I've got Seattle neighborhoods on my mind. I think the neighborhoods of Seattle are what make this city, or whatever it is, great. It used to be the smell. Back in the sixties downtown Seattle smelled like rotten fish heads, and some of us thought that was pretty cool. But, now, the pretty cool thing about Seattle is its neighborhoods.
Most people don't know just how many Seattle neighborhoods there are. Anyone who has ever watched Almost Live, live or in reruns, knows at least 10 or 11 easy areas of Seattle like Ballard, Wallingford, the U District, Belltown, Pioneer Square, the International District, Rainier Valley, Georgetown (maybe), and West Seattle (the Kent of Seattle Proper.)
But how many of you knew that West Seattle isn't considered a neighborhood itself but is composed of nine neighborhood pieces, namely Alki, North Admiral, Junction, Seaview, Fairmont Park, Genesee, Gatewood , Fauntleroy and Arbor Heights? I certainly couldn't unless I were cribbing off of the neighborhood list of http://clerk.ci.seattle.wa.us. The Internet is to die for.
When you add it all up our government has identified somewhere around 95 to 97 neighborhoods, depending on whether you lump some together for consistency's sake, or let them all hang out.
They each have their own history and character and reputation. For example, once when I was in college on the East Coast I found myself by chance in a room full of guys who were all from Seattle just like I was. Everybody had to say what neighborhood they were from and when they got around to asking me I told them I was from Mid Beacon Hill and they all laughed. Especially the guy from Broadway. "You're from Beacon Hill? What a loser! Ha, ha!" he said. What a great memory.
Fortunately I have since moved up in life and have lived in more highly regarded neighborhoods. When, a few years out of college I found myself living in a car, it just didn't make sense to park it on Beacon Ave when I could be part of the "In" crowd and park on "The" Ave. Since then I have slept in an alley in Belltown (at a time when it was the seventh coolest neighborhood in the whole country!) and I now live in subsidized housing in Pioneer Square, or as I like to think of it, the hot neighborhood where the cool all began.
A couple of weeks ago the One Night Count of homeless people was held and the big news was that the overnight homeless occupation of Ballard increased by 132 percent this year. It looks like somebody else has got the idea: if I have to sleep outside, at least I can sleep somewhere interesting. Seattle neighborhoods are catching on with our homeless people and I think it's fantastic. I want to see them have to do the count in Blue Ridge next year. By the way, the view of the Sound from Blue Ridge is fabulous in October – so everybody make your travel reservations early!
Speaking of Seattle neighborhoods, I want to complain about the City of Seattle Charter Amendment No. 5 that's being voted on soon. How lame is this? They want to elect city council members from nine city districts instead of city-wide.
Nine? Nine? Out of over ninety neighborhoods they're going to rig nine districts? ARE THEY MAD?
What this city needs to do is wallow in its neighborhood-icity. We've got the neighborhoods, now we need the Neighborhood Representatives. We need a Seattle Congress, a legislative branch consisting of a House and something else I haven't thought of yet.
We need at least one, maybe two, representatives from each of Seattle's 95 or so neighborhoods to legislate and debate and advise and consent and all the other things that representatives do.
Then, and only then, will we be able to witness a roll call in a Seattle House of Reps and hear a guy from Ballard stand up during roll call and talk for fifteen minutes about Norwegians. It would be almost as good as getting the smell back.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
Thursday, October 16, 2003
What If Chihuly Signs It?
Let's talk about bongs and insane drug-paraphernalia convictions!
I have never used a bong. I'm not even sure I know what a bong is exactly. But I love saying the word bong, and I know I'm not alone in that.
It often surprises people to look at me and hear me say that I have never used a bong. But there are two good reasons. One, all my hippy friends in the sixties and seventies had plenty of rolling papers. And two, I've never liked marijuana anyway. It makes me cough my lungs up and by the time it gets me high I'm too sick to enjoy it.
Still, I'm of the age to have had all those hippy friends, and yes, my children, I did inhale. Just not from a bong.
But I've looked at a lot of them. Some are very artistic. I've learned a little from looking at them. As best as I can tell, they are pot-smoke delivery systems. That, I believe, is a principal defining characteristic of a bong.
The other thing that I have learned from looking at bongs is that you don't need to buy one to smoke pot. Let's say worse comes to worse and you are desperate for a toke from a bong. I have learned that all you need to do is procure an ordinary legal pipe for smoking tobacco and make minor adjustments to it, and that will do just as well.
Because of all that, and the ready availability of the afore-mentioned rolling papers, I am absolutely certain that no-one has ever failed to smoke pot due to an inability to buy artfully crafted bongs on the Internet.
Can you imagine someone saying, "Oh golly, now that Tommy Chong has gone to federal prison for making and selling glass bongs on the Internet, I can't buy his wonderful glass bongs, and therefore I won't smoke any of this evil grass that I have purchased on the black market through other sources?"
Let me be clear on this. I don't know what Chong's bongs look like. I don't know that they are as artistic as they've been made out to be. I don't know that Chong himself ever had anything to do with making them either. All I know is he lent his name to the selling of bongs and the feds busted him for it and he's gone to prison for what could be nine months, barring an appeal, and that's totally insane.
Let's suppose the public service ads are true and that smoking marijuana kills people like flies in a zapper. It would still be the marijuana that did it, not the bongs.
So why do we have a law against selling bongs? Because this whole country has gone freaking bat-spit nuts, that's why.
It's gotten so that I don't even have to look for absurdity anymore, it finds me.
For the last two years the administration has been telling me that the most important thing in the world for Americans to worry about is this country's security. Because of the need for security we had to go to war against two other countries. We had to pass a law making it legal to wiretap anybody and never tell them we did it or why.
We've always been told, at least since the Truman administration, that one of our needs for security is the need for good intelligence as specifically provided by the CIA and its undercover agents. And by the way, if they're undercover, it's for our blessed safety as a nation, right?
But when a right-wing columnist outs a CIA agent the Justice Department looks the other way for months, even though our security has presumably been harmed by it.
Meanwhile an old comedian gets nine months for capitalizing on a stale joke. I wouldn't mind so much if they'd just stop lying and telling me it's for my own good.
I have never used a bong. I'm not even sure I know what a bong is exactly. But I love saying the word bong, and I know I'm not alone in that.
It often surprises people to look at me and hear me say that I have never used a bong. But there are two good reasons. One, all my hippy friends in the sixties and seventies had plenty of rolling papers. And two, I've never liked marijuana anyway. It makes me cough my lungs up and by the time it gets me high I'm too sick to enjoy it.
Still, I'm of the age to have had all those hippy friends, and yes, my children, I did inhale. Just not from a bong.
But I've looked at a lot of them. Some are very artistic. I've learned a little from looking at them. As best as I can tell, they are pot-smoke delivery systems. That, I believe, is a principal defining characteristic of a bong.
The other thing that I have learned from looking at bongs is that you don't need to buy one to smoke pot. Let's say worse comes to worse and you are desperate for a toke from a bong. I have learned that all you need to do is procure an ordinary legal pipe for smoking tobacco and make minor adjustments to it, and that will do just as well.
Because of all that, and the ready availability of the afore-mentioned rolling papers, I am absolutely certain that no-one has ever failed to smoke pot due to an inability to buy artfully crafted bongs on the Internet.
Can you imagine someone saying, "Oh golly, now that Tommy Chong has gone to federal prison for making and selling glass bongs on the Internet, I can't buy his wonderful glass bongs, and therefore I won't smoke any of this evil grass that I have purchased on the black market through other sources?"
Let me be clear on this. I don't know what Chong's bongs look like. I don't know that they are as artistic as they've been made out to be. I don't know that Chong himself ever had anything to do with making them either. All I know is he lent his name to the selling of bongs and the feds busted him for it and he's gone to prison for what could be nine months, barring an appeal, and that's totally insane.
Let's suppose the public service ads are true and that smoking marijuana kills people like flies in a zapper. It would still be the marijuana that did it, not the bongs.
So why do we have a law against selling bongs? Because this whole country has gone freaking bat-spit nuts, that's why.
It's gotten so that I don't even have to look for absurdity anymore, it finds me.
For the last two years the administration has been telling me that the most important thing in the world for Americans to worry about is this country's security. Because of the need for security we had to go to war against two other countries. We had to pass a law making it legal to wiretap anybody and never tell them we did it or why.
We've always been told, at least since the Truman administration, that one of our needs for security is the need for good intelligence as specifically provided by the CIA and its undercover agents. And by the way, if they're undercover, it's for our blessed safety as a nation, right?
But when a right-wing columnist outs a CIA agent the Justice Department looks the other way for months, even though our security has presumably been harmed by it.
Meanwhile an old comedian gets nine months for capitalizing on a stale joke. I wouldn't mind so much if they'd just stop lying and telling me it's for my own good.
Thursday, October 2, 2003
Mind Your Manners
It is now possible for any of us to be secretly imprisoned without charges indefinitely by making creative use of existing anti-terrorist laws. So what do people worry about? They worry that there's too much obscene language on prime time network television.
For one thing, there can't be too much. That's like saying there's too many Bulgarians. The Bulgarians aren't hurting anybody, are they? So how can there be too many of them?
OK, maybe some Bulgarian has popped you in the nose recently. So then maybe that wouldn't be a good illustration of my point. So instead of talking about Bulgarians, we'll talk about wide ties. Now I understand that a lot of you hate wide ties. Hell I hate ties altogether. But no one was ever injured by a wide tie, at least not by it's wideness. Therefore there is no such thing as there being too many wide ties, even if there may be far too many ties.
Likewise, there may be far too much prime time network television, but there can't be too much obscene language on what there is of it. Because none of it hurts anybody, no matter how much they whine and tell you it does.
Let me put it another way. If any of these prudes who don't like obscene language want television that doesn't have any, let them do what everybody else in this country has to do when they want something they don't have. Let them pay for it. It's called cable, and it's widely available these days.
Hey, I want to watch South Park on free prime time network TV and listen to weird little fat cartoon kids from Colorado talk about unnatural sex. Is Congress going to pass a law so that I can get what I want? No! I have to pay for South Park. So why should these obscenity-hating whiners get free obscenity-less TV? What makes them better than me?
Some of you are probably saying to yourselves right now, "Self, if Dr. Wes likes obscene language so much why doesn't he use it all the time? Better yet, why doesn't he go away to Obscenity Land or Obscenitrovia or whatever?"
Fair enough, except for one thing: this IS Obscenity Land. If you don't believe me go ride a bus. Get out and meet people. And no, it didn't just start being Obscenity Land when Berkeley Breathed started using the word "suck" in Bloom County. People were using a lot worse s-words years before that.
In fact, speaking of worse s-words and foul mouthed little kids, way back when I was 9 years old back in 1958, during the Eisenhower administration right here in Prudezuela, the other little kids on my block promised to beat the crap out of me if ever I uttered any single sentence that didn't at least once use the s-word that signifies "crap." The South Park kids would have gotten beat up all the time in my neighborhood, because sometimes they say sentences like "What?" Where I lived you had to say "What's this [s-word]?" or eight kids spent an hour taking turns scraping your face on the pavement.
So why don't I use the crap-signifying s-word all the time now? I'll tell you. I don't do it because I moved away from that insane neighborhood and those kids didn't follow me, and they all grew up and don't care anymore anyway, so now I don't have to say the s-word if I don't want to. So I don't.
After I moved out of the insane neighborhood I moved into another insane neighborhood. In the new insane neighborhood you were ostracized if you said the words "golly" or "heck" or "gosh darn it."
This is the one constant: wherever I have been in this country, people have tried to tell me what kind of language I could use, instead of being content with controlling their own mouths.
Why is that? And why are we imprisoning people without trials? That's offensive.
For one thing, there can't be too much. That's like saying there's too many Bulgarians. The Bulgarians aren't hurting anybody, are they? So how can there be too many of them?
OK, maybe some Bulgarian has popped you in the nose recently. So then maybe that wouldn't be a good illustration of my point. So instead of talking about Bulgarians, we'll talk about wide ties. Now I understand that a lot of you hate wide ties. Hell I hate ties altogether. But no one was ever injured by a wide tie, at least not by it's wideness. Therefore there is no such thing as there being too many wide ties, even if there may be far too many ties.
Likewise, there may be far too much prime time network television, but there can't be too much obscene language on what there is of it. Because none of it hurts anybody, no matter how much they whine and tell you it does.
Let me put it another way. If any of these prudes who don't like obscene language want television that doesn't have any, let them do what everybody else in this country has to do when they want something they don't have. Let them pay for it. It's called cable, and it's widely available these days.
Hey, I want to watch South Park on free prime time network TV and listen to weird little fat cartoon kids from Colorado talk about unnatural sex. Is Congress going to pass a law so that I can get what I want? No! I have to pay for South Park. So why should these obscenity-hating whiners get free obscenity-less TV? What makes them better than me?
Some of you are probably saying to yourselves right now, "Self, if Dr. Wes likes obscene language so much why doesn't he use it all the time? Better yet, why doesn't he go away to Obscenity Land or Obscenitrovia or whatever?"
Fair enough, except for one thing: this IS Obscenity Land. If you don't believe me go ride a bus. Get out and meet people. And no, it didn't just start being Obscenity Land when Berkeley Breathed started using the word "suck" in Bloom County. People were using a lot worse s-words years before that.
In fact, speaking of worse s-words and foul mouthed little kids, way back when I was 9 years old back in 1958, during the Eisenhower administration right here in Prudezuela, the other little kids on my block promised to beat the crap out of me if ever I uttered any single sentence that didn't at least once use the s-word that signifies "crap." The South Park kids would have gotten beat up all the time in my neighborhood, because sometimes they say sentences like "What?" Where I lived you had to say "What's this [s-word]?" or eight kids spent an hour taking turns scraping your face on the pavement.
So why don't I use the crap-signifying s-word all the time now? I'll tell you. I don't do it because I moved away from that insane neighborhood and those kids didn't follow me, and they all grew up and don't care anymore anyway, so now I don't have to say the s-word if I don't want to. So I don't.
After I moved out of the insane neighborhood I moved into another insane neighborhood. In the new insane neighborhood you were ostracized if you said the words "golly" or "heck" or "gosh darn it."
This is the one constant: wherever I have been in this country, people have tried to tell me what kind of language I could use, instead of being content with controlling their own mouths.
Why is that? And why are we imprisoning people without trials? That's offensive.
Thursday, September 18, 2003
Nuke Daddy Was Jerk
Last week Edward Teller died, and I was reminded what a truly monumentally shallow guy I am.
You should all know who Edward Teller was. In case you've forgotten, he was the so-called father of the H-bomb who may also end up being called the father of the forthcoming anti-missile system. Either of those two facts would make him an extremely important figure in modern history, but what do I think about him? I'll tell you what I think about him. I think he didn't have good manners. That's what I think about him.
It's all because I'm so incredibly shallow and the fact that I only care about what happens to me.
OK, that's not entirely true. I am interested in the events in Liberia, even though I have never been there and have no personal connection to the place. But, on the other hand, would I be so interested if the new president there wasn't named President Blah? I think not. So that example only proves again how shallow I am.
I am so shallow, I am more interested in how shallow I am than I am in whether Seattle gets an espresso tax or not, or whether the police will make marijuana use a higher or lower priority than unlicensed flag pole sitting, for example.
I am so shallow that yesterday when I was talking to someone about Issaquah I got wrapped up in trying to guess what people from Issaquah should call themselves and it ended up being the high point of my day. You know, if you're from Seattle you're a Seattleite, if you're from New York you're a New Yorker, if you're from San Francisco you're a San Franciscan, if you're from North Bend, you're a Bender. What are you if you're from Issaquah? An Issaquant? An Issaquator? I didn't really want to know, I just wanted to make up answers for an hour or two, but the guy I was talking to got annoyed and shut me up after a minute.
That sort of thing happens a lot when you're as shallow as I am.
One time in college I was required to take a physics lab course. They gave me things like Bunsen burners and oscilloscopes and expected me to perform serious physics experiments with them and prove that I could be the next Edward Teller. Instead I set fire to stuff and tried to make cool designs on the oscilloscope screens. Later they let me at an air table, one of those tables where you can slide things around almost without friction. I took the hockey pucks they provided and crashed them repeatedly into each other. It was great until one of them flew off the table and nearly beaned the lab instructor. Boy, what a snoot he turned out to be. You'd think I had nuked a city or something.
Speaking of nuking cities, did I mention that Edward Teller also had a hand in getting Roosevelt to set up the Manhattan Project? So he wasn't just the H-bomb daddy, but he was also kind of at least a godparent to the regular A-bomb. Talk about your weapons of mass destruction.
But I'm so shallow I won't even try to judge Teller for that. Nor would I try to judge him for any of his other well-known traits, such as that he was a good piano player, or that he kicked ass at table tennis, or that he was a great teacher.
One night years ago, at a time when Teller was in Seattle promoting his anti-missile ideas, I was homeless and happened to be walking dejectedly along a path on the UW campus when a group of five or six men in suits came charging straight toward me shoulder to shoulder. I was in danger of being run over. I had no time to get out of the way. But the guy in the middle of the pack, the one with the bushy eyebrows, looked me right in the eye and yelled, "GET OUT OF MY WAY!!"
It was Teller. Fortunately the reporter following next to him separated from Teller at the last minute so they could pass around me.
Now, finally, Teller himself is stepping aside for all the rest of us, too late.
You should all know who Edward Teller was. In case you've forgotten, he was the so-called father of the H-bomb who may also end up being called the father of the forthcoming anti-missile system. Either of those two facts would make him an extremely important figure in modern history, but what do I think about him? I'll tell you what I think about him. I think he didn't have good manners. That's what I think about him.
It's all because I'm so incredibly shallow and the fact that I only care about what happens to me.
OK, that's not entirely true. I am interested in the events in Liberia, even though I have never been there and have no personal connection to the place. But, on the other hand, would I be so interested if the new president there wasn't named President Blah? I think not. So that example only proves again how shallow I am.
I am so shallow, I am more interested in how shallow I am than I am in whether Seattle gets an espresso tax or not, or whether the police will make marijuana use a higher or lower priority than unlicensed flag pole sitting, for example.
I am so shallow that yesterday when I was talking to someone about Issaquah I got wrapped up in trying to guess what people from Issaquah should call themselves and it ended up being the high point of my day. You know, if you're from Seattle you're a Seattleite, if you're from New York you're a New Yorker, if you're from San Francisco you're a San Franciscan, if you're from North Bend, you're a Bender. What are you if you're from Issaquah? An Issaquant? An Issaquator? I didn't really want to know, I just wanted to make up answers for an hour or two, but the guy I was talking to got annoyed and shut me up after a minute.
That sort of thing happens a lot when you're as shallow as I am.
One time in college I was required to take a physics lab course. They gave me things like Bunsen burners and oscilloscopes and expected me to perform serious physics experiments with them and prove that I could be the next Edward Teller. Instead I set fire to stuff and tried to make cool designs on the oscilloscope screens. Later they let me at an air table, one of those tables where you can slide things around almost without friction. I took the hockey pucks they provided and crashed them repeatedly into each other. It was great until one of them flew off the table and nearly beaned the lab instructor. Boy, what a snoot he turned out to be. You'd think I had nuked a city or something.
Speaking of nuking cities, did I mention that Edward Teller also had a hand in getting Roosevelt to set up the Manhattan Project? So he wasn't just the H-bomb daddy, but he was also kind of at least a godparent to the regular A-bomb. Talk about your weapons of mass destruction.
But I'm so shallow I won't even try to judge Teller for that. Nor would I try to judge him for any of his other well-known traits, such as that he was a good piano player, or that he kicked ass at table tennis, or that he was a great teacher.
One night years ago, at a time when Teller was in Seattle promoting his anti-missile ideas, I was homeless and happened to be walking dejectedly along a path on the UW campus when a group of five or six men in suits came charging straight toward me shoulder to shoulder. I was in danger of being run over. I had no time to get out of the way. But the guy in the middle of the pack, the one with the bushy eyebrows, looked me right in the eye and yelled, "GET OUT OF MY WAY!!"
It was Teller. Fortunately the reporter following next to him separated from Teller at the last minute so they could pass around me.
Now, finally, Teller himself is stepping aside for all the rest of us, too late.
Thursday, September 4, 2003
No Shortage of Scapegoats
I have a real challenge this time. It has been suggested by none other than our Production Manager and writer Molly "What's That Accent?" Rhodes that I talk here today about those attacks on homeless people that occurred in Cleveland about three weeks ago.
Molly reported on those attacks in our North American Newsbriefs last issue. Four kids, aged 16-19, videotaped themselves using a stun gun to paralyze sleeping homeless people. They then urinated upon them, among other things. How funny is that? Not very.
It's even less funny than we reported. For instance the authorities only charged the kids with misdemeanor assault charges. That in spite of the fact that they attacked at least six people with the stun gun and at least one person was also struck on the head with a rock. This was a terrorist attack on people who were sleeping, who were harming no one.
Even less funny: three days after the kids were caught and the story was all over the Cleveland news a radio co-host at Extreme Radio WXTM/92.3 FM in Cleveland went to the site of the attacks and exploited homeless people à la "Bum Fights" by offering them $10 and free pizza to be shocked with a stun gun. Three let themselves be shocked and ten more were desperate enough to get in line for it, and the majority of callers to the show thought it was funny, according to the other co-host.
Last night fellow editor and writer babe Anitra Freeman was riding a bus and wished to enter a conversation but for the first time in possibly years she was unable to butt in, because the people talking were so engaged. What stirred their passions so much? They were convinced America was headed toward fascism and there was no stopping it.
There sure are a lot of the signs. I see three sides of fascism coming into place. On the one side you have a government that only cares about you if you are a corporation. That's your basic idea of fascism, government for the corporations. Mussolini really promoted the hell out of that aspect of it.
You also have the side represented by these four teenagers in Cleveland. These aren't rich kids we're talking about. They lived in a slum. They may have been nearly as poor as the people they attacked.
Did you all read very carefully what we wrote about Lyndon LaRouche's campaign? Polly Keary wrote: [LaRouche] wants to create an "International Youth Movement" in order to build "a large cadre of deployable youth" to reverse what he calls a decadent Baby Boomer culture.
Well isn't that special? Can you say, Brownshirts? So it will be Baby Boomers this time, instead of Jews? How pluralistic of him.
This country is full of recruits for the new Brownshirts. There are plenty of poor desperate youth ready to believe any message scapegoating any segment of society. Why not Baby Boomers? The media has already convinced everybody that Baby Boomers invented decadence. Never mind that there's plenty of decadence to go around in every generation and that the Boomers just got the big spotlight on them. That's what they get for growing up during the rise of mass media and television.
And of course, why not homeless people? Hell a lot of them are the same people anyway. Besides they're easy to find, and if you get them with a stun gun while they're sleeping they can't fight back, unlike some of those nasty Baby Boomers who have money and lawyers.
Where was I? Oh yes, I've been witnessing the rise of three sides to fascism. The third: the glorification of the masses. You have to convince the majority that they are superior to the scapegoated minorities. Let's see, the masses are Christian, let's pander to that.
Who will put these ingredients together and do to America what Hitler did to Germany? Does Bush have the charisma? Is LaRouche too sidelined? Stay tuned.
Molly reported on those attacks in our North American Newsbriefs last issue. Four kids, aged 16-19, videotaped themselves using a stun gun to paralyze sleeping homeless people. They then urinated upon them, among other things. How funny is that? Not very.
It's even less funny than we reported. For instance the authorities only charged the kids with misdemeanor assault charges. That in spite of the fact that they attacked at least six people with the stun gun and at least one person was also struck on the head with a rock. This was a terrorist attack on people who were sleeping, who were harming no one.
Even less funny: three days after the kids were caught and the story was all over the Cleveland news a radio co-host at Extreme Radio WXTM/92.3 FM in Cleveland went to the site of the attacks and exploited homeless people à la "Bum Fights" by offering them $10 and free pizza to be shocked with a stun gun. Three let themselves be shocked and ten more were desperate enough to get in line for it, and the majority of callers to the show thought it was funny, according to the other co-host.
Last night fellow editor and writer babe Anitra Freeman was riding a bus and wished to enter a conversation but for the first time in possibly years she was unable to butt in, because the people talking were so engaged. What stirred their passions so much? They were convinced America was headed toward fascism and there was no stopping it.
There sure are a lot of the signs. I see three sides of fascism coming into place. On the one side you have a government that only cares about you if you are a corporation. That's your basic idea of fascism, government for the corporations. Mussolini really promoted the hell out of that aspect of it.
You also have the side represented by these four teenagers in Cleveland. These aren't rich kids we're talking about. They lived in a slum. They may have been nearly as poor as the people they attacked.
Did you all read very carefully what we wrote about Lyndon LaRouche's campaign? Polly Keary wrote: [LaRouche] wants to create an "International Youth Movement" in order to build "a large cadre of deployable youth" to reverse what he calls a decadent Baby Boomer culture.
Well isn't that special? Can you say, Brownshirts? So it will be Baby Boomers this time, instead of Jews? How pluralistic of him.
This country is full of recruits for the new Brownshirts. There are plenty of poor desperate youth ready to believe any message scapegoating any segment of society. Why not Baby Boomers? The media has already convinced everybody that Baby Boomers invented decadence. Never mind that there's plenty of decadence to go around in every generation and that the Boomers just got the big spotlight on them. That's what they get for growing up during the rise of mass media and television.
And of course, why not homeless people? Hell a lot of them are the same people anyway. Besides they're easy to find, and if you get them with a stun gun while they're sleeping they can't fight back, unlike some of those nasty Baby Boomers who have money and lawyers.
Where was I? Oh yes, I've been witnessing the rise of three sides to fascism. The third: the glorification of the masses. You have to convince the majority that they are superior to the scapegoated minorities. Let's see, the masses are Christian, let's pander to that.
Who will put these ingredients together and do to America what Hitler did to Germany? Does Bush have the charisma? Is LaRouche too sidelined? Stay tuned.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Dances With Squirrels
Like many of you I was fascinated this week by all the news about the Northeast electrical blackout. Who could have imagined that one night thousands of New Yorkers would have to sleep on sidewalks?
Seriously though, the numbers in the news are staggering. According to one report, 50 million people in the US were without power at one time, along with another several millions of Canadians the report didn't count.
Let's put that into perspective: That means 1 out of every 6 Americans had no power for many hours, which makes more news than if 1 in 6 Chinese were out of power for an entire century! To put it in perspective another way, 50 million Americans being without power is just like if all of France were out of power, except that Americans care!
Let's turn our attention now to reasons why the Northeast blackout occurred. We might as well since everyone else has, and we have nothing better to do with our time.
Experts and politicians (different people) have weighed in on this subject, beginning with Prime Minister Chrétien's bold assertion that it was New York's fault. Since then the arguments have been mainly over whether it was New York's fault or Ohio's fault. There are still some people though who think it could have started in Ottawa. Ha, ha, that was a joke. We all know Canada couldn't have done it. You have to be a superpower to screw up this big.
All I know about electricity I learned using a model train transformer to fry things, and by sticking one of my fingers in a light socket. Also, my Uncle Fred was a City Light lineman. He found fried squirrels all the time in his work.
So this is my main advice for people looking for the cause of this thing: Look for extremely dead squirrels. You may have to look several hundred yards from the power lines because Uncle Fred said sometimes they go airborne.
Once dead squirrels are found, one specific question invariably arises, "Hey Mister Technology, how can roasting and orbiting a squirrel result in so much loss of power?"
Answer: I'm not Mister Technology.
Still, I'll give it a shot. The electricity in an electrical grid system the size of what we are talking about (the family size) is like a long freight train loaded with, I don't know, french fries, coming down the tracks at a relativistic velocity. It all wants to go somewhere and you aren't going to be able to tell it, "No you have to sit here and wait while I look for this poor squirrel's next of kin." It will knock you out of the way to keep going on down the tracks.
OK, that explanation went nowhere.
Let's try again. Since electricity was first discovered, when Ben Franklin rubbed his hair with his rubber kite, electricity almost never gets rubbed anymore. So when the electricity finds the squirrel it gets all happy because it thinks it finally has a "friend" it can "dance" with. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when electricity "dances" with squirrels. So the squirrel goes bye forever and ever. That makes the electricity sad so it goes all mental…
Sorry, that one was going down a dead end, too.
I'll give it one more try. It's like this. Say you've got a system where all the money that gets poured into it just goes to make a few rich people who are pretending to run it a lot richer. Then it doesn't matter what happens, every couple of decades a squirrel is going to sidetrack your system, because it's going to be one gigantic piece of junk.
That sounds about right.
Seriously though, the numbers in the news are staggering. According to one report, 50 million people in the US were without power at one time, along with another several millions of Canadians the report didn't count.
Let's put that into perspective: That means 1 out of every 6 Americans had no power for many hours, which makes more news than if 1 in 6 Chinese were out of power for an entire century! To put it in perspective another way, 50 million Americans being without power is just like if all of France were out of power, except that Americans care!
Let's turn our attention now to reasons why the Northeast blackout occurred. We might as well since everyone else has, and we have nothing better to do with our time.
Experts and politicians (different people) have weighed in on this subject, beginning with Prime Minister Chrétien's bold assertion that it was New York's fault. Since then the arguments have been mainly over whether it was New York's fault or Ohio's fault. There are still some people though who think it could have started in Ottawa. Ha, ha, that was a joke. We all know Canada couldn't have done it. You have to be a superpower to screw up this big.
All I know about electricity I learned using a model train transformer to fry things, and by sticking one of my fingers in a light socket. Also, my Uncle Fred was a City Light lineman. He found fried squirrels all the time in his work.
So this is my main advice for people looking for the cause of this thing: Look for extremely dead squirrels. You may have to look several hundred yards from the power lines because Uncle Fred said sometimes they go airborne.
Once dead squirrels are found, one specific question invariably arises, "Hey Mister Technology, how can roasting and orbiting a squirrel result in so much loss of power?"
Answer: I'm not Mister Technology.
Still, I'll give it a shot. The electricity in an electrical grid system the size of what we are talking about (the family size) is like a long freight train loaded with, I don't know, french fries, coming down the tracks at a relativistic velocity. It all wants to go somewhere and you aren't going to be able to tell it, "No you have to sit here and wait while I look for this poor squirrel's next of kin." It will knock you out of the way to keep going on down the tracks.
OK, that explanation went nowhere.
Let's try again. Since electricity was first discovered, when Ben Franklin rubbed his hair with his rubber kite, electricity almost never gets rubbed anymore. So when the electricity finds the squirrel it gets all happy because it thinks it finally has a "friend" it can "dance" with. Unfortunately, we all know what happens when electricity "dances" with squirrels. So the squirrel goes bye forever and ever. That makes the electricity sad so it goes all mental…
Sorry, that one was going down a dead end, too.
I'll give it one more try. It's like this. Say you've got a system where all the money that gets poured into it just goes to make a few rich people who are pretending to run it a lot richer. Then it doesn't matter what happens, every couple of decades a squirrel is going to sidetrack your system, because it's going to be one gigantic piece of junk.
That sounds about right.
Thursday, August 7, 2003
Whites Priced At Five Dollars Each
Let's talk about religion!
No, let's not talk about religion! I don't want the headaches! Let's talk about religious authorities instead. Don't religious authorities do the darndest things? I guess it's because they're authorities.
Take your imams, for example. With all the war and misery going on in highly Islamic quarters of the world these days, I would be very surprised if the world's imams weren't making pronouncements right and left. But the other day when I went looking on Islam.com for a pronouncement or two to get the flavor of them, I didn't expect to see a fatwa on the importance of men tucking their shirts in. (Just so you know, the imam issuing the fatwa basically says tucking the shirt in isn't necessarily evil, although he personally would never do it.)
With that kind of focus on gender-specific grooming tips vis a vis fiery hell, you can all imagine for yourselves how the fatwa on homosexuality read on the very same page. Likewise re the archived fatwa on the same site concerning surgical hymen restoration. Hint from me on that one: "If you break it -- you pay for it." OK, that hint sucked. Let's try this one: "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Now go publicly bury this bucket of kittens in your front yard, you harlot."
Speaking of homosexuality, I want to take time out to say that, although I am not myself a homosexual so far as I am aware of, I am deeply grateful that the Supreme court has now recognized my right to practice sodomy in the privacy of my own bedroom with consenting adults, because I've been doing it anyway.
Of course Islamic imams do not hold the monopoly on fatwas. The Vatican just issued one of their own on gay marriages. Having once been a card-carrying member of the Catholic Church (in my impetuous youth I favored the classics) I find its decrees delightful and fascinating. In much the same way that I find forced live oyster eating riveting. This particular decree compares especially well with the shirt tucking decree in its decreeness, or decree-osity.
Will someone please explain to me how exactly does allowing at least civil homosexual marriages undermine heterosexual marriages? What exactly do people think is going to happen? Do they think all the straight guys are going to wake up one morning and think, "Hey, I could have married one of my buds!" and immediately divorce the wife and ditch the kids and elope with Steve in accounting?
The Vatican decree whinges on and on about the blessed sanctity of procreation, as if allowing gay marriage is going to make one iota of difference to the frequency of condom failures during straight sex.
But enough of that nonsense. What I really want to talk about here isn't a fatwa or decree, but it's still coming from a religious authority. I want to talk about Bishop Fred Caldwell's decision to pay white people to come and diversify his overwhelmingly Black-attended church in Shreveport, Louisiana. Five dollars for Sunday masses, fifteen for Thursdays.
Whoa! Can you say "spiritual ho's?" My first reaction was to recall that when an impoverished homeless guy I was often bribed with food to attend meals. I thought: this just cuts through the BS. They pay the money; I can spend it the way I want. Maybe I don't want turkey tetrazinni. Maybe I'm in the mood for chicken diablo. It's my choice.
But then I thought, wait a minute, what's all this saying? I mean, first of all, how white do you have to be to collect your fee? Does a Quarter-white get $1.25 on Sundays? Does Michael Jackson get anything; does effort count? How about comportment?
You know, if it were me, in Louisiana, I'd pay more for an Asian than a white person, out of supply considerations.
When someone suggested that Bishop Fred might give the money to the poor instead, he said that that was the sort of thing Judas Iscariot would have proposed. I'm wondering: if Judas Iscariot were to tell Bishop Fred not to jump off a bridge, would he do it?
No, let's not talk about religion! I don't want the headaches! Let's talk about religious authorities instead. Don't religious authorities do the darndest things? I guess it's because they're authorities.
Take your imams, for example. With all the war and misery going on in highly Islamic quarters of the world these days, I would be very surprised if the world's imams weren't making pronouncements right and left. But the other day when I went looking on Islam.com for a pronouncement or two to get the flavor of them, I didn't expect to see a fatwa on the importance of men tucking their shirts in. (Just so you know, the imam issuing the fatwa basically says tucking the shirt in isn't necessarily evil, although he personally would never do it.)
With that kind of focus on gender-specific grooming tips vis a vis fiery hell, you can all imagine for yourselves how the fatwa on homosexuality read on the very same page. Likewise re the archived fatwa on the same site concerning surgical hymen restoration. Hint from me on that one: "If you break it -- you pay for it." OK, that hint sucked. Let's try this one: "Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. Now go publicly bury this bucket of kittens in your front yard, you harlot."
Speaking of homosexuality, I want to take time out to say that, although I am not myself a homosexual so far as I am aware of, I am deeply grateful that the Supreme court has now recognized my right to practice sodomy in the privacy of my own bedroom with consenting adults, because I've been doing it anyway.
Of course Islamic imams do not hold the monopoly on fatwas. The Vatican just issued one of their own on gay marriages. Having once been a card-carrying member of the Catholic Church (in my impetuous youth I favored the classics) I find its decrees delightful and fascinating. In much the same way that I find forced live oyster eating riveting. This particular decree compares especially well with the shirt tucking decree in its decreeness, or decree-osity.
Will someone please explain to me how exactly does allowing at least civil homosexual marriages undermine heterosexual marriages? What exactly do people think is going to happen? Do they think all the straight guys are going to wake up one morning and think, "Hey, I could have married one of my buds!" and immediately divorce the wife and ditch the kids and elope with Steve in accounting?
The Vatican decree whinges on and on about the blessed sanctity of procreation, as if allowing gay marriage is going to make one iota of difference to the frequency of condom failures during straight sex.
But enough of that nonsense. What I really want to talk about here isn't a fatwa or decree, but it's still coming from a religious authority. I want to talk about Bishop Fred Caldwell's decision to pay white people to come and diversify his overwhelmingly Black-attended church in Shreveport, Louisiana. Five dollars for Sunday masses, fifteen for Thursdays.
Whoa! Can you say "spiritual ho's?" My first reaction was to recall that when an impoverished homeless guy I was often bribed with food to attend meals. I thought: this just cuts through the BS. They pay the money; I can spend it the way I want. Maybe I don't want turkey tetrazinni. Maybe I'm in the mood for chicken diablo. It's my choice.
But then I thought, wait a minute, what's all this saying? I mean, first of all, how white do you have to be to collect your fee? Does a Quarter-white get $1.25 on Sundays? Does Michael Jackson get anything; does effort count? How about comportment?
You know, if it were me, in Louisiana, I'd pay more for an Asian than a white person, out of supply considerations.
When someone suggested that Bishop Fred might give the money to the poor instead, he said that that was the sort of thing Judas Iscariot would have proposed. I'm wondering: if Judas Iscariot were to tell Bishop Fred not to jump off a bridge, would he do it?
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