Saturday, December 28, 2013
I Need a DVD Player
Mainly I've been watching the 'Breaking Bad' marathon on AMC this weekend. Today I noticed for the first time that the character of Jane, Jesse's first dead girlfriend, is to the very day exactly the same age as I am. You can watch the vomit-choke/plane crash episode for yourself to find out exactly when that is. :-) Personally I've tried most everything myself but never have danced with needles; not to claim exceptional wisdom for that but here I am alive enough to type this right now. It was a tingly existential moment that one.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
My Mother is a Liquor Store Manager
For Christmas I got one hundred dollars and a bottle of Wild Turkey 101. It is exactly what I would have asked for if I were the kind to be gauche enough.
A freak warm front moved onto the plains today, as happens from time to time over the winter, especially in the more unstable west. Temps in the lower fifties Fahrenheit. Earlier I took a hike to the southwest of North Platte, saw the lower South Platte valley and the hills beyond in all their starkness and felt renewed. Once you reach the edge of this town, at 24,000 people the largest settlement in a hundred mile radius, the sudden change to frontier openness really is quite stark. On South River Road I could have sworn that I heard a distressed fly.
A freak warm front moved onto the plains today, as happens from time to time over the winter, especially in the more unstable west. Temps in the lower fifties Fahrenheit. Earlier I took a hike to the southwest of North Platte, saw the lower South Platte valley and the hills beyond in all their starkness and felt renewed. Once you reach the edge of this town, at 24,000 people the largest settlement in a hundred mile radius, the sudden change to frontier openness really is quite stark. On South River Road I could have sworn that I heard a distressed fly.
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
FC top 10
1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Liverpool
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Arsenal
9. Roma
10. Raja Casablanca
2. Barcelona
3. Paris St. Germain
4. Liverpool
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Arsenal
9. Roma
10. Raja Casablanca
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Hippies Get A Bum Rap Bill Jack
As a contemporary boho/lefty of course I would think so. Hippies and mid-6o's to mid-70's culture in general get a bum rap. (Either that or glorified as having invented rebellion and fun out of thin air, but that's another story.) It was no radical break from American traditions that came before, quite the opposite. And it is simply inaccurate to describe the flower children as hopeless utopian dreamers. They were in the main as perfectly well-versed in political theory, 'realism' and the art of the possible as anyone else.
On the other hand, there was Billy Jack.
......................Yeah, the whole seven hours or so of three Billy Jack films committed to film are more or less like this, in fact generally worse. No, no group of Native Americans have ever had themselves repeatedly injected with venom for inspirations sake. You're smart people, I'm sure you knew that.
At any rate the White Indian Jesus seen above, Tom Laughlin, died last Thursday at the age of 82, still planning to get around to a new Billy Jack sequel that would, in its own special way, deal with the War on Terror, police militarization in the drug war etc any day now.
But though it is right and just that we despair the loss of a brother we should should despair not the death of his work. Steven Seagal has been making all the Billy Jack sequels fit to can for twenty five years now. The spiritual parentage between Tom and Steve is clear in how both make action movies from a left-wing point of view: anti-corporate and anti-security state, instead of the more typically rightist 'punish bad guys and kill the foreign devils' bent of such film. Seagal and Laughlin are also linked by a sympathetic but wincingly exoticized view of Native Americans (So Spiritual! So close to the land!) and most importantly by a hilariously earnest and wrong-headed messianic sense of self.
Seagal's "On Deadly Ground", is the film that betrays his celluloid paternity more than any other. In this famed career-killing opus Seagal saves the environment by firebombing an up & pumping refinery and invited to address the Alaska state legislature as a reward, which is of course the same favor those fine people would happily grant any other left-wing terrorist.
Still, there's something about the tired look of a film still bleached by Southwestern sun that will always move my heart just a little bit more. For me the original Godfather is the only dope that will ever truly do. RIP half breed.
On the other hand, there was Billy Jack.
......................Yeah, the whole seven hours or so of three Billy Jack films committed to film are more or less like this, in fact generally worse. No, no group of Native Americans have ever had themselves repeatedly injected with venom for inspirations sake. You're smart people, I'm sure you knew that.
At any rate the White Indian Jesus seen above, Tom Laughlin, died last Thursday at the age of 82, still planning to get around to a new Billy Jack sequel that would, in its own special way, deal with the War on Terror, police militarization in the drug war etc any day now.
But though it is right and just that we despair the loss of a brother we should should despair not the death of his work. Steven Seagal has been making all the Billy Jack sequels fit to can for twenty five years now. The spiritual parentage between Tom and Steve is clear in how both make action movies from a left-wing point of view: anti-corporate and anti-security state, instead of the more typically rightist 'punish bad guys and kill the foreign devils' bent of such film. Seagal and Laughlin are also linked by a sympathetic but wincingly exoticized view of Native Americans (So Spiritual! So close to the land!) and most importantly by a hilariously earnest and wrong-headed messianic sense of self.
Seagal's "On Deadly Ground", is the film that betrays his celluloid paternity more than any other. In this famed career-killing opus Seagal saves the environment by firebombing an up & pumping refinery and invited to address the Alaska state legislature as a reward, which is of course the same favor those fine people would happily grant any other left-wing terrorist.
Still, there's something about the tired look of a film still bleached by Southwestern sun that will always move my heart just a little bit more. For me the original Godfather is the only dope that will ever truly do. RIP half breed.
Reminder
Internet trolls do not and shall never have shit on O.G. letter to the editor writers.
"The Lincoln Journal Star should be more insulting toward communists in general and show much more respect to the so-called wing nuts because the wing nuts who hate and distrust today's government on both sides of the political aisle may just be the ones who end up saving this country from bankruptcy, civil war and World War III. The cartoon is fascist because it portrays American capitalists in much the same way Nazi Germany portrayed Jews."
"The Lincoln Journal Star should be more insulting toward communists in general and show much more respect to the so-called wing nuts because the wing nuts who hate and distrust today's government on both sides of the political aisle may just be the ones who end up saving this country from bankruptcy, civil war and World War III. The cartoon is fascist because it portrays American capitalists in much the same way Nazi Germany portrayed Jews."
Sunday, December 15, 2013
Today's Feature in the Sunday Omaha World Herald
Good old fashioned eugenics!
Nikko Jenkins is by all means a bad person. One who went on a killing spree after automatic release from prison for 'good behavior', made necessary to keep prison space open for I-80 weed smugglers and such so that small counties can pay their bills. Jenkins was caught after killing the wrong person, a West Omaha white woman who legally existed before the fact, which brings us to where we are today. But none of this remotely excuses the OWH's ritual shaming of 'Those People'. This is nothing but Zenith style roll up the sidewalk prig thuggery in three parts.
Nikko Jenkins is by all means a bad person. One who went on a killing spree after automatic release from prison for 'good behavior', made necessary to keep prison space open for I-80 weed smugglers and such so that small counties can pay their bills. Jenkins was caught after killing the wrong person, a West Omaha white woman who legally existed before the fact, which brings us to where we are today. But none of this remotely excuses the OWH's ritual shaming of 'Those People'. This is nothing but Zenith style roll up the sidewalk prig thuggery in three parts.
FC top 10
1. Bayern Munich
2. Barcelona
3. Arsenal
4. Paris St. Germain
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Chelsea
9. Roma
10. Real Madrid
2. Barcelona
3. Arsenal
4. Paris St. Germain
5. Atletico Madrid
6. Cruziero
7. Juventus
8. Chelsea
9. Roma
10. Real Madrid
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