adios to 2K2... 12.31
the champagne's chillin' @ chez d'monquis,
not feeling particularly optimistic so we
could end up getting vewwy vewwy dwunk tonight...
uhhh... we did, uhhhh... were, uhhh.... whatever...
oh, and poetry is made to be read aloud and savored,
so do the right thing & print it out,
maybe (maybe) rehearse oncet or twicet
and then read it A L O U D...
(maybe to someone you love...)
see if somewhere it doesn't trigger something,
something that'll cause a little catch in your voice,
a little hesitation, perhaps move you to the brink of tears,
if so, you did it right, well done, we love you for that...
now we'll be away for awhile, but we will be back, that's a promise...
(although some of you are welcome to interpret it as a threat...)
this postscript added 1.2.03
And when you leave, and no one's left behind,
do you leave a cluttered room, a window framing
a zinc roof, other mansard windows? Do you
leave a row of sycamores, a river
that flows in your nocturnal pulse, a moon
sailing late-risen through clouds silvered by
the lights flung up from bridges? Do you leave
the wicker chairs the café owner stacks
at half-past-midnight while the last small clutch
of two girls and a boy smoke and discuss
what twenty-year-olds in cafés discuss
past midnight, with no war on here? You leave
the one and then the other, the all-night
eight-aisles-of-sundries with a pharmacy
cloned six times in one mile on upper Broadway.
Everywhere you're leaving something, leaving
no one, leaving as a season fades,
leaving the crisp anticipation of
the new, before its gold drops on the rain-
slick crossings to the walkways over bridges,
the schoolyard's newly painted porte-cochère:
remembered details. You're no longer there.
What's left when you have left, when what is left is
coins on the table and an empty cup?
An August lapse begins; the shutters drop
and lock, whatever follows is conjecture.
The sound feels final, punitive, a trap
shutting its jaws, though when the selfsame structure
was rolled up mornings, it was hopeful noise,
a reprieve from insomnia, a day's
presence opening possibility.
As you leave the place, you bring the time
you spent there to a closed parenthesis.
Now it is part of that amorphous past
parceled into flashes, slide-vignettes.
You'll never know if just what you forget's
the numinous and right detail, the key—
but to a door that is no longer yours,
glimpse of a morning-lit interior's
awakening silhouette, with the good blue
sky reflected on the tall blue walls,
then shadow swallows what was/wasn't true,
shutters the windows, sheathes the shelves in dust,
retains a sour taste and discards the kiss,
clings to the mood stripped of its narrative.
You take the present tense along. The place
you're leaving stops, dissolves into a past
in which it may have been, or it may not
have been (corroborate, but it's still gone)
the place you were, the moment that you leave.
on the threshold of the new year...
yourstruly finds himself grateful for the kindnesses offered him by friends, old & new, and on this day in
particular, desire to mention thanks to pal of several years for introducing us to author Derrick Jensen through two of his works, both books received as gifts via this friend, The Culture of Make Believe and an earlier work, A Language Older Than Words. It may be possible ourowndamnself has never expressed adequate thanks for those gifts, but to that friend, should she be reading these words, Thank You, it was kind of you to share those while thinking us worthy of those gifts. This morning another friend, our friendship of short duration so far, comrade blogster whom we happened to have as a guest here at chez d'monquis earlier this year, he of Plep; well, this morning he sent along something also by D. Jensen, which we are attaching here, in toto: (thanks S.J.G.!)
by Derrick Jensen, author of The Culture of Make Believe
and A Language Older than Words
We need a war with Iraq. It would help distract Americans from the scandals
surrounding the president (and more broadly from the fact that our failing
economy is killing the planet) than the start of football season: Nothing
compares to the patriotic thrill of watching grainy footage of Iraqi
radar facilities—or maybe houses or hospitals; the resolution’s
never quite good enough to tell—explode into fragments, or better,
simply vaporize from the pressure of the blasts.
We need a war with Iraq. It allows those who run the U.S. government—both
the politicians, who run the nominal government, and the CEOs, who run
the de facto government—to talk about new jobs while increasing
their fortunes. It allows the top 1% of America’s power elite
to speak of patriotism while sacrificing lives less valuable than their
own. It brings about an urgency—a frenzy, even—that allows
the rationalization of massive public expenditures without even the
illusion of a greater good or benefiting the public. It allows them
to further centralize political and economic power under the guise of
efficiency and national security. It allows them to imprison or execute
those who oppose this centralization, with no fear of repercussion.
It allows them to praise themselves and others like them for giving
voice to an urge to destroy. It allows them to invent, deploy, and use
no end of nightmarish devices. It allows them to kill, or rather give
orders so others must kill, with no fear of public censure. It allows
them to pull off the mask of public nicety and more fully concentrate
and exercise their power, or more precisely, their power to destroy.
We need a war with Iraq. But let’s break down that sentence. First,
who is the we in this statement? I cannot speak for you, but I do not
need a war with Iraq. Nor do any of my friends. (I’ve asked them.)
The trees outside my door do not need a war with Iraq any more than
the salmon living in the stream nearby. They’re busy trying to
survive our culture’s war against the natural world. I’m
pretty sure that the people of Iraq do not need a war with Iraq. They’re
suffering enough already at the hands of the U.S. government. Or rather
they’ve suffered because of its policies. The United States has
perfected the science of killing at a distance. No barbaric strangling
or stabbing here, it’s much more civilized to kill with policies,
or if necessary at the push of a button, the flick of a joystick. In
July, 1989, before the United States imposed sanctions on Iraq, 387
children per month under the age of five died in that country. As of
July 1998, 6,495 children per month under the age of five died. That
number will go up dramatically if the United States invades Iraq.
The New York Times and other news agencies tell us that a war with Iraq
could hurt the economy, since the “U.S. would have to pay most
of cost and bear the brunt of any oil-price shock or other market disruptions.”
This is undoubtedly true and realistic, but it is also dangerously short
sighted. Wars are necessary to the U.S. economy for reasons far beyond
the stimulating effect of all these taxpayer subsidies going to large
corporations, and even far beyond the critical utility of soaking up
of excess industrial capacity by producing items that will never enter
the consumer economy, in fact items specifically created in order to
be destroyed. War for the United States is a question of public relations,
the most expedient way for our government to demonstrate what happens
when our policies are ignored or our way of life threatened. The message
is clear: You will be bombed. You will be killed. If a leader of a Central
American country does not want an American transnational banana corporation
running his country, he will be deposed or killed, and a more reasonable
leader will be installed. If a leader of a South American country does
not want American transnational mining and communications corporations
running his country, he will be killed—spectacularly—and
a more reasonable leader will be installed. Teddy Roosevelt said it
well when he talked of carrying a big stick to beat into submission
those who resist, and intimidate those who have a mind to rebel. If
you are the leader of an African country, and do not want transnational
aluminum corporations to dam your rivers, if you are like Arbenz, Allende,
Lumumba, Mossedegh faced with U.S. sponsored death squads and the kleptocracies
that these death squads support, what do you do? Perhaps you compromise
just a little, and then a little more, not only to save your own skin,
but to save the skins of the people you are supposed to represent.
One problem with the use of force to support an economic and governmental
system, however, is that the poor do not always give up their hope and
dignity so easily. The lesson—that they are poor and you are rich—must
be constantly reinforced, lest they forget that their resources actually
belong to you. And how must you remind them? The same way the rich have
always reminded the poor, through the use of spectacular violence—terrorism.
This was true in the postbellum South. It was true in the turn-of-the-century
Philippines, where a million Filipinos were killed to reinforce the
lesson that the Philippines do not belong to them but to us (a San Francisco
newspaper editorial put it well: “We do not want the Filipinos.
We want the Philippines. The islands are enormously rich, but unfortunately
they are infested by Filipinos. There are many millions there and it
is to be feared their extinction will be slow.”) It was true in
the Shah’s Iran, Guatemala after Arbenz, Somoza’s Nicaragua.
And it is true today around the globe in the New World Order.
It does not matter that Saddam Hussein is not a revolutionary, or a
reformer. He defies America, and so he must die. He has something America
wants, and so he must die. He is a symbol of what America fears, and
so he must die.
We need a war with Iraq. Now let’s define another word in that
sentence: war. Not even Bush, Rumsfeld, General Electric, nor Boeing/Rockwell/McDonnell-Douglas
particularly want a real war: my understanding is that for something
to be called a war the other side has to actually be able to fight back,
and while those who run the big military corporations of course wouldn’t
complain too much about the destruction of their equipment, necessitating
the purchase of replacements, I don’t think Bush and company particularly
want to feel the political fallout from the steady flow of homeward
bound of body bags. It would be too cynical, or more accurately superficial,
to say that a drop in popularity would be the only reason those in power
wouldn’t want to see the bodybags. A more fundamental reason would
be that our society is based on an unarticulated hierarchy. The unthinkable—when
those low in this hierarchy perpetrate violence against those at the
top, or just a little higher than they are—inevitably meets with
shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. Violence brought
to bear on those of little importance to this hierarchy is nearly always
transparent, and very often goes unnoticed, or ignored. If noticed,
it is fully rationalized. War thus redefined begins to seem more like
ritualized slaughter.
In the first Gulf War, the United States military flew 110,000 aerial
sorties in forty-two days, the equivalent of one every thirty seconds,
dropping 88,500 tons of bombs and killing probably at least 100,000
human beings (casualty ratio: 637:1, although the number is actually
higher, since most of the American dead were killed by Americans, too).
Foreign dead didn’t matter. When asked how many Iraqis the U.S.
military had killed, Colin Powell responded, “Frankly, that’s
a number that doesn’t interest me very much.”
“Crispy critters,” that’s what a U.S. soldier burying
Iraqi dead called those she buried, “people whose blood had boiled
and evaporated. Their uniforms burned away with their skin down to naked,
blackened bones, leaving vacantly staring charcoaled skeletons brittle
enough to break up into skull, torso, legs, arms, and ashes.”
Let’s look more closely at the word war. Such a small word. Three
letters. Even if we call it slaughter that’s still only nine letters.
Behind and beneath all the talk of geopolitics and Patriot missiles
are dead bodies. If the United States military invades Iraq again, many
more people will die. Let’s say for a moment that the casualties
are the same as last time, and the number is 100,000. What does that
mean? If each of the individuals who are about to die has an average
of thirty-years of life ahead, this would be three million years snuffed
out. More than a billion days. Let’s say two hundred million moments
of lovemaking, three-quarters of a billion bursts of laughter, and the
same number of tears. A half-billion personal epiphanies, and six billion
dreams. Children, old men, young women, grandmothers, the healthy, the
sick, the happy, the unhappy, parents with children, orphans, lovers,
friends, brothers, sisters. More than twenty-four billion hours of life
suddenly stopped. Never to happen. Three hundred thousand pounds of
brains, boiled or charred in the brainpan. Two million pounds of bones,
and more of muscle. All of these turned into crispy critters.
And for what?
—Derrick Jensen, Crescent City, California
August 28, 2002
hiya hiya... 12.26
oh!?! you mean there was a holiday yesterday???
okayokayokay, maybe some of you can identify...
hiya...
America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twentyseven cents January 17, 1956. I can't stand my own mind. America when will we end the human war? Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. I don't feel good don't bother me. I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind. America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes? When will you look at yourself through the grave? When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites? America why are your libraries full of tears? America when will you send your eggs to India? I'm sick of your insane demands. When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks? America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world. Your machinery is too much for me. You made me want to be a saint. There must be some other way to settle this argument. Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister. Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke? I'm trying to come to the point. I refuse to give up my obsession. America stop pushing I know what I am doing. America the plum blossoms are falling. I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder. America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies. America I used to be a communist when I was a kid I'm not sorry. I smoke marijuana every chance I get. I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet. When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid. My mind is made up there's going to be trouble. You should have seen me reading Marx. My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right. I won't say the Lord's Prayer. I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations. America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia. I'm addressing you. Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine? I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week. Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore. I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library. It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me. It occurs to me that I am America. I am talking to myself again.
helpful hint for those of you stuck in video emporium aisle over the next few days,
maybe time to revisit Buckaroo Banzai for lil'blast from the past,
yourstruly bet ya the kidz'll like it too...
a few words about Daniel Day-Lewis... 12.24
but first, a minor digression. It has been quite rainy around here lately, quite stormy at times, more of the same expected beginning this afternoon, and a whole series of weather systems lining up out there in that birthplace of the winds known as the Bering Sea, north of the Aleutian Islands; appears that things will remain quite moist in the neighborhood thru the new year. Over the weekend though, we had a lovely respite from the rain and wind, and on Saturday morning we took ourself out for a little jaunt thru the Berkeley Hills, up to Grizzly Peak, where yourstruly was hoping to capture a few photos of the view from there ultimately a little unhappy with the results, due to the limitations of the equipment alongside those of the photographer, grumbles...
nevertheless it was a beautiful morning, and the small amount of trouble it took to get up to the vantage point atop grizzly peak was worth it, as the panorama one was afforded was marvelous at that time, with the clouds breaking up and early morning sunshine filling the sky, the sight of the city across the bay, and the golden gate in the distance, oh, it was a morning to remember. Okay, so it being a very nice day after some several days in a row of inclement weather, many people were disposed to being out and about, there was that holiday looming on the horizon so no doubt much energy was being expended in the completion of shopping chores in preparation for same, whilst yourstruly thought it an ideal afternoon to hie hisowndamnself off to the Oaks,
the local theatre in jaypea's neighborhood, in order to catch the first matinee of Martin Scorsese's latest effort Gangs of New York. This is where we return to the subject at hand, Mr. Day-Lewis, by mentioning that we first were introduced to him in the eighties, and still a remarkable thing to recall seeing him in two films, in particular when realizing that the actor in both was the same fellow, as one could hardly imagine two more disparate roles. The first film we saw his work in was My Beautiful Launderette, directed by Stephen Frears, from a story by Hanif Kureishi (which the BFI thought highly enough of to include amongst their Top 100 British Films, no time to debate that now...) and then, in recollection, it seems that we viewed both these films nearly simultaneously, but it was likely a month or two separated their viewing, we were at the Elmwood in Berkeley to see A Room with a View, and in somewhat of an aside here, both are wonderful films that we enthusiastically recommend to ye although M.B.L. might be the one more difficult to locate and likely only on VHS, am not certain of the status of its release on DVD. You can find a number of pictures of a young D.D-L. in My Beautiful Launderettehere, courtesy this D.D-L. tribute site, where you can also gaze upon him in his role as Cecil Vyse in A.R.W.A.V as well as some of the other wonderful roles he has inhabited. Now, the simple physical contrast you see in the photos is a minor thing, compared to viewing his work in fleshing out both of the roles, so perhaps it would be easy to understand why, after having seen both of these and determining the roles were the work of the same fellow, we became an admirer of his work in film. Oh, there were some duds to be sure (Stars & Bars anyone?) but as you can see after visiting that tribute site, our amateur cobbler has put together quite a body of admirable work. (cobbler? What's this you say?) So, back to the beginning here, so to speak, our lovely afternoon in a theatre we have many fond memories of having viewed other films in, on a beautiful day where only a few folk felt the motivation to be indoors, like ourowndamnself, the quiet and peace of a theatre with only, oh, perhaps 20 other people, and the luxury of a new print, as yet undamaged and flawed. Now there are other films that Scorsese has made that easily outclass this effort, perhaps it was Marty biting off more than he could chew, go read the reviews, go see the film and determine for youself, but for this primate's money, Daniel Day-Lewis alone is worth the price of admission. Yourstruly cannot tell you how much we enjoyed his performance, all the while listening to that flat
almost adenoidal new york-ese that he spoke in, thinking "am I listening to Rupert Pupkin or is it Chris Walken or maybe deniropacinohoffman... ", well, that aside, goddamit, go see the movie and check out the work of a guy whose work makes the other folks alongside him look rather amateurish.
from the dumbmonkey archives, last year, around this time we never ask much of you, our visitors hereabouts, but jessferdahalibut,
read the goddamned thing will ya?
there's a special treat for the fellas in the audience in the Mid-Dec post,
little video highlight of a wondrous vision, a heavenly visitation...
I am SO fuckin' sick of George W. Bush... 12.22
okay, so stepping out from behind the curtain, levers & smoke machine at rest, tired also of Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Rove, all the rest of those incredibly myopic and short-sighted, power-lusting vermin who are looting
the nation both figuratively & literally. Over the weekend
(and maybe later we'll -- OOOOPS, there I go again -- get to the pleasant things that happened to us during Saturday and Sunday) we visited our pals Stumpy & S.J as well as the usual bloggos favoritos, many of whom were TOO FUCKIN' QUIET, must be the goddamned holiday, ENNNYWAY- Thanks Stumpy, for the picture of the statue before it was removed and no doubt destroyed, and thanks, altho' sorta painfully offered up, to S.J. for the heads-up re the shenanigans of the #2 boob in the administration... OOOOOOH, color us furious... YAHHH, yourstruly is plenty aware of what is happening in this country and DISMAYED does not describe the magnitude of my personal distress that SO MANY FOLK still continue to go on about their business without even the merest of second thoughts or questioning of the motives and actions of these rapacious fools currently holding office, and then, not that he was ever a personal friend of ourowndamnself or anything but I heard today that Joe Strummer died. 50 years old that muthafukka was. FIFTY
goddamnit! okayokayokay, just venting a bit, got my pantaloonies all bunched up and the only thing that allows me to feel even the least little bit better about it is that some of you stopping by here feel the same goddamn way.
Not enough of us, which is the real tragedy here, just not enough of us...
SO...
here's something to end this morning's rant with,
in the spirit of true holiday giving: The George Dubya Bush Songbook. I will offer up the fool to ridicule until the pillars of his disgraceful tenure crumble and fall, and the world
truly comprehends his ignorance and stupidity...
personally speakin'...
we voting for platypus, altho that actually be word of the year
from one of yourstruly's childhood years...
& another thing yourstruly has fond memories of and would likely regale thee with wonderful stories of as we share a couple of tall snifters of fine cognac (or maybe even a nice mugga mulled wine) is our several months of "duty" aboard Genesis, 53' Pearson ketch, some many moons ago,
on her voyage to Baja, Puerto Vallarta & points south. This NYT piece has to do with a road trip, but any way you can get there, the Baja Peninsula is one magnificent place, as Melanie from Brushstroke TV can attest, some of her recent holiday in Cabo pics available here. For any of you with a real sense of adventure, wintertime on the left coast is usually the time many yachties & sailing folk head south to various ports in Mexique, Cabo was (and likely still is) the place many of them would rondevous (great xmas & new years parties held there) before everyone would jump off for futher W. Coast
adventures, some folks heading westward across the Pacific towards Hawaii and various South Pacific destinations, ahhhhh, the memories...
yah, check out the 12.9 mention of the Pearl Harbor of cruising at this link, yourstruly was there two years before the hurricane hit, what a lovely little village Cabo was then, likely changed a great deal now. More related linky goodness: the Baja HaHa; the sailing adventures of Team Toucan; lots and lots of opportunity for vicarious arm chair adventuring when you read the Changes of Latitudes letters (btw, if you are a sailing enthusiast and have not heard of Latitude 38, well now you have.); big long Baja adventure story available here, and leave you with a ton of Baja related linky goodness that you can access here.
yahhh, & monkees might fly outta my butt... 12.19 no, we not talkin' about el residente resigning when he
finally realized that the job was just too big for him... Flying Saucers Are Real come and take me away P L E A S E . . .
okayokayokay...
another item you can file under "preaching to the choir",
it ain't about terrorism, and it ain't about democracy, it is all about oil, boyz & gurlz, no matter what they say...
yourstruly happens to be a scrooge...
of the first degree, this goes way back to
our disaffection w/catholicism, the early underpinnings of what developed into a full blown atheism & general disavowel of things affiliated with christendom. No,we not gonna dwell on all of that at this time, maybe revisit the theme later, but ourowndamnself always slightly mystified every year at this time by the amount of stress & grief folks put themselves through in the pursuit of a merriment filled xmas...
oh, yesterday was such an incredibly beautiful day, and this comes from a person who loves a cloudy rainy day like no other, awakening to a beautifully clear & sunny day wedged in like a little gift between two major storms, it was our pleasure to hike thru the hills and catch glimpses of the panorama of the bay below thru the eucalyptus groves. The next big storm has already begun to announce its arrival via the wind whistling through the trees, and very shortly, the rainfall will begin anew, nice we've some firewood stashed aside for the evening, must make a point of aquiring a little more before the weekend.
yah, there's a lot of crap around us these days that ourowndamnself has a problem getting past, it would be so much more difficult without the knowledge of a lot of others out there whose dismay matches that of our own, you all know who you are, those of you that stop by here on any kind of semi-regular basis, this attempting to remain fully sentient primate is thankful for you and your efforts, in case we don't get around to dropping you a line personally in the next couple of weeks or so,
Gracias, amigos y amigas, muchisimas gracias, para todo...
this inquiring mind would like to know...
if this is such a wonderfully informative program on Muhammed,
then why in hell isn't it mentioned at all here? ahhhh, young grasshopper,
you must seek first, then you might find...
at this point in time...
we'll take that good news wherever we can find it...
from The American Prospect, James K. Galbraith with four reasons to give thanks --
or at least not despair completely -- this holiday season. Lötterdämmerung
and for the film buffs out there... International Documentary Association list of Top Twenty Documentaries a good many of these are available on tape & DVD,
if you happen to have a first class video emporium nearby,
if not, well Binky, we feelz your pain...
yourstruly should not have forgotten the umbrella...
on our way in to the j-o-b this Am, certainly a handy
item to have around for those occasional showers and drenching downpours...
from Slate, The Legend of Strom's Remorse. ourowndamself does not believe in hell, but if we did,
there'd be a special place there for folks like Strom...
meanwhile, our favorite bad boy's in baghdad, Sean Penn, "We'll have blood on our hands...",
and yesssss, The Morning News is becoming a favorite stop;
via today's Daily Bleed, Happy Birthday, Jose
didn't we all use to believe in magic... adieu, Zal
Zal's #28 on this list
some of you not going to remember how sweet it seemed,
way (WAY) back then, Summer in the City, Younger Girl, oh man...
methinks l'marquis gonna cry a while...
itza col'annawetta outtaheah... 12.15
actually, not too cold, but at times it has been Very Wet,
lots more of the same in the local forecast this week;
and first this Am (it is still Am so far right?, oops, barely, 11:55),
thanks to dear pal of ours on the other coast for sending me fine link
leading to this very interesting excerpted piece from Jan/Feb Orion,
available online at When Compassion Becomes Dissent;
next, from the pages of the local fishwrap, Sunday Edition:
& then, dear darlink katz&kitteez,
a new blip on our blog radar, Gay, Dead or Canadian, mentioned here because of
this bit of cleverness in particular... oh yah, new to us, and amongst a good thirty or forty others soon to be included
at our motherlode of chewy linky goodnesses
OOPS!, damn-O-lay! almos' forgot...
Is Maureen Dowd single?
the dumbmonkey sure got a crush on her...
arrgggghhhh, so we sorta scatterbrained this Am,
otra cosa mas, y nos vamos...
the one little problem with this AP article online is that
it didn't include the lovely little chart included below:
some additional related linkage
discovered during google search for arms trade and arms trade statistics:
from Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
Jan/Feb '01, via World Policy Institute, Stop Arming the World;
okayokayokay, so long as we don't kid ourselves into thinking the only thing we've got to be
concerned about is No War in Iraq, some truly fundamental changes have to take place in our
society in order to restore some degree of sanity to this ever increasing madness, so this weary ol' silverback's asking hisowndamnself if he's in it for the long haul or what? And what about you, Binky?
okay, so we got some work to do...
& no, we ain't superstitious, black cat cross our trail...
ennnyway...
Doc said "you bettah start taking bettah care o'yourself, boye..."
and yah, she's right, this dumbmonkey been way too slovenly.
on the first day of a week of wet weather to come,
we will keep this brief, and likely, as it will be very wet outdoors,
be back here sometime over the weekend ahead, but for now,
something from the L.A. Times, remarked upon here as one nite,
over dinner not so long ago, friend Janey-Kakes put question to her mate Philbert
and ourowndamnself, something about what it is about a song that catches our attention,
you know, that very first time you hear it and go, "hmmmmmmmmm, that's mighty tasty..."; Music Leaves Its Mark on the Brain
yourstruly's got an appointment w/medical professional... 12.12
aujourd'hui, and no, nuttin' to be concerned about (leastways, at this point in time) just tryin' to get on track in terms of maintaining the marvelous machine that is jaypea, now we on the threshold of surpassing our 26,280,000th minute of existence on this lovely rock spinning about in the ether...
spent some quality time yesterday abed reading recent novel by Jim Harrison (whom we made mention of back on our
11.3 & 8 posts in re another effort of his) and while it may not be his finest effort, we found ourself teary eyed at
end of part 1 with the passing of the patriarch, and just want to share a couple of timely sentences found in the story so far (this is written by character alive in late 1950's, novel time):
One need not read very deeply in history, despite the otiose trappings of patriotism, to see how irrationally vicious we were with our Natives. We have rebuilt Germany in a scant dozen years and have utterly ignored our first citizens, and are confident in this sodden theocracy that the God of Moses and Jesus has been quite enthused over our every move.
then, later, another character, great grandson of the writer of earlier paragraph:
It struck me for the thousandth time that when you were on the move you noted the bottom third, at least a third it seemed had become social mutants and were scratching along as minimum-wage menial laborers and without any reliable way to get anyplace else for a fresh look; those in Washington who could help simply had never noticed these people, that there was something about the xenophobic power trance in politics that made them unable to extrapolate any other reality than the effort toward reelection. They were making a mighty effort to rigidify the society to protect the top, and the bottom third were being openly sacrificed.
okay, yah, we know, different strokes for different folks, but nonetheless, some good stuff in these pages, though yourstruly might suggest you begin with the novel Dalva before you get around to The Road Home, the book excerpted above. Some good stuff in there too, re dogs and our relationship to them, particularly those of us who think they happen to be some of the finest creatures we blessed to share the planet with, their owners notwithstanding...
SO... heard about this lucky couple on the news last night, and after seeing the details this Am, just have to say, Wow!
some of you who come here on a regular basis, yah, the dedicated dozen of you, have seen mention of something we been wrestling with for some time, something inspired by a couple of films we saw earlier this year and amplified by some
events in the life of l'Marquis hisowndamnself, well, we still wrestling with it, and it seems to be coming together in
some fashion, as yet unwieldy as hell, so, maybe this be some introduction to it, and likely the remainder of entries between now and the end of the year will simply be "chapters". It began on a week not so long ago that we were suffering thru some unholy variant of flu/cold and we saw something re-broadcast on cable and not long after watched The Royal Tenenbaums for the first time. Part of our problem with the composition of this effort has been the death of certain brain cells that contained the memory of that initial film we viewed, then found some of our impressions of it were reinforced by the viewing of T.R.T. shortly after; that both films have something to do with Fathers, and in a roundabout way, what that particular reponsibility entails. (and mind you, we not speaking altogether LITERALLY here, we could be referring to
the responsibility of a mentor of any sex...). So in the time that has passed since then, we have viewed T.R.T. again, and
then even one more time in the company of the monkeeMomz&Popz, each time coming away with something previously unnoticed.
I was happy to find a copy of the script of The Royal Tenenbaums online (here it is gurlz&boyz, PDF mind you...) because there was something we caught in the later viewings of the film that, well, sorta made some sense to us,
a line by Gene Hackman, ol' Royal hisowndamnself, at the table with his adopted daughter, when he says "Can’t someone be a shit their whole life and want to repair the damage?", well, to be honest, that isn't really the crux of what has been bugging yourstruly for a while, but it is something that got under this dumbmonkey skin, 'cause there's a lot of that
"being a shit" kind of thing that we've been responsible for, likely some few of you have had similiar experiences. Another kinda funny thing is this book mentioned earlier also possesses this idea sort of woven throughout it, and oh my,
better get ready to wrap this up and prep for meeting the doctor. You are likely very familiar with the idea of the
Child being Father to the Man (vary the nouns as you wish, but you get our drift) so, ahhhh, let's leave you with something to ponder over; who might you consider most responsible for you becoming the person that you are, where did that process begin; those initials lessons re right & wrong, fair play; the development of whatever prejudices that inhabit you; in that sense of "teach your children well", who taught you? And now, what are you teaching your children? And if we can extrapolate that idea & question a few steps further along, what are our leaders teaching us, who are we taking example from?
unwieldy, yah, but look around you, where and how can we begin to engender fundamental change? Is it too late?
h i y a . . .
it's monday, isn't it?
something new to us,
heads up provided via ZNet newsletter: unitedforpeace.org
sunday Sunday SUNDAY! 12.8
what would Jesus drive?
why, his own goddam monster truck is what. Phil Berrigan died the other day, and we know some folks
just won't recall who he is and why we ought to celebrate him, so thanks to Mark at wood z lot (sorry 'bout that Z there, Mark, it's an affectation of mine & soon to be copyrighted) for the quality linkage in rememberance of a man who walked it and talked it. Something else in the news got our attention the other day when we first ran across the story in the Chron on the sweeping out of the homeless chaff in San Francisco. Once upon a time, when a much younger dumbmonkeyfella and his lovely spouse Gin were gallivanting about in the Fisherman's Wharf area, we discovered Grimes' Jukebox, yourstruly's sure that Gin still has the pictures somewhere. Which Grimes? Which Jukebox, oh, man, it is a sad fuckin' tale, but here it is. & then, while briefly at this weblog thing this Am, something from Riley Dog caught our eye, so we link to the main page of the site, & from there you are on your own, Binky... one other item, relating to Father Berrigan's passing, An Apology of Sorts
you'd think a libertine like ourowndamnself... 12.7
would have a more interesting personal life, wouldn't you?
you be wrong, Binky, way, way wrong...
out of the wreckage that masqueraded as a friday night rondevouz we come away reminded that at this point in time, we not about to play those silly ass reindeer games again...
breathed some sighs of relief (last night's were sighs of unrequited passion) when finding note from dear pal on the other coast, residing in the wooded hinterlands outside of Raleigh NC, who survived the recent ice storm, albeit without power and heat for nearly two days. whew...
for those of you who do not visit the linky goodness on the sidebar currently, here's something from Alternet you may have overlooked, Noam Chomsky Analyzes the Bushies.
awwwwwshit... what's the frikkin' point... 12.5
yah, yourstruly's got his crankypants on today, unable to put finger on exactly why we inna funk presently, but aware a lot of it has to do with the stupidities of the populace at large and the specific idiocies of the administration given free rein to fuck us good and proper & without so much as a thank you very much...
some local event info that perhaps some of you aware of already:
David Rees, enfant terrible creator of My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable, Get Your War On, etc., etc. on Tour, Tonite & Friday in S.F. Bay Area
our favorite from the latest batch: seriously folks, go out and buy lots & lots of copies, send them to those folks you love in the hinterlands who use AOL & MSN...
n o p e . . . 12.3 it was not moi... altho we are seeking a mate and we do like to bite...
uh oh...
better get myself off to the gym on a regular basis,
already paying enough in taxes, thank you very much...
from the December issue of The Atlantic, The Fat Tax;
& somewhat co-incidentally, local columnist w/similiar idea,
Emil Guillermo, Of Waistlines and Bottom Lines; quickly now, vite vite, hie thyself to the liposuction clinic...
the return & revenge of the living dead...
we are referring to that nasty business re the resurrection
of a certain H. Kissinger. There's this T. Meyer cartoon,
alongside item from GoOff.com, Revenge of the Living Dead. yourstruly's indebted to S. Baum of Ethel the Blog for the latter link...
then, from The Nation there's this and this too,
& C. Hitchens might need to take a little time off to re-evaluate his
own opinions on certain issues of importance, ourowndarnself a little concerned
with the self described contrarian's viewpoints of late
and his recent behavior while speaking in Berkeley, some mention of that here and here, and
in light of all of that, this letter to C.H. Thank the goddess he's
not changed his opinion re Henry the K. & thanks to Stumpy & the gang at environy for the timely reminder
d a m n . . . 12.2
just as we were gettin' comfortable w/November...
perusing the local fishwrap, an item on this interesting gadget.
more on Anoto products here
Logitech on their io pen
& now, for something completely different, not your usual chocolate heart.
some additional related linkage
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