The Thing About This Casey Dean Moore Thing

We Nebraskans like to think that we're all badass like Texas is.  We're true salt-of the earth John Wayne types too, damnit.  We're real Americans imbued with the courage to get our hands bloody and punish evil like real men, just like the cool kids at Red America High who go out for football and get all the girls. 

 But the real truth is that once you strip us down we're the same soft-hearted Yankees that we ritualistically mock, bitelessly and by rote because we don't really mean it.  Because we are Midwesterners, and those of us who didn't come off the boat, who were already American, came here from the East not to escape the east but to expand it, to fill the landscape with the same styles of trees, gardens, and wood frame houses that you'll find in Iowa and Illinois and Indiana and Albany New York.   There's a reason we joined the Big Ten, after all.  Well, yes, money.  But symbolic and essential reasons as well. Chicago is our capital. We are tied to the city and the modern world.  Let those Huns down south try to escape it.


True, there is still more than enough country in us to make us feel like we're supposed to value sternness  and toughness over all other things.  That's why our current relationship with the death penalty is going to remain in it's current state of black-comedy stasis for a long time probably.   We're certainly keeping it on the books, and woe to any limp-wristed politician who suggests we should take it off the books and thinks he can still win.  But at the same time we don't truly, in our heart of hearts, honestly want to kill broken, helpless, sorry ass old cons who have been effectively dead for a long time now.   There will continue to be one or two condemned men in every generation who, depending on how they see it, who are either lucky or unlucky enough to actually get the ax, for the other ninety percent the death penalty in Nebraska will simply be a life sentence with some dramatic flair attached to it.   

And that's fine by me, I'm an out of the closet effete elitist eastern idiot, after all.  It's dishonest.  It's grotesque.  But I have my priorities.  I can live with this.   

2:44

To The Guys who Replaced Funkadelic with Metallica, AC/DC and Country Music on The Jukebox.

I'm sorry.  You must be new to town.  And I just wanted to say that, well different bars have different atmospheres, different vibes.  And O'Rourkes at 14th and 'O' caters to a certain class of people, the sort of people who aren't, how you say, ignorant fucking meatheads.  You know, those sort of folks.


I mean, you're two grown men, and you were singing along to Avril Lavigne.  I saw you. 

OK Mexico

You're good people.  Believe me when I say it's not puffery when I rank you among my favorite foreigners.  I like your culture.  I like your women.  And I hate it when you all get scapegoated for social problems that we pure-as-snow middle Americans couldn't have possibly brought upon ourselves.  


So. I'll begrudge ya nothing.  Congratulations on beating the shit out of us on our home soil.  California, used to be yours you know, well of course you knew that.  Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of industry and natural resources that you're never going to get back. I just mention that as a by the way thing.  I begrudge you nothing, like I said. 

I also mention, and again this is just a by the way thing, that the most important game we ever had against each other; second round of the 02 World Cup, was a game we won, and that therefore nothing you do or accomplish can possibly change the fact that we have the leg up in this rivalry, and you know this, y'all.  Have a nice day, and enjoy your Tatooine summer down there. 

Good Work New York

I was in the Watering Hole drinking dollar pints when the NY state Senate legalized gay marriage.  And  it was good to hear that the country as a whole; in a sort of weak indirect way, had done the right thing.  It's only appropriate after all that one can now get gay married in our largest city/capital of sin and secularism.

Of course, there were the same tired old objections in the vein of this.   
“God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage, a long time ago,”


The assertion that heterosexual monogamy has always been the universal, set-in-stone, instinctively understood norm of human romance has been pointed out as bullshit many times before.  Those who continue to make this assertion are either lying or acting upon their exercising their rights as God's chosen ones to invent truth.  I won't waste time adding myself to the long list of people who have pointed out that the definition of marriage has in fact changed quite frequently throughout human history.  I'll just link to this because it's funny. 


 http://www.thebricktestament.com/king_david/david_impregnates_more_women/1ch11_14p2s05_13.html

Prepare For Battle You Sons of Flatwater!

This Scared My Wee Self Shitless it Did

I Went To See My cousin in the Pen Today

It rurns out that NSP has a dress code, for visitors, and I violated it.  I was wearing an old pair of shoes because, I was going to prison and it wasn't hot enough for sandals and a wife beater.  But anyway, no clothing with holes in it, shoes included.  I was invited to go back home and come back with something that complied.  But I didn't.  And I won't.  Sorry Brian. Obeying a state-imposed dress code on free citizens is just something that turns my fuck you on.

Rules exist for their own sake, you know. Whichever prison has the most restrictions is the one that hates crime the most and takes it the most seriously.  And it gives CO's a reason to feel important, something to lesson the sting of not haveing the third-grade reading level neccessary to be actual cops.  Rat motherfuckers. 

Tales From Lincoln

Last night in the near south I saw a man who covered and tattoos, shirtless even though it wasn't remotely hot, walking his pit bull while smoking a cigarette.  Everything about it was faintly unbelievable.

Hell of A Storm Last Night

What did we get, something like two inches of rain an hour for a solid four hours, much of it falling directly into the Platte and the Mo.  Obviously the exact opposite of the extended hot and dry spell we desperately need. 


I don't know about you, but to me the message couldn't be more obvious.  Jesus loves illegal immigration and abortion, and is punishing us for our attempts to impede both.  We can either knock it out with this nonsense or learn to swim like Maynard says.  I've been trying to warn you all for years myself; ain't my fault, ain't my problem.

Overheard

"There are robots out there."  Not with the 'be careful caveat, unfortunately, but in that tone of voice.

There's This Neighbor Couple

One is a gangly tall man with honest-to-God buck teeth.  The other a short King-Koopa looking woman, at least twice her ideal weight.  They have this sticker on their car.  
























 


Earlier today the cops showed up at their place.  The man was angry at the woman for walking to Casey's and back without telling him/asking his permission.

I honestly wish I was just making up two hillbilly stereotypes here.   Really I do.  It's damned unfair to anyone who has tried to write fiction that two creatures too loathsome to be believed in a created universe actually exist in this one. 


Foul, foul, foul motherfuckers is all. 

I Wish I was Important Enough to Make A Right-Wing Governments Enemies List

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/us/politics/16cole.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper


I've made it clear on every public forum availible to me that I support Vegan Homosexual Communist Jihad.  What else do I have to do?  Or am I already being watched?   Does the once of skag I bought last night put secret mind-control sensors into my blood stream?  Did the hooker from last weekend have a heat-seeking micro-camera sowed into his; I mean her ass?    Did I really get away scott-free from firebombing the Baptist Church, or are they just waiting for me to lead them to my superiors? 

No, no, no, because there's no reason to watch little old me.  I'm nobody special, I just act like I am sometimes.

20 Peter 7 Charlie Tengo Alpha 27 14 William Geyser 48 Shirpa Debbi Bingo.

 I'm an absolute nobody and there's simply no reason for anyone in authority to pay me the slightest bit of attention.  Ever.  Especially not on the second Saturday of the month between midnight and four AM, when I'm home in bed.  Miles from the abandoned hardware store at 6th and B in Lincoln Nebraska.

Gur pncvgnyvfgf naq Puevfgvnaf bs gur Jrfg funyy ebnfg yvxr fjvar va gur objryf bs uryy.  Inshallah. 

Lunar Eclipse FReak OUt

Poe's Law Invoked

Or, if not, I don't even fucking know. 

Kid These Days Watch

Overheard at Walgreens...

"Thirty or forty years ago some crazy guy might do a bunch of drugs but he didn't go out and kill a bunch of people.  That's not true anymore."

And A Late Post About Soccer

First of all, if you're Panamanian, you're cool, congrats to you and your boys.  Go ahead and stop reading now.



So, team USA, you lost to fucking Panama in the States?  No, no, no, no, no no, no, no, fuck no.  Blow up the fucking team, not like a bad baseball team, I mean blow up the fucking team.  Normally I'm happy to live in a culture where a losing soccer team doesn't need police protection from its own fans, but in this case, no.  You really should be stoned to death by a mob.  There have been three recent moments when a sports team has left me wondering why the hell I was stupid enough to invest a scintilla of time or emotion in them, the sinking feeling of dating a woman for a few weeks only to one day find the Twilight Saga carefully arraigned in chronological order on her bedroom shelf.  Those would be the Nebraska football games against Iowa State in 09 and last seasons Holiday Bowl, and now this disgrace by the national team.

Bob Bradley isn't a bad coach.  I never did and do not blame him for failing to capitalize on the opportunity to make a historically deep run in the World Cup last year.  That was just a case of a team unusually good at riding their luck running out of luck when they did.  But the fact is that whatever the spark was in this team has disappeared under Bradley's watch.  There was the beatdown from Spain, (Of course we lost, but the fact we got killed is disturbing.)  And now a thing that's been unheard of in American soccer for over twenty years; a home defeat to our own de-facto colony.   If we come back to beat Mexico and win the tournament, fine, but to paraphrase Chris Rock it would be a case of not supposed to go to jail.  It shouldn't be enough to spare Bradley's job.

Guy looks like a fucking vampire anyway.      

NBA Finals

Part of me is tempted to join in with all the Lebron hate, I mean this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pH3Oo-T-jI is more insanely over the top then Rush and Jim Steinman doing coke together while planning a tour with set designs by Julie Taymor. 

But as much as I am tempted to make be the billionth man to make a cheap 'no you didn't' jibe I can't help but feel that much of the animosity towards James is based on racism, especially with all the downright foul allusions to his mothers history as a working girl; or at the very least is based on the old Anglo-Saxon/Roman insistence on instilling games between boys with a profound moral import that simply ain't there.

I'm glad the ugly-ass Teutonic guy won a title before he got to old to play, would have been tragic if he didn't. It is simply impossible to imagine James not winning at least one trophy for himself in the next two years, (just join the Bulls and everything will come up roses man.) and I have every hope in the world that he does.  He's not a bad guy and was never indebted to Ohioans or anyone else to deliver anything.  Get over yourselves, and get along with your own lives.  Mine will involve drinking a bottle of Barefoot just because the whether depresses me slightly.

 

Lincoln Is

The 40 year old man I saw this morning in a ratty No doubt 'Tragic Kingdom' tour t-shirt and a three dollar gold chain.  Simply awesome.

Bullshit Growing in The Womb

http://omaha.com/article/20110610/NEWS0802/706109983/-1#the-public-pulse-june-10


There seems to be a narrative developing that current flooding on the Missiouri is the fault of those damned enviromentalists and the Army corps of Enginers holding back river flows during the winter due to enviromental concerns.  The basis for believing this thing is that, in the words of Tom Ritzdorf of York, "Many are convinced', (many Strong, Real Americans mind you,)  that this is so. Because everyone knows that nature can only ever hurt us when we fail to grab her by the hips and show her who's boss. 

You're stupid if you believe this, is all there is to say.  For some reason I'm reminded of the scene in 'Armageddon' (Yes. I am ashamed) where Bruce Willis is shocked; shocked, that the mighty U.S. Government has only a single improvised plan for dealing with a situation that in real life would be utterly hopeless, period point blank.  There are an infinite number of natural forces that are stronger than human will, even when it comes in superconcentrated American demigod form. 

Our Founding Timelords Opposed Evolutionism

"As far as the Founding Fathers were concerned, they'd already had the entire debate over creation and evolution, and you get Thomas Paine, who is the least religious Founding Father, saying you've got to teach Creation science in the classroom. Scientific method demands that!"- David Barton - (Whose qualifications as a historian consist of being a true American Christian White man asserting that the Founding and other Great Fathers have always agreed with him.) 




I've mentioned to several people several different ways that the concept of doublethink is not some hellishly new and exotic evil dreamed up by Orwell for his fiction or by the tyrannies he satirized and metaphored.  Doublethink is as old and as common as the human tendency to consider oneself better than others by whatever pretense.  Most of us are aware that there are laws of science that determine reality and laws of logic for finding them.  But for most people these laws are only distant abstractions. It is the society that we live in and interact with every day that is in practice the ultimate reality of a persons life, and so it's natural that a chauvinistic sense of social entitlement will lead to a half-conscious  belief in one's ability to invent truth with his mouth.   

The privileged classes of every society will always come to see paternal wisdom as something exclusive to themselves, an essence that they are born with, and are bound to be sorely insulted by any suggestion that they should have to go through the trouble of learning things before they can be wise.  And it goes without saying that this conceit will make those who hold it stupid.  Sarah Palin states increasingly bizarre things about Paul Revere because she honestly believes that whatever is right because she says it, and she's getting a boost from Nietzschian  supporters now inventing truth  by rearranging Revere's Wikipedia article to suit her newly-created facts.

I think that the rise of religious fundamentalism among the religiously prone in an increasingly secular world is somewhat related to this conceit.  It's no accident that Christian fundamentalism in America, which explicitly offers its followers the right to dictate and impose social norms and cultural identity, is most popular among well-to-do White suburbanites.  People who are used to getting their way and being catered to and fear the loss of these indulgences.

This is counterproductive in the end.  When a belief that whatever you say is by definition right leads you to state that Daniel is the most important Jewish prophet,  you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow.

I'm Honestly Very Proud

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-humour-nationalities-idUSTRE7563XB20110608


"The social network and dating website Badoo.com asked 30,000 people across 15 countries to name both the 'funniest,' or best at making people laugh,' and "the least funny" nationality.
Americans took the funniest prize, followed by the Spanish in second and Italians in third."


Thank god for New York Jews.  We never could have done it without them.

And who couldn't have guessed this?  



"The voting for "least funny" nationality confirmed the view of American novelist Mark Twain that 'a German joke is no laughing matter.'
The Germans won comfortably, ahead of the Russians and Turks."

Oh My Fucking God. You're So Beautiful. I Love You.

"Publish and be Damned!"

That was the Duke of Wellington's reply to a former lover who was threatening to expose him as a lousy one i9n a blackmail scheme.    Things would obviously be better if Congressman Anthony Weiner had responded in the same way, had simply said a week ago that 'Yeah, sometimes I  send pictures of my dick to women who express attraction. And yes, I do happen to be married, but my wife gets to see my dick in the flesh.  She still has  exclusive privileges."

It's damned aggravating that he tried to lie about it, because a smart man made himself sound stupid and downright weird.  ('It's nothing I'm familiar with?'  Say what?)  But mostly because he simply didn't have to.  I mean American prudishness is a problem for playa politicians sure, but certainly a much smaller problem among NYC Democrats then among Milford Presbyterians. The pictures themselves don't strike me as anything shameful.  Congressman Weiner has a perfectly adequate unit, for one thing.  Some might even go so far as to call it impressive.  Not that I'd describe myself as a, connoisseur of such matters.

 

Now is it wrong for a married man to flirt with strange women in such a direct way?  I'm a sexual nihilist, so of course I don't think so, but I realize that most people consider certain limits and taboos to be an inherent part of their own sexualities, and that a solid majority of perfectly good and liberated people would consider the congressman's actions wrong.   So be it.  I doubt very seriously that it would have jeopardized his career if he had just been honest from the start, God knows we've kept people in power who had done far more immoral and downright brutal things before.


As it is what Weiner chose to do only emboldens Breitbart, his slimy ilk, and their distinctively sadistic concept of morality.  One that declares that those who have embraced The TRUTH are entitled to make deviants from THE TRUTH suffer in any way they find satisfying; that indeed it is an act of treason against THE TRUTH to acknowledge that outsiders have any right to empathy, respect or privacy.

And I'm afraid that this is a dance that we're going to see again and again until probably the end of days.  It's obvious that politicians have a stronger-then normal desire for admiration.  The full truth is that every politician; even the good ones, even the ones we agree with, has a lust for influence and admiration so strong on the one hand and a  hatred for rejection and embarrassment so intense on the other as to be at best borderline sociopathic.  It's common sense that pols would be highly lascivious, being desired is a form of being admired.  But they also have a political and emotional need to be seen as moral, mature, and responsible.  And so they end up adhering to the hollowed tradition of  not-so monogamous marriage.   And when their marriages are exposed as not so monogamous they will almost invariably rely on an extreme confidence in their speaking skills to avoid the embarrassment and popular chastisement they dread worse than death. So the nature of politics and politicians makes it inevitable that political sex scandals will always take on a tone markedly behind whatever the common sexual mores of society actually are at the time.  Even among liberal members of the left-of-center party in the big old swinging city.   And it just doesn't have to be this way.  But it will.  

“They have memorized parts of texts that they can string together to prove the biblical basis for whatever it is they believe in,” he says, “but they ignore the vast majority of the text."

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/05/thats-not-in-the-bible/?hpt=hp_c1

Yo, Wisconsin GOP

People like good craft beers up there, a lot.  This is pure electoral stupidity on your part.
 http://www.thedailypage.com/daily/article.php?article=33683


"Worried that perhaps microbrewers were operating in too free a market, legislative Republicans have proposed even more restrictions on the beer distribution business. Although the motion approved by JFC will now allow microbrewers to distribute their own beer to retailers, but it will forbid them from holding wholesalers licenses, which, as some articles have indicated, means microbrewers will not be able to band together to distribute beer"


Now, the fact that major corporate breweries are a major part of the Wisconsin economy is as well known as Wisconsinites love for brew, and protecting big business from free-market competition is clearly the main motive here; as, of course, it is with most things that the GOP does.  But I also have a feeling that psuedoconservative culture war is also a factor here.  The age-old resentment of jocks who were never able to get over the nerds becoming the cool kids once they got to college.  There's a feeling in America that actually indulging and taking pleasure out of food and drink is unmanly.   Think of those 'Miller High Life' commercials; with either the deep voiced 'High Life way' narrator or the friendly Black beer man,  that openly present drinking High Life as a test of masculinity.   It's a great pitch because it's indisputably true.   Nothing in advertising works better than presenting unflattering truths about your product in an enticing manner. But back to the lesson at hand.

There is, I'm sure, a small part of these Republican legislators taking some pleasure here out of socking it to those race-mixing college brats and urban hipsters who think they're so sophisticated.  "You will drink flavorless mass-produced light 'beer' and like it, because it makes you look virile while you unload your jet ski from your pickup, and your supper shall consist of the same light beer combined with a dozen pack of plain hot dogs garnished with plain American yellow mustard and ketchup.  Yes ketchup, we're ain't those big-city elitists from Chicago up here, and we will legally make you put ketchup on your fucking hot dog if you don't do it yourself.  And oh yeah, we will also cut off one million in parks funding every time one of you faggots in Madison buy a God-Damned Prius.  Where are you going to play kickball now you fucking hippies?"


Perhaps this round of Republican 'government' will convince the independents of this country to actually form opinions, and stop being 'edgy' like it's 1996 by voting for whoever is on the outs when times are bad.  We'll see.

In Other News:

I wouldn't call Jack Kevorkian a hypocrite, death seems to have taken him on pretty short notice after all.  Still it's a shame that he was unable to have his dying self taken out to the backwoods, strapped with his own body-weight worth of explosives, and atomized so awesomely and  completely that there would be nothing left for bacteria to scavenge on.   It would have been appropriate, and I'm sure we can all agree that this is the only truly good way to die, if we're honest with ourselves.  I know it's how I'm going out, and I really can't respect you if you object.  

America, We Will Never be This Gangsta

"Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples. Paintings of the Playboy logo adorn the pool hall. Inmates and their guests jostle to place bets at the prison’s raucous cockfighting arena."



http://www.blogger.com/%20http://www.nytimes.com/pages/todayspaper/index.html?src=hp1-0-P