the saddest part of this dark era in history, that of my potentially fair country sleep-goose-stepping its way into fascism, as the history books will eventually point out, is that all of this was done with consent, explicit and tacit...by the time people are shocked into the level of discontent necessary for revolt, it will be too late; either the rest of the world will tire of us, or we will be to the point of natural self-destruction and collapse...expansionism is illogical, it will be our undoing...

the us war for independence was a revolt from above. there were just enough elites who bought into enlightenment ideals to frustrate the absolute success of their fellow aristocratic british revolutionaries looking for a way out of paying taxes...sadly, the way around granting freedom has been discovered: peddle fear.

an interesting read...

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refuted his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred. to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. --And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

No time...

ahhhh, 'tis the school year, indeed...full swing...midterms and too much coffee...

for anyone who still comes here, most of my creative talent will be applied in writing for Boiling Point, UNC's unapologetically progressive magazine...by far more ballsy than the Carolina Review...note the unfortunate sarcasm...

here's the shameless plug...

Speaking as a writer, I'll be candid about my thoughts on the editors...squares...especially one in particular...I may post full versions of the articles here...not sure...with any luck, my article for next month's issue will make it through that process a little more intact...and that's being optimistic that the other people who are supposed to be submitting articles come through on their part so that we can have an issue for November...jesus, I have a great disdain, well, love/hate relationship with deadlines, but moving it back three separate times (two if I concede that moving the first date because of fall break was at least somewhat legit...which I still got my article in...written on no sleep.....) I digress, moving the deadline back that many times, thus moving back the date that it hits the presses, thus moving back the date that it hits the public, is unprofessional, even for college students.

A song...

Ejected out

into the dark sea stranded world

circa that Orwellian year

struck and set ablaze

like a signal flare

of generational distress

and discontent.

Now some two decades

of madness

and cultural slumping…

relegated out of place like

a landlocked lighthouse—

this is our beacon,

our hope

our drive

a desperation to shine

brighter than

that flypaper box

of streaming electron beams

and the Mtv race for

the bottom.

We are that oxidized-green light

and that longing

for a distant shore.

Give us your outcast,

your tired poor

with tear eroded raw cheeks

cut deeply in

mourning the death stillbirth

of the American Dream.

distractions...

ah sports...little league world series, nfl pre-season (fuck to and fuck espn for that new insider bullshit, fucking capitalists...), the nhl is back (though I think I'm still subconsciously holding a grudge), NCAA will be starting up soon...and before long, it'll be sweater weather again in beautifully depressing north carolina.

Don't leave me behind, just drop me off at point-zero and paint a target on my skull...

To being, steal a copy of Bad Religion's, "No Control" (and others, should you choose). Put them on repeat for the next two decades or so...

And when you have the tune nicely in your head, sing along...
BIG BANG
this isn't another new fashion, or a new wave plastic trend. everybody's searching for something but in the meantime let's all just pretend. i've got this feeling and i don't know what it is. this room is overcrowded, man, and i need air to breathe, yeah. big bang, big crunch, you know there's no free lunch. kneel down and pray, here comes your judgment day. big crunch, you know, it's gonna be quite a show. what comes around always goes around, yeah. a million hopeless faces dwell within protected walls, all waiting for a moment in life when they can heed the clarion call. and it's all so oppressive my mind feels like a sieve. this city's overcrowded, man, and i need room to live. big bang, big crunch, you know there's no free lunch. kneel down and pray, here comes your judgment day. big crunch, you know, it's gonna be quite a show. what comes around always goes around, yeah. i think of the countless shadows that have all come and gone, all suffering in the notion of better things to come. if you share these beliefs you know i wish you well, 'cause there's no room left in heaven and there's sure no room in hell, yeah. big bang, big crunch, you know there's no free lunch. kneel down and pray, here comes your judgment day. big crunch, you know, it's gonna be quite a show. what goes around always comes around.

So, PBU is going to be writing about doom and gloom... I guess I'll find out if I'm alone in being crazy, this should be fun.

The question we've been given as a topic was "The Evil-doers:How far will they go?"

I think I will take a view that accepts some of the positive aspects of our time's negativity. Meaning, I will start form this point: those who are in power, now, either believe that they are blessed to an afterlife robed in beautiful white censorship free from sexuality (which will begin just as soon as they take over the "Promised Land" and the Great Hero, the Commander and Chief tortures and slaughters all thieves and takes away all Believers to the Land of Milk and Honey), or they believe that they are something more than Bald Apes...of course there are variations to these, there's Karl, who sold...scratch that, who is Ni666on's bastard child, thus he's about doing his Dark Father's work, corrupting souls and seeking to bring about the End Times (thus, the pairing of W and him, they both want the same thing, just for different reasons...). Beyond this, a couple hundred years of believing the fairy-tale of infinite supply has forced this planet to the breaking point...well, a critical point would be more accurate.

The point is, the planet will survive us. We will be recycled.

So, will the world end? Not for a couple billion years. Will humanity self-destruct? This remains to be seen.

We have the ability to curtail our negative impacts on our environment. We have the ability to seek balance. Further, we have the ability to forecast where this spinning wheel is going to stop, and to adapt to that new reality.

I don't believe in a jackasses who quote from Revelation.... especially when they call it revelations. The writer of that piece of literature was writing in a specific historical period, to a specific audience, making specific historically bound allusions.

If you want to quote the Bible, how's about taking a look at what the philosopher Jesus said... take a good look at his moral theory (of course founded in Jewish theology, he was, after all, a Jew)... then take a look at what he said about the "End Times." Could he have been warning not to make any claims because he understood that the messianic era (in terms of the end of the world sort of crap) was bullshit? God was not coming down from the sky, sin was not something that a Zoroastrian creation was going to boil you in a lake of fire for, and further, to be more explicit, there was no such thing as the Devil.

We hold our future in our hands. Perhaps the time is coming for a true battle. Perhaps the time is coming to debate the semantics of a fist. Or, perhaps the time is coming for us to walk away.

waiting for the great destruction...

Approximately 250Mya, life on earth nearly ended. Though perhaps a contributing factor, most scientist agree that this crash was not caused by a bolide impact. In fact, life has been nearly wiped-out mulitple times by geo-environmental changes (see the "snowball earth" theory). But I digress, the Permian Mass Extinction began in Siberia. Volcanic activity pumped billions of kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (as a side note, this volcanic activity was most likely the eruption of a cauldron volcano, similar to the one under Yellowstone, which is continuing to grow... moving closer and closer to an eruption, the likes of which could only be described as Biblical--and that would be the thoughts of an observer in NYC where God would be raining down fire and brimstone on the sinners and econorats that scurry up and down Wall Street, never mind what would happen to the politicks in DC). This increase in atmospheric CO2 led, as greenhouse gases (GHG's) tend to do, to a rise in earth's overall temperature. As tends to be the case for systems, this change triggered further effects. Frozen in the bottom of the ocean were vast quantities of methane, safely separate from the atmosphere, so long as it was frozen. An oceanic rise of just 4 degrees Centigrade triggered the sublimation of the methane, which is a far more efficient GHG than CO2. From here, the effects ran their course. This extinction event wiped out nearly 96% of all life, approximately 95% of marine life and some 60% of land life.

Scientists are now reporting that thawing Siberian permafrost is releasing methane into the atmosphere.

And still, we cannot curb our appetite for petroleum. This is what our entire culture is founded on. And still, we are moving toward peak oil production and the end of cheap oil. We are actively seeking our own demise.

Order and balance will establish itself, but we do not know what the new homeostasis will be. Human history has witnessed the rise and fall of numerous empires, and has continued. This is the best case scenario. With any luck, the US and the Capitalist (because, yes, there is such a group, organized under various corporate logos, "societies," and treaties) will recognize that their world-view rest on a dangerous fallacy and decide to simply step down. This, however, is mostly a non-likelihood; and their inevitable fall will have ripples because we do live in, and as part of, a system.

In order to understand just what we face, we must accept the other possibility. But in this too, there is hope. The earth has survived numerous mass extinctions. Life has survived. And life will survive us, eventually. It will grow in complexity and become intelligent. And just as we have discovered the tragedies before us, something will discover our tragedy. They will be gifted with the understanding that they can be their own destruction. They will not look to dominate the earth and sky trying to prevent extraterrestrial shots in the dark (which may or may not have ended the reign of the dinosaurs), because ours will be the top layer.

And with head phones on, I'll tune out the world...
waiting for the lights to change
the raindrops skip the wiper blades
buildings fall from the sky in panes
and it carries me down
if you gave me a chance to be sincere
do you think they'd let me outta here
gonna walk out in the traffic
if I promise not to make a sound
and the look upon your face
would be chiseled there forever
as the glass came through the windshield
and the car lifted from the ground
maybe at my funeral
they'll say I found the answer
they'll say I had it coming
they'll say I was just sitting around
waiting for the great destruction I am
waiting for Holden Caulfield to call
waiting for the great destruction I am
waiting for the sky
the sky
to open up
make me feel small
like a bird in bad weather
these engines won't stall
time enough to watch the free world fall
under the black and blue handle of
it will only take a saw
waiting for the lights to change
the lies they learn to rearrange
the truth they hold to exchange
and it carries me down
second hand to the greater fear
these words of promise disappear
so I wrote them down to make it appear
but nothing is what I found
but if it was really all that easy
don't you think I'd have given up by now
and if the questions had an answer
they wouldn't be believable out loud
and you know that I would tell you
even if it sounded like a lie
funny thing about the truth is that
no-one warned us to wonder why
and I will leave the car door open
as a symbol of my freedom
like the riddles of a dead man
who didn't always need them
and in the end they'll say I'm crazy
'cause I never give a reason
he always talked about tomorrow as if
he were always leaving
and I am waiting for the great destruction
waiting for Holden Caulfield to call
waiting for the great destruction
I am waiting for the sky
the sky to fall
--Matthew Good

But still mark your callenders and call Rummy and tell him you'll be there with boots and a cowboy hat on to show your support for the troops on September 11th.

in brief...

Goodnight, Mr. Jennings. Thank you for your professionalism.

And in other news, it seems that Dole is trying to make a deal with UNC...more on this later...

A Paradox.

Life is at once entirely accidental and random, but it exists as it does because it absolutely must.

So long as we adhere to dogma, whether under the guise of science or religion, we will never come any closer to solving these mysteries. Acceptence of Truth, however, is not dogmatic.

I hope that in forty years, we celebrate a century without the use of nuclear weapons between opposing nations. What's more, I hope that we can celebrate forty years since the last weapon was built.

The World is Beautiful...

...embrace its magnificence.

As tends to be the case, schools of thought fall into the dangerous area of dogma. This is no less true for Religion as, ironically, it was for the Existentialists. Their flawed dogma was the outright rejection of all systems, when in fact, the System is the very point one should focus on.

We will never be able to absolutely calculate Pi, but that endeavor was essentially missing the point from the start, regardless. The point is that there is an absolute order, a constant relationship between a circumference and a radius which constitutes what we've labeled "circle." From this simple fact, we are able to further articulate and describe our perceptions of the world around us. This is not to say, however, that syntax is never important, only that it is worthless without its counterpart semantics.

So to carry on this train of thought further, we live in a charged and active world. From the earth's iron core to the thermohaline circulation of the oceans to solar radiation, we are surrounded by a world in flux. Our weather is dictated by electromagnetism in ways that we are only now beginning to comprehend. Beyond this, all of reality, humans, dust, lightning, grass, E. coli, stars, the universe itself, everything is but simple variations of one fundamental energy. Einstein's discovery showed that mass, space, and time are separated in dimentional expression, only. They are equal in terms of energy density, which is by the factor of the speed of light square; another constant.

In this, inexhaustible sources of energy are to be found. In this, clues to solving that old riddle are to be found. In this, a foundation for a true Ethics is to be found.

But if existence is defined as a System, there are limits and equilibrium. This cannot be refuted. None of this is new thought...

So, why the fuck are we still killing each other?

hmmm, makes me think of a happy song

www.cfa-inc.org...
"One step closer to making the unification with China easier...here, take this pill and it will all be painless. Trust us."


it makes me think of a happy canadian punk rock song, by propagandhi, no less...

perception and time

Apparently, this country is on its way to hell in a handbasket...but hey, when hasn't it been? Cable companies consolidating, a corporate friendly congressman (as if there are any other kind) to be voted on for the SEC chairmanship, the on-going race to the bottom between MTV and most of the other crap on TV, an entire administration that is still in office as we are still in a war of false pretense and the deathcount and number of war crimes keep rising...

But thinking on all of this I can't help but think of the sequoia forests of northern california. How many civilizations have crumbled as they've reached for the sun? Planets take billions of years to form. Solar systems take eons to condense from swirling clouds. These are the respective scales of their lifespan. How do they percieve? Do they percieve on these time-scales?

Given that perception is simply interaction with the rest of the universe, I'd say yes.

It's impossible to watch a tree for five minutes and watch its life in motion. Is it possible to sit in a forest for weeks and watch life in motion? I think so, with the right patterns of thought.

from comcastwatch.com

Why Your Community Should Oppose the Sale and Transfer of Adelphia Franchises to Comcast and Time Warner Cable

Comcast is the largest cable operator in America, serving 21.5 million cable homes, or nearly 30 percent of American homes subscribing to cable. If the Adelphia purchase is approved, Comcast will grow by two million homes to 23.5 million.

Time Warner Cable (TWC) is the second largest cable operator in America. While TWC serves fewer cable homes than Comcast, it is controlled by Time Warner, one of the world's largest media content creators, an owner of a broadcast network (WB) and multiple cable channels (CNN, TBS, TNT, HBO, etc).

By virtue of their joint control over the nation's cable television homes, Comcast and TWC each possess unacceptable "gatekeeper" power to dictate which television channels Americans receive, as well as the content on those channels, whether they are Comcast and Time Warner Cable subscribers or not. Says cable tycoon John Malone: "I don't believe that an independent programmer has any chance whatsoever… There's no way on earth that you can be successful in the U.S. distributing a channel that Brian Roberts (CEO of Comcast) doesn't carry, particularly if he has one that competes with it."

Comcast and TWC's monthly fees increase annually far in excess of the increase in inflation. A 2004 study by the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) found that Comcast's rates have increased by 50 percent – almost three times the pace of inflation – since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. To increase its profits, Comcast forces customers to pay for channels they don't want. Despite the fact that the CFA found that nearly 80 percent of Comcast's customers wouldn't pay for ESPN if they didn't have to, the company refuses to allow customers the option to choose the channels they wish to have in their home and keep out the channels they don't want.

Comcast is the nation's largest broadband Internet service provider. It refuses to allow competing national and local Internet service providers, such as Earthlink, to use its broadband cable to provide Internet access, a practice ruled illegal by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in the Brand X case, presently on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Comcast's refusal to allow competitors to access its broadband cable gives it power to dictate which sites its consumers can access and to divert customers to sites that Comcast has an economic interest in. Regardless of the outcome of its appeal, the sheer number of Americans who have little or no alternative to Comcast for broadband Internet service gives it an unacceptable power over the American public's Internet and media choices.

TWC, through its AOL and Road Runner units, is the nation's largest Internet service provider. While it presently allows other broadband Internet service providers to access its broadband cable, it does so only because the Federal Trade Commission requires it to – a public interest condition of the approval of the 2001 AOL/Time Warner merger. Time Warner Cable is now appealing that condition of open access – a telling commentary on that company's commitment to the public interest.

Comcast has the worst customer satisfaction rating of any company or government agency in the country, including the Internal Revenue Service, according to a 2004 American Customer Satisfaction Index survey. According to a recent article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian, searching Google using the keywords "Comcast" and "hate" generated 339,000 hits.

The city of Philadelphia, Comcast's corporate headquarters, is building its own wireless broadband network to provide better broadband Internet access to its citizens at a reasonable cost. This speaks volumes.Comcast is the "Wal-Mart of the telecommunications industry" in terms of its labor relations. A recent study by American Rights at Work, titled "No Bargain: Comcast and the Future of Workers' Rights in Telecommunications," is highly critical of the company's labor relations, citing poor pay and union-busting tactics. According to the report, pay is "approximately one-third lower than the unionized telephone companies" while employee "turnover and the use of temporary workers ... are twice as high as the telephone industry average.... Only one in four locations where a union exists have been able to obtain a collective bargaining agreement."

Comcast has taken an extremely confrontational and difficult stance with local communities in franchise-renewal negotiations. In 2003, Comcast sued the city of San Jose during negotiations over its local franchise agreement, arguing the process violated the company's First Amendment rights. Comcast lost this dubious argument in the lower courts, but is now appealing the decision. Meanwhile, San Jose has been without a franchise agreement with Comcast for seven years.

Given these facts, are Comcast and Time Warner Cable truly the best companies to take control of your local Adelphia cable franchise?

ponderings for the night...or morning as the case is

What strange times we live in. For as trite as that phrase is, I don't think there's any other way to put it. For as comfortable as we've become with living next door to our annihilation as a species, the medical field doesn't seem to have figured out the concept of mortality...well, you could argue that they have, but a different abstraction motivates them to perpetuate absurdity. And for as tangled and twisted as the web is, as deep as the rabbit hole drops, it seems to all boil down to one point, one flaw in Western "logic..."

When it comes down to it, they can never really answer "why?"

Today, two people fell in love, some people stubbed their big toe, a person's smile made a stranger's day, a little girl lost her first tooth, a husband became a father, some one cried for the loss of a loved one, a man killed total strangers, a whore turned a trick, a country carried on "business as usual." And also today, climate shifts were continuing, petroleum deposits were drained more, a child starved, violence was inflected on strangers by strangers, the media gave a voice to a jackass who should have been kept quiet and silenced a story that should be known. And in this country, criminals remained at-large, in office...and the country carried on "business as usual."

"Ev'ry day da bucket a-go-a well; one day, da bottom a-go drop out." Jamaican proverb

What happens then? Are things really as bad as they can seem? Is there any way out? To fix? To throw-out and start-over? To not fuck things up once something new was established?

Tomorrow, the sun will rise, perhaps...

an email

And though it contains a shameless plug or two, do watch the film "Bush's Brain." It's terrifying.

In a message dated 7/11/05 9:12:06 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
imcurl@email.unc.edu writes:

Hello Mr Shoob,
I'm a subscriber to the
Institute for Public Accuracy's email briefs and have some questions for you regarding the current "episode" of the Bush drama. Before I begin, I must say, "Bush's Brain" does in fact give me nightmares.

First, what do you expect to result from this "revelation," in terms of public approval for the Bush administration?
I think it's still hard to tell. If this investigation turns out to be as thorough as it appears that it's going to be, I think the Bush administration will feel the pressure, and their approval rating will suffer.
Will Rove be released from his position and prosecuted, as Mr McClellan stated in 2003?
It's not clear that Karl Rove has broken the law, so it's unclear to me whether he will be prosecuted. My guess, however, is that this will lead the press and the voters to look at our film, read the books and newspapers that are out there and learn about Rove's thirty years of "hardball politics". I think his reputation will suffer.
What will be the Congress' response? Do you think that Republicans and Democrats can come together to pursue justice?
This all depends on the findings of the Special Prosecutor. I think this investigation might turn up other pre-Iraq activities by this administration which will be taken seriously by both Democrats and Republicans.
Considering Rove's past shenanigans, how strong will a defense based on "knowingly" be?
"Knowingly" will be the key.
How long can the Administration get away with such blatant disregard for the very ideals they are supposedly bringing to the rest of the world?
Good question. This next sixty or ninety days will tell us a lot.
Do you think that there will be any real public displays in reaction to this scandal, since this story has been largely confined to the "blogosphere?"
I think that this story has reached beyond the "blogosphere" into the mainstream press. And, for the first time in his administration, Bush is having to contend with a hostile and aggressive press corps.
Thank you for your time.
Ian Curl
pfblack.blogspot.com
My pleasure. I would encourage your readers to look at our film to better understand the Bush-Rove relationship and to realize that this latest revelation about Rove is just the tip of the iceberg in his thirty year history of vengeance and dirty tricks.

Best,

Michael Paradies Shoob
Co-Director, BUSH'S BRAIN

upcoming events

United for Peace and Justice is holding a major event in September...find information here.

Right now, I've got a strange feeling about it...a "my knee aches, I think it's gonna rain" sort of a thing. BUT, it's not for two months, and who knows, the Administration could all be in jail and the country plunged into chaos before then...

A Quote

With the possible exception of Nixon, Hubert Humphery is the purest and most disgusting example of a Political Animal in American politics today. He has been going at it hammer and tong twenty-five hours a day since the end of World War II--just like Richard Nixon, who launched his own career as a Red-baiting California congressman about the same time Hubert began making headlines as the Red-baiting Mayor of Minneapolis. They are both career anti-Comunists: Nixon's gig was financed from the start by Big Business, and Humphery's by Big Labor...and what both of them stand for today is the de facto triumph of a One Party System in American politics.

Hunter S Thompson, '72

As true today as it was then. The trend has been a consolidation of power under the manufactured polarization produced by the media. Simply put, we need the Democrats who are serious about fixing things to break off and start a new party...but not like Lincoln, where the new party wound-up replacing the old, we need a multi-party system. Democracy is not supposed to be easy, it's not supposed to be stable, it's never supposed to be business as usual.

and while I'm on the point of continued trends, Harvey Wasserman has published another brilliant article.

Against the Death Penalty and For Reform

This example, along with sad others that will never see the light of day, is a strong reason for why we should do away with the barbaric practice of capital punishment...even for treason...

Further, as it has been stated time and time and time and time and time, again, our entire justice system needs reform. Most especially, drug policy needs to be thrown out and incarceration should be replaced with treatment. None of this is new thought. Alternatives to criminal trial for nonviolent drug offenses must be found and utilized nationally.

Shifting in thought, only slightly...

I was suddenly struck last night by the question, "what happens when the crash doesn't come?" Where will all the doom-sayers be left, then? What happens when I wake-up on that "prophecized" day, only to find that I lost my job because I pissed off my boss and didn't care because, "shit, there isn't even going to be a world tomorrow?"

Will there be rough times, globally, in the not so distant future? I believe that there is more than enough evidence to suggest so, even if it is just the shift away from petroleum dependence. But this doesn't exactly spell the end of the world. Throughout human history, thousands of people have forecasted the apocalypse, only to sit on a hill and look like idiots.

Barring widespread nuclear war as a result of possible chaos, the world has survived the fall of empires and will survive the fall of the US. There are ways, however, to advert the systematic failure of our country. Nothing is guaranteed.

Thoughts on Rove

this one goes out to deb

correspondance from the belly of the beast

830, this morning...
"Ian, phone."
Hello?
Curl, what's up man?
What's up, John?
Did I wake you up?
Yeah, but it's all good; I was supposed to be up an hour ago to run. What's up?
Nothing much, I pissed some people off today.
Already?
Yeah, I made a shirt that said 'Impeach Bush' on it and got yelled at by this sixty-year-old guy. He called me a 'faggot' and shit and threaten to kick my ass 'rabble rabble' and call the corporate office 'rabble rabble'. I think I really pissed him off when I told him to have a great day, and not in a smart-ass tone, either.
Wow, really? That's great.
And this other guy asked me why we should impeach the president, so I told him about the Downing Street Memo and everything. He kept saying, 'oh, so you want them to come over and put bombs in our planes and blow-up our buildings?' I told him no, but he didn't really listen...
Well, just be careful, man. Remember that you're not just fending for yourself...
What do you mean? I'm sure if someone were to kill me over a fucking shirt they'd start some kind of fund in my name.
Nah, but what about company policy? Could you be fired? You know Sam's is just an extension of Wal-Mart...
Nah, politics are fair game, just as long as I don't wear anything offensive, like 'fuck bush' or 'dead fetuses taste good,' I'm ok.
Haha, right on.
But, my manager asked me to take it off, since that old fuck threatened to call corporate.
Bummer, dude...

John's down in Florida...need I say more?

goddamn...why is it that bush always has a smug fucking grin on his face, like he knows something that we don't know, whenever he's shoveling shit out of his mouth? does he not know that we're on to him (well, them, since bush is too big of a fucking idiot to plot out some of the shit they're pulling, while I'm at it...)? why the fuck am I not in washington throwing molotovs?

begin hair pulling and teeth gnashing...

focusing on something else...

Though I support PBU and all others who are trying to keep the light shining on the Evil Fuck, it's too much for me right now. So, I'm going to post about something that I just learned about today...which is somewhat of a disappointment, at my own ignorance and the lack of press, not about this project.

Acrosanti is an experiment in "acrology," a school of ecologically balanced architecture. This project was founded by Paolo Soleri, a student of Frank Lloyd Wright (a fact easily recognizable when viewing the buildings in this Arizona desert town).

I need to do way more reading into this...but, it's good to see that people are actively seeking alternatives to the "conqueror and sprawl" system...which, by the way, is still heading for The Crash. So, set your watches, pack a cooler with beer, kiss your dog, wash in between your toes, check your armpits, and floss, 'cause it's gonna be a big ol' time, darlin'.

My heart goes out to all the Londoners affected by today's attacks, and to the entire country.

hmmm...

hmmm...

Where as I completely agree with the spirit of the olympic games, the gathering of all peoples for friendly competition. It's an ideal that I hope one day we as humans can truly live...

What the fuck? Who fucking cares about the 2012 olympics? I hope that the world is still spinning in 2012... Of all the things to be worrying about, at this time... Anything for a nice distraction, I guess.

a thought on live8...

I wonder what Mr Robert Nesta Marley would have though about live8... Would he have been invited? Would he have been invited back in '85?

And by the way, on a unrelated, related note...Karl Rove is a mean-spirited ass. I hope he is put in prison...along the rest of the Bu$h administration soon after (sorry, even Mr Powell.) He's the corner-stone, if he falls, the whole temple goes... Kill the snake by cutting off the head.

A Hard Rains-A Gonna Fall...

Simply put...wha?

Strange times, indeed. The Courts have decided that local governments can snatch up "churches and replace them with Walmarts," as the congresswoman pointed out. And yet there's confusion about the difference between displaying the 10 commandments (Harvey Wasserman has written a brilliant article related to the subject) in a courtroom, versus on the court lawn...now, Dylan's going with Starbucks...It's not that surprising, remember his deal with Victoria's Secret? Honestly, I'd say that it's best to remember his songs, since he's a musician first and foremost...

Holy moly, the gentlemen and gentlewomen are getting feisty on the floor of the house, today...over credit cards...eh...though good googly moogly, Rep Obey has some fire in his belly, I think I like him. Rep Jeff from Arizona is a Flake... And, by the way, VIVA CUBA! Fuck simply opening up Cuban-American's ability to go back to Cuba more often than 3 years, End the Embargo! Castro should be kicked in the shins because he lost sight of what the revolution was supposed to be about (that's giving him the benefit of the doubt that he wasn't just an ego-maniacal twat to start with...)

Over the past few weeks, I've had the opportunity to listen to the local rap and r&b stations... Overlooking the fact that the two stations I listened to play the same five songs each hour, every hour, 24-7 (maybe it's for people who only tune-in while they're driving and such, not for people listening for prolonged periods of time), I noticed something far more sinister. These stations are directed toward a Black listener, this is not sinister; but, between being told that "she likes me 'cause I'm so icy, so icy, so icy...", "Hey ya'll, this is America, and in America we have certain freedoms, like the freedom to eat any time we want. That's why Mc-D's is open 24hours...", sex sex booty booty sex sex "don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak, like me?" "I'm gon' beat that, beat that..." "Ain't no need in even askin' bra, the best women all reside in Africa..." I didn't once hear any news. None of the dj's said anything about the fact that Blacks have the highest percentage of HIV infection in this country. No body said a damn thing about the fact that (for Ohio at the very least, though Fla, NM and many others are included) the GOP fucked Black voters and impotent fucking Democrats published a piss-poor water-down "assessment" this past week...(Dr Manning Marable is right.) Not once did I hear any of them talk about poverty in the US. Not once did I hear anything about Live8, let alone any reference the the G8 meeting and the publicly desired push to erase African debt, without any strings (hold on Asia and South America, if they can actually pressure dicks like Great Britain and the US to do something like this, your time, too, will come). This is not conspiracy, it's economics..."It's mathematics." (and between "pimp my daughter" and handling brittney's "truth," "white America" is a fucking joke and deserves a fall.)

It's becoming inevitable that the time is coming when, after having their toes stepped on for far too long by far too many assholes, people are going to take up their sledge hammers and storm malls, storm the ceramics store and GNC and the food courts and Sears; they're going to pick-up pitch-forks and storm million dollar mansions and invite the resident 3 member family to continue to live there, with two 5 member families...
Down with dope, up with hope.

"The Pentagon and mental health professionals have been examining the ethical issues involved."

hmmm...it seems like there shouldn't be much examination or debate:
Aristotle said politics:society::ethics:individual...equivalent to virtue, or performing one's function excellently. Therefore...HEALTH "professional"=someone who promotes HEALTH....christ, I thought that debating the meaning of "is" (though in actuality a very interesting philosophical debate...but not in the way that mr. cigaro was intending...) was a bad ear-fucking, mind-boggling, skull-bashing, tongue swallowing, glass eating waste of tax dollars (not to mention carbon and hydrogen, etc)....but this........and how fucking long have the "experts" been telling everyone, fucking everyone, that torture (and yes, I'd say that these practices fit into the dark dirty inhuman realm of torture...no! say it ain't so, sammy; not you! you're apple pie and baseball and the very meaning of summer, fireworks, the fourth...please, someone call the hague.) doesn't work? They have all said, on ABC 20/20 special reports and history channel War glorifications and such, that torture gets people to talk, sure...and it even gets them to tell you what you want (like who else is fucking satan in the forests at night...it's goodie whitefield, the pastor's own wife! satan is assaulting god's people! AHHHHEEEE!!!!)...but is anything that they tell you really worth damnit? (let alone worth the inflicting of suffering on another human being...) most with brains and the slightest shred of humanity have said, "no."

ethics...my fucking ass.

Soon, this moral high horse is going to clip a hurtle...and it's going to hurt, bad...the poor bastard will have to be put-down because he broke both hips and won't even be able to screw and pass on his sloppy DNA...not to mention the little runt of a jockie will snap his neck in thirty-thousand places, leaving him hospitalized with senators scrambling to pick up the pieces of a fallen hero...too busy to notice that the doctors have decided to pull the plug...and the nation will have a good old fashioned Irish wake. god bless.

Simply put, historians will not be kind to the US. There will be no Roman romanticism of these evil bastards...

A Big Man Finally Defeated?

Sadness...Tyson was a monster two decades ago. A beast. A man who could swing his arms and land devastatingly beautiful, bone-smashing, god-fury punches...and then there was that man with the bad hair...out of the ring scandal, tragedy, in the ring scandal, and psychosis, all the while psychosis...Finally, in debt and mostly a joke, Tyson was reduced to fighting chumps in order to pay mounting bills...he was reduced to a gladiator playing in some boondock middle of no-where roman town, when he used to dominate in Rome's lighted bastard whore daughter herself...I can't help but feel sorry for him.

Viva Cubanismo

Within the next two decades, we're going to learn a lot from Cuba...from autorepair to agriculture...

news briefs-what journalists wear under their trousers

so, mr stewart presented himself very well, again, with one of the jackals...the shame is that I actually like mr powell (well, he's a likeable guy...just fell in with a bad crowd), unfortunately, he spoke like a true politician, covering his ass and the asses that his lips still pucker for, powell that is, not stewart...and apparently, strip poker is not the bush family's after dinner game of choice. I think that Jon Stewart did an excellent job of giving him hell, but, since it's comedy central, there's an unspoken, "dude, don't take yourself too seriously, it's comedy central. sit there, take it, and smile...or you can look like a bigger jackass than we already think you are; it's your choice." mr ridge got the same treatment. I think that both of them, though obviously still politicians, came off as looking somewhat more human. BUT, history will still be unkind to them...of course this is being optimistic that there will be history after the economic bubble pops. GM is going under, though they won't admit it...for as satisfying as it is to see the expansionist-driven economic model (which, by the way, is not what a true free market/capitalist economy is...) slowly coming apart at the seams, leading to a burst and a chaotic crashing and burning, I feel terribly for all of the Cassandras out there.

Your predictions will come true, and there's nothing to stop it...even if you manage to convince enough people, even if you manage to motivate them to action, even if you come up with the perfect solution, your predictions will come true, because inertia is a property of matter that needs transition to work...the system is in its final count-down sequence, they ignored your warnings when they had the chance...and should the dust cloud settle in a non-radioactive form, we will all be the wiser and better for it.

And it gets weirder and weirder...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
--The Constitution of the United States, Amendment 1

In NY women are having a "nurse-in"...in Ethiopia, people are being killed for protesting a fraud election...

So, Ba-bwa Wawas pissed off some women by saying that public breast feeding made her uncomfortable and women are up with babies in arms in response. First, maybe if we didn't have a culture that shunned nudity, while promoting increasingly voyeuristic "celebrity" crap...(fuck paris hilton..and fuck nipple-gate), she would not have felt the way that many US citizens feel. But this, to me, is a smaller matter...

The bigger problem is our world view. We have been endowed with such freedoms and guaranteed rights that should honestly be considered basic human rights, but we don't seem to realize that not everyone on this planet has it this way. Protests and demonstrations have become passe...mostly meaningless...fits of public masturbation. This is not to say that we don't have legit reasons to protest (see anything regarding the Downing Street Memo) or that we don't have a large group of pissed off people...but there's something amiss...something that doesn't connect...

Would we risk life and limb to defend what is right?

Dark times for democracy in the good ol' USofA...sadly ironic, no?

(and I fully admit that I'm waiting, just like everyone else, for someone to come and lead the charge...)

Tremble.

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Man, when the hammer drops, I hope to be on a hill with a view and a telescope, though I'd rather be at ground-zero to see the look on their faces...

first...this is not new thought. Sadly, Nader and others have been bringing up this point, but Democrats are, for all intents and purposes, spineless cock-sucking whipping bitches...if one, only one, congress person would bring impeachment charges against Bush, though the poor bastard would surely be dead in seconds of uttering the words with some treasured body part displayed at the City's entrance to make the point very clear that there will be no improv or breaking from the script...

I'm currently reading HST's account of the '72 race...it must have seemed like some wicked deja vu flashback of a bad trip gone worse when W's rotten ass made a repeat...a while back a certain female giver of half of my DNA told me that she had voted for the Crook (though I'm not so sure that she was actually 18...mathematically speaking...so, how she voted...who knows?). I was a little taken aback by the thought of it...she claimed that it was a time when there still wasn't the cynicism of today. At first, I somewhat bought her story; but being a bit of a socio-political history junky (goddamn, if I could get some of the gigs that thompson got...weird, he's like an obi-wan ghost...but not the new bullshit version of him that georgie-boy is passing off on a stupid public--fuck him, I won't watch it), I must say that I've found more sources that draw the "anybody but [insert dick-head's name here]" as the democrats' campaign slogan in '72 than to say that it was a naivete still present...we're talking the age that cynicism arose, so, I'd have to reword it to be ignorance...Ni666on was a bastard, that was common consensus.

How does the saying go? "Those who don't study history..." Thus, the male half of my DNA voted the shit-head back in, this year...mainly because, in his words..."Fuck John Edwards." But bigger than that, I think the loss to Bush stems from the fact that the present-day democrats are masochists...or mostly a bunch of self-righteous, old white pussies...but how do you convince the ones who aren't to break away from the two-party status-quo? When will there be a multi-party polity in this country? Is that the answer? How else will politicians be brought under the thumb of their constituents?

Odd, I've not thought about the election so much for quite some time...I think it's stemming from seriously pondering the future of the US...I've never been a partisan but, if they grew a backbone, I think it'd be interesting to see how the dems are going to deal with the reality of a post-W world...it's good to see the local party trying to get out in full force, here in western NC, and take things back to the grass roots...it may be cause for me to get off of my cynic's high horse and get involved...

I had a friend who starved himself;
he said he wanted his skin just
taut enough to see
the support structure that
keeps his softer side
fighting gravity...

I had a friend who shaved her head;
she said she needed to see that
egg shell skull
that trapped her ego,
her identity...
She had to crack it open.
she wanted the answer to that question:
"where am I?"

A New World Dawning...

Start off here, here, and here (which, it was scary enough hearing a Reaganite and some republicans make similar claims, but fuckme, when an oil company does it, you know something is up).

First, in spite of the somewhat arrogant, self-righteous, omnipotent manner I sometimes tend to project myself as, I'll be the first to admit that I am not an expert in anything, at all.

That said, I'm somewhat worried by the fact that, from what I've seen, even in essays and articles and speeches that accept the dire situation that peak oil production poses to the US...well, what I would call the "american way of life," very few have applied the consequences beyond energy and transportation headaches. Petroleum is used in just about everything, from plastics to fertilizers to the gas for our beloved automobiles.

But what is more unnerving is the extent to which our entire culture is founded on cheap oil. I cannot foresee anything other than collapse, unless there is vast reformation, now; but I cannot see any motivation, any imperative, any desire to change. We are a citizenry asleep, a nation of horses with blinders...sheep.

When comfort is stripped away from us, what is there with merit in itself, that will prevent catastrophic destruction and total social up-heavel? Where are the "ubermen?"


(I realize that globally, the impact of peak-oil will be historical, to say the least. My focus, however, is to try and figure out how it will play out in my country...granted this must take all of the rest of the hemisphere and world into consideration, but when I think of the US, I think that we have a unique cultural disposition to being especially negatively impacted. Until this happens, however, I still believe that we can advert, or at least cushion, the blow, if we only make a few changes in how we see ourselves and our environment.)

The Need for Restructuring....

Balance. Balance. Balance.

To the extent that the current form of our Government has lost its sense of balance (being kind enough to assume that it was there in theory to being with...) it is failing us. Numerous examples serve to support this claim; I personally feel that the support need not be repeated, especially since it is quite blatant, even in the mainstream wash-out that passes for news.

So, what we need are solutions.

To begin, where as our problems nationally are bureaucratic in nature, bureaucracy is not the problem. Though it's taken me many years, I have come to accept that anarchy is absurd. It cannot exist in human society, since it is, by definition, truly anti-social, regardless of the niceties that the black and red kids try to give it. Suggesting any sort of order, which is a fundament of society (again, by definition), is automatically something other than anarchy. All things that are in existence today are expressions of some sort of order.

Unfortunately, it has been characteristic of "Western" thought to be anthrocentric, to the point of forgetting that we are, in fact, animals. That said, we are a certain type of animal. We are animals who have the social complexities of our ape ancestors and relatives, combined with cognitive and technological inheritance which we have advanced, in our own right. These have allowed us a singular position in this global system, but it has not freed us from that system.

But these are not the points that I am arguing in this post...at least not explicitly...

I would argue that the changes that we need, taking as granted that government form is a reflection of the popular culture, fall essentially into two categories: structure and focus. Since these exist in a dialectic relationship, separating one from the other and the effects of one on the other is impossible. Further, perhaps this is a somewhat egomaniacal, the intention of this post is not so much to present total ideas as it is to, hopefully, spur conversation and debate with anyone that reads this (so please, comments are more than welcomed). So, I will write a brief sketch of some of my ideas.

Focus:
Socialism is not a dirty word. Game theory is showing that the only way to insure maximum success is to minimize competition; meaning that, instead of competing, we cooperate. Sounds simple.

Simple conservation laws (the physical, not legal, kind) prove that the indefinitely expansionist economic model is fiction, not to mention bad fiction at that. Finitude means exactly that; limits exist, so equations must be balanced by us or they will be balanced for us (most likely in a way that is not so kind to us humans, or more specifically, since this country is my focus, to the US). In WWII, the Nazis planned to crash the British economy by flooding the streets with counterfeit currency...and yet we make money by making money? This concept of limits and balance within those limits applies to everything from our conception of medicine to our market models to education. BUT, balance does not mean stagnation.

Okay, this may seem to be a bit more directed at our culture, but as I typed above, it applies because of that...Celebrity should reward merit (by extension, legitimacy), not the other way around.

There are others, but these will do for now...

Structure:
First and foremost, to the extent that we as US citizens desire true democracy, or something that is a close approximation to it, we should do away with the Executive branch. It is more than possible to distribute its powers, as well as the all-important checks and balances, between the Legislative and Judicial branches. (If we want consolidated power, it should be in the hands of those most qualified to lead and rule...and megalomania is not a qualification.)

Being limited by necessity (see above), the nation-state model of the US as a single entity and "its states" as sub-level entities needs to be reevaluated. In fact, I think that one of the original conceptions of the US as a federation of interdependent states should be reexamined. The central federal government should handle universals: travel, trade, healthcare, education, communication, utilities, and defense (until it can be phased-out).

For the sake of keeping this brief, I'll leave these as being some of the changes, in an abstract form, that need to be and can be made.

God is.

This is a brilliant article, well worth reading.

It seems like our culture is rapidly cycling towards that crash that nihilism warns of, when all of this is pointed out as nonsense founded on even more nonsense, leading to a possible violent crash, because common morality is proven to be bunk.

This doesn't have to happen. There is an irrefutable a priori that can serve as a foundation for a new way of embracing our old thoughts. There is reason to both embrace and question our spirituality, to pursue those paradoxes that seem to paradoxically define us.

Order. Order is a priori. For simple proof, ask yourself this question, "Can I think chaotically?"

The answer to this question doesn't quite free one from skepticism, yet. Just as Descartes didn't escape the skeptic's dilemma by proving his own existence, simply proving the order in one's own thoughts does not necessarily prove anything else, until more evidence is provided...

But that evidence does exist, I think. All one needs to do is seek it out.

There is something to found our morality on, bigger, more real, more stable than the figments, the absurdities, and abstractions that "right and wrong" are based on now. Religions have that Truth; I think it has unfortunately just been lost, in many ways, because of our own limitations of speech and reliance on cognitive short-cuts to explain things that are far beyond our ability to fully articulate. But I do not think that this limitation means that we are limited in our ability to seek and discover what it is, to accept it, embrace it, to accept our portion of it, to embrace our being a part of it...

But how is one supposed to live according to this knowledge when it's still just speculation at the moment?

a presentable revision...after about a year...

They're strong
with the forceful thousands and thousands of Blank Eyes;
and plastic flags that hang on Main Street flutter
in dead air...
so, there's no need to question them,
even to ask what the matter is, because
cartoon police patrol the city streets
leaving no room for rags
or musicians--
because
"Safety" was circumscribed into loops and downward spirals
by circular arguments
or by mutes, the Inheritor,
and a sinkhole that formed in the middle of downtown,
after de-rail-abrations
chipped off accidental crumbs from the Piecrust.

Well, the policrats still come down here
scamming us to buy bigger and bigger guns,
Threatening and robbing
those who didn't vote for the Son;
but I was too young the first time, and the second
he had the momentum of a country that'd half-lost its mind
(i voted nader)
So the deficit just keeps growing
But complaints are only heard at the pump line
shhhhh...they might hear
[but I'll ask Her for you anyway...]
"...could this really be the end?"
Oh, I'm STUCK in the wake of the American Century,
with the post-postmodern Blues, again...

though what's far worse,
my hands are smooth and clean;
and strangers claim to be familiar,
so the familiar must be strange...
and distracted by the green changed season,
i can't seem to tell time

click.

Simple Truth...

It's sad that rational dialogue has been largely discouraged in this country, more so when legitimate opposition (of which there is sadly a limited amount) is easily discredited as a bunch of quacks and conspiracy theorists...

Here's an excerpt of a recent Zblog post by Chomsky...

There are no “conspiracies,” and it has nothing to do with “brutal men.” True, individuals influence decisions, but within a very narrow framework of choices. And that framework very largely derives from the concentration of domestic power, not surprisingly. That does leave a range. Thus the people around Bush happen to be committed to an unusual extent to serving very narrow concentrations of wealth and power and transferring costs to the great majority of the population and to future generations. Looking at who they are, and where they come from, it’s not hard to understand their role at the extreme of a pretty narrow spectrum.

Here's something else worth looking at...

a poem

A family crossed the quad on a warm spring Sunday at UNC-CH: two boys, a mother, a father

A reflection:

I was once a toddler,

running, struggling to keep up,

my hand out stretched

reaching for the safety and assurance

of being led,

of slowing you down.

I grew.

At five, I ran,

charged ahead to find a world not

found by second-hand experience or

truth. I and my imagination were

Creator, Author:

I was God.

Then came physics and gravity

and experience and understood

insignificance, ignorance, and embarrassment…

I rejected

denied

escaped

embraced skepticism as

the most efficient destructive

tool,

until the scaffolding shook and

I was forced to cling

to something

or ____

So that now I feel dumb,

tormented by simplicity

—by that simplicity which we all always know—

tap-dancing

tip-of-the-tongue

elusive to that singular embrace which could end

this absurdity.

"set vel free," and "turn it blue..."

Today at noon in the pit (the one that Sonic Youth sang about), there was a rally in support of Ms Vel Dowdy, which culminated with the demonstrators marching through Lenoir Dining Hall, her former place of work. Many believe that Ms Dowdy's arrest is more so a tactic of intimidation, of which the University has a long history, in response to her activity with the formation of UE-150. Besides UNC's long history of workers' rights abuses, which arguably can be traced back to it's very founding, as seen by the White names that adorn buildings built by the sweat of Blacks (slaves and the poor freed), this case is further complicated by the fact that dining services are taken care of by contract with Aramark...who, simply put, suck when it comes to workers' rights (including collective bargaining and livable wages). Because Ms Dowdy is a beloved member of the UNC family (which excludes jackass bureaucrats and other worthless money stealing upper management-types...like the Board of Governors and such), students, both organized activists and individuals, are uniting with union activists to try and petition Aramark to drop their charges (which include embezzlement, for letting kids up to eat the shitty food of Lenoir without making them pay) and to reinstate her.

And in other news, UNC's men's basketball team is gearing up for a throw-down in St Louis, tonight...

strange times.

a moment of weakness

tiring,

this weight, this inheritance:

the blood soaking of conquerors and a million or more murders

and my hands are

oily slick with history and

the white-washed bleaching of

pledge allegiance to the corner

of the industrial classroom.

Straining with that burning want of

chaos and

a cigarette choked scream

of desiring to be the bomb—

she’s my hope for the future…

hope that something will come after us.

as she stands guard

in the beauty of nuclear glow

and irony

like falling stars and lightning bugs in july,

to keep june bugs buzzing and bumbling

they can’t seem to grasp the concept of

solid limits and boundaries…

though if I had the chance I’d probably

reveal myself to be that which I

am still a number in the system…

and I’ve spoken too much already.

like a self-serving raised and shaky fist,

a trite attempt to be something abstract.

BULLSHIT

bullshit

what's there to say?....it's march...

Driving back to Chapel Hill from Hickory, I40east, on a grey rainy Easter Sunday...the kicker was seeing the crow waddling around the right shoulder. That made me smirk and think, "Com' on..no one writes like that anymore..."

first poem written in a long while...

I must confess,

I was on that down-stroke earlier today

—the world can be too much, at times—

not nearly as dramatic as the negative pole,

more like a piston.

One day, maybe, it will be that beauty that is in a

pendulum…kinetics;

otherwise I’m just a boy chasing rabbits, claiming

to debate the proper syntax of a fist,

and just what sort of connotation that

holds.

but for now, I’m just Holden Caulfield again

(and I hate the implication of that)

We have problems.

sad

and in other news... CNN went from reporting on this story to reporting about a fucking "brain boot camp..." and then Ms Schiavo is not allowed to die in comfort... Instead of giving her an overdose of, say morphine, and allowing her to die with some semblance of dignity, the choices are starvation (the decision of a federal court) or continuance of "life" by machines (fuck Congress)...and goddamnit, the planned kidnapping Letterman's kid...Michael Jackson...

"News from CNN" is enough to make one want to embrace the bomb... utter rubbish
...........


We need a change in culture, simple as that.

Pam Anderson's New Sex Video!!!

If you came here by way of a search engine looking for hot xxx action, I'm sorry... Sucks to be duped, doesn't it?

I'd encourage everyone to click here...

hope...because, goddamnit, we (or at least I) need some...

First, not that any of this is really all that shocking...but I like Chomsky and this is a good article.

Now, for the hopeful part... My little sister, nearing the age of fifteen, said today, after watching his normally inspired and valid rant, "I'm going to write Andy Rooney in, for the next election." I laughed and said, "Right on..."

This is quite honestly painful to have to post...

I used to think that a strong sense of safety existed in Chapel Hill...I am stunned.


I hope to have more to post on it soon.

To Dr Gonzo: You've touched many; you'll be missed...

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro...
...though perhaps even the most professionally weird burn out.

Strange and sad times in this foul year of our lord, 2005...

Freaks of all generations have been dealt a swift and forceful blow...Thompson took his life last night at his Colorado compound... As many have commented, this comes as a surprise... Thompson was a character larger than life, some sort of strange singular mutant, if you will...

I'm not entirely sure how to comment on the death of Hunter S Thompson (1937-2005)...honestly, I didn't personally know the man and it's only been a few short years since I was introduced to him first-hand by reading his classic Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas...I can say that I, like many, have been affected by that "introduction..."

Though from reading his espn.com page2 column, he definitely appeared to be aging...My thoughts are that it finally caught up with him. Not the guns, fast cars, boozing and such, but what was behind it all, the work to stay out of the norm... His writing grew tired, more so after this past election. Maybe, "They" finally broke him.

Which brings me to my inability to decide how to look at his suicide: is it yet another example of bitching-out and hiding from the world, more permanent than a mountain ranch or a Riviera dream home? Or is it furtherance for the argument of sustainability?

Thank you for touching our lives, Doc. Sorry to see you go...

On Language

Given the significance that Language has, the blatant and tacit ways in which it influences and is shaped by human thought and life, it is a futile undertaking to try and condense an argument for even its definition into three printed pages. I ask the reader to overlook any minor holes.

As tends to be its effect (if not intent), science has called into question most previously held conventions regarding languages. As Chomsky illustrates with his paradox, languages are indefinite objects, thus he suggests that linguistics is actually “the study of grammars.” By abstracting away the untidiness of human speech acts and the associated tangles of culture and sociopolitics, linguists are able to better tease out their true goal of a Universal Grammar. Much like the difference between the simple trajectory formula and data collected from a test trajectory, however, abstracting too much from a language to reach its grammar risks accuracy in a study’s interpretation of the true nature of the event, the active use of a language. Beyond this, a strictly formal conception of the linguistic object possesses ambiguity in itself: —how are other forms of symbolic thought and behavior not part of Universal Grammar; and how are they to be separated? Or to be slightly heavy-handed, how is it not absurd to separate the human element out of a human technology?

I suggest that a synthesis is needed, in which the subjective human variable is taken as a major part of Language and its study. This can be done by taking a broader anthropological approach, which defines languages in cultural terms as social artifacts (in the Durkheim sense) that are bound to a specific group, time, space, and history. By maintaining the ideology of cultural relativism, which is based on the same intuition that there exists an underlying system, linguistics could search for the Universal Grammar, not as an abstraction, but as a real system. Thus studying languages - —systems of vocalized symbolic expression - —as systems interrelating with other human symbolic thought and action could lead to a systematic description which is rigorous and malleable enough to fulfill the requirements of both formal linguistic investigation and sociolinguistic evaluation. To support this claim regarding synthesis, I will appeal to three unorthodox, subjective, figurative sources, with the hope of formulating a definition of Language which is more in-tune with the larger common “human condition.” With this in mind, I must point out the potential for “global west” bias, given that I and my three sources are part of “Western” popular culture, though perhaps not exactly the mainstream.

I will appeal to three songs - —“Keep Talking” by Pink Floyd, “Humble Mumble” by Outkast, and “Schism” by Tool - —as support for developing a definition of Language. The use of musicians to gather insight into the nature of Language presents interesting opportunities, since recorded music can be seen as a combination of both oral and literate traditions. With regard to concision, however, there is the risk of easily taking tangential paths due to fact that context is needed to present the songs as complete messages and interpret their meaning accurately (since, as McLuhan has asserted, "“the medium is the message”").

Due to their intensely personal style and perspective, information regarding the members of Pink Floyd is needed to understand their music; however, as with all art, their music and song meaning is approachable without such knowledge. Regarding The Division Bell (1994), it seems that personal context, more so than other albums, helps to put it into perspective. Briefly, this album was the second release by the band since David Gilmore took the creative lead, after the departure of former band mate and childhood friend Roger Waters, who was forced to take the lead when former front man and childhood friend Syd Barrett left the band in the early 60’s due to mental illness (who was also a friend of and replaced by David Gilmore). In the years since Barrett, Pink Floyd’'s music has explored concepts of isolation, especially that which is caused by mental instability and the inability to cope with society. Ironically, these themes and the phenomenon of stardom contributed to the eventual departure of Waters, after recording The Wall and The Final Cut. Thus, having passed middle-age, David Gilmore takes on these themes once again in The Division Bell from a slightly different, more mature, perspective. Focusing on the song “Keep Talking,” two features are worth noting; first, the use of Dr. Hawking’s “voice” (that of his synthesizer) which I will return to, and second, the effect that the call and response has on the listener. The combination of Gilmore’s lyrics (see below), voice, and that of the accompanying vocalist creates the juxtaposition of isolation in speechlessness and estrangement in silence, often caused by communication breakdowns. Both are quite vividly expressed, creating the feeling of that specific aching silence which cannot be described in conventional terms. Returning to Hawking’s “voice” in the song, he "speaks" the introduction and a reply to the call and response (see below). Considering Hawking’s life, disabilities, and his status as a lecturer, his “presence” shifts the attention from the silences to the voice of an individual (perhaps, begging the question of what constitues one's voice). Thus, Pink Floyd seems to be presenting language as a possession of individuals, between individuals, which allows us to connect intimately with each other. Further, Floyd illustrates our yearning for that connection when it is not available.

Outkast, the hip-hop duo of Antwan “"Big Boi"” Patton and Andre “"3000”" Benjamin, presents another aspect of language on Stankonia (2000). This album reveals an evolution of the group from their debut Southernplayalistic (1994). It is an expansion and refinement of their original style which, fitting to their name, has as a core characteristic the “tradition of "offering their fans deep thought provoking social commentary”" (outkast.com) from the perspective of the disenfranchised. This is the case for “Humble Mumble,” in which the two, along with guest vocalist Erykah Badu, make statements (subtle and not-so-subtle) regarding the sociopolitical aspect of language. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of the song is the near unintelligible speed with which Big Boi and Andre deliver their verses, characteristic of “Dirty South” hip-hop. This somewhat conceals what is being said. Bellow the dazzling stream of words lie several bold contrasts (see below), those of humor and seriousness, laughter and crying, the heard and the unheard. Taken as a whole, this song expresses the notion that a language is a social construct, often times used to differentiate and stratify people, or worse, to discriminate against a group or individual. At the same time, “Humble Mumble” recognizes that speech has the potential to inspire, educate, and reform, thus seeing the positive and negative aspects of a language as a social artifact.

Taking a still broader sense of Language and its significance, Tool expresses the notion that communication holds personal, social, and spiritual importance for many humans in the song “Schism.” As with the other two groups, Tool’'s Lateralus (2001) marks a key point in their development as a band and as individuals. Though Tool has been perhaps one of the most metaphysically challenging popular artist groups since their inception, they seem to have reached a break-through on this album, further developing their questions and investigations into the human species. Lateralus seems to be on the brink of that spiritual enlightenment, promised or sought after by many world religions. This holds true for all of the tracks on this album. In listening to “Schism,” it is easy to recognize the main theme, that communication breakdowns cause pain; however this is almost "Zen-like" in its deceptive simplicity. Further examining the song, one finds allusions to “"deity-speak/word”" creation stories, historical events, specifically the Great Schism, and simple (relatively speaking) inter-human intimacy (see below). Through this use of references, Tool portrays Language, though more importantly its application through communication, as having the potential for humanity'’s greatest possibilities of love, spirituality, and peace; and at its breakdown, our worse characteristics of hate, sin, and war.

A thread which links these three views of Language is that all three express the active nature of Language. Though synchronic rigor is necessary for any scientific study, it must be understood that a diachronic perspective is needed to fully describe the system, as it is, in motion. In his book Language, Bloomfield describes a human without language as being on an equal level with other animals, because ne must rely on nesself, alone, for survival. He continues to write that a language grants each individual the skills and aid of all the other members of a linguistic community, by allowing for group cohesion and cooperation. Therefore, I suggest that Language is Universal Grammar, in that it is the human capacity for communicative speech, and that what is commonly referred to as "“languages"” are simple variations in the realization of the system, due to systematic geographic, historical, and social factors.

Pink Floyd: Division Bell-Keep Talking

For millions of years mankind lived just like animals
Then something happened which unleashed the power of our imagination
We learned to talk

There's a silence surrounding me
I can't seem to think straight
I'll sit in the corner
No one can bother me
I think I should speak now
Why won't you talk to me
I can't seem to speak now
You never talk to me
My words won't come out right
What are you thinking
I feel like I'm drowning
What are you feeling
I'm feeling weak now
Why won't you talk to me
But I can't show my weakness
You never talk to me
I sometimes wonder
What are you thinking
Where do we go from here
What are you feeling

It doesn't have to be like this
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking

Why won't you talk to me
I feel like I'm drowning
You never talk to me
You know I can't breathe now
What are you thinking
We're going nowhere
What are you feeling
We're going nowhere
Why won't you talk to me
You never talk to me
What are you thinking
Where do we go from here

It doesn't have to be like this
All we need to do is make sure we keep talking

Outkast: Stankonia-Humble Mumble(feat Erykah Badu)

[Andre 3000]
Ahhhh I stank I can, I stank I can
The funky engine that could
Oooo oooo yosky, wosky, pisky, wisky
All aboard the Stankonia Express
The underground smell road
Everybody's lookin' for an excuse to let loose
What's your locomotive, the chatter and the choo choo

[Hook:Andre 3000 and Erykah Badu]
Humble as a mumble in the jungle
Of shouts and screams
That's the way the cracker crumbles
So I guess I've got to re-route my dreams
[Repeat]

[Big Boi]
Back on the microphone, your number one controller
I rock the microphone like a blizzard;
I'm so cold I'm tryin' to hold ya
Life is like a great big roller coaster
Everything in life don't happen like it's suppose to
Trials and tribulations make you stronger live longer
You wanna reach the nation nigga start from ya corner
Everything in life don't always happen like you plan it
Demand it; over stand it then you handle it
Fuck wishing you, you missing the ambition on your mission
Now you switching why you quitting 'cause it's heated in the kitchen
Sloppy slipping in your pimping nigga
You either pistol whoop the nigga or you choke the trigger
You've got to follow through, struggle to complete your dreams
"No Weapon Formed Agains Prospers" 54:17
From Isaiah lay a nigga down and spray 'em
If the dealer dealt a fucked up hand of cards you've gotta play 'em

[Hook]

[Andre 3000]
Too Democratic, Republic fuck it
We chicken nugget, we dip in the sauce like mop and bucket
Blue-collar scholars, who'll take your dollar and wipe my ass wit it
You living for the lotto never hit it, I met a critic
I made her shit her draws
She said she tought Hip Hop was only guns and alcohol
I said "Oh hell naw!" but yet it's that too
You can't discrimahate because you done read a book or 2
What if I looked at you in a microscope saw all the dirty organisms
Living in your closet would I stop and would I pause it "whoo"
To put that bitch in slower motion, got the potion and the antidote
And a quote for collision the decision
Is do you want to live or wanna exist
The game changes everyday so obsolete is the fist and marches
Speeches only reaches those who already know about it
This is how we go about it

[Hook]

[Erykah Badu]
I'm wild just like a rock, a stone, a tree
And I'm free, just like the wind the breeze that blows
And I flow, just like a brook, a stream, the rain
And I fly, just like a bird up in the sky
And I'll surely die, just like a flower plucked
And dragged away and thrown away
And then 1 day it turns to clay
It blows away, it finds a ray, it finds its way
And there it lays until the rain and sun
Then I breathe, just like the wind the breeze that blows
And I grow, just like a baby breastfeeding
And it's beautiful, that's life and that's life
And that's life and that's life

[Hook]

[Andre 3000 Speaking]
Humble as a mumble in the jungle
Of shouts and screams
That's the way the cracker crumbles
So I guess I've gotta re-route my dreams
Y'all can't harm me, it's over

Tool: Lateralus-Schism

I know the pieces fit cuz I watched them fall away
mildewed and smoldering, fundamental differing,
pure intention juxtaposed will set two lovers souls in motion
disintegrating as it goes testing our communication
the light that fueled our fire then has burned a hole between us so
we cannot see to reach an end crippling our communication.

I know the pieces fit cuz I watched them tumble down
no fault, none to blame it doesn't mean I don't desire to
point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over.
To bring the pieces back together, rediscover communication.

The poetry that comes from the squaring off between,
And the circling is worth it,
Finding beauty in the dissonance.

There was a time that the pieces fit, but I watched them fall away.
Mildewed and smoldering, strangled by our coveting
I've done the math enough to know the dangers of a second guessing
Doomed to crumble unless we grow, and strengthen our communication

cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion

between supposed lovers
between supposed brothers.

And I know the pieces fit.