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3/29/02
An eighteen year old girl blows herself up at the supermarket.  It sounds absurd, but I guess she's lived 18 years under Israeli oppression, perhaps had no family left alive and certainly had no counselors to help her sort out her savage, seemingly meaningless existence of suffering in the desert.
I thought I might illustrate with a picture an 18 year old girl, but realized typing "18 year old girl" into a search engine isn't going to lead to anything worthwhile.  Since I'm not going to easily find a picture (a decent, moral picture) just imagine Brittany Spears blowing herself to bits or better yet imagine her donating 90% of her multi-millions to ease suffering on the West Bank.  Shit, I'm sure the bitch would rather blow herself to bloody streamers of gore than part with any money in the name of easing unnecessary human misery, and this is the world we allow to exist.  On the one hand a young woman driven to such desperation as to strike out at her supposed enemy (Israeli grocery shoppers, I guess) by taking her own life and on the other hand a young woman driven to such desperation as to assault the public with her talentless stripper like stage theatrics.  I'll give the next Palestinian girl who wants to be a suicide bomber a clue, you're real enemy has nothing to do with people at the super market, but rather, people who pay others to go to the supermarket for them.  Give Brittany Spears a hug and light the fuse.

Just a bit of speculative nonsense:
I saw the preview for Attack of the Clones, the one that aired first on FOX, and the immediate punch in the gut I got from the preview was simply from a line of dialogue that said they had to give the chancellor (future emporer) emergency powers to protect the republic.  It's hard not to think of George.

3/28/02
The entire morning has slipped me by as I've sat here reading depressing and unsettling news story after news story.  And now with tales of Aflotoxin infected livers, suicide bombers, Iraqi nuclear capacity, failing peace negotiations and the crumbling of the last remnants of U.S. credibility in the Middle East, especially as peace negotiators, I must write record reviews for a half dozen bands who are going to find themselves the recipients of harsh and malicious words railing against their feeble attempts at musicianship, songwriting, lyricism and vain uninspired artistry.  That's how it goes with me; you best not catch me reviewing your band on a bad news day, and by those standards if you want a good review you'll have to wait until the Middle East runs out of oil and the United States no longer gives a bullet in the heads worth of interest in these religion blinded hicks. 
Secular democracy for all; Allah, Jehovah and Jesus for none!
3/27/02
I rented Ghost World last night and watched it again for the first time since seeing it in theaters and this time through I fell in love with the opening number Thora Birch is dancing along with on her television.  The band playing has "Ted Lyons & His Cubs" written on the bass drum, but a quick googling of "ted lyons" and "his cubs" set me right on my path to truth and a search for 1960's Indian pop music.  Tomorrow I'll take my search into the real world by walking down to the corner 7/11 and asking the clerk where one might go to buy popular Hindi music from the mid-60's, in particular the works of Mohd Rafi.  I don't know why, but I have a gut feeling the clerk will know the answer to that one.
I feel I'm being a tad frivolous for the past couple days with my global concerns narrowed down in writing to moths and Mohd.  Honestly, I still have no love for the government, but I'm currently feeling resigned to the inevitable destruction the world is facing due to the avarice of the world's richest 1% and those who use all their political might to insure that 1% stays at the top.  Yup, resigned.  Just like a peasant farmer when Stalin rolls into town.  Just like a German in the 1930's.  Just like anyone who would rather bury themselves in the minutiae of their own lives so they don't have to speak up or bother helping others.  Yup, I'm resigned and in my resignation I will fill my time with TV.  TV like, tonight's episode of Enterprise where the fearless crew encounters the Ferengi. 
What a minute.  But aren't the Ferengi not encountered until two hundred years later by Captain Jean-luc Picard and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D?  The implications of this much earlier encounter to the space-time continuum are indeed staggering and highly illogical.  Ferengi belong in the 24th century, not the 22nd.  Worst episode ever!
Note: In my haste to detail the plight of the moths and I, I forgot to note the most significant event of this past Sunday.  It was a question that had been battling in my mind for a clear answer for many years and now, finally, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has given me an absolute and determinate end to my quandary.  Ron Howard really is a superior and more skillful director than Peter Jackson and David Lynch.  Maybe even combined.

I'd like to thank the Academy for their decisiveness in this matter.
03/26/02

The dried food stuffs of my kitchen have become an endless, unstoppable breeding ground for gray winged moths.  The fluttery bastards are every where.  First it was Argentinean ants, now it's Indian moths.  Doesn't any insect living in L.A. actually come from here?  Probably not, just like its people.
For how often I complain about insect infestations you'd think I was living in a dank root cellar or wading through ankle deep piles of refuse, but that's not the case.  I'm quite sanitary.  I'm sure I could be even more so, but life as they say is too short for excessive sterilization.  For me, I want just enough sterilization to get by in the world and that includes, but is not limited to the complete wiping down, scouring and chemical blasting of every vertical, horizontal, slanted and inverted surface in the kitchen.  These moths must cease their wanton destruction of my flour, cereal, dried fruits and nuts.  If I put the time into it and emptied out the food cabinets, toweled off all the canned goods and washed out the cupboards, then I'm certain the infestation of winged 30 to 50 egg-laying at a pop, larvae developing, silky-excreta dropping kitchen vermin would be reduced to nil. But I haven't taken the time to fight Rick's New War in the proper way.  Instead I kill by hand the strays that casually beat their crooked path through the air only to be swiped down by the great hand of god, thrown roughly to the ground and stepped upon.
It's my belief that the moths are psychically connected like a hive mind without a strong centralized governor of actions.  When one moth is smashed into a wall leaving behind it's final gray powdery streak of defiance, inevitably a second moth will fly out on a spastic ill-prepared kamikaze mission directly at my head which results in the second moth being batted from the sky, dashed to the floor and ground in mercilessly beneath 180 pounds of brute crushing force.  They are connected these moths.  Most likely they are horribly inbred after what must amount to nearly 100 moth generations of isolation from other moths of their kind.  Maybe they have new-blood missions where they go out seeking their moth version of Don Johnson and trap him in my kitchen to knock up all their moth broads, but I have my doubts about their organization skills in pulling off such a plot.  Rather, the advance states of inbreeding have created a singular unity of mind in which one moth feels the death of his brother and reacts in futile vengeance to what is deemed through moth eyes as an unjust attack on their freedom and carefree peace loving ways.  For one hundred generations they have known only the terror of constant warfare and it is unlikely they will ever know anything more.
03/22/02

American Patriot Registration!  Do it now or suffer the consequences of another rousing round of "Let the Eagle Soar."
This link goes out to... The Juggler.

Here's a review of the new Cannibal Corpse.


 

Cannibal Corpse
"Gore Obsessed"
(Metal Blade)

Long time fans of Cannibal Corpse know about the band's obsession with the 1960's teenage pop recording artist, Leslie Gore, and this is Cannibal Corpses tribute to the lovely Ms. Gore and her eleven, count them, eleven, top forty hits she recorded before the tender of age of 21.  Cannibal Corpse's newest "Gore Obsessed" relives those fun-filled top forty days of the mid to late sixties with covers of all eleven of Ms. Gore's top forty hits.  Some of the highlights from "Gore Obsessed" include, "It's My Party," "Judy's Turn To Cry," "You Don't Own Me," "That's The Way Boy's Are," "My Town, My Guy, & Me" and the classic, rip-roaring, "Sunshine, Lollipops, & Rainbows."  Cannibal Corpse's faithful and straight faced covers of Leslie Gore's late 60's hits may leave some of their fans in the lurch, but I am certain their brave and bold move will pick up legions of new fans.  Vocalist, George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher said, "It's difficult for us when we tour, having been banned from Australia, New Zealand and Korea, and with our album "Butchered at Birth" being outlawed in Germany we thought a change of pace might be in order.  Fans might not understand, but if they give it a real chance they'll discover Leslie Gore has a brutal intensity all her own."
Guitarist Jack Owen added, "German authorities have banned us from playing songs off our first three records so we thought it only fair to our German fans to beef up the reservoir of songs we can choose from when playing their shores.  But what I really want to know is why an American band can't play whatever the fuck they want in Germany?  We won that war in the name of freedom, so freedom would prevail, and now they're censoring us again.  Fucking Nazis."


03~21~02
And to think I used to actually enjoy this guy, really, until his politics came rolling obscenely out during the election fiasco of 2000 and his pro-war stance of 2001 through to the end of time and his anti-everyone in the Middle East except Israel platform.  Today on his site he posted a little essay whining about Michael Moore, and Mr. Moore's best selling new book, Stupid White Men.
Mr. Lileks begins like many others faced with a galling truth they are unwilling to accept by name calling. First, he tells his audience he thinks Moore is a "gasbag," then goes on to flesh out his gasbag/balloon metaphor by making a disparaging remark concerning Mike's genitals being "twisted in a tight little knot."  Hurray, name calling and little dick remarks all in the opening paragraph.  This is a great start to what most anyone can see will be a scintillating work of Republican satirical co-option, which I rudimentarily define as the majority in power attacking the minority, those with little political powers, through humor, supposed irony and outright lies enucleated in "harmless" japes.  When the majority does this they usually do little more than echo the information coming down the conduits from the large controlling media conglomerates that back and enforce the power of the hard-right because that's the way the media mergers can go on unchallenged and the way the presidents and CEOs of the large media conglomerates can maintain their power and their wealth and their near monopolistic control of the news.  Did I digress? Well, we'll put a stop to that right now.
Lileks continues his anti-Moore essay with a synopses of Stupid White Men that reads:
Moore’s book is “Stupid White Men,” a blistering indictment of fellow multimillionaires who behave in ways Mr. Moore finds objectionable. 
Of course, the way Mike's fellow multimillionaires behave in objectionable ways is by valuing dollars over human life, their own salaries over their workers and the power of the dollar to crush, kill and destroy the environment that stands in its path.  What Lileks objects to is Moore, the millionaire, criticizing other millionaires.  That's why he mentions Moore is a millionaire, that and to discredit everything Moore says and does.  You see, a millionaire speaking ill of other millionaires (and billionaires) is somehow, by default, a hypocrite regardless of how any of them earn or maintain their wealth. The not-so-fine differences between the politicians and corporate scalawags attacked by Moore are somehow not picked up by Lilek's acute sonar, but, of course, he doesn't want to read the book, but rather insult Moore and his online book tour diary.
**parenthetical aside** (I can't blame Lileks for not wanting to read Stupid White Men, but not for his reason of tiring of "[Moore's] cute little 'ain't I a stinker?' grin on his dust-jackets. It is a breezy, brisk read, and maybe a little too much so like the book was also written breezily and briskly as if by a 1950's sci-fi author attempting to pay the bills with his pen.  I enjoyed the heaps of facts, but I'm a bit too much a member of the choir and had already acquired most of the information elsewhere and made most of what passed off for jokes in Stupid White Men in coffee clutches and beer brigandages with friends.  But then again, it was Roger and Me that had a big to do with my political awakening, so it's a little chickeny/eggy isn't it?) **end parenthetical aside**
Once again, Lileks is uncomfortable with Moore's tone on his web diary, especially with this off-handed comment from Mike, "...it is already outrageous enough to be charging $24.95 for a book (a good way to keep the masses ignorant and not reading if there ever was one)."  James dislikes Mike's use of the word, "masses."  And here, in James' words, is why:
There’s Moore in a nutshell. We have “the masses,” that big doughy heap of sodden proles, heads bent from their daily lashing by The Man, blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey-navigated, and it goes on like this.
But then again, Mr. Lileks can't liken himself to these masses anymore than Moore does.  They're both authors, both well off, both married white men, both with a daughter and neither have to do real work anymore.  I mean, they both can live off their writing.  And I'm glad for both of them.  I enjoy both of them, despite my opening comment, and I am also glad I am able to enjoy them.  Forty-four million people in the U.S. are functional illiterates.  An estimated one-sixth of the world's total population is illiterate according to UNICEF and the UN places the percentage much higher at around 44%.  So, yes, even though the word "masses" may be objectionable to some in its broad categorization of the poor and dispossessed as one large lump sum it is hardly arguable that, when not being semantically pedantic, there are not illiterate masses.
Further objections to Mike's book tour diary  include Mike's detailing of the police raiding his book signing in San Diego.  Now, I'm sure "raiding" is a bit overly dramatic, but to assert that cops come in and threaten to arrest adults for violating a curfew that would have heedlessly passed if not for the call of a lone janitor to the police is ridiculous.  If Mike is guilty of hyperbole in describing the events of that night, then he can be excused.  As many people know when the cops arrive, calling for the end of any sort of gathering, it's frightening.  Why?  They have guns, know how to use them and can get away with murder.  Sure it ain't likely to happen, but neither is it likely for a guy from Flint, MI to become a multimillionaire by bad mouthing the policies of the auto industry.
As tiring as this is, I must go on.  Lileks lashes out with much to object too, and here I must do some rather liberal quoting.  When Moore says, "Motivation is key, with discontent providing that motivation," Lileks takes immediate objection on an unrelated harangue:
Discontent: the sign of a Serious Person. If you’re Deep and Real and Concerned with the way things are, you’re pissed off. Unless you’re angry about taxes, race-based government policies and the inefficiencies of the public education system, in which case you are an Angry White Male who has to pick gravel out of your knuckles every night. 
I can barely begin to state what's wrong with that.  To start, being angry about taxes:  I'm angry about taxes, the rich don't pay enough, sales tax is unjust to low income earners and now corporations that post profits in the billions of dollars pay no taxes or have the government pay them.  But I don't think that's why James Lileks is angry about taxes.  I don't know what to say about race-based government policies except they'd hardly be necessary if there were legal recourse under the constitution of the United States of America to sue for racial inequality in pay and hiring practices by way of something insanely progressive and liberal like the Equal Rights Amendment.  And what about public education?  Maybe it would be more effective if teachers were valued more, if education was shown to be even slightly valued on the government tax distribution sheets, but it ain't.  Teachers are paid worse than cops, schools are falling apart while brand new shiny precincts are being built, while anti-ballistic missile technology is being explored, while corporations are having billions of dollars retroactively returned to them thanks to George W.'s tax breaks and million dollar bombs blow up Afghanistanis.  There are many inefficiencies in the public education system, there are many ways to fix them and privatization, Mr. Bush, is not one of them.  Lileks' defense of "angry white males" is hardly a group that needs defending.  If you think you pay too much in taxes, then you've got it made, oh my brother.
One of the sources Lileks quotes frequently is a story with some quotes from Michael Moore in it recently published in the Arcata Eye newspaper.  The story, and some of Moore's quotes don't paint the nicest picture, especially some rather ineloquent and incendiary remarks Moore made concerning small businesses.
"If the small businesses suck they'll be driven out of business.  If they got a good restaurant, people will go there and eat. You know in my town the small businesses that everyone wanted to protect? They were the people that supported all the right-wing groups. They were the Republicans in the town, they were in the Kiwanas, the Chamber of Commerce - people that kept the town all white. The small hardware salesman, the small clothing store salespersons, Jesse the Barber who signed his name three different times on three different petitions to recall me from the school board. Fuck all these small businesses - fuck 'em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. Fuck 'em all. That's how I feel."
That's how Mike feels, but I can't say that's how I feel or even that it makes much sense.  I'll grant that Mike was extremely tired at the time he made those remarks, but that's not much of an excuse.  It's like hating all of the members of say, a particular racial group because one of that groups members once said your paintings showed a lack of personal style and your grasp of technique was lacking.  And small businesses don't always go out of business because they "suck," there are a variety of other reasons such as not being able to under sell the mighty corporate behemoth when they decide to under sell your small business at a short term negative profit margin in order to drive you out of business, thus eliminating competition so they can price fix.  That's one reason besides sucking.
I know this tirade set out with a vague thesis of undermining Lileks' screed on Moore and has taken somewhat of a turn but I never said I had to agree with either of them.  Lileks is wrong.  Moore is not a greedy gasbag more interested in his book sales than the causes for which he fights.  And Moore is wrong.  The chains should not uniformly and unanimously be brought in.  They should be monitored, grossly taxed at the corporate level and their numbers per square mile regulated to keep them under control.  It's for their own good too.  Unlimited expansion, history teaches us, leads to collapse.  I really don't think the same applies to the universe, however.  The universe simply expands until it expands no more, becomes cold and dies.  Like this essay, in conclusionless anti-climactic stagnation.

Moore for sale

Lileks for sale.


03~20~02
Jack In The Box fast food chain has been running an ad so nauseating it's hard for me to believe they're actually trying to sell food by airing the thing. 
The ad features their white hydrocephalic mascot cruising around in a sports car convertible while piquantly lamenting the recent hard times many Americans are facing due to the lapse (re: corporate hoarding of the wealth) in the economy.  That's why, Jack says, I've rolled out a slew of cheap meat for you meat eating guineas.  And they can deliver unto the starving masses cheap meat because the lagging economy isn't pulling down the Jack in the Box profits which had a  4.3 Percent Increase in First-Quarter Earnings.   But that's the way it is all over.  The corporations want the American public to believe we've hit hard times because if the masses believe the hard times are here and the profits are all dried up then they won't be asking for their share.  The eyes can be turned away from them as they ride off with their sacks full of loot in their Porsche convertibles and Bentleys leaving plenty of cheap road kill behind in their wake for their loyal, non-unionized work force. 
The Jack in the Box ad goes on to say that even though these hard times are supposedly upon us, and there's nothing left for the people after the CEOs and the politicians they sponsor take their fill that this is still the best gosh-darned country in the world because of our freedom loving, tree-hugging, chainsawing, meat-eating ways.  The ad jingoistically implies we, America, will overcome, but what I want to know is what, precisely, in America will overcome.  Will the will of the people, the cry of the poor, the hungry, those who can't afford insurance or a doctor or the medicine the doctor prescribes overcome or is it the continued will of the corporations, these American institutions and the ultimate perseverance of the value of a dollar over the value of life that will overcome?  What the fuck's it going to be Jack?  Either our nigger-bombing, meat-eating, chainsawing, energy consuming, environmentalist bashing ways continue and the rest of the world slowly but surely turns their hostile eyes our way for forcing them to live in squalor and suffering and join the Bin Ladens of the world to put an end to our greedy, self concerned ways or we end these ways ourselves, intelligently, without the loss of even more life and the piles of the smoking wreckage of our hateful ignorance.
And as if those things you call tacos are worth even close to a dollar!
03~13~02

This update is being written with no hope of it ever appearing online, at least not for the next month.  Today marks the one month anniversary of this website disappearing from the internet; a vanishing act more complete and total than the one the BUllSHit administration performed on the Bill of Rights.
What's been going on?  I've been trying (and that's it, just trying) to transfer this site's domain name from one company to another.  The "another" is register.com.  They seem like a decent lot of people, but I want to know why it took them a full month to tell me that I can't transfer an expired domain name?  How maddening.  I emailed them daily, phoned them on occasion and when it finally looked as if the record was going to be set straight and the planes would resume their regularly scheduled flights, bang! they drop the news on me that the transfer can't be done like an American Airline's Air Bus on Rock, Rock Rockaway Beach.
Maybe it's a good thing the website has been down for awhile.  It's allowed my thoughts free roaming without the constraint of fomenting them into words, sentences and actual cohesive ideas.  It's allowed my mind to wander off untethered into the wild lands of paranoia, persecution complexes, vaunted hyperbole, ungainly delusions and total persistent phobia of the current U.S. government and those who back what it does.  Our government is composed of blood and money thirsting caterers to the richest ten percent of the nation.  If you're poor, then you have no representation in the government.  And by poor I mean 90% of us.  Once again the rhetoric hides the truth, and the "war on terror" or "terrorism" is another code for a "war on the poor waged by the powerful monied class supported and fully backed by the power of the United States government."  And if you don't like it, they now have the power to take you away.  Without a high six figure per year salary in the United States you have very few rights, but you do still have some rights, but there's another but...  You have rights "in" the United States, but how easy is it for the government to extract you from the United States and take you to countries where you have no rights, not even from torture?  It's happening.  They're doing it to suspected terrorists and people suspected of having connections with terrorists.  And remember children, I once suspected Jeff Bridges of sneaking into my backyard and stealing my tomatoes on a nightly basis so take the word "suspect" in the broadest and most delusional sense of the word possible and I think you may have a notion of how the U.S. government thinks.  What the hell does that mean anyway?  "suspected of terrorist connections?"  Well, shit, George W. Bush had connections with the Taliban, a group waging political, religious and sexual terrorism on an entire country.  In fact George W. Bush supported their efforts with monetary contributions and aid to their unrecognized government of over $40 million dollars in 2001.  What if you had donated large sums of money and other aid packages to the Taliban in 2001 just months before September 11th?  Where would you be right now?  Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay?  Of course making connections between George W. Bush and terrorists isn't necessary since, with all due respect to his handlers and those doing the real thinking, George W. Bush is a terrorist, the most powerful terrorist the world has ever seen.  And it's my guess he's going to get more powerful.  Excuse me as I traipse off into a conspiracy theory because that's where I'm going.  The shadow government has been established.  Dick Cheney is rarely in Washington, D.C. and George does get out of town an awful lot too.  As the Enron scandal continues to erode the president's 80% approval rating, as he and his administration continue to ensconce themselves in secrecy and as Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT) whose mission it is to "take to task those groups and individuals who fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the war we are facing," fails in their militaristic propaganda campaign, the sentiment in America will turn.  The sentiment in America is turning.  The president's approval rating is falling faster than an American Airline's Air Bus on Rock, Rock... wait, I think I used that one already.  The very existence of AVOT is proof the administration and the hard right is fearing the reversal in public attitude towards America's new rampant militarism, but AVOT's own propaganda and forms of terrorism against those "who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first,'" won't hold out forever.  They even came up with a cool political stance: "Blame America First!"  Well, that's what I'm doing.  I'm blaming America and it's illegal and unjust occupiers of it's highest political positions.  I'm blaming those illegal occupants whose ranks include Bush, Cheney and all those in every cabinet position; they have given the corporations the power to dictate domestic and foreign policy, including America's New War, for their profits.  This is a class war with fronts both at home and abroad.  When George W. Bush gives a tax cut benefiting the wealthiest ten percent of this country, I'm Blaming America!  When George W. Bush grants the Taliban $43 million dollars to help fight the war on drugs, I'm Blaming America!  When George W. Bush orders the bombing of innocent women and children, I'm Blaming America!  When John Ashcroft writes and sings patriotic jingles, you bet your ass I'm Blaming America!  When Israelis kill palestinians, I'm Blaming America!  When oil companies determine domestic energy policy, I'm Blaming America!  When a non-violent, judicial coup overthrows the officially elected government, I'm Blaming this god trusting, corporate shoe shining, steak eating country of America!  And ain't no government agency going to convince me that I'm wrong.  And that is precisely what is too bad.  Remember, I'm still going on about my conspiracy theory.  When propaganda and domestic terror units like AVOT fail, then the Bush administration will have to go to their contingency plan, nuking D.C.  Originally the thought of the U.S. government nuking its own capitol seemed outlandish even to me, but on further consideration it's a completely logical plan for allowing the occupational forces that have seized the U.S. government to remain in power.  The Pentagon, under orders from the current presidential administration has developed plans to use nuclear weapons against China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Libya and Syria.  Bush has also ordered the development of smaller nuclear arms for deployment on the battlefield.  The support of the American people to use nuclear weapons in war won't hold up unless a nuclear weapon is used on the United States by "terrorists."  There is undeniable evidence linking George W. Bush as being the top supporter of the Taliban before September 11th so how far of a stretch is it to imagine the federal government, as run by him, as engaging in a plan of this sort?  The shadow government has been put on the ready; Bush and Cheney will be "thank the baby Jesus" out of D.C. at the time of the nuclear attack and that's all she wrote; the rest will be an unprecedented orgy of nukes abroad and mass domestic round-ups, arrests and executions, without due process, of political dissenters and poor people.
Sing about that, Ashcroft, you fuck.  I'm Blaming America; a country with a drunk at the wheel of a stolen car.
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