Tales From North Platte

I'll be here until  Sunday.  What the social life in this town is like these days I don't know.  It's shit cold at night and I haven't even considered stepping out.  I would guess that there's still a great deal of macho posturing and alcohol/meth intoxication that often leads to nasty fights, but like I said I don't know.  Thankfully this town does have its very own tabloid in spite of its size so that you can know who's being arrested for this or that almost as soon as it happens, from anywhere in the world.   It's tawdry yes, but if you saw the television news here (I believe that this is something like the second smallest town in the US with a major network affiliate)  you would agree that there truly is not anything else of interest that happens here.  You won't find me in the blotter though.  I'm staying in, like I said.  By day I gorge on Christmas candy and cheap coffee.  By day I gorge on Game of Thrones and 'Blue State' bourbon gotten for half price from the City Discount Liquor  .  It's a good life, though certainly a  comatose one and improper to maintain for any great length of time.  I'm happy. 

I Don't Hear Much About Youth Culture Anymore.

Apparently these guys are a big deal? 

I no longer feel the same passionate,  faintly homophobic hate crush for boy bands that I felt towards the N'Sync and The Backstreet Boys as a youngun,  but I still dislike and distrust them rather deeply.  I've always sensed a faintly totalitarian smell about them   And now here comes this outfit who willingly call themselves .... well, if you take away the Pakistani kid it would just be four uniformly blue-eyed Anglos calling themselves 'One Direction." right? Can you imagine the fuss there'd be if some Rammsteinesque Teutonic metal band had a name like that?  People would be fucking appalled and rightfully so.  These little junior-mint stormtroopers are no less horrifying. 

This is What I Bought My Stepfather For Christmas

He loves it with utmost sincerity. 

Children's Cartoons on the Eve

Would it be proper to explain to small children just how brutal of a Hobbesian murder hell existence would be if everything alive were endowed with human level intelligence?  Is Charlotte's Web in particular part of the War on Christmas, an act of secret Kosher/Halal propaganda?   Here in the rural US anyway the greatness of that tale is taught to us as a matter of objective fact, just like Shakespeare.  If it were indeed revealed to be an act of foreign subversion this whole time everyone's belief in everything would be completely broken.  Pity that. 

Christmastime New Now

I made the drive from Lincoln to North Platte, Ne for the Holiday just today. There was a blizzard on Wednesday, and the slow lane on westbound interstate 80, the one furthest from the Southern Hemisphere's sun, was still covered with ice that had stuck fast even after plowing, so that from Lincoln to Grand Island cars formed a giant snake in the fast lane, crawling at abouts thirty mph while trying to keep a grip on the road and avoid being the cause of a pileup.  Sometimes one of us would attempt to pass when the congested lane slowed to near nothing, turning into the frozen lane and rolling at about 25 until we once again found a space in the safer lane.  After Grand Island it was past noon and temperatures rose to just above freezing.  This thawed the ice and improved driving conditions to near-normal.  Still what is normally a three hour drive took me six this time, and damned if I didn't make it motherfucker!  Grinding my way past yet untidied pileups and overturned semis so completely shredded that their drivers must surely be dead.  Terrible shame for them, but I'm afraid it doesn't stop me from feeling a little......

........... about myself.  I realize it would have been a lot smarter to wait until afternoon before leaving.  I probably would have reached the folks place at nearly the same time and would have spared myself all the danger and stress I've gone through today.  All the same though...

I especially remember this woman in a Honda van who came up behind me during the hazardous stretch.  She tried tailgate goad me into speeding up and when this failed she got into the frozen lane to pass me by at about forty MPH or so.  As she passed me I noticed that she was listening to an I pod,  with several children in the back and Georgia license plates.  So yeah, a woman from the land where no one knows what ice is blindly rolling on the autopilot assumption that freeway = fast while her children slept peacefully in the back.  I never saw her van in the ditch as I carried on so; they got lucky. 

What I Want To Know Is

Yes, the suggestion that one cannot be a man without owning a lethal weapon is offensive.  (Not that I don't have that covered anyway.  I do own a car, thank you very much, as well as several dozen batteries and several dozen socks with which they could be easily combined.  )  But what's really strange to me is why Bushmaster chooses to advertise its own product by depicting a giant snake who has swallowed a Bushmaster whole and is now laughing at how easily it triumphed over its already digested owner. 

I Have a Pretty Consistant Way With My Coffee

Normally the level of sugar I put in a cup will rise and fall with the warmth of a given day.  In the cold season I take it completely black, mostly.  This morning however I awoke with a strange need to be coddled, so I filled my cup with three sugars even though a storm is coming and it's already damp.  Then I spent several hours drinking more while dressed in a sweater & socks sans underwear or pants, covering myself with a blanket while I looked out the window at the languidness of winter life.   This urge to be pampered is rare like I said but when it does come it has only ever been myself who has been able to satisfy it.  As a show of affection from someone else it simply carries too much weight, a presumption of the intimacy I have always despised.  The most ecstatic moments of my life have always come when I've had these long allotment of hours to myself, a feeling of wonder lightness and joy in being that I am not niether able or willing to share with another in any capacity.    I cannot now imagine any comfort in family, sexual partners or any other varient of 'US' that would ever be worth the cost of losing these times.  It pleases me to see the noise grime and fetid fecundity of Summer be gradually overwhelmed by the proper order of things. I am a Northerner. 

I'm going to Go ahead and Go Full Hippie Here

I would even go so far as to say that the behavior of the USA's most famous strain of culture cancer towards the nation of Mexico has been downright rapish, and that this may perhaps be something to keep in mind the next time you're feeling grumpy about a street sign or storefront that happens to be written in Spanish.  They do have a full compliment of Burger Kings' Radio Shacks and Starbucks too ya know.

Hey, I know You!

Didn't you used to be the world's oldest person?


To change the subject to something slightly more substantial, soccer, the World Club Cup is undeniably the real deal now.   Not that fans of the European 'Great Clubs' and Occicentrists in general won't try to deny it, all the same.  There is, to be sure, an attitude within this game similar to one of the many things that are quickly poisoning myself against college football.  This can be best described as a cowpox echo of racism. Call it 'Leagueism' or 'Great Club/Program ism', a feeling that the Great Teams from the True Elite Leagues are always and forever better as a matter of essence, even in those years when the small fish prove that this isn't so on the field.  But then the fat cats are only able to get away with this because of the worldwide army of whores, myself included, who mostly ignore our own 'small time' national leagues in favor of fucking the European stars. 

Now, having said all that, I'm afraid that Corinthians' extremely blah performance in their own national league means that I won't be able to promote them very much in the following poll.  No one can honestly deny that leagues are more scientific than cups and one does have to judge a team's entire resume if they aim to judge it properly. You would agree? 

1. Barcelona
2. Juventus
3. Manchester United
4. Bayern Munich
5. Corinthians
6. Porto
7. Real Madrid
8. Paris St. Germain
9. Shakhtar Donetsk
10. Dortmund


Contenders.  Velez Sarsfield, Inter Milan, Manchester City, Lyon

Well

I suppose this was fucking predictible. 

I remember in the days after Columbine there was a sign somewhat in vogue around real American parts.  'Dear God why didn't you save the school Children at Columbine? '  'Sorry, I'm not allowed in schools.'   Truly, there is no more effective advertisment for the God of Abraham then to portray him as meglomaniac demanding constant flattery on pain of death.  The last place I saw the sign was at a hair stylest in downtown North Platte while I was a teenager.  I remember that while she chopped my mane she talking with another customer about the obvious utility and moral rightness of spanking ones' children, and how terrible it was that the PC bureaucrats were taking this good and neccesary power out of parents hands.  Of course the actual truth is that it is known; not believed, not softly felt, but indisputibly known, that spanking is of absolutely no help in building a succesful adult. But of course the problem with accepting this would mean not only accepting ones own self as wrong but ones own parents grandparents and on down through the mists of time as wrong.  And of course suggesting that grandpa can possibly be wrong earns a spanking.  But anyway let's return to the central point. 

I think that the loong insistance upon public school prayer, (Rapidly on the wane now though it is, and thankfully so.) can be easily related to today's NYT    column about how we seek second-hand immortality through group identities.  Passing down one's beliefs to the next generation, by force as some feel entitled to do, is obviously a big part of this, and of course it's very obvious that religious beliefs are more closely associated with eternity than secular ones, at least for those who haven't convinvced themselves that the two can be mingled in one perfect bloc of certainty.  It is clear that the denial of ultimate mortality and helplessness ishe spine of  chauvinistic attitudes and behaviors.  However abhorant these behaviors can sometimes be they are still based on recognizably human feelings that normaly should be sympethized with.  In the case of forcing ones' religion on the public however I can and will not sympethize. The reason is that for all the language of selfless devotion to God and the Founding Fathers behind it the forcing of ones' religion is really about aggrandizing oneself and nothing more. It is about establishing oneself as a God that future generations will bow to in unquestioning fear. It is evil.

Jesus

If nothing else, I am really in no Goddamn mood to hear about if only the teachers and/or young children had been armed like all Americans constantly were in the golden age of the True Path.  Beyond the guns there is nothing particularly wicked about US culture that leads to these things.  There have been psychopathic killing sprees in China, Europe or any other place you can think of.  One cultural factor in all of these places might be the patriarchial pressure upon frustrated men to be ; exceptional &decisive factors upon their own social environments.  Even now in the immediate aftermath I can not stop myself from trying to analyze and comprehend in my own way, which I suppose makes me typical.  Mostly though I am only heartbroken and sick.  If you are one of those who thinks that praying for the victims would be of any help then do so, absolutely.   I'm just sick myself.  I don't know what to do except to feel helpless and fucking sick.  god damnit.

Something New Everyday

I had no idea that it Lindsey Buckingham was the one who did the 'National Lampoon Vacation' song.  Learning that just now gives me a very real trivia orgasm.  I'm more susceptible to those things than most other people. 

For some reason, the video is jarringly self-important in comparision to the film.  The water, I think, is about the best case of faux-symbolism one can ever hope to find, unless I missed some elaborate joke here in my half-paying attention. 

Well I'll be Damned, is This really Happening Then?

I'm looking forward to the radical postmodern anti-Defense Department already.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

I do Believe It's Late Enough

for even the timid to post a footie club top 10:

1:  Barcelona
2. Juventus
3. Man United
4. Bayern Munich
5. Porto
6. Real Madrid
7. Corinthians
8. Shakhtar Donetsk
9. Lyon
10. Dortmund

Contenders:  Paris St. Germain, Inter Milan, Velez Sarsfield, Manchester City

12/12/12

The next perfect number day on the Western calender is 2/2/22.  I'll be over forty by then, assuming I'm still alive, which is something I know that I really shouldn't do.  I feel as if I should do something epic on this day.  It is in its own way much more significant than just another birthday or Christmas.  Maybe bury some prized possession of mine somewhere out in a frozen cornfield to either dig up myself fifty years from now or leave it in my will for whatever heirs I might have to do so, or maybe just dinner at the Indian restaurant here in town, or maybe today is the day I march to the top of a tall building, rocket launcher in hand to finally challenge God to a no-holds barred fight like I've always intended to.  Maybe an especially savory pizza with soulful tasting sausage and plenty of mushrooms.  In my spiritual journey I have become utterly convinced that assuming that the apocalypse must be dramatic is pure masturbation.  Reality will simply turn off like a switch is what's going to happen.  Exactly the same as what will happen when we all die mundanely in bed on our own account. 

I Admit It

Silvio Berlusconi's existence is darkly reassuring to me.  It's comforting to know that the United States in general, and especially the conservative rural interior I'm native to, is not the only place in the free world where majorities of complete fools will place a sociopathic rat in a position of great power.   Whatever it might be about Italy's culture that leads anyone to willingly support this creeping letch with delusions of omnipotence is not my place to dote upon.  It goes without saying that we have failings of our own.  Still it's amazing that this man fails and fails again and yet simply will not die;  in a strictly political sense I mean.  Though I suppose he is, (doing wikicheatpeak now)  76 years old. 

Overnight

It got cold enough to lightly freeze the running water in rivers and creeks around Nebraska
.  I suppose that's enough to compell me to surrender my Yankee pride and concede that yeah, it was rather uncomfortably cold yesterday.  One major difference is that these Northern fronts usually hang around for about a week and bring some snow with them.  This one has done neither.  Temperatures have already returned to their December 'norm' (There's really no such thing on the Plains) of mid-thirties or so.  Perfectly comfortable if you're under the sun in your coat, scarf, gloves, etc. 

I read an aside in the NYT yesterday about the Syrian rebel who digs Johnny Walker Black.  but has now taken to playing Islamist in order to placate therocracy minded suppliers.  I have no geopolitical point to make in this observation.  Or any point at all really.  I would only say that I was pretty indifferent to scotch for a long time.  It's  as I've aged and lived through some truly cold holiday seasons that I have come to learn that a dose of high-grade scotch to a savory-filled belly on a freezing day is God-damn orgasmically good.  Some Jameson in the winter is even better still.  Bushmills can do the trick too.  I have an uncle who's a total fuckass otherwise who brings some of that stuff around at Christmas and that's good on him.  Nothing more for today comrades. 

My Thoughts On This Valiant Nebraska Girl

*To address what's truly important first;  I appreciate middle-era Green Day myself and have always thought it rather underrated by the public at large.  I can't say I adore them at the level of Dylan Queen or P-Funk but hey, 'Warning', 'Minority',  'Brain Stew/Jaded' and 'Walking Contradiction' are all perfectly solid tunes.  Of course all anyone really remembers from this period is 'Time of Your Life' and the way it Borg Assimilated every modern rock/soft rock/top 40 radio station or high school related function for a full decade after its release; and that's a shame. Still it's no fault but our own that pablum sells. 

*At a somewhat more serious level.  I hope that no serious pundit or social will use this incident as a pretext for the next codgery kids-these-days rant, claiming that the mass access to fame provided by Youtube, Facebook, etc. is raising human foolishness to levels never even dreamed of in the good old days; because that simply isn't so.  People are precisely as stupid as we have ever been, no more and if anything a good deal less, in spite of the myriad examples of stupidity like the above that are still out there.  It wasn't the woman's on-camera end-zone dance that got her caught anyway. Rather it was robbing a bank in a small village where everyone knew everyone and knew exactly who they were being robbed by immediately.  That form of stupidity is by no means particular to our own time and certainly doesn't rely on modern technology. Not that Al Capone or John Dillinger ever shunned the limelight anyway. 

*  Finally, in punishing this woman, I hope that the judge and jury in punishing this woman do take into account the fact that what she did was quite indisputably.  I am not such wannabe-trickster nihilist to suggest that being funny attones for threatening lives destroying property or child abuse, but it counts for a hell of a lot alright?  Yes dear, the system truly is nothing but a game anyway, and it's one that you just lost on an unforced fumble.  The ones who are truly smart and dangerous enough to realize that the system is just a game are the ones that go into banking.  Everyone knows that. Several years from now, when you're parolled and hopefully somewhat wiser, we can go on and on about how the search of purpose leads people of all ages to do and think stupid things; how the young seek purpose in dramatic self-destruction while the old seek purpose in stasis and mindless dogma, or even how these two impulses feed off each other in war, terrorism, etc.  Feel free to call me up when you get out, and be sure to let me know if that band gig of yours looks promising.

Mule Is USA

Stamina of a camel, climbing prowess of a mountain goat.  Guranteed to get you to the highest peak, hottest jungle or deepes driest nothingness alive and in one piece,  so long as you're not too old when the journey begins.  A mongrelized misfit for a mongrelized misfit people, exponentially hardier and harder working thean those thoroughbreds made weak by incest to satisfy the aristocracy fetish of the Old World.  When the war comes these triple crown winners shall be nothing but dinner and their bouquets of roses shall be our garnish.  The Mule meanwhile shall live amoung us as our comrade and our brother together we relish manly toil.  The mule is of the people and we shall reign as one body forever. 

Post 400

Be cartoonishly epic in everything you do.  If you are unemployed then amen but you must eat beans and watch General Hospital with enough passionate glory to make the Gods shudder in their very thrones upon holy Olympus. 

Seek conflict for it's own sake.  You must convince yourself that any refusal to eat your special raisin bread cookies is a life-threatening insult or else verily you are already dead. 

When the New Order comes it shall truly be the greatest day of life.  Not that you were ever with them, of course not.  Still the look on your neighbors faces, after year upon year of laughing while you stockpiled on guns and sardines and now forced to knock on your door beging for your help.  You'll give them your help alright.  for you are a rightous man.  Still the pleasure of it.  By God it will be so wonderful.  You realize now that your honeymoon sex with that whore of an ex wife was only a plae echo of the glory to come. 

 

What it comes down to see is work ethic and love.  Love what you do more than you love your children and love the great men who made your work possible more than yourself.  Amen but verily all else must flow from that.  Love your lot in life and become your work as an act of war  then amen but the answers must surely come.  God bless.  

 

 

Here and There

Their reasons are of course their own and they are perfectly entitled to them, and it is also true that this Enrique Nieto received only a plurality of the vote, not a majority.  Still I'm mystified as to why any large group of Mexicans would ever trust those fuckin shyster Death Eaters from the PRI ever again.  Though their official policy positions are vaguely leftish the PRI are an truth a aideological mafia in political clothing who leeched the southern folk dry for nearly a century.  Now here they are again.  Duly elected by all reasonible accounts, yet the amount of penance paid for the amount of harm they caused seems shockingly brief to me.  Thankfully the human race as a whole seems ever less inclined toward submission and it's unlikely that these jokers will be able to get away with anything near the levels of tyranny and corruption that they have in the past.  Maybe. 

..........................................................................................................................................................................

I'm curious man... are you a completely bad faith actor or; is there some part of you that, out of natural fear, honestly refuses to accept that some level of innate mortal vulnerability is unavoidable?  Have you truly convinced yourself that there is such a thing as perfect control over one's own fate?  That it's humanly possible to be eternally vigilant and prepared against any threat?  That victimhood can always be staved off through sufficient force of will?  Or whenever something shooty happens do you simply go into bullshit autotron when you say 'If only victim X had been armed'?

...........................................................................................................................................................................

The group stage of the UEFA Champions League is often criticized as being hopelessly dull and/or weighted in favor of the big name teams.  This is true in no small way.  Yet also true that it is we the common fans, acting as a worldwide army of shameless bandwagon frontrunning bastards; who create the financial incentive to favor the aristocracy and are therefore responsible for the competitions' bloated contemporary shape.  They shouted out who killed the Kennedys...

Yet in spite of all that there will be some interesting drama in the last jag of group games on Wednesday afternoon, American time, involving my adopted club of Celtic.  The Bhoys (We are so intimate enough for me to call them that:) are tied with Portugal's Benfica for the second and last survival spot in Group G on seven points.  The Portuguese hold the tie-break on head-to head record, so that a win would put them in the last 16 no matter what the papists do.  The catch here is that Benfica are playing their last game at  Barcelona, while Celtic will be home with already doomed Spartak Moscow.  Overall I'm feeling pretty good about, if you'll excuse me, our chances. 

Celtic's best recent performance was probably back in 2007 when they took eventual champions AC Milan to overtime in the second round.   They acheived this by intentionally playing for 0-0 and penalties the whole way but fuck it, underdogs gotta do what they gotta right?  A wildcat run similar to what those Cypriot guys acheived last year would be very cool.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves. 

Not That It Hasn't Been Clear for some Time Now

But something is well and truly fucked up within the bowels of American football culture.  At the personal level this means that, as a Nebraskan, there is alwo something well and truly fucked up within my own 'native culture.'  There's the UNL Cornhuskers of course, but also the related fact that most Husker males play at least a few years of organized football.  I was tight end and secondary, still remember the basics of blocking and tackling, and it can be resonably presumed that most men one sees on the Lincoln streets do as well. 

I do see with the same blinding clarity as everyone else how much of a filthy, poisonous, corrupt, evil little game this is.  Yet my boyhood love of it is still there.  Aye.  Perhaps last night's reminder that the home team will never, ever, ever be elite again will be enough to free some of us from this chauvinistic, patriarchial, blindly authoritarian hate fuck that sucks the blood of legitimate education like a horde of lampreys.  Time will tell. 

The Return of Nebraska's Greatest Perfomance Artist

Well, probably not.  But maybe.

Lincoln's own Don Walton is every bit the conventional 'horse race' political journalist.  And yet conventional is hardly the word for how he does it.  The old man is filled with such an obviously sincere puppy dog enthusiasm for the horse race that the reader is left little choice but to drop her own cynicism and join in.

Chuck Hagel, on the other hand, is the very epitome of cynical post-modernity.  I mean that as a compliment.  I have long been convinced that the man has deliberately made himself into a piece of living art, a walking parody of the contemporary politician and how the media cover them.  Just think about it now. How many rumors of Chuck Hagel going to this or that important post have there been over the years?  How many of these rumors have ever been based on anything but their own verbal momentum? 

This wealthy white man won a major election in a small, demographically simple state. Once this comparatively easy feat was attained he is now always and forever able to start a media storm by basically just standing there.  It's fucking brilliant.  I remember the whispers that he would run for president in 08, a long time ago now wasn't it?  I remember most especially his Magritte-style anti-press conference where he announced that he had nothing to announce.  My God it was so....my God.  It was and remains the only time in my life that I have ever truly wept at the beauty of a performance. 

I Have, Certain Nerderies

Last night I had a blandly realistic dream about a military coup in Turkey that I learned about on TV News.  After waking I spent several hours believing that this thing had in fact happened and wondering what it would lead to. 

I have no special fascination with Turkey.  I know that they'e had several coups before and; I suppose I could free association association with them for a while.  Istanbul, They Might be Giants, the Bosporus, Hagia Sophia, Ataturk, (I Order You To Die!)  the Ottomans, throne to whoever's man enough to ice off his own brothers one by one, Vienna; except not quite; Vienna, except not quite, longest standing rivalry in the NBA Eastern Conference with the Greeks, Galatasaray, Fenerbahce, that's about all I have just now.  Oh, the coffee there is really well made and dank right?  I think of had some in that style once; or maybe not.   

Aye, Hope Solo.

Drama and sublime terror are not the same things as love.  Not necessarily anyway.  It is in truth a form of mental illness to insist that one must come with the other;  the product of a life that was either hellishly boring or so traumatic that simple day-to-day calm comes to feel like death. 

There's always driving on acid if you want a thrill.  It's far less dangerous and painful than signing off half your property to a violent galoot. 

War on Christmas Time: Let's Get it On!

Featuring a dystopian nightmare  world so hellishly desexualized that..... girls, well you seen now, girls are firing nerf guns.

"There will be NO gift certificates from "Toy-R-Us" this year after reading this story, I don't do business at homosexual run companies if I know about them"



In all honesty, "Electric Winter Tree" is a better name for anything than any alternative, whatever the context.  It's self-descriptive and yet subtly majestic, just like 'United States of America".  And let's be clear, Holiday Trees (En Garde!!!) are popular because of the shiny light, not because devotion to Baby Jesus leads to a love for shiny light on trees that wouldn't otherwise be there. 

Judging from some of the comments its apparent that liberals want lsIam to control the sphere; in all probability hoping it will be a time to celebrate whacking the heads of members of the Fudgepackers union, not to mention returning BIacks to slavery and women into veiled harlots.

"Well what do you expect of 'enlightened' Eurowiennies?"

 

Which is to say, it was the self appointed Christmas defenders of Christmas who are responsible for nearly depriving Providence R.I. of the big shiny lights.  It was not athiests, Muslims, or homosexuals playing the part of player-hater here, rather the local chapter of people who are so much more fucking Christian than you. 

 

"Sorry Communists and Atheists... YOU LOSE THIS ONE."

 

Hooyah!

 

 

Overall this yearly shindig seems to be going rather slowly and rather lamely, at least so far.  And while I suppose it's good that some things are too stupid for any large group of people to be fooled by for any long amount of time it is also in some ways rather sad; a life sapping reminder of advancing age like a cold slow night in the middle of the work week.  Aye me. 

 

:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

 

In other news... not to intrude, Mr. President..., none of my business and all.  But I say go ahead and leagalize booze on the reservation.  It won't make things better, only a naive or self-serving fool would think they would.  But the standard for leagally forbidding something is whether the legal ban makes things better, and the answer here is quite obviously no.  Things are as bad as they could possibly be:  Well, at least since the US Army guns stopped firing anyway, not to be insensitive. 

If, by some infinitesimal chance there is anyone up there who would give any regard to my advice; it would be better if the "Black Market" traffic was flowing more to your side of the line, don't you think.  And considering that casinos are completely filthy gauche lame-ass dirty little rat traps might I suggest for ya'lls consideration.....

 

.......Native Weed parlors.  The hippies will fucking love it, y'all know this.  The town/college of Chadron, Nebraska is bound to quintuple in enrollment/population.  And as for long-distance vacation traffic on the Western plains.  I worked in a No. Platte truck stop as a kid.  I hated the Sturgis bikers and I was always thrilled when the rare crowd of gypsy/vagabonds came along.  There's some teenage kid out there today that needs more of that. 

I Hope This Doesn't Turn Out To Be Overly Obtuse: But Here Goes.

I find Tywin Lannister to be very interesting.  What fascinates me most is the way that he considers both of his sons to be failures in spite of their obvious competence; largely for the simple reason that they dare to have humor and libido and generally enjoy life.  To have humor and libido is to go against the superior image of "Great Men" from "Great Houses" and every justification for the horrible things done to solidify their heightened position.  

I feel that as a White American man I have some close awareness of where Tywin is coming from.  Social privilege does have its drawbacks and the most noticible one to me is the pressure upon the privileged to be 'Olympic' if you will.  There's the pressure to define oneself as a heroic avenger of evil that in this country expresses itself most vividly through gun culture or any given strain of Illuminati NWO bullshit.  There's the prudishness that we Americans most closely associate with conservative Christians but also takes very familiar form among Brahmans or other non-Western privileged groups.  To be one of the chosen is by rights to be above being a body and take pleasure in nothing save the victory of the righteous.  Finally there is the pressure to intimately possess moral truth which encourages dogmatism and the denial of modern scientific and post-modern social complexities.  There is also here a tendency to glorify intuition & will, at least when it comes from within 'The People', from which the famed anti-intellectualism of the US in general and the populist American right especially is largely spawned from. 

It's a chain of thought that's been vaguely forming in my mind for the past few days now, and the discovery of this little ditty from "Conservative Fact Check" has just now brought it to the surface for me. 

"The left has its "scientists" and "economists" and "statisticians," while we have common sense. And common sense will win every time."

Make whatever the hell out of that you can as best as you're able dear reader. 

Miss Me?

I've been homw west for the holiday and gorging in any number of unhealthy things.  Now I'm back in Lincoln and feeling oddly satisfied.  A few powerpoint-style comments on what I've missed in the past few days.

>  Todd Rundgren's 'Hello It's Me' is stuck in my mind at the moment.  This has beeen a very common thing whenever I've been tired since I was a young boy and will probably remain common for the rest of my life.  I could be very happy working as an overnight truck stop cook, or clothing store security guard, or any other place where I could reliably expect to hear 'Hello It's Me" every
night of the winter. 

>  I've long had a passing interest in Grinnell college basketball and their crystal-meth offensive system.  Basketball is fascinating in its fluidness, the way it allows tempo-specialists to essentially turn every game into the same game no matter the opponent.  It's very common for underdogs, including my own Cornhusker ballers, to try to turn the game into a grinding indoor football slugfest.   Villanova famously lucked all the way to the title in 85 by playing this way.  But usually this negative strategy accomplishes nothing except to make bad teams and their fans, including my Cornhuskers, even more miserable.  Though Grinnel doesn't seem to have made any national noise down at NCAA Div III they at least seem to have won themselves a few conference titles.      And at any rate I'm sure you'd agree that having the biggest single-game scorer in the history of the game at any level ever is a much bigger deal than even the D-III national title.  I've noticed some in the internet comments complain about ball-hogging and lack of defense but, seriously, get the stick out of your asses.  This was awesome.  You'll find these sort of people trying to ruin the fun of every sport with their pseudo-patriarchial moralizing about 'teaching the game of life'.   My own sociological diagnosis of these people is that they suck and they are stupid. 

>  Speaking of kill-joy moralizing... dude, the presidential turkey pardon is fucking funny alright?  Get over it!  It's predictible that this sort of argument would come from the Washington Post; official organ for the Very Serious People Party, and in all honesty the suggestion that the president must always maintain a rarified dignity even on our great binge and drink holidays is a seriously frightening piece of  monarchist bullshit. 


> Thanksgiving happened to coincide with the forty ninth anniversary of President Kennedy's murder this year, which I suppose is bound to happen occasionally.  The two events were depressingly close to each other back in 63 after all.  I do confess to still having a boyish admiration for John.  Even after all the dark revelations and my own disillusionment with age I still think that he has been the best president of a recognizably modern US that we've had so far.  It burns me that he was killed by a lowlife fake revolutionary rat too stupid to even wear a pair of gloves and a balaclava while he did the deed, let alone have a getaway plan beyond 'kill cops in public and keep walking like nothing happened.' 

Kennedy is still after all the first and only 'ethnic' Catholic pres that we've ever had.  Which is strange given that it's been decades since anyone here has run a blatantly Jack Chick style anti-'popery' smear campaign.  And as for his policies; laying the first shoots of federal support for the civil rights movement, : ), showing brilliant judgement in the Cuban Missle Crisis, : ), Vietnam, (Well, okay he did fuck that up) but most importantly;  Space baby.

It's a Holiday Week: A Few Bits and Ends

I'm just going to say right here tha my alma mater was completely mad to ever switch from this mascot. 

 

 

 

 

 

If Nebraska were its own independent nation (Third world, no doubt, if not fourth.) This creature would spend its days seeking to attract tourists outside of some Paris world expo, performing dances it claimed to be a thousand years old.  Though the immediate successors to this Husker mascot also have a cool Carnival vibe about them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The modern Herby Husker is fat too sanitized, and let's not even get into the Third-Rate sub-disney abomination called 'Lil Red'.  Those you may look up for yourself. 

This is something you should really consider becoming a part of should you ever be in Lincoln, Ne in November.  I'm still coming down from Saturday's feast.  Thanks to all for a grand time.  There actually is a plot to "Ecco The Dolphin" but who the hell cares? 

Rupert Murdoch is C. Montgomery Burns.  I'm not saying that the character of Mr. Burns is based on Rupert Murdoch, I suppose that's long been a pretty common theory.  I am saying that Rupert Murdoch is given a light working of makeup and told to act naturally in front of the camera for a few minutes for every Simpsons episode that features Burns. 



Fuck twinkies.    I'm just going to say that right here and now.  Twinkies are good for nothing except the unearthly green tinge they give off when lit on fire.  Yes I did eat twinkies as a child but I do not feel any more historical warmth for them than I do for porn magazines two dollar packs of ciggerettes or any other architectural relic from the early nineties conveinence store.  This is the twenty first century and if you don't have enough kitchen skills to make up your own combination of sugar junk with whatever combo of whipped cream cocoa and microwave you have available than damnit it's time to make yourself useful around the house man. That's all there is about that. 

 



The President of Uruguay

is fucking cool.  That is all. 

Some Interesting Nuttery Here.

I've mentioned this guy before,  this is the one who calls himself  "the Voice of God" in the mangled King's Latin and makes no bones about considering himself the voice of God precisely because he is a White Christian Yankee.  This most recent article of his touches familiar ground; the same old tripe about how every good American is required to submit to one true eternal belief system and governing philosophy in the name of freedom.  But I think it does bring home a point made by Cory Robin and others about how the distinction between social conservatism and 'libertarianism' is mostly bunk.  Both of these things are the result of White Men being raised to believe that it was our birthright to be unchallenged masters of our adult households; and then grow up to be truly shocked that the federal government should possibly have more day-to-day leverage over "our" wives, "our" children and "our" communities than ourselves.  Those of us endowed with "centuries-old cultural traditions in which a dominant central government is considered a basic fact of life "  might consider it a given that yes, the central government is bound to be more powerful than the 'Head of Household", not because of any philosophy of what government should be but because it is a government and you are one man;  but this is only because of our own inferior cultures.  These are True American Men you see, and it can only be due to alien conspiracy that they are not always  deferred and catered to by everyone around them, including the State. 

The belief that all truth must be pre-determined and eternal is a fascinating thing, whether it comes in the form of King-James-Onlyism, 'Strict Constructionism' or what have you. (Usually some form of all the above) There is to be sure the longing to live forever, to become immortal Leviathan through a 'pure' culture that is always static and a universally held belief system that is never challenged.  But I think the main appeal of all fundamentalisms lies in the ego of dictating the eternal truth to perceived subordinates ex-cathedra. The impulse is the same whether they are perceived as subordinate due to race, sex, youthfulness, or income.  And it's no accident that these fundamentalisms tend to be most popular among old privileged classes who are suddenly find their privilege challenged.  The 'Religious Right' in the US has always found the meat of its muscle among upper-middle class White suburbanites, not among the lower-class rural 'hicks' as perceived in stereotype.

In the end there is in fact a kernel of truth in the doublethink of insisting that we all must do what the Eternal Truth/Myself demands in the name of liberty.  A respect for liberty does sometimes require the surrender of one's own will out of deference towards the liberty of others.  For those of us who were raised in Vox Day's unAmerican cultures this contradiction might be funny or even rueful but not intolerably painful.  It is among those who have been entitled with 'The Rights of Englishmen' those who have been raised to believe that exercising their wills unencumbered would always be their birthright; so long as they held to the true and unchanging path, on whom the agony of egalitarian dissonance has fallen upon double fold.

Yeahhhhh!

Public Enemy bringing their nastalgia noise to Lincoln.   

I really can't describe in words how liberating the words 'motherfuck John Wayne' were for my White self the first time I heard them growing up on those plains.  In time it has come to be the likes of Kurtis Blow and Afrika Bambaataa who grew into my favorite 'classic' rap acts.  And I'd still have to say that RATM are my favorite "political" band.  (Again, I'm White, and fuckin killer guitar man.)  But PE our still indescribebly radiant, and I hear their new album is actually a lot better than the standard tour-pretense filler for old guys.  We'll see.

Thanksgiving Is God-Damn Depressing.

It involves a healthy amount of my favorite pet hates; extended family, crowded houses where there's no where to be alone, animated conversations in combined spaces, combined with an offensive sense of moral entitlement to make me share myself and join in said conversations.  Honestly it's even worse than having a girlfriend, since at least then I can get drunk and enjoy the sensation of sex while being dull to how damned obnoxious and loud it is.  I'm dreading the holiday already.

Christmas, well it's the same, except enjoyable to me.  I don't know why.  It certainly isn't the gifts or the early mornings. 

I Voted For This Measure

This One Right Here

I could see why some would be opposed to it.  Personally I figured that if we're going to have a small, single house of professional "Senators" (Nebraska's unicameral has forty nine seats)  it would be better to pay them enough to make something of a living on so that people from all walks of life could realistically seek the job; phony populist fears of 'professional politicians' be damned. 

I could also get behind going completely the other way with a large, completely amateur "house".  The New Hampshire House of Representatives has 400 members.  or one for about every 3300 residents.  That's a might be a little too much, but if you were to divide Nebraska's population by two hundred you would have one rep for about every ninety two hundred people.  That would be enough for every rural two-stoplight town to have its own rep, major market towns like GI or North Platte to have one for each quadrant on this or that side of the tracks, and of course a horde of several dozen for Lincoln and Omaha.  More direct democracy is better democracy says I.

To keep costs down we could pay them little more than what they need for food and board; with maybe a bit more for caucus leaders to encourage the ambitious. This would I concede leave them more vulnerable to bribes, but then again the effective value of corrupting one out of two hundred would also be much lower.  Such a large group would also probably need to be officially partisan for organizational reasons.  I concede that many Nebraskans are proud of their non-partisan house but I would say that this is only another case of phony populism.  The people of the unicam reflect the mostly conservative nature of the state and everyone knows which way the wind blows with them.  The body was certainly willing to play the partisan redistricting game last year in a very obvious and deliberate way.  It was only their machinations that kept Omaha's US House seat red last Tuesday.  There's also the fact that the imposing of term limits has brought with it a steady stream of self-promoting abortion and nativism pimps looking to roll into Congress as the next great talk radio messiahs. In as much as it ever existed, which is unlikely, old George Norris' dream of a purely pragmatic and anti-ideological chamber is long dead.  So go ahead and let the Repubs enjoy the glory of formally controlling another statehouse in fact as well as name.  Very small constituencies will at any rate allow single-issue whackaloons total freedom to operate with no shame in their games; perfectly free from the tut-tutting of Very Serious hypocrites.  That's nothing but good old-fashioned freedom you know, and hilarious to boot.  Like I said before more democracy is better democracy.      

Trouble at The BBC

It disturbs me more than a little.  It's been one of my primary sources of news for several years now.  I look up its website about four times a week since the Beeb actually covers Latin American more regularly than the NY Times or any other American outlet. (Why this is I don't know. )  Plus I very often listen to the 'World Service' that comes in over Omaha's NPR every night at midnight with maybe a beer or glass of whiskey in my hand depending on the season, utterly convinced that the voices comeing over the speaker were perfectly trustworthy because; you know, British. 

Thankfully, from my selfish perspective, this pedophile scandal seems to be mostly a matter for its domestic/entertainment division and hasn't sullied any of its international reporting.  Still I can easily see how those who are British would be more than a little pissed about having to pay taxes to these people just to own a TV; even before this apparently long-running horror was exposed. 

The Traffic From Iraq is Something New

And almost certainly accidental.  Sup sup ya'll all the same. 

Strange Days

I drank a good deal of red wine mixed with a healthy amount of water last night; woke up with a hangover which was undeniable yet not painful, just felt an odd sense of powerlessness over my limbs and resentment for the sun.  I also awoke with a weird sexual energy that comes from I know not where.  I don't any particular crush on anyone at the moment and I can only suppose that it was the ultra-early false spring.  Just a tingle to be caressed by my clothes. 

A Brief Theory on Global Warming Denial

Now that, perhaps, political and social momentum may perhaps be slowly moving towards doing something serious about the problem thirty years too late, here goes:

There is a general human tendency to view oneself as the standard model for one's own society and/or all humankind.  Conservatives and the socially privileged are especially prone to this, so that any suggestion that "we" are doing X the wrong way is interpreted as a personal attack that must be defended against.

A closely related truth is that we Americans are raised to believe that a big car and a big house in the suburbs are things that the proverbial boy raised by wolves is supposed to instinctively want.  We have been taught to see the attainment of these things as proof of being good; of being responsible, productive, loving and protective of one's family, etc.  Now we have the specter of man-made climate change to suggest that this conventional dream is not only not innately virtuous but downright harmful. Many people who have spent their lives striving for and then prided themselves on attaining this dream cannot tolerate the thought of having been fools who prided themselves on a lie.  They cannot stomach the implied charge that by having simply 'played by the rules' they have brought harm upon their fellow humans.  They would rather believe global warming is a Trojan horse, cooked up by the losers to change the rules of the game by foul means.

I would add a couple minor points from what I've personally observed.  There is a friend of mine, White as I am, who was once called nigger by as passing car while biking down a Kansas street.  As far as either of us could tell he was called a nigger strictly because he was riding a bike. In many parts of this country there's a lingering sense that there is no such thing as willingly choosing to walk or bike any distance in any weather. (And certainly not to ride public transit with Those People)  Not taking your car to wherever you're going is in itself proof of indigence, or even of being a dangerous fiend out to prey upon the children.  My friend does have a car, as do I.  I use mine almost exclusively for medium or medium-long trips out of town, otherwise I walk.  I've heard cat calls of 'get a car' or some ruder equivalent more times than I can count.

I have also seen within some of my family an absolute, literal, 1-to-1 equation between the automobile and masculinity that is believed with utmost sincerity.  Whether they think the millions upon millions of humanoid males who lived before the car was invented spent their lives with a constant sense of missing something I don't know.  Or maybe they believe in some natural evolution between the horse and the car and that every true American man is a shining knight.  Again I don't know.    

'Cannibal Cop's Wife Flees With Baby....."

Yada, yada, yada, nothing really to do here except repeat and link.    And throw in some Misfits 'Demonomania' while I'm here, that goes without saying. 

Well I'll Be a Shit Sandwich

Welcome to the team Richport ;) 

More Regionalish Election Views

Nebraska, in our weather-beaten wisdom, have seen fit to enshrine the right to hunt and fish on our state constitution, right next to such nanny-state protections as the right to free speech and fair trial.  I don't have all that much to say about this.  I myself am not even a vegetarian; though the diet is common enough among my circle of friends to be as normal as football and beer, which I suppose is enough in itself to make me an extreme outlier in this state.  Still I have never heard my veggie elitist friends say a single word about hunting; no fiery denunciation or even light condensation.  I would personally describe myself as in favor of 'animal rights' in as much as I oppose displaying dominance over them for its own sake without any valuable benefit to humans.  But it's not on my short list of passion triggers by any means.   Within this state there is simply no movement within even the tiny community of urban bohemians to restrict hunting or fishing in any way. 

Still there is a loud contingent of hunters who badly want to believe that anyone who shows concern for the well being of wildlife must necessarily be an A.L.F. bomb thrower.   The entire 'sporting' industry, especially its media, makes itself a great deal of money in pandering towards those who lust to feel hard-done by.  (Because being hard done by is the shit!)

For the blowhards, it is nowhere near enough that hunting and fishing are not just allowed but wholly unthreatened. They want the established authorities to pat their heads and tell them what good boys they are, how special and brave they are for being hunters and fishers.  It suits their vanity to believe that every man has an instinctive desire to wake up at four AM on a weekend morning so that we can traipse through a frozen cornfield, and that those damn hippies are the only possible reason for why their own hobby isn't universal.  This sentiment can easily be tied into larger issues such as the lingering spoiledness of White men; or the desire to believe that White rural culture is the eternal American norm, all obvious proof to the contrary be damned.  In the end though it's true that this new law, aggrandized as an amendment though it is, is quite literally hot air, effecting absolutely no one or anything in any way at all.  So I suppose..... whatever. 


Congrats to our neighbors in Colorado for doing the right thing in legalizing the herb.  When I go home to the west for Thanksgiving I intend to make a side trip to the border town of Julesburg and walk the streets openly while I...... walk.  It's rather strange isn't it that Colorado, which actually was quite stodgy within living memory, would reject prohibition before ultragreen Oregon.   Whatever I suppose.  Here's 'Saucerful of Secrets' as a congratulations gift for you kind people.

Deb Fisher, a member of the strutting, rightist, anti-urban ranching class that is grossly overrepresented in our Unicameral, has defeated old salt Bob Kerry for a US Senate seat.  Well shit, it happens.  Though there is great comfort in the fact that Governor Heineman's racist agenda is bound to be brilliantly stymied by the preordained return of:  HIM. 

Four More Years :))))

Pres up:  

Haters Down

The Reagan-Bush coalition is now an aging and irrevocably dwindling minority.  They have forever lost their last best hope to stop the last best hope of Earth from reaching its logical conclusion.  They have failed in their efforts to permanently impose the damnable Old World hierarchies upon the New.  They are powerless to stop women, minorities, the poor, gays and lesbians, non-believers, the Stranger and The Other from claiming what is rightfully theirs very soon.  We have won.  Existentially, we have won. They are free to buy a gun about it and preen in the mirror about how tough they are.  I myself am buying some wine. 

I Remember The Last Election

I was in Omaha. It was about half an hour before Steven Malkmus came on stage when Ohio came through for Obama, and it was done.  I remember driving to a friend's house to crash afterwards, listening to reactions from all over via the BBC via NPR, seeing the hipsters partying in recently 'gentrified' midtown neighborhoods and thinking that yes; this would all be good.  I remember reading Emma Goldman and engaging in some heavy petting with said friend.  I remember forgetting my cell phone in her couch, driving all the way back to Lincoln before I noticed, returning to a house with no one in it, and granting permission to myself to violate their sacred property so I could retrieve mine.  Then I had Asian for lunch at some place downtown and hiked across the brand new Bob Kerrey bridge.  We'll see what happens this year.  Things are a little colder all around.  We'll see.

My Mom Turned 55 Today

She turned me on to Jesus Christ Superstar when I was quite young.  Once you're in you're never out. 

I Can't Believe I Forgot This Yesterday

I have a lifelong love of  funk music that can, truth be told, probably be traced to seeing Tim Curry get his groove on when I was a toddler. 

I also occasionally search the internet for a now aincient documentary called "Dance of The Cranes" if a I remember right.  It's something I saw on Nebraska PBS when I was skipping school as a  90's teenager and appears to have been made in the early 80's.  It features a man dressed up as a crane doing this sort of interpretive dance on the streets of downtown Omaha.  I was very high and it was glorious.  Any internet people out there who might have info on where I could find it would be appreciated. 

Halloween Is Cool: Dia De Los Muertos Is Soooo Much Better

Our own big Senate race here in Nebraska has been highly obnoxious, as per ushe.  Democrat Bob Kerrey has given himself a slight chance of winning lately and of course I'll vote for him but it's still all so damn tiring.  Mainly I wish that Nebraska Republicans would just come right out and say that they consider themselves the moral owners of this state and that they are entitled to reign without challenge. 

As it is they feel the need to stretch for moralistic reasons as to why non-conservative beliefs and candidates are illegitimate and unworthy of true engagement even in opposition.  Bob Kerrey lived in New York you see, and don't you know that he's more likely to agree with Henry Reid then members of the party he isn't a part of?  As for rank-and file Democrats, well, you know, our views are beyond the pale because they are likely to align with those of Hollywood actors and academic elites.  We serve as nothing but ballast to prevent three reliably GOP house seats from being whittled down to two, beyond this there is no compelling reason for True Americans to tolerate our presence.  Very tiring, like I said, though it does reveal just how much the right wing well and truly hates this nation that they love better than us.  Are they really so socially limited to truly believe that ninety nine percent of everyone are knowingly and maliciously living outside the true universal norm?  (  Everyone who has been physically outside of the US for purposes other than military conquest : especially those who were born abroad but certainly not limited to them; All non practicing Christians, all sexual "deviants"; not just gays but the willingly childless or single, everyone who lives in the core of a 100'000+ metro, everyone who lives east of the Alleghenies and north of the Mason-Dixon; or California, or a college town, all brown people who are not perfectly assimilated to Ameriwhite; etc, etc;)  Or is it just the self-righteous buzz that they care about and to hell with whatever sense it makes? 

Sandy & Such

Whenever extreme weather hits the Boston-New-York- DC "national downtown" the national media that tend to be based in this region does naturally tend to focus on the story quite heavily, and it's as if all  America is sitting in a living room with the power gone out telling ghost stories.  I feel somewhat bad in focusing on the romantic aspect of it; this thing is after all causing great pain and misery and has apperently already killed people.  But then again think of all the famous love stories that are set in the midst of major wars; nothing like mass slaughter to bring our passions to the surface so that we all experience things more fully, isn't it all so sweet? 

And am I the only one who finds it seriously fucking perverse that the national media, even NPR, is speculating on how this storm might effect the election?  Christ.  The obvious answer, anyway, is that this is solid evil elitist Fake America country and it won't.