismissive when I say that I honestly don't have any.

20. Favorite dead hero/heroine?
Clarence Darrow?

21. Most important goal/s in life?
Is to be happy with the life I lead, which I am.

22. Details or big picture? (I know both are important. What I want to know is your overall leaning and if you consider that leaning a strength or a weakness.)
Well, big picture, although my big picture includes an encyclopedic overview of the details. It's like an aerial view of the freeway system encircling a city: you can see the overall pattern, but also the individual vehicles.

23. Depressive or anxious?
I tend toward the depressive. (Cue Bob Hoskins as the evil manager guy in "Pink Floyd's The Wall" movie, shaking the uptight hotel manager and screaming, "HE'S AN AHHHTIST!" over Bob Geldof's slumped, o.d.'d form.) It's more romantic.

24. Pick a super power, you only get one.
Invisibility. I already have other super powers, but most of them do me no good in my current form.

25. What would your diet look like if there were no physical or nutritional consequences?
More or less what it looks like right now.

That was satisfying. For as much shit as I talk about these things, they serve as awesome jumping-off points. I was gonna do my usual and write a Fourth o' July essay, but no. The lady of the house and I have sat here all damn morning doing this. Thanks, George.

44 Lines about 88 Topics?

2009-06-28T15:06:00.000-07:00

Internet memes just don't make it with me. (Although when th' Tugboat Cap'n invited me to participate in one specifically about books four years ago, I quickly hopped right on.) So when I was asked recently by George to take part in another one, I sort of went 'meh'.

But consider that you can use any manner of lenses to look at a thing.

1. Do you like bleu cheese? Yes.
2. Have you ever been drunk? Sure.
3. Do you own a gun? Yup.
4. What flavor of Kool Aid was your favorite? The powdered form of Nestea iced tea.
5. Do you get nervous before doctor appointments? Not generally.

6. What do you think of hot dogs? I believe that to love a hot dog is to love yourself!

Awright!

7. Favorite Christmas movie? 'It's A Wonderful Life'.

8. What do you like to drink in the morning? Coffee. Lots of it.

9. Can you do push-ups? Many!

10. What's your favorite piece of jewelry? Don't wear any.

11. Favorite hobby? Now this one raises questions. What's a hobby, as opposed to something you regularly do and enjoy, but not necessarily with some sort of intent, or for that matter, what if your job is also kind of your hobby? Does 'socializing' count?

12. Do you have ADD? Nope.
13. What's your favorite shoe? Not sure I have one.
14. What's your middle name? Adventure.

15. Name three thoughts at this exact moment. Frank, Mart-Bell and The Amazing Dynamo.

16. Name three drinks that you regularly drink. Maker's rocks & a glass o' water, A Grape Soda (actually Monopolova vodka with soda water and a floater of Marie Brizzard Parfait Amour), an Arnie Palmer (Jack Daniels' optional).

17. Current worry? I work in an industry where I could be killed, crippled or catastrophically brain-damaged at any time. I need to work in a clear space, mentally. Or, as I put it recently, somewhere else and on entirely another topic:
"And then they all died..." is the real punchline to every joke. But y'know, only a fucking tool meditates on it too long. I'm also very likely to get old, and my body will cease to function as masterfully as it currently does. That would be my reward for Not Dying. Call it what you will; dark cauldron o' shadows or whatever. Enjoy your freakin' life, jack.

18. Current hate right now? Aw man, I'm too much of a zen warrior about that shit. 'There is no enemy'. Well, yes there is...The tyranny of the mediocre? How hard it is to communicate even basic things to most people? How expertise is looked upon as a bit too effete, and is to be replaced by shouted, repeated Opinion?

19. Favorite vacation? Dreams.

20. How did you bring in the new year? Arguing with my girlfriend. I'm a class act.

(Stop. Did you just start talking about death? What did anyone else on that message board say?
"...saying that 'only a tool meditates on it too long' makes all of the great majority of great artists in the world into tools. Though, those who mediate on it on message boards are probably guilty of this, i.e. me, but I see that we have become a society so shallow, that thinks everything can be cured by technology, will have a lot of trouble getting old."

To which I replied:
"Well, in all honesty, art to one side, perhaps most of the artists in history were indeed a royal pain in the ass to actually be around...

Also, I agree: the main concern of any media orgasm like this has a great deal more to do with the individual need to see one's self as unique, and oh what a tragedy it will be when a soul such as your own passes from this plane.

After which we have religion, which generally promises that your soul will continue, and one so unimpeachably wonderful as yourself can live Forever!

I actually wasn't being dismissive with that 'tool' thing: be honest with yourself about your mortality -how could you not?- but remember that there's plenty of other things you can do between your birth and your death: that's all."

Can you tell? We were talking about Michael Jackson!)

21. Where would you like to go? The past.

22. Name three people who will complete this. Probably nobody I know in the immediate vicinity. They're pretty stupid questions, and so far I can't think of any better substitutes. If I do, I'll start an internet meme, I guess.

23. Do you own slippers? So far, I've been stymied in my attempts to find slippers that I actually like. Generally, it's garden clogs for me.

24. What color shirt are you wearing right now? Black, as is often the case.
25. Do you like sleeping on satin sheets? What are you asking?
26. Can you whistle? Like a champ.
27. Favorite color? As a rule, blue.
28. Would you like to be a pirate? Why? You recruiting?

29. What songs do you sing in the shower? Oddly, the shower is one of the few places I don't sing. These days, if I'm singing out loud, it's "The Porpoise Song" by The Monkees.

30. What's your favorite girl's name? Osa!
31. Favorite boys' name? Don't have one, really. Archibald!
32. What's in your pocket right now? Keys. Impressed?

33. Last thing that made you laugh? I laugh so goddamn much every day, I don't even know where to begin.
Actually, this comment thread about the death of Billy Mays:

Whoever delivers the eulogy at his funeral should SHOUT THE ENTIRE THING!

LET US PRAY. AND THEN LET US WIPE OUR EYES WITH A SHAM-WOW.

I HAVE HAD CAUSE TO WALK IN YOUR WORLD AND TRY TO UNDERSTAND! I SHALL LET THE PAST BE THE PAST, AND FOR YOU BILLY MAYS, YOU KNEW THAT THE COMBINATION OF THE OXICLEAN AND THE MIGHTY PUTTY, WAS SOMETHING MORE DEADLY THAN WE COULD IMAGINE!

He had apparently just signed on to shill for Taco Bell. I can't even imagine what that would have been like.

YOU SHUT YOUR WHORE MOUTH WHEN WE'RE CELEBRATING THE LIFE OF BILLY MAYS!

IT GETS INTO THE MATTING!

IT GETS INTO THE PADDING!

IT PUTS THE LOTION IN THE BASKET!

THERE'S YER MILDEW!

THIS BURRITO IS PACKED WITH CHEESE AND BEEF! YOU'D NEED A JACKHAMMER TO POUND IN MORE BEEF AND CHEESE!

(All of those lines were delivered by different people. Isn't the internet wonderful?)

34. Best bed sheets as a child? Pass.

35. Worst injury you ever had as a child? Oh my: um, either the one time when I was running down a hill with a rusty tailpipe in my hand, and narrowly avoided plunging it in my eye but did smack myself in the eyebrow, requiring eight stitches, or the time when me and a couple guys were playing "chicken" with a lawn dart, and I got darted in my right shoulder. I have faint scars from both of these injuries to this day.

36. Do you love where you live? Portland? Yeaaahhh...Most days. Our house? Sure, I suppose. The corn was well beyond knee-high by the Fourth of July though, in our back yard. I do love the back yard.

37. Don't you just WISH you knew... what made people tick? I don't understand that ellipsis...It might be a transcription error. In any case, through a lifetime of observation and experience, I know pretty fucking well what makes most people tick. The problem comes in how exactly you go about dealing with them, and how honest you can be about the source of their problems.
I mean, some people (okay; lots of them) are pests of the worst sort, and oddly enough, it's because they wish to be relevant in the lives of others. Now, would my telling them that help in any way? Certainly not; and it's hard enough to talk to a pest at all and keep it short: if they feel that you've insulted them in some way, you'll be standing there two hours from now, trying to soothe their hurt feelings. No: tell them how much they're alienating everybody else. That'll get it done.

38. Who is your loudest friend? Oh you, The Internet.
No. George.

39. How many dogs do you have? Two. Here they are:

From left: Goofus, Gallant.

40. Does someone have a crush on you? If so, I am unaware of it.

41. What is your favorite book? Good God. Do you know me? If I start talking about this, we'll be here all day. A better question for me would be;
What books do you wish you had enough money to buy right now?
There's a new translation of Herotodus' The Histories that looks awesome. Also; I just found out that Robert Graves wrote his own version of The Iliad, and it's called The (anger? fury?) of Achilles. Oh my gaahhhd.

42. What is your favorite candy? Hm. Dunno. Salty caramels from Pix?

43. Favorite sports team? Don't have one.

44. What song do you want played at your funeral? Sheeit. If you know me at all, you know we'll be talking about this all day. However, somebody does need to remember to play "Across the River" by the High Llamas.

Write on o' yer own?

45. Sweet or Savory?
Savory.

A letter from a Flower to a Garden, or perhaps the Other Way Around

2009-06-24T14:41:00.001-07:00

So, after the Fall Out Boy show at the Expo Center a few months back, we found a sealed envelope lying on the floor. Upon opening, we found a letter to one Trace Dempsey Cyrus, son of Billy Ray and brother of Miley. He seems to be the front man for something called Metro Station, who had opened that evening.

The letter was from a fan, and again, hadn't been opened. The fan was either a twelve year old girl or some adult with a wicked sense of humor. Let's read:

Thank you. Thank you and the boys for putting your fans before your fame. For everything.

('Don't feel bad about not being famous', I believe is what she's saying here.)

Thank you for signing my Outsiders book in November, page 149 right on Stay Gold Ponyboy. Thank you for that hug, after I gave you that picture I drew of you. Thank you for signing my glass heart with your name and re-signing it later that night because it rubbed off.

(And thank you Fan, for giving me some images in that last sentence I could really do without.)

Thanks for grabbing my hand, and singing to me. And for saying, "I LOVE YOU TOO BABE." I'm sure you say it alot, but unlike many other celebs, you, Trace, you mean it when you say you love your fans. Thank You

(Thine is the Kingdom and the Glory, Forever and Ever, World Without End.)

Your fame, everything you've accomplished, it was all on your own babe (heart symbol) Millions of people everyday, see you as the talented, sweet, strong, independent, inked, pierced, drop dead sexy guy you are...all over the world! Look what you and the boys have come to!

(Yesss Trace...Loook at your life. You thought that when you got all those tatooes and piercings, your fans might not be pre-teen girls. But deals with Satan are like that: tricky.)

I was a winner for "Be Our Top Friend". I was very first actually. Im so blessed! You don't know how that made me feel! (Heart symbol)

(It has been pointed out by sharper cultural commentators than myself that any boy band you could conceive of will find at least some level of fame, for a while, anyway. It's like a license to print money. Briefly.)

Also, on Stickam you left me a :] in my comments, that was amazing! You took time to send me that, to recognize me. Metro Station, you truly love your fans (Heart symbol) And we love you! I LOVE YOU TO NO END!

(Here we have come to a place of pathos. [Also, the first sentence wouldn't have made any sense at all in English as of -say- fifteen years ago. Ever think about that?] Anyway, it's nice that shit like that can make her day, and it's also sooo sooo very sad that shit like that makes her day.)

When I hear your music, I wanna be home in Alhambra, LOS ANGELES county. Back in California! I probably saw you, Trace, at that Burbank Mall ShoeStore or Mason selling pretzells. :)

(For starters, I gotta give her credit that 'pretzells' is the first spelling error I've found in a relatively lengthy letter. Secondly, imagine if this letter was actually written by a spurned ex-girlfriend/ex-bandmember who wants to really, really get under Trace's skin. Hey pretzel boy! Whyncha go back to Burbank?)

Then it says that she's '17 forever (heart symbol)', and that Trace is her 'forever shining star'. Then her name, cell phone number, and "STAY GOLD PONYBOY, STAY GOLD" in huge letters.

She name-checks an uncle in Texas who is a 'kickass tattoo artist'. "And if you read this and you're still in Oregon, let me buy you dinner!" and then,

"LOL. Whatever you guys want!" Hm. "Whatever"? And, have you noticed how 'LOL' keeps on being used in sentences where people couldn't possibly be laughing out loud?

Again we get the cell number. Then her MySpace page, and her Stickam page. Her gmail account. Her identity at both metrostationunderground.com and metrostationmusic.com. Then there's this weird diamond-shaped design she drew, with the names of each of the band members represented in four facets.

Finally: "Trace, I'd be very grateful if you come with me to get inked for the first time (heart symbol) haha (heart symbol)"

Ladies: let's just go ahead and not put our personal information inside of letters that will almost certainly never find their way to your idols' hands, okay? I mean, this was found by a bunch of filthy, nasty stagehands with nothing but time in between gigs: you don't know us, girl.
And yeah, either you end up on that rented touring bus or you don't, you know?

But really this is mostly here as a historical document. There are many letters like this one, but this one is in my possession.

Why We Suck

2009-06-18T09:39:00.000-07:00

Oof. It's Donna Barstow!

I hadn't even heard of her until Josh Fruhlinger (also known as The Comics Curmudgeon, and also also known as Cartoon Violence) started making fun of her. Even then, I couldn't tell whether or not I was perhaps ridiculing a developmentally-disabled five-year-old (who had strangely been given a job drawing political cartoons), and maybe should stop.

But she's an adult of some kind, and the fact that she can't create a coherent one-panel narrative is graced and enhanced by the fact that she seems to have lots of time on her hands, and answers any criticism of her fine self first person. Like the picked-upon kid in grade school who finally just screams, "YOU LEAVE ME ALOOONE!", this doesn't make things any easier.
As a rule, she shows up and starts ranting a lot of underinformed things about the Fair Use doctrine, and starts threatening lawsuits and/or server crashes. Between her lack of artistic talent, inability to make a simple joke and propensity for freaking out in public, she serves as the poster child for Why Editorial Cartoons Are Stupid, basically.

How did I put that? Oh yes:
"How to make an already unfunny joke even less funny: have one of your unfunny strawmen attempt to explain the punchline within the context of the joke.
You can do this with anything. Two (generic people, animals, items) walk into a (bar, police station, the White House) and say, “Gee, (easily generalized-about group) are sure going to (like/not like) this (thing that is going on, or is not going on)!”

But did you follow that first hyperlink up top? I haven't been able to export it back to here, so it's only a link, but that's where she becomes a special case. More on this to come.

So here's exhibit A.

Donna attempts to make the most common joke known to humanity (possibly the most common joke told among primates): Men Be Like Dis, Wimmin Be Like Dat.

But she can't do it, because her reasoning apparatus has been compromised or something. For one thing, it's not an especially funny scenario, nor is it realistic. In what I think she's showing us here, these people are already dating (or at least he just keeps showing up and watching her TV). Despite this fact, he uses a phrase that probably a stranger/maybe a distant acquaintance/no one at all would use.

And then we note how insensitive the male beast is (muted trumpet sound effect)...

Exhibit B:

Does this or does this not look like something that a seven-year-old who has listened to their parents talking politics for half a minute might draw? I certainly did, when I was kid: I came from a family of newspaper people, and wanted to be thought Clever.

But what is the pistachio supposed to represent? What are the squiggly lines? What does this actually say about the specific topic under discussion?

It's almost a political statement. But not really.

Now this, this here's a political statement, I guess.
If you had thought before that perhaps Donna is one of those people who would describe themselves as Conservative, consider the name that she copyrights under, which is "The Opposite of Wrong".
So now I feel like it's not too cruel to call her dumber than Glenn McCoy. At least he can actually make a point, regardless of how badly.

You can feel here how there's an undercurrent of anger at something, but...There's at least two attempted jokes going one here, and neither of them work. Honestly: what the hell is the joke, as laid out by its author?

We're back to a gender critique of some sort. The caption, which isn't available here, was "Paging Captain Jack Sparrow".
This image originally appeared on doubleX, who should know better. So should Slate, and the New Yorker. Her shit is everywhere, and I'm wondering why this is. What could she possibly have on them?

The fun thing is, once you get beyond making fun of how retarded she is, the assholes on the left end of the spectrum start coming out of the woodpile. I mean, there is a special kind of idiocy that allows one to create a sentence like:

"Racist cartoonist Donna Barstow, who is here seen being responsible for racist cartooning on the subject of swine flu, has unsurprisingly dabbled in racist cartoons before."

Well, thanks for that. Then they go on to get all frothy about the stupid cartoon where she renders Barack Obama as a Chia Head. This cartoon, like all of her cartoons, is underinformed to put it nicely. Not living where anyone else lives, to put it another. But to immediately jump to 'racism!' is...Ah, 'typical', is what it is.

Even better? Late in the comment thread, we get to meet the face of Donna that one could describe as homophobic -or could they? Because that cartoon doesn't make any sense, either.
She says so herself:

"Am I being disrespectful? Or funny? Only an editorial cartoonist knows for sure. I was surprised when Proposition 8, here in California, got picked up by gays all over the country as a rallying cry. I thought it was a state by state thing. I mean, didn’t Massacusetts say yes? And maybe other states."

So let's see...You aren't being funny. I can say that for certain...And I guess that if you're unable to marry in California, you could always move to Massachusetts?

But let none of this deter The Womanist, who wrote this amazing piece of freighted wordification. She starts off by referring to our (demonstrably, I believe) brain-damaged subject as a "pearl clutcher", which is a term The Womanist came up with all on her own.

And so we start to see how stupidity and shit reasoning beget themselves. Donna has a job publishing things that seem so full of political import, but mean absolutely nothing, and seem diagnosable. Renee publishes pointless diatribes with some of the worst circular logic I've seen outside of freshman year seminar, and receives the approval of others who don't reason so well...Which may very well be most people. These particular fish just happen to love their purported victim status.

So, since I can't seem to find a copy of that cartoon that will allow itself to be dragged back here (it appears on her blog), let me lay it out for you:

A white man and a white woman are seated on a couch. They are watching a television that has an poorly drawn image that nonetheless is clearly supposed to be Barack Obama. The white man has a string of words emitting from his mouth. They read, “I can’t believe it’s been 100 days and he’s still standing. Do you think it’s like Reaper, and he made a deal with the Devil?”

The comic appears in the context of some stupid little story about how her favorite teevee shows are being cancelled, like 'Reaper'. Then she suggests that somebody already should have shot the President by now. Good fucking lord, Donna. Get help.

Gin n' Platonic

2009-06-17T08:14:00.000-07:00

Oh 'Strictly Platonic' section of Craigslist, why do you exist? Well, this fits the bill:

I found a wheelchair and I have some flowers I stole from the cemetery - m4w - 24 (SE PDX)

Yes, indeedy. Wanna push and be pushed, ride the MAX and take up too much room? Or, better yet, have a good time and not take life seriously? Srsly.

email me back, life's short.

** ** **

See? Direct, to the point, random as fuck and not specifically looking for sex, like the majority of the posts in this strange, confused section.

Perhaps it's just a place for the author of this one -simply titled "some exersize"- to go besides 'Rants and Raves':

I'm thinkin its time to get some exersize, maybe some runs or jumping rope? I feel like I need to be challenged when I run. Like a race. Anyone interested. Not so much in the racing...not trying to scare anyone off.

Perhaps you enjoy weird euphemisms, and have found a homophone for "assburger".

It looks like a romantic relationship that I was in is falling apart. That is why I am not seeking a romantic relationship right now.I would like some somewhat regular phone company to help me get through this time.

It was not my idea to end the relationship that I was in. The person that I was with found that relatonships are too demanding. I am sure that this is infact the case because I didn't really "demand " that much.

Things deteriorated to the point that it was impossible to do fun things anymore. She was somewhat of an "asperger" and from time to time it was pretty hard to read where things were going. Still. I cared about her very much.

I am a good and interesting conversationalist, and like to listen as much as talk. I would be interested in hearing from anyone interested in engaging in dialogue on modern realtionships or other interesting subjects.

There's lots and lots of these:

Hello ladies lonely looking to chillax and smoke some good chronic.. so if u wanna chill hit me up...

HELLZ 2 DA NOEZ OFFICER! I enjoy chillaxing as much as the next lady lonely, but I have the strangest feeling that this would immediately become something other than platonic.

Speaking of which...

I am 59 years old,relatively good looking,good job,good home,good company very good health,seriously looking for a decent woman 45-53 to get married,you must be classy,good looking must love sex,prefer blond with pale skin,must be able to come and live with me for six months NO Rent,No utility,i pay for all then both decide to get married,i know if you live with me for 2 weeks you want to get married.I love sex very much,love weekend trips,i workout every day and i am in a great shape.i am very caring,loving and very generous.Please NO provider,NO drugs.I will send photo through regular email not craigslist.let's get started and get married

Okay, so you're a little unclear on what 'platonic' means. Okay, you're a lot unclear. NO (health care?) provider? Despite his love for sex and weekend trips, he hates doctors? But yes, if you are as classy as he (and nothing bespeaks class quite like the word 'classy') you will endure a two week probationary period, after which you will both decide to get married. If not...Death?

So I am cuirous about who you like to date. Would you date me if you knew that I am nicer looking for my age? Remember I am not 18. I am hard working and monogomous. Would you date me if you knew I was a really good kisser? Would you want to date me if you knew I was a very good cook and keep my house clean and spotless? Would you want to date me if you knew I am not a gym bunny but take care of myself? Would you want to date a guy like me knowing probably once a week I would try to do something special for you? You know, maybe an extra nice meal, a sexy massage or have your bath drawn and tell you since you work so hard too you should do nothing tonight. I guess the biggest question is: Would you date me if you knew I was positive. Curious how many I lost with that last one. Wonder who will respond?

For one thing, the Socratic method isn't recommended here. It sounds like those rhetorical questions rendered by a non-English-speaker that show up in teevee commercials for 1-900 numbers: "How does sexy talk turn you on?", and "What do you like most about me on our first date? My smile?"
Matter o' fact, that is what's particularly wrong with this one: it asks too many hypotheticals. Yes, I hate an extra nice meal. I prefer my massages un-sexy, as supposedly you and I will just be platonic, and above all else, don't try to be cute about being HIV positive.

Friendship with aVoluptuous Fun Women - m4w - 30 (Bvrt)

Hello to all the fun Voluptuous outgoing women.

I am 30 years old, average guy, with no drama, and no baggage. I do enjoy going out watching all type of movies, going to concerts, watching all types of sports,going for a bike ride, walking around, drinking, dancing, and just enjoying time with family and friends durring a great sunny day at a bbq. I do sometimes enjoy giving back rubs, talking, and wearing lingerie around the house, and watching old episodes of tv shows.

I live in a nice area in beaverton, I do work, and I also have a car that I drive.

** ** **
(And he illustrates it with this. On a related note, the jpeg itself is named "maninbra", which sort of sounds like a fantastic Evil Villain Name, if pronounced a certain way, but of course still resolves itself to "man in bra" if you pronounce it another.)

Don't you just love how he sorta casually snuck in the 'oh, and I'd like to wear your undergarments' part of his missive? At first, after only a casual read, I had assumed that the picture is a suggestion for how you should look, should you choose to be his friend. But no. No.

I was with him until he got to the "old episodes of TV shows" part. Freak.

This one is laid out as though it were a song. Try to sing it! (I did.)

I would love to have a female friend to hike with!
I've been here 6 months. I haven't hiked yet.
I'm scared to hike alone.

I'm thinking of someone who has a deep reverence for nature.
kindness to animals. healthy food, healthy living. artsy/outdoorsy. indie music.
That sort of thing.
Not that we'll TALK that much during the hike. I adore the silence of nature, wild places.
But it's nice to vibe on a non-verbal level with the person you're hiking with.

I'm present, philosophical and psychological and an animist.

I have sturdy shoes and a backpack. I like day hikes or the idea of just a couple of hours.
I'm open and flexible.
If we got along, maybe we could go camping!!

DON'T TALK TO HIM! SHUT UP! HE'S ENJOYING THE MAJESTY OF IT ALL, GODDAMN IT! It's strange to see the word "animist" outside of an anthropology text. I mean, no one ever describes themselves that way, do they? They'd have to be awfully 'present' to do so, I guess.
And hey? When you're done with this long, subverbal day of fun, whaddya say we ramp it up a bit and sleep together in a tent?

From the department of 'This Should Go Well':

i want to propose to my girlfriend.

she's mexican. i'm not. she speaks spanish... i don't very well.

will you help me write something beautiful and poetic for her? i have a very special lady i want to impress... i'm kinda lost when it comes to the translation bit, and i want to sound like a native speaker.

i'm not really available today... but sometime this week or weekend?

will trade for drinks, friendship, and/or a cup of coffee.

By any chance, is your "girlfriend" a clerk at a convenience store? Is the cup of coffee you're going to pay me with from that convenience store? You're right. You don't very well.

looking 4 boy - w4mw - 100 (portland)

Date: 2009-06-15, 9:07PM PDT

write me if you know whats up.

(Seriously dude; I have no idea. That's all the more they had to say, god love 'em.)