Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Everything I need to know, I learned from Miller's Crossing
If I'd known we were going to cast our feelings into words, I'd have memorized the Song of Solomon.
Everything I need to know, I learned from Leonard Cohen
I've seen the future, brother, it is murder.
Tribal politics
What's wrong with tribes?
Tribes?
The Texas tribe. The American tribe. The Christian tribe. The teuful tribe. The "Western-Civ" tribe. The Scottish tribe. The gun-nut tribe.
Moynihan was wrong.
All politics is not local. All politics is tribal.
It all depends, of course, on how you define your tribe.
Tribes?
The Texas tribe. The American tribe. The Christian tribe. The teuful tribe. The "Western-Civ" tribe. The Scottish tribe. The gun-nut tribe.
Moynihan was wrong.
All politics is not local. All politics is tribal.
It all depends, of course, on how you define your tribe.
So, how come you don't have an M16 (or AR15) yet?
Lt. Colonel Hal Moore: I think you oughta get yourself an M-16.
Sergeant Major Basil Plumley: Sir, if the time comes I need one, there'll be plenty lying on the ground.
I'm just sayin'.
Sergeant Major Basil Plumley: Sir, if the time comes I need one, there'll be plenty lying on the ground.
I'm just sayin'.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
When did Obama decide to run?
After watching the first season (or first day) of 24, I can't help but think that, maybe, just maybe, it was after Dennis Haysbert won America's hearts as the first black POTUS.
Games people play
Obama plays poker.
McCain plays craps.
Putin plays chess.
Nope, don't mean nothing. Nothing! We're America, dammit!
McCain plays craps.
Putin plays chess.
Nope, don't mean nothing. Nothing! We're America, dammit!
No, I WAS wrong
I remember, back in the day, back when Sandbox I was winding down, I thought Poppy Bush (т.е., George Herbert Walker Bush) was flat out wrong to not pursue Saddam Hussein's forces back into Iraq, all the way to Baghdad, and remove him from office.
I was wrong.
I was so very wrong. I was focused on "could we do it?" and not on "and then what would happen?"
I've mentioned the Coen Brothers' movie Miller's Crossing in the past, because I dig on it so much. Now I'm thinking of an exchange between Tom Regan and Leo O'Bannon.
I don't have me the transcripts, but the exchange went something like this.
Leo: You do anything you can to help your friends, the same way you do anything you can to kick your enemies.
Tom: No, Leo, you do things for a reason.
It just works out better if you've thought through the reason.
Looking back on my enthusiasm for getting rid of Saddam, my face flushes crimson. Maybe Poppy really SHOULD have gone to Baghdad, but that ain't the way it looks to me.
I was wrong.
I was so very wrong. I was focused on "could we do it?" and not on "and then what would happen?"
I've mentioned the Coen Brothers' movie Miller's Crossing in the past, because I dig on it so much. Now I'm thinking of an exchange between Tom Regan and Leo O'Bannon.
I don't have me the transcripts, but the exchange went something like this.
Leo: You do anything you can to help your friends, the same way you do anything you can to kick your enemies.
Tom: No, Leo, you do things for a reason.
It just works out better if you've thought through the reason.
Looking back on my enthusiasm for getting rid of Saddam, my face flushes crimson. Maybe Poppy really SHOULD have gone to Baghdad, but that ain't the way it looks to me.
Guns and butter?
While thinking back on the "most conservative administration in history" (excuse me while I hack up a lung laughing, no, wait, I really CAN keep a straight face) it occurs to me that we need a new phrase to describe the "guns AND butter" philosophy espoused by the Bush the Lesser Administration.
I think I know what to call it.
You work it as a contraction, you take parts of both words and fuse them together.
Guns?
And butter?
"Gutter."
Oh, if that crack about "most conservative administration in history" above got your goat, let me enumerate. We've had massive new unfunded liabilities to seniors (Medicare drug benefits), lavish tongue baths to diversity, strong presidential action to "regularize" "undocumented" workers, centralization of the state organs of security, back-breaking simultaneous paeans to Islam as the religion of peace combined with kill-the-dirty-towelheads xenophobia and two and a half wars funded by Japanese and Chinese credit.
And the trend lines, o my droogies, they ain't looking so good.
I think I know what to call it.
You work it as a contraction, you take parts of both words and fuse them together.
Guns?
And butter?
"Gutter."
Oh, if that crack about "most conservative administration in history" above got your goat, let me enumerate. We've had massive new unfunded liabilities to seniors (Medicare drug benefits), lavish tongue baths to diversity, strong presidential action to "regularize" "undocumented" workers, centralization of the state organs of security, back-breaking simultaneous paeans to Islam as the religion of peace combined with kill-the-dirty-towelheads xenophobia and two and a half wars funded by Japanese and Chinese credit.
And the trend lines, o my droogies, they ain't looking so good.
Brezhnevschina
I've traveled some in the Former Soviet Union, and worked for a couple of years in Kazakhstan (with side business and pleasure trips to Mongolia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan), and I always enjoyed talking to people about their lives. I've always been interested in the Soviet Union, and its predecessor and successor states.
I can't claim this as authoritative (i.e., "I could be wrong!") but a lot of people talked to me about the way things were under Brezhnev (and his successor party heads).
By that point in time, pretty much no one believed in the "Soviet system." No one really believed that the workers of the world should unite and cast off their capitalist oppressors.
But there was some stability, and if you were smart and worked hard and had some luck and knew the right people, you could make some money, have some status, do okay for yourself.
In Russian, adding "-schina" to someone's name turns it into a new noun, meaning "Age of X" or "reign of X". I don't think anyone's used the term Brezhnevschina before, so it's my very own little term of art.
For me, it means, "We all know it's a fraud, but there's still money to be made pretending, so we keep on going through the motions."
So . . . would that make it the Bushschina? I mean, here, now, for us.
We still talk the smack: freedom, democracy, capitalism. Does anyone still believe that smack? More particularly, does anyone still believe that the United States Government represents that smack?
I suppose I can take comfort in the more euphonious-sounding impending "Obamaschina."
Right?
I can't claim this as authoritative (i.e., "I could be wrong!") but a lot of people talked to me about the way things were under Brezhnev (and his successor party heads).
By that point in time, pretty much no one believed in the "Soviet system." No one really believed that the workers of the world should unite and cast off their capitalist oppressors.
But there was some stability, and if you were smart and worked hard and had some luck and knew the right people, you could make some money, have some status, do okay for yourself.
In Russian, adding "-schina" to someone's name turns it into a new noun, meaning "Age of X" or "reign of X". I don't think anyone's used the term Brezhnevschina before, so it's my very own little term of art.
For me, it means, "We all know it's a fraud, but there's still money to be made pretending, so we keep on going through the motions."
So . . . would that make it the Bushschina? I mean, here, now, for us.
We still talk the smack: freedom, democracy, capitalism. Does anyone still believe that smack? More particularly, does anyone still believe that the United States Government represents that smack?
I suppose I can take comfort in the more euphonious-sounding impending "Obamaschina."
Right?
Monday, October 20, 2008
Everything I need to know, I learned from Ronald Reagan
"Trust, but verify."
It sounds better in Russian, of course.
"Верить, а проверить."
It sounds better in Russian, of course.
"Верить, а проверить."
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Everything I need to know, I learned from Scarecrow
CHOICES
by SCARECROW
had a talk w/G-d last night,
this was his offer:
all my sins forgiven,
all my debts paid,
everyone i ever fucked over or fucked,
reborn and made to feel clean,
no more pain for my eyes,
bulldozers and tanks
rust into anthills,
nothing more ever dreamed of
or manufactured to melt the skin,
hunger not even a word,
only one language - love.
Yeah,
all this,
all this,
or I could have stars on my boots.
And you should see them babe,
everyone wants a pair.
Note: I copied this poem down from a journal, probably twenty years ago, and have no idea where it came from, nor who, beyond the nom de plume, the author is. I humbly plead "fair use" in reproducing it here, and will provide proper citation if it is produced to me.
by SCARECROW
had a talk w/G-d last night,
this was his offer:
all my sins forgiven,
all my debts paid,
everyone i ever fucked over or fucked,
reborn and made to feel clean,
no more pain for my eyes,
bulldozers and tanks
rust into anthills,
nothing more ever dreamed of
or manufactured to melt the skin,
hunger not even a word,
only one language - love.
Yeah,
all this,
all this,
or I could have stars on my boots.
And you should see them babe,
everyone wants a pair.
Note: I copied this poem down from a journal, probably twenty years ago, and have no idea where it came from, nor who, beyond the nom de plume, the author is. I humbly plead "fair use" in reproducing it here, and will provide proper citation if it is produced to me.
Everything I need to know, I learned from Percy Shelley
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Everything I need to know, I learned from Bill Bixby.
"Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
I likes me some meat
I am prone to self-doubt. I mean, "I could be wrong" as the title, that's filed under "Clue, Some Kind Of." Sometimes I wonder if I've secretly turned all left wing, gone all prog, like a piece of meat goes bad in the supermarket if it sits there too long. Generally this is preceded by a putative conservative calling me some variation on faggot Godless commie.
Fortunately, the internet is full of places where I can easily check if I have succumbed to a, shall we say, more sinister political belief. (Umm, that's sinister as derived from the Latin term for left handed, playing on the popular understanding of the "left" and "right" wings.)
It doesn't take much roaming around for me to conclude that I fit in with "good movement leftists" about as well as I fit in with "good movement rightists," which is to say, not at all.
The left, we can posit, don't really dig on meat. This is not to slander the fine barbecue-loving Democrats that make up, one hopes, most of the Democratic Party, but speaks rather to the more rigorous adherents of the fringes. Vegetarians, vegans, Veejer (wait, that was Star Trek Something or Other), PETA advocates, or just folks who prefer to think that meat is generated, pre-shrink wrapped, in supermarkets around the world. I'm going out on a limb, here, and I don't have the statistics to back me up, but I'd venture that those folks are mostly left wing.
That's one of the ways I can tell I'm no commie pinko. Because just between you and me and the fence post, I likes me some meat. Hell, I loves me some meat.
I believe I am evolutionarily a carnivore, with the whole "eyes in front" thing going for me, with the whole "growed to rip flesh not chaw cud" teeth thing going for me. I believe I digest meat better than grains, and from time to time I see internet headlines about how our brains require amino acids found in meats to fully develop. Hey, all that could be nonsense.
What isn't nonsense is how much I likes me some meat.
I likes me some cow.
Like the commercial from a few years back said, "Beef, it's what's for dinner." For me, beef is the staple, it's the everyday thing. It's a floor wax, and a dessert topping! From the high-falutin' filet to the lunch bucket ground hamburger, it's the little black dress of the carnivore's feeding wardrobe. You can accessorize your beef just about any which way and it'll turn out satisfactory. We've cracked the code on beef, plus we're relying on cow farts to stave off the oncoming Ice Age. Fart, Bessie, fart!
I likes me some pig.
I pity observant Jews and Muslims because they have done themselves out of pork products through their piety. There are atheists out there who posit that every religion is a sham and a fraud, and while I don't buy into that (in my heart of hearts I do think I have a spiritual relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that I'm racking up karma points by attempting to walk with my Savior and that there is, in the end, a Plan however I am unable to fathom it, but I'm just saying) I think in such a case a good faith argument could be made that getting to eat pork is enough reason to do some schismatic heresy-shaking. Unlike beef, pork to me has a distinct, wonderful yummilicious distinctness. (Beef is pretty much "just meat.")
Bacon? Foshizzle my nizzle. Ham, either thick sliced steaks or honey glazed slices of just hocks tossed into the red beans and rice? Shut yo' mouth good. One time back in the day, one of my Daddy's clients sent him a peppered ham, had a good, thick, 1/4" rind of peppers on it. I remember the taste of that ham TO THIS DAY, I tell you. Ahem. To this day.
Now chicken and lamb, they have their place, as do all of God's other little critters. About venison, enough words simply cannot be said, so I shan't say a thing. And I've had some mighty fine elk and moose. Huh, that brings Palin to mind, who was, by causing mass anti-hunting spasms, probably the inspiration for this post. But other meats, they are of tertiary importance compared to beef and pork, and I want to get to sleep sometime tonight, and if I start going off on individual meats, I'll be here all night.
Loves me some meat. Yeah I do.
In my way, I'm a sensualist, a hedonist. Not a libertine, mind you (although I could be wrong) but a hedonist. I try to relish the sensations of the physical world, like the feel of grass between your toes, the pleasant itchy annoyance of a mosquito bite (somewhere in Clavell's Shogun someone says "life is pain") and oh my goodness gracious the taste of meat in your mouth. Maybe it's bad, maybe it's evil, maybe it's rotten, but you can't deny that meat tastes good in your mouth, even if it's "good like a fresh hit of crack" good. (Or wait, are kids these days just doing meth? Damn, it's hell to get old.)
I love ripping meat apart in my mouth. Bite down, there's that big explosion of flavor, sometimes a rush of juices, something primeval about it, something very rooted, something very grounded. Something very traditional. (We just do those traditions a lot more than people throughout history have been able to.) It's not a pellet, it's not something plasticized and hydrogenated for your protection, not something shot through with preservatives and processed into nothingness. (Even a hot dog, hey, lips and assholes, man, as they said in the East Texas poultry business, "parts is parts.") It's something real. It's something that was living, and not "living" like a plant turns towards the sun and produces phyloplankton, but living like it had a face and a heart.
And because I have a conscience, which means I'm a liberal . . . or maybe a conservative, I get confused, but anyway . . . the meat that tastes the best is meat I've made for myself. "Making meat" is another way of saying "getting your deer" and it sums it up in wonderful, beautiful, brutal simplicity. I won't lie, I'm no great hunter, I'm barely even a hunter, been hunting six or seven times and only bagged one deer and one pig. Both Bambi and Wilbur were thoroughly consumed, and with great relish, I will point out.
Aside from the health benefits of being leaner and free of hormones, antibiotics and other stuff of the nightmares of Upton Sinclair, meat you make for yourself is more moral. Rather than being industrially produced and processed, meat you kill for yourself has probably lived a more or less free existence, running around and rutting and fighting and mating and, you know, eating acorns. (Not, sadly, ACORNs.)
So yeah. I'm no commie pinko, because I likes me some meat.
Fortunately, the internet is full of places where I can easily check if I have succumbed to a, shall we say, more sinister political belief. (Umm, that's sinister as derived from the Latin term for left handed, playing on the popular understanding of the "left" and "right" wings.)
It doesn't take much roaming around for me to conclude that I fit in with "good movement leftists" about as well as I fit in with "good movement rightists," which is to say, not at all.
The left, we can posit, don't really dig on meat. This is not to slander the fine barbecue-loving Democrats that make up, one hopes, most of the Democratic Party, but speaks rather to the more rigorous adherents of the fringes. Vegetarians, vegans, Veejer (wait, that was Star Trek Something or Other), PETA advocates, or just folks who prefer to think that meat is generated, pre-shrink wrapped, in supermarkets around the world. I'm going out on a limb, here, and I don't have the statistics to back me up, but I'd venture that those folks are mostly left wing.
That's one of the ways I can tell I'm no commie pinko. Because just between you and me and the fence post, I likes me some meat. Hell, I loves me some meat.
I believe I am evolutionarily a carnivore, with the whole "eyes in front" thing going for me, with the whole "growed to rip flesh not chaw cud" teeth thing going for me. I believe I digest meat better than grains, and from time to time I see internet headlines about how our brains require amino acids found in meats to fully develop. Hey, all that could be nonsense.
What isn't nonsense is how much I likes me some meat.
I likes me some cow.
Like the commercial from a few years back said, "Beef, it's what's for dinner." For me, beef is the staple, it's the everyday thing. It's a floor wax, and a dessert topping! From the high-falutin' filet to the lunch bucket ground hamburger, it's the little black dress of the carnivore's feeding wardrobe. You can accessorize your beef just about any which way and it'll turn out satisfactory. We've cracked the code on beef, plus we're relying on cow farts to stave off the oncoming Ice Age. Fart, Bessie, fart!
I likes me some pig.
I pity observant Jews and Muslims because they have done themselves out of pork products through their piety. There are atheists out there who posit that every religion is a sham and a fraud, and while I don't buy into that (in my heart of hearts I do think I have a spiritual relationship with God the Father, Jesus the Son and the Holy Spirit, and that I'm racking up karma points by attempting to walk with my Savior and that there is, in the end, a Plan however I am unable to fathom it, but I'm just saying) I think in such a case a good faith argument could be made that getting to eat pork is enough reason to do some schismatic heresy-shaking. Unlike beef, pork to me has a distinct, wonderful yummilicious distinctness. (Beef is pretty much "just meat.")
Bacon? Foshizzle my nizzle. Ham, either thick sliced steaks or honey glazed slices of just hocks tossed into the red beans and rice? Shut yo' mouth good. One time back in the day, one of my Daddy's clients sent him a peppered ham, had a good, thick, 1/4" rind of peppers on it. I remember the taste of that ham TO THIS DAY, I tell you. Ahem. To this day.
Now chicken and lamb, they have their place, as do all of God's other little critters. About venison, enough words simply cannot be said, so I shan't say a thing. And I've had some mighty fine elk and moose. Huh, that brings Palin to mind, who was, by causing mass anti-hunting spasms, probably the inspiration for this post. But other meats, they are of tertiary importance compared to beef and pork, and I want to get to sleep sometime tonight, and if I start going off on individual meats, I'll be here all night.
Loves me some meat. Yeah I do.
In my way, I'm a sensualist, a hedonist. Not a libertine, mind you (although I could be wrong) but a hedonist. I try to relish the sensations of the physical world, like the feel of grass between your toes, the pleasant itchy annoyance of a mosquito bite (somewhere in Clavell's Shogun someone says "life is pain") and oh my goodness gracious the taste of meat in your mouth. Maybe it's bad, maybe it's evil, maybe it's rotten, but you can't deny that meat tastes good in your mouth, even if it's "good like a fresh hit of crack" good. (Or wait, are kids these days just doing meth? Damn, it's hell to get old.)
I love ripping meat apart in my mouth. Bite down, there's that big explosion of flavor, sometimes a rush of juices, something primeval about it, something very rooted, something very grounded. Something very traditional. (We just do those traditions a lot more than people throughout history have been able to.) It's not a pellet, it's not something plasticized and hydrogenated for your protection, not something shot through with preservatives and processed into nothingness. (Even a hot dog, hey, lips and assholes, man, as they said in the East Texas poultry business, "parts is parts.") It's something real. It's something that was living, and not "living" like a plant turns towards the sun and produces phyloplankton, but living like it had a face and a heart.
And because I have a conscience, which means I'm a liberal . . . or maybe a conservative, I get confused, but anyway . . . the meat that tastes the best is meat I've made for myself. "Making meat" is another way of saying "getting your deer" and it sums it up in wonderful, beautiful, brutal simplicity. I won't lie, I'm no great hunter, I'm barely even a hunter, been hunting six or seven times and only bagged one deer and one pig. Both Bambi and Wilbur were thoroughly consumed, and with great relish, I will point out.
Aside from the health benefits of being leaner and free of hormones, antibiotics and other stuff of the nightmares of Upton Sinclair, meat you make for yourself is more moral. Rather than being industrially produced and processed, meat you kill for yourself has probably lived a more or less free existence, running around and rutting and fighting and mating and, you know, eating acorns. (Not, sadly, ACORNs.)
So yeah. I'm no commie pinko, because I likes me some meat.
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