Just blog

The 6th Estate

2005-04-07T03:26:00.000-07:00

The 6th Estate

Dallo Specchiaio

2005-04-07T03:24:00.000-07:00

Dallo Specchiaio

Bratz Dolls

2005-04-07T03:23:00.000-07:00

Bratz Dolls

make your life more lively :::: You live to fullfil your dreams and your dream is there to

2005-04-07T03:21:00.000-07:00

make your life more lively :::: You live to fullfil your dreams and your dream is there to

2005-04-07T03:16:00.000-07:00

Volcano pours ash over Pacific islands

Last Updated Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:07:24 EDT

CBC News

MARIANA ISLANDS - A volcanic eruption rocked a remote group of islands in the Pacific Ocean Wednesday, spewing ash more than 15,000 metres into the sky.

Officials have placed the Northern Mariana Islands off limits, ordering aircraft and ships to avoid the area.

Local authorities say the eruption is the strongest since Anatahan Volcano, about 120 kilometres north of the main island of Saipan, became active in May 2003.

The governor's press secretary, Pete Callaghan, says there is no immediate threat of an earthquake or a tsunami in the tiny U.S. territory.

The health department has warned people to stay indoors and avoid drinking water contaminated with ash. Students have been sent home and several government offices have also closed for the day.

Today's eruption is the fourth in the past two years.

Located roughly 6,100 kilometres southwest of Hawaii, the Northern Mariana Islands have nine active volcanoes and a population of 70,000 people.

(with files from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Headlines: World

2005-04-07T03:13:00.000-07:00

Kashmir buses make historic journey

Last Updated Thu, 07 Apr 2005 05:53:15 EDT

CBC News

SRINAGAR, INDIA - Buses left from both the Indian and Pakistani sides of Kashmir Thursday, a symbolic step toward peace in the divided region.

INDEPTH: India and Pakistan

Most of the roughly 50 passengers on both buses are from families which have been divided since Kashmir was split almost 60 years ago.

Indian officials marked the launch of the historic service with a short ceremony in Srinagar, the defacto capital of Indian Kashmir. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh waved a blue flag when the buses left.

"The new climate will help India and Pakistan to settle their disputes peacefully," said Singh.

A grenade was thrown at the bus about 20 kilometres into its journey, but no passengers were injured.

On the Pakistani side, people watched from rooftops and from the side of the road as the bus departed from Muzaffarabad.

Passengers will travel to the bridge that spans the Line of Control, which divides Kashmir. From there, they will walk across the bridge to board buses on the other side.

FROM APRIL 6, 2005: New Kashmir bus service target of deadly attack

Separatist militants had threatened to disrupt the buses, attacking a bus terminal on Wednesday. Three passengers were hurt in the attack in Srinagar.

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the region since 1947.

Headlines: World

2005-04-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

Washington -- Sen. John McCain, the powerful chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, told the Lytton Band of Pomo Indians Tuesday that their controversial bid to build California's first major urban casino in San Pablo was "not the way to do business."

At a Senate hearing on the casino plan, the Arizona Republican said the tribe should never have been allowed to insert special language in a bill backdating its purchase of a card club so they could build a slot-machine casino just off Interstate 80.

"That's just not the proper way to legislate," McCain said after the hearing. "It just isn't."

In another blow to the tribe, a top Interior Department official said the Bush administration was inclined to support a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif., that would scuttle a deal between the tribe and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to build a 2,500-slot machine casino.

"We do not believe it is proper to waive the requirements ... for any particular tribe," said George Skibine, the Interior Department's acting deputy assistant secretary who oversees Indian affairs.

With the casino plan already facing near-universal opposition in the state Legislature, the strong resistance to the proposal from the White House and federal lawmakers could doom any chance of a casino's being built in the near future.

The hearing Tuesday before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee was called by McCain at the request of Feinstein, who has been the most formidable opponent of the tribe's plans for a Las Vegas-style casino in the East Bay.

Feinstein said her bill was needed even though the Lytton band's leaders recently dropped their proposal for slot machines and instead plan to install 1,000 video bingo machines in the cardroom. Under federal law, tribes typically can operate the bingo devices without permission from a state. However, bingo machines generate much less revenue than slot machines.

Feinstein's bill would force the tribe to go through the regular state and federal approval processes under the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act even to install video bingo machines. She warned that the tribe was likely to seek slot machines again in the future.

The Lyttons "could reverse these plans at any time and proceed with both Class II and Class III gaming without first going through the regular process, " Feinstein said. "Allowing this to happen would set a dangerous precedent not only for California, but for every state where tribal gaming is happening."

Also testifying at the hearing was Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez, who has been criticized for inserting language in a 2000 appropriations bill to put the San Pablo card club into federal trust for the tribe. He said Tuesday he still believed it was the right decision to help the tribe, which was wrongfully terminated and restored to tribal status by a court order in 1991.

But Miller acknowledged the tribe's original deal with Gov. Schwarzenegger to build a 5,000-slot machine casino -- bigger than the Las Vegas MGM Grand -- and its scaled-down 2,500-slot machine proposal were far bigger than the "modest" 1,000 slot machine casino the tribe had first discussed with him.

Still, Miller urged the Senate not to approve Feinstein's bill, which would effectively wipe out the language he drafted.

"Doing so would be a significant breach of trust between Congress and the Indians, a trust that has been broken so often in our nation's history," Miller said.

McCain appeared skeptical of Miller's statement that the Lyttons only planned to build a modest casino in a densely populated area just off a busy interstate.

"One thousand slot machines is a modest Indian casino?" McCain asked sarcastically.

Miller said it was modest given the size of other tribal casinos being approved in California at the time. "It's a big state," Miller said.

"One thousand slot machines is a lot of slot machines," McCain replied.

The Lyttons' chairwoman, Margie Mejia, made an emotional plea to the committee not to back Feinstein's bill, saying a casino was the only way to boost the fortunes of a 275-member tribe that suffers from inadequate health care, alcoholism and substance abuse and whose members can't afford homes in the Bay Area.

But McCain took a tough line of questioning, asking whether any tribal members worked at the current card club, which is owned by the tribe. Mejia acknowledged that no members did, although she said there would be a training program once a casino deal was clinched.

Mejia, a onetime aide to former Modesto Rep. Gary Condit, also played hardball with lawmakers, warning that if Feinstein's bill was approved, the tribe could sue the federal government alleging an illegal taking under the Fifth Amendment.

"We believe it would be legally wrong to do that," she said.

But the Interior Department's Skibine said his agency had done a legal review and concluded that requiring the tribe to go through the normal state and federal approval process was fully constitutional.

San Pablo Councilmember Sharon Brown urged senators to consider the economic benefits from the proposed casino for a city with an 18 percent unemployment rate. McCain appeared impressed with a tribe-commissioned study suggesting that economic benefits for the region could exceed $600 million.

But Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, D-Berkeley, a critic of the casino plan, testified that the original proposal would have been the size of six Wal-Mart stores and even the scaled-down versions could lead to traffic congestion, crime and gambling addiction.

"Without legislation, the Lytton tribe will continue to seek a massive casino," Hancock said.

The tribe may find some support on the committee. Sen. Daniel Inouye, D- Hawaii, a strong backer of tribal sovereignty, gave an opening statement that appeared supportive of the tribe's efforts at self-sufficiency. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., the panel's ranking Democrat, gave no hint of whether he favored or opposed Feinstein's bill.

McCain said he would consult with his fellow senators and schedule a committee vote if there was enough support. He also plans to hold more expansive hearings this summer on the general topic of off-reservation Indian casinos, he said.

"We've got to look at this whole issue," McCain said

eskobar

2005-04-07T03:08:00.000-07:00

Eskobar Online

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wiki

2005-04-07T03:02:00.000-07:00

Main Page - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
... Wikipedia encyclopedia languages with over 50000 articles: Deutsch (German)
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2004 Indian Ocean earthquake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Encyclopédie libre, gratuite et écrite coopérativement. Section française.
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2005-04-07T02:59:00.001-07:00

R.I.P. Saul Bellow 1915 - 2005

The great American novelist, Saul Bellow has died. His novels fall into two modes - the somber and the madcap - but in all of them you will find generosity of thought, observation, humor and insight.

2005-04-07T02:59:00.000-07:00

Starbucks Sued for Second Hand Caffeine Intake

Seattle - In district court on Thursday prosecutors for King County filed a class action lawsuit against Starbucks Corp. for second-hand caffeine intake. Lawyers for the complainants pointed to "the incredible proliferation of Starbucks outlets - sometimes only doors apart -" within the Seattle city limits.

Prosecutors state they are responding to multiple citizen complaints of attacks of "unexpected, inopportune caffeine buzz and occasional horniness" in the vicinity of Starbucks. The complainants all insist they are non-coffee drinkers.

"We're at the epicenter here," said deputy prosecutor Winston Chad. "We've got to get a handle on it here at coffee ground - so to speak - zero. This is Seattle after all. If we can stop this here then we have a good chance of stopping it anywhere else."

Starbucks had no comment.

Monday, March 28, 2005

Beg-a-thon for the cool people

I love it when our local NPR feed, KUOW is forced to slow down and beg for money. Earning money is hard and more often than not humiliating. I'm not sorry that the minions at public radio are not spared this indignity. I also hope they are aware that their upper level bosses rake in over 300 K a year in salary compensation. During the Beg-a-thon you get to see their self regard flower in full. The beggar-broadcasters sincerely believe that only public radio offers in-depth reporting. And non-biased reporting at that. Why take a look at this next story about gays addicted to crystal meth. We are assured that it is a very important story. The reporter himself went into bath houses and talked to the men in rented rooms, covering their hardons with a towel, waiting for their male lovers to wander in. The reporter asked the tumescent males how many men take drugs during these sex conjunctions. One of the obligatory conclusions touched on, of course, if only straight society would just stop making gay men feel bad then they wouldn't take drugs. After the story, back to the Beg-a-thon, I am again assured that this is a very important story and that only public radio would produce such a story. Go to your phones right now...

2005-04-07T02:58:00.002-07:00

It's Simple...

I don't know how to stop high school kids from blowing away teachers and classmates and themselves when they crack up. Nobody does. Every time a revolver cylander (or an auto magazine) gets emptied into a school campus liberals come out shouting about taking away guns and conservatives shout back their statistics about high crime in "no-carry" zones. The weeks pass and nothing happens until we are poked from our stupor a year (or month) or two later when it happens again.

Lacking a grand plan why don't we try a couple baby steps that are simple in scope and execution (bad word choice):

baby step one: when teachers and others in tax-funded positions advocate violence - get rid of them. Ward Churchill, violence monger, should not have been around long enough for his name to fly over the boulders of Colorado. When you advocate violence - you're gone. Goodbye. No bullshit about free speech. Just take your pencils and go, asshole. When you advocate violence you surrender your right to a tax-funded position and salary. Administrators who don't have the balls to enforce this very simple code should also be fired. This is not a free speech issue; it is about standing up to bullies and overcoming cowardice. What kind of society are we to tolerate this crap for a second? A chicken-shit society that allows cowardice to masquerade as free speech.
Real violence is a terrible paralyzing overwhelming thing. We can't stop Hollywood or the record industry from using violence but we do have the authority to shut up psychotic professors who verbalize their dreams of blood flowing throughout America.

Rightly, no administration or student group allows any shade of neo-Nazism to appear on campus; likewise student Muslim groups must stop calling for the destruction of Israel. Stop, now, or get out. If you can't stop advocating violence within the commonweal then get off the tax-funded campus.

Another baby step: let's rein in the flammable rhetoric, stop calling your opponent Nazi this or that, Hitler, Eichmann, Goebbels, et al. This is America 2005; no American has had any real taste of totalitarianism; the playful ease with which we throw around totalitarian imagery testifies to our lack of acquaintance with it. The memory of the victims who really suffered under nazi monsters demands that they be not further degraded. Bite back at fools who use wild nazi rhetoric; shame them for their lack of historical knowledge; shame them for their lazy way with a simile and their lack of reasoning power. For they are shameful.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

Two Years On...

I would love to see Seattle's anti-war left contingent engage with the Iraqi blogger posting at Democracy in Iraq.

But then, what good would it do? The anti-war folks treasure their own catchphrases and slogans more than they want Iraqis to be free.

2005-04-07T02:58:00.001-07:00

Questions from the Nut Ward

"There is no alienation that a little power can't cure."
- Eric Hoffer

Why do the Ward Churchills of the world always wait until after the skyscraper has been blown down by terrorists to deposit their idiotic commentary?

If the Ward Churchills are so bold and insightful why don't they point to some terrorist target, a skyscraper, say, the Sears Tower, and proclaim - before the atrocity occurs: "Terrorists should blow up that building because it is full of little Eichmans."

The Ward Churchills always comment on terrorist acts after the terrorists have done their hellish deeds. This after-the-fact commentary strikes me as parasitical. If your thinking did not demonstrate the requisite solidarity with the terrorists beforehand why should we take seriously your gloss on terrorist destruction afterwards?

It is not nothing to say the victims of 9/11 deserved their fate; it is shocking and horrifying to claim as much and we suspect that Churchill was just trying to shock and horrify his auditors/readers. Calling for the specific destruction of property and innocent lives before a terrorist act would put the caller in league with the terrorists.

Is not approbation after the terrorist act linked to approval before the terrorist act?

What do you think?

2005-04-07T02:58:00.000-07:00

Topless Beaches Islamic Style

You hear a lot of talk that Europe is going to go orthodox Islamic if they keep pissing their pants around Islamo-killers terrorists. I'm not so sure. Do you really think the top-free liberated women of Europe would go for an Allah-approved swimsuit like this? This kind of swimwear might be the line in the sand. So to speak.

Monday, March 07, 2005

I'm going to sue my parents

I’m suing my parents. For giving birth to me. Plato pretty much proved that we are spirits hanging around pre-natally, just waiting to be conceived after you’re assigned a human form. You can read all about it in the last few pages of The Republic. It’s all there.

You’re shuffled like a bunch of cheap tourists to the plains of the River Lethe, that’s The River of Forgetting, and you’re supposed to bend down take a few big gulps. The water of the Lethe wipes out your pre-natal memory, puts you to sleep and then, accompanied by thunder and lighting, you are born into your earthly life. It’s all there in The Republic.

I distinctly recall my pre-natal spirit; was up there looking down, the floor was a glass-bottomed like some boats, and you could see what was happening on earth – not that you wanted to. I my case I saw it all. I saw my parents fucking and I knew I would be going. I shouted at them to stop. My dad was drunk and I screamed and became thinner and thinner about like a plastic straw until I disappeared and found myself standing on the banks of the Lethe with a bunch of other straw-like wisps, naked, standing, waiting in the water up to our ankles.

Then a beautiful woman – that was the Goddess Clotho – came up and said “hold hands everybody” and led us into the river. About midway she told us to dip a hand in and take a big mouthful and drink. She was so beautiful that you couldn’t help doing what she asked but I was still very pissed at my parents. I kept the water in my mouth and then spit it out before we stepped back up the riverbank.

So I remember everything perfectly. And I’m going to sue. There was no way I wanted to come down here. It was so cool up there. It was like Liberace’s penthouse. Lots of pillows and sequins on everything. Lots of mirrors, lots of glitter. It was fucking great.

My lawyer says I have a pretty good case. Plato is one of the cornerstones of Western rationality, not to mention our legal system.

I’m gonna sue my parents. Damn right.

2005-04-07T02:57:00.003-07:00

If All Seattle Read a Different Book

A few years back, Seattle's dotty little book maven, Nancy Pearl, started a program called "If All Seattle Read the Same Book?"

What kind of noise is that? I asked myself when I saw that this program was actually taking off. If a half million people each read a different book then maybe writers wouldn't get so discouraged. What kind of adolescent flimflam thinks it's cool for everyone to do the same thing? Let's all wear horizontal-striped crew neck sweaters! Let's all eat lemon chicken on Wednesday. Let's all leave our jobs in the city and go pick green beans up in Stanwood. Let's all read the 5th chapter of Das Kapital Vol I...

Standing on one of the Eiffel Tower lookouts one Sunday morning a couple years ago my friend and I noticed that the streets below were filled with thousands of kids on roller skates. When we finally touched down a few skaters were still swirling about. What gives, I asked them. I was told that the Mayor of Paris cordons off a kilometer or so around the Eiffel Tower neighborhood on Sunday especially for this kind of thing. When did Paris get so benign? My Paris was the Paris of Balzac's betrayers and spies and confidence men. The City of Lights had become the City of Tiny Ball Bearings. Roller skating? OK.

I don't know why these two thoughts came together.

2005-04-07T02:57:00.002-07:00

Seattle Notes - South End: another day in the neighborhood

Just stepping outside my door (I live near MLK and South Graham) a number of unwritten stories occur to me. The neighborhood is
incredibly dynamic: the old poor people’s housing has been knocked
down to make way for light rail; some have been replaced with
attractive single family units that look like real houses (as opposed
to community college annex classrooms). Who is moving in here? How
much do the units cost?

There is a huge Vietnamese grocery store on MLK on the scale of
Safeway called Viet Wah which features a huge tub of dying blinking
frogs and both live and dead eels among other cool things. Food writers have to get over there to see another world of ingredients - along with the isle - college kid alert - dedicated to a thousand different kinds of Top Ramen.

Moving over to the Rainier Avenue side, there are many hundreds of Muslims
who live in the neighborhood. I see women in full burkha every day
going to worship at the mosque on Rainier about a mile from our
place. We have teenage foster boys and one of our boys joined the
mosque last year. He came home with a prayer rug and a tape of Arabic
prayers. He stopped being a Muslim but still hung out with a few
young guys who ran a restaurant and a barber shop. I visited them one
evening last summer and saw that they were running a video explaining
why Israel shouldn’t exist. They guys ended up getting detained by
the FBI last November. There was only a short newsblip about this
and no follow up. My informant tells me that two guys were released
and one guy has been detained.

There are two dental clinics and two health clinics in the south end that
are open for low income folks. I wonder if they are getting east African or Muslim women coming into the clinics with home-done clitorectomies?

At the other end of the Rainier corridor on Henderson is a large grocery whose
managerial staff is orthodox Jewish; the store features a large kosher section in the store. I wonder what relations are like between them and the
local Muslim population? Can Muslims eat kosher? Can Jews eat halal?

The Womens Studies Dept at the University of Washington has a healthy
budget in the millions. Have they made any contacts with the Seattle
Muslim community? Any hope that they might introduce liberating ideas
into the feminine Muslim community? Or will they take the safe route
and continue to ream the white Christian male oppressor, the sole
easy target for oppressed, albeit, well-funded academics? Have Womens
Studies made any contact with the south end Muslim community? Any
graduate students doing any kind of work? Any? Any?

How about the arts community? Have it made any effort to reach out
to the local Muslim community? The one time when there could have
been some sparks local arts leaders squashed it in the bud (to wit, a
local artist carved a replica of the Bamiyan Buddhas into the pages
of a Koran. Even with no input from the Muslim community local arts
leaders pulled the piece from the gallery. Remember this when local
artists pump up their bravery and boldness in the face of
Philistine apathy...snore...).

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

David Welch, America's Two-fisted, No-bullshit Ambassador

The media would have us believe that America's diplomats suck up to sadistic tyrants while it alone speaks truth to power, its own safety be damned. Thanks to Eason Jordan we know that the press is all too eager to ass-kiss Slaughterers-in-Chief and their maniacal henchmen while striving to preserve its safety at all costs.

Enter, stage right, David Welch, polite, firm, non-shit taking diplomat extraordinaire, US Ambassador to Egypt who was recently appointed to the post of Assistant Secretary of State (Near Eastern Affairs).

This is nothing but good news to those of you who believe America's diplomatic corps spellbound by middle eastern goonocracies.

Be sure to click on the "articles" and "interviews" links of the main page above.

My favorite interview with Ambassador Welch can be found HERE.

RE: Eason Jordan: Fan, sheisse hits, mainstream media stands resolutely, splatteringly downwind

Hoo boy.

The press just doesn't look good in whine-mode. The press isn't made for whining. The press is made to ask questions. Problem is, after ex-CNNer, Eason Jordan, speculated that the US military might be targeting journalists only the bogosphere asked questions and demanded answers. Where was the mainstream press?

Who effing knows?

If the mainstream press doesn't get it together the next question will be:

Who effing cares?

The blogosphere asked the questions that the mainstream press should have asked but didn't.

That cracking you hear is the sound of a very tall tower made of old brittle sandy concrete, getting ready to crumble.

The media has shown itself more than willing to paint the US military as an eager torturer and/or sadistic killer. But when the media is querried about an obvious slander, the media tumbles into hysterics.

2005-04-07T02:57:00.001-07:00

Eason Jordan Resigns Bloggers Crow

As is appropriate since this is the year of the (click on the link in the previous post to find out).

Imagine being a young journalist working for the NY Times, the LA Times or any of the major network TV stations. Then, the head of a rival news organization makes some weird comments hinting that the US military has got journalists in its sights. Can you imagine how frustrating for young journalists not to be able to apply the tools of their trade - quesitons?
-What exactly did he say?
-Did Jordan overhear some military people talking about offing journalists?
-What do those present at the event say?
-What does Jordan's company CNN have to say?
-Will the conference people in Davos release the video of the talk?

Maybe our young journalist is not frustrated...?

I can't believe that.

Even if you hate Bush and the war in Iraq you are still trained to investigate happenings until you hit truth. How could a young ambitious journalist be happy doing nothing at a major news organization while citzen bloggers are all over one of the major stories of the day? Why wouldn't an ambitious young reporter, working for a mainstream news group, do what Bill Roggio and his friends did over at Easongate? That is, set up a website and stay on the story until something broke?

Do young mainstream reporters lack ambition? Training? Are they squelched by their editors from above? If they cannot demonstrate the fire, the hunger of sites like Easongate what are they doing in the business?

Just curious.

Meantime I want to congratulate Bill Roggio and his cohorts at Easongate for their work in putting together a story-specific news clearinghouse and staying on CNN until they got results. CNN has taken every opportunity to pile on the US military over the years. They went too far and, rightly, got knocked down.

See Michelle Malkin for a comprehensive round-up of the blogosphere and Eason Jordan.

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR!

It's just past midnight and the firecrackers from a nearby Buddhist temple have been going off for about 10 minutes straight. It sounds like heavy rain bashing on an aluminum roof. (I live in south Seattle between MLK and Rainier)

2005 is the year of the =

Monday, February 07, 2005

Easongate Showdown

Will the mainstream press break the story of CNN chief, Eason Jordan speculating about the US army targeting journalists?

Follow the developments here at easongate.

Sunday, February 06, 2005

What to do about the crazy aunt chained in the attic...?

In the 1980s the press was all over the kooks in northern Idaho who stood in front of forested compounds and spoke dementedly about Jews and blacks and police-state America. They were crazy, they were the Aryan Nations! The Normal Nation had a ball laughing at them and holding them up as proof that America has a long way to go if its rural communities still harbor such imbeciles.

Now from the precincts of the press and academia come kooks talking dementedly about Jews and Israel and police-state America. The press isn’t laughing though; and neither is academia. When they aren’t hiding behind free speech the press and academia are treating their kooks like crazy aunts chained in the attic; they deny that they have a crazy aunt even though the neighbors can hear the screams coming from the high small window. Sometimes a wide-eyed face appears in the window spooking passersby. We have to encourage the press and academia to get therapeutic with these crazy relations. The conservatives distanced themselves from their nutty kin in short order once everyone got a look at the nutty kin. The left should do the same.

2005-04-07T02:57:00.000-07:00

Jordan vs Cronkite

Top CNN news guy, Eason Jordan is not exactly inspiring Cronkite-like confidence with his wild musings about the US military being guilty of extra judicial murder and torture.

Jordan was the guy who downplayed Saddam's horrors to save the lives of his translators and drivers for CNN in Iraq. After the fall of Saddam CNN made up for its previous excisions by relentlessly pouncing on America's every misstep during the process of freeing Iraq's millions.

Jordan recently stood up in front of a roomful of bigshots at Davos Switzerland and either mused to himself or declared that the US army has targeted journalists in the past. What is going on? Every university has its resident kook proclaiming America a Hitler knock-off; now every major news organization has got to unchain and publicly feature its in-house kook. The upending of every major institution into some kind of fruitoid left, anti-American crock-pot is amazing.

Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail, a vet, is all over this; check him out now.

Thursday, February 03, 2005

The Fruitoid Left vs the Liberator

Go to leftist, anti-Bush websites and you will not see one word directed against the sick murdering bastards who use Downs Syndrome children as suicide bombers. The media, NPR, the academic left have baptized these inhuman fiends as "the insurgents" or "the resistence" or "militants". Read about it here at Iraq the Model. (hat tip: buzzmachine)

The murdering scuz of Iraq is granted a near boundless equanimity while rabid foam-flecked attacks of colera are reserved for president Bush and his administration. President Bush has changed, is changing the world; he sits on his bulldozer, alone, and he has charged the river and not been overturned and changed the course of the river forever.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

What a great time to be alive!

What a great time to be a young and adventurous journalist. You can stand a smile as you see the immense liberal left edifice, built of mindless suppositions, crack and fall around you.

You can see the cowardice, up close and personal, of university presidents who refuse to shitcan professors who claim Americans are nazis or that America is a terrorist state.

You can see the cowardice of film festival promoters who refuse to run the documentary by murdered filmmaker, Theo Van Gogh.

You see the cowardice of the mainstream media extending boundless equanimity to Islamo-fascists while piling on our sometimes clodhopping leaders who are trying to protect us.

You see a media and academic and diplomatic elite determined to perceive and relay a message of failure no matter what reality might have to say to it.

You see our petted artists and intellectuals indignant over president Bush's every word but silent confronting Islamic terror; silent when millions of men and women in the middle east gain the right to vote thanks to our blood and treasure.

You get to hear politicians say stupid things like, "America is creating terrorists."

You see Mendacity throwing its blubber around; you see how cowardly and childish are our petted elites; how fragile their sense of themselves and how deeply they fear for their vanity.

O young journalist - to see a monument of vanity and self-righteousness collapse - what a privilege!

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Iraq got its balls back

Strut yo' stuff honey!

Check out the infuriated ballless ones: HERE
(hat tip: American Digest)

Iraq is going to be fine

So says Mark Styne. (hat tip: American Digest)

I had to laugh at NPR reporting on Iraq after the elections yesterday. The reporter talked in a dry monotone with inflections of worry and cautious dread. She seemed to be reporting about a tsunami - which in a sense she was - a freedom tsunami, to wit:

A giant wave of freedom smashed over Iraq today leaving the hopes and dreams of thousands of insurgents in shambles. The shatttered dreams of a strife torn Iraq lay bloating and blistering in the dry wake of this devastating force of nature - the desire for freedom. The wave of freedom completely rearranged the landscape of this war-torn country; nobody can yet say if these changes will be permanent. Daily explosions testify to the fact that the insurgnecy has not stopped surging...

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Congratulations Iraq!

Well they did it, the Iraqis inked up their fingers and voted. And they did it in the face of real, demonstrated threats to their lives. I am so proud of them and I am so proud of the American armed forces for helping to bring about this day.

But if the insurgents wanted to stop people in Baghdad from voting, they failed. If they wanted to cause chaos, they failed. The voters were completely defiant, and there was a feeling that the people of Baghdad, showing a new, positive attitude, had turned a corner.
- From a New York Times article though Glenn Reynolds says the paragraph is disappearing from the article.

I just wanted to post a few sweet words before the alley cat howls of the mainstream media and the fruitoid left begin. (They have begun...)

2005-04-07T02:55:00.003-07:00

Student Fascism at Seattle Central Community College

It looks like A mob of students at Seattle Central Community College shouted down ganged up on and otherwise verbally assaulted Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Due, a U.S. Army recruiter this past Thursday (1/20).

The sergeant was unable to attend to his table while students screamed and tore up US Army literature on display. The sergeant had to be escorted from the student union area by campus security.

I appreciate the right of college kids to goof off and make asses of themselves, such is a big part of the college experience. But a mob action that shuts down debate reveals the complete failure teachers and staff to instill minimum curiosity and tolerance in their students. Thanks to the laziness of the SCCC administration and faculty the student mob is permitted the illusion that they are powerful and heroic, rather than shameful and stupid.

The US Army is a volunteer force and these student fascists would deny fellow students the free flow of information - whereby their fellow students could make up their own minds. The US Army has freed millions of people; every day our soldiers are dying to set people free. The mob students were free and they made a disgrace of their freedom.

UPDATE:

My brother (the Iaido master), a die hard Kerry, anti-Bush, anti-war Dem, looked at the photo and declared it disgusting and creepy.

UPDATE: Thanks to Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail for the photo link

Update: A friend writes: You think American soldiers facing lethal suicide crazies are brave? No way. These students, a mere one hundred or so, faced down a single lethal seargent armed to the teeth with thousands of razor sharp pamphlets; this is the very definition of courage; I never knew such bravery possible outside the mythology of the Iliad and the Odessey. Just look at their bold faces; it makes you want to weep.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

CNN's Loaded Cliches

Has there ever been a more self-important bunch of puffed up fools than the staff of CNN? Sometimes, watching CNN, you think that you’ve mistakenly tuned into a Saturday Night Live skit in which they skewer the blind dumb and deaf mainstream news media. Anytime Judy Woodruff’s tongue is forced to palletize the word “America” she weepily adds the clause, “which does not support the war in Iraq.” Anytime Judy mentions the word “Iraq” she never fails to add, deliciously, “whose citizens are restive under American occupation.”

Listening to CNN you would think that George Bush lost the ’04 election but that, gosh darn, CNN just went ahead and let him continue in office because, gosh darnit, he is a likeable guy and he really really believes in those things he says so how could we, CNN, not let a guy like that just go ahead and stay in office - as a figurehead mind you. We’ll just keep on reporting what is really going on.

What’s really going on in the CNN Land is the casting and solidifying of anti-Bush cliché, to wit:

The word “Iraq” becomes a train engine followed by dragging variations of these boxcar phrases:

which we invaded under false pretenses
which has polarized the nation
which has alienated our traditional allies
which has now claimed the lives of over 1000 young Americans

America’s sacrifice of blood and treasure is a void and a waste in CNN Land. America is simply not capable of any good action in Iraq. Our soldiers are not heroes but harassed victims flinching under Rumslfeld’s bullwhip directives.

Wait there’s more. The phrase “foreign policy” can never stand alone. It is always modified with “go it alone” or “unilateral.”

Any mention of America is always coupled with “deeply divided.” And the “world” is the place where America hopes to reclaim “squandered goodwill” and/or long-lost “prestige.”

Allies, inevitably are “traditional,” or “alienated.”

Conclusion: CNN feels guilty for sucking up to Saddam. The Bush administration did not suck up to Saddam; therefore, it must pay.

UPDATE: Maybe not; I don't think CNN owner Ted Turner feels guilty about much of anything. Yesterday (January 25) he let fly with his oft repeated analogy between Fox News (or Rupert Murdoch) and Hitler. Ted Turner is a rich baboon.

John Kerry's Stentorian Vacuity

John Kerry treated us to his trademark stentorian vacuity before the Condi Rice Senate confirmation committee. He affrims for us the total emptiness of the left’s contribution to contemporary reality.

Kerry said, [Current U.S. policy is] “growing the insurgency, not diminishing it.” Really? What does John Kerry know about growing an insurgency? Nothing. The Islamic nihilistic death cult is the central mystery of our age and we do not know how or why it has come about. But we are learning. And we are trying to stomp it out. The suicide killers themselves don’t really know what or why they do what they do. "America is the cause of terror" is just simple leftist bullshit stolen from medieval theology in which God is the Prime Mover that sets the universe in motion. True agency belongs only to the Prime Mover. Likewise for, the left, America is the only entity possessing agency on earth. Every other action in the world is a shadow movement stemming from the original push from America.

If you think you understand why Islam is going crazy in a death cult, well, think again. You do not know.

My own view is that a satanic spirit, a large dark venomous bird, has spread its wings over the Middle East. Under its shadow lay chaos nihilism death destruction.

2005-04-07T02:55:00.002-07:00

Student Fascism at Seattle Central Community College

Thursday, January 20, 2005

CNN's Loaded Cliches

John Kerry's Stentorian Vacuity

2005-04-07T02:55:00.001-07:00

The Mountain Blinks

On a clear Seattle day like today it seems like you can stick your toungue out and lick Mount Rainier. The thing stands there like a wall, or someone's large angry older brother, the kind who will beat the crap out of you if he suspects you are poking his sister. Two hundred years ago Indian kids probably found clearings up on the West Seattle ridge or over on the high hump now called Sommerset where they could look out and contemplate the stunning mountain. Back then they would have observed a solid wave of trees going right up to the snow line.

Today's hyper clarity seems to encompass time. Lewis and Clark have gone over the maps with Thomas Jefferson and they have set out on their journey that will bring them within gossip range of our mountain.

The mountain blinks and they are gone. Gone too are the Salish, the Duwamish, the Suquamish campsites along Alki and Elliott Bay.

In two hundred years the mountain has barely changed at all.

Will this patch of freeway that lets me see the mountain so clearly be here in two hundred years? Possibly. It has been here for over 40 years.

No the great eruption of 2146 blew away the entire Pacific Northwest. Now only treasure hunters and vulcanologists dig through the gray landscape. The mountain is much the same though the northern slope is indented somewhat, as though sucking in a breath.

But the whole world is a different place. Weather geeks, the guys who gave the daily and weekly forcasts, figured out how to make rain on demand. Vast sections of the earth opened up, the western desert of the USA, east Africa and the Sahara, of course (though terrorist groups have gotten ahold of the technology and are threatening to submerge the capitals of enemy nations). The other big breakthrough was the invention of an easy salt water to fresh water conversion system. More on that later.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Random Sweepings

Guitar
The lower the electric guitar is slung the worse the player (heads up to non players).

Jeff Beck has the worst tone of any electric guitar player out there. It's downright repulsive.

John Williams, the great Australian classical guitarist; I heard his early recordings of Scarlatti and he massacred them; he didn't execute the trills that are integral to that music; shocking?

Listening to classical guitarist, Christopher Parkening, play Ravel; it's a bit of a mess. He can't hide the effort and the guitar seems overtaxed for the job. The melody is indistinct and you hear a lot of nail clacking as his fingers race around. Classcial guitarists think that they should be able to play anything from the classical repertoire. I'm not so sure. Most classical pieces strain the instruments and the players they are written for. To submit the guitar to that exaction seems an excercise in torture since, to work, the guitar performance must outshine the original.

It makes me grind my teeth that Johnny Winter is left out of every single blues compilation, anthology, reunion or TV special. Perhaps this is due to legal restrictions but I doubt it. It is lazy neglect on the part of the compilers. JW is a living encyclopedia of American blues in every idiom. He's getting old and his latest release shows his age and afflictions; but he has a huge catalogue and it is mostly unheralded. Yes JW took the rock-star detour away from straight-on blues, but, more than most of the famous white bluesmen, he paid his respects to the old blues masters: he helped produce some of Muddy Waters' last albums in the late 70s.

Books
I like books that ruin you for other books; books that raise your standards and turn you into a impossibly stuffy aristocrat of taste. Good books sharpen you; they shake you up and threaten to turn you into an obsessive; they make you suspicious of everything that would make a new claim on you. That's why I have a hard time taking seriously our (Seattle's) dotty little book maven, Nancy Pearl. She is in love with being in love with books. Every week she unloads a fresh pile of fabulous books on our local NPR feed, KUOW. They're all just super fabulous. In reality, I suspect that a constant flow of brand new books fed into you like shiny new coins into candy a machine has got to rattle your judgement.

Here are a few novels that will make you hate all other books for a long time:

- The Dissertation by R.M. Koster
- What the maid saw: Eight Psychic Tales (or Portrait of Eight Families) by Yasutaka Tsutsui
- The Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgokov
- Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
- The Maqrol novellas by Alvaro Mutis

Movies, Samurai
Did you know that there is a special Japanese martial art dedicated to just withdrawing the samurai sword from it scabbord (and putting it back)? Neither did I until my brother became the America champion (scroll down) for a few years in a row (he has slipped to third place the past couple of years). It is called Iaido. My brother has an ancient samurai sword that is so sharp that just thinking about it will open up band-aid cuts on your fingers.

So I pick up the phone and call him.

Me: Kevin Coster's sword in "Bodyguard" - would it really cut a falling silk scarf in half?
Bro: Nope.
Me: How does Uma Thurman's sword handling rate, along with all the other sword wielders, in "Kill Bill?"
Bro: Passable. You can see their effort though, you can tell they are novices. But you can also tell they've had training and have worked hard.

Wednesday, January 12, 2005

If we are the government it is a strange part of us that is the government

Business - the service sector can be sloppy annoying and insulting but dealing with government agencies can be dowright sinister. Recently I've had to deal with the City of Seattle about a neighborhood issue. In dealing with City employees - other than police fire or sewage workers who are uniformly helpful - I observe about City of Seattle employees:

They are afraid to give their names.
They never offer their names.
They don't respond to emails quickly.
They never sign emails.
They might respond to emails if you putsomething like ///////2nd request//// or /////////3rd request/////// as a header.
When they say they will look into the problem they never offer the name of the person who will look into it.
They never list their email addresses on their websites.
They are bold about telling you what they will not do.
They never give a day or time when the problem at hand will be addressed.
They never say that they will take care of the problem.
Nobody ever says, "may I help you?"
Nobody who works for the city of Seattle has a name.
Names can get people with names into trouble at the City of Seattle. So nobody gives a name.
A gung-ho City employee who loves people and loves helping them must be very careful. He must tone down his natural enthusiasm because he will show everyone else up. He can make needy citizens happy but he will make his co-workers unhappy.

In business if you create enough of a ruckess you can usually find some manager somewhere who will respond to your needs or complaints. Not so with The City. People who work for The City know that helping people only brings trouble and lawsuits. People who work for The City have excellent dental and health insurance, vacation and retirement benefits.

Don't worry. I'm not resentful. I do feel that in the ideal world of the City Employee everyone has the same name.

UPDATE: OK I'll Eat some of my words: Many weeks later I did get a call back from the city; the employee was friendly and told me they were working on problem X. She told me her name and gave me her phone number. I wrote my original post under the influence of a first impression - which sink or swim Private Sector entities; in the Public, we just have to forge on and pray for luck.

2005-04-07T02:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Lord...

Sometimes our world does seem like a rather pretty stone cast by chance into a fiery and cold universe. Unaccustomed to nature competing with us to see who can annihilate the most within the shortest time, we’re shaken by the destruction of last week’s tsunami in the Indian Ocean. The expertise in killing we had achieved in the 20th century seemed amateur compared to this, nature’s casual and near instantaneous brutality.

But we are not just killers; we are human beings after all and schooled in grief and pain and loss and anger. We think to ourselves, why? Why, God? Just what in the hell did you have in mind? We thought your eye was on the sparrow? The children, snatched from life, heartlessly batted from the living by oceanic claws. What of pity, what of mercy?

We shuffle into line, next to Job, who lost his house, his wife and family in a pitiless set of swift blows.

Richard Dawkins comes into view. He is shrieking at us: "unbow your heads, get off your knees and forget about all this God crap, forget about all this virtual father stuff. Science will save us! You lost your babies, your wives your husbands because tectonic plates of southeastern Indian Archipelago rubbed together and massed in a far corner of Indonesia. Water, obeying the laws of science, hurled this rub in the form of a giant wave at the shores of the Indian ocean. This scientific fact should be of great comfort to you!"

From deep within our pain, Richard strikes us as an asshole and an hysterical fool; one of those militant atheists, first on the scene of any grandiose disaster, first to blame the God in whom he does not believe, and a probable, nay inevitable convert to fundamentalist faith.

Meantime, Job and the rest of us do the normal human thing and go back to shaking our fist at God. Do we get an answer?

Of course not!

In the book of Job we get four Bible chapters, about 129 verses, of divine sarcasm. It’s not pretty. God doesn’t let us get a word in edgewise. He just keeps putting us down and mocking us for doubting his existence; for questioning the wisdom of His letting mayhem and destruction visit humankind at will. Our questions are met with even more questions and a swift kick in the pants.

At the end of God's tirade a kind of answer emerges: your job, people, is to see it through, your job is to be weak and know that you are not in control. Keep trying, though. Keep trying.

2005-04-07T02:54:00.003-07:00

The Haj

The other evening I saw on TV a PBS show (I think it was PBS – Please don’t make me go over to their site to confirm! I can’t endure another homage to Bill Moyers!) that tracked the pilgrimage of three Muslims as they made their way to Mecca to perform the Haj, the ritual pilgrimage to Islamic holy places urged upon all true believers.

One of the pilgrims was a telegenic South African black man, the second a white American lady with an Irish surname and the third a successful Malaysian businessman. Islam provides a million ways for women to look dowdy and Ms. Irish eschewed every one of them. She outfitted herself to look like something out of Paris Match. As part of her hajib she wore a red silk dress and headscarf. She was frankly beautiful with high cheekbones and long legs of a model. The more silks she wrapped around her the more fetching she became, plus she wore makeup. Then she gets to Mecca and complained that all the men are looking at her and asking her if she is really Muslim. In Mecca the South African man felt there was some racial prejudice going on but he wouldn’t elaborate because restraining the passions – anger among others – is part of the Haj. The Malaysian businessman traveled first class. His tent in Mecca had catering and a strict limit on the number of fellow pilgrims allowed under it. One of the Saudi Arabian interpreters explained why the V.I.P. tents didn’t mean that they were V.I.P. tents especially since the purpose of Haj was to affirm the equality of all souls before the eyes of God. But, on with the Haj.

Amazing scenes of thousands of pilgrims walking in a circle around the Kaaba, the large windowless cube, located in the courtyard of the Great Mosque, which is covered with a blanket of hand-embroidered silk. The pilgrimage also demands that participants undertake a number of 8-10 mile walks through assorted valleys around Mecca to commemorate decisive events in the life of Mohammed. Some of the scenes were very moving to me, scenes of men and women together quietly praying on a mountain, the ritual moments of enforced meditation and intense prayer.

Everything about the pilgrimage, the spirit of it, the individual intensity, the communal sense of purpose before God – for the life of me I couldn’t relate anything going on here to the insane bloodshed of Islamic killers making hay in Iraq and other places in the world.

I can’t picture a murderer, reflecting on his sins, standing before God on one of those sacred mountains, feeling himself vindicated in Allah’s eyes.

2005-04-07T02:54:00.002-07:00

Life without Art

We - men, women, the species - know what we are not. We are not flesh machines. And the proof is that we don’t feel like we are. But when you try to explain further, into extra-spiritual explanations those explanations seem to fall apart: you get into astrology or palm reading or religion based on faith or tenuous explanations of science using intelligent design theories. And the Fraudulence Alert crowd says, "Well, maybe we are just flesh machines; your attempts at affirmation are so feeble, so loaded with falsehood, better stick with the model of Scientism, the selfish gene etc…Don’t stray into mysticism, etc. Philosophers have abdicated to Science. They tell us our thoughts are largely nonsense and even consciousness itself is just a flamboyant mistake in the scheme of things. So it fell to novelists to affirm the human particulars, to tell us we are not just flesh robots. But novelists fell into belittling all things human too. Where then, do people go to enlarge their spirit? Where do people find some alignment of their inner certainty when Art, that traditional messenger from the spirit world, is off playing post-modern pattycake? Well, they put it on hold, they wait it out. They starve in silence. There are enough mental appetizers to get by on and the life of fleshly exertion in drugs sex can also entertain for long stretches. But it is not enough, life without art is not enough.

2005-04-07T02:54:00.001-07:00

The shape of things to come

The world has a deep, indulgent pocket for assininity. Lots of people think Michael Moore is an insightful commentator, lots of people think Cornel West is a brilliant scholar, lots of people think Chevy Chase is funny. Far from being a cruel and merciless field of winners and losers Life shows itself an expansive embracer of nonsense and dilirium. Chevy Chase calls the president a dumb fucker from the platform of a highly visible national stage. Are we supposed to laugh? Seriously crazy terrorists are keen on bringing our world to its knees. Is the president your enemy, Chase? What of the enemy who has demonstrated that he will stop at nothing to destroy you and your children. Any nasty comments in reserve for them? Didn't think so. Millionaire entertainer Chase is heavily invested in the blood and capital of the American economic system. Profanity is the last refugue of the scoundrel. I suppose in our worship of movie stars we give them plenty of reason to think that we, John Q. Starstruck Public, are fundamentally stupid. Deep down the stars know they are not all that special. Call the president a fucker in the nation's capital from a high-flown perch and nothing will happen to you. This, by the way, is a prime demonstration that we are not living in a fascist police state. Will the Flakoid Left stop saying so? Don't bet on it.

Not many people get the kind of attention that Chase gets when he opens his celebrity mouth. When he does crap falls out. Is he proud of himself and his inarticulate moronishness? He is so late to the game. Game over. Chase demonstrates his minimum capacity to understand great things. Call your antagonist a fucker. This is what a dead end looks

2005-04-07T02:54:00.000-07:00

Touch that Dial...

For long stretches I do not listen to NPR on the car radio (see: Books on Tape); I find the young reporters insufferably priggish in their anti-war bias; the undertone, of course, is that America is anything but a liberating force in Iraq. Any chance to take a potshot at the effort in Iraq is taken with relish.

For the last two days NPR has featured interviews with disaffected America soldiers; the one a deserter, the other an honorably discharged vet of the Iraqi Freedom campaign. How do you interview a deserter and not ask him if he is ashamed of himself? How can you call yourself a reporter and not ask probing questions? NPR doesn't bother to ask if the deserter has bailed out of other life tasks. Did he finish high-school? Is he married? Why did he join in the first place? Does he feel that he let his fellow recruits down? Why does NPR want to highlight a rogue recruit trashing the efforts of 140,000 committed men and women? The deserter spouts off about war dissent being silenced and oil as the reason the president went to war. Has the deserter been living in a hollow tree trunk for the past year? The NPR reporter, of course, doesn't bother to question the ex-soldier's brilliant and original insights.

The vet who served and was honorably discharged is leading up a vets against the Iraq war group. Well, say on, at least he served and fulfilled his commitment. I wouldn't give him a whole lot of slack though - he volunteered!

NPR producers, who came of age with the frustrating Nixon administration and the last dark years of Vietnam, desperately want Operation Iraqi Freedom to be another Vietnam. They're doing what they can do.

2005-04-07T02:53:00.002-07:00

Air Kissing the Democrats Goodbye

I saw the Kennedy boy on TV last night, the one with the raspy voice who is a Democratic senator or congressman or something like that. He's out hawking a book that proves Bush & Co are crooks and...

Sorry! I dozed off for a second there.

The Democrats will implode or less dramatically, just fade away unless they focus on a real enemy. The Democrats don't need ideas or religion or southern accents or COSTCO cards; they need to attack something real. Keep calling Bush a Hitler knock-off, Iraq Vietnam, Marines war criminals, Republicans apes and the Dems will kiss off any significant participation in American politics.

The Democrats must lower the mote and leave Crazy Castle and wade into the areas of their traditional expertise. And they must tell themselves this: The bullshit stops. We've got one last shot to do something real or we are goners.. Now go into the schools and do something to make a difference. Figure out a way to make American kids more proficient in math at younger ages. A whole generation of Asian graduates are poised and ready to eat our technological lunch. Take another look at the welfare system you put in place during the Great Society and try to get some real results. Bush has got his hands full in the international sphere; take some domestic issue and get real results. And stop sitting around accusing Republicans of wanting to see 9 year olds selling flowers on street corners at midnight.

And while we're at it stop using the poisonous conjunction, as in:
Yes, Saddam was evil, but-
Yes 9/11 was horrible, but-
Yes, terrorists murder children with glee, but-

It makes you sound like insensitive brutes and sympathizers with terror. In case you haven't noticed our civilization is going through a first class crisis; it wouldn't hurt if you acknowledged that fact once in a while just to show that you can lift your gaze above the belly button level.

I don't think you, Democrats, will do any of these things so goodbye. And just to show you that I do not exult in your demise I will include this memento mori of our common destiny.

The Bones of Chuang Tzu

Suddenly I looked and by the roadside
I saw a man’s bones lying in the squelchy earth,
Black rime-frost over him; and I in sorrow spoke
And asked him saying, “Dead man, how was it?”
Fled you with your friend from famine and for the last grains
Gambled and lost? Was this earth your tomb,
Or did floods carry you from afar? Were you mighty, were you wise,
Were you foolish and poor? A warrior, or a girl?”
Then a wonder came; for out of the silence a voice-
Thin echo only, in no substance was the Spirit seen-
Mysteriously answered, saying “I was a man of Sung,
Of the clan of Chuang; Chou was my name.
Beyond the climes of common thought
My reason soared, yet could I not save myself!
For at the last, when the long charter of my years was told,
I too, for all my magic, by Age was brought
To the Black Hill of Death.”

2005-04-07T02:53:00.001-07:00

Detaching from politics (for a bit): read a novel

Politics is the communal voice of the marketplace. We are all coming off a great harangue; a good novel is an individual voice speaking to you alone. Sometimes we need to step out of the cacophony. A good novel can center you the way nothing else can. I'd like to recommend a few:

Mr. Bridge by Evan S. Connell
Anything in the Maqroll Series by Alvaro Mutis
Old Love by Isaac Beshevis Singer
The Dissertation by R.M. Koster
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
Falconer by John Cheever
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess

2005-04-07T02:52:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

A Long Way to Go

Tavis Smiley features blacks of achievement who never cease to cry foul and racism whenever the get near a mic. It is so tiresome, the same retread ideas. Any artist or established intellectual is quick to proclaim the oppression of blacks in present day America. There is no let-up. No improvement in America's basic attitudes towards blacks. Daniel Bell tells us that the media does not sufficiently honor the Williams sisters. Yes. This is evidence of serious oppression in 21st century America. The audience murmurs agreement. And me living in working class black America wonder why none of these bigshots addresses teen pregnancy, lazy parents, dope addiction, dropouts, absentee fathers. Instead we hear about "white power structure, institutional racism, our brothers in prisons, we've got a long way to go, etc…" I have a theory about this: they are expressing the frustrations of their parents' generation. That things are so much better than they ever have been is not to be taken at face value - things could go back to being rotten (well, not really but this is a normal human feeling). The resentment their parents had to swallow (and persevere in spite of) is now street coin of high value. Another theory: nostalgia for a time when all we had was the power to hold hands and stare down bigots with badges. Transcendent hand holding gave us spiritual satisfactions far beyond the drudgery of individual achievement.

Waving Signs at Power

re: anti war march et al

I saw the anti war march as a great pop occassion. Basically decent people
who have heard themselves calling Bush & Co. shitheads, crimminals and oil
murderers now feel the need for a moral bath, a kind of enlarged moral fair
in which they can cleanse their spiritual palettes, by which they can regain
a sense of their innocence. They want to cling to the notion that they can
live in a major power country, enjoy its benifits, without anything unsavory
going on in the world. The flip side of innocence is inventive childishness,
charging Bush for prosecuting the war on terror for personal reasons.
Claiming that Bush and his staff love war for its own sake. Or calling for
his impeachment (who but one with a child's brain could think of impeachment
of the leader of the free world at a time like this? And again, the weird
focus on Bush when it is Saddam who is bent on raising hell in the world.).
What breaks my heart is how the marchers underplay 9/ll. I don't want
everyone to run around crying "Revenge!" but, my god, a bit of perspective,
please. Why no indignity on behalf of those victims? Shouldn't our maximum
anger be reserved for the evil monsters who perpetrated 9/11? Instead I hear nothing but vehement denunciation of Bush & Co.

I differ from McDermott and the protesters in that I believe in the straight
intentions of our elected officials and appointees and that peace is not an entitlement but something earned.

2005-04-07T02:52:00.000-07:00

Peace A-Go-Go

First, the peace that the demonstrators is calling for is off target. The USA was attacked. The Muslim world is throwing up all kinds of wild terrorists; they dispatch suicide bombers in Israel, they terrorize in the Philippines they blow people up in Bali, they've brought Algeria to a standstill and they are supported by Saddam in a big way. Why then the hatred for America? They resent our bigness and power, they don't like our methods, our results. I've gone through my own leftist phases but always the example of my grandparents came back to me. They were young kids in the 1920s when they worked hard and saved and invested wisely and made a good life for themselves and descendents. They navigated the politics of their era without getting snared in religious or political fanaticism. They believed in hard work. That humdrum working people like my grandparents revolutionized the world economy is not to be believed by so many of the world's intelligencia. Besides there is nothing at stake for the peace marchers now. They pay no price. When Dr. MLK marched there was real danger that he would get taken down by a billyclub, a rock or a bullet. But these glam protesters risk nothing, theirs is a great pop occasion.

2005-04-07T02:51:00.001-07:00

Thursday, February 06, 2003

Sometimes Courtesy is Revolutionary, Sam

Memo: to Sam Hamill, Poet, Publisher, Copper Canyon Press, Port
Townsend, WA

From: Doug Anderson, Poet, Publisher, klang, Seattle, WA
Date: January 31, 2003

First lady, Laura Bush, invites you, along with hundreds of other poets, to the White House to participate in a poetry symposium called "Poetry and the American Voice" scheduled for this February 12. You refuse and ask poets from all over the country to write anti-war poems. They do. By the thousands, with famous poets like Galway
Kinnel, Hayden Carruth, W.S. Merwin and Adrienne Rich weighing in. You are moved. You weep. The First Lady cancels the symposium believing - "it would be inappropriate to turn a literary event into a political forum." It's confirmed: you are a Lion of Moral
Outrage.

Mr. Hamill, would it have been so painful to check the Howling Poet bit and graciously accept the White House invitation? Or regretted it, and with quiet resolve refuse all government monies and subsidies at Copper Canyon Press?

Not everyone who loves poetry has your high profile and the luxury of your tears and rage. Such a symposium might have provided an opportunity for well-known poets to push for support of poets in schools, prisons and other poets-in-residents programs that encourage appreciation of our art. And in a time of strife it would have been good to hear the poet's voice in the nation's capital.

Do you really think Mrs. Bush is shocked that Poet America stands against her husband's foreign policy? I suspect she knew (and knows) but issued her invitation anyway. Her miscalculation was in believing us - poets - possessed of good manners. Well fine. Now the government can go back to never issuing invitations to poets and we poets can go back to complaining about the callous, philistine government (as we fill out grant applications).

But I don't think it's the government that comes out of this one looking callous and philistine.

Sincerely,

Doug Anderson
http://klang.bizland.com/
Seattle

2005-04-07T02:51:00.000-07:00

Thursday, January 16, 2003

Read R.M. Koster's novel The Dissertation. It's full of daring and fun, wild imagination, witty commentary on the politics of politics between the USA and Latin America, canny histories of the mid 20th century, rogues and romantics, and an incredible home-run streak in the 2nd half.

Thank you Andrew for your link in today's Dish.

An artist mainfesto:
The name of the game is freedom, total freedom, if the game is art.

Art is humanity's most brutal, most generous assessment of itself.

Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Seattle Critic continued in my article in FrontPage here.

2005-04-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

Thursday, January 09, 2003

Seattle Critic Turns Commissar
This past December Seattle Post-Intelligencer art critic, Regina Hackett, wrote a summary on art exhibits featuring provocative multi-media work presently on display in Seattle galleries. Ms. Hackett emphasized that Seattleites seem to look on controversial pieces with more maturity (or less outcry) than gallery viewers in other parts of the country. She cited the occasion of protesters blocking entry to New York's Jewish Museum over Zbigniew Libera's Lego concentration camp (titled "Correction Device") last spring. They didn’t close the show but news of it hit the front page of The New York Times. When the piece came to Seattle? No leather patch elbow needed rise against a gauntlet. No front-page news. Ditto – in years gone by - Mapplethorpe's "X Portfolio," ditto Serrano's "Piss Christ."

Among the works viewed by Ms. Hackett, Gallery Roq la Rue featured a Koran in which artist Kurt Geissel had carved out the shape of a Buddhist figurine – specifically one of the Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban in the spring of 2001. The carved Koran was just one of a number of works by various artists each jabbing at religion in a show titled Gods and Monsters. This week, art critic Emily Hall, writing an article for The Stranger titled Fear Factor, reveals that Ms Hackett determined not to mention the Koran piece in her round up because she thought it “irresponsible to feature such a work.” Ms. Hall reports that Ms. Hackett, upon viewing the carved Koran, told Kirsten Anderson, owner of Roq la Rue, to remove the piece from her gallery. Ms. Hall quotes Ms. Hackett as saying, "I was afraid to publicize it, because Kirsten sits there alone in the gallery," and "It's a particular kind of flag to a tiny group of people."

Ms. Anderson ended up asking Mr. Geissel to remove the carved Koran and he did so.

Read Regina Hackett’s article here.
Read Emily Hall’s article (with photo) here.

And now I have a bunch of questions from the floor.
-Doesn’t Ms. Hackett feel like a hypocrite for gooing up a butterball of praise for Seattle’s tolerance while at the same time pushing for the removal of a work that could genuinely put that tolerance to the test?
-Does Ms. Hackett want an award from the artist community for saving them from themselves?
-Does Ms. Hackett think the Muslim community incapable of mounting a peaceful protest?
-Does she want some recognition from Islamo-terrorists for saving them an expenditure of blood lust? (Maybe they’re mad at her, come to think of it.)

Of course the obvious questions gather in but they are no less worthy of attention.
-Why is it OK for Christianity and Judaism to get it in the knackers and Islam to get a pass?
And it’s axiomatic in the art community that the whole War on Terror is just a Texas oilman’s tumbleweed.
-Why then would Ms. Hackett fear for Ms. Anderson’s safety anyway?

Ms. Hackett is really out of line here. She has taken on the mantel of Art Commissar deciding what the public should see and then turning to compliment us on our taste. Or maybe something else is going on. The first Bamiyan Buddhas were removed by a bunch of thugs while world political and cultural leaders looked on. What now, are we joining the thugs?

Wednesday, January 08, 2003

To a friend enthusiastic about Chomsky
T, I agree that the US shouldn't lose focus on Latin America. I know that the foreign aid dollar is substantial as are the various loans by all the usual big-shot agencies. At the same time I put a lot of the blame for the problems mentioned in the article on the Latin American rich. They don't tax themselves. They don't have a muscle IRS to throw all the thieving bustards jail. The strong class structure lets the rich think that there is such a thing as a free lunch (in terms of skilled and unskilled labor for peanuts).The free lunch mentality has a trickle down effect. At any given time someone is always being vigorously rogered by someone else all down the line. Much as we like to complain here in the US about "class structure" and “dog eat dog" capitalism, you know, and I know, that we ain't seen nothing compared to the Latin American economies as far as sheer ruthlessness goes.

I don't know how to solve it. It's pointless to go back to the Renaissance or the Enlightenment to rehash the reigns of Elizabeth vs Isabella and how they were translated to the Americas; by luck or fate or whatever, those cagey old goats of founding fathers inserted"...the pursuit of happiness..." in a basic American document. That pretty much wiped out any latent aristocratic design to develop a peasantry in America. Now It's in every American's blood to say "go to hell" to the president or a millionaire or the landlord or that asshole boss. We are united in cockiness and the feeling that every man each is his own king.

Interclass hatred runs deep in Latin America. It's not something we can solve from up here. And it's holding their societies static. Until Latin Americans can figure out how to value human resource over the free lunch mentality - what can we do? We just keep throwing money at them and getting cursed by them in return. Speaking of money, I wish there were some way of turning off the illegal currency flows from Latin-American governments to capitalist honey pots around the world. These are tried and true and the World Bank folks must know that so much of their dough ends up in Swiss accounts, Aspen real estate, Miami yacht basins. I wish that some alert World Bank guys would set up an IRS type institution (even though I'm not crazy about the IRS) in, say, Ecuador, just as an experiment. Look for tax returns in some ratio to the country's GNP. Enforce those returns and plow the money back into roads, schools, electricity, public health. It seems so basic to try for this...

2005-04-07T02:46:00.001-07:00

Saturday, November 23, 2002

Our knuckles drag the ground
It's a maxim among liberals that Americans are stupid. If you don't see things their way you are deeply uninformed, unaware or just plain braindead from too much mall shopping and ESPN.

Listening to culture studies hotshot, Sut Jhally, on NPR's Alternative Radio, I learn that I am pro Israel because I've been subject to an all-out media blockage of the truth. You see, any time the truth about the Palestinians threatens to emerge, it is quashed as Anti-Semitism by...well, he doesn't name names. But he does know that the Quashers are big, sinister, pro-Israel entities with powerful links to media, advertizing, PR and political circles. Jhally speaks with trembling voice about finally gaining the courage - as a tenured professor - to stand up and speak out for the Palestinians - anti-semite label be damned. Can you believe the courage of this guy? A fully tenured professor criticizing US Midle East policy right here in the United States of America? Breathtaking. God, he must fear for his life every waking, every sleeping second.

I also learn that Palestinians are repulsive to me because the western media paints them as "threatening, dark Other[s], speaking a strange language and practicing an alien religion." Hold yer Dark Threatening Other horses. There's also the wee matter that members of the Palestinian debate team don't mind pulling dynmite caps when the discussion heats up. May I timidly suggest that when one side installs dynamite as an oft-used rhetorical device, it has, effectively, called off the debate?

"There can be no justification whatsoever for suicide bombing," Jhally assures us. "However," he continues -

Friday, November 22, 2002

Babysitting
Hey there big pimp f-daddy-o or whatever your ghetto schitck is. While your successful betters slam each other as house slaves you slime the streets without commentary. (Fascinating this psychosis in the black community. Golden guitar player Harry Belafonte, the recipient of much white generosity and much black disdain, calls Colin Powell a house slave. Colin Powell helped revamp the US army after Vietnam and helped win the Gulf War, enormous accomplishments, achievements beyond color. Belafonte can’t touch Powell so he dips into the sewer to fish out insults. The genuinely nasty shit – absent fathers – goes uncommented upon by Mr. Right-on bro - Harry.)

I don’t know what kind ghetto pimp meister thing you’re into but none of it makes any sense while you continue to ignore your daughter. This has nothing to do with race because we’re talking a human life. Life comes before color in my book. So that’s all I’m going to say about it. My idea of you is that you are some kind of unnatural monster. I’ve heard about you coming over to the house and shaking down the baby’s mother for pocket change. These can’t be healthy occasions because the baby comes back saying “my daddy is a bad man.” Well what kind of shit is that?

Along with my girlfriend S, I’ve been looking after your baby for over a year. And we’re not of those creepozoid couples who go around glomming onto other people’s children. S has her hands full and so do I. In fact I always considered it my job to shield S from kids like your daughter because they come at her all the time from all over the neighborhood. I remember that day your daughter came after S saying “grandma, grandma.” I wasn’t all that happy. S had gone to check on her real granddaughter and your baby heard her and said, “she’s my grandma too.” Well after that there wasn’t much I could do to keep them apart.

Your baby’s mom began to ask S to take the baby overnight. The mom has some kind of a drug problem by the way. She’s always in some state of bingeing or recovering from her latest blow-out. Strange dudes are always creeping and crashing at her place. At least she cares enough for the baby to get her out of the way on these druggie occasions. That’s usually when S and I step in. We take her to dinner or just play with her at S’s place. We’ve taught her to draw and play on the computer. She calls it “the puter.” She loves getting new books and she’s crazy about the Toy Story movies. We just got her a Jessie doll and you should have seen the look on her face when she opened the box.

How charming she is and how beautiful she is. Taking her trick or treating this last Halloween you should have heard how many parents exclaimed about her beauty. What a great imagination she has. She likes to pretend a fly is buzzing my head and then she lands it on me and then we whack it together and brush it to the floor. And what a great sense of humor she has. When I was taking books out of my bag, your daughter, like any normal kid, was curious. “What’s that?” she asked. “It’s a book of Spanish poetry,” I told her. She takes it up and immediately begins to read it in pretend Spanish. She's not yet four years old and knows that Spanish is something you read that's different from English. Lately she’s trying to learn to eat with chopsticks since S and I eat salads with chopsticks. She got frustrated and said “can I eat with a chop fork?” She can count confidently up to 10 but sometimes she sings "now I know my ABCs" after counting. I’m always asking her how many fingers she has. I started hiding some of my fingers or pretending one is cut off at the knuckle by folding it into my palm. When she counted I told her I only have four and a half fingers. Now she knows what half means and she likes to imitate this. Shame on you. God gave you a gift more awesome than a million suns and you shit on it. Shame, shame, shame on you absent, non-caring father.

Thursday, November 21, 2002

Baldwin again
“For the arrival of these people, the people in the seats of power have only themselves to blame. Who, indeed, has hijacked more than England has, for example, or who is more skilled in the uses of terror than my own unhappy county? Yes, I know: nevertheless, children, what goes around comes around, what you send out comes back to you. A terrorist is called that only because he does not have the power of the State behind him – indeed, he has no State, at bottom, and when the chips are down, rules by means of a terror made legal – that is how Franco ruled so long, and is the undeniable truth concerning South Africa.”

James Baldwin in Just Above My Head (The Dial Press, 1979)

I beg to differ James. You're saying we're all just a bunch a terrorists? Anyone with a state behind him? Doesn't America get any credit at all for keeping clear that non-terrorist space in which brilliant artists and writers can develop? I guess not.

Why are writers, artists and intellectuals infatuated with terrorists? Is it the fascination of the sedate with men of action?

June 23, 2002
Dear NPR
Here's a Seattle listener and Spanish speaker begging you to change the editorial policy of pronouncing Spanish names in Spanish when they come up in a spoken English report. Spanish is not English. It is hard for listeners who don't know Spanish to grasp the name of the person when that name is spoken in Spanish.

Isn't the purpose of your broadcasts to communicate news and facts clearly? Why would you want to withhold such an essential fact - a name - from your listeners?

Spanish consonants are softer than those in English; the English ear has a hard time sorting out, say, Spanish bilabials, m, b, v, p. Unless the listener has studied Spanish pronunciation he will not be able to catch the distinctions.

Or take the letter "r". In English this sound is formed with the mouth muscles, sticking the lips out as in a kiss. In Spanish the lips are still - frozen, really, into a faint smile - while the tongue flips or rolls against the roof of the mouth. These are difficult sounds to master for the respective students of each language.

No other different-language-speaking-country in the world pauses to pronounce foreign language names the way the mothers of those name-bearers pronounce them.

What gives with this nutty policy?

Das
Sunbreak City

June 24, 2002
Dear Das,
Thanks for your email. NPR has no policy about pronouncing Spanish words with Spanish accents.

Our policy is to make foreign words as comprehensible as possible. One exception would be
if the reporter is Hispanic, then the natural pronunciation would be obvious. Even so, as the United
States becomes home to more and more Hispanic people, my guess is that we will all become more conscious of how words should sound.
I would be interested in knowing which reporters are, in your opinion, unnecessarily Hispanicizing
their pronunciations.

Regards,
Jeffrey Dvorkin
NPR Ombudsman

June 24, 2002
Dear Mr. Dvorkin,
Thank you for your reply to my concern about the mixing of Spanish and English during some of your reports.

NPR has no policy about pronouncing Spanish words with Spanish accents. My Concern is not with accents, but with language. Your reporters are mixing the English language and the Spanish language when they pronounce Spanish language names in Spanish during a given report in the English language.
One exception would be if the reporter is Hispanic, then the natural pronunciation would be obvious. Obvious? Natural pronunciation? If a Venezuelan reporter files a report from Caracas speaking comprehensible English, with an accent, and pronounces Spanish names in his report in Spanish, I can understand. That's natural pronunciation. But when one of your reporters, say, Mandelit del Barco serves up a report in flatland mid-western English and then lets rip with Spanish language pronunciation of Spanish names in said report, well, I don't understand. At best, she's just showing off her language skills, at worst, she obfuscates, or subtracts important information from the report.

Even so, as the United States becomes home to more and more Hispanic people, my guess is that we will all become more conscious of how words should sound. Really? Do you really see speakers of only one language taking the time to learn the complex language structure of a different language just to pronounce a name now and then? As more Hispanic people arrive (and stay) questions more urgent than precise name pronunciation will come to the fore.

I would be interested in knowing which reporters are, in your opinion, unnecessarily Hispanicizing their pronunciations. Again, I'm not talking about Hispanic this or that; I'm referring to the absurd mixing two languages when it is unnecessary and when it interferes with your listeners' ability to capture the flow of information. But to answer your question here: Except Bob Edwards, ALL OF YOUR REPORTERS. EVEN THOSE WHO DON'T SPEAK SPANISH TRY OUT THEIR SPANISH PRONUNCIATION (TO COMIC EFFECT!). Please ask them to knock it off; there is nothing hideous or offensive about pronouncing "Juliana Martinez," or "Roberto Aguilar" with an English speakers' accent.

I am no English Only Crusader, I just want to urge your reporters to "Pick a Language" for the broadcast, in the interest of reportorial clarity.

For what it's worth:
I just conducted an informal straw poll with about 10 Mexican guys, my neighbor and his pals, out polishing a car and listening to nortena polkas in the parking lot under my window. I just asked them if they thought it disrespectful when English speakers pronounce their names with an English accent. The universal answer was "no." 8 of 10 thought it was kind of funny. The other two said they know they are massacring English when they try to say Gringo names.
Regards
Das
Sunbreak City
[No follow-up reply from NPR]

October 7, 2002
Dear Latino USA,
Why don't you do a program on why your reporters, who speak perfect Gringo English, pronounce Spanish names in Spanish? People who don't understand Spanish, the majority of your listeners, cannot understand names pronounced in Spanish. It's a fascinating thing to see men and women committed to communication deliberately obfuscate important information. Why do they do this?

To the English ear the name "Eriberto", pronounced in Spanish, sounds like Eddyberto or Eddyverto; also, as you well know, the Spanish "r" is vastly different from the English "r". Spanish labios and labio-dentals are different from their counterparts in English.

Why do LUSA reporters do this? I can only guess. I come up with two reasons, one addressed to A) the native Spanish speaking community, the other addressed to B) the native English speaking community. To A the reasoning must go like this: don't hate me because I speak such perfect English. I'm still an authentic Latino; I have not sold out; I'll confirm this by pronouncing names and proper names the way you do. Towards B, the reasoning must go like this: If it weren't for you and your damn language I'd be living in a world of bliss in which I both earned a living by and dreamed in Spanish. Curse you. The hell with you if you don't understand.

I believe "Latino" is an American moniker. In San Salvador a few years back I tried to call a group of Salvadorean friends "Latinos" and they jumped all over me; "that's Salvadorñeos, Douglas." (pronounced "Doogloss", in Spanish by the way) they insisted. "Latino" in Spanish refers to things Latin, doesn't it? So if "Latino", describing a people, is an English language invention why would you pronounce it in Spanish?

Just Curious,
Das
Sunbreak City

October 8, 2002 [unsigned reply from Latino USA]
Rodolfo de la Garza of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute was once quoted in our program as saying:
"There are no Latinos except in the United States."

People in Mexico are "Mexicanos." They retain a "mexicano" identity when they immigrate to the U.S., but they also become part of a larger group of people here.... more than merely Mexicanos.

As for the pronunciations, they are pronounced correctly because... that's how they are properly pronounced. If the pronunciations were more "anglicized," would you retain the name 5 minutes after the report was over? Studies show, probably not. But we are definitely NOT militant on this issue. You should hear how some activists in New Mexico pronounce "Albuquerque." In this case, it would render the city unrecognizable to practically everyone.[I give up - DA]

Das
Sunbreak City

Monday, November 18, 2002

A Don Quixote American version would be an actor in a daytime soap opera; he goes crazy and starts taking his role too seriously: he doesn’t smile, no sense of humor and he gets thickly involved with men & women over trifles. He barely works, talks on the phone a lot, can’t understand why everyone doesn’t live at the same intense level as he does, hears somber minor chords all the time. He spies, eavesdrops reacts emotionally, paranoid, plots with others, pouts and spouts, fucks everything. There are vast acres of comedy waiting to be uncovered in the US of A: so much is sacred, therefore much to pick from. Porn, money, TV, celebrity. Where’s the celeb who will declare it’s all bullshit? Who will cut his throat before a live TV audience: you are dumbshits for thinking there is anything here: it’s all phony! There are few breaks from being hardened fighters in the money game; everything is pornographic (if you define pornographic as in your face); the heavygoing PR machine of the USA. The cult of celebrity alive and well.

Saw a great Japanese film by Itami who committed suicide a while back. The realism of his films. Opening shot: after sex the woman walks to the bathroom with a tissue wad in her crotch. Camera at butt level. Startling.

Sunday, November 17, 2002

Do I look any different? Sexier? How about my profile? Does it turn you? On ? Are you getting hot yet? When you come into contact with death your sexual nature comes out and you become sexier by close contact with the angel of death. Today the angel of death brushed me with his wings. I was thinking about a song I was thinking about a girl I was thinking about a poem. Not good thinking when you are driving but at the same time it made me go slow to be thinking like this and driving at the same time. I obeyed the green light and went forward. Just before the middle of the intersection my body – not my mind – my foot mashed the breaks. A red sportscar whizzed in front of me going at a high speed. I stopped to organize myself to catch my breath and calm my heart. The red sportscar had run the light flying by like the tail of a comet. I saw the angel of death float off, up and over the light, over the building, off towards the water.

2005-04-07T02:46:00.000-07:00

Saturday, November 16, 2002

I had a friend in Nicaragua
I was a kid and I don’t know why he liked me
he was a hit man and killing was common for him
killing and whoring and he looked after me
and I asked why can’t I be like you? And he said
I will kill you first before I let you turn out like me…
he was big and fat and liked food and drink and women
and he killed people and he loved me and looked after me
and gave me money for school and protected me during the civil war
then he died as was his wont he was shot in the back violently,
and he came to me in dreams and I asked him what it was like to be dead
and he said nothing it doesn’t feel like anything…
and he visited me so often that finally I had to tell him
not to come around anymore and he stopped…

That Most Chilling Conjunction.
After 9/11 the world is divided into those who use a period and those who use a conjunction. As in:

9/11 was a horrible senseless attack on America.

9/11 was a horrible senseless attack on America but...

Friday, November 15, 2002

Eye of Knute Watch
In which the citizens of Sunbreak City are subjected to the rolling boil rants, conventional non-think and sorry grammar of high-profile Sunbreak City editor, Knute Berger.

Here's Knute calling President Bush a suicide bomber wannabe. Here Knute offers up a whimsical, affectionate comparison of bin Laden to the bands of grassroots heroes who knock over their technological overlords in SciFi movies.

Hyperbole of this sort hints at a far-gone, mental dry-rot; a surrender of reason to rant, argument to wild assertion. Meanwhile the corpses of the innocent pile up - thanks to Islamic murderers. No biggy. Knute will go on writing editorials, fully coated in the 1st Amendment, comparing President Bush to Lord Suaron while his comic book hero, bin Laden, dreams up better ways to blow us all - those who hate him and those who believe him the sprout of a root cause - into the afterlife.

More later.

Thursday, November 14, 2002

All that Chas
To read Charles Mudede in The Stranger is like sniffing paint thinner. His prose makes the issues that clear. He blames the downtown murder of an innocent white bystander by roving black gangsters on the clash of Class Struggle; the haves against the have-nots. You can always count on Chas to lay a wet king-sized blanket of cliche over some social problem. You can practically see him typing with one hand and patting himself on the back with the other for being so smart. What a powerful intellect! Class Struggle! Wow. Exhibit A: there is no thought taking place in the popular Sunbreak City rags. On this same note a friend of R’s friend gets beaten in a park by three masked thugs. They asked him for a cigarette and started hitting him with lead pipes smashing his jaws and teeth and eyes and skull. They left his girlfriend, a witness, alone. They said “he’s dead” when they finished. She saw the skin of their wrists and necks and identified them as black kids. He survived but barely and will undergo facial reconstruction and life-long monitoring of his brain. The cops believe the attack was part of a gang initiation. Chas would call it Class Struggle – Thanks Chas now everything’s clear!

It’s almost impossible to listen to Noam Chomsky. He is so smarmy and self satisfied. He talks into a vacuum of stupidity. To hear him in his old man’s voice compare world atrocities and terrorist incidents makes you ill. The man simply has no heart. He uses dead bodies and world bombing statistics to explain away the horror of 9/11. (Ditto Harper’s Magazine, Oct 2002) Chomsky sounds the way you’d expect the alert ten year old who found and swallowed the smart pill to sound: smarmy, statistic mad, simplistic, legalistic, patronizing, unknowingly heartless and brutal.

Wednesday, November 13, 2002

The indifference of our society to poetry really shows up at poetry readings, especially among poets. I wish I could ask everyone: why are you here? I do know we are all hoping to participate in something grand and munificent in a long line of tradition, etc. But please just do one simple thing: avoid cliches. Instead the language of the poets at these readings is inert, flaccid, recumbent, tossed off. The poems lean heavily on anecdote, and seem to be either therapy vehicles or invitations for the audience to recognize the superior sensibility of the poet. It is not horrible writing but it is writing developed in a vacuum – writing of zero critical readers. It’s poetry as a kind of Doppler Diary – taking in whatever gets scooped up. We need a contemporary Ben Jonson to hold court and criticize and encourage young poets. I’ll highlight what I think are the major failings of the poetry in journals published in Washington State. (My poems are not examples of perfect and wonderful poetry. They are examples of avoidance of total crap. I’m not so skillful yet. I have a pretty level view of my own poetry. On the upside I try to give sovereignty to the individual line. I don’t indulge in prose anecdote; I avoid poetic language and cliches. There is a voice to my poems: you know someone is trying to get through to you. On the downside I tend to fuse endings with a kick-flourish, too much reaching for meaning leading to sentiment which in turn leads to lightweightedness.)

Here is a list of common errors you find in regional (and some national) poetry: 1. The false epiphany; 2. The lackluster description; 3. The inane anthropomorphism; 4. The wimpy simile; 5. Heavy leaning on anecdote; 6. Referents in the void (formerly known as automatic writing); 7. Overabundance of non sequitur; 8. Inept shaping (my term for meter/rhyme). The overall effect is of a child describing her day in the doll house to her parents. Well first Julie wouldn’t go near the closet/ Then I sent her to the bad room/ In the bad room she meets the Fooglings, etc. You find yourself involved in quaintness, in intense, private language. Just because we deal in words does not give us any excuse to dislodge them at will. Words are not balloons that you tie into cartoon shapes. Painters deal with light and must study it whether they are realists or abstract artists. Writers have no license to shuffle meanings like Las Vegas card dealers. You must trick lull convince charm your reader. Readers ain’t stupid.

I see the movies and the novel attached to each other in a most unhealthy way. Like the convicted criminal of old who had to go about with the cadaver of his murder victim tied to his back. The camera is an invention of genius yet how reduced is the vocabulary of the camera in modern movies: the car chase scene, the gun the chase through a two story house or a parking lot or an industrial site. Bad marksmanship, bad dialogue. A moratorium on movies with the shouted line "you don't have the guts!" A moratorium on underground parking garages in movies. Ditto warehouses. Ditto loading docks. Ditto meatlockers. By the way, ever notice how people in the movies never have any peripheral vision?

The novel too, seems stuck with its lexicon of dialogue, description, the sex scene. The finest tempered cliches find their way into new novels. What in the world goes on in creative writing workshops? How about some charm, for Chrissakes. Are the basic techniques of fiction so exotic? I think not. We have two excellent examples from the ancient world: Petronius’ The Satyricon and Apuleius’ The Golden Ass. Both novels of comic genius. The Satyricon is a gay cruising novel. The Golden Ass is a – what? Satire? A picaresque romp? A morality tale? Who knows.

Back to the movies, I like the way Spike Lee uses the camera as a kind of perceptual vacuum cleaner; the way he holds it steady on a face, on the hyper beautiful faces of his actors and actresses. On the downside I’ve never seen an interview with Spike Lee in which he does not present himself as weary, put upon, embattled by Hollywood bigshots. Here is a talented young man working in a retarded medium among fat fingered thugs who has achieved great things. He loves to come across as persecuted, victimized throttled at every turn. He says that white directors cannot should not portray black themes; yet he is confident that he can portray white Americans – or at least the lower-class Italian version thereof.

I loved that French movie – Amelie – about the girl who negotiates her nutty parents and neighbors and finds a like-minded boyfriend through the quick photo booths in public terminals. There the camera seemed necessary, like another brain hemisphere.

In the Publishing House of My Mind
I’ve got my doubts that we Americans even understand the ground rules of fiction. Fiction is something you do after you retire from broadcasting or acting or commanding ships in the navy or some other career. As a language vehicle for the delight and enlargement of reality through the imagination fiction doesn’t have such a great track record in the U.S. I’d like to read more novels from which movies cannot be made. Movies have eaten and digested the lexicon of the novel – dialogue, narration, scene painting, conflict and resolution - and made it their own.

That said, here are some nay and yeah guidelines:
No genre fiction - Crime, Romance, Sci Fi - unless yours is an outstanding satire that will knock the genre out of the running once and for all as did Cervantes’ Don Quixote the pulp Chivalry/Romance genre during the early Renaissance. And while I’m in the NO column, no coming of age novels, no novels with writers or poets in them, no novels about paintings, no novels about drug addicts whose dopey language is passed off as poetic prose. It would be nice if you knew something about a life and the tensions it takes to hold that life together. Show how your characters respond to those tensions. Yes. Humor yes. Have you read Petronius or Apuleius?

I’ll reject your manuscript outright when I espy my first cliché. In your manuscript tears will not stream, playgrounds (stadiums, parks) will not flood with non aquatic objects (children, dogs, cars), napes will not be associated with women’s necks, lips will not be full, courage will not be bolstered, eyes will not brim - at the rims. And while we're at it we don’t welcome words that appear often in books but rarely in daily life such as: to proffer, to avert, wry, tousled, grimace, resonate (it’s time we took this verb back from critics and returned it to luthiers), luminous, meander, amble, clamber, flounder, saunter, fraught (without with), drape a sweater (or whatever – on anything), set something on the table with a flourish (what’s a flourish for God’s sake?), smoothes (his palms down the front of his/her apron), to trudge (forward or backward or onward), to trundle.

At the Publishing House of My Mind we believe that verbs turned nouns are ugly (disconnect), but nouns turned into verbs are cool (“The hearts that spanieled me at heels”)

No shortcuts to freshness, thought, originality!

Yes, it’s the machinery of fiction that upsets. The description of the belt knife pinching the waist through the denim as he walks across the field at night, the wet crab grass soaking his tennis shoes, the wind fresh on his skin now. Cliches rule. The machinery of fiction grates. How few can do it well. The humdrum of received ideas, accepted techniques, the mini encyclopedic explanations, the constant description, the tic of description, the reiteration of trait to make sure the character doesn’t dissolve under our - the reader’s - eye…

Tuesday, November 12, 2002

From last summer
Christ the weather is hot still. It’s like Maui. Did I tell you about the veteran’s hospital? S is up there trying to get over wanting to kill himself. Vietnam class of ’69. A couple shock treatments later and he’s feeling a bit better so he says but he still says things like “I wish they would have got me over there…” The atmosphere of the place is dreary. How can the staff be inspired when the maladies of the men are so metaphysical? They’ve been to the river Styx and back through bravery, stupidity, youth, whatever, but they did something for the good of the country, something most of the shrinks haven’t done. It must be hateful to see your expensive time-consuming education bounce off a bunch of wily old vets with intractable (immutable?) depressions and lopped limbs. You must end up hating them. The food is wretched. I watched as S picked at his canned peas and fake mashed potatoes with a piece of white bread with a single slice of turkey ham (nitrogenated, water enhanced) under gravy and a wedge of cantaloupe. There was a debate going in the cafeteria between a couple vets:
“Sure, you can make fake mashed potatoes taste OK!”
“Well, you can I supposes, but you got to put a lot of butter on them. Butter. A lot of butter. They never give you enough butter around here.”
“Yeah, that’s for sure.”

Something else we look for that is harder to define. It’s a feeling that your sentences are weight-bearing sentences. That they have some carrying power. That you know how to manage the English language as a craftsman. This is what craftsmen the world over feel when they look upon a colleague's fine work with mixed degrees of envy and appreciation. That from sentence to sentence you have earned your keep with the language, that you have put in your time woodshedding. Guitarists talk of woodshedding, that is, spending time working on the fine points of your craft and making them your own. You know it when you see it. It’s the difference between a moving crew that knows how to pack and carry your goods with dispatch and elegance and a bunch of wine-breath hustlers off the street enlisted just to get the job done – crash!

From The General I learn of sensory deprivation training in which a man is given harsh tasks with no feedback as to how he is doing. Well there you have it: the role of the struggling artist. He logs in his time, words, with little or no feedback. He just keeps going. Is there any better definition of the beginning artist?

Dear A,
You've got to address your own pathologies here. If you're afraid of life in
the USA there isn't much I can do for you.

It wouldn't hurt for you to do a tour of Iran or Saudi Arabia to learn what
real fear of Big Brother means. I do not fear anyone or anything, especially
in our government. What privacy rights have I lost? I suppose I've lost the
right to stand in front of an underpaid baggage checker and scream "Praise
be to Allah! Death to the Infidel!" but I probably wouldn't do that anyway.
Speaking of art, when I came out with my donkey story I took a lot of shit
from liberal leftist feminist types. Speaking of Bush and his cohorts,
rather than epitomes of uptightness, they present the opposite picture. They
are relaxed, confident secure in their mandate to wipe out the motherfuckers
who want to kill you and me. The little worry worms are the democrats who,
like you, do nothing but whip up fear and conspiracy theories and bogus
scenarios. You are too high falutin' to acknowledge that we are living in a
scenario of real terror. It's time to focus on what is real. It's tyranny vs
freedom; I know who's dishing out what.
D

Dear D
You represent a rare species . . . an arch-conservative, writer/musician .
. .
an absurd contradiction! The very essence of creativity runs completely
counter to the clenched sphincter, rule by fear and divisiveness right-wing
ethos epitomized by Bush and his uptight cohorts. Even in your current
brainwashed state you need to understand that these are the people who
have always burned books and banned music for "explicit lyrics" . . . and this
one will really get you . . . . cried PORNOGRAPHY!!!! at the mere sight of a
nipple or penis. How strident you must be to feel so cavalier and naive
about your loss of privacy rights . . . . you seem to have lost much of your
imagination as well because it doesn't take much to see where this nation
is headed . . . and it won't be a friendly place for artists.

Your pal A

Novels
Reading Henry Miller – The Air Conditioned Nightmare – his vituperative prose - all contra America. He was a pregnant man; his spawn rules the universities, the disaffected, the asteroid belt of bohemia. I love his prose but he was frankly demented about America.

2005-04-07T02:45:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

R.I.P. Saul Bellow 1915 - 2005

The great American novelist, Saul Bellow has died. His novels fall into two modes - the somber and the madcap - but in all of them you will find generosity of thought, observation, humor and insight.

Friday, April 01, 2005