Saturday, May 18, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
The Corrections
Isn't that weird? While assorted conspiracy theorists have been trying to carve a bogus scandal out of the Middle East, a real one actually pops up at home, and (staying so wonderfully true to form various watchdogs ought to get a broach featuring a picture of Bernie Madoff) it once again emerges without a single whistleblower - inside government or out - seeing it coming.
Incredible - incredibly stupid - but still,...just incredible.
I ask you - as we're now treated to the continuing spectacle of America's leaders, happily throwing shit they found on the ground, as others avoid being buried under it - is this any way to run a nation?
Special note to PW - send me an email:
themachoresponse@gmail.com
Tuesday, May 14, 2013
My Reaction To NewAge (Is Also A Product Of NewAge)
Today, I'm saluting what-we're-being-sold-as America's "extended family".
From the Self-Help world, I see Dr. Joyce Brothers has died:
From the Self-Help world, I see Dr. Joyce Brothers has died:
When asked why the public was hungry for personal advice from a public person, she proposed that an increasingly mobile society had heightened feelings of isolation.
"There is a lot more searching for answers these days," Brothers told the Washington Post in 1979. "And a lot more answers too. But we're missing friends and kinship roles. So you rent a friend. Like Dr. Joyce Brothers."
...One demographic that did not seek her advice was her own family.
"She totally loses her objectivity," her husband told UPI in 1985. "With her family, she's abysmal."
Speaking as someone who's been somewhat isolated my whole life, even when I had a choice, I'd never gone in for that "rent a friend" stuff. I mean, first of all, if you want 'em, real ones are free. (I know - wha?) Second, if you're renting 'em, they're going to tend to agree with you, right or wrong, right-right? Real friends don't do that. My friends and I argue, over the phone, about what we're wearing.
(Like I said, they're free,...)
(Like I said, they're free,...)
So - ruminating on the hidden fragility of the family unit vs. the obvious strength engendered in true friendships - what's the possibility of there having been some gravitational pull between A) the selling of circular reasoning by the "abysmal" B) a train wreck, and C) that train just happening to loop back on the blood relatives of the "extended family" they were unwittingly forced into?
As I've been saying for a while now, when it comes to social disaster, most roads lead to Oprah:
As I've been saying for a while now, when it comes to social disaster, most roads lead to Oprah:
Readers don’t pick up self-help books just to ruminate on life’s dilemmas, but to be guided to solutions. The new series of self-help books published by the London-based School of Life, co-founded by the Swiss-born popular philosopher Alain de Botton, echoes the school’s lofty approach to problems, claiming to be “intelligent, rigorous, well-written new guides to everyday living.” Yet to peruse the School of Life’s calendar of classes is to fall into a vortex of jargon pitched somewhere between the banal banter of daytime talk shows and the schedule for a nightmarish New Age retreat,...
This is the upside-down world of NewAge "Friends" - TV shows, talk shows, Facebook - today. Because, would any "friend" be allowed to buy into this nonsense, on the scale it's been, knowing we've got to look at each other tomorrow? Not around here.
Here's the true family reality:
Here's the true family reality:
Somewhere, deep down inside, Brad Pitt's wife, Jennifer Aniston, is doing the Snoopy dance - not because Angelina Jolie wasn't held down and abused by misogynistic male physicians - but, with Jolie having announced her breast removal was "My Medical Choice", it's also a pretty good guess it wasn't anything Anniston's husband, Brad, was counseled, or counting on, either.
That's the Self-Helped now.
Then there's also the unforgettable issue of Jolie's procedure being insufficiently homeopathic, but then, none of what's transpired - starting with Pitt originally leaving mega-NewAger Gwyneth Paltrow for Aniston - jibes with NewAge's stated purposes (there are many) or even the claims it's participants make about how they live their lives.
I tell ya, they're everywhere.
It just occurred to me that, even knowing Jolie is a U.N. ambassador, this medical operation is the most significant thing the regularly-voted "Most Beautiful" actress in the world has ever done to garner respect in it.
That's absolutely insane.
It's no wonder so many stick to merely making money:
With so many "helping" this path to enlightenment stuff can be hard,...
It just occurred to me that, even knowing Jolie is a U.N. ambassador, this medical operation is the most significant thing the regularly-voted "Most Beautiful" actress in the world has ever done to garner respect in it.
That's absolutely insane.
It's no wonder so many stick to merely making money:
With so many "helping" this path to enlightenment stuff can be hard,...
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Droppin' Science Like Galileo Dropped The Orange: Nod
"We run to scandal long before we land on stupidity."
I heard somebody say that, on one of the Sunday morning talk shows, and - despite the "Hey!" Hey! Hey!" nature of the Benghazi hype - I'm also here to tell you (while feeling like that kid saying "I see dead people") the political fallout over Benghazi always fell under the heading of somebody - I ain't naming no names - engaged in their almost regularly scheduled bout of hysterical "stupidity".
When you've dealt with U.F.Oh! Oh! Oh! nuts for as long as I have, you learn to identify conspiracy theorists pretty quickly, usually recognizing A) they weren't "all there" to begin with, and B) a new wild-eyed desire to set their hair on fire, again. Unfortunately, B usually reveals itself before A, so there's an undeterminable time lag Mark Twain referred to as truth - as it "gets it's boots on".
He, too, didn't take kindly to those messing with the fabric of reality.
He, too, didn't take kindly to those messing with the fabric of reality.
But conspiracy theorists are only allowed to become dark-minded, and participate in evil, because - absent a social structure based in critical thought - minus the courts, society simply lacks the much-needed tools to effectively unravel misunderstanding. A lot of mischief can be "innocently" accomplished in the grey area this circumstance creates, as America whooshes along, under a bureaucratic apparatus designed to move slowly (as a means of gaining wisdom) leaving it's citizenry at time's unforgivable mercy until something's resolved, or someone walks away bored, broke, or just plain broken.
So what was the point of school again? What still remains relevant from all that early education? Oh sure, P.E. - running in circles - so the Smiley Faced live long enough to hopefully one day grasp what the rest of us have got rubbed in our faces:
Running in circles, on a spinning planet, is not the same thing as coping with it.
Running in circles, on a spinning planet, is not the same thing as coping with it.
Here's another vision of "stupid" America:
It's men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, all (kinda) getting along.
So sure, let's say it's also an image of us still,...haphazardly working out some issues,..but nobody's screaming about their rights being even so much as unassumed, or how truly insulted they are by hot button phrases they're not even listening to. I submit to you this is convincing evidence that - at least at your neighborhood Mickey D's - there's obviously enough spectrum-wide anonymous unconditional support floating around for everybody. That includes the black guy in the pink dress waiting outside.
They just gotta know how to sell it.
To the untrained eye, this vision of America probably looks even more chaotic than the waste (in time, energy, interest, and money) of the Benghazi fallout, except, as anyone can see, these Americans know in their bones everyone's on an equal footing, that nothing's hidden, and that completely contradicts the true conspiracy theory - delivered daily in the current news/activist/media slants - that the country can't move forward as we should. It's they who are stuck on stupid.
The rest of us are practically George Jetson.
Witness, as Americans have historically done since Einstein and the "modern" Jazz Age, all this righteous living being carried out to laughter - equal in power and protein to anything the Chatty Cathy's say - celebrating, somehow, escaping another day with their now-probably-overly-strobe-lighted sense of reality duct-taped intact. Just like the folks on Tee Vee.
Everyday, almost, "only a flesh wound."
Everyday, almost, "only a flesh wound."
The reaction to uncertainty, existing in what America, and even Martin Luther King, reminded us - no, assured us - was supposed to be a "dream". Knowing nothing, conspiracy theorists live on nightmares, only sleeping comfortably within earshot of their view. Eyes closing, head falling, trailing off mumbling the words.
And here we are.
And here we are.
The results speak for themselves,...
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Every Time I Wave My Flag (Nobody Waves Back At Me)
As I've discovered, like so much outside of ghettos and the good life, society's proven it fully understood what yogic cult training's pitfalls were - before embracing them:
Bikram Choudury, the famously abrasive founder of Bikram hot yoga, has been accused of rape and of encouraging his followers to recruit women he could victimize, according to lawsuits filed by two different women.
Two separate Jane Does filed suit against Choudury, 67, and Bikram Yoga alleging sexual battery, false imprisonment, discrimination, harassment and seven others counts, according to Courthouse News. Both women, whose identities were not released, filed very similar suits on the same day in the same California courtroom.
Another former student, 29-year-old Sarah Baughn, filed suit against Choudury in March claiming he sexually assaulted her constantly during her time training to become a yoga instructor in 2005 and has since prevented her from teaching “because of her past and continuing refusal to have sex with the guru.”
In her complaint filed Monday the second Jane Doe claimed she had been raped in November 2010 after her boyfriend paid for her to be trained as a teacher a Bikram’s San Diego studio. The court documents claimed the attack seemed to be nothing out of the ordinary, reading “other persons in defendant Bikram Choudhury’s inner circle, were aware of defendant Bikram Choudhury’s pattern and practice of causing, inducing or persuading young women to enroll in teacher training classes to become yoga instructors only so he can sexually assault and/or rape them.”
It also accuses Bikram’s underlings of knowing an attack was inevitable, but says they still “did nothing to prevent this from happening to plaintiff or to protect her.”
Jane Doe said she “lived in constant fear” of the “cult-like atmosphere” fostered in the organization. Potential instructors are required to pay $13,000 for a nine-week training program, where they’re deprived of communication with the outside world, forced to listen to Bikram’s vulgar rants on sexuality and endure “demoralizing” activity, including urinating on themselves.
“Plaintiff Jane Doe No. 2’s life unraveled after she returned home,” the suit claims. “Her long term relationship fell apart, she went into a severe depression, attempted suicide, started drinking, doing drugs, engaged in uncharacteristically impulsive behavior, quit her job and cut off communication from almost everyone in her life.”
I think the current standard is, if you don't have photos, it didn't happen. [Rimshot] No, wait, wait - if you ask me, with The Vagina Monologues playing everywhere, getting that stretching-is-mystical thing out of everyone's mind will take a little time. [Kidding, kidding - this is all tragic.] But seriously, I think I watch a lot of Nazi movies because I'm still coping with SS Guards-doing-yoga-for-Hitler-hating Americans, in America, allowing frauds to openly manipulate swallowing others whole (and even groups of others) while everybody just stands around:
“With the power and hubris Bikram wielded (and the stories that have been floating around for years) it was almost expected, like we were all just waiting for it to happen.”
"We were all just waiting for it to happen.” Spoken like a real monster. Great incentives, too. Straight from the gutter - with a hearty "Namaste" and (a "spiritual") Good For You! - here's some cud for you to chew on, pimp:
See, it's only after someone's identified themselves as a cultist - that is, someone capable of being convinced touching their toes should be considered a smug-inducing accomplishment - that I can understand how anyone in this country "thinks" like that.
And, for some odd reason, it's never a pleasant experience.
Now that I think about it, it rarely follows one either,...
Like A Rolling Stone (Or A InstaCult Marketing Business)
I'm almost positive John Lennon's airy Watching The Wheels lyric ("Well I tell them there's no problems - only solutions") is one origin of, the "progressive" corporate fetish for, advertising that exact jargon's what they provide. Some NewAge con artist, somewhere (or, considering who we're talking about, probably a group or groups of them) included the late atheist's phrase in his/their "spiritual" retreats or seminars or teachings or whatever - many mandatorily attended by corporate employees for decades - and now I'll never hear the end of it. Pretty Polly:
"The messianic thing has to do with the world of mankind, like it is. This world is scheduled to go for 7,000 years. Six thousand years of this, where man has his way, and 1,000 years when God has his way. Just like a week. Six days work, one day rest. The last thousand years is called the Messianic Age. Messiah will rule. He is, was, and will be about God—doing God’s business. Drought, famine, war, murder, theft, earthquake, and all other evil things will be no more. No more disease. That’s all of this world.
There will be a run on godliness, just like now there’s a run on refrigerators, headphones, and fishing gear. It’s going to be a matter of survival. People are going to be running to find out about God, and who are they going to run to? They’re gonna run to the Jews, ’cause the Jews wrote the book, and you know what? The Jews ain’t gonna know. They’re too busy in the fur business and in the pawn shops and in sending their kids to some atheist school. They’re too busy doing all that stuff to know."
I predict, in the future, there's going to be a Serious Frown Line Epidemic from reading this stuff,...
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
I'd Also Consider Investment (In The Sale Of Torches,...)
I keep forgetting to mention something about this:
Musically, I had another brilliant technological breakthrough with the software yesterday (I'm talking MAJOR) and - since everything else is kicking into gear - I'll be rolling out new songs very soon.
I stuck this up as a first test run of various things i.e. my photo-altering software for making CDs, my sampling equipment, and CDBaby's payment method (and structure) for exclusive material. Feel free to purchase the song at the link - I like it - though it's an older, unfinished lark I was only using for engineering-type purposes. (The first real post-TMR stuff is going out for free, with special material for those who have donated, or stuck out the lean periods, like now.) The bit at the link is sure to have value later - as a beginning and an ending - if you allow it time.
So, in case you've ever wondered where all this talk was heading:
It looks like we're going to get there before I go,...
Saving America: Waaay More Complicated Than It Looks
When she's kidnapped just to be tortured, is this not poetry? Rev up The Internet Meme Machine:
“I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man's arms!"
I'ma start searching YouTube for "The Yardstick Of Martin King's Dream...."
NewAgers Waited For News (To Hear They're A Fraud)
Remember the height of American television programming? When Montel, and Oprah and Ellen and all the other reality TV con men had our country awash in X-Files nonsense - while crushing the weak and vulnerable at their most exposed, right before our eyes? Man, that was a wonderful time.
Unless you weren't buying any of it.
Then - despite the fact this wasn't the 70's, no one was wearing bell bottoms, and we'd seen this cult stuff all before - skeptics were labeled "energy vampires" to be shunned for not having an "open mind." These people said so, and also said others should do so, right on television and radio. To applause. This way, the leadership could view and use those inside, and outside, NewAge's circle as prey.
I remember those times vividly because, for me, this wasn't stuff that stayed behind our TV screens. This was part of what Grrrl Power! meant and means and, for some reason, nobody wants to do an investigation on that and what harm it's caused.
Nobody really wants to report on any of it because, like the discovery of a "real U.F.O." or proof that homeopathy works, I think the revelation would turn the entire known universe - including the question of who has been America's good and bad actors - upside down. Completely. Hell, considering the quality of names, crimes, and just plain bologna, it might even sell some newspapers. You know, get us going again.
Baby steps,...
Sleeping While Standing (And Other Magic Negro Tales)
As much as I can do without Oprah "The Secret" Winfrey in this movie or anything else (I haven't even watched movies she's financed, like Precious) casting her still kinda makes sense. And though, politically, I know it could get pretty ugly and stupid (being a Weinstein film also starring Forest "I'm Spiritual" Whitaker) I want to see it anyway:
Like the desire to see a black president elected, how America's slaves cared for it's royalty - and what that means - has been privately mulled over by blacks my entire life.
Some version of this story is long overdue:
But, if this crew stay true to form, expect Being There and Forrest Gump in blackface,...
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Making A Fight For Survival (More Than A Show Again)
Yes, of course - for me - that was it. That made it all better:
The jingle they play over The Ricky Gervais Show's closing credits is one of the most whimsical little things I've heard in a long time. Not quite magical, but definitely great - especially for kids.
I still wonder why parents let their kids listen to adult music, or garbage. Actually, no I don't. I flashed on Frank Zappa just now - a pretty successful parent by any standard - he told 'em:
So intellectually lazy, they can't search out more compelling art than "Sugar Walls" themselves, the hysterical mob (Frank referred to them as a possible "cult") always blames, and then tries to control, artistic output simply for the sin of making it.
But truth tellers still tell it, and it ain't always nothing nice.
Oh, we do nice. I woke up to Gospel this morning, sitting bolt upright, with a pain in my chest (the ulcer) but a three-day depression lifted.
It was sweet.
The chest pains became stomach cramps after I whirled out of bed - snatching the sheets with me for the laundry - before hitting three days of dishes so I have nothing but a few errands, and then music, for the rest of the day.
I'm talking sharp, organized, knowing exactly what I have to do - even what order to do it in - after depression's forced march through God's blessed "Valley of Death" again.
Dragging my ass through a world that barely registered as a distraction. "Babylon" meaning more like "babble on". I looked for distractions, which is how I found the Ricky Gervais song.
Since I expect intelligence to be insulted, that soundtrack became one tiny dark vacation.
And now - in technicolor - it's all coming back.
And so am I - in *ahem* mind and body - it's a good feeling.
Nothing about Jesus' (or Himmler's) beloved "spirit" about it:
I'm their primitive man, alright - the both of 'em - but in The Age Of Wonder:
And heading straight back to the future,...
Monday, May 6, 2013
Atheists Still Act Religiously (In A Manner Of Speaking)
I know, in my case this probably isn't true, but it still rings true:
All sorts of people write with strong feeling, the way I do. But if they’re white, they won’t say it. I used to just pretend I didn’t notice it, and now I just think I don’t care.
There are all sorts of reasons not to like my writing. But that’s not one of them. Saying something is angry is not a criticism. It’s not valid. It’s not a valid observation in terms of criticism. You can list it as something that’s true. But it’s not critical.
You may not like it because it makes you uneasy—and you can say that. But to damn it because it’s angry…. They always say that about black people: “those angry black people.” And why? You’re afraid that there might be some truth to their anger. It might be justified.
I promise you, if I had blonde hair and blue eyes this wouldn’t be an issue. No one ever says, “That angry Judith Krantz…” or whatever.
Fighting a pain others turn from is but one of the many concepts I've had to wrestle with, practically all my life, starting much too early. I've learned to compartmentalize a lot of things, just to get on with it. But, whatever I do, I don't follow my "beliefs" just because they "ring" or (let's be blunt) feel true.
I know how that "works":
Exactly a week after watching the movie Edmond, where a fortuneteller's "advice" helps screw up a guy's life, I accidentally bumped into another film that featured a male NewAger.
It was The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers starring Geoffrey Rush.
It was The Life And Death Of Peter Sellers starring Geoffrey Rush.
Now - having no clue a fortuneteller was an integral part of Peter Sellers' story - I could have found this second NewAge occurrence significant, somehow, as a part of my own life.
I'm into this shit, right-right?
I'm into this shit, right-right?
Somebody trying to "tell me something," maybe?
Hey, I might be that hot important.
But it gets even better because, after divorcing his wife (!) Peter Sellers goes to this fortuneteller who - fraudulently acting on a tip the director Blake Edwards wants Sellers to star in a movie - tells the actor to build a strong relationship with someone who has the initials "B.E.".
Sellers immediately runs out and "marries" Britt Ekland.
Which also doesn't end well.
But, otherwise, what's so weird?
My very next movie was The Wicker Man, which I had no idea was starring - wait for it:
Britt-Fucking-Ekland!!!
And not just Britt Ekland, but I'm talking Peter Sellers' second "wife" buck naked - this YouTube cut is edited and framed not to show it - and doing some Stonehenge-y white girl hoodoo love dance, using NewAge to try and make a good man go bad.
[Place the theme to The Twilight Zone here.]
I was getting totally sucked in, like, Oh-My-God, Becky, Look-At-Her-Butt.
What the name of Oprah and Gail was going on? Had I discovered The Matrix?
Nope.
Nothing was going on, except we're a nation of hysterics, seeing "signs" where there are none - and disregarding everything we know for "beliefs" - as unworthy as anyone who holds them.
The reality is, I pick up, and watch, random DVDs for free from the library.
The reality is, I pick up, and watch, random DVDs for free from the library.
Y'all suit yourselves,...
Sunday, May 5, 2013
B.O.B.: My Story, Cont'd (I Only Left Out The Drug Stuff)
What I was leading up to, before the last post, was Abu Ghraib. That's when shit got excruciatingly serious, undermining everything others thought America (and Americans) stood for, and when all eyes turned to me - as an American in France - asking what I felt about my country. I'd given it some thought by then, so I could articulate American values in a kind of MOR attitude most still scoffed at.
But, every now and then, while they're at it - and since they're asking where I stand and all - what exactly am I made of, anyway?
Once, I was "guest of honor" at a soiree, thrown specifically so a vain, well-muscled and toned, but extremely insecure French host could loudly bash Bush with glee, finally, because he was in the company of his friends.
That didn't end well.
Socialism, it's failures like being unable to satisfy even the smallest requirements of most restaurant menus, Smart cars that couldn't make the slightest incline, outrageously-priced diesel fuel, sky high taxes on everything - "Television Tax" - resulting in a kind of "snitch" culture ("I paid mine") village life's outright costume drama "plotting" like you see in the movies, with lots of rumor-mongering and fact-free decision making, and all saturated by a IT MUST BE FRENCH AT ALL COST entertainment industry, so limp, after being excited to see blacks on TV, I stopped relying on even those, allowed to perform, to always have rhythm. And few have a real job.
That's how bad Socialism is.
But how much had I really left?
Other there, America is everywhere, but cut up and reduced from Freedom to fetish. Clothing stores are called California. "Friends" DVDs were massive sellers. Dance floors filled up to "Surfing U.S.A." and Joan Jett's "I Love Rock 'N' Roll" but seem lost, and even got angry, when presented with anything that didn't cater to their quirks, like hating every Barry White song but one, and like their favorite Billy Paul anthem (I didn't even know there was anybody's favorite Billy Paul anthem) it's pretty much unknown in America and awful. I started counting how many times I'd hear Toto's "Hold The Line" over time, not because it's a bad song but seemed to be causing me a kind of PTSD, and I still didn't know if I'd be leaving for a while.
Calls to my friends back home were holding me up now. They'd send me music, buck me up.
Stay in the pace and outlook of France, and you'll see how hours are squeezed into seconds, very quickly - or they'll smugly ignore everything, just to be contrary - in which case the slowing can take much, much longer. Like working in a homeopathy company, or entering a time before we expected results, little more important than what can accompany a picnic actually gets accomplished. Wasn't no dot-com boom over there. Ah, now I'm back to the effects of socialism.
Doesn't anybody get that?
I don't mean to say France doesn't have talent - it does - but they're mostly conventional liberal sheeple, "in rebellion," yada, yada, yawn, and I could get better than that back home.
What was different was, I now knew, I didn't want anything like that back home.
I saw bumper stickers in the windsurfing South of France saying Kerry would sweep that thing.
Everything appeared to be falling out of sync,...
Saturday, May 4, 2013
The Best Of Blogging, II: We Did More Before 6 AM,...
It's a bright new day, so before we carry on, let's take another header right into the audacious, provocative, only-saying-shit-to-get-money-and-attention, Defenders Of Ignorance:
“Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ripped the media and took a subtle dig at President Obama during an CSPAN interview dated from April 9th. When asked about how he felt about the nation’s first black President, Barack Obama, Thomas said he always knew it would have to be a person who was “approved by the elites and the media” because if it was someone who they didn’t agree with, that person would be picked apart.
'Any black person who says something that is not the prescribed things that they expect from a black person will be picked apart…'"
Picky, picky, picky.
Never - this is a slander - those fine folks always know better, showing us the way out of our own stupidity, by insisting we follow the example of well-known seekers and "keep open minds":
I saw how journalists on highbrow papers write primarily for other journalists or to impress politicians or other members of the great and the good.
They don’t actually like ordinary people — especially the lower middle class, the strivers who believed in self-discipline and personal responsibility.
They dismiss them as narrow-minded, parochial and prejudiced (unlike themselves, of course).
But I always wrote with ordinary people in mind.
Just as they were sceptical of intellectual abstractions, fantasies or Utopian solutions, so was I.
Bit by bit, I saw through the delusion of the Left’s supposedly ‘progressive’ politics.
Increasingly, I turned away from their stupidity, hypocrisy and moral blindness.
They, of course, dismissed me as contemptibly ‘Right-wing’, as if that was sufficient to destroy my argument.
...Truth was being sacrificed to personal expediency. Evidence would be denied if the consequences were inconvenient.
Self-centred individualism and self-justification ruled, regardless of the damage done to others.
"Damage done to others"?
You silly, over-reacting, anti-cult freak, there are no "others" - WE'RE ALL ONE, remember?
An onlineclique "community" (to counter how the bad guys were doing it, of course) a "community" that's offering "solutions" (Thank you, NPR) "raising awareness" (Thank you, NPR) and offering us groupthink "real love" in return:
You silly, over-reacting, anti-cult freak, there are no "others" - WE'RE ALL ONE, remember?
An online
There is a supposition among experts on grief that in time the bereaved ‘move on’ and ‘come to terms’ with their loss. For Lord Saatchi, whose wife died two years ago from a swift and merciless form of cancer, there will be no such remission from mourning.
He dismisses the platitudes of the self-help industry with quiet scorn. ‘Coming to terms and moving on are expressions of betrayal and unforgivable selfishness. They mean the lover has abandoned the loved,’ he says.
For this reason, every morning he goes to the tomb in the bluebell wood on his Sussex estate in which his wife Josephine Hart is interred, and eats his breakfast beside her.
It is a habit he never intends to relinquish; any more than he would dispose of her clothes or fail to set a place for her at supper.
‘In snow and rain I go,’ he smiles. ‘It is of the greatest importance to do that. I eat my grapefruit cocktail and if I’m not there — if I’m in London — I find it very difficult.
‘It’s a pretence, a fiction, I know, but it’s still pleasing. We would always have our breakfast together and a chat, and that chat is still important. But now, of course, I talk to Josephine and there are no answers . . .’ His voice trails off.
‘Oh look. This is impossible,’ he sighs, his eyes blurring with tears. Momentarily, he has to leave the room.
What a party-pooping wet noodle. What kind of example is he setting? Making food for somebody who ain't there - what a downer - that ain't green. He'll never ride in the PRIDE parade.
Can't he "be a man"? Can't somebody immediately find him a "sexy" replacement? Aren't men so consumed with hormones (do we even have hormones?) and horniness all-the-time that nothing else matters, except finding an alley somewhere to hump in?
I mean, I don't want to offend anybody but, look at gay guys.
In San Francisco, it's accepted you can hardly walk through a public park at night. NTTAWWT. I have no idea why anybody would be bothered. I grew up in South Central, Los Angeles and know what it's like when gangs own the parks. Same thing. Both situations are very romantic.
And both Dan Quayle and Joe Biden have said that, as long as Will & Grace is on the air, there's absolutely no need to talk about anything else. The battle for gay rights and The Civil Rights Movement - and the fall-out that's resulting from each - are identical.
Even in dignity and stature.
Is Will & Grace still on the air?
That show's so real it's a documentary.
Can't he "be a man"? Can't somebody immediately find him a "sexy" replacement? Aren't men so consumed with hormones (do we even have hormones?) and horniness all-the-time that nothing else matters, except finding an alley somewhere to hump in?
I mean, I don't want to offend anybody but, look at gay guys.
In San Francisco, it's accepted you can hardly walk through a public park at night. NTTAWWT. I have no idea why anybody would be bothered. I grew up in South Central, Los Angeles and know what it's like when gangs own the parks. Same thing. Both situations are very romantic.
And both Dan Quayle and Joe Biden have said that, as long as Will & Grace is on the air, there's absolutely no need to talk about anything else. The battle for gay rights and The Civil Rights Movement - and the fall-out that's resulting from each - are identical.
Even in dignity and stature.
Is Will & Grace still on the air?
That show's so real it's a documentary.
But this guy? This "widower"? Totally unreal.
Like marriage, the word "widower" will need redefining.
They've got it all "worked out," see:
This guy should just wait a while - maybe even a long while - that will make him/her/us/everybody forget how just about everything "works". There's no way that'll interfere with how things, that work, work, but Mitt Romney said the rest show promise and - if that honestly self-made man was smart enough for the conservative wing of the Republican Party to elect him as the first follower of Joseph Smith to be President Of The United States - then, damn it, that sounds perfectly rational to me and I'm certainly not going to show "bad form" and argue the point.
I will say the woman in this photo creeps me out, though.
Deep breath - in America especially - there's no such thing as a cult, there's no such thing as a cult, there's no such thing as a cult,...
"Accidently found in a trash"? If that's true, it's fucking criminal. I picture it laying there, covered in coffee grounds. This business can break your heart.
Like marriage, the word "widower" will need redefining.
They've got it all "worked out," see:
This guy should just wait a while - maybe even a long while - that will make him/her/us/everybody forget how just about everything "works". There's no way that'll interfere with how things, that work, work, but Mitt Romney said the rest show promise and - if that honestly self-made man was smart enough for the conservative wing of the Republican Party to elect him as the first follower of Joseph Smith to be President Of The United States - then, damn it, that sounds perfectly rational to me and I'm certainly not going to show "bad form" and argue the point.
I will say the woman in this photo creeps me out, though.
Deep breath - in America especially - there's no such thing as a cult, there's no such thing as a cult, there's no such thing as a cult,...
Sorry, went off topic - the note about this video, too, I suppose - whoever put it on YouTube added:
"Recorded in 1969 and released on the 1985 album 'VU'. Written by Lou Reed. This is one of the songs that got lost at the MGM studios and was accidently found in a trash can several years later."
Anyway, I know websites that would definitely label this "widow" a bellyaching masochist. I've seen it. They're so "nice," and understand so much about the human heart. The human spirit. They've got enough love for anybody. Unless they "move on" and then all bets are off. They'll find another body.
See, if your "mind" (artificial construct) follows your "body" (artificial construct) to get in the "spirit" of things (a very real construct) I don't know, they just,...happen.
Something about the power of feelings. I don't get that part yet. I was in the military and still try to control mine. I know, maturity, discipline, honor, loyalty, not caring about the world, but being the world's policeman and not trying to save the planet.
Isn't that what they say - over, and over, and over again - when they're not too busy praising women for being women because they're women, and that's what they deserve, as we've learned from birth in everything from all these "spiritual retreats" that all-of-a-sudden popped up all over the place, to the media stream of flowers/diamonds/soap/spa commercials in almost every 24 hour period that most people don't even seem to notice except those divorced people who can't seem to "move on" and get control over their anger after never seeing anything coming including "only" being repeatedly refused permission to see their kids after giving their beloved half of everything they worked for so, somehow with all that on their back, they can't seem to afford it?
Haven't you even seen it in the hospitals that feature homeopathy, rieki, and other forms of "complimentary" medicine Dr. Oz "teaches" about on shows Oprah "The Secret" Winfrey delivers as she and Ellen, or maybe the other multiply-divorced and "re-married" celebrities, hang out with Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and Ken Wilber, like The Beatles did with the "Maharishi" in India before John Lennon told him to fuck off for trying to take advantage of Mia Farrow's sister?
How - in the name of Altamont and Charles Manson - anybody who lived through the 60s and 70s can look around and "think" there's anything racist, or cultish, about anything that's been going down since then (and it has been going down) I don't know.
All-American, it is.
Been around for over 50 years.
Mind/Body/Spirit.
See, if your "mind" (artificial construct) follows your "body" (artificial construct) to get in the "spirit" of things (a very real construct) I don't know, they just,...happen.
Something about the power of feelings. I don't get that part yet. I was in the military and still try to control mine. I know, maturity, discipline, honor, loyalty, not caring about the world, but being the world's policeman and not trying to save the planet.
Isn't that what they say - over, and over, and over again - when they're not too busy praising women for being women because they're women, and that's what they deserve, as we've learned from birth in everything from all these "spiritual retreats" that all-of-a-sudden popped up all over the place, to the media stream of flowers/diamonds/soap/spa commercials in almost every 24 hour period that most people don't even seem to notice except those divorced people who can't seem to "move on" and get control over their anger after never seeing anything coming including "only" being repeatedly refused permission to see their kids after giving their beloved half of everything they worked for so, somehow with all that on their back, they can't seem to afford it?
Haven't you even seen it in the hospitals that feature homeopathy, rieki, and other forms of "complimentary" medicine Dr. Oz "teaches" about on shows Oprah "The Secret" Winfrey delivers as she and Ellen, or maybe the other multiply-divorced and "re-married" celebrities, hang out with Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and Ken Wilber, like The Beatles did with the "Maharishi" in India before John Lennon told him to fuck off for trying to take advantage of Mia Farrow's sister?
How - in the name of Altamont and Charles Manson - anybody who lived through the 60s and 70s can look around and "think" there's anything racist, or cultish, about anything that's been going down since then (and it has been going down) I don't know.
All-American, it is.
Been around for over 50 years.
Mind/Body/Spirit.
It's a state of
And I hear, once they've got all three, it'll last a lifetime,...
Friday, May 3, 2013
Blogging At It's Best: My Story (In Words And Music)
My best friend (36 years) came over yesterday, a six-pack in hand, and we had one of those long, meandering conversations that only best friends can have. During it, I admitted I love my country, and explained how I got there:
After years of traveling, the Iraq War made it necessary for me to weigh the same questions Vietnam-era Americans did, but without the luxury of (what I considered to be, in my pre-NewAge awareness) ignorance about the world.
By this time I was living in France, and being hounded by my gracious hosts (another divorce subtext, my wife's friends, family, and the rest of their nation) because I was firm in my conviction George W. Bush was a good man, and - Michael Moore at Cannes or no Michael Moore at Cannes - there was no way this Democrat would diss my nation while in theirs.
But I'm no pussy when it comes to myself - was I adopting a pose, after all I'd endured at home (from whites and blacks and mexicans and chinese and gays and anybody else who saw opportunity in what was obviously an isolated human being) or was this "proud black man" truly something more - an honest-to-goodness American? I had to know.
Which meant I had to "crunch the numbers" on the United States, too - and all of you - looking at everything from outside our shores, warts and all, deciding if we were worthy of what we were doing - and each other's love.
That wasn't the first time I'd had a chance to compare the U.S. to the rest of the world, having already returned from the military to tell my friends ghetto life was a dance in the park - a very dark one - compared to the Third World.
And I told them, knowing that, I think we should be grateful we somehow made it here.
Something white Americans get in a lot of trouble for saying.
All of my foster parents were from The South, so there was no sugar coating what I was raised in, who kept the imagery clean, who made this nation great, endured it's struggles, and committed it's crimes.
But come on, I was over that by the time I started seriously taking drugs and knew I was an atheist - like, the age of 14 - maturing into someone happy they kept the lights on long enough for me to get married and actually succeed in launching a ramshackle solo music career that, after I'd acquired a band especially, started taking on, you might say, humanist tones. Yeah, me. I was an "out there" American artist in France, contemplating what my next professional move was, really nothing more dramatic than that.
Sure, 9/11 had happened, but it was the inescapable reaction to Iraq that was making it impossible for me to keep that as my only focus. "War" was getting deep. (In english, the French were asking my wife if she agreed with my political views, to elicit only that she does "When he says it,..." They'd keep talking to her in french,...) America's streets had more-than-equipped me for war's mechanics, and the ability to cope, but no one can prepare for the fall-out because no one can know the untold number of options (many horrifying) fate chooses from. Dying "like an animal" is not just a possibility but one of my norms. Hell, not even always one of the worst possibilities.
I knew the score - but, as I said, not where knowing it could lead:
Then came the fast ball,...
(To be continued,...)
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Conservatives Being Conservative (Now Imagine That,...)
I couldn't agree more, with Hot Air, that this spot - made by the Democrats without any evidence to the contrary - could be a badge of honor for the Right:
We should stand by science, but even my science-loving ass knows, scientists have damaged their credibility - mostly because, despite their vehement criticism of certain aspects, like homeopathy, they've shamefully revealed themselves to be products of this NewAge and not to be trusted.
It actually pains me, to have to write those words, but there it is,...
I Write A Lot (When I Don't Know What To Write About)
Despite making it through yesterday in one piece, I've got so much on my mind today, it's difficult to even start typing. By now, most of you may know I end my intentional reading (which I include under the heading "blogging") with Instapundit and Althouse. That's one reason they stay so fresh on my radar. Althouse is also why I'm opening with this girl, full of pride over her ginormous funbags that no man better be looking at or else he's a sexist, and probably a misogynist:
This .GIF is truly Ann's precious feminism "in action."
That's right:
No longer will "these boots" walk all over men, but, thanks to feminist assertiveness training - and the new over-the-counter birth control - fathers can look forward to men being killed off by their daughters smothering us in gallons of teen-and-post-teen breast milk until we die off.
Along with lying, that's real power, or so I am told.
Along with lying, that's real power, or so I am told.
And, mostly, thanks to one of Ann's heroes, Madonna, making it the right thing to do.
But I digress. No, my actual point was going to be, this dancing girl (no one this stupid can be called a "woman") was acting on her feelings. You remember feelings, don't you? Althouse was going on about how influential they were yesterday. But not today. Today she's got this to say:
You know what? Nope - I can't do it. (I told you I'm frazzled,...)
Here's the post I was going to link to, but, to be honest, I'm tired of writing about stupid contradictory assholes like Ann. (James Taranto called her "contrary" yesterday - yeah, she's contrary all right, even to her own ideas, from the very day before, which means - even if the Instapundit and The Wall Street Journal links to her - like Glenn, she's really just another nutty "professor," whatever that term means, considering the screwy context they've created for it.) Following your feelings was alright yesterday, it's not alright today, and tomorrow it'll be some man's fault women have feelings at all - should I even be trying to keep up?
Sure, despite knowing little about music - and having some of the worst taste in it I've ever seen - Ann knows the difference between Mac Daddy and Daddy Mac, but (as much as I love the imagery of Ann taking her gay son to see the only child rappers who wore their clothes backwards) like a "dissatisfied" housewife would say, that's simply not enough.
Somebody alert me when she fully comes to her senses.
After today, I'ma try to ignore her idiocy.
I admit, speaking as someone referred to often as a musical genius, it'll be hard.
I admit, speaking as someone referred to often as a musical genius, it'll be hard.
Back to Mac Daddy's death. It gave me a little jolt this morning, but mostly because it's reported he died of a drug overdose. Gee, how did that happen? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that, once Kriss Kross reached puberty, women like Ann (and her gay son) didn't find them "sexy" anymore, could it? (I think, from reading Ann's blog, I know more about what turns her on than Meade,...) I can still remember the ruthless backlash Kriss Kross faced, merely for growing up, and my thoughts on how immediate, cruel, and feckless it was.
It had nothing to do with their music, BTW, which depends on your ears, not your eyes. No, based on pimples, Kriss Kross' career was over. Don't think that's true? Where's the multi-talented, multi-instrumentalist Hanson now?
They, too, were boys who merely grew up.
Yes, Mac Daddy's dead, but I think his "fans" killed him a long time ago.
That last link brings me to the guy who offered his "lollipop" to all these "smart, intelligent, and independent women" in his video. (I do like that he shows 200 lb. black women as attractive when women in the white world look like they're auditioning for a concentration camp stay,...) Not that anybody cares unless a Rapper dies, but the ultra-prolific Lil Wayne just had another epileptic seizure. I don't really know what to say - should Weezy take some time off? Work as much as he can until he can't? What? I don't know. My heart goes out to him, though, because - whether he makes stupid shit or not - he's certainly talented, and can be a LOT of fun, so the idea of losing him, too, is heartbreaking-in-advance.
My heart also breaks when I remember Glenn's clique is made up of teachers - and then looking at the results. How do you stop gun violence? Gun Control. So what's the college-educated answer when terrorists make bombs out of pressure cookers?
Stupidity, of course. College-educated stupidity. The kind I didn't get:
I still think most women are insane and feel for the men who don't/can't act accordingly.
"Thank God" for Too $hort.
"Thank God" for Too $hort.
Which brings us to the God portion of our show. (There's always a God portion of our show.) Here, a preacher is making some very good points - Hey, it can happen:
1) Right under the noses of parents, teachers, and everyone else, artists are doing their jobs and playing with every possible concept under the sun - and the kids are eating it up because those same parents, teachers, and everyone else, aren't doing theirs. (Being hippies, they don't even know how to do it anymore, I think.)
2) When the forces of cultural subversion, manipulation, misinformation, and exploitation (Ann? Glenn? Hello!) get caught with their pants down, their "sincere" apologies don't mean shit. If they actually cared about anyone, or anything, they would've drawn the line between fantasy and reality in BOLD. But they don't - they'll push any bad idea, to be (as Ann said) "provocative," since getting your money is all that matters - because, to them, there is no "America" we adults should be protecting. Hell, as the so-called "parenting" out there proves, these Toys 'R' Us kids don't even think there's such a thing as growing up. Even Snoop Dogg agrees:
"When you're buying Snoop Dogg you're buying all that that come with it. When you're buying Rozay, you're buying all that come with it. You know what his lifestyle is about, you know what his music is about, so you have to engulf all of that. If you're not willing to take all that on, then step out of the way and stop playing and acting like he's bringing harm to your company."
"When you're buying Snoop Dogg you're buying all that that come with it. When you're buying Rozay, you're buying all that come with it. You know what his lifestyle is about, you know what his music is about, so you have to engulf all of that. If you're not willing to take all that on, then step out of the way and stop playing and acting like he's bringing harm to your company."
3) I can hear Ann Althouse telling me I'm no "fun" again.
Growing up in the ghetto - where I've see the results of all Ann's "fun" flying around - I have no idea how anyone can get the impression kids and parents are on the same footing. Funny thought:
Picture this as Ann and her sons.
Am I the only one who remembers when Ann got herself on FOX News for claiming she was "attacked" after some guy tried to grab her camera, with Meade by her side, in Wisconsin? Meanwhile - all over the country - this is going on, on a daily basis, and FOX and Ann are nowhere to be seen. But there's no difference in America's treatment of blacks and whites. Or a wealthy white lady being lunged at, for her camera, and a mob physically attacking a black woman and her children - in their own home - while it's being filmed.
One is newsworthy, and the other? Meh. Not even bloggable.
Thank goodness black people have blogs now, and I read them, huh? (Ann and Glenn think, by reading "The Root," they're getting the real nitty-gritty on blackness - when they've got me. I rarely touch that middle class black stuff, for the same reason I don't bother with Ebony and Jet magazines - they're stupid Civil Rights-era propaganda, having no bearing on the lives of average black people what-so-ever.) You wouldn't know anything happens, in anything but the middle class world, relying on these so-called "teachers."
Thank goodness black people have blogs now, and I read them, huh? (Ann and Glenn think, by reading "The Root," they're getting the real nitty-gritty on blackness - when they've got me. I rarely touch that middle class black stuff, for the same reason I don't bother with Ebony and Jet magazines - they're stupid Civil Rights-era propaganda, having no bearing on the lives of average black people what-so-ever.) You wouldn't know anything happens, in anything but the middle class world, relying on these so-called "teachers."
Here's another situation I'd like to see Ann handle - that she doesn't cover - because who cares?
I care:
I care:
If I was this teacher, not only would I have clocked-the-fuck out of this "child," but I would've demanded the rest of the faculty backed me up in doing so (watching this, I can easily see him weighing his options under the current stupidity) and they'd had better do it, or else I'd attack them, too.
Which is why I'll never be seen as a teacher, I guess.
Speaking of good teachers, remember when I said to call me when Althouse comes to her senses? The greatest pimp who ever lived, "Magic" Don Juan, has a few suggestions on how Meade can speed up the process - and Magic's got the credentials (and his women in-line) to prove it.
Hey - we're only trying to help.
And finally, it all seems to come down to how we can't rely on the current enforcers (all self-appointed, BTW) to be reasonable - or even good Americans - under the circumstances. That goes for our leading political bloggers, as well. We're living in the real world:
They simply ain't there yet,...
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