All her toys wore out

Poor chuckling is a hermit, at least a hermit wannabe. Many of my happiest times occurred when I was homeless, living in a tent or a Kombi in a desert, Sonoran or Saharan, or in the deep dark woods of Washington state. My dream for retirement is to go live in a beaten up Airstream parked in a mesquite grove somewhere in southern Arizona or northern Mexico. Unfortunately, my wife does not share that dream, but this is not about that.

It seems counterintuitive to many, but big cities can be good for the hermitic lifestyle. The ability to be alone and invisible in a crowd is one of the things I like best about New York. But as time progresses, I find myself being sucked inexorably into an ever more social world.

I am not a stay-at-home type hermit, not in the desert and certainly not in this city where home is not beautiful. The greatest thing about New York, from a hermit’s perspective, is that there is so much to do. Museums, zoos, botanic gardens, concerts, comedians, circuses, movies, dance, parades and plays. Something is always happening and a companion is rarely necessary.

Chuckling goes regularly to many of these entertainments, I am especially fond of Circus Amok and the Mermaid Day Parade, but to some, such as theater, not nearly enough. One of the advantages of my increasing entanglements with the social lives of others, in conjunction with living in New York, is that I am now regularly invited to events in which people I know are participants. More and more, I am asked to attend the concerts, art openings, seminars, sketch comedies, and plays of friends and acquaintances. For example, although I like going to the theater “in theory,” in practice I don’t go very often. So it is nice when an acquaintance, no matter how slight, suggests I attend some kind of event that I normally would not. It provides that necessary nudge.

Thus it was that I saw the off off Broadway play Los Angeles last night in a small theater in Tribeca.

The worst thing about the play was the location. Tribeca is one of wealthiest zip codes in the United States and the bars suck accordingly. The night was bitterly cold and windy, we had an hour to kill, so we went to the bar nearest the theater, which was one of the crappiest drinking establishments I’ve ever had the misfortune to visit. The decor was fine, a typical New York bar with low, interesting lighting, exposed brick walls, and street punkish art on the walls. But the crowd was the biggest bunch of dweebs you’ll ever find outside of an exclusive country club. Most guys were dressed in some variation of white pants and a pink polo shirt with blue horizontal stripes, a scene I’d thought unimaginable in New York. From the snatches of conversation I heard, I gathered that most of them worked in the television or film industries. There was one guy that I’ve seen regularly on television, but I can’t quite find the name to go with the face. But I think most of them must have worked in marketing or administration. They did not seem like a particularly creative bunch. Early nineties rap was blasting from the sound system. Periodically, a good chunk of the crowd would throw their hands up and go “woooo” when a new song came on. Guys in yellow polo shirts singing “insane in the membrane” is truly a sight to behold. It reminded me so much of Michael Bolton in Office Space. On a lot of nights I would have enjoyed the scene, from an anthropological perspective you understand, but the bartender “jiggered” me and the drinks were expensive. Mercifully, time passed and we walked back around the corner to the theater.

I enjoyed the play. We get so used to seeing two dimensional characters with perfect makeup and airbrushed bodies on a screen that its shocking to experience the presence of real humans with all of their dynamism and imperfections. We were sitting in the second row, which in this particular theater was the back row, so the physicality of the actors was immediate. I say it all the time, but I really do have to get out to more live theater. It’s an entirely different experience.

Perhaps it’s because I go so rarely that I am able, for the most part, to turn off my inner critic and just enjoy the experience. But not entirely. In this case, I recognized the story immediately and was able to predict its arc a few minutes into the first scene. A young couple wants to get out of their hometown and make it big in Los Angeles. It’s obvious that she’s a head case. Hmmmm, I wondered, what would happen? Downward spiral of sex and drugs perhaps?

Of course at this late stage in human society, every story has already been told. The question is not if it has been told, but how it’s being told. What, if anything, makes it stand out. The acting? Direction, lighting, staging? All of those were fine in Los Angeles. As an inexperienced theater-goer, I always find that the actors over-act, but I guess that’s just a part of the theater, the necessity to project emotions out into a crowd. Film permits a lot more subtlety.

The lighting and stage direction were fine. For the most part, I didn’t notice them, which I count as being well done. I was very impressed with the artistry of the final fade out, Perhaps it was a common trick that they do in all plays and I’m just a rube, but the good part of being a rube in that sense is that there is so much more in life to enjoy.

What truly separated Los Angeles from its hackneyed story, for me at least, were the musical interludes. One of the main characters is a singer who appears during scene transitions, which really helps move the play along. She has a good voice and stage presence and the music fits well with the narrative. I’d give a thought here and there to the significance of her presence, but it wasn’t until the end that I had some ideas about it. There was one point where I thought she might be the Angel of Death a la Jessica Lange in All that Jazz, which kind of bummed me out because its been done. Then there was another point where I thought she might represent a guardian angel, which bummed me out for its hokeyness. But ultimately, my inner critic stayed in the background and I was able to enjoy the show.

The last scene did leave a lot up in the air. On one level, it wrapped up the hokey writer's workshop aspect of the plot. But on several other levels it left a weird, unresolved vibe. I didn't really know what to think about it, which is something I count as a very good thing when it comes to art.

And from what I gathered milling around in the after theater crowd, everyone else enjoyed the show as well. A vague, old man smell followed us into the night, but the wind blew it away in no time.

Children of idiots

The Guardian reports on a U.N. study on the well-being of children in a study comparing 21 advanced nations.

The UK is bottom of the league of 21 economically advanced countries according to a "report card"' put together by Unicef on the wellbeing of children and adolescents, trailing the United States which comes second to last.

It’s interesting that the countries on the list that finished number 1 and number 2 in warmongering stupidity came in at the bottom for children’s well-being. Just a coincidence no doubt. Or blame it on the liberals. If we had more warmongering stupidity things could be much better. We’d be living in a fucking utopia.

Click on table to see larger image.

That vision thing

I was significantly less than enthused when I learned that José Saramago had written a sequel to Blindness. Blindness is not one of my favorite books, but it is a very powerful work of literature. It is possibly the most relentless and brutally pessimistic take on human nature of any book, or at least great book, I have read. When an entire city inexplicably goes blind, society falls apart and the ugliest brutality imaginable reigns.

Normally, if I know I am going to read a book or see a film, I go out of my way to avoid finding out what it’s about. I like to see the work presented as its creator intended, without having been filtered through the opinions of others, no matter how much I might respect them. So when I discuss a work, I usually go to great lengths to avoid giving away plot details and try to focus on the craft of how the story is conceived, structured and presented. In this case, however, I don’t think it takes away anything from the reading experience to know that Blindness is about a whole society going blind or that Seeing is about a city in which most of the citizens cast blank ballots in an election. It’s kind of like knowing that The Godfather is about organized crime. The question is “how so?” Tangentially however, there seem to be an infinite number of stories about about organized crime, but to my knowledge, Saramago is unique in imagining the worlds we find in Blindness and Seeing.

Saramago is unique in a lot of ways. The most obvious is his writing style in which sentences can go on for pages and paragraphs for chapters and, within those long expositions different characters’ dialogue is not differentiated by any punctuation or line breaks. I know that sounds like some William Burroughs-like nightmare, but it actually works quite well. Saramago’s style may take a bit of getting used to, but once you tune into the rhythm and lyricism, it works very well.

Saramago is unique, or if not unique, he is a rare master at pulling off stories that are not character driven, or those in which the characters don’t have a lot of depth. Not all of his work is like that, but a good portion is. In Blindness and Seeing, for example, the characters don’t even have names. They are referred to as the “the girl with the dark glasses,” “the doctor’s wife,” the Minister of the Interior,“ ”the old man,“ and so on. And in many cases, abstract ideas become characters. In The Double. for example, Common Sense is an oft-recurring secondary character. In Seeing, the capital city is one of the main characters. And the narrator typically moves in and out of the story, most often seamlessly and in a literarily unusual manner. For me, style is a distant second to story and I have never enjoyed books that are all style and no story or in which the style gets in the way of the story. Saramago’s style does not get in the way of the story. I’m not exactly sure that it adds to it, but it works. It may, however, take some getting used to, so if you have never read Saramago and want to give it a go, be prepared to go through a period of adjustment.

Anyway, as noted above, I was not enthusiastic about there being a sequel to Blindness, but as I began reading it, the story quickly hooked me. Seeing turned out to be perhaps the most accessible of Saramago’s novels. As the story progressed to about the halfway point, I’d forgotten all about any relation to Blindness. As the repercussions of the city’s blank ballots escalated, I became ever more interested in how the story would be resolved. The government debates polices, steps are taken, absurdities abound. It’s very good stuff. But it began to seem as if there was no way out, as if Saramago had written himself into a corner. Then I came to following lines and laughed out loud:

Obviously, any reader who has been paying close attention to the meanderings of the plot, one of those analytical readers who expects a proper explanation for everything, would be sure to ask whether the conversation between the prime minister and the president of the republic was simply added at the last moment to justify such a change of direction, or if it simply had to happen because that was its destiny, from which would spring soon-to-be-revealed consequences, forcing the narrator to set aside the story he was intending to write and to follow the new course that had suddenly appeared on the navigation chart. It is difficult to give such an either-or question an answer likely to satisfy such a reader totally. Unless, of course the narrator were to be unusually frank and confess that he had never been quite sure how to bring to a successful conclusion this extraordinary tale of a city which, en masse, decided to return blank ballot papers...

And then the characters from Blindness are reintroduced. On one level, this confirmed my worst fears about there being a sequel. Saramago was lost in the plot, so he takes the lazy way out and brings in characters from his most acclaimed and popular novel. That’s gotta suck.

Much to my relief, however, it does not suck. At this point, I have to be very careful not to give anything away, so I’ll just end this part of the discussion with the observation that I found Seeing to be a thoroughly fascinating work of literature. It is one of those rare works of art that has stayed with me for at least a week after finishing it. The denouement is powerful.

As a postscript, I’ll just mention that mainstream reviews always comment on Saramago’s politics. He is reportedly a communist and an atheist and critics typically try to tie those personal attributes to whatever of Saramago’s stories they are reviewing. Much of Seeing is about politics. The city makes political statements and the government and police react in political ways. Yet I am loathe to describe it, or anything else I’ve read by Saramago, as a political novel. He is a great artist and no matter what political motivation he may or may not start with when writing a novel, the art takes over and the finished work is impossible to classify with any kind of concrete political position. So I wouldn’t read Saramago because you like books by leftists or not read him because you don’t. Read Saramago if you like great literature. And time will tell, but I think Seeing may be great literature, perhaps his best.

Cold and grey

Here are yesterday's Inner City photos.

I haven't explained what I'm doing posting photos here, but since there are now a few people dropping by who don't know me, I'll take a moment to let you know what's going. on.

Often, I am just walking around my usual circuit, carrying a camera, and I take snapshots of anything that looks interesting. Anything that looks like it was shot in a Botanic Garden, Park, or Museum probably falls into that category. I'm not putting these out there as great work or anything, just tourist photos essentially, with the occasional inclusion of kid pics for friends and family. The big baby picture below doesn't even fall into that category. That is a straight up picture of someone else's art. Every bit of the creativity that went into it came from the sculptor. I was just using it as an illustration, not as an example of my work.

Other times I am working on photo projects. The ones I've been calling "Inner City" fall into that category. At this stage, these pictures are no where near to being finished. They are first drafts. I look at them for awhile, consider whether I will use them in a final product and if so, better ways to process them. Most of the photos I display here never make the final cut, but my hope is that you may find them interesting anyway. They are, after all, free in this medium and I imagine that these are things you've never seen before. If you have, then I hope I am framing them from a different perspective.

Although I will take a picture of anything for a variety of reasons, things like pretty flowers or beautiful sunsets, there are a few big themes that I pursue in my serious work. I am not about to tell you what they are, but there is usually something a bit deeper than what you see on the surface. For me, photography is more of a storytelling method than a presentation of the abstract or the beautiful, though not exclusively. Of course it's best when the story contains beauty and abstraction. Sometimes a picture stands on its own, but more often than not it is the series that is important. And from a decorative standpoint, I find myself more and more seeing things in pairs.

Anyway, I didn't want you to think that I am putting these things out there as finished products. In addition to the processing, if I find a scene I like there is a good chance I will go out and shoot it again in different light, or season. Yesterday, for example, the light was horrendous, barely a cloud in the sky and the sun at a harsh angle. There was a good gray scale range, however, so I converted them to black and white. This is not a black and white project though, so if I want to use any of them, I will go out on a rainy or cloudy day and reshoot them. Seems like this city just looks better under a cloud.

And I'm not hawking my work here, especially the above examples, but if you see something you might like to hang on your wall, let me know and it's something I can make a good print out of I'd be happy to sell you one at cost + a six pack, pretty much as a favor. Most of them look nice at 8 x 12 and work best in a pair.

You were wondering how stupid they could be?

Barbaro‚s Desperate Fight for Life Gripped a Nation in Anguish
By HARVEY ARATON (NY Times)

Why this national obsession with Barbaro? Maybe, as the fallen champion, the horse was reminiscent of a country that was seriously wounded on 9/11 and has been wobbly ever since.

The Wapo had similar nonsense. I can only say ummm and burn my journalism degree. Is the nation really gripped with anguish about the travails of this horse? I speak to a lot of people every day, people from all parts of the country, and I’ve never heard anyone say a word about it. And the horse is reminiscent of a country that was seriously wounded on 9/11? How out of touch can these top level journalism creatures be?

Way fucking out of touch, and that doesn’t even begin to describe them. I’d suggest that we avenge Barbaro’s death by bombing Iran, but it’s possible that a journalist might read it. We sure don’t want to put any more stupid ideas into their empty heads.

La vie en rose

The national statistics agency says that in 2006 France had the highest birthrate in Europe, according to the William Pfaff at the IHT.

Hmmm, I thought the French had quit having babies and that was a sign of the failure of their culture. Now that it’s the highest, is that evidence of the success of their culture?

Meanwhile, Frenchwomen are more likely to work than elsewhere in Europe, but even those with advanced degrees, graduates of the so-called Grandes Écoles, who go into privileged jobs, are having large families. Ségolène Royal, the Socialist presidential candidate, with four children, is exceptional only in that she and her "companion" never married.

Never married, quel horreur! Evens the front-runner for the presidency?

He goes on to inform us that she is not that much of an exception. The number of marriages fell from 416,500 in 1972 to 268,100 last year, but the number of civil partnerships — a legal alliance meant originally for homosexual couples, which has proven extremely popular among heterosexuals living in concubinage — has gone from some 6,000 to over 60,000 in six years.

Unmarried couples, homosexuals, they must all be struck by lightning, or at best die of aids before they’re forty. Ummm, no. French life expectancy in 2005 was also the highest in Europe, at 84 for women and 77 for men, and it increased last year by three and a half months for women and nearly five months for men.

Plus, their life expectancy is the highest in Europe? Here? We’re only a three to six years behind. Gotta be a lot more “divorces” by those unmarrieds, gotta be. Well, no.

A report of the National Assembly, chaired by the spokeswoman of the conservative UMP party, said that the choice between marriage and civil union seems to have no great impact on family life: which is to say that while the number of divorces is up, the civil union is not noticeably more unstable than marriage.

How to explain it?

Another possible birth incentive in France, which may not be copied elsewhere, is its 35-hour workweek. It has been suggested that the French have so much leisure now that they have found nothing more interesting to do with it than have babies, combining fun with demographic patriotism.

Are American conservatives wrong about everything?

Another wasted weekend, he cried

Click here to see photos from this weekend's walks around the neighborhood.

I've seen the future, baby

All of the big foreign policy questions of our time have been rendered irrelevant. They have all been answered. And the answer is always the same. No matter the question, the answer, it seems, is murder.

In the latest example, we learn that our government has targeted Iranians in Iraq. They are to be murdered on sight with no pretense of a trial. This is just another small detail in our strategic vision for victory in Iraq. We are not exactly sure what that strategic vision is, but we plan to achieve by murder, mass murder. The fact that our murder spree hasn’t achieved its goals, whatever they may be, is not seen as evidence that murder is not a good strategy. It is evidence that we have not murdered enough.

Dr. chuckling will now don his white lab coat and speculate that those who see murder as the answer to all of the questions are simply projecting their own fears and insecurities onto humanity in general. Many have noted that those who advocate the loudest for murder are not the ones who will go out and commit it themselves. The Bush’s, the Cheney’s, the blog nutzi’s, are all cowards in their personal lives. There is no way in hell that they will fight their own war. There is no principle for which they would fight. They kid themselves that they are brave by sending other people of to kill.

Dr. chuckling believes that because they are such craven cowards afraid of losing their own lives, they assume that everyone is just like them. In their back brains, they cannot imagine that anyone would sacrifice themselves for the sake of an idea. And they cannot imagine that anyone would fight against overwhelming odds.

It probably goes back to the playground. Because the George W. Bush’s, the Dick Cheney’s, the blog nutzi’s, the pundit class, and most of the rest of the “murder is the answer for everything crowd” did not fight back when they were bullied in their youth, they believe that others will not fight back when they are likewise bullied by the armies we command. They do not, and probably cannot understand that for many people, an idea can be more valuable than their life. The idea may be religious. It may be nationalistic. It may be simply self-respect.

Had these cowards been more observant on their playgrounds they could have learned. Many kids did not consent to being bullied. Many kids fought back. They fought back knowing they would get hurt. Knowing they would lose. And when those kids fought back, the social dynamic changed. The bully would win every fight, but he would also be hurt. And the other kids rooted for the kid that took the punishment. They respected him. And if it went on too long, they ganged up on the bully. Eventually, the bully backed off.

Unfortunately, that same playground dynamic we see in Iraq and elsewhere plays out with weapons and mass murder. The end will be the same. The bully will be hurt and withdraw. The death and destruction, however, are real.

It would be bad enough if the pathology of murder as the answer to all questions were limited to the nut cases in the White House, but it now envelopes our entire culture. Every day the news reports our intention to kill people without any kind of legal arrest or trial. It is so commonplace that no one even disputes the strategy. Not on moral grounds. Not on practical grounds. Murder, baby. The fix-it for all our problems. Never mind that it’s the cause.

An Inner City

Just walking around the neighborhood on a Saturday morning taking snapshots with my toy camera.

Dream nightmare

Toward the end of Dreamgirls, Eddie Murphy launches into a truly horrible song and I’m thinking I can’t believe I’ve actually paid good money to hear Eddie Murphy sing. But then in what is arguably the only decent musical moment in the show, Murphy’s character says enough of this shit and launches into some James Brown-style funk. Unfortunately, pretty much the rest of the music in the movie is more of that shit.

Dreamgirls is a musical that portrays the rise of a Supremes-like girl group fronted by American Idol washout Jennifer Hudson and a Motown-like record label run by Jamie Foxx. Eddie Murphy plays a Soul singer on the downward spiral and Beyoncé Knowles and Danny Glover also have bit parts as well.

Had I thought more about it, I would have questioned the idea of paying good money to see Eddie Murphy act, but he was actually pretty good as James “Thunder” Early, an R&B legend who was unable to de-saturate himself enough to make it in the white world. Or maybe his acting just looked good by comparison. Jamie Foxx was a total stiff, Danny Glover didn’t have a lot to do and Beyoncé had a small part and one big song at the end.

Jennifer Hudson, the former American Idol wannabe, is the main character. She is the leader of the girl group and far and away the best singer. But in order to make it on television, the talented but overweight Hudson is forced to sing backup to the beautiful but bland Knowles. The movie is best when Hudson is on the screen. I’ll leave it to more insightful critics to judge her acting skills, but her character’s story line, attitude and vocal skills easily dominate this lame-assed movie.

Ultimately, a musical cannot be that much better than its music and the music in Dreamgirls is mostly American Idol-style power ballads and screaming, with some Broadway show tunes and a little bit of R&B. It would have been much, much better if they could have used the actual songs of The Supremes.

The subplot outside the movie, however, is interesting in a nightmarish way. The movie’s central theme, that beauty and blandness triumphs over talent, played out in real life as well. Although Jennifer Hudson was the main character and Beyoncé Knowles played what was essentially a bit part, when it came to awards, the studio pushed Knowles for Best Actress and Hudson for Best Supporting Actress. There is no way in hell that anyone could watch that movie and think that Knowles was the lead and Hudson the supporting actress. That would be like nominating Olivia deHavilland as Best Supporting Actress in Gone with the Wind rather than Vivien Leigh. It was truly a very sad case of life imitating popular entertainment.

And unfortunately, that’s also an example of popular entertainment imitating corporate and political life. George W. Bush is by far the most obvious example of one who has done nothing to deserve a lead role, yet gets it through connections. As we know all too well, the less talented have been promoted over the more talented throughout Bush’s government. And if anecdotal evidence proves accurate, the corporate culture is at least as bad. And media? The hair is so much more important than what, if anything, is underneath it.

Still I can’t think of another situation so rife with hypocrisy. To have a film about producers screwing over Jennifer Hudson’s character because of her looks and then screwing her over for her looks in real life is just sick. The movie? Well, it sucked in the way that big Hollywood happy ending movies always suck. As far as killing time with a date before late night dinner, drinks, and the fun stuff, it had it’s moments and you could certainly do a lot worse.

More on the subject of cities

He is a man who eats and drinks too much, smokes too much, sits too much, talks too much and is always on the edge of a break-down. Often he dies of heart failure in the next few years. In a city like Cleveland this type comes to apotheosis. So do the buildings, the restaurants, the parks, the war memorials. The most typical American city I have struck thus far. Thriving, prosperous, active, clean, spacious, sanitary, vitalized by a liberal infusion of foreign blood and by the ozone from the lake, it stands out in my mind as the composite of many American cities. Possessing all the virtues, all the prerequisites for life, growth, blossoming, it remains nevertheless a thoroughly dead place--a deadly, dull, dead place.

That’s from Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. It’s been many years since I’ve read anything by Henry Miller. It's good to get back to him again. Miller was probably the biggest single outside influence on my life. I went the places he went, read the books that he read, looked at the art he looked at. Always wanted to write like he writes, but don’t seem to have it in me.

It cheered me up to find that his most notorious books are still unavailable on the shelves of the Public Library. If you wanna read The Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy you have to ask the librarian. I wanted to re-read it, but was too lazy to hike up to the big library, so I had them send me Nightmare. I had forgotten what an anti-American polemic it is.

Those two girls in Youngstown coming down the slippery bluff--it was like a bad dream, I tell you. But we look at these bad dreams constantly with eyes open and when some one remarks about it we say, “Yes, that’s right, that’s how it is!” and we go on about our business or we take to dope, the dope which is worse by far than opium or hashish--I mean the newspapers, the radio, the movies. Real dope gives you the freedom to dream your own dreams; the American kind forces you to swallow the perverted dreams of men whose only ambition is to hold their job regardless of what they are bidden to do.

The most terrible thing about America is that there is no escape from the treadmill which we have created...

Reading Henry, it struck me that no one today is seriously railing against the consumer ethic and the virtual enslavement necessary to its maintenance. I occasionally read about a simple life movement of some sort, but as far as I can tell it is made up entirely of high income types and has nothing to do with art. And no great artist, at least none currently known, is giving voice to the idea that a life of art is better than a life of work. Instead, we are told that art is hard work. And art, for most of us, is what we see on the 60“ plasma television or what the kids do in grade school. We are so deep in corporate hell that the only the very few can even conceive of a better life. Henry Miller, it seems, is dead.

But what’s different about The Air-Conditioned Nightmare is that it contains a lot of fairly standard political commentary and it’s surprising to find that much of it is pretty much exactly the same as what we read on the lefty blogs these days, albeit more insightful and better written than most.

The flag has become a cloak to hide iniquity. We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it it means danger, revolution, anarchy. In less than two hundred years the land of liberty, home of the free, refuge of the oppressed has so altered the meaning of the Stars and Stripes that today when a man or woman succeeds in escaping from the horrors of Europe, when he finally stands before the bar under our glorious national emblem, the first question put to him is: ”How much money have you?“ If you have no money but only a love of freedom, only a prayer for mercy on your lips, you are debarred, returned to the slaughter-house, shunned as a leper. This is the bitter caricature which the descendants of our liberty-loving forefathers have made of the national emblem. Everything is a caricature here.

How's that for an insight on the use of the flag? Now, 65 years or so since that was written, no one remotely considers the Amercian flag to mean revolution or anarchy. True, it still means danger to a lot of people, but not for the wealthy and the powerful. Things are, indeed, under control. King George is alive and well.

I've always thought that protests would be more effective if everyone draped themselves in the American flag. Not only would it be a good P.R. move, it is, as Miller points out, consistent with our tradition. As a country born of revoltion with a democratic tradition that merits tremendous respect, we just need to recapture the idea that the flag stands for revolution against the looting of the many to benefit the few and against a government that exists only to protect those few. Maybe someone could dig up a design from the old days for progressives to adopt? Something that reminds us of who we are, or once were. A potent symbol of who we are supposed to be.

More invisible city

Here.

Outside

When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him a s a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.

That’s from Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Beyond my admiration for the writing, it’s kind of how I feel about New York.

There they go again

The Washington Post prominently displays the headline “5 Iranians Linked to Militants” on their web page, referring to the 5 people the U.S. violently kidnapped from the Iranian consulate in the Kurdish state in Iraq. Funny though, when you click on the article it’s not about the 5 being linked to militants, it’s about the Iraqis and the Kurds protesting their violent kidnapping.

Though to be fair, it is reported way down in the article that “the U.S. military had information indicating that the Iranians were "closely associated" with activities targeting U.S. and Iraqi forces.”, whatever that may mean.

Of course I don’t know whether these Iranians are funneling weapons for our Shiite allies in Iraq to kill us with or not, but the Wapo article doesn’t address the issue. And even if the article was about what its headline claimed, I don’t doubt that they, the Iranians not the Post, would confess, but what’s a confession worth when it’s obtained by torture? Nothing, that's what.

No, this is just another example of lame ass pro war propaganda from our “independent” media to justify another idiotic crime by the morons in the White House.

A little west of some place

If anyone was wondering what Jersey City looks like, I'm on the case.

Symbolism and 50 cents

The Democrats in the House have passed a bill that would require the government to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. This is opposed to the Republican plan, which is to pay the highest price possible. In an open declaration of allegiance to the principle of absolute and unapologetic corruption, 170 Republicans voted against the bill and the president has promised to veto it.

Although the Democrats had an 85 vote cushion, they concede that nothing is likely to change. “This bill has symbolic importance...” said Representative Murphy of Connecticut and the Times reporter editorializes (with no attribution whatsoever) that the measure is unlikely to become law.

So if the idea of negotiating lower prices is just symbolic and unlikely to become law, what is really going on?

According to the gist of the article, it is unlikely that the power to negotiate would by itself have much of an effect. In order to achieve the stated aim of lowering drug prices, the Democrats would need to follow the Veterans Affairs example and implement a federal price ceiling and a uniform list of covered drugs, effective measures to which the Democrats are opposed.

So it’s not really about lowering prices. It’s about symbolism and making the Republicans look bad. Tune in tomorrow as the Democrats symbolically bring the troops home from Iraq while in the material world the Republicans throw another 20,000 into the quagmire. After that, we can look forward to the Democrats symbolically restoring tax fairness for the wealthy while the Republicans have to settle for yet another tax cut for the wealthy. And so on.

Rose garden strateegery

I couldn't help notice that we just stormed an Iranian consulate and took the occupants hostage. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that considered an act of war, or at the ver least, a war crime? I guess we're accustomed to the media ignoring acts of war and war crimes, but I'm surprised no one is pointing out the very obvious fact that once upon a time it was the Iranians who stormed our embassy and took our diplomats hostage.

Is it a question of turnabout is fair play? No, unfortunately it is yet another example of how we have abandoned the rule of law for the rule of the gun. Apparently we have unofficially declared war on Somalia at about the same time with the same lack of commentary, much less outrage over our complete abandonment of interanational good citizenship.

And meanwhile we want to increase the size of the army by 100,000. Whatever for? To invade more countries perhaps?

We are just a rogue state on a crime spree. Much like Nazi Germany in the late thirties, our security is threatened by weak states and shiftless races and we must lash out with overwhelming violence to protect the glorious homeland. Never mind that only an insane megalomaniac and his mindless followers could possibly think that this is the way to safety and national security, but it's not like we have any kind of system in place that can stop them.

I'm all for national security, but squandering trillions of dollars on a murder spree does not make us more secure. Just think how truly secure we could be if those trillions were spent on healthcare, education and job creation.

No, better not to think about it.

Should christian girls wear miniskirts?

Bartholomew turns us on to the New Year's demented hopes and dreams of the retarded right. Apparently 25 percent of Americans anticipate the second coming of Christ in 2007. Yea, that could happen. I guess those are the same 25 percent who still think George W. Bush is not the pathetically malignant little idiot that he so obviously is.

Of course their leaders are more interested in the pre-second coming festivities. It's the anti-Christ that girds their loins. On that front, they hopefully scour the bureaucratic scat of the European Union for sign (again, via Bart).

EU Action Plan agreed on improving animal welfare within the European Union, for the period 2006-2010. Could the renewal of this document be the one that causes the sacrifice and oblation to cease, halfway through the Antichrist's reign? (Daniel 9:27)

What a world, what a world.

Escalation surges

I notice the Liberals are actually having some success in the propaganda war and it’s interesting to see how the major media are dealing with it. You can tell that the pro-Bush writers, who are legion, predominantly use the word “surge” whereas the liberals have taken up the “escalation” banner and use it with abandon. The poor saps who at least make a pretense of being objective are getting all mixed up, using “surge” in some graphs and “escalation” in others.

Well, that’s progress for the Libs, I guess. Even though I think, as detailed below, that using the wussy word "escalation" in place of the strong and accurate "troop increase" is a strategic mistake, at least they are actually having some success framing the debate. Hard to remebember the last time that happened.

Even though I don't agree with the strategy, I don't blame politicians for being politicians. Propaganda is a large part of what they do. S

But the media, what's their excuse? This whole semantic debacle is yet another example of how pathetic the press has become. They are not supposed to be doing propaganda, at least not in the news pages, yet it seems that they have lost the ability to use words in an independent manner. Just read the British press to see how professionals handle it. In every instance, unless they are quoting someone directly, they say “troop increase.” What has happened to us?

Yes, that’s mostly a rhetorical question. But I have an inkling, so to speak, of the answer. In short, we are living in the era of the idiots. The way George W. Bush promotes sycophants and rewards failure is reflected throughout our culture, including the media. And as the rights of corporations continue to subsume the rights of individuals and the current crop of idiots continue to weed out the more competent and replace them with like-minded losers, we can look forward to a whole lot more stupid down the road.

Update: The Daily Howler wins the prize for being the first I've noticed to say the obvious, that the press should use "troop increase" rather than the propaganda phrasings of the right or left. Why is this so difficult?

Atrios hates me

Atrios has created a list of the types of people he finds most annoying and Chuckling is #1!

The Defeatists - Doom and gloomers who know it is all hopeless, who know that we can't win elections, or that if we do win elections nothing will improve, and who think that people who bother to try are just wasting their time. Why these people spend so much time paying attention to this stuff if there's nothing to be done I do not know. If you really feel that way go do something else with your time, otherwise I expect you're just addicted to the sweet thrill of self-righteous outrage.

Yep, that’s me. And it’s unfortunate he feels that way, since I like and respect Atrios and the work that he does. Nevertheless, perhaps I can be of some help by answering the question of why we poor chuckling dead-enders spend so much time paying attention to politics when there’s nothing to be done.

It’s really not so complicated. Watching politics is like watching sports. Politics, football, basketball, lacrosse -- they are all just games and our potential for influencing the outcome is just about the same. We watch them because we find the games interesting. Plus it’s fun to root for your team, to revel in their wins, to suffer through their losses. And there is also the flip side, the schadenfreude, the relish of seeing the opposing team suffer.

So thank you very much Mr. Atrios for your advice on how I should pass the time, but if I like to watch games, and perhaps talk about them over a beer or two, well, that’s nobody’s business but my own. Certainly not yours.

And since I’m in a communicative mood, perhaps I can allay his suspicions that I am addicted to the sweet thrill of self-righteous outrage. It’s nothing so eloquently or existentially interesting as that. I can’t speak for any of my defeatist brethren, but I, at least, do not find self-righteous outrage sweet. I know that Mr. Atrios interacts with many more people than poor chuckling, but I wouldn’t classify those gloom and doomers I know as self-righteous. Realistic is the more accurate term. The sorry state of our body politic is not something to be happy about, much less self-righteous. That’s just the way it is. Sad.

Yes, it is sad. But what can we do?

Recent neurological studies, which will remain un-cited, indicate that such attributes as optimism, pessimism, or realism are hard wired into our human nature. Thus, those like Mr. Atrios who are optimistic and believe they can change things are in no way morally superior, nor are the more realistic among us. We were all just born that way.

Don’t get me wrong. I recognize that the optimists are largely responsible for the strides we humans have made from our chimpish beginnings and I respect the efforts of those who go beyond opposing the current body politic and actively try to change it for the better. Of course it would be unrealistic of me to fail to note that the conservative morons who have actively created this mess, or at least nurtured the environment in which it could develop, are optimistic go getters as well. Optimism about the possibility of changing the world for the better is not a universally positive attribute. “Better” means different things to different people.

Another study, or perhaps it is the same one since I am referencing memory, found that the best decisions were arrived at when different types of personalities were involved. As is so often the case, the aphorism “it takes all kinds...” is not far from the truth. It’s worth noting that the United States’ founding fathers, as well as the architects of the western European social democracies were more realistic, if not outright pessimistic, than optimistic. The societies they crafted were arguably designed to keep the optimists in check. So if the realists and pessimists among us took Mr. Atrios’s advice and left the optimists to their machinations, the world would not be a better place. It would likely be more of a bloody hell than it already is.

And it is not such a bad thing to recognize that on the grand scale there is little hope for the body politic or that life ultimately has no meaning. There are currently about 6.5 billion humans on earth living 50 or sixty years on average and human history goes back about 40,000 years. By contrast, the universe is 17 billion years old and there are at least 125 billion galaxies each of which contains about 200 billion stars. When you consider those numbers and their significance, it is obvious that our little lives have no greater meaning in the grand scheme of things than the lives of ants. And we’re not as different from ants as we’d like to believe. Our cities are like anthills and we spend our days building, gathering food, reproducing, and moving around with no apparent purpose. We are all just earth creatures, evolved from the same distant ancestor. I doubt an observer from a distant galaxy would see that much difference.

That’s not something we like to think about, but the realists among us cannot help but recognize the unavoidable truth of the proposition. But just because our lives have no ultimate meaning in the vastness of space and time doesn’t mean that they don’t have meaning within our limited existence. My life means something to my parents and my children and, if I live well, to a good number of other people as well. And many people’s lives have meaning for me.

And there are some people whose lives unquestionably have meaning, for good or ill, beyond their immediate circle of acquaintances, and even beyond their own time. People who get involved in politics can, obviously. change the world for millions, if not billions of people. But it’s a dangerous proposition and I think the founding father types had it right to try to hobble them.

I wish Mr. Atrios and his coterie well in their quest to better our lives, and I have even thrown a dime their way on a couple of occasions, but I am not an optimist. The fact that he is already creating an enemies list exclusively made up of people “on our side” bodes ill for the future. Power corrupts those on the left as surely it does those on the right. As the left ascends, it's likely they'll follow the same pattern as the recent right. Talking points will be distributed, the loyalists will repeat them, those who don't will be attacked, then purged.

The nonsense about surge/escalation is an early harbinger of that dynamic (it's clear that all the liberal bloggers have gotten the memo) and demonstrates how hopeless our prospects are on several levels.

First, the fact that nobody in America is capable of calling a troop increase a troop increase is distressing. As far as I can see, the entire major media has adopted the word surge for troop increase without so much as a quibble, unless you consider putting quotation marks around it a quibble. And the opposition media, the Daily Kos, other leftist blogs, Atrios, rather than call a troop increase a troop increase dig up the old propagandistic wussy-word escalation, a word designed, like surge, to avoid calling a troop increase a troop increase. What the fuck is wrong with you people?

I’m generally okay with using language intelligently to frame the debate, but using escalation instead of troop increase is not an intelligent use of language. An escalation sounds reasonable. Nearly everyone is against a troop increase. Just say the fucking words.

If, for whatever reason, the liberal bloggers can’t call a troop increase a troop increase, they should at least drop the wussy-words and come up with a good snarky substitute. Bush is reportedly going to ask for sacrifice as well as a troop increase. Perhaps we should refer to his plan as a troop sacrifice? Try it out. Bush’s plan to sacrifice more troops? Personally, I think calling a troop increase a troop increase is as effective as it’s going to get, and very effective at that.

It’s issues like these that make me doubt the literal existence of the Democratic party. So often it seems like they are the political incarnation of the Washington Generals, the faux basketball team that is paid to lose to the Harlem Globetrotters. When they can’t take something as unpopular as a troop increase and slam dunk it in the Republican’s face (give them a facial, in popular terms), you have to wonder if the game is fixed.

A surge in propaganda

I've noticed that Atrios and other liberal bloggers have been making a concerted effort to use the word "escalation" instead of surge, saying that escalation is the accurate term.

Actually, escalation is just the surge of stupid wars past, a propaganda term designed to make "increase the number of troops" sound like a good thing.

In general, I agree with this push to choose the words with which to frame the debate, but I'm uncomfortable when it turns into misleading propaganda.

In the case of escalation, however, I don't think it's misleading propaganda as much as a poor choice of words. The honest and accurate description -- "increase the number of troops" -- is a much more effective, from an anti-war perspective, than escalation, which was originally, as noted above, a pro-war propaganda term itself.

Not only that, but escalation, like surge, is a weak word, which is why they use it. Think of the words we use when we want to make the opposite argument. We do not demand that the Bush administration ebb the troops. No one at a protest rally screams de-escalate now! No, "bring home the troops" is the powerful phrase. It is powerful because it is honest and direct. It is powerful because it brings humans into equation as well as the concept of home.

By the same token, the words surge or escalate have no human connotations. But "increase the number of troops," now those are some powerful words. People know exactly what they mean.

It's green, it's green, it's tangerine

My daughter and I saw Children of Men yesterday, the new movie directed by Alfonso Cuarón that stars Clive Owen. I was interested in seeing it because I liked the look Cuarón gave Prisoner of Azkaban, the third film in the Harry Potter series -- and Owen, who gave an interesting performance in Spike Lee’s Inside Man.

The first step in my approach to critiquing a film is to determine whether it is primarily art or entertainment. Of course it could be both, or neither, and I don’t necessarily consider art “good” and entertainment “bad,” but I feel the distinction is a helpful starting point. It serves no useful purpose to judge Monsters Inc. with the same criteria as Richard the III.

I consider Children of Men to be primarily entertainment. It is a dystopian sci-fi action-adventure that follows its main characters from point A to point B, forcing them to overcome ever more formidable obstacles along the way.

The most important requirement for entertainment is that it entertain. This it does very well. The film is well paced, the slow parts are not too slow. They often contain humor and humanity and add depth to the characters. The action sequences are great, and not so sustained that the action becomes overwhelming. The acting is very good. In addition to Owen’s hang-dog performance, Claire-Hope Ashitey provides spunk and attitude, Juliette Moore does a worthy star turn and Michael Caine goofs it up, adding some much needed levity to the proceedings.

I say “much needed levity“ because Children of Men is not a light film. It is, in fact, very grim, which explains why a big budget blockbuster-type movie with an all-star crew and cast is playing in only three theaters in New York and given next to no publicity.

Much of the plot could have been stolen from Michelle Malkin’s wet dreams. As we follow the main characters from their point A’s to their point B’s, we see unremittingly bleak images of refugees/Illegal aliens in the background being brutally chased, herded, beaten, tortured, and killed with impunity.

And it is perhaps the most violent film I have ever seen. As a Natural Born Killers aficionado, I do not say that lightly. But if someone were to do a body count, like they did with NBK, I’d wager Children of Men would easily take the prize.

Yet we did not find the violence overwhelming. My daughter said it was because there was not much blood. Yea, I replied, but there were a lot of limbs.

And thinking back, I realize that there was a lot of blood as well, but it was not obvious because of the film’s palette. As he did with Azkaban, Cuarón removed nearly all of the magenta from the film, leaving it with an aquamarine cast and strong yellows. So the blood was mostly shadow with only the deepest reds showing through. You really only noticed it when it pooled. The splatter was mostly lost.

Beyond the palette, Children of Men was incredibly well filmed and edited. The action sequences are fantastic. I am not a war movie nerd, but I would guess that the final action scene is one of the best battle sequences ever filmed. It is certainly very good.

The plot is mostly coherent. It is adopted from a novel by P.D. James, the mystery writer who apparently went off the reservation in the early 90's and wrote a grim sci-fi novel that foresaw the direction of our future. There is only one scene, near the end, that intrudes on the suspension of disbelief. It’s unfortunate, and could have been easily rectified, but does not do much to mar the overall achievement of the picture.

Children of Men may be primarily entertainment, but it is not stupid entertainment, nor is it artless. If you like a very good dystopian action-adventure and can stomach a lot of very stark violence, or if you are into cinematography, I recommend it.

Update: If you want to get a taste of the look and feel, here's an interesting video montage someone made. I don't think it will spoil much of anything, but I could be wrong, so view with trepidation if you plan on seeing the movie.

Another new york moment

Perhaps my iconic New York moment took place one day on Houston street, near Katz’s deli. I was walking down the sidewalk and after a few minutes, I noticed that every car on the street was honking its horn. The “after a few minutes” is the key to that moment. A crowded city street, cars backed up, probably all the way across Manhattan, every one of them blowing its horn. It was very, very loud. Yet I am so acclimatized to the noise that 500 cars honking their horn only intrudes on my consciousness after a few minutes, and then only because of how long it’s gone on. The noise itself is unremarkable.

I was reminded of that on the bus the other day. If you’re ever in New York and are the type of person who likes to get away from the tourist traps and see the “real” city, I recommend a ride on the B35. It starts in a warehouse district well-seeded with strip clubs and porn shops, makes its way through Sunset Park, a major Hispanic neighborhood, catches the edge of Brooklyn’s Chinatown, cuts through a corner of Borough Park, an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, then all the way down Church avenue through Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Polish, Mexican, Central American, Haitian, and West Indian neighborhoods all the way out to the mean streets of the East New York ghetto. Around the world in Brooklyn or It’s a Small World in Hell?

So my wife and I are on the B35 and after a few minutes I notice that people are screaming. In retrospect, I realize that the volume has been increasing for awhile. Then the F bomb explodes through the pop pop pop cadence of the Haitian Creole and the wild tonal swings of the English West Indian dialect and the Spanish (who knew that there were Spanish speaking Muslims in Brooklyn?) on the periphery and I realize that it’s gotten pretty damn loud in here.

The primary commotion is between two large black women, each with two kids. Apparently a woman from the English speaking West Indies sent her daughter up to pay the fare and leaned a stroller up against a seat to save it for her. Then, reportedly, the woman from Haiti came along, contemptuously pushed the stroller aside and sat down in the seat. A few insults were exchanged and the confrontation escalated quickly into a devastating war of words that left both sides badly shaken.

To get the full flavor, you have to imagine it in a West Indian accent.

Insults about speaking a foreign language.
Insults about English language accents.
Accusation that people like her are why white people look down on black people.

You are uneducated.
No, I have a bachelor’s degree. I am an artist.

No, you are uneducated, and you are no artist. You are too ugly to be an artist.

No, you are uneducated, I’ll show you my card, and I am an artist. And you are the ugly one.

No, you are the ugly one, and you are uneducated. I am enrolled at the university. You are so ugly.

No, you are so ugly, and you are uneducated, you are not enrolled at the university, show me your card. You are so ugly. And you are on welfare.

I’ll show you my card, and I don’t see your card. You don’t have no card. You are too ugly to be an artist. You are uneducated. And ugly.

No, You are ugly, and you are uneducated, and you are on welfare. You look link a monkey. Why aren’t you in the zoo, you ugly welfare monkey?

And so on.

In addition to being very, very sad on so many levels, the choice of words the women employed in this war were interesting for what they illustrated about their perspectives. Pretty much every insult concerned the ability to fit into the dominant American culture. What would white people think? The importance of having a college degree. The stigma of welfare. The implied stigma of being of recent African descent. The overall importance of appearances. Ugly was the weapon employed most often. Ugly was the word that cut the deepest. Both of these women were seriously overweight. Neither was what anyone would call good looking. From an American cultural perspective, they looked exactly the same. They were ugly.

So they smack each other in the face with this word, they whack each other on the head. But ugly is more than appearances. Ugly is the lack of education. Ugly is welfare. Ugly is Foreignness. Ugly is African. Ugly is un-American.

Of course I don’t believe these things. The ugly I see in this incident is the ugly of poverty in a land of obscene wealth, which is the root cause of all the other uglies.

The ugliest thing concerning the immediate human beings was the devastated look on the women’s faces. Neither won that battle. They both lost big time and were severely hurt.

But in long view, the ugliest thing was probably that the children were there to witness it. To hear their mother called ugly and uneducated in front of a bunch of strangers. And frankly, to watch their mothers act so ugly in such a public place. The look on the children’s faces was not ugly. They looked sheepish. They looked embarrassed. But the ramifications for their psyche? That’s got to be ugly.

A Moooving Frienship

Professionalism worthy of the Post, on so many levels.

An ongoing struggle

Here are some fall photos from my Greenwood Cemetery project. I suspect I've mentioned before that I am involved in an ongoing struggle to photograph this cemetery. Although mostly forgotten by the tourist industry, Greenwood is one of the premier attractions in New York City. It is beautiful, quiet and historic. It contains a wealth of natural beauty and quite a bit of interesting art and sculpture.

Yet I have found it very difficult to photograph and have not seen particularly good work from anyone else. Its beauty is obvious to the human eye, but harder discern for the camera. Anyway, I am not there yet, but seem to be making progress.

Sympathy for the conservative in us all

I’m a generally happy guy. I don’t remember ever getting pissed off about anything concerning Christmas. There were a lot of years when I didn’t give a shit one way or the other, but since having kids of my own I’ve always enjoyed it in a traditional way. Every Christmas Eve we have the turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, etc., with a bottle of wine and a Port for a digestif in a good year, then the kids are allowed to open a present or two and we all watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Then Xmas morning we open the rest of the gifts, have a nice breakfast, and spend most of the day playing with the kids' new toys. This is, for the most part, as it was in my childhood. I’ve replaced church with the movie, but otherwise have maintained the tradition

But today I turn into a seething conservative-like maniac. My wife’s family never celebrated Christmas and she usually does well to tolerate my insistence on tradition. Can we have lobster instead of turkey for once? No. Do we have to watch It’s a Wonderful Life again? Yes. Can we open half the presents on Xmas Eve? No. And so on.

Anyway, this year her nephew invites us to a Christmas Eve party in Jersey. Being from a family that doesn’t celebrate Christmas, and young to boot, he apparently has no idea that people with kids don’t generally trudge off to Jersey on Christmas Eve to go to a party with a bunch of strangers. Beyond the mere fact of trashing my lifelong Xmas tradition, it would require us taking three trains and a bus. We would be lucky to get home by 1 am. I was shocked that she would even consider the idea. She was shocked that I would be disagreeable about the issue. Each was seriously disappointed with the other. You really would not believe how rare it is for us to have a disagreement of any magnitude. It was not a good way to start the day.

And while this internal discord is going on, the landlord is having work done on the eave outside my window. Three Mexicans are on the roof blasting Cumbias and operating power tools.

Then I go out to get the Turkey and the fixins. The supermarket is a horror show. It’s packed, taking 10 minutes to navigate any one of the narrow aisles. Everybody is in a nasty mood. I make the mistake of getting in line behind an Asian with a nearly empty shopping cart and predictably the rest of the family arrives with three more carts and cuts in front of me.

And it’s like 80 fucking degrees outside and sunny. There’s a Cadillac Escalade with ghetto hop going thumpa thumpa, niggah niggah. The Jews are bickering and the Muslims haggling over pirated DVD's on the sidewalk. Dueling eastern Europeans with cheap Casio’s are blasting horrible Christmas music on opposite sides of the street. People are speaking Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Spanish, Albanian, Arabic, Hindu, whatever the fuck they speak in Bangladesh and Pakistan and who knows what else. I feel the Edward Norton character in 25th Hour. I just want to cuss them all.

And more than that, I just want a traditional white Christmas. I want to be sitting in a lonely farmhouse on a hill, looking out a frosty window at snow covered hills, hearing the ring-a-ling of approaching sleigh bells in the distance. Or in a small town with carolers and Christmas lights and a fresh dusting of snow unmarred as yet by tire tracks. But no, it ain’t happening. It just ain’t.

Of course I realize that the problem is me and I pick up a liter of Kentucky straight medicine in the hope of changing my perspective. My kid’s sitting under the Christmas tree shaking every gift, constantly scheming to open a present or five before the traditional time and this is as irritating as the heat and the noise and the foreigners and I know that I am wrong. The kid shaking the presents, the excitement in his eyes, this is what our Christmas tradition is about. I forcibly unclinch my teeth and try to soak up some of his spirit. A couple shots of medicine and I’m almost there.

So I take him out to see Night at the Museum, the season’s Ben Stiller comedy. The sun is setting. Now the people, their different dress and language, the dueling eastern European keyboardists and their music are all beautiful. The Muezzin is calling the faithful to prayer and there is a crescent moon. It’s all so beautiful I would probably weep if I were a sissy.

And the movie wasn’t bad. We walked home through the old Irish neighborhood and looked at the elaborate Christmas decorations. The wife was happy again when we returned. A little more medicine and a nice meal and hear I sit, the holidays lookin good again.

So I got a little feel of what it's like to be a conservative. The tradition part is nice, but that's not the property of conservatives. It's the hate that separates them and it sucks. It really does.

So happy holidays, whoever you are.

It's a wonderful life in pottersville

"When we consider the character of any individual, we naturally view it under two different aspects; first, as it may affect his own happiness; and secondly, as it may affect that of other people."

-- Adam Smith, famous Free Market Philosopher



"Remember, no man is a failure who has friends."

-- Clarence, 2nd Class Angel in "It’s a Wonderful Life."




It’s the holiday season again. Millions of people will watch It’ a Wonderful Life, the 1946 Frank Capra movie starring Jimmy Stewart.

It's a life affirming movie with wonderful characters and a happy ending. There’s dancing and romancing. Good triumphs over evil. The little guy wins. It’s even got angels. In short, it has the kind of plot elements that appeal to the masses, but would normally make people like myself want to puke.

Yet "It’ a Wonderful Life" has somehow managed to transcend that angel sodden sugar plum plot synopsis and become an integral part of the holiday tradition, not just for those who believe in angels, but for others as well, including my own family.

Our eyes grow moist at crucial points throughout the movie. George saves his brother from drowning, saves the druggist from a tragic mistake, saves Uncle Billy from the mental institution, saves Violet Bick from becoming a drunken harlot, and ultimately saves Bedford Falls from becoming Pottersville. Tears flow freely when we learn that George Bailey, not Mr. Potter, is the richest man in town.

When the movie was released in 1946, few could have guessed that it would attain the status of timeless masterpiece. "It’s a Wonderful Life" was a box office flop and financial disaster that bankrupted its studio. Although nominated for several Academy Awards, it didn’t win in any category. It may seem strange to us now, but people felt that the movie was too political. And it is a very political movie. But with the passing of time and collective education, It's a Wonderful Life has become like This Land is Your Land by Woody Guthrie. Rabble rousing art turned patriotic blather for the masses. Everybody knows the words, but their meaning has been lost in the ether.

George Bailey is a child in the years immediately following World War I. He’s a teenager in the Roaring Twenties, a young man during the Great Depression and a middle aged family man through the end of the Second World War. Those years span momentous eras in the history of the United States. From the general economic well-being of the war years through the record setting prosperity of the 1920’s to the Great Depression of the 1930’s, society was rocked by wild mood swings and extreme changes in fortune and financial well-being. Radically different philosophies were embraced to explain the times. Each new era seemed to prove false the philosophy of its predecessor.

It’s a Wonderful Life presents those philosophical arguments just beneath the surface. George Bailey’s struggle with Mr. Potter for the soul of Bedford Falls pits the individualistic moral universe of the Roaring Twenties against the community oriented struggles of the Great Depression and war years. The arguments pitting the good of the community vs. the greed of the individual are not only illustrated by the parallel lives of George Bailey and Mr. Potter, but also by the parallel universes of Bedford Falls and Pottersville.

In Bedford Falls, freshly fallen snow blankets the town square. Patriotic buntings deck the walls and buildings. Main Street is empty at night save for a few parked cars and some lonely tire tracks in the snow. The trees are bedecked with Christmas lights. Precocious little boys sled down a hill onto an icy pond. Little girls in ribbons and bows twirl on soda fountain stools. People treat each other with respect. The cops and the cab drivers are nice, happy people. Christmas wreaths and glowing candles in the windows of classic American homes appear warm and inviting.

In Pottersville, nothing is warm and inviting. Certainly not its Main street panorama of nightclubs and bars that serve "hard liquor to people who want to get drunk fast." Blinking lights and cold neon signs garishly advertise the Blue Moon, billiards and fights every Wednesday night, the Indian Club, cocktails, pawn brokers, dancing at the Midnight Club and gorgeous girls who will jitterbug for a dime a dance.

The same men who are warm, fun loving guys in Bedford Falls – Bert the cop Ernie the cab driver, Nick the bartender; are angry wrecks living in broken down shacks in Pottersville. Women like Mary and Mrs. Bailey who were safely ensconced in the warmth of family and friends in Bedford Falls are lonely, cold and afraid of strangers in Pottersville.

The message was clear in 1946. George Bailey’s community spirit resulted in a better society than Mr. Potter’s relentless pursuit of financial self-interest.

Judging by the box office, people didn’t want to hear it back in those days. But somehow in our own time, that message has much more resonance.

It’s a bit ironic, because, let’s face it, we’re living in Pottersville.

An aspiring Capra could easily put together a montage of images depicting a Pottersville-like panoply of strip clubs, porn shops, casinos, bars, cops, and mean drunks in any decent sized city in the USA. The necessary footage is all too easy to come by.

And the similarities between Pottersville then and USA now do not end with the nightlife. Like the 1920’s that Pottersville depicts, we live in a time of record setting prosperity and technological revolution which is creating, or at least further entrenching, a class of super wealthy and a government that exists to protect their interests.

Then, as now, the rich, and the minority of people who participate in the stock market are getting richer a lot faster than those who have to work for a living. In 1920’s Pottersville the wealthiest 1 percent' controlled a statistically inordinate amount of the nation’s wealth and that number was compounded daily by the inexorable march of interest. Today, the top 1 percent of Americans own more than 35 percent of the nation's wealth, and one half of the population has less than $1000 in net financial assets. The government of both eras exacerbates the disparity though regressive tax policies and loopholes for wealthy campaign contributor types, John D. Rockefeller has been reborn as Bill Gates.

Then, as now, a technological revolution has provided more jobs. Back then skilled labor gave way to assembly lines that have now become customer services and teleservices and shipping and handling. Working in a phone center in Tucson or an IT department in Manhattan is the 1990’s equivalent of working on the assembly line in the 1920’s. No serious education is required.

As wages for the majority stagnate or decline, consumer debt keeps setting new records. The mailbox is full of easy credit.

We know that the 1920’s ended with the stock market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. To the great surprise of conservatives everywhere, it turned out that things such as ever increasing income disparity and massive consumer debt that could not go on for ever didn't. One rich family could have thousands of times more assets than thousands of middle class families, but they didn’t buy a thousand times more washing machines. Not then, not now. Business fundamentals eventually brought stock valuations back in line with reality.

Although It’s a Wonderful Life deals with these grand issues, what sets it apart from other political message movies is its focus on the value of an individual life.

And paradoxically, that is the great lie at the heart of the movie - that the life of anyone like George Bailey would have any significant influence on the life of a city like Bedford Falls, much less the country.

Wars and recessions; boom times and depressions will come and go. Adam Smith’s "Invisible Hand" will continue to assure social results that are independent of individual intentions.

Ultimately, what separates people in It’s a Wonderful Life isn’t their interest in accumulating wealth but their attitude towards it. George's life long friend Sam Wainwright pursues wealth with the same single-minded intensity of Mr. Potter, but he wants his friends to get rich too, unlike Mr. Potter who tries to keep it all for himself.

Like the great majority of Americans, George Bailey never becomes inordinately wealthy. But, like most of us, he learns that the value of family and friends is more dear than the value of money.

George Bailey will be the richest man in town in any era. Although Pottersville may be just outside the door, that’s not an entirely bad thing. If one is so inclined, what’s so wrong with enjoying a jitterbug with a pretty girl in a gin joint from time to time? We can still be good people, even here in Pottersville.

Make your holiday complete

A quick programming note. On Christmas Eve, I will publish my annual review of It's a Wonderful Life. It's a holiday classic you won't want to miss.

A surge in obsequiousness

Has anyone else noticed how the media so readily adopted the latest Orwellian term coming out of the white house, to write "surge option" instead of "increase the number of troops?"

I know we've seen so much of that over the past six years, and perhaps I just wasn't paying attention, but I've never noticed it being so total so fast. The first few stories I read put "surge option" in quotation marks on the first reference, but since then that's all they use.

A glance at the British papers, on the other hand, shows that they only use "surge option" when quoting someone. Otherwise, they use the accurate words, "increase the number of troops."

Why, oh why, does no one call the press out on this? I havn't seen a single word of complaint in any of the major papers or intelligent blogs. I know, I know, the bullshit and lies fly so fast and furious, it's just overwhelming.

Unfortunately, they see that the "surge option" is so effective with bullshit and lies that they think it will work with armies and lives. Tehy'll get a surge all right. A surge in death and destruction.

Another day in hell

I climb 13 flights of stairs in the subways on my regular daily commute, six on the way to work, seven on the way back. On many days, due to the impeccable timing of the MTA, I have to sprint up four particularly steep flights if I don't want to miss a connecting train.

Overall, I consider this a good thing. I am old and fat and climbing the stairs is usually the best, and certainly the most consistent, intense cardiovascular excercise I get, so if I don't keel over, it is probably good for me.

Another little known fact about New York is that there are homeless people. Not very many, by west coast standards, or even D.C., but although ours are few, they often smell much worse than the more numerous homeless folk in other towns.

These two facets of life in the big cesspool came together for me today. After sprinting up four flights of stairs, grabbing the subway doors and using all my strength to keep them open until the conductor relented and let me in, I found myself huffing and puffing in one of the smelliest cars I've ever had the misfortune to ride in. The eau de homeless was so strong it was almost as bad at the far end of the car as it was next to the poor soul from which it emanated, who was right next to me when I entered. Gasping for breath after the sprint, I'm sure I inhaled several decades worth of eau de homeless before the train got to the next station. Then when I got off the train, I set my bag down in a puddle of piss.

Otherwise, things are swell with the holidays coming up and, lacking smelling salts, I'm waving a glass of rum under my nose to make it all better. Soon I won't be smellin a thing.

Not bad for a big budget action movie

I saw Apocalypto tonight. I’m not a big fan of big budget action movies, but as those things go it wasn’t bad. There was plenty of blood and action, some beautiful women and a few tits. The scenery was different and often striking, the costume and language interesting. A typical action movie. Mad Max on foot. A mostly mindless way to spend two and a half hours. Great art, however, it was not.

I’ll break from my usual practice of not giving away the plot because it is boilerplate big action movie. All is wonderful in the beginning. Bad things happen. A lot of people die bloody and spectacular deaths. The hero overcomes great obstacles and saves the girl. The end.

The opening scenes are based on Neil Young’s Cortez the Killer. Indians live happily in a forest paradise. The women all are beautiful. The men stand straight and tall. Sexual hijinks ensue. Everyone is laughing and having a good time. Then some bad dudes from the city, led by a guy who’s Nagual name translates as “The Lord Humongous,” leads his men on a rape and killing spree and hauls the survivors off to the big bad city to be sold as slaves or slaughtered. Along the way they meet a creepy little girl who foretells the rest of the movie in cryptic sentences that all come to pass. Then the Deus ex machina goes into overdrive, a convenient solar eclipse allows the hero to escape the obsidian knife that is about to cut out his heart. Then he runs at full sprint for at least 24 hours after several days of beatings and privations then getting speared through the chest. Along the way, he outruns a jaguar, jumps off a waterfall, struggles his way out of quicksand, takes another blow to the head and an arrow through the chest, all the while getting stronger and killing his pursuers in the best horror movie fashion. The best part was where he cracks a bad guy's skull and the blood sprays out in a fine mist. The audience got a few chuckles from that one. Will he escape the bad guys? Will he save the girl? It’s a cliffhanger. Yep, a cliffhanger. That’s what it is.

Then at the end, when he has no where left to hide and no more chance to escape, Cortez shows up and distracts the warriors that are about to kill our hero. I kid you not. Fucking Cortez! There were quite a few chuckles in the audience about that as well.

As I said above, not a bad action movie but not great art by a midnight mile. The only element of any interest whatsoever is the depiction of the Aztecs. They are portrayed as a sick and brutal people. They cut out people’s hearts, cut off their heads and toss their heads and bodies down the temple steps. There are quite a few skulls around and piles of bodies are a common site.I don’t have a problem with that. In real life, the Aztecs were a sick and brutal people, pathologically so, unrivaled in all of history on that score. The were as bad as the movie depicted them on a good day and usually a helluva lot worse. But there were also a lot of beautiful things about their culture and little or none of that was displayed. Too bad.

The movie opens with a quotation about how great civilizations are only defeated when they rot from within. I guess that was a comment on the Aztecs and Cortez’s arrival, but it could have something to do with the political situation in Australia. I don’t know. I don’t follow those things. Or maybe it’s a reference to the Jews. Were there Jews in Mesoamerica? Did they bring down the Aztecs from within? I guess if you believe the Mormons, it’s possible.

Anyway, character development is not handled well. The dialogue telegraphs that the main character is supposed to overcome his fear, but he never seems that afraid in the beginning so when he overcomes it in the end, it’s not much of a change, if at all.

The direction and cinematography are average for big budget blockbusters. There are a few nice shots of the jungle, the Aztec city is marginally interesting. That’s about it. There’s a lot of running through the forest, but if you want to see how that’s handled by a master, check out Rashomon.

It would be nice to see a genuinely good movie about the Aztecs. If Hollywood ever asks me, I’ll recommend adopting the short story The Night Face Up by Julio Cortâzar. Or if you are really interested, read This Tree Grows in Hell by Ptomely Thomkins. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read on any subject, fiction or non. Dr, Chuckling’s advice? Skip the movie. Read the books.

Update: Now that I'm reading reviews, I notice that every reviewer refers to the Mesoamericans depicted in the film as "Mayans." I don't know where this came from, presumably Gibson or his production company. I don't know if that's some kind of joke on the media, or what, but they are obviously based much more on the Aztecs than the Mayans. The temples, the ceremonies, and the bloody fact that the Spanish galleons arrive at the end leave no doubt.

Update II: Rex Reed in The NY Observer has a similar take, but phrases it much better.

A question of magnitude

Our insane right wing friends – the Rush Limbaughs, Richard Perles, John McCains, as well as the cowardly keyboarders are in extended two minute hate mode over the bipartisan Iraq Study Group's analysis of American policies in Iraq and its proposals to minimize the damage. Never mind that it is only bipartisan in the sense that it includes both Republicans and conservative Democrats who were stupid or cowardly enough to support the idiotic war when they had a chance to do something to stop it. Might as well just save words and call them morons, eh? And never mind that their proposals are equally insane, though certainly not as disasterous as Bush's "path to victory," which stripped of newspeak translates as " catastrophic downward spiral." What Iraqi army are they planning to train? There is no Iraqi army. Only factions.

In any case, our rightwing brethren, those who have been astoundingly wrong about everything, have a point. The ISG's report does not contain a plan for victory. If it is not, as they say, a plan to surrender, it is certainly a plan to retreat. If it is not an acknowledgment of defeat, it is an acknowledgement of inevitable defeat if we keep trying for victory.

The nutcase argument in favor of victory will resonate with a lot of Americans. After all, most people would agree that victory is good and that defeat is bad.

The problem, however, is not that we will be defeated when we withdraw from Iraq. The problem was that we were defeated when we invaded. All that's left to sort out is the magnitude of the defeat. And every day we stay, it just gets worse.

But the idea of not admitting defeat, of doing what's necessary to achieve victory could resonate beyond the right wing fringe. Everyone, even Bush, admits publicly that the present policies are not working, that changes will have to be made. I don't doubt that Bush is capable, if not likely, to advocate change by staying the course, but the only two logical alternatives are leaving or putting in more troops.

My guess is that we will put in more troops. Athough this is insane, it is the only thing that makes sense if one is still deluded enough to believe that there is any hope of victory. It is the "Lyndon Johnson" approach and will have a similar result. Many, many more dead and violent spillover into other countries before the inevitable denouement. And the inevitable denouement in this case is significantly worse than Lyndon Johnson's war. Dominos may not fall, but they will take a lot of damage.

Dr. Chuckling, however, has a can't fail plan for ultimate victory. It's called international rule of law and it's the only hope we have. Pretty much all educated people used to know this, but our right wing brethren and their joe sixpack and religious nutcase enablers were not among them. Unfortunately they gained power and fucked up everything for years to come, if not forever. But things can change. Blowback can happen and it doesn't just go from right to left.

But what to do in the short term? How to stop the troop increase that John McCain advocates? You'll see. Soon it won't just be McCain. It will be the entire right wing hate machine. Throwing more death at the problem is all that's left to them.

Dr. Chuckling has a short term plan as well. He recommends labeling the idea of increasing troops in Iraq as the "Lyndon Johnson strategy." Everyone with a platform should repeat it over and over again. The Lyndon Johnson strategy, the Lyndon Johnson strategy, the Lyndon Johnson strategy.... Didn't work then, won't work now.

A two-headed child or a headless calf?

I've been suffering through a period of brain death lately and have not written, or created by other means, much of anything. Fortunately, the big television died and there isn't much on anyway, so I've been passing the passing of my intelligence by reading. I read Brooklyn Follies by the bad man, Paul Auster, the children's book Holes, and several books of science fiction nonsense.

Now I'm bogged down in more challenging stuff: Blood Orchid by Charles Bowden, Tests of Time by William H. Gass, and Rios Profundos by José María Arguedas.

These books are not what you'd generally call page turners. The writing is so great that you stuck in sentences, or paragraphs, or perhaps on rare occasions, even pages, and they fill your head so full that it's difficult to keep reading. So I switch off to another book and the style is so radically different that it takes a several minutes to make sense of the words and I have to read again.

In any case, maybe when I'm smart again I'll tell you about it. I know there's a lot of demand for the ol Bowden/Gass/Arguedas review, but it will have to wait. In the meantime, though, I will share with you this paragraph from Rios Profundos, just because it's about words, and me like words.

The Quechua ending yllu is onomatopoeic. Yllu, in one form, means the music of tiny wings in flight, music created by the movement of light objects. This term is similar to another broader one –illa. Illa is the name used for a certain kind of light, also for monsters with birth defects caused by moonbeams. Illa is a two-headed child or a headless calf, or a giant pinnacle, all black and shining, with a surface crossed by a wide streak of white rock, of opaque light. An ear of corn with rows of kernels that cross or form whorls is also illa; illas are the mythical bulls that live at the bottom of solitary lakes, of highland ponds ringed with cattail reeds, where black ducks dwell. All illas bring good or bad luck, always to the nth degree. To touch an illa, and to either die or be resurrected, is possible.

Kinda makes me want to learn more Quechua.

Thinking the all too thinkable

I fear we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of major disaster in the last year. It’s understandable. September 11, the ongoing disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, New Orleans, government services, massive election fraud and in everything else George W. Bush and his henchmen have touched provides us with a feeling that it can’t get any worse. But it can always get worse. It can, it can.

George W. Bush is perhaps the biggest loser in the history of the world and he has two more years to foster new disasters or ignore warnings that could have prevented them. We know something's coming, at least one miserable failure, but we don’t yet know what form it will take. So in order to get ahead of the game, I’m listing a few possibilities and their likelihoods.

Disasters can come in three categories: National Security, Natural and/or Political. Am I missing anything?

National Security Disasters

Possibility: Terrorist attack.
Likelihood: Almost assured. The fact that there has been no major terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 is Bush’s only positive accomplishment. It is highly unlikely that Bush will leave office with any positive accomplishments.

Possibility: War with Iran
Likelihood: Fair to High. Attacking Iran would be so mind numbingly stupid that the armed forces might refuse to follow orders. But unfortunately, fostering a breakdown in the constitutional authority of the president would constitute a horrendous failure by itself, so we can’t rule it out. Otherwise, we know they are actively planning for a war with Iran and there is a large right wing constituency for it. Bush may feel that defeating the Mullahs and bringing democracy to Iran would be the crowning achievement in his legacy and that he has nothing left to lose but the lives of millions and the future security and prosperity of the United States. Just kidding, I’m sure the lives of millions and any likely negative consequences will not enter into his equations, which are something along the lines of 5 - 3 + 12 = 48.

Possibility: War with North Korea
Likelihood: Low. North Korea has nuclear bombs. Bush is a sniveling coward. If they somehow managed to nuke D.C., he could get hurt. Not gonna risk it.

Possibility: War with some small, weak country
Likelihood: Very High. If Bush could find some small country like Grenada or Panama to defeat, he might feel he could go out a winner. If Castro dies, which seems likely, watch out.


Natural Disasters

Possibility: Giant asteroid strikes earth, wipes out all human life
Likelihood: Small. But, if there is a giant asteroid hurtling towards us, it is very likely that Bush is ignoring the warnings. Maybe he doesn’t believe in asteroids, maybe he just thinks the “scientists” are trying to cover their asses, or maybe he thinks God will bail him out (again). Unfortunately, we’ll never know because we’ll all be dead.

Possibility: Very Nasty Hurricane
Likelihood: Small. Of course there will be a couple more hurricane seasons, and there may even be a big one, but after Katrina, state governments are on the ball and would not be dependent on Bush or his appointees being the least bit competent.

Possibility: Earthquake
Likelihood: High. Earthquakes happen all the time. It’s been a long time since one has struck the United States. And since the Pacific coast states are probably prepared, I’d guess it will happen in the midwest or on the east coast. If that happens, Bush will go into hiding, curl up in a ball and suck his thumb before emerging to trumpet his manly and agressive response to the disaster.

Possibility:Tidal wave
Likelihood: Fair. Most likely coupled with previously mentioned Earthquake. "Scientists" will warn Bush's aids, but they will be too afraid to disturb him when he's curled up in his fetal position, and he would ignore them if they did.

Possibility: Volcanic Explosion
Likelihood: Not likely, but possible. I recently read that Yellowstone sits on top of a super volcano, the kind that erupts every half million years or so and causes mass extinctions, and that it’s overdue. If anyone has bad enough Karma to set it off, it would be Bush.



Political disasters

Possibility: Declares national emergency, refuses to give up presidency
Likelihood: Low. If he were popular, it would be a near certainty, but only the most idiotic 30 percent of voters, and 90 percent of the pundits (Richard Cohen would lead the liberal apologists), would support him if he tried to do something like that now.

Possibility: Pardons everyone who ever kissed his ass or wrote him a check
Likelihood: Certain.

Possibility: Gets caught having sex with gay prostitute in White House.
Likelihood:Fair. You just know that he is worse than Clinton in every way. Can he get away with it for two more years?

There are so many more possibilities. Help me out here.