Comedy Is Not Pretty And Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction

SATIRE

 So we were smoking this joint of Jamaican over in that corner and [NYT columnist David Brooks] got the bright idea to blow the smoke into the register. “That’ll make everyone up there one of us!” he said. And sure enough when we went up to class the whole floor stank and the vice-principal was hustling up and down the hallway, wrinkling his nose like a bloodhound trying to figure out where the smell was coming from, and then he went into the boys’ room and dragged out one of the only two black boys at Radnor High, yelling at him for smoking pot in school.

I remember the guilty look on Dave’s face when he saw Mr. Santangelo with the kid by the collar. Later on, he told me that he was tempted to confess, but he also happened to know that that boy did smoke pot, that he was a full-on stoner, so if he got in a little trouble, it might be good for him.  When I read today that Dave thinks that “not smoking, or only smoking sporadically gave you a better shot at becoming a little more integrated and interesting,” while “smoking all the time seemed likely to cumulatively fragment a person’s deep center,” I thought about that boy and wondered if getting kicked out of school had helped him hold together his deep center, and if his going to juvy was the kind of subtle discouragement that Dave thinks governments should engage in when it comes to the “lesser pleasures.” I suppose he thought he was doing the kid a favor by letting him take the rap.

THE JOKE

  In “Weed — Been There. Done That” [David] Brooks makes a case for a “moral ecology” that curbs individual freedom for the collective betterment of potheads that would be better served devoting their energies to higher aspirations like running track. If you think I’m minimizing his argument to be glib, I dare you to read it. That is his argument.

...The ACLU released a report, based on federal arrest data and self-reported crime reports, that,...found that over half of all drug arrests in 2010 were for marijuana possession,...that whites use marijuana more than blacks, yet blacks are over 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana use.

…The ACLU makes a passing mention of federal student aid and drug convictions in its report. African Americans, particularly African American men, are more likely to be arrested for recreational drug use and consequently barred from receiving financial aid to pay for college AFTER paying their debt to society.

We can thank Bill Clinton for that.

…Brooks’ rumination on his stoner days is kind of funny. It’s certainly elitist. But it is also an example of the two Americas we’ve fomented through legislative, cultural, and organizational boundaries that disrupt every single path for opportunity available for those not born to wealth and privilege.

No one need make a black code anymore. They need only embed moral ecologies in laws that have nothing to do with morality and wait for systemic disadvantages in neighborhoods, schools, and racist policing to do the rest.

A Clinton Cult (Baptizes Napoleon's Nightmares In Stars)

"My decision to destroy the authority of the blacks in Saint Dominque (Haiti) is not so much based on considerations of commerce and money, as on the need to block for ever the march of the blacks in the world."

- Napoleon Bonaparte, making me laugh

 

"It takes more than a horrifying transatlantic voyage chained in the filthy hold of a slave ship to erase someone's culture."

- Maya Angelou, my babysitter back-in-the-day

 

Starchild,...is a divine alien being who came to earth from a spaceship (his arrival is "the Mothership Connection") to bring the holy Funk (with a capital "F": the cause of creation and source of energy and all life) to humanity. As it turns out, Starchild secretly worked for Dr. Funkenstein, the intergalactic master of outer space Funk, who is capable of fixing all of man’s ills, because the "bigger the headache, the bigger the pill" and he’s the "big pill". Dr. Funkenstein’s predecessors had encoded the secrets of Funk in the Pyramids because humanity wasn’t ready for its existence until,...everyone is on the One.

Starchild’s nemesis is Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk ("Sir Nose Devoid of Funk"),...Sir Nose attempts to end the Funk because he is too cool to dance. He is the master of the Placebo Syndrome, which causes unFunkiness (a combination of stupidity and no dancing). His goal is to place the minds of all humanity into a state called the Zone of Zero Funkativity. Starchild, on the other hand, uses his Bop Gun to achieve "Funkentelechy" for all humanity. With the Funky powers of the Bop Gun (which are augmented by the Flash Light....Shine the light on them suckas!!!), Starchild causes Sir Nose to reach Funkentelechy, and find his Funky soul. He then dances away the night.

- George Clinton's Mothership Connection (1979 - South Central, Los Angeles' soundtrack the year I graduated High School) predicting NewAge's rise ("the Placebo Syndrome") would lead whites (Sir Nose) off course until modern man (Starchild) identified the problem (using the Flashlight) to show Nose the way to true freedom (The Funk).

 

"Never learned to swim,


Can't catch the rhythm of the stroke
!

Why should I hold my breath?

Feelin' that I might choke!"

Things ya blow through, 
because of things ya swim through

Why hold your nose to spite your face?

With the rhythm that makes you dance to 
what we have to live through

You can dance underwater and not get wet, OH!!!

- "Aqua Boogie (A Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop)", Mothership Connection's happy conclusion, when the spirits of "Atlantis" (the Atlantic Slave Trade) force Sir Nose's dance floor discovery:

That to address what's bubbled up from under the sea ("What we have to live through"
) doesn't have to get anybody killed ("wet").

Culture Trumps Politics: Blacks Are Creating The Future

Techno is black music. True, there’s more to it, but that statement can be justified on both general and specific grounds. General: its genealogical forbears, whether it came of age in Europe, America or elsewhere, are Disco and Rock ‘n’ Roll, the black roots of which are not in dispute. Specific: the earliest releases of bona fide Techno—not to mention the genre name itself—came from four black dudes trying to imagine the future in inner-eighties Detroit,....

There are always things happening in Indian country that never make it into the mainstream news, and we Indian people are accustomed to it. We never expect the issues near and dear to our hearts to be covered 24 hours on CNN or to trend on Twitter or on Buzzfeed.

White Man March

On March 15, 2014, White people around the world will be taking to the streets in various ways to express love for their race and opposition to the genocidal programs of our puppet governments. On this day, our banners will be unfurled simultaneously in many different locations, which will also coincide with other demonstrations. The pictures and videos taken from these events will be assembled into compilation videos that highlight our struggle.

Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers dead at 74

You Either Conform, You Get An Easy Life, Or You Fight It, And You End Up Criminalized, Outcast, And Removed

 I love when Jane Elliott yells "Don't Care!" - it's less complicated.

I'm a big Judge Judy fan, too,...

 

The Macho Response: This IS Another Planet But,...Here

"Why Black Science Fiction is Essential for Our Children"

A “dangerous” inability to recognise the importance of race meant social workers and police missed glaring warning signs about a gang of Pakistani men grooming white girls for sex in Rochdale, an official inquiry has concluded.

An obsession with being “colour blind” meant they failed even to notice the pattern of abuse going on under their noses, it found.

“I knew this day was coming.”

"From the slave ship to the space ship."

The Macho Response: Richard Pryor Let Mojo Handle It

The Macho Response: Gays, Women & Warping Reality

• Straight women and homosexual men are the most natural allies 

 • Relationship characterised by a lack of sexual competition and deception 

 • Straight women more trusting of gay men over women or straight men

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”

― George Orwell

Worse is the evangelism, full of wide-eyed enthusiasm that comes across as the arrogance of youth and groupthink. It has its own lingo, its own social norms, and of course you must pay top dollar to enter. No wonder it reminds me of Landmark Forum.

After working for the company for six months, Wilson would pay for employees to attend Landmark Forum, a kind of "group therapy-cum-self-help seminar."

"The idea that you could shape reality to look however you wanted suddenly seemed dangerous, easily abused, especially among my Type A co-workers, who exercised and worked and exercised and worked and ate so little that it was not really a surprise that someone, eventually, snapped."

"Too Bad (Our Gay & Feminist Friends Said Otherwise)"

-TMR, December 23, 2013

"Hey, it's cheaper than therapy," a therapist-turned-real estate agent tells me. He ponders how to persuade one of his employees to pony up for the Forum. She's going through a rough patch, he explains—the recession, her marriage.

The central character, Amelia, arrives at Sutton McGrath and Feingold to help one particularly stressed-out employee, Jun Suk, with his presentation skills. But, Amelia quickly gets swept up in the turbulence of downsizing, office hook-ups and self-medicating.

"The Consultant" looks at one,...company office to get at the bigger picture of working life today.

Along the way, the play pokes fun at a lot of aspects of contemporary New York City, from the putdowns aimed at those who live in Murray Hill, to the way that graduates of the "The Forum" -- 1970s guru Werner Erhard's offshoot of est -- can drive their friends and co-workers crazy with tales of the way their lives have improved after the seminars.

The Daily Show

Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

The Macho Response: When My Reiki Has You Touched

Starting over.

"First, the history department, where he had a joint appointment, abruptly terminated his joint arrangement. They simply stopped inviting him to department meetings, but never informed him of their decision. Then the dean of the college wrote him a note saying that the college had decided in its wisdom that the tenure quote for Black Studies would be capped at one for all time. This meant, she explained, that if the current candidate came up for tenure as mandated by college legislation, he might well be successful and then no other Black Studies professor would ever have a chance to be tenured. In order to level the playing field, she curiously argued, she would advance the next person in line, who would have been eligible for evaluation the following year. Thus, she reasoned, two (black) people would have a chance to slug it out while the rest of the college would presumably enjoy the spectacle.”

Enjoy The Spectacle. 

"Blue Oyster Cult Founding Member Allen Lanier Passes Away At The Age of 67"

Woman's Death Linked to Alternative Cancer Treatment

"Assertions of "cold fusion" were based on nothing more than experimental errors by scientists in Utah.

...Dr. Jones,…drew cheers and laughter when he concluded his talk,..."

"When you deprogram people, you force them to think.... But I keep them off balance and this forces them to begin questioning, to open their minds. When the mind gets to a certain point, they can see through all the lies that they've been programmed to believe. They realize that they've been duped and they come out of it. Their minds start working again."

"BEWARE, IT MIGHT FORM A SINGULARITY OF AWESOMENESS,..."

"Romney was always a better man than Obama — he’s quite possibly the best human being to run for the White House in quite a few election cycles,..."

"I believe in laboratories, looking at ways to conduct electricity with -- with cold fusion, if we can come up with it. It was the University of Utah that solved that,…"

"I was at the grocery store the other day when I was unexpectedly confronted with an adult-oriented magazine located right next to the vitamin section."

"I immediately had to look away from the front cover, which featured a scantily clad, seductively posed, sex symbol. Yet it was only a few weeks ago that I read an article about how this same sex symbol loves to speak in tongues and has to restrain herself from outbursts in tongues while attending church services. What?"

"This is actually a perfect illustration of American charismatic Christianity, where you can say you love Jesus (like the rapper 'The Game' claims to do) and still frequent strip clubs (as 'The Game' still does), or where you can flow in the gifts of the Spirit and become a made-for-TV preaching sensation, only to announce that God told you that you married the wrong woman, leading to a quick divorce and remarriage."

"Yes, this is the 'gospel' of the 21st century, 'Spirit-filled' church of America, where the cross is bypassed, denial of the flesh is scorned, purity is called legalism, and anything goes if it feels good."

"It is the 'gospel' of self, in which Jesus dies to make you into a bigger and better you, a 'gospel' in which God is here to serve you and help you fulfill your dreams, and where the measure of all things is not how God feels about it but how you feel about it (or how it makes you feel)."

  

"How Does It Feel To Be Right?"

"It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest, and it was mine."

"Slavery Should Be Remembered Like The Holocaust"

"It’s your job to provide evidence to back up your claims. And when I say evidence, I mean evidence,...The more outlandish the claim, the more proof you need to back it up; the tighter you need to seal up your argument. If you don’t have it, then, as Christopher Hitchens famously said, you and your claims can be shrugged off without any discussion, because,...the sheer scope of what you’re alleging will directly correlate to how hard you’re laughed out of the room for not being able to prove it."

"Slavery, well, I mean, I don't know how obvious you could be. I mean, all you've got to do is walk down the street, and you see the evidence of slavery in everyday life. But there's a huge silence about it. It's a deafening silence about it. You know, why are the prison population of black males so huge? Why is poverty in that community so huge? Why is mental health, why is education so poor, why? When you ask yourself that question, it all leads down to what happened in slavery because no one has - you know, once it was - you know, once it has stopped, you know, everyone was left to get on with their own devices but without a platform, without a leg up.

And there you have the evidence of slavery." 

Starting over,...
 

The Macho Response: When Numerology Saves The Day

"Horrific things happen in the most beautiful places … Life is perverse.”

 Now that someone important has also informed us “The Devil Comes With a Smile” I hope you won't mind coming here any longer because, in 2013 - clearly - neither I nor TMR has exactly fit that profile.

"It wasn’t perfect, but it was honest, and it was mine."

 A German woman did wonder if I had a tail once, but - different story.

 

 No, if anything, I'm on the other side and I think it's about time we play "Name That Tune"!

 

Toussaint Louverture (20 May 1743 – 7 April 1803) by mgia-reporters

 You know, the one we've been dancing to,...all these years? 

“The dates of 1986 are exactly aligned with the dates of 2014,…”

I reminded you, character is what happens when no one is watching, and I told you I was watching. 

You were the ones who insisted on telling me I was,...no one [Smile].

Well-laid plans always work out so well.

 

 As I also told you, all I had to do was,...wait:

So let's see, 2014 - 1986.

8+6 is 14 of course, and then there's 1968, drop the 1, which is 1868. Well, whaddayaknow?

Three years after the Civil War.

Uh - uh, this does not look good.

Pretty low rent metaphysical neighborhood.

No, Lord, not a lot to smile about there.

So we have to remember we're here - especially those of us who always were. Here. Now.

And what are we to think of those who've had to "find" themselves?

 

They've probably never existed to begin with:

Good thing we're starting over,…

 

2014