Love is a Book

I don't 'believe' in love and I have only sporadically enjoyed sex without finding it obnoxious.

Am I against love?  No.  Happiness in others does warm me, somewhat.  I simply don't experience happiness as inherently linked to interaction whether in the form of sex or pub quiz.

Am I against monogamy?  No.  I've felt sexual jealousy myself and have even had a live-in girlfriend. She said she loved me and I loved her too maybe, though on reflection I think it was more the ego boost of being gushed over by someone on my part, plus I needed a roommate for economies of scale and such.   We had a neighbor who sold weed and crank and she fucked him too as I guessed she probably would.  Understand though that this was no dramatic trauma for me.  I wasn't wholly unbothered it was just... well I was mainly just tired see.  We were both really lousy on drugs and I'd rather not get into it more than I already have. 

Am I against marriage?  sort of.  i have a loathing for ritual and tradition that  I confess to be somewhat kneejerk.  The idea of such a thing as one ultimate measure of united love is a fucking illusion maan.  Though again the happiness of others does warm me somewhat. 

What I'm mainly against see is evangelical monogamisoism.

There is nothing to settle down to maaan!

There is no human nature maaan!

There is no authentic self maaan!

There is no intimate core for anyone to touch through any means whatsoever maaan!

There are no touchstones of common experience or desire for anyone to bond over maaan!

I have broken off nascent relationships just to defy people who remarked on how happy I looked now that I had a girlfriend.  This is no joke; and aside from the live-in on no romantic breakup has ever saddened me at any level.

Aside from the live-in one I have never taken a girlfriend home to meet the folks over holidays.  This irks them and they've asked if this is because I'm ashamed of my family.  No.  The fact is that I took no enjoyment in these' women's presence and holidays gave me an excuse to be free of their presence.  Just as adult life gives me an excuse to be free of my family's presence.

Some years ago I had a condom break with a woman I was seeing and she went to a doctor for a pregnancy test.  It was negative and she was maybe being overdramatic but still my mother inquired about this incident for a time, for a long time.  Over Thanksgiving she let slip that she had been 'looking forward' to being an accidental grandmother.  My sister is a confirmed bachelor to and my mother has described herself as heartbroken about not having grandkids.  I do not want to hurt my mother.  I've considered 'coming out' to her on this matter but I don't know myself if I'm actually so confirmed as that and anyway; it's monstrous after her devotion to me through both our lives to say she centers her life on family too much but damnit she does. She centers her life on family too much and presumes that of course everyone must so center their lives too much.  And this has been a tyranny to her and to us kids as well. 

My happiest time in Chicago was when I was between pseudo-relationships, wondering alone.  I did my laundry at a random mat in Rogers Park off the Red Line and then wondered to a black church with a choir and that vital church music.  I felt myself connected to the whole of America in a way I never thought I would, North South East and a little West, Urban and modern yet still smelling of the summer trees of country home the smell of grass and garden our longing and bodacious people timeless from the dawn of the machine age. 

After this event I got drunk and had sex with a stranger after we had broken into someone's car for this purpose.  I liked the church better.  That was the moment in life that I felt most in love and this is the love that shall tangibly survive myself.  Our people will endure; our cities, our travelers, our bohemians, layabouts, neighborhood beauties, our talentless buskers, our American summers, the breeze carrying the scent of entire metropolis and entire hinterland.  I was here too.  And now you know.   

You Can't Spell Ham Sandwich Without; Well You Know

I've been thinking about the seemingly inexplicable refusal to indict in recent high-profile police killings.  This article in today's' NYT does well to explain the structural problems at work here and that is part of it surely.  But of course personal racism is at play is well and does raise questions of how racism can remain so strong decades after the loud, overt belief in white supremacy has been banished from the realm of the respectable

It's true that murder, rape and robbery are things that do happen in the world; and also true that blaming the first black man available for such crimes is also something that happens far too often; yet we still do need the police who commit such outrages all the same.  It may be that normally fair-minded jurors are actually becoming more racist when faced with this problem, that they may embrace old myths of the Black Brute in order to deny this quandry or deny its very depressing existence.

It's also true that nothing can lead people to embrace bullshit faster than reminders that life is not fair.  There are some who pride themselves on being tough enough to tell you life isn't fair but in reality neither they me or any of us can truly accept it.  Perfectly smart people will embrace willfully irrational or even magical thinking for the sake of feeling that life is fair.  More to the point it is of course painful for we whites to accept that we enjoy unearned comforts secured by foul means.  Accepting that our society has some injustice at its root, at least party by intentional design, cast pallor and suspicion over everything; our endeavors, our accomplishments, our prestige, even our deepest personal relationships.  We should accept "civilization" not because ours is innately glorious but because it makes life a little bit better maybe.  We should submit ourselves to the rule of governments ruled by people no greater or smarter than ourselves, obey the laws made by people no greater or smarter than ourselves, and accept the need for police no more or less innately noble than ourselves and no more or less inclined to be good or bad than ourselves because maybe it all makes life a little softer and easier by some unknowable degree. 

Accepting all this is easier said than done to say the least of it.  While on the other hand the pleasures of being more righteously pro-police/law than your neighbors are visceral and immediate while protesting the social order so that maybe it shows slight noticeable improvement before your own death is rather less so.   It's bleak work to do the right thing and there's no such thing as anyone winning.  Still there is never any good cause for despair; as the eighty year-old bothers to see the doctor because they love themselves so must we love the world.

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FC Top 10

1. Real Madrid
2. Bayern Munich
3. Chelsea
4. Barcelona
5. Paris St. Germain
6. Juventus
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Cruziero
9.Manchester City
10. Porto

 

the Day of The Sp ce Yard

I remember that the day felt warmer than it actually was.  I was hungover and I wanted salt, brine, pickles olives or something except I walked.  I walked and there are no groceries footnear to Rachel & Eric's so I went to a Shopko on Hwy 2 that had no olives.  They did have potato chips which would sate what I wanted partially so I brought potato chips to the party; chives & cheddar.

I already felt better just by being there.  Something about the neighborhood brings a cooling effect.  It might be the trees or the nearby grade school which always reminds me of the cool season.  Zachary Schomburg was there and we exchanged words such as 'excuse me' and 'were you in line  ahead of me?  No well alright."  Bandito gave me a hit of acid and I drank more beer than wine though I think intended the opposite maybe.  There were visitors from the coast who were amazed to learn that peas can be eaten straight off the vine and it pleased my patriotic vanity to have known this before.  The garden in general was beautiful with life and there was this olive-pickle relish thing at the party after all.  You put it on hot dogs with hot mustard and potato chips and every breed of sour and salt and it was fucking beautiful.  The twilight was glorious silk as summer twilights everywhere always are.  The desert twilights where one can see the mountains glow are different but not better.  The prairie twilights with crickets and the smell of life at peak fury are different but not better.

It rained maybe.  I think it rained lightly for a little while or moderately hard for briefer still or maybe not at all.  I said things which I'm told were quite brilliant or amazing and since what I've been told I've said does fit with what I know to be my cadence than alright I said them.  I'm confident that there is no conspiracy to slander my person and it's a lame one if it is so never mind.  Women friends of mine performed a communal poem that mentioned Bachman-Turner Overdrive who I abhor.  I could ascribe their ubiquity on the radio to Baby Boomer privilege except I have never heard any member of my parents generation proclaim any love or even strong like for Bachman-Turner Overdrive.  Nobody wants B.T.O on the radio so it is therefore clear that this Bachman, whoever he is, some uppity little snowback as I recall, is forcing corperate stations to play his shit through some terrible dark power.

In any case there was a moon that I worshipped with the womenfolk for a time and ice cream as well.  I think it was ice cream with chocolate cake or chocolate pie I mean it wasn't just ice cream or was it?  It was a terrible and sublime thing to thaw the ice cream and then separate it from itself into individual bowls.  I realize now that it has always been a terrible and sublime thing to unfreeze ice cream; ever since the time of my grandfather's ice cream and the ice cream of his fathers down through time primordial ice cream is fucking tragic.

There was ice cream and a teacher educated at Ball State who I am now able to recognize only by how she grins at me when she sees me downtown.  After this a carried to the afterparty.  It was a shatteringly existential car ride and I now know this to be the case with all car rides throughout time as with all ice cream.  We went to Hell House where Mikey made Nazi jokes and talked too loud and sang Bob Dylan too loud and drank too loud because Mikey though we love him.  There were  creatures on the couch. The people who lived there along with guests and others too; humanoid worm things with sunless skin stolen from someone but fuck them they are not important.  This ended at some point and in the morning some wank-off of a movie about the power of rock & roll on Netflix.  It was made by someone involved with 'The Sopranos' and nothing happens.  Outside it was hot and nothing ever happens. 

FC Top 10

1. Real Madrid
2. Bayern Munich
3. Chelsea
4. Barcelona
5. Marseille
6. Juventus
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Cruziero
9. Benfica
10. Manchester City

A Man I Know

If you live in Lincoln you may have seen him yourself.  His name is Greg, three quarters native and one white, both of various kinds, and bound to a wheelchair on account of a lost foot.  He lost the foot after drinking Four Loko and passing out on the BNSF railroad, the Omaha-bound north side tracks.  He has a place but decided to get drunk on the tracks.  This may have been a suicide attempt though he says it wasn't.  Or perhaps the American romance of getting drunk on the railroad called to him.  Doesn't it call everyone with blood in their veins?  Of maybe it wasn't a suicide attempt as such so much as indifference to if he woke up or not.  As it is he woke up with one foot and the rest of him alive enough to be obliged to deal.

FC TOP 10

1. Real Madrid
2. Bayern Munich
3. Chelsea
4. Barcelona
5. Paris St. Germain
6. Benfica
7. Juventus
8. Cruziero
9. Atletico Madrid
10. Manchester City

Been a Way For A Time I Know I Know

So what do I think of the elections?  I'm disappointed, but nor despairing.  Voting is a very simple matter you know; and I cannot for the life of me understand why people seem to need to feel "inspired" to perform this simple task; why common people of the left right and center all alike need to feel the hope of acheiving some Existential victory or Great Historic Good in order to pencil in some circles.  I can understand being disappointed by politicians, of course I can.  what I cannot understand is why grown adults should feel especially bothered by the disappointment.  Innocent idealism does not exist.  Purely idealistic "Great Leaders" are a human impossibility, and political liberty requires accepting ourselves as every bit as dirty as any 19th century machine boss. 

I hope that all of this doesn't come across as some bitter or angry "people suck" rant.  Because I am not in all honesty bitter and angry about what happened yesterday.  I only mean to say that for so long as we the people cling to the conceit of our own time being uniquely troubled (Which is not remotely true) or the politicians of our time being uniquely venal, (ditto), then the schizophrenic contrasts between midterm and presidential elections will probably remain the norm for some time. 

At any rate I am not as I've said bitter or angry about thangs.  I predict that the GOP; (in its patented certainty for certainty's sake manner) shall proceed to overestimate the significance of yesterday's victory; to over gauge just how much of the country has come over to Real True Conservative ideas and proceed to flood Washington with the same brutalist dogmas that horrified the general public in 2008 and 2012.  Sunrise; sunset. 

At any rate there's happier news here in Nebraska; closer to home where laws more directly effect lives and where; even still' in spire of all efforts, one stil has some liberty to vote without the conceit of fighting an epic culture war define the national identity.  The right-wing dipshits have unfortunately run the race for Governor and Senator; but then that unfortunately was to be expected.  The good news is that the Omaha House Seat is flipped Dem.       Good in any number of ways; a reflection that the city proper has been Dem majority for some time now; and all the anti-urban mythology in the world cannot long keep Nebraska monolithicaly Republican if that's the case.  what's especially heartening about the Dem win here is the backfiring of this old-school Willy Horton style ad,  .   Anyone who's been paying the least attention to the Nikko Jenkins affair knows that untoward affection for criminals from Brad Ashford or anyone else, has jack-all to do with the problem.  The race-tinged late 20th century hysteria over "urban menace" and tough-on crime "melon morality"   have both been especially strong in Omaha, and if that city of all places is falling out of love with such comforting lies it speaks well for the course of our culture.  The benefits shall be much more important than what is gained or lost in any one election. 

Finally Nebraska has voted by a wide margin to increase our minimum wage.      Proof among other things that not even conservative people are as blindly-supply side as some might think; and more importantly people will make more money... fucking Ay!  Life does go on indeed it does it does.

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Chelsea
4. Real Madrid
5. Marseille
6. Juventus
7. Atletico Madrid
8. Manchester City
9. Cruziero
10 Benfica  

Addendum

Just what the hell is all this about 'indoctrination' now?      Do the trans/homophobic and gender 'complimentarians' truly believe that babies raised in bubbles would 'naturally' grow up to be perfectly binary Barbies and Kens?  There is no universal default manhood or womanhood and never has been.   It is if anything the belief that there is such a thing that goes against "common sense".  Given the vast numbers of our species this belief in One True Manhood & Womanhood is more deranged than a heroin addicts' dying dream.  The belief in traditional gender is, in a word; superstition.  A farmer who ritually jerks off onto his fields by the light of the Spring moon may rightfully laugh at such foolish magical thinking.

And yet they have the gall to speak of "indoctrination".  And when they speak of the supposed conflict between secular education and families it is clear that they consider one's proper relationship to their own family (i.e., one's father or husband) to be one of feudal submission and view controversies such as these as part of an epic struggle between the "family" and "the world" for the sole right to impose loyalties, identities, and "Truth" upon future generations; to "indoctrinate" them if you will.  The complainers at this meaning have expressed in near so many words an entitlement for their children to believe as they do.   And while all this occurs there are trans children being subjected to hostility, exclusion, and abuse so that some adults can imagine themselves secure & "natural" in their identities and other adults can imagine that future generations shall live for the sake of aggrandizing their bones.  There is truly nothing so beautiful as unyielding morals.

Lincoln School Board Gets McCartheyed by Fox News Windmill-Slayers.

We've hit the big time in quiet old Nebraska.

My words on this matter shall be brief as this so-called problem is a very simple one. We godless liberals who favor 'gender' inclusiveness are not being mindlessly 'politically correct', in the sense that we are ignoring obvious reality in favor for some soft idyllic nicety.  It is rather the case that our position is quite indisputably the one on the side of reality and common sense.  Gender ambiguity is not a thing that liberal educators have conspiratorially invented through willpower, brainwashing and mind voodoo.  Gender ambiguity simply is and has always been.  Gender ambiguity exists, it is something we can directly observe with own eyes within others  and something that like it or not one must know we all feel within ourselves.   And at any rate if it is so their are only two "True and natural" genders; strictly biologically determined and strictly defined against each other, how then is it so that "outrages" like this could ever possibly happen?  How could the queer and transgender people we factually know to exist possibly exist?  If the "True Traditional values" really are the natural default than why should they ever require heroic culture warriors to defend them?   The fact of the matter is that it is the authoritarian right which seeks to impose a universal ideal in defiance of known reality.  It is they, if anyone, who are being "politically correct" in the way they are obviously trying to interpret divergence from their beliefs as offensive.  The "educational elites" here are simply trying to deal with people as they actually are in a systemic and civilized manner.

To get the heart of the things a little more; I recall a Fox News clip I saw a couple of weeks ago; one in which Sean Hannity said something to the effect of 'their are some schools that don't think parents have the right to instill our values in our children'.  Well; the reason for this is that parents absolutely do not have the right to instill their values in their children.  One's own identity; sexual, political, religious, cultural, is an arbitrary thing that each of us must invent from scratch for ourselves and all identities are wholly annihilated with the deaths of ourselves.  A fundamental purpose of education, (any theory of education) is to strengthen the individual's ability to invent themselves.   It this goes against paternalistic fantasies of cheating death by forcibly imposing one's own identity and  'eternal truth' on the next generation,  than fuck your fantasy.  And stop trying to poison my town with your stupid blubbering poison. 

FC top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Chelsea
4. Valencia
5. Juventus
6. Marseille
7. Real Madrid
8. Manchester City
9. Cruziero
10. Benfica

Ebola comment Sections

Good God Damn; but some people do take the threat of being made unclean by social outsiders very primaly don't they?*

Let us be perfectly cleat shall we?  On the day you do catch a virus of some kind; on the unavoidable when you will be infected with something that makes your body do disgusting things and your conscious life a constant agony, your disease will most likely come from someone among your own kind, your own children, your spouse or sexual partner, your boss, your best freind.  The people we love are the ones who make us sick.  The people we trust and rely on in times of difficulty are the ones who make us sick.  It has always been thus and I know you must have already experienced this truth directly. Why then do we insist on believing that the threat of infection must ipso facto be an exotic one?  Is the truth you've experienced directly really so painful as that?  You had might as well attempt to fly from your roof as believe that human measures of 'cleanliness' or 'civility' are things that nature and mortality care the slightest fig about.      


* There's also a common desire within these comments to believe that all bad things that happen are the result of someone's intentional will and could therefore be potentially controlled through sufficient will to punish.  The answer to this is no; you stupid assholes.  

Conservatives Stand Behind the president

As much as they despise Obama it is truly heartwarming to see them so concerned for his safety , or if not that to at least worship the security apparatus around every president of wither party.  It is also truly heartwarming to see them worried that our president has been threatened; or at least angry that their fantasies of Strong Men with uniforms and guns exercising total control have been shattered; whatever the case may be.

In  all honesty though we should let Laura Ingraham's bizarre, culture war-pimping rant serve as a reminder that those who blindly assume "strength" to be the solution to and the lack of it the cause of any conceivable problem are in no sense "realist" in how they relate to danger, crime, evil or enemies.  Their worldviews are entirely premised on denying their own mortal weakness and insignificance in favor of annihilating themselves to some Great Eternal Truth or demagogues who perform being strong in the most ripely cartoonish way possible.  

In my adult life I have never been one who held to the post-Cold War consensus that these deluded fools can be more trusted in a crisis because they "understand evil".  No; they don't understand evil.  In the manner of "Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt"   they need unquestionably evil enemies that will always be there' so that they can define themselves as positive by comparison, yet at the same time need to feel "strong" by believing they could destroy the enemy any time they wanted to; if only their soft-hearted neighbors were as strong as they were.  This mindset is the furthest thing from understanding evil or anything else; as it requires a willful denial of the reality around myself.  If the strawhippies who wanted to give our enemies flowers were actually real they would still be less dangerous in confronting threat as they would at least have the potential to gauge the strengths and vulnerabilities of both sides in an accurate manner.  Those who worship strength & their own fantasies of being stronger than thou have no such hope. 

FC Top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Chelsea
4. Atletico Madrid
5. Juventus
6. Real Madrid
7. Paris St. Germain
8. Manchester City
9. Cruziero
10. Benfica.

Just In Case You're Confused

Remember that the outrage is the end itself.      These particular right-wingers are not getting outraged due to lack of intelligence or on account of being mind-whammied by this or that media figure, but because they view outrage as in itself denoting courage, strength, manliness etc.  Because they view anger at and an eagerness to punish evil as the "masculine" and thus superior way to morally express themselves over 'feminine' compassion and empathy.  Because once one "knows" that anyone who loves their country in the most generic sense must automatically default to conservatism, anything we liberals do, including perfectly opposing things, will be taken as proof of the same pre-determined conclusion.  Because once there is no measure of foolishness or ridiculousness except to exist outside the tribe of Real Americans those who are inside the tribe have free reign to be as foolish and ridiculous as they like in order to prove themselves more inside the tribe than each other.

Any questions?  

One Way in Which the US is Not Exceptional

This sort of rot is a problem most everywhere on earth.      In most every country there is a segment of the population who demand an intentionally distorted teaching of their national history because they imagine that the purpose of history class is to train our descendents to live in thrall to their ancestors. 

If one Jill Smith were to demand her local school district teach children as fact that Jill Smith was inherently superior to the average person; she'd be universally recognized as precisely the vainglorious loon she is.  To demand our children be taught as fact that the United States is innately superior to other nations is exactly the same thing and couching this demand in the language of duty country and sacrifice does nothing to hide the juicy smell of masturbatory self-regard.  

It is quite as simple is this; if you declare that a belief in America's superiority is a minimal requirement for loving our country at all; you are a fucking liar, and a God damned disgrace to those who actually worked to make freedom happen, to those who faced our cultural failings with clear eyes and suffered for that for the very reason that they loved the United States and wanted it make it a better place for all of us. The real United States you understand, our living common people, not the standard cartoon cutout version of the "founding Fathers" or any other such 'Great Men'.  Fuck Great Men.  While the people live love suffer stumble and thrive in the way of Whitman and Ellison the authoritarians' vile submission to Great Men will will earn themselves no such reverence from beyond the grave but only the same oblivion that awaits us all. 

FC Top 10

1. Bayern Munich
2.  Barcelona
3. Chelsea
4. Atletico Madrid
5. Juventus
6. Paris St. Germain
7. Real Madrid
8. Porto
9. Manchester City
10 Cruziero

Reminder

There is no actual distinction between Strong reason and Weak emotion.  There is no purely rational reason to eat, sleep, hydrate, copulate, not feed oneself to lizards or in a word to do anything without an the emotional desire for something  preceding it.

Nor is there any actual distinction between strong self-interest and weak altruism.  There would be no nations, no capitalist socialist or any other economies of any sort, no society culture or perceived ethnicities etc. if mutual self-interest were not in fact the norm of human being.

These hard/soft oppositions are imagined to exist because people want such oppositions to exist for their own sake.  There is a need to invent distinctions between the strong/superior masculine and the weak/inferior feminine.  And given the protest-too-much willingness of some men to discard other social qualities that are otherwise valued; like dignity or maturity, in order to prove ourselves hard, I'd dare say that deep down most of us are fully aware that these distinctions are in fact bullshit.  At I've little patience for claims to 'nature' or 'realism' from either men or women who, from whatever fear of weakness or inadequacy, seek to perserve such obviously false dichotomies.

It's Constitution Week

Which means nothing.  You were probably unaware and it's very much for the best if you were.  

The week seems to be the doing of the Daughters of The American Revolution,  that old starched-shirt enforcer of WASP supremacy/cultural "purity" who I was surprised to learn still exist in 2014.  The  purpose of this designated week seems to be to promote a decidedly 'originalist' view of the document, the idea that the founders intended to bind all generations to one legitimate philosophy of governance for all time in the name of freedom. (Towards that end are such banalities as "inform people that the Constitution is the basis for America's great heritage and the foundation for our way of life."  and yes that is the singular "way") It failed towards that goal, but it does led to some more in-depth study of our Constitutional freedoms in some classrooms and that I suppose is for the good.  If any students should be so subversive as to realize that the concepts of freedom of speech, religion etc could potentially exist in any legal document one chooses to place them in so there is no need to fetishize this particular one; well, that can't be helped.  

Fc Top 10

So much more interesting to poll this time of year with small sample sizes and balls all up in the air. 

1. Atletico Madrid
2. Bayern Munich
3. Chelsea
4. Barcelona
5. Paris St. Germain
6. Juventus
7. Real Madrid
8. Manchester City
9. Porto
10 Dortmund.

Journal Entry 9/10/14

Songs secretly about heroin include Van Morrison' Brown Eyed Girl, The Beach Boys Surfing USA, Prince's Pussy Control, Elvis' Love Me Tender, Led Zeppelin's Achilles Last Stand, Linda Ronstandt's Different Drum, Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Rait's Something to Talk about, Melissa Etheridge's "I'm the Only One', The Indigo Girls' Shame on You, Aqua's Barbie Girl, the entire Ace of Base discography, John Mellencamp's Little Pink Houses, The Baha Men's Who Let The Dogs out, Dire Straits Sultan of Swing, The Alan Parsons Project's Eye in the Sky, Elton John's Gray Seal Candle in the Wind Princess Di version, Herbie Hancock's Rocket, Rush's By-Tor and the Snow Dog, The Ally McBeal theme song by what's her name from the nineties, Steve Winwood's The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, The Backstreet Boys' I Want You Back, Eiffel 65's Blu Da Ba Dee, The Jackson 5's Ben, Want You Back, and Micheal's solo Don't Stop Till you Get Enough, George Micheal's I Want Your Sex parts 1, 2 and 3, Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, Stevie Wonder's I Just Called to Say I Love You, Dusty Springfield's I Only Want to be With You and Son of A Preacher Man, Debbie Gibson's Shake Your Love, Cat Stevens Hard Headed woman and Garth Brooks The Thunder Rolls.  Meat Loafs Bat Out of Hell, You took the words Right out of My Mouth and Paradise by the Dashboard Light parts 1, 2 and 3 are all about the same 600 hour heroin binge in which only he survived out of a group of seventeen.  The Rolling Stones Cocksucker Blues and White Zombies Thunderkiss 65.

They are all coming to get me.  the dirty brown Ebola world is coming to get me.  The Muslims who congregate the space between Holdrege and the Omaha-bound tracks are coming to get me.  the one who put a tiger head sticker in the rear window of his 96 Corolla is coming to get me.  His mom who watches his dad pave their driveway with erotic intensity while sipping lemonade is coming to get me and he's coming to get me to.  The ones who keep a pet chicken are coming to get me.  The D'Leon's; I know it's a family business so logically that's their name right?  They are also coming to get me and they are Muslim.  The Latin Browns are not really Catholic like good Slavs are really catholic they are Muslim and the Italians and the Greek and the Israelis are all fucking Muslims.

The women who aren't being clones of my mother like they're supposed to are coming to get me.  the professors with their Muslim food and secret mockeries are coming to get me.  

Ted Kennedy is still trying to get me from beyond the fucking grave man.  Joeseph fucking Stalin is still trying to get me from beyond the grave.  Noam Chomsky Ralph Nader and Al Gore are still trying to get me from beyond the grave.  Ludicrous' Who let These Hoes in My room is about pushing heroin for Allah to little girls.  just play the fucking tape forwards and it's right there in the fucking open.

There is nothing for a man to do about it.  Split worms and grow flags.  Worship holes discipline and strong things because they are going to get you eventually.  They say my grandfather died of cancer over the course of a near-decade but there's no such thing as cancer it was fucking Muslims.  Split the atom and turn reality towards the true path that your lilly-weak Christ fucking botched.  Devour seeds of sesame never poppy seeds. Tear the earth and replace your law with sesame seeds.  Will entire forests into god-Damn sesame.

I know how to swim.  Understand that I know how to swim understand.  I can swim to the Falklands to defend the beleaguered brave from Muslims, sharks, ravens, manticores, seagulls, polar bears, metal beasts, horned cats,  the ACLU, anti-royalists, pagans, witches, the media elite, pirates, Jews, Rosicrucian, the Bilderbergs, the Go Big Red Chanters, Anonymous, Peter O'Toole, rainbow parties, pedestrians, mongrelized cities, radical greens, Big Pharma, abortionists, the Red menace, the Orange menace, the Rose Bowl, Robocop, Simone de Beauvoir, folk music, organic farmers, and Herbie Hancock.

I know the number codes by which the order is given to disseminate, disseminate, disseminate.  I seek the One Strong Man who Wills truth and never yields, righteous and untouched by the world entire and never made shaken soft or undistinguished equal but only master or enemy ever.  Control.  Absolute detachment independence and Control.  All questions and difference are guises to steal my
Control.  They are all out to get me. Questions do not exist and I am the answer.

Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it Define it or kill it  Define it or kill it.  humor the Mother worship the father and seek control.  Worship mountains and strong things.  I am an ocean of glory and the Seven Seas are mine.

A Tawdry Little Matter

Nebraska's lieutenant  governor apparently assaulted his sister in a dispute over the future of their family's farmland in the lower Missouri Valley.   In addition to being Governor Henieman's lieutenant this Heidermann was also the running mate for current GOP gov. candidtate Pete Ricketts. That's all out the window now; with the GOP facing an outside possibility of actually losing this governor's race a scandal of this sort simply could not be abided; and at any rate it was of course the right thing to do.  Heidermann has been replaced by state auditor Mark Foley (most always wrong, but at least a person of competence and integrity.) as Liet. Governor candidate, and we carry on.  Heidermann's name will still be on the November ballot though of course the law cannot force him to run against his own will nor that of his party or his superior on the ticket.

I'm no angel for pointing out the obvious fact that there's nothing especially 'partisan' to be said here.  siblings behaving badly with each other when inheritance comes into question is not a Republican-specific thing, and if only it were so that only conservatives ever felt entitled to beat 'hysterical' woman-folk into seeing reason, though they are of course more inclined to rationalize such thuggery. 
The governor himself said yesterday that he would withhold judgment on his lieutenant until all of the facts were in.  That's only fair, indeed the only decent thing for one to do.  It is not a courtesy that Heinieman would ever extend to social outsiders accused of something awful, he would of course be eager to believe anything bad said about brown people or outside-agitating animal rights hippies on first hearing, but never mind.  The Republican Party has in truth acted appropriately here.  It might have been a case where the right thing to do was screamingly obvious but from this sort we should take nothing for granted.  

There Was a Fly in My Bathroom Today

There was a fly in my bathroom today and I nearly had him.  I knew that he was an intelligent fly, for he knew it was time to come inside, that it was later in the year and would be freezing soon, and that I needed to destroy him in particular because of that, lest he live to breed smart flies who would evolve into ultra intelligent super flies that would enslave us all in their colonies of sugar shit and blood.  He was on my towel rack and I nearly had him.  I know the time to strike is when they are running their front legs together which means they are less alert to danger.  Yet this one stood still for a long time without running his legs, he's smart as I said, as I warned.  He sensed me but still I am wise as well, and patient.  I waited for some minutes crowbar in hand until he let his guard down as all life eventutually must and he eventually he did so I struck.  Nearly there.  Nearly there.  The beast lives still and I give my deepest apologies to my fellow man.  Still I have not surrendered.  This fiend shall fall.

30+ Years Instead of Execution

So, innocent men only had about two fifths of their lives stolen; give or take, instead of all of them, well alright.  Thank Odin for small favors.

I'm not sure abour the precise racial angle of this case; the victim, rest In Peace, was also black.  Whatever else there was clearly professional pressure on the local police and prosecutor to win as well as social pressure to do something;  to ritually prove that the community was anti-rape and murder by punishing someone.

The wrongly imprisoned men, Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, claim to have confessed to the crime under duress, and as science has proved them to be innocent of the crime that would seem to quite clearly be the case.  It would of course be absurd to claim that all confessions are false.  Obviously guilty people confessing to crimes they clearly did do indeed greatly outnumber such railroading jobs.  Still I'm bothered as to why any strenuous effort is put into gaining a confession at all, even if no untoward methods are used and even (especially rather) the accused is clearly guilty. 

I am disturbed by the superstitious thrall humanity continues to hold over the interrogation and the act of confessing.  It is known, by the police themselves more than anyone; that the human word is the least reliable form of 'evidence' there is and that deliberate lying to save one's own ass is only a small part of the reason why. The truth is discerned by the gathering of physical evidence that is lifeless, emotionless, biasless , devoid of any will towards self-protection or self-aggrandizement.

There has long been both a strong correlation and strong emotional tendency to associate confession with torture and for good reason.  Even if an interrogation is performed out of good motives, without malice or abuse, there is still the superstitious belief the Truth can be willed into being by simply being anti-evil enough to make the sinner surrender.  It's an assertion of power and control which prevents no crime and adds to the material safety of no one; and it is high past time that we stop viewing 'interrogation skills' as necessary parts of the police tool chest.  

FC Top 10

So it begins..

1. Atletico Madrid
2. Bayern Munich
3. Real Madrid
4. Chelsea
5. Paris St. Germain
6. Juventus
7.  Dortmund
8. Manchester City
9. Barcelona
10  Porto

Oh Omaha

The police department there may have very well killed "COPS".    At the very least there is probably not going to be an Omaha episode of "COPS" now, and I confess to somewhat looking forward to that episode for the same perverse voyeuristic reasons everyone looks forward to watching that rotten little public shaming orgy.

We common citizens should above all else remain fair-minded here.  We must especially remember that the chronological nearness to the Micheal Brown murder is a coincidence that does not magically shape the facts of this one incident.  We should remember that the OPD were not acting out of irrational fear or contempt for the general public or any particular segment of it here; they were responding to an actual major violent felony being actually committed by a deliberate villain, (one Cortez Washington.)  We should remember that we would be asking the police to be superhuman if we demanded them to tell the difference between a BB gun and an organ-shredding 'real' gun in the heat of the moment.   And yet by this same fair-mindedness we are still forced to ask ourselves this; thirty fucking shots fired at a single bad guy.  Really? Even if every officer at the scene happened to have ubermenshenly perfect aim there still would have been bullets hitting something or someone they weren't intended for by the mere fact of there being no more bad guy to shoot.

From what we know so far this tragedy does not seem to have come about from prejudice on the part of Omaha police but rather 'mere' incompetence.  whether it is better to have competent though bigoted, anti-egalitarian police force or a police force that simply doesn't know what it is doing is for each individual to decide for herself.  And all snark aside we must certainly remember COPS soundman Bryce Dion and especially his friends and family at this time.

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In other Nebraska news:  It is a truly sublime thing when angel Ernie tears into Devil governor and something  he definitely do more often.

  Chambers said the presidency was "simply too tall an order and too big a responsibility for someone of your meager, inadequate capability to handle competently and effectively."


:--O  :-)

I Am the Resurrection

Indian Summer is my favorite time of year.  A "cold front" came in today and now the same clothes I've been wearing for three days are somewhat chilly.  I made a stew of sausage squash and hot peppers for lunch and it was orgasmic.  Tonight I intend to drink bracing hard cold weather liquor like vodka or scotch even though that's terribly premature and overdramatic I realize and yet;


If you could see the way the light glows no in midfternoon you'd agree that it is very autumn gold even if it's mid-nineties bullhot and you can't help but think that all the West O bougie decadents who bought swimming pools in Nebraska have it right after all.  I have a morbid fascination with some tales of toddlers who drowned in private swimming pools, in how they were so intensely fascinated with the skywater that they scaled fences several times their own height or braved dogs several times their size just to touch that skywater and become that skywater.*  I vaguely remember having that thing in myself; that ingrained childhood instinct to be so wholly overwhelmed by curiosity as to become it like a demigod feels lust but I don't remember it enough to truly feel it again; alas.  Though there as a point in my adulthood when I was taking an art history class and viewed a slide of a cathedral in like Occidentia I think it was and letting out the most audible and sincere AHHH at the sight of a dome shaded the color of the most cutting ice blue several hundred feet in the air and good god Damn.  I think Burke was an ass for declaring storms mountains and terror superior to cute and comfortable things but he wasn't without his justifiable reasons. 


*  A less depressing example, if dead children depress you as well they should.  I was once at a smorgasbord restaurant and left a jalapeno at my seat while I went to get some beer-cheese pasta or something.  A girl or four or five was so transfixed by the pepper that she ignored all obvious signs of the seat being taken and the pepper being someone's; throwing my jacket car keys etc aside in her attempt to grab it for herself and being stopped only by her father dragging her away in tears.   She shall make a very brave woman this one.

Last Night

I walked in the rain for thirty blocks and it was glorious.  Especially after working through the beastly hot day on not enough sleep.  It was an impressionistic day where pleasure and pain were felt with particular acuity.  But it was something after all.   Bob Segar is in intolerable beast hack. 

There's A Woman I See About

A smoky look; Afro American I think though perhaps south Asian, thin yet curvy with perpetually somnolent eyes.  Yet it seems obvious that she already has a boyfriend. Alas. 

Why I share this publicly I don't know.  I've never 'believed' in love in the abstract sense.  Though I know it literally exists and I've felt it myself.  And I have never wanted 'a girlfriend' in the abstract.  I have never viewed marriage and children as even a remote theoretical possibility.  I have been completely cold to the idea always and angered whenever a family member spoke of "when" I'd be married as if it was of course the natural human default.  I am very suspicious of those who pursue strong passions, sexual or otherwise,  for the sake of having them or even will themselves into feeling them for the sake of feeling them.  I feel perfectly 'alive' enough idly thinking to myself and perhaps that's a problem though I don't think so. 

Still I have attractions.  I've had relationships that just sort of happened until they died out; freeing me to return to my comfortable norm of solitude.  There are women that I wanted and then either had or didn't and the odd man that I wasn't really attracted to per se but not repulsed by either and one does only live once, after all.  Yet while I say that I admit that I find sex generically pleasant and no better.  I don't find it transcendentally wonderful and on reflection now I realize that this is mainly because I do not want anything to be transcendentally wonderful.  I deplore the thought of any experience having such power over me, especially not if the experience requires another person and is not solely my own.  Take this for what you will.   

I'm Not Looking Forward to Football Season

Though At least I am now free from small-town men in bars and their-weirdly moralistic, manfully adamant for manful adamancies' sake analysis of the latest big game.  I've no greater hope than for the Cornhuskers to be blandly mediocre for so long that they cease to be viewed as intrinsic parts of Nebraska identity and the head football is paid in proportion to his actual value to society; maybe half of what a sociology GA makes if he's especially good. 

The solution to the recent controversy over paying players or not  is to completely abolish athletic scholarships and recruitment for every school of every size everywhere without exception.  If you want to keep football then form a team out of scratch from among actual student body; a pack of business, history, and computer science majors who have never touched a barbell running single wing sweeps on the common campus green space before an audience of dozens.  My God it could be beautiful.  At any rate the absurdly loud, vulgar, hyperbolic protofascist thing we call college sports today must for the good of humanity be destroyed, exterminated, annihilated and burned to its respective subatomic units of obnoxious bullshit.  The question of whether to replace it with something or nothing is a luxury that can wait. 

And my God but you should see the bougie knobheads that the football team brings to my town on fall weekends; clogging up my streets my neighborhood my bars and generally treating my beautiful city and its people like an amusement park.  It's enough to embitter the greatest saint. 

 

A Story I tell Every now and Again

I'll be attending this event at the NE state capitol about an hour from now.    

When I think of how 'white privilege'  has benefited me directly; well, I sometimes speak of past occurrences when I would walk to the capitol straight from classes at the university, (It's only eight or nine blocks depending) with a backpack clearly bulging with... something or another; receiving no more than 'attaboy that thing sure looks heavy' jokes from capitol guards and every else who even bothered to mention anything.

Just thought you'd like to know.  Boom. 

No Justice No Peace is Self-Evident Common Sense

Looting Isn't cool or anything like that: and yet....

"The law' you see, does not exist as an abstract totem of moral authority to submit oneself to.  Nor are police officers the priestly representatives of this non-existent ideal.  Police are the passive agents of laws that other people make; no less and no more. If the promise of social deference or 'respect' played the slightest motive in one's pursuit of a law enforcement career, then one should not have been allowed to pursue a law enforcement career.  But I digress.

'The law' you see, only actually exists in as much as people gain from it materially.  This goes no less for the privileged than it does for the oppressed. If summery execution is the penalty for, as a matter of fact, obeying the law, then it is in no sense 'radical' but statement of objective fact to say that the law does not exist.  If a young black man or anyone else knows that the law's 'or else' is the only  consequence of anything he does or doesn't do, then of course the law doesn't exist. Why would it?  How could it? 

 As I said before I do deplore looting and chaos; up to a point.  I myself am no Marxist but merely Keynesian, no militant but merely liberal.  Yet if one finds the current looting in the St. Louis area to be 'outrageous' or what have you then please understand, among those who can expect summery execution for obeying the law respect for property cannot possibly exist; and again this is quite indisputable.  One has to be alive to own things. One has to be alive to enjoy or appreciate any level of wealth in any way.  And as of now as of our entire history so far our black compatriots, our neighbors throughout our national journey who have formed us as much as vice-versa, have no cause to reasonably expect that their lives will be protected.  Their lives are not being protected.  It's quite as simple as that. 

Well Shitty Shitty Shit.

I remember the disgrace of a ballot initiative that made gay marriage in Nebraska cooties no-tag backs double illegal.  It was 2000 and the first major election I was old enough to partake in.  You probably a couple other things from that one yourself; but anyway.

Yet even within the context of this law (and of course I'm in favor of legal gay marriage) I find this story very baffling.  Just what the hell is the trouble here? Sue Stroesser has decided to take her "roommate's' name then.  Better now?   

Tip for Amatuer Erotic Writers

It's perfectly alright to build a fictional universe where your own proclivities are more common than in our world. That's a writer's prerogative.  But please still bear in mind that your fetish is perceived as a 'fetish' for a reason and that it simply won't do to build a world where every human alive of whatever cultural background or general orientation just happens to share your particular fetish.  This simply goes beyond a recognizable human credibility even if you build the most fantastic universe with rules wildly different from our own.   It cheapens your tale, you see; causes reader indifference.  People would be disinclined to keep up with the how and why of your climactic battle if they know it's just an excuse for another 20 page diversion into how much the emperor loves to rub himself off on the lower spines of miniaturized rat people.  Sometimes you need to step back and allow your characters some autonomy of will. It makes everything better.    

I Remember

As I recall it was either late fall or early winter.  I know it was Sunday night because I was at O'Rourke's having one of their cheap but serviceable bloody Mary's.  This is not a ritual of mine per se but rather something I may or may not do based on being truly hungover and especially if I had something savory or spicy for dinner that day.  Anyway I was here in this day smoking in the streetfront cube where I met a man who'd come up from Texas for some kind of contract work.  He saw me drinking alone and accosted me for rambling Texas banter.  I told him that I noticed the distinct Texan of his accent and he replied rather defensively that 'it's Southern!'  I suggested otherwise at no point at all though I meant that I had his accent pegged for north Texas/Oklahoma in particular; Southern watered down by Great Plains flatcent influences. 

He made a point of hitting on the blond pony-tailed waitress at O'Rourke's; the quiet one with the probable husband/boyfriend who works at the Zoo.  I've 'known' her for near a decade now and I've may have heard her name before or maybe not as I'm quiet too.  Anyway he clearly made her uncomfortable though she must have built some protective callus against such jackassitude by now. Eventually I managed to not-too-roughly get away from him myself; and while I know it's wrong to stereotype anyone; even when it comes to assuming that all white Texans are loutish obnoxious dudebros; the fact remains that this particular one.....

Well I guess he caused no real harm.

Knuckleheads to Dine at South Lincoln Eatery

I'm of two minds about this.  On the one hand I suppose that; for so long as private gun ownership is going to be widespread and there are going to be those who insist on taking their guns everywhere, that open-carry is preferable to conceal-carry.  It's struck me that the recent trend of concealed-carry laws do nothing to advance 'gun rights' per se; not even by the most absolutist interpretation of the 2nd amendment, but rather were carried out so that gun fetishists could be reassured by social authorities that gun ownership was socially normative, and that furthermore white rural culture, or rather an idealized fantasy of it, was the eternal American archetype. So yes, if you're going to tote your gun around, please keep it in the open so that I'll know.  It's not as if I was going to piss on your alfredo or anything like that anyway.

Yet at the same time I found myself stricken by this organization's ground rules for the open carry dinner.   "no camouflage or all-black clothing -- keep guns holstered and not bring rifles or drink alcohol." 

I'll be careful to not equate legal gun owners with terrorists here.  Still I'd say that if one deliberately dresses himself 'like a terrorist'; camouflage, ski mask, flag or banner proclaiming the Great Cause of whatever, and of course big-ass gun cradled like an infant, a deliberate intent to intimidate others would be rather obvious and challenged by no one, least of all Short-Fusey himself.  If this group wants to present wearing a gun in public as innately non-threatening, as seems to be the case; then why acknowledge that certain sartorial choices are understood as intended to frighten while asserting that openly wearing artery-shredding weapons carry no such implication.  Why not rifles anyway?  Why not alcohol anyway?  It's true that drinking any amount at all while handling a lethal weapon is bad and banning such a thing within any shooting group is a very basic measure of good sense.  Still if you forbid drinking while carrying, as of course you should; then why go to a restaurant.  I don't like restaurants myself.  I dislike being confined in a space where I'm expected to converse for minutes or even hours on end.  Still I understand that the pleasure that people get from having booze served to them while they eat, (whatever that pleasure is) is a primary reason for why people go to restaurants.   

It comes down again to an imagined and insecure need to be the American Prototype felt by people who know deep down that they are no such thing and that there is no such thing.  People have always gone to restaurants to get mildly buzzed while they get full.  Bringing one's gun to Chez XYZ's has always been understood as a foolish thing to do and had never been common.  And just as the manly-ass old west had much stricter gun control than we do today these people must know that there is no American birthright to be an evil-slaying knight-errant and that no generation of American men has ever been or wanted to be such a thing.  Still I hope they enjoy their dinner at this HF Crave, whatever sort of place that foreign south end establishment might be. 

I Have This Neighbor

Today he informed me that he 'smokes weed every day and tells the cops to kiss my ass.'  The man is an ex-con with arms and body entirely covered by tattoos and three pit bulls.  Not to indulge in stereotypes but if you saw this man you would know without a doubt that he does indeed smoke weed every day and tells the cops to kiss his ass; and good for him so far as that goes. 

He also passes out in his yard from time to time; which is ok for so long as it's still warm and he keeps it to his own yard.  He argues with out Middle Eastern neighbors quite a bit too; which is rather less admirable though it is mostly confined to tiffs over lawn mowing and such.  Mostly. 

It's Been Awhile Since I've Been East

I do believe I'll be travelling to New York and Washington this Fall.  I have family and other people I know there and anyway; I'd like to spend a part of Autumn in cities too large to care about college football for a change.  Also there's the fact that Ernie and the unicam won't be back the work until midwinter and I've never seen a Congressional debate, or Walt Whitman's birthplace, or President Kennedy's grave.  Yes I do believe that this shall happen. 

Govenor Heineman is Not one of Those Dishonest Politicians.

I say this not to praise him mind; at the utilitarian level it would be much better for us if he were.  A deliberate con man must at least be able to think practically, strategically, situationally.  A con man could not get away with seeing himself and his own as too cosmically pure and good to ever need to think this way.

As it is Dave Heineman is indeed acting in an honest matter.  He does indeed honestly speak as he imagines it to be.  He is honestly convinced that people like himself are just better than everyone else; intrinsically cleaner, morally purer, more manly; that only landowners and good solid businessmen can possibly have any good fatherly wisdom of value to others and should therefore have exclusive social control, that the cartoon vision of white rural Nebraskan life and true doctrinaire Republican conservatism is the instinctive default of all decent people; while most of humanity on the other hand, the great galaxy of every kind of outsider, is most decidedly indecent in all the most fantastic ways one can think of. 

And on one specific point of governance I'm sure that Heineman believes quite sincerely that undue empathy for criminals is the only true problem a legal system could ever possibly have.  We have indeed suffered from horrific  failures from our security state recently, and I'd presume to say that it should be quite clear to those of clear eyes that these failures are primarily the result of underfunding and overcrowding, not by any sort of fuzzy-heartedness.  The governor and others could be addressing this problem by say, reforming our drug laws to something within the realm of sanity.  Or failing this, if one insists upon incarcerating our neighbors at the current extreme degree, then at least to fund the prison system at the level it would necessarily require for such Sisyphean work.

But of course we shall get none of this from to soon-to-be-departing Heineman.  Heineman "knows" that taxing and spending are always bad because they are bad because all the good and proper people say so.  At the same time he honestly believes that society is best served by keeping all those Dirty Other People under lock & heel as commonly as possible by as many pretenses as one can think of. 

Give me an old urban machine man if this is the alternative.  If forced to choose I would happily take a slick-talking dirty dealer over a blindfolded straight-shooter any day. 

Part Polish.....

Among other things, and not much, but anyway while Poland can no longer claim to be "surrounded" by enemies per se; (they're getting along with the Germans now, more or less.)  It does have one potential enemy to its immediate east; one that you may have heard about either in the past or just over the weekend, and one of considerably more power & potency than the repressed dress-up loving shitheads of Hezbollah, Hamas, et. al.

Now one is of course a NATO member, and as such a legally declared all for one/one for all friend and ally of the United States.  It is also true that, like many ethnic groups ,the Poles have managed to survive as a people in spite of a history that  often than not is tragically brutal;  filled with the most truly apocalyptic violence, suffering, deprivation and repression and still "we" live on.  More than this the Polish people, both in the old country in among the US diaspora, have earned a soft spot in the hearts of many here for our general warmth, love of family, and might I say wry intelligent wit. 

Still I for one would never be so fool as suggest that the United States has a sacred honor-bound duty to always take the Polish government's side in all disputes forever.  I would never suggest that it was not just a matter of American patriotism, but the only true American Patriotism, to defer to Polish foreign policy prerogatives as it they were the larger stronger and more powerful patron of us.  Why I even mention that I would never suggest such things I don't know; because of course it's beyond fantastic and I know I'm tipping at a strawman here.  It's frankly impossible to imagine anyone suggesting such a thing out loud now isn't it?  The greatest barstool jingoist on the Great Plains would give a great drunken-belly laugh upon hearing such an obviously stupid proposal, and as for such wretched nonsense ever being taken seriously by anyone in the halls of government;You'll sooner live to see someone run for Senate on a platform of mandatory public gonorrhea and win.  

I am only human dear reader.  In the future soon I hope to address actual bad ideas that actual functioning-if-misguided people could ever possibly have.  As for now you have my thanks for indulging me and my apologies for having wasted your time.  Good day now. 

Today I Have Nothing for You :-(

I do of course offer my sympathies to the victims and families of MH flight 17.  There seems to be, at least so far, some deliberate malice here; of course it makes the situation no better or worse if there is or not.  Fuck death. 

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Still for those of us still alive in comfortable non-war zones there is nothing to do except to feel the pleasure that the dead cannot feel anymore.  And it is, after all, 90's rock season.  So here y'all go:

Remembering

I had a friend in Junior High who was not a bully himself, but who sometimes did identify with and smile at the abuse heaped on designated outsiders by bullies.  He would commonly insist that "the rules", the junior high rules, for how to dress, how to interact with girls, what music to listen to and how, were the indisputable truth indisputably universal and most of all indisputably important.  I my part would generally disagree though in a knee-jerk way and not especially well.  I was not cool per se.  I was smart but more '14 smart'; blindly contrarian, an empty Trapper-Keeper sort of rebel. 

Looking back now I realize that my friend believed that THE RULES OF BEING COOL IN JUNIOR HIGH were both universally mandated and of great cosmic importance because he was in Junior High and of course he was of great universal importance. So in exploring the link between childhood bullying and adult bigotry-authoritarianism; well that is a thing right now and also rather fraught, so maybe I won't attempt something so grand as that right now. 

And yet, to hear something like the tired 'football vs. football' debates or any sport vs. sport debate, one gets the sense that their our athletes and coaches who need to believe that their particular games have exceptional powers of measuring moral fiber in order to justify their own hard work, along with fans who fear they'd be exposed as damned fools, (Which is what we sports fans are fully aware of being deep down) if the games we've invested our emotions in did. not have such powers of moral detection.

At the social level there may be those afraid that if; for example, white rural/suburban US culture is not Just Better than everything else in all details great and small, that is there is no inherent harm in that culture being altered by integration, immigration, the whole galaxy of liberalizing social forces, than their own identities are lies and that the great amount of work put into being responsible & conscientious solid citizens was a life-long waste.  In one's apocalyptic raving about Kids these Days or Welfare or Those People taking over there may be a protest-too-much woundedness in having invested oneself deeply in living "The Good Life" only to be blithely told by some liberal do-gooder that actually there is no "The Good Life."

Though again, I attempt nothing so grand as all that.     

Update: Real Americans Sleep with who They Lie With

The Justice department is sending a single member of the oh-so-menacing "Community Relations Service" to look into the Norfolk parade shit-headedness.  Doug Powers of Michelle Malkins website has bravely rode to the rescue.*

Just to give you some further idea of what sort of people are white knighting this thing the last post from Malkin herself was this pathetic piece of petty lameness   which attacked a perfectly neutral observation from Michael Bloomberg that Colorado is extremely wide-open compared to the Northeast.  Of course this perfectly neutral observation does have the seeming benefit of being completely true.  From the flip side I remember being shocked by "suburbs" 30 miles from the core of New York or Chicago having the same density level of midtown Omaha or Denver.  Yet apparently to point out that Western cities aren't quite as city as Eastern ones, as has been observed many times by many people over many years, is in itself to condemn the Westerners as hopeless Yahoos. Malkin knows this.  She's on "our" side and she's coming to our rescue.  She goes on an epic spiel about how New York is a terrible hellhole and how Coloradoans are godly pro-gun who love America too much to hold anything but hatred for America's primate city.

This dishonesty here is just too damned obvious for even Ms. Terrorist Scarf.  I realize the conceit of outrage being its own proof of strength & courage is Malkin's entire 'thing'.  It's what she does for a living; it is who she is.  Still if one feels the need to lick  residue from the bag to get their fix they should at least find a place to do so privately. It is simply untoward to fein all out in public like that.  If the true-blue conservatives of Northeast Nebraska feel the need for outside help from this so-called "attack" then even they must surely have too much pride to accept it from the likes of this.   




(*For some reason Powers takes pains to point out that it is "Eric Holder's Justice Department; which it indeed is for now;  and if Holder and his Suede Denim secret feds were indeed consciously evil that would indeed be a hell of a problem for all of us.  Still the real trouble with villainy are the material effects of villainy, the villains themselves are mere vehicles.  So to pointedly call it "Eric Holder's Justice Deparment" is... well I don't know.  It's almost as if Powers is catering to a crowd more interested in having cults of anti-personality to hiss at,  and so attain a cartoonish sense of heroism, than they are in honestly assessing actual threats to the nation's well-being.)

Governor Wants to know Where The Innocent Refugees Are Hiding

Or; just to be fair on magic phraseology; where the ILLEGALS, ILLEGALS, ILLEGALS, ILLEGALS are hiding!
 
 The answer governor, is everywhere, all around you, staring at you through your window at all times.  Just three blocks from your house; at what used to be a nice solid White owned cornor Those People congregate along with all the other riff-raff who ought to be locked up.  There we wait.  There we congregate and wait for you to close your eyes and sleep.  Bwahahahaahahaaha!

Lost Track of the News Abit While Away

I saw or heard nothing about this until several days after; and to tell the truth this is one liberal who finds it a bit eye-rolling but not shockingly evil.  Norfolk could be said to be a bit more 'perfectly' Republican than the Platte Valley hubs of similar size; slightly more self-righteous and 'bougie' if you will but only by subtle degrees.  I suppose it is a bit disturbing that a community could be so politically monochrome that this can be done in a parade before the general public with all reasonable expectation of unchallenged approval; but then it's also true that I myself rarely associate with anyone other than hipster/bohemianradical/humanist/witches etc. 


As for the racial element; well it's there and it's fucking bad, no question about it. Still there's nothing to be done for it except disapprove, as is being done, and let the people of Norfolk deal with our disapproval however they will.  Do they want to be a part of the wider society or see themselves as pure Superamericans living above the general society and beyond our right to disapprove?  It's their ball. 

In My Mother's House There Were Too Many People

My sister has moved back in with our parents temporarily, and my aunt was there for a time' along with my little cousin Abby who was in North Platte for the summer to establish Nebraska residency so she could get a driver's license then she could in Sacramento.  Her father (my cousin Aaron) is a Union Pacific rail man there who speaks of moving back to Nebraska permanently.  He doesn't like queer people non anglophones or 'hippies'.  He is simply not a California guy.  My aunt is waiting for the city of Greeley, Co to pay for the bullet hole in her car from this incident;  and also for the cost of cleaning off the bloody hand smears.         

In addition to the human menagerie were the three dogs, one of them a new one; a year-old rescue who was abandoned at an interstate rest stop in winter.  Why anybody ever does such a thing I've no clue.  Write 'PUPPY 10$' on a piece of cardboard drive to a big box parking lot and wait. No more inconvenient for you than that. 

I slept on a military cot of my fathers that was apparently much older than I am. He was in intensive care for  Hyperkylemia.   5-hour energies nearly killed him.    But overall the 4th of July was a godd time.  

Comparatively Speaking

Lincoln is both "liberal"  by Nebraska standards and rather conservative and staid by college town standards.  By most normal measures, inasmuch as there are such things, the capital is very much a Peoria; slightly Democratic leaning at about the same rate as the nation at large; with ratios of rich-to-poor; white-to-minority etc. also lining up pretty cleanly with the national mean. 

This story is not about Lincoln politics per se,  it's about the slightly less doomed than usual Dem candidate for governor choosing a Lincoln area pol for his running mate.  Still the chair of the state GOP felt the need to say that this running mate, Jane Raybould, represented the 'liberal ideals of Lincoln."   (The Republican chair is himself a Lincolnite; unless he's a south of Hwy 2 man, in which case not really, as I'm sure we'd both agree.)

I am well and truly heartened by this language.  It falls well short of the outright hatred expressed towards coastal cities or President Obama's Chicago;  still one can be assured that her city is "making it" as a good place to live if it is being otherized by rural/suburban right wing conformists. It's a sign of Lincoln and Omaha gradually becoming fairly substantial Democratic strongholds, real threats to a Republican reign over Nebraska that GOP officials; from the governor on down, will tell you in plain sincerity they consider to be a moral entitlement.   When "People's Republic of Lincoln" becomes a common truck stop dig; and the day is coming soon when it will be, that's when we'll know for sure that our city has upped its game from a nice peaceful and serene place to live to an downright badass to live.  The Onion A.V. Club shall be coming to test our pizzas any day now. 

This One Time Under the Sea

The original cut of "Thelma and Louise" was twelve hours long, with the last ten consisting of Thelma still alive though impaled on some piece of Corvette at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, bleeding to death at an imperceptibly slow rate, though not so slow that she doesn't feel colder than human words can describe once the sun goes down; a perfect and absolute dark with not even the undifferentiated gore that used to be Louise to look upon anymore.  Eventually the coyotes come; not a pack of coyotes mind because there's no such thing.  Coyotes are solitary beasts though these ones did eventually reach a rough agreement for each one to snatch itself a small piece of fresh Thelma and then scurry off to wait its turn again.  It's all very Herzogian. 

Once Upon a Time

I had this friend in my adolescence; dead now, overdosed in a Norfolk, Ne hotel room when he was 25.   Anyhow he had this way of looking at photos from the mid-20th century and remarking how everything was so much brighter back then, happier back then, the skies were not as bright now (the 1990's) because we were in darker times, unhappier times.  He had convinced himself that we were approaching the Christianish end-times.  He had a an overriding fascination with Satanism the occult and their secret massive powers over society. 

I knew it was bullshit myself, though I still humored him and enjoyed his company.  I knew it was a simple matter of cameras back then exaggerating brightness or something like that.  I actually listened to the words of "Kodachrome" after all.  Already I knew it was Paul Simon's best solo jam though I was not yet familiar with his whole catalogue. 

My friend lived with his grandmother at any rate.  He could have asked her at any old time if the skies were really brighter in the 60's.  But he didn't.  He knew it was an illusion deep down, or perhaps not all that deep.  He liked the idea of the world going to shit so rapidly as to effect the atmosphere within a human lifetime. As still-children then it was very much our world more than anyone else's and yet still he liked the idea of his world becoming so demonically awful.  Whatever he got out of this I couldn't tell you.  It does seem obvious, in retrospect, that he sincerely did find existence in this world to be disappointing; his own end-times would indeed be coming soon after all.  His grandmother is in her hundreds and still lives.  I wouldn't guess that she likes it very much.  I doubt that anyone much enjoys being over 100 very much at all.  She simply isn't ready to end the world yet. 

Not Hungover Per Se

But I am hoping that the sun doesn't come out with full mid-afternoon force just today and that the clouds remain till at least twilight.  There is no soccer today and it is a quiet time.  I've neglected the spring/summer exhibits at the art museum here and I should probably go.  I might get frisky and have a bloody mary today though I'd honestly prefer an iced tea instead.  I might need to "break up" with a woman I've been involvedwith and would rather not be but that's really not here or there. 

This is my friend Travis getting his mildly cyberpunk dudebro thing on in California.  This is of no sociopolitical value to anything whatsoever. 

This is what I've been listening to a great deal since the warm season began:

And this is who I've been reading these past few weeks.

That's all there is to blow son. 

I'm Not One of Those who Thinks Rap is Required to be "Hard"

I would certainly never think that "true" rap music must necessarily be cartoonishly sexist, homophobic, or gleeful about the artist's imaginary mass murders.  And of course it's far past the point where anyone thinks that a "real" rapper cannot be white. 

Having said all that; fuck Macklemore/ Ryan Lewis and their bland, air-puffed, daytime talkshow moralizing dead-eyed flavorless pablum excuse for music.  Christ.  In case you're wondering what I find wrong about their shit; here's what's right about it.....

Any questions?