Mugabe '08: Let The Conversation Begin

Not Robert Mugabe.

According to my daily paper, The Zimbabwean, Robert Mugabe has been nominated as presidential candidate for next year's national election. It should be a heated contest, with tough competition coming from the Movement for Democratic Change, which calls for less authoritarianism, and the Movement for Fascist Change, which calls for more. Critics have accused Mugabe of pandering to the coveted white farmer vote, which could prove a potent electoral issue if his opponents resort to race-baiting. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been known for all kinds of baiting, including blatantly provoking physical assault through obnoxiously loud prayer. There is also strong public fear of a return to colonialism, as the classically paternalistic human rights lobbying by white nations has been compared to the worst excesses of Cecil Rhodes. Rhodes himself may serve as a candidate for the fringe Resurrect Cecil Rhodes party, which caters largely to colonial nostalgics and the necromancer bloc. Despite this crowded playing field, however, only one candidate can be said to embody the will of the nation. Throughout Zimbabwe's rich and storied history as an artifical construction of the British, its people have never been able to resist the sweaty charms of senile bespectacled demagogues. Really, senile bespectacled demagogues are to Zimbabwe as incoherent Frenchmen are to Canada and anonymous repressive technocrats are to China: in other words, irresistible. So this pundit is going to boldly predict a Mugabe landslide in 2008. You heard it here first folks. Huzzah for democracy!

Arnold's Guide To Brazil

Informative and erotic!

Every Network Is UBS

Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network provides a searing portrait of the United States cultural landscape in an era of decreasing confidence in authorities and institutions. Using a declining television network as a template, the film imparts a wider message about the crass commercialization and cynicism pervading America in the aftershock of the tumultuous sixties. Produced following the debacle in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, Network is emblematic of the subsequent cynicism towards the political and corporate establishment. Yet while in the sixties that cynicism was tempered by the optimistic belief in change of the counterculture, Network depicts the remnants of the counterculture as superficial caricatures easily co-opted into the corporate order. All they really want is their share of the pie. Specifically, a Patty Hearst-type guerrilla figure and a strident black communist modeled after Angela Davis become huge draws for the network, as well as the "angry prophet" Howard Beale whose anger is subsidized and supported by a new corporate generation eager to abandon old-fashioned principles like integrity. Dianna Christensen best represents this new wave of corporate thinking, viewing even human relationships in terms of her work and blurring the boundaries between television and reality to the point where she climaxes while gasping about ratings. Her affair with older news director Max Schumacher is indicative of the era’s generational gap and the new model of a working woman that dashed old gender stereotypes. The speech by corporate boss Mr. Jenson finally summarizes the film’s pessimistic view of world affairs, as nations lose power to corporate interests and ideology becomes simply a smokescreen for the profit-driven powers that be. Democracy, communism, terrorism, radicals and the revolution of "muttering mutilated Marxism": all are merely prisms for the backstage world of insider dealings and transnational corporate interests.

The reasons behind the cynical attitude of Network and the decade it was produced in include the economic stagflation, the declining share of American world trade with the rise of the Asian economic tigers, the publication of the Pentagon Papers, recurring environmental disasters, the machinations of OPEC and the long disengagement from Vietnam. While the film deals with most of these issues only implicitly, they can be seen as the locus behind its overall attitude of pessimism towards the media, corporations and authority in general. The popularity of Howard Beale is directly reflective of the American public’s desire for "the real deal," a voice of authenticity amidst the uninspiring cultural landscape and negative news cycle. That the people in the control room don’t even realize Beale is threatening to kill himself on-air, shows just how staid and predictable television had become: technical precision is the goal, not excellence. The acronym of the station, UBS, speaks for itself. Beale’s simmering angry is the simmering anger of the silent majority, "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore." That his act quickly degenerates into a variety show complete with psychics, revolving platforms and a live studio audience only increases his popularity and mass adoration, as well as the profits of the network. The network, personified by Diana Christensen, works under the guiding principle, stated by H.L. Mencken, that "no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public." The film itself does not refute this notion either, though it certainly bemoans the fact. Many members of the older corporate generation are disillusioned by the new emphasis of flash over substance and disregard for the public interest, but they are aging relics of a bygone era. As old-fashioned corporate integrity gives way to the torpedo-like ambitions of the Christensens of the world, the line between entertainment and information becomes so blurred as to be non-existent. While Howard Beale’s fifteen minutes of fame eventually run out in a violent way, there will certainly be more demagogues to fit his timeslot.

The raving idealism of Howard Beale and even the Ecumenical Liberation Army, modeled after the Symbionese Liberation Army, are in the end no match for the powers of corporate co-optation and control. The closest thing to a person of integrity in the film, Max Schumacher, has an affair with his younger, attractive usurper. Like the public at large, he is drawn to the attractive shell of glitz without depth, a chance to reclaim the much vaunted commercial ideal of youth. No one is innocent, the film seems to be saying, and while corporations cynically exploit the populace, people seem all too willing to be exploited. Like Frank Capra's Meet John Doe, the film explores the dangers of populism, but from a cultural rather than political standpoint. It is not anything so idealistic as fascists who attempt to pull Howard Beale’s strings, but a capitalist order with no interest in the hollow power of mere politics. Rather it is money that moves the world, and the media which delivers the bread and circuses to distract from that fact. Even if the bread and circuses is explicitly against the capitalist order, like the "Mao Zedong Hour," it is still no threat but rather a ratings opportunity. True revolution has been discredited in many American minds by the failure of the sixties counterculture. It is now pure entertainment, style without even the pretense of substance. The image of Mao is as much a sellable logo as the McDonald’s arch or the Pepsi swirl. As subversive as radicalis may claim to be, they could only dream of being as subversive as the network executive who puts his seemingly ideological enemies on television and reaps the material benefits. Power isn’t a bomb in the street, it’s the chart in the backroom marking the bomb’s retail value.

Ironically, the film probably would not be a success these days, not because of its message but because it focuses on older actors too geriatric to put on the marquee. It is not the substance but the style that matters to the executives with their eyes on the dollar prize, as Network presciently recognized. Company head Jenson tells Howard Beale that he is an "old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples," not the market segments and investment portfolios that truly matter to the bottom line. Even communists know better by the cynical seventies. Outside of the film, two sixties relics, Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy, went on debating tours on campuses in the eighties. Despite being ideological opposites, one the countercultural LSD advocate and the other a quintessential figure of corrupt law-and-order, they recognized that they were a draw together and that the bottom line transcended any personal antagonism. Network recognized this disillusionment in sixties ideals as a defining feature of the late seventies, as even the savvier radicals adapted to the times and embraced the media as the ultimate platform for self-promotion. Individuals seemed increasingly miniscule as the swirl of pre-fabricated cultural events and corporate mergers intensified, so a larger-than-life character like Howard Beale came at the perfect time to express the national frustration. When Beale actually urged citizens to use their own power to send a protest to the White House over plans to sell the network’s parent company to the Saudis, he turns from infotainment demagogue to potential threat. A corporate dressing-down, decreasing ratings and a well-timed assassination solved the problem before it could become a real clog in the machine, leaving network space for the Next Big Thing to fill. Being mad as hell is a fine form of sublimation, but actually doing something about it is taking things a step too far. So Howard Beale goes the way of the other fallen idealists still fresh in recent memory: the Kennedys, Jimmy Hoffa, Martin Luther King and every other heroic martyr archetype. The voice of the people is ultimately silenced when it overstays its welcome, Network seems to indicate, and it is a lesson from the sixties carried on through the next decade. It is the Jensens who push the buttons from the control room, working through enough bureaucratic chains to bind any hope for romantic rebellion. Direct action is the ultimate relic of the sixties, not even usable for broadcast.

Rhyming Couplet Of The Day

Oh, you must be a socialist
'Cos you're always off out on the piss
- Cocaine Socialism, Pulp

Song Of The Day

Disturbingly sexy Norsetronica about the search for Odin/Eden through a pulsing landscape of clangs, thumps and whirrs. Seizures are a distinct risk for the discerning post-modern extradimensional Viking. Valhalla I am cumming!

The Knife - We Share Our Mother's Health

We came down from the north
Blue hands and a torch
Red wine and food for free
A possibility
We share our mothers' health
It is what we've been dealt
What's in it for me?
Fine
Then I'll agree

Trees there will be
Apples, fruits maybe
You know what I fear
The end is always near

Say you like it
Say you need it
When you don't
Looking better
Shining brighter
Than you do

Recommended Book Of The Day

Challenging De Gaulle: The O.A.S and the Counter-Revolution in Algeria, 1954-1962
by Alexander Harrison

Choice Quotes:

"'Martin was the dean of conspirators in France. He had conspiracy in his blood. He had conspired against every regime and would even conspire against himself if he came to power one day.'"

"The image that Susini has of Canal is that of a man who would take a bomb with a lighted fuse and stroll through one city after another looking for an opportunity to explode it. Reportedly, 'He adored seeing things explode.'"

"'I can't tell you who actually killed Levy, but it happened two or three times... For there were dozens of men named Levy in Algiers in those days. I think that before we found the real Levy we must have killed two or three others.'"

"Cabero-Borgia once claimed--and it may not have been a complete exaggeration--that Algerians and peid-noirs often frequent the same cafes with the express purpose of insulting one another."

"Following the events of 1962, former Delta chieftain Joseph Rizza underwent a period of intense soul-searching. Vowing to never take arms again, he entered a monastery. Two years later he emerged to apply for a position as a policeman in Nice."

"'Algeria should have been forced to Westernize. In time it might have become the Pennsylvania of the Maghrib.'"

"His commitment is lifelong. Even if the world were to end tomorrow, Martel would still be writing newsletters."

"'Squeezing the trigger of a gun was like flushing the toilet.'"

Head Wide Open: The REAL TRUE HOLLYWOOD STORY

In the FAQ (not to be confused with the far superior FLQ) of questions never asked, I describe the origin of the name Head Wide Open as follows: "I used the title because of its three connotations: an open mind, visible to the world; a head that has been split wide open by a forceful blow; and running towards an open space. All three interpretations are, in one way or another, what this site is all about." This is the pretentious, after-the-fact version. The true story is much more interesting, and horrifying. It was back in high school, possibly Grade 11 or 12, and I was singing "Hands All Over" by Soundgarden to myself in the washroom. Suddenly I heard a loud banging as someone opened or closed the shoddy excuse for a door. It sounded like a shotgun blast that might split someone's head wide open. So I replaced the chorus of "Hands All Over" with "Head Wide Open" and a legend was born. Actually I thought it might be a good band name and kept it around as a floating thought until I applied it to this blog. In retrospect it's not the best title, but it beats the Goo Goo Dolls or some shit. Plus it gives me an excuse to find a bunch of pictures of heads in various states of explosion or open-ness and post them. So that's that. Oh, and as a last word here's Shannon: "This is just an excuse to put exploding heads on your site. thats sick ben"

The Stalinism Of Low Expectations

"Not all that is accessible is a work of genius, but a real work of genius is one that is accessible, and the more accessible it is to the widest masses of the people, the more clearly it is a work of genius. . . Music that is unintelligible to the people is unwanted by the people. Let them not blame the people. Let them [the composers] blame themselves. They've got to understand why they do not appeal to the people, and they've got to reform themselves accordingly."
- Andrei Zhdanov, de facto Commissar of Cultural Repression of the Soviet Union, January 1948

The above quote from Zhdanov summarizes my profound philosophical disagreement with Stalinism. Not just Stalinism though, but also socialism, Marxism, communism, capitalism and democracy. What all these 'isms have in common is the pretense of serving the will of the majority. The way they aim to serve that will differs, but their rhetorical objective is the same. The market claims to give the people what they want and so does socialism. Democracy claims to respond to the people's will and so does communism. But my problem is this: what if the majority of people are idiots? Zhadanov believed good art was synonymous with bad art, dismissing the possibility that perhaps the majority of Russians simply had bad taste in music. But can any discerning listener deny that of North Americans nowadays? And, if the majority of North Americans have bad taste in music, what else do they have bad taste in? If the answer is everything, as I would argue it is, that calls into question the very basis of democracy itself. Not just Western democracy, but every utopian alternative form, including but not limited to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

In the communist variety of populism, the emphasis is on working class values. The oppressed working class is the majority and so the oppressed working class deserves totalitarian power. While I entirely sympathize with the Marxist disdain for the bourgeoise, I can't help think that the working class is a poor alternative. Literally of course, but also figuratively. Do we really want a society dominated by Roseanne Barr? In the nineteenth century it's understandable that one might look for redemption in an oppressed, seemingly more hard-working and honest class. But the end-result will always be Zhdanov. The working class, as Zhdanov makes clear, likes pleasing melodies to sing along with, not dissonant experimentation. And if a minority of aesthetes prefer something more challenging, the minority of aesthetes can farm rocks beyond the Urals until they feel that working class spirit. Lenin was smart in coming up with the idea of the vanguard party, a way to be elitist while simultaneously feeling the righteousness of populism. A perpetual, ever-shifting minority has always been the harbringer of cultural and political change. Progressives seek to take on the mantle of that minority, while reactionaries seek a recognizable minority to blame. So it works out for both sides, and if communists are unavailable as an enemy there'll always be the Jews.

My problem with Lenin is the hypocrisy of his motives. He acted like he really wanted a classless society where exceptional people like himself would be useless. He acted like he only wanted to serve in the vanguard until everybody became the vanguard. But if everybody's the vanguard then it isn't the vanguard anymore. Invariably standards slip and people join the party for positions rather than principles, a fact Lenin recognized early on. Lenin died before he could witness the bureaucratization of his empire, so the question of what he would make of it remains unanswered. But I find it hard to believe that Lenin, or any revolutionary, would be happy without a revolution. Trotsky tried to account for this by coming up with the idea of the Permanent Revolution, but even then it must reach an invariable snag. When the whole world finally does embrace the Bolshevik dream, the revolution must end. Utopia must ensue. But what use does Trotsky have of utopia? His oratorical skills would be useless. He would have nothing but bureaucratic minutia to plan, no great sweeping forays of the Red Army. The fact is Lenin and Trotsky were Great Men who refused to follow that fact through to its logical conclusion. Namely that greatness is an end unto itself, and that the goal of a classless utopia would make their greatness superfluous. They wanted to conquer countries for the revolution, not break coal in the mines for it.

Communism is a dead horse. It's fun and sometimes intellectually stimulating to beat, but nonetheless even corpses can only take so much. What isn't dead is populism, the idea that the majority is always right, that the majority by virtue of being the majority deserves to dominate society. Zhdanov's assumptions live on. People tacitly accept them because they don't want to seem elitist. But life is elitist, school is elitist, the workplace is elitist, monkeys are elitist. The key is to develop the right kind of elitism. From popular high school girls to the Waffen-SS (and are they really so different?), a million different would-be vanguards have given a bad aura to the very idea of a vanguard. Elitism by itself isn't wrong, it's the values the elites carry that determine their worthiness to that air of distinction. One key measure of a worthy elitism, and one that does involve some measure of democracy, is that of meritocracy. Popular high school girls and the Waffen-SS based their elitism, at least in large part, on inherited characteristics. Spiritual elitism, intellectual elitism, even athletic elitism are democratic in the sense that anyone can enter their echelons given the requisite will and work. The difference between this form of democracy, what you might term aristocratic democracy, and popular democracy is that rights are earned rather than assumed. To return to Zhdanov, this form of elitism is "accessible," but the onus is on the majority to attain that difficult access. It is up to the plebeian majority, not the avant-garde minority, to "reform themselves accordingly." As it should be.

Song Of The Day

German avant-garde cinema meets Texan avant-industrial rock.

Course Of Empire - 59 Minutes

There's a minute every hour
I will stop and go away
All of the people, they want to sell me
A package of something to make them rich
I work for 59 minutes, to share one with you
I work for 59 minutes, to share one with you
All of the police have left a hole up in the atmosphere
Where all of the things that matter here
Will vaporize without a trace
And we will never separate
The difference between every face
The eyes always give you away
The eyes always give us away
The eyes always give you away
The eyes always give you away
The eyes always give you away

Today the population watches
On amazing perfect boxes
This is the place where the people tell me
They know the way to a passage to somewhere
I work for 59 minutes, to share one with you
The eyes always give you away
The eyes always give us away
The eyes always give you away
The eyes always give you away

Nothing will save you from human behavior
Nothing will save you, you build your own saviour
Nothing will save you from human behaviour
Nothing will save you from human behaviour
The eyes always give you away
The eyes always give you away

Here's What's Playing As Rome Burns!

Rival militants clash in Pakistan, 'Children used' in Iraq bombing, Sex slavery widespread in England, North Korea boycotts talks session but forget all that and enjoy the fiddle solo!

Tips For Dealing With Little Fickle Eaters

Tip #1: "Eat the fucking banana!"
Tip #2: "Don't give me that face you little shit!"
[sounds of struggle]
Tip #3: Force the banana down the corpse's throat.
Tip #4: Hide the body.

Tears Of The Shah

"President Carter's remarks at the state dinner were so generous and gracious that they reportedly brought tears to the shah's eyes for the second time that day and, on this occasion, without the aid of crowd-control gases."
- Robert A. Strong, Working in the World: Jimmy Carter and the Making of American Foreign Policy

The Strangely Coincident Wisdom Of Ancient Somalia & The Talking Heads

"Sheikh Abdurahim Mudday, the council’s information minister, told The Times an old Somali story to reinforce the point. A mad woman runs through a village of straw huts with a burning torch. An alarmed villager warns her not to set the village alight. 'You’ve just reminded me,' the mad woman said. And she starts burning down the homes."
- Times Online story



"Watch out! You might get what you're after... Burning down the house!"
- David Byrne

The Mangiest Mastermind

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has confessed to being the "mastermind" behind the 9/11 attacks and 30 other plots, officially making him the shlubbiest, mangiest mastermind in history. Looking like a cross between Ron Jeremy, Super Mario and a bear-skin rug, this hirsute monstrosity will surely scare off even the 72 pliant virgins that await him in heaven. He would be rejected by the Plumber's Union for not meeting standards of physical decency. The hair on his torso resembles the pubic matte of the most slovenly of testicles. That he seemingly went out of his way to wear a shirt with such a ridiculously stretched neck hole seems to indicate his pride in defying such Western blasphemies as physique-appropriate garb. Why must women wear the chador while their so-called protectors tease the eye with all the modesty of a peacock? Swarthy may be sexy in some cultures, but even Sicilians have the decency to only undo their top few buttons. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, you should die for crimes against fashion alone.

The Beauty Of A World On Fire

Sculpture by Paolo Buggiani

"In the long nights of the trenches, the soldier-poet could contemplate the sky starred with mortar fire, and imagine new constellations."
- Guillermo de Torre

TEN REASONS NOT TO BOTHER PURSUING THE OPPOSITE SEX

1. It's degrading to men.
2. It's degrading to women.
3. Anyone worthwhile is already taken.
4. Jesus didn't.
5. Effort is a sign of desperation; no one respects desperation.
6. Attractive people have a big enough ego as it is without you fawning over them.
7. "Attachment is the root of all suffering." - Buddha
8. Internet porn increases in quality and quantity every day.
9. Instead of being rejected, you can reject other people in advance.
10. Loneliness is conducive to frustration which is conducive to madness which is conducive to great art which is conducive to fawning acolytes which is conducive to ending loneliness!

The Most Demonic Alliance Since The Hitler-Stalin Pact

Jay-Z and Beyonce are Hitler and Eva Braun, Fall Out Boy is the Politburo.

Forgotten Even As Being Written

Who am I expecting? Unless you're pregnant, expectancy is a losing game. I will call the typical expected one the True Love Cure-All Doctor Messiah. A generational spokesperson! The one person you don't have to lie to! An honest connection! Yeah but the connection won't be made. It's better in the long run, to have to connect yourself to yourself if you expect salvation, but sometimes sure it's painful. The search for the perfect drug, unfortunately, I've barely begun but I know how it will end. The drug won't be the answer, I'd love to trip on acid and see God but it won't be the answer. Maybe it will deliver more questions, but it won't answer. How could it? It's reflective of personal indecision even if magnified a thousand times. Let's not shit ourselves.

I like temporary salvations which I acknowledge are purely temporary. Like a record or a book or any other art with a beginning and end. The appeal is to imagine that life could have any recognizable beginning or end, climaxes and ups that exist for the downs and vice versa. But it isn't that way usually. It's a flat line. ZZZZZZZZZ between yawns. Empty bottles, an empty mug, an emptied wallet, tomorrow to be filled up again. Space to fill in the barn. Hay hay hay. I'm looking at a book with at least five stickers saying USED on top of each other, signifying the degree of hand-me-downitude this book possesses. The book is "The Conquest of Cool" about how cool was co-opted before it even got to most people, how authenticity is the best way to pre-package goods. There's no irony here, it just happens to be the book in front of me that I stopped reading to live to return to again. But at least the book has a beginning and end.

So expectation. I've stopped expecting. Don't check the mail, write letters instead! Good advice for most of the time, but sometimes you're tired and maybe a little drunk and would like a letter to be waiting there. These words should never be spoken though. Never admit that. The more you want it the less it comes. That's the twist that adds a hint of lemon. Just act surprised until the act is real. Many people died as an expression of frustration so I don't have to. It's been done, the point has been made, move on and seek the post-nihilist eden. What were the martyrs if not stepping stones on the way to your own cumulative, even greater martyrdom. Bed would be so much better. It's calling and why bother not answering. I've practically achieved symmetry even if the walls all equal each other only to equal nothing. Words don't even look right. And that's as close as close gets.

Angry Russian Of The Day

Visual representation of "Ivan."

Fisrt: You are all very welcome to Siberia to that kind of party! These gangs will be very happy to kick some foreign asses, as they are too tired kicking each other’s.

Second: Take a trip 100 miles away from your big city and you’ll find same bustards…doesn’t matter which country you live in, but the most pathetic morons you’ll find somewhere in NY, Bronx or in London’s West End, someone looks like Brittney Spears with moustache or George W. Bush!

Third: Russia is a great country with the MOST BEAUTIFUL LADIES, greatest history, smartest scientists and famost writers in the world!

Fourth: Don’t forget, we have a planty of nuclear bomb! …need some, we will throw them to you…for free!

Fifth: Fuck you all!!! and stick you’r comment to you ass!!!

Russian citizen.

- Ivan

From http://englishrussia.com/?p=526

Da Category Guide

/\ntictodes /\
Usually nothing ever happens to me, and if it does I don't want to talk about it here, but if it does and I do I might write about it. Getting drunk is sometimes involved, and strange dreams and maybe strange people and getting punched in the face.

Ga-Ga :D
Silly stuff, pictures and quotes and facts and little signs of the end of the world. If it makes me laugh and doesn't require much thinking it's Ga-Ga :D

Lists-upon-Lists!!
I really like making lists. Music lists, personal lists, picture lists, silly lists, lists of fruits and good quotations. All of it. It's either that or wash my hands ten times a day.

Overthinking/Overcoming/
MY OWN PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY based on reading a lot of existentialist stuff that prevents me from being dead. I like writing manifesto-type stuff, generally around such topics as: why people suck but we have to get used to it, how to turn negative emotions into positive ones, why life is OK sometimes, psychic exorcism, being Nietzschean without being a Nazi, the quest not to be a tool and more.

Photoz(zz)
I like taking cool pictures like lots of other people who want to be arty without having to learn about art. I particularly like urban ruins and turtles.

Politik-tik-tokk k
I read all about politics, but I rarely seem to write about it. I guess because it's usually depressing and someone else has said what I meant to say better. Nevertheless, should I actually be political without the veneer of satire it goes here to scandalize my future career as gubernatorial candidate.

RE:views:
I read books and watch movies and listen to music and go to concerts, and sometimes I feel like giving my thoughts on them. So I will write a review and pass judgment and otherwise be a typical picky consumer with a taste for the sublime and retarded and sublimely retarded.

S'atyr <--
When I have something to say about something miserable going on in the world I like to express it through satire. Sometimes it descends beyond satire to be my honest-to-God feelings, but to give myself cover in case people accuse me of sincerity I try to write for laffs. History, politics, crunk music and Tintin are areas I like to lampoon. Because I both love and hate them.

Self-Self-Self...!
I'm a little self-obsessive sometimes, and when I get too full of myself I have to let it off in writing. It's all very meaningful and heart-rending to me, but I understand this level of totally unerotic intimacy may not be for other people. I must pretend my life has meaning though, so let me have this corner.

Sigh-ciety :o/
Society sucks! But I still write about it sometimes, I just thought I'd give the warning in the category title that I tend to sigh about it. Morbid obsessions include crunk, the evil shuckster that is Howie Mandel, the links between fascism and gangsta rap, rabid anti-Eddie Vedder sentiment and why lipstick lesbians make me bittersweet.

Sp-p-puttering-g-g--
Usually I write very carefully and make sure I make sense but sometimes I'm mad or overly excited and just sp-p-putter-r-r. Tends to be insomnia or frustration or feeling sick. I write this for myself because it stops me from kicking something usually, so don't mind inconsistencies.

what's THIS for...?
Sometimes I write or draw silly things which seem silly to you but mean something to me. Usually they have no point so you might ask "what's THIS for...?" But they mean something to me, they are my soul speaking, and if you're so cynical as to deny me my self-indulgence then your Protestant work ethic suffocates me so die.

Manson Was Right: God Help Us All

Charles Manson: "We were all your students, you know. You had everyone looking up to you. You could have led the people anywhere you wanted. When I got out of jail in 1965, there were millions of kids cut loose from the old lies just waiting to be told what to do. And you didn't tell them what to do. That's what I could never figure out. You showed everyone how to create a new head but you never gave them the new head. Why didn't you? I've wanted to ask you that for years."

Timothy Leary: "That was the point. I didn't want to impose my realities. The idea is that everybody takes responsibility for his nervous system, creates his own reality. Anything else is brainwashing."

Charles Manson: "That was your mistake. No one wants responsibility. Everyone wants to be told what to do, what to believe, what's really true and real."

Timothy Leary: "And you've got answers for them?"

Charles Manson: "It's all in the Bible, man."

- Conversation between Timothy Leary and Charles Manson through the air shafts at Folsom Prison, 1973

Source: Timothy Leary: A Biography by Robert Greenfield

Rhyming Couplet Of The Day

I make love to mountain lions,
Sleep on red-hot branding irons
- I'm So Bad (Baby I Don't Care), Motörhead

A Confessional That Doesn't Talk Back

I'm a man of simple pleasures. Anal sex and heroin. I like to wrap myself in a blanket and sit on a swivel chair. I like a variety of Korean noodles from the local Hasty Market because each one contains a delicious variety of strange crutons and shrimp-like things which I adore. I like reading the paper while eating lunch. I hate sore throats because they seem to portend sickness and depression. I like drinking myself into oblivion once in a while because oblivion is a nice place. I hate the bourgeoisie but equally hate the poor. Liberals and conservatives are boring but fascists aren't fun to live under. I like kishka because it comes in intestinal tubing and makes me feel all carnivorous. I love being home but then quickly hate it then want to come back. I hate work but when I don't do any my mind kills itself. There's more in a book than there is in most people. I want to overcome myself, out of hatred for what I was and love for what I could be. I've never tried anal sex or heroin. I probably shouldn't. I don't even feel guilty about my guilty pleasures anymore. Nothing to prove and no one to prove it to is that savage freedom I love. Isolation is my think-tank. As honest as I get it still doesn't matter. My speaker blew not because God hates me but because he has better things to attend to, and rightly so. If you knew me before 2006 you probably didn't. I don't like pain but I must pass through it to pleasure. And sixty-six virgins and a pile of hot bread straight out of the oven, covered in olive oil and butter and goat cheese, wait for me on the other side.

THAAAARG!!

Great Idea, Poor Execution

"On 19 September 1970, the Basque nationalist Joseba Elosegui set himself alight and threw himself at the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who was presiding over a game of the world pelota championship in the Anoeta court of San Sebastián. Elosegui was arrested and Franco was not harmed."

- From the Wikipedia entry on Self-Immolation

Gangsta Bush

Once In A Frogtime

Oh For The Love Of Parades

The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, presented by the wholly unbiased Defending the Family International, presents the hidden role of "gays" (their scare quotes) in the rise of the Nazi Party. And yet support for this slightly outlandish-sounding theory comes from some unlikely sources. Russian communist Maxim Gorky remarked in his 1934 essay Proletarian Humanism: "Exterminate homosexuals, and Fascism will disappear." Meanwhile gay pornographer and film-maker Bruce LaBruce claimed that "all gay porn today is implicitly fascist. Fascism is in our bones, because it’s all about glorifying white male supremacy and fetishizing domination, cruelty, power and monstrous authority figures," according to an article by Johann Harr on the strange, unexplored overlap between homosexuality and fascism. In the music world, the seemingly pansexual Morrissey wrote the fabulous pop tune "National Front Disco," a possible anthem for a future National Socialist (Steel-)Worker's State run by the Gay White Racialist Network. See also: the lyrics from that classic Marxist disco anthem by Gang of Four, "I Love a Man in a Uniform." The girls they love to see you shoot indeed. Unfortunately I left gay Nazis off my list of the Top Ten Worst Kinds Of Nazis, but we can consider them an honorary #11 behind Kitty Nazis.



Winter Fashion, 1941

Nine Inch Nails Industrial Dance Party USA

EV'RYBODY DAAANCE NOW~!

The Rock N' Roll Inquisition

I stumbled upon this Christian band Knights of the New Crusade, and while they won't convert me from infidel status anytime soon, I do respect their gumption. Ridiculous they may be, but it's nice to see a Christian band actually showing some balls instead of taking the Jesus-loves-soft-rock approach. I wouldn't call this band offensive any more than I'd call Slayer offensive, and in fact invoking the Crusader mythology instead of the Satanic mythology is much more provocative these days. Preaching anarchy or socialism in rock is one thing, but theocracy? A tour of the Levant would certainly be in order, and I'd like to see a verse-trading duet with Matisyahu. The music itself is garage-punk fare, an interesting dichotomy between sleazy guitar and righteous lyrics. MTV probably isn't in the cards, but then again who'd have predicted the Roman Empire would convert? Choice song titles: "Ain't No Monkeys in my Family Tree," "Protocols Of The Greedy Elders Of Christendom," "Dangers Of Dating," "'E' is for Evil," "Why Do You Want To Go To Hell?" Almost makes me want to revive the band name I've had kicking around for some time, Christian & The Lions.

A Missed Chance To Turn The Tide In Vietnam

". . .the 'Maximum Leader' of the [Hell's] Angels read the text of a telegram to President Lyndon B. Johnson, volunteering with his friends to do service as a 'crack group' behind enemy lines in Vietnam in order to 'demoralize the Viet Cong and advance the cause of freedom.' He added: 'We are available for training and duty immediately.'"
- Klaus Mehnert, Twilight of the Young