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Porn Stars: The Future Of Celebrity

2011-12-13T16:00:00.001-05:00

Kim Kardashian owes her fame to a self-released sex tape. Her ass is her pass into the cultural conversation. Softcore pornography is already mainstream. Voyeurism has penetrated once sacrosanct boundaries. When will we, as a culture, stop beating around the bush? It's time to elevate porn stars to the rank of talkshow-guesting, magazine-profiling mainstream celebrities.

Unlike most reality stars, porn stars have a skill: fucking. Being good-looking is not enough. Truly successful porn stars earn their fortune and fanbase through a talent for the craft. The models and lite-actresses who feature in Maxim and Details are pale (actually, typically orange) imitations of the Real Thing. Why pay to see, why pay attention to, the empty signifiers of sex, when the real carnal heroes are ready and willing?

Tyra Banks, fashion model, looks down on Tyra Banxxx, pornographic model. Her disdain is thinly disguised fear. Banxxx has an appreciable talent that society needs. Society, filled as it is with the lonely and unloved, requires vicarious sex partners. It does not require human clotheshangers. Banxxx should be the one with the TV show, the media empire, the mainstream emulation. In due time, Banxxx will be that maven, and Banks will join silent film stars in culture's scrapheap. What's to stop her? Public decency? Kim Kardashian owes her fame to a self-released sex tape

Dreams Of Collapse

2011-12-01T02:14:00.001-05:00

Maybe I'm not the only one who dreams of collapse. Nothing so dramatic as suicide; simply collapse. Let friends drift away, never leave home, accumulate dust. Spiral down, let beard grow, observe the world from a distance if at all.

"Be responsible." Of course. I take my filial duty seriously. I must make something of myself before I collapse. Or at least erect walls between myself and the truly collapsed: the dregs, the rap fans, the hopeless. Erect them just high enough to avoid bringing shame upon the family name. Then I can collapse in peace.

Every animal dreams of burrowing a hole and burying itself alive. My coffin will be a bookcase. I will fall asleep reading and never wake up. My bones will crumble. My penis will retreat into its skin. My words will form protective porcupine thorns. I will scavenge the ruins of my former self, sifting through memories in the absence of novelty.

This is my temptation. Maybe some men feel the urge to kill or rape or watch sports. I feel the urge to collapse. I am driven to dive to the floor. I want to find a quiet spot underneath the carpet. I lie in the bath and hope to never get up. I await the disappearance of phone calls. Lord, save me from nirvana.

Put The Veil Over My Eyes

2011-11-10T23:17:00.001-05:00

Ancient wisdom agrees that sexual emission depletes man's vitality. Freud affirms that all works of culture result from sublimation - the rerouting of sexual energy. In a culture that celebrates unrestrained sexuality, the most radically liberating move is chastity.

Self-flaggelants will be the old-new exhibitionists.

Free porn makes the challenge greater than for any previous generation. But the rewards for self-restraint are potentially all the greater. Sexual frustration is a primal power. He who conquers himself may conquer the world.

The Middle Ages produced saints. Modernity will produce gods.

Sex is samsara, futile desire, post-coital sadness, pre-coital ensnarement. Sex empowers others and depletes our selves. The Muslims have it right but totally backwards. We need blindfolds for men (ocular veils), not burqas for women.

Sluts will walk. The chaste will rise.

The Unintended Consequences of Identity Politics

2011-11-09T13:55:00.000-05:00

History is a tale of unintended consequences. Take the existence of Palestinian nationalism. "Palestinian" did not exist as a self-conscious identity prior to the creation of modern Israel. The Arabs who lived in what would become Palestine did not see themselves as Palestinians, but as part of the Muslim Ummah, or Arab nation, or Greater Syrian subset of the Arab nation. The Jewish intellectual Gershom Scholem observed, "We educated the Arabs about nationalism. It was our very existence that created Arab national consciousness. That is the peculiar dialectic of history and I'm not sure that there is any escape from it." Palestinian identify developed in symbiotic response to the emergence of Israeli identity. Israel unwittingly created Palestine, just as anti-Semites unwittingly created Zionism, by dashing the assimilationist dreams of European Jews like Theodor Herzl.

Today, I see the "peculiar dialectic of history" that Scholem spoke of working on various fronts. Its incubator is typically the university. (I speak as a Canadian, but I take it that American colleges function in a similar manner.) The university celebrates multiculturalism. Every cultural group has its own club, and will often man a table in the concourse to advertise or proselytize or raise funds. When I was an undergraduate, an acquaintance spoke half-jokingly of forming a Western European club. This acquaintance was not a right-wing radical, or a racist, or even someone particularly political at all. She simply thought, "Everyone else has a club, so why not us?" The idea never came to fruition but it will, eventually. As the multicultural paradigm becomes ever more dominant, the formerly majority culture will become but one culture among many (as it already has in many major cities, i.e. in Canada, Toronto), and develop similar institutions of cultural representation.

Darker-skinned folks are trained by universities to identify themselves as "racialized." The term "racialized" acknowledges that race is a construct, yet the bearer claims the right to a racial identity based upon the fact that other people define her by this social construct. As Hannah Arendt wrote, in the context of European anti-Semitism, "You can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as. A person attacked as a Jew cannot defend himself as an Englishman or Frenchman. The world would only conclude that he is simply not defending himself." Barack Obama defines himself as black, though he is only really half-black, because most Americans see him as a black man. "Racialization" fortified if not created Obama's identity as a black man. Obviously one can, like Tiger Woods, stake out a multiracial identity even if most people see a drop of black as equal to fully black, but few people of any race are strong enough to go against society's flow.

When I am in my heavily white hometown of Hamilton, I am part of the white majority, and am not conscious of being "racialized." When I am busing to work in minority-majority Scarborough, I am aware of my heretofore non-existent or subliminal identity as a white person (even if, by some more stringent white people's definition, I am not white but "ethnic"). Demographically, the North American metropolitan future is Scarborough, not Hamilton. Consequentially, white or European racial consciousness will begin to be more frequently articulated, even if in a carefully post-postmodern, "racialized by the Other" sense. As my apolitical (and this qualifier is key, because most people are apolitical) university acquaintance said, "If everyone else has a club, why not us?" I am not making a value judgment here. I am simply predicting, based on what I know of social psychology, what I foresee happening.

The other modern example of the "peculiar dialectic" I wish to mention is the emergence of a self-consciously "masculinist" identity. Again, the university is typically the incubator; it is where the educated classes come to a rudimentary political and cultural self-awareness. "Feminism" is a broad term, but one wing of it, a wing with undue influence in the university, demonizes men. At the very least, that's how the situation is perceived, by both men and women I talked to who had taken Women's Studies courses in university. Recall Arendt: "You can only defend yourself as the person you are attacked as." Attacked as men, men will defend themselves as men. This is simply human nature. Men will, and already have begun to, articulate and defend their own group interests. Extreme masculinists will be the inverse of Andrea Dworkin and the "penetration is rape" school of feminist hyperbole. Cooler heads will, hopefully, push the movement in a more moderate position where it can meet feminism somewhere in the middle.

Feminists tend to be confused and/or threatened by a masculinist identity. This is because they think of men as the dominant class in society. Yes, most CEOs are men, but most men are not CEOs. Yes, most "players" are men, but most men are not players. The silent majority of men are no more "privileged" than women and, in some circumstances, less so. Where men are a minority, which includes the university and an increasing number of middle and upper-class professions, men will increasingly become conscious of themselves as a "genderized" interest group. Nice guys will no longer be content to finish last, but will begin to craft themselves a new social script as neither cretins nor milquetoast. Arguments about a history of oppression will not fly with newer generations who have not seen, and feel no responsibility for, "the sins of the fathers."

The peculiar dialectic can unfold in any number of ways. Recently, Europe witnessed the atrocities of a self-styled Christian Crusader, who clearly saw himself as the inverse of a Muslim Jihadist. A heightened Muslim corporate identity begets a heightened Western corporate identity, at least among a few (at first). Yet a heightened Western corporate identity need not manifest itself in violence. It can also manifest itself as a stronger, more cohesive society, willing to deal with other societies on the basis of mutual respect. On an individual level, a person aware of, and proud of who he/she is - whether this identity is biologically or socially constructed - need not hate who other people are. After all, who other people are helps define who we are, and vice versa.

Ode To My Madness

2011-11-05T19:40:00.001-04:00

I cultivate my madness. It keeps me sane. It allows me to go through the motions without feeling motion sickness. I gorge my madness on music and words, and I sing to it "Grow."

I pretend to be normal to the best of my ability. They reward me by saying I'm mostly harmless. Another day then I can go home again, to cultivate my madness in peace.

I sing sonnets to my madness. I lie in bed with it at night. My madness is closer to me than you could ever be.

Confession of a Luftmensch

2011-11-03T11:55:00.001-04:00

I am a luftmensch. This Yiddish/Germanic term means air person, someone whose head is in the clouds. Luftmenschen are concerned with ideas, not logistics.

Logistics bore and depress me. I skip over the details to get to the conclusions. Why, not how, is my perennial question.

Society has no place for the luftmenschen. Rather, it has one place, the ivory tower. The ivory tower is full of self-hating luftmenschen. They cling to the notion that, through "Theory," they are changing the world. Marx, not Socrates, is their model. Truth? It's only meaning is as a political weapon.

Despite loathing the typical "radical," I do empathize with anti-capitalist sentiment. In the capitalist system, the luftmensch has no value. Money talks, and everyone else is as good as mute. This, of course, also applies to the realm of erotic capitalism.

Living on air is lonely. But when you've seen the ground from up high, there's nowhere else you'd rather be.

The Ivory Tower Is White And Has Its Head In The Clouds

2011-10-15T18:18:00.006-04:00

Graduate school: where idealists are put into quarantine.*

* except when they're on day-pass occupying streets.

The Word Made Flesh Is A Stripper

2011-10-03T01:00:00.001-04:00

This blog has been around since 2003. I first posted when I was 18. It has a history! It is me but is not me. By this point, Head Wide Open is an autonomous being. A part of me, to be honest, is an egomaniac who thinks it should be much bigger than it is. Another part is impressed that the the void into which I shout - occasionally - echoes back, jarring my sense of isolation. A reader commented that my writing displays a lot of testosterone. I never thought of it that way, but it's true. I am mostly placid in real life. I keep things inside, hence Head Wide Open, which is not in fact my natural state.

Head Wide Open is an open diary of consciousness. I can think of no better description than that. I suffer from a surfeit of consciousness. It's not an attractive condition. So here is where the consciousness goes. It is not academic or journalistic - filtered. There are enough filters in the outside world. "Man is a miserable pile of secrets." Here are mine, piled up. The weird thing is that other people are conscious of my consciousness. Some of them may be more conscious of my consciousness than I am. For a solipsistic disembodied Cartesian I (that is, I), this is disturbing but also vaguely arousing. I am displaying my psychological dirty parts. To see my self, true self, through the gaze of the Other makes me an objective being. The Other is the aleph to my golem.

The elephant in the room is death. I am horrified by death. This is my mind trying to live forever. Everything not word is flux. I am trapped in a world of perpetual becoming, archly symbolized for me by my obsessive thought patterns. My every pacific state is disturbed by the imp of the perverse. But this, this is permanence. This is the invisible made visible. As such, it is an idol. It is not the real thing. But the real thing is inchoate and incommunicable. Head Wide Open is the facsimile of my self. My brain also contains links, which I am constantly clicking.

I am not always, or usually, so conscious. But when I am, I have to capture it. Here it is, captured. Tomorrow I work, nod, smile, and live in the real world, except for a small part which I have just put the zoom lens on.

The White Girl Mob: Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Kali-Yuga

2011-09-29T09:52:00.001-04:00

When a friend introduced me to the White Girl Mob, all I could think was: I surrender. The world belongs to sexy postmodern white bitches with glasses. We're just living in it. We are lucky to make it into the margins of their video shoot, their Facebook album, their Tumblr feed. Otherwise, our lives are void. Hail, Caesar!

Twenty-Six Years On My Way To Hell

2011-09-24T20:54:00.010-04:00

Nine Inch Nails are my favourite cathartic juvenalia. Every time I listen to them I remember how I felt when I was fourteen... okay, sixteen... okay, twenty... okay, still: like an angry, embittered outsider desperate for sex. Trent Reznor is too fond of the word decay and things that rhyme with "hole," but he is able to deftly capture negative psychological sentiments with simple lyrics.

"Closer," with its "I want to fuck you like an animal, I want to feel you from the inside... You bring me closer to God," ably captures the truth expressed by Malcom Muggeridge, "Sex is the mysticism of materialism and the only possible religion in a materialistic society."

"Burn," with its "This world rejects me, this world threw me away... Sometimes I think I could burn this whole world down," is the Platonic form of the sort of vengeful nihilism Nietzsche dubbed ressentiment.

"Only," with its "I just made you up to hurt myself... There is no you, there is only me," is the crystallization of solipsism.

"Down In It," with its "Just then a tiny little dot caught my eye, it was just about too small to see, but I watched it way too long and that dot was pulling me down..." absurdly conveys the inherently absurd downward spiral of obsessive thought.

"Wish, " with its immortal rallying cry "Twenty-six years, on my way to hell!" is particularly relevant to me, as I just turned twenty-six.

No, it's not Mozart. No, it's not even the more operatic negative depths of Swans. But I've seen Nine Inch Nails twice in concert, and they provide a ritual purgation for eternal adolescents no other misery-grinders can equal.

The Strange Faces Of Facebook

2011-09-03T16:27:00.004-04:00

As poet-Sodomite Jim Morrison observed, people are strange when you're a stranger. As a stranger, I use Facebook to follow that strange breed, "people," up close but from a distance, like a bird-watcher with binoculars. I have a number of "Friends" who are only my "Friends" because I'm fascinated by people I have nothing in common with.

My favourite was (alas, she unfriended me) my real-life friend's stripper ex-girlfriend, who would frequently post rap lyrics glorifying her vagina and its ability to extract money from men. Other choice faces are the unfailingly cheerful Filipina (is there any other kind?), the Panamian girl who's always jajajaja'ing, and the young socialite Jewess who posts about fashion and her cat Boo.

Upon self-analysis, it's clear that I am strangely drawn toward non-intellectual, non-ironic, non-jaded females to whom I have nothing to say. I don't wish to enter their perfect world, or shatter their perfect world. (Unlike Marxists, I believe in the firm necessity of false consciousness.) I'm content to simply spy on their existence in awe and wonderment. They are strange to me because I don't know how people can be so unstrange.

Erotic Capitalism

2011-08-28T09:52:00.002-04:00

I don't accept all the implications she draws, but I find Catherine Hakim's term "erotic capital" a useful one. Will Self writes:

Hakim endorses Schopenhauer's characterisation of the "striking effect" of young women's beauty and sex appeal, and gives us cross-cultural statistics to prove that not only is their "erotic capital" consistently greater than that of young men, but that it is also always undervalued: it is attractive young men who get the better jobs and secure the higher wages, attractive young men who end up being US president – regardless of their skin colour. This might seem counter-intuitive in a world seemingly plastered with images of this "striking effect", displayed in every possible state of dress and undress, but the strength of Hakim's analysis lies in the very crudeness of its metric. According to her, while young women may possess considerable charms, men's desire for them always vastly outstrips supply. The reverse is simply not the case: men are both less attractive to women, and markedly less desired by them, especially as those women grow older. What Hakim terms "the male sex-deficit" underlies both the ubiquity of female sexual imagery – as pornography, as marketing adjunct – and the persistent unwillingness of society at large to "valorise" women's good looks.

To tie this in with my previous post, 5 Things Women Unfairly Expect of Men: young women, on average, have more erotic capital than men. Thus they can more easily defy gender expectations and still receive attention from the opposite sex. As I wrote:

Given that most men are libido-enslaved and not very selective, women have the luxury of playing around with gender roles and still being fawned over. But if a man of average appearance takes a feminist's advice and stops doing what society expects of him, he will be doomed to loneliness. Women, snidely disdaining lower-ranked males' advances, have no idea of what it's like to be unwanted. If the choice was celibacy or traditional womanhood, they would choose traditional womanhood.

I also found confirmation of my earlier post, Gays Have It Easy, in a responding comment to Self's article:

As a straight man, my many gay male friends never seem to experience sexually fallow periods. If not with a partner and even when heart-broken, they have plenty of fun, consensual sex that is often temporarily emotionally and socially rewarding. My experience when single is the reverse. There is no straight 'Grinder'.

Gay men are free to defy gender expectation because they possess greater erotic capital in the eyes of other men. Much straight homophobia is no doubt latent resentment of the social freedom coupled with sexual cornucopia that gay men possess. Such social freedom/sexual fulfillment is unavailable to straight men who are doomed by the biological lottery to be attracted to women.

The business-oriented straight male will conform to social (read: feminine) pressure to make up for his lack of erotic capital. He will strive to become one of those alpha males feminists love to castigate almost as much as they love being fucked from behind by. He will work to achieve a high-paying job so women will pay him notice - and then be scorned for contributing to the gender wage imbalance. How dare he seek capital capital to make up for his lack of erotic capital, when women should rightfully have their share (the majority) of both.

The passion-oriented straight male will reject social (read: feminine pressure) to conform to alpha male status. He will sublimate his sexual frustration into fanatical dedication to an art or science. If he is extremely gifted or lucky, his efforts will pay off (literally) and he will achieve erotic capital as well. He will then be scorned for contributing to the gender genius imbalance. How dare he seek artistic/scientific success to make up for his lack of erotic capital, when women should rightfully have their share (the majority) of both.

Of course, capitalism being what it is, most men will simply be failures, without even the feminine option of living by and through their mate's success.

That "gay" also means happy is no coincidence.

Ugly Hate Machine

2011-08-22T16:39:00.004-04:00

I have a future at Rolling Stone!

New rule: If you're going to criticize a song for being shallow and overly-dramatic, you might want to do some research about it first. . . .

From what I gather, the essence of this guy's argument is that the Pearl Jam song "Better Man" is a pompous excuse for Eddie Vedder to pander to women. . . .

Just because something isn't spelled out in a song, it doesn't mean that it's not a part of the whole story.

Actually, come to think of it, this guy has a future with Rolling Stone magazine.

Friendo is referring to an old post making fun of Eddie Vedder, with a record 43 comments, mostly Pearl Jam fans lambasting me and excusing the man's poor songwriting abilities. All my most popular posts are products of vituperation. I tend to barely post at all when I'm feeling happy, well-adjusted, or am getting laid on a regular basis. Thus, expect many more posts in the near future!

Johnny Rotten sez, "Anger is an energy." Between anger and lethargy, "J'accuse!" and "meh," I am drawn like a moth to the light of the former. This is why Bethany never loved me and I assume the Neil Diamond destiny of being a solitary man. This is why I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah. This is why I find beauty without scars revolting. This is why I blog.

5 Things Women Unfairly Expect of Men

2011-07-31T21:20:00.005-04:00

A feminist lists 5 Things Society Unfairly Expects of Men. They are: make money; win; be physically strong; fix stuff; get it up. I agree that society expects these things of men. As a fairly non-stereotypical male (i.e. I have no interest in sports or tools), I should be enlisting in the author's war against gender stereotypes. But I recognize something that the author, as a woman, is perhaps (willfully) blind to: it is not simply abstract "society" that expects these things of men, it's women.

Women want a man who is rich, physically strong, handy and virile. Whether such demands are fair or unfair, culturally or biologically based, makes no difference, practically speaking. They are as good as ineradicable. If women wanted men to change their goals, they would stop rewarding alpha males with sexual attention. But even feminists secretly seek alpha males. They justify it to themselves using the patina of irony. I recently heard a couple of modern women discussing a bad landlord. The one modern woman recommended to the other that she get her boyfriend to confront him. She said so in a knowingly ironic way, but the implication was clear: it's a man's job to be confrontational.

What feminists want is for men to "make money; win; be physically strong; fix stuff; get it up," but to also be sensitive (to her needs) and intelligent (in a non-threatening way). The word for this imaginary species is chimera. Given the choice between a man who is ambitious and assertive, or a man who is sensitive and intelligent, (and most men fall roughly into one or the other, not both, categories), the woman, even the feminist, will pick the former. Perhaps handsomeness allows some men to forgo male stereotypes and still get sexual attention, but for the majority of men, it's conform to society's demands or die alone.

Given that most men are libido-enslaved and not very selective, women have the luxury of playing around with gender roles and still being fawned over. But if a man of average appearance takes a feminist's advice and stops doing what society expects of him, he will be doomed to loneliness. Women, snidely disdaining lower-ranked males' advances, have no idea of what it's like to be unwanted. If the choice was celibacy or traditional womanhood, they would choose traditional womanhood. For most men, the choice is between celibacy or traditional manhood. And today, even traditional manhood - being a good provider - is often not enough, given the prevalence of the Mr. Right chimera.

Alas, gender expectations may be unfair, but women aren't attracted to whiners. I keep my head wide shut in day-to-day life, because I don't have the luxury of being a feminist.

Tomorrow's Viking

2011-07-26T18:14:00.004-04:00

Like everyone, even Muslims, my first thought upon hearing about the Norwegian bloodbath was "the religion of peace strikes again." I was wrong, although since prejudgment ("prejudice") is a survival instinct dating back to our jungle days, I'm not ashamed of my initial stance. Muslims (typically Pakistani or Arab) have a record of indiscriminately killing civilians that, until recently, Nordic "Knights Templar" didn't possess. Prejudice, when based on statistics and amenable to change, is common sense.

The Norwegian terrorist is undoubtedly psychopathic. But unlike congresswoman-killer Jared Loughner, who seemed to blame his troubles on the alphabet, Anders Breivik is not crazy in the certifiable sense. His actions, to quote a favourite phrase of the Chomskyite left (which I doubt they will use in this case), had a "root cause": Muslim mass migration and misdeed in Norway. This root cause does not justify the murder of innocents; although, arguably, it is a better justification than the root causes of Islam-inspired violence, like the printing of cartoons and the existence of Jews.

Obviously, I am not one of Breivik's hated "multiculturalists/cultural Marxists." I expressed some thoughts on multiculturalism's failure in a previous post, and even vaguely predicted some kind of violent backlash in Europe:

I don't know about Europeans. History shows they are capable of anything. . . . A forced population exchange of Israeli Jews for European Muslims is possible. (I'd love to see the look on the anti-Semitic Algerian's face when he is forced to move to Palestine and give up his French home to a Tunisian Jew.) Liberal assimilation camps are possible. (Muslims locked into chairs with their eyes pried wide open, ala A Clockwork Orange, forced to watch reels upon reels of gay porn and Sex and the City reruns.) Who can predict the future?

A rational argument can be made that, once a non-assimilated minority group reaches critical mass, social breakdown is likely to result. A rational argument can also be made that to sustain a high standard of living, a country with a low native birth-rate requires immigration. To square the circle, I recommend European countries declare a moratorium on immigration from Muslim countries. Instead, they should look to East Asia. East Asian immigrants are non-violent, hard-working, lack religious and ideological baggage, and tend to intermarry and adapt to Western culture, even taking on Western names.

I might be wrong, and I owe my open-mindedness, at least in part, to Europe's philosophical tradition - hence my tangential interest in Europe's preservation. If the Europe of Plato and Spinoza still exists, rational argument, not the hard nihilism of Breivik and the soft nihilism of his PC boogeyman, will prevail. But as I said in the aforementioned post, I don't know about Europeans. Today's social democrat is yesterday's, and perhaps tomorrow's, Viking.

Gays Have It Easy

2011-06-30T19:49:00.002-04:00

Gays have a community, a cause, and no sexual or romantic frustration, given that men know what men want. We should all be so lucky.

Jaunty Interlude

2011-05-08T16:07:00.003-04:00

I am not posting here much lately, but I am still writing - working on a manuscript of sorts. I will still try to post once in a while as well.

Thank you to those who've commented and/or expressed appreciation for something I've written. I've always considered Head Wide Open an alternate reality. And I need an alternate reality, because I'm not quite suited to the one given. For other people to briefly share in my alternate reality makes it almost feel real.

I will end, as is appropriate, with this ode to delusions of future greatness:

Canada Under Jack Layton

2011-04-29T21:42:00.001-04:00

Between A Tusk And A Watery Place

2011-04-04T23:58:00.007-04:00

There's trouble brewing on the Ivory Coast,
Denuded elephants are in revolt,
The ultrablacks have turned on each other,
Mark your map "a spot of bother,"
The French are here to protect the ivory,
Conflicts like this are never binary.

Panacea

2011-03-31T22:59:00.001-04:00

Life is easy if you don't think. Life is hard if you think too much. Life is meaningful if you think too much but have learned how to unthink. Without alcohol! But in the meantime, alcohol...

The Superfluity Of Secret Societies

2011-03-25T10:03:00.001-04:00

These days, the word "esoteric" is itself esoteric.

As For Winning...

2011-03-13T01:33:00.003-05:00

The die is cast. Fortune's verdict is clear. I have given up on finding fame, fortune and women. In the tradition of Villiers de l'Isle Adam - "As for living, our servants will do that for us" - I will now win vicariously through Charlie Sheen.

Biology Speaks!

2011-03-04T03:13:00.005-05:00

Charlie Sheen is right. We are all wired differently. My brother is half my DNA, and we have something in common, but there is still a gap. No words can ultimately communicate how we think. Kin are nearest, dearest strangers, but still strangers. Physical fusion is the closest facsimile to oneness. And from that sublime counterfeit, marriages have been born.

Settle while you can!

Notes From a Dead-End

2011-03-01T02:04:00.005-05:00

Kids should be taught the reality of disappointment (reality is disappointment) early and often. Little boys should be given a memento mori depicting a bald head with the subtitle, "This is your future." Also a ribbon declaring: "You are superfluous to society's needs." We should welcome them into adulthood at age 13 with a 24-pack of beer and a subscription to Internet porn.

Christopher Lasch called the family a "haven in a heartless world." In my experience (not everyone's, I know), this is so. The only reason I seek a modicum of material success and bourgeois entrapment is because I am sucker for the fifth commandment. If I didn't have a loving family I would drop out and kill my brain (more quickly).

As Putnam has shown, ethnic diversity corrodes a sense of community. Meanwhile the Thatcherite attitude of "There is no society, only individuals," is the correlate to David Bowie's "No one needs anyone, they don't even just pretend." Human nature is being fucked with left and right.

Don't think. Don't think. A girlfriend once saw this blog and asked a friend, "Who am I dating!?" (I checked her Facebook. She left it open - her fault.) I should be more grounded, watch sports, leave reading to girls. Perpetuate the illusion for the next generation.

Two Minutes' Hate

2011-02-13T17:12:00.001-05:00

A brilliant idea, why has no society adopted it for real? Is Julian Assange Emmanuel Goldstein, or does he just wish?

My Superbowl Pick

2011-02-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

The Chamber of Deputies in Brasília.

Don't Be A Hater

2011-02-01T10:01:00.006-05:00

Blacks have a very enlightened, Zen saying: "don't hate the player, hate the game." And yet they tend to apply it simply to the romantic realm.

World history is a game. Europeans have been successful players, but they didn't invent the rules.

Don't be a hater. Instead see the game for what it is, and the players as the pawns they are.

After all, Ozymandias too was a winner.

Ricky Gervais At The Golden Globes

2011-01-17T00:22:00.008-05:00

I respect callous disregard for the vanities of the pampered. Robert Downey Jr, you cannot erase your criminal past. "How dare he say what we think?" Tim Allen insulted American manhood for a decade plus with his grotesque "Home Improvement." He is a hack who happened to latch on to a successful franchise just as his career was hitting the skids. Fazil Iskander wrote, "Ancient Rome perished because its emperors in all their marble magnificence failed to realize how ridiculous they were." One could say the same for our modern Babylon. Hollywood should applaud the jester's mockery, because it is a valve for revolution.

Answers Offered To the Question "What Is Love?" As Asked By Haddaway

2010-12-24T00:05:00.002-05:00

Love is not a victory march / It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.
- Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah"

Love is the law.
- Aleister Crowley

Love is always over in the morning.
- Andrew Eldritch, "Temple of Love"

Love is the eyes of god, hate is his asshole.
- Perry Farrell

Love is the shit that makes life bloom and you never know when you might step in it!
- Michael Franti

Love is a bomb that destroys all evil.
- Gerontissa Gabrielia

Love ... is the exact reverse of desire, for love is all activity. Instead of the object coming to me, it is I who go to the object and become part of it.
- José Ortega y Gasset

Oh baby, don't hurt me
- Haddaway, "What Is Love?"

Love is the gun that I fire inside of you.
- Mary Beats Jane, "Day In, Day Out"

Love is the final end of the world's history, the Amen of the universe.
- Novalis

Love is one of the answers humankind invented to stare death in the face: time ceases to be a measure, and we can briefly know paradise.
- Octavio Paz

Love is at once the brother, son, and father of death, which is its sister, mother, and daughter.
- Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life

Love is the proof and the very substance of his [God's] reality.
- Simone Weil

Conform To "Diversity Our Strength" Or Die!

2010-12-19T12:25:00.004-05:00

Eduard Limonov, not one of Barbara Walters' 10 most fascinating people of 2010, rants about the West in the following terms:

"Europeans are so timid they remind me of sick and elderly people," he begins. "And Europe is like one big old people's home. There is so much political correctness and conformity there that you can't open your mouth. It's worse than prison. That's why there is no culture in the west anymore. Just dying screams.

"In Russia, fortunately, the people still have some barbarian spirit. But Europeans and Americans are just dying, sick invalids."

A recent example of the conformist mindset Limonov describes recently emerged in my native Canada. As the National Post reports:

City councillor Mike Layton (Trinity-Spadina) enters his first full city council meeting Thursday with a motion asking council to censure Maclean’s magazine for “negative stereotyping of the Asian-Canadian Community.”

And members of an Asian Canadian group gathered at City Hall Wednesday to put their support behind the rookie politician.

Mr. Layton, the son of Jack Layton, the federal NDP leader, represents Toronto’s Chinatown, and his stepmother, MP Olivia Chow, comes from China. He told reporters and members of the Chinese Canadian National Council at City Hall Wednesday that the Nov. 10 article in Maclean’s, “Too Asian?” is “offensive to my neighbours. It is offensive to me personally.” . . .

He said his motion, “Reaffirms our commitment to the city’s motto, ‘Diversity Our Strength.’ We are living in the cradle of global diversity.”

Censuring public mention of facts uncomfortable to your worldview (i.e. that cultural differences have consequences beyond culinary diversity) does not eliminate those facts, or prevent private conversation of those facts. Intimidating mainstream publications into not discussing controversial issues only pushes those issues into the ideological quiver of extremists (see rise of the anti-immigrant far-right in Europe). It also leads to the banalization of public discourse, so that the "10 Most Fascinating People" includes the hopelessly inane cast of the Jersey Shore and all politicians must be lawyers both professionally and spiritually - i.e. dead inside.

"Diversity Our Strength" only makes sense as a slogan if the diverse parties bring unique strengths to the table. If Asians are indistinguishable from whites, why is diversity a strength? Can't "Diversity Our Strength" accommodate the unspoken assumption held by nearly everyone that Asians are better (or work harder) at math and science than their non-Asian peers? If "Diversity Our Strength" means I don't have to specialize in math, I support it. If "Diversity Our Strength" means I can't talk about what is in front of my nose, I agree with Limonov - there is no culture in the west anymore, just dying screams of "I'm offended!"

Carol Of The Day

2010-12-16T01:06:00.005-05:00

Tis the "holiday season." Kwanza, Chanukah, Christmas, Eid Mubarak, Hindu Elephant God Celebration, you name it. Yet amid all the public displays of ecumenical cheer, I see little representation of that holiest of days, Crowleymass.

What is Crowleymass, you may ask? See below.

Current 93 - Crowleymass Unveiled

Okay boys and girls, let's go!
Alright

Another wretched morning
A wretched October day
No sound of angels in the trees
Christmas is far away
Yeah, listen, what's this?
The televoice starts whipping round
The vision comes today
And this is what the voice declaims
It's To Megatherion's birthday!

Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!
I said
Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!
One more time
Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!

Well you can take your three wise kings, your manger sheep, and hey!
And I'm gonna tell you why, too
Cause the thelema-boys are taking over with the tidings of the beast's birthday

Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!
I said
Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!
One more time
Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!

Crowleymass, crowleymass
See the little children at crowleymass
Their faces full of awe

And they don't get no shitty dolls and trains and stuff like that
No, they just get the book of the law

Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!
I said
Don't give us no sass or we'll kick your ass
Cause we're the heralds of crowleymass!

Well you can take your reincarnation, transsubstantiation and your papal kiss
Cause I'm with a beast in beastly bliss
And all I want is copulation!
Oh darling!
And there ain't no grace, there ain't no guilt
Cause this is the law, do what thou wilt
The name is crowley, it rhymes with holy
It isn't crowley, that rhymes with fouly, eeewww

Well you can take your reincarnation, transubstantiation and your papal kiss
Cause I'm with a beast in beastly bliss
And all I want is good old-fashioned copulation!

[occult chanting]

Shallow Fascination

2010-12-13T16:26:00.008-05:00

Here's Barbara Walters’ list of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2010:

1. General David Petraeus
2. Betty White
3. Mark Zuckerberg
4. Justin Bieber
5. Cast of “Jersey Shore”
6. Sandra Bullock
7. Jennifer Lopez
8. LeBron James
9. Kate Middleton
10. Sarah Palin

Here's my list of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 1848:

1. Giuseppe Garibaldi
2. Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte
3. Mikhail Bakunin
4. Giuseppe Mazzini
5. Adam Mickiewicz
6. Victor Hugo
7. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
8. Klemens von Metternich
9. Lajos Kossuth
10. Karl Marx

To paraphrase General Patton, "God I hate the 21st century." Also: what does the contrast between Mazzini and Garibaldi vs. Snooki and The Situation tell us about the decline of the Italian race?

Wikileaks Crocodile Tears

2010-12-06T17:40:00.004-05:00

Oh, the injustice! Governments say one thing in public and another in private! Julian Assange expects the United States government to conduct itself as the Kingdom of God. Jesus wisely said, the Kingdom of God is within. Carl Schmitt observes, "Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks." Love can only thrive in borders defended by violence.

Steal Russia's secrets and Putin's gonna make you look like the Joker after his acid bath. China acquiesces in the starvation of millions of people so it can avoid a refugee problem and a united capitalist neighbour. Muslims defend human rights until the moment they achieve majority status. Iran would nuke the Palestinians to spite the Jews. Africans depose white rulers to show off their superior oppression skills. This is the world we live in. The Woodrow Wilsons and Forrest Gumps of the world should stick to monasteries.

Song Of The Day

2010-11-07T22:18:00.000-05:00

There aren't enough songs sublimely conveying universal feelings of dislocation using a slightly obscure literary reference as lyrical lynchpin. Some background from New York Magazine's review of Michel Houellebecq's H. P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life is useful for context:

In Houellebecq’s reading, Lovecraft was initiated into the secrets of the vile by his disastrous move from Rhode Island to Brooklyn in 1924. He did it for love: At the age of 30, he’d married an older woman, Sonia Haft Greene, who was both Jewish and divorced (no small thing, Houellebecq points out, “for a conservative anti-Semite”). But affection, which had taken him this far, could take him no further. In the metropolis, he was jostled and out-hustled by immigrants and “negroes” and could not find work. “My coming to New York,” one of Lovecraft’s narrators concludes, “had been a mistake.” In that story, the hero is shown a terrifying vision of the future by a demon in Greenwich Village; in real life, the desperate Lovecraft and Sonia were forced to sell their furniture. For some time, he had to live alone in Red Hook. Two years later, utterly defeated, he left. The marriage failed.

Now to delve into what Lovecraft, in top spine-tingling form, called the "Italo-Semitico-Mongoloid" lower east side:

The Mountain Goats - Lovecraft In Brooklyn

Gonna be too hot to breathe today
But everybody is out here on the streets
Somebody has opened up the fire hydrant
Cold water rushing out in sheets

Some kid in a Marcus Allen jersey
Asks me for a cigarette
Companionship is where you find it
So I take what I can get

Lovecraft on the car-length funhouse mirrors
I stick to the shadows when I can
Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Well the sun goes down
The armies of the voiceless
Several hundred-thousand strong
Come without their bandages
Their voices raised in song
When the street lights sputter out
They make this awful sizzling sound

I cast my gaze towards the pavement
Too many bloodstains on the ground
Rhode Island drops into the ocean
No place to call home anymore
Lovecraft in Brooklyn

Head outside most everyday to try to keep the wolves away
Imagine nice things I might say
If company should come

Woke up afraid of my own shadow
Like, genuinely afraid
Headed for the pawnshop
To buy myself a switchblade
Someday something's coming
From way out beyond the stars
To kill us while we stand here
It will store our brains in mason jars
And then the girl behind the counter asks "How do you feel today?"
"I feel like Lovecraft in Brooklyn!"

Yeah!

Why The Gender Revolution Is Permanently Stalled

2010-10-28T19:12:00.004-04:00

Joan C. Williams writes:

Masculinity holds the key to understanding why the gender revolution has stalled. As long as men continue to feel threatened by the possibility of being perceived as wimps and wusses unless they live up to the norms of conventional masculinity, we can expect little economic progress for women.

Addendum: as long as women continue to feel attracted to "conventional masculinity," we can expect little change in men's values. Since people can't help what they attracted to, this will never happen.

Islamophobia: A Working Definition

2010-10-19T11:18:00.000-04:00

The irrational fear that people who irrationally fear Christians, Jews, Hindus, Bahá'ís, giant Buddha statues, apostates, women, gays, alcohol, free speech, textual criticism, public displays of affection, pigs, dogs, cartoons and teddy bears might be worth fearing.

See also: Amboy Times List of Things That Offend Muslims.

Jesus Forgot To Tell You

2010-10-15T11:41:00.000-04:00

Love not forged in the fire of hate is doomed to expire.

Can't Stan Ya

2010-10-11T16:24:00.004-04:00

Jews hate Hitler. Armenians hate the Young Turks. But do the majority of Russians hate Stalin? Do the majority of Chinese hate Mao? Not as far as I can tell. Human beings are inveterate tribalists. We don't mind being oppressed as long as it's by one of our own and in our name. So of course even non-fundamentalist Afghanis prefer the Taliban to NATO occupation. Abandon Afghanistan (and Pakistan) to rot in their stone age existence. Limiting their malfeasance requires drone attacks and spy networks, not the sacrifice of Western lives. Give India carte blanche to do whatever it wants in the region. Accept only women refugees on condition they don't bring their menfolk. Come back in a hundred years and see if things have improved. If they haven't, try again in another hundred.

Ten Better Places To Seek Religious Enlightenment Than Afghanistan

2010-10-10T17:54:00.003-04:00

Warsame admits he attended an Al Qaeda camp. But Erlinder insists his client was mainly there to teach English to nurses working for the Taliban, recognized internationally at the time as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. The Osama encounter occurred when the Al Qaeda leader spoke at a dinner attended by 75 people, including Warsame. Erlinder adds that Warsame insists the man he sent money to was not an Al Qaeda member.

“He went there to seek (religious) enlightenment,” Erlinder says of Warsame’s time in Afghanistan. “He found that (Al Qaeda) were engaged in acts that he didn’t support and he came back before 9/11 happened.”
- Terrorist supporter might make Toronto his home, Toronto Star

10. New Jersey
9. Death Valley
8. Cobra Island
7. Guyana
6. Magog
5. Latveria
4. North Korea
3. The Congo
2. Skull Island
1. Any fucking place

Jews, Gentiles, Blacks, Whites, We All Have Our Kampf

2010-10-05T03:31:00.009-04:00

I rarely watch Saturday Night Live (because it's not funny). However, I caught a bit of Kanye West's prog-rap tribute to King Crimson. One line: "In this white man's world / we the ones chosen." I wish I could be rich and successful and still blame my problems on a Sauron-like oppressor. Unfortunately, as Rick Sanchez has pointed out, I hardly belong to an oppressed minority. If I was like the rest of the majority, I could blame my problems on the Jews. But being a Jew myself, to do so would just be in bad taste.

A confession: if I wasn't a Jew, I might be an anti-Semite. In fact, I've sometimes thought God made me a Jew so I couldn't be an anti-Semite, or that I was an anti-Semite in another life. Anti-Semitism is concentrated misanthropy. Ah, to give my inchoate resentments a singular name and face. Paul Gauguin: "Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge." Life is too big, narrow the focus. Manic Street Preachers: "Hitler reprised in the worm of your soul." Jews call it Yetzer Hara, the evil impulse.

Hitler, Kanye West and Rick Sanchez: little men made big who still think like little people. Fair warning: being the establishment doesn't make you happy. As a Jew, I should be happy that my people have managed to destroy Western civilization through open borders, civil rights, cultural Marxism and jazz music. But there's still a hole in my soul where the misery pours in. Did Jews control the world when Kafka was around? But he was unhappy too. "There is infinite hope, but not for us."

Angry black men, you are not Asiatics, Moors, Egyptians, Ethiopians or the real Israelites. You are descendants of Guineamen who got a raw deal and now have little to complain about in the grand scheme of things. But the grand scheme of things is hard to suss out from down here in the shit with Hitler's worm in your soul. Even though if any people were chosen by God it was certainly us and not you, I still love you as His fellow distorted images. And Rick Sanchez and anti-Semites too.

We Are All People Of Colour

2010-10-03T08:12:00.005-04:00

Race exists. It may be (to some extent) a social construct, but so is the state. Try not paying your taxes for a year. To be ignorant of reality is to possess what Marxists called false consciousness. Therefore it's a good thing that, as demonstrated by sites like Stuff White People Like, white people are coming to gain some racial consciousness. People without perspective assume they are the default and everyone else is other. Like only other people have accents, only other people are "ethnics," only other people are "of colour" (white is a colour), only other people have social morays and ridiculous customs.

Racial consciousness doesn't necessarily mean racial hatred. Chris Rock is racially conscious, but hardly hateful. To be racially conscious is simply to acknowledge the reality that we are not disembodied Cartesian egos. We possess bodies and faces. Genes aside, our bodies and faces, especially the way other people react to them and culture portrays them, affect how we interact with the world. I don't know if black people are loud because media and culture tells them to be loud, or because they are predisposed to be like that. (Something to do with bigger dicks?) Probably it's a mix of both. Either way, acknowledge the fact and move on.

"Loud" isn't a positive or a negative. It's how you use it. You can be a loud, vivacious personality everyone loves, or a loud, obnoxious bully everyone wants to kill. I'm too humble to claim racial superiority. As a Jew, I could accurately say "nya, nya, my race has a higher IQ than any other." But I don't think IQ is the be-all end-all of being a good person. A high IQ doesn't make you wise (although it certainly predisposes you in that direction). We're a smart people, but we're also neurotic, self-centered and often loud ourselves. We possess, as we say, foibles. Acknowledge the fact, as all good comedians do, and move on.

When we acknowledge the fact, we can, to a large degree, alter the facts. I can try, and do try, to be less neurotic and self-centered (loud isn't my particular problem). I'm always going to be the bookish type, for which I blame centuries of inbreeding to create elite Talmudic scholars, but how I deal with it is my own measure of freedom. As Mussolini said in his saner days, "Race! It is a feeling, not a reality; ninety-five per cent, at least, is a feeling." I can do with that ninety-five (or fifty, or sixty, or seventy, or eighty) percent feeling what I will.

The problem with racists is that they're determinists. They deny what religion tells us (and it ain't the world was created in six days): people can transcend themselves and so defy the laws of culture. Abraham was once just another Iraqi. The problem with "race is a construct" PC types is that they aren't realistic. They deny what science tells us: people can transcend themselves and defy the laws of culture, but they can't defy the laws of gravity. If you aren't realistic reality is going to hit you on the way down. It doesn't matter what your race is.

Mount Morah Revisited

2010-09-29T23:59:00.004-04:00

Allah said to Ibraham, "Kill me a son"
Ibe says, "Inshallah, thy will be done"
- with apologies to Bob Dylan

Song Of The Day

2010-09-27T02:15:00.000-04:00

Points for discussion. The only realistic love song? Is "in a bar that's always closing" the saddest line ever written? Why does Emo bother to exist after this song (see also: "No Time to Cry")?

My favourite bootleg by this band is Floorshow, performed 1985 in Long Beach, California. The band's disdain for the audience comes through in lines like "Thank you for that whatever that was" (following scattered applause), "Sometimes people ask us why we're so gloomy, really they do, and we tell them, we're not, except when we have to play here" and my favourite, "This country is a banana republic. I want to go home."

True goth rock fans don't wear black. We walk among you like normal men, dreaming of hara-kiri.

The Sisters Of Mercy - I Was Wrong

You say "stay and never leave"
You say "meant forever"
I could believe you, but I don't
You say we're almost all alone together
All alone
You say
You say you will
I know you won't

CHORUS:
I was wrong
I was wrong to ever doubt
I can get along without
I can love my fellow man
But I'm damned if I'll love yours

In a bar that's always closing
In a world where people shout
I don't wanna talk this over
I don't wanna talk it out
I was quite impressed until I hit the floor
Isn't that what friends are for?
Pain looks great on other people
That's what they're for

Great Big Thing Crawlin' All Over Me

2010-09-24T12:11:00.004-04:00

Older generations found the vocabulary to describe the supra-rational in the Bible. I find it in song lyrics. A line from Big Black's Steelworker describes depression as I've known it: "great big thing crawlin' all over me." Depression crawls through the brain sticking its tendrils into your every thought. But enough melodrama. I can hardly compete with Down in It by Mr. Trent Reznor and Failure by the aptly named Swans.

Medication defangs depression, but a defanged animal can still keep you awake at night. Depression exaggerates, but it still has its point to make. I interpret its point as follows: "do more with your life: exercise, talk to other human beings, change the world, find somebody to love." Valid, I reply, but why do you have to be such an asshole about it? Let me read a book or watch a TV show without sticking your tendrils in.

Alcohol and writing are temporary panaceas for depression. Ultimately however, the only cure is to thine own self being true. By "self" I don't mean id and ego with their cries for instant or slightly extended gratification. I mean that better nature you sometimes hear squealing from under the avalanche of psychic noise. Call it the divine spark, Atman or some less poetic neurological equivalent. Perhaps, "that thing beneath the great big thing."

Kim Kardashian's To-Do List

2010-09-22T09:02:00.003-04:00

When all of this started a couple of years ago, my mom and I sat down and wrote a list of all the goals we hoped to accomplish with the show. And so far every single one of them has come true.
- Kim Kardashian in Entertainment Weekly

1. Leak sex tape.
2. Fuck a small army of mandingos.
3. Spawn uglier, mutant clones.
4. Hitch uglier, mutant clones to coattails.
5. Retroactively justify the Armenian genocide.

The Fall Of The Multicult

2010-09-20T16:44:00.016-04:00

Ezra Pound called artists the antennae of the race. You don't need to be a master artist to notice a premonitory scent in the Western air. Let's call it anti-multicult. In Toronto, a fat white guy who dared say "diversity is not my priority" during a forum held on diversity is leading the mayoral race in Toronto. Toronto! The self-proclaimed most diverse city in the world! Here's what his opponent says:

Mr. Smitherman said, going ahead, the race comes down to two clashing sets of values. “Ford’s values are about going backwards, cutting the city down in a reckless way,” he said. “Our side is about bringing people together and building on Toronto’s strength.”

“The city of Toronto’s motto is diversity is our strength. If Rob Ford is elected mayor, the first thing that will need to be done is change the motto.”

As far as I know, changing the asinine motto of Toronto is not part of Rob Ford's platform. But if it was, I bet a lot of people would support the change. That Smitherman uses the thought of any change as a threat shows how out to lunch old-school elites are. Most people believe unity is our strength: in the Canadian case, unity under Anglo-Saxon and in Quebec, French, law and values. Diversity within that framework is fine (we all love Chinese food and hot biracial girls), but when the multicult's objects of worship try to impose sharia law or import foreign conflicts, the monocult asserts its primacy.

Even Sweden, beloved by socialists the world over, is in the midst of an anti-multicult backlash. Right-wing commentators often talk of Europe becoming Eurabia, but I think a resurgence of soft (i.e. more or less democratic) fascism is more likely. Europe needs migrants to replenish an aging population, but eventually one of their "Christian Democratic" parties is going to want to preserve Christian democracy by restricting the migration of Muslims. Maybe they'll even, God forbid, try to integrate Gypsies into the workforce instead.

Rancorous white nationalists will never take power in North America. The reason is as much inbuilt Christianity as inbuilt liberalism. There is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ/Uncle Sam. America always leaves room for Sammy Davis Jr. in the rat pack, Mr. T in the A-Team. We are the Borg. We assimilate you, you don't assimilate us. Today's conservative American Muslim parents are giving birth to the reality TV/porn stars of tomorrow. I speak not of right and wrong here, but of simple fact. In ten years the burqa will be modified into exotic lingerie sold at Walmart.

I don't know about Europeans. History shows they are capable of anything. Akhmahjinefucker wants Israelis to go "back" to Poland and Germany. A forced population exchange of Israeli Jews for European Muslims is possible. (I'd love to see the look on the anti-Semitic Algerian's face when he is forced to move to Palestine and give up his French home to a Tunisian Jew.) Liberal assimilation camps are possible. (Muslims locked into chairs with their eyes pried wide open, ala A Clockwork Orange, forced to watch reels upon reels of gay porn and Sex and the City reruns.) Who can predict the future? All I know is my antennae are tingling.

No Sympathy For The Beautiful

2010-09-19T16:56:00.006-04:00

Much blather lately about attractive people complaining that their attractiveness (which, naturally, they accentuate) elicits a reaction. I have a general rule of thumb: no sympathy for the beautiful. They, more than whites or men, are the privileged caste of our society. They get unearned attention, sex, deference and job preference. Who do political parties want for candidates, who do companies want for spokespeople, who do directors want for stars, who do designers want for models, who do you want to be seen with, who do you want to fuck? The beautiful. The least they can do in return is let us ogle them without bitching (or suing!) about it. If you don't like being the "object" (ooh, objectification!) of mass adoration, wear a burqa.

We humans are a sympathetic bunch, but we have limits. We give money to Haitians hit with an earthquake. We let Pakistanis hit with flooding flounder. Why? Because Pakistanis, thanks to their support for terrorism, retrograde cultural practices, religious bigotry and oppression of women, are unsympathetic. We worship dogs and exterminate rats. Why? Because rats, thanks to their scurrilous ways, are unsympathetic. As the Buddha observed, life is suffering. Except for the rare Christ figures, we can't sympathize with all suffering creatures or we'd never be able to get up in the morning. I for one, abstain from sympathizing with beautiful people, dastardly animals and barbaric nations. For the most part, I don't actively wish them ill. But my Noah's ark of pity ain't big enough for three.

At The Risk Of Seeming Ridiculous

2010-09-17T23:38:00.005-04:00

With the coming school year, many university students will be purchasing posters like the following:

Unfortunately there will be no posters emblazoned with my favourite Che quote, "We're going to do for blacks exactly what blacks did for the revolution. By which I mean: nothing."

Ecclesiastes 2.1

2010-09-16T00:45:00.004-04:00

The title bar of this blog contains an image of the Fool's Cap Map of the World. Strange Maps has a useful exposition on its background:

The archetype of the Fool, presented here in his incarnation as the court jester, is a first indicator of the map’s deeper meaning. In previous ages, the Fool was a court figure allowed to mock majesty and to speak truth to power. These were rare and useful correctives to the corrupting absolutism of the monarchies of the day. But criticism of this sort was only possible if it was de-fanged by the grotesque appearance of the Fool - preferably a hunchbacked, slightly loopy-headed dwarf, i.e. someone not to be taken too seriously.

All of this would have been common and current knowledge to the people viewing this map, in the late 16th century. The uncomfortable truth told by this map is that the world is a sombre, irrational and dangerous place, and that life on it is nasty, brutish and short. The world is, quite literally, a foolish place.

This is underlined by the mottoes of biblical and classical origin, dotted across the map. The legend in the left panel reads: “Democritus of Abdera laughed at [the world], Heraclitus of Ephesus wept over it, Epichtonius Cosmopolites portrayed it”. Over the cap is the Latin version of the Greek dictum, “Know thyself". Across the cap’s brow, the inscription translates as “O head, worthy of a dose of hellebore”.

The Latin quote just above the map is from Pliny the Elder: “For in the whole universe the earth is nothing else and this is the substance of our glory, this is its habitation, here it is that we fill positions of power and covet wealth, and throw mankind into an uproar, and launch wars, even civil ones.”

The reason for so much trouble and strife is explained in the quote below the map, from Ecclesiastes: “The number of fools is infinite”. Another quote from that most depressing of Bible books, on the jester’s staff to the right, intones: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity”. Inscribed on the badges adorning the shoulder belt are a few sayings in line with this cheerful message: “Oh, the worries of the world; oh, how much triviality is there in the world”, “Everyone is without sense”, and “All things are vanity: every man living”.

I'm a believer in the Hermetic doctrine of "As above, so below." In its essentials, what goes on in my head corresponds to what goes on in the world. To map one is to map the other. Greek wisdom and Hebrew wisdom agree, because wisdom is one. Whatever their deficiencies in understanding the scientific details of the world, ancient wise men understood its metaphysical essence because they looked deeply within themselves. To most moderns, blessed by the good god Progress, they are fools. Who better to speak truth to power?

How Much Longer Must We Tolerate Mass Culture: The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards

2010-09-13T21:35:00.005-04:00

I used to watch the MTV Video Music Awards to gauge the temperature at which Babylon is burning. I watched it again Saturday night. Some thoughts:

Rock is dead:
30 Seconds to Mars won Best Rock Video. Although not hipsters, nor are they rock n' roll in any meaningful sense of the term. The danger, the grandeur, the cthonic energy, is gone. Probably forever.

White malehood is dead:
Related. The black male continues to be the paradigm of cool manhood. Cool whites are only so by virtue of aping black male styles: Eminem, Justin Timberlake, even Justin frickin Bieber. I'm really disappointed in the way this race has well, abandoned the race.

American womanhood is undead:
Except Taylor Swift. She's cute and legit.

Lady Gaga is a symptom, not a cause, of Kali Yuga:
As such, I find her unrestrained decadence admirable. Truly, as Baudrillard said of America, "the finished form of the future catastrophe."

Linkin Park have become the mainstream emo KMFDM:
Not a bad transition.

It Doesn't Take Sun Tzu...

2010-09-13T01:00:00.001-04:00

If you want to win hearts and minds, send apostles. If you want to win skulls and fingers, send soldiers. If you want to lose a war, confuse the two.

The Coming Of The Artificial Vagina

2010-09-12T12:49:00.005-04:00

Via local liberal rag:

Barss: Pornography profits are plummeting because porn is so easily available. So people are saying maybe that’s it.

There’s also less resistance to new technology today. Before, you really had to push people to adopt something like the VCR, but now you can invent a new device like the iPhone and people will adopt it more readily.

But for 40,000 years this has been going on; I don’t think it’s done yet.

I think there are new technologies coming that people will be uncomfortable with.

For example, almost all of the communications technologies either communicate sound, picture or both. Haptic technologies communicate touch, anything from temperature, texture, vibration. It’s a very different kind of communications technology and in some ways a lot more intimate and invasive.

Some of the initial haptic applications are coming from the pornography industry. So what some of the pornography companies are doing is that they can essentially connect an actual physical machine, a vibrator or, more likely, an artificial vagina, to a movie that’s encoded in such a way that what’s happening on the screen happens to the watcher.

Star: Oh, that’s so sad.

Sad? I don't know. Seems to me the advent of the artificial vagina would decrease rates of STDs, rape, prostitution and adultery, for a start. It would also level the romantic playing field. Bars would have to start offering "men's nights" to lure us away from our e-ginas. Even then, a large swathe of society will choose to stay at home, always.

This is the direction our society, with its great cities of solitude, is headed in. I predict a future of jacked-in cyborgs seated on designer toilets, dicks in artficial vaginas, ears listening to two different songs at the same time, one eye on a video of a live execution, the other on tentacle porn, intravenous serotinin boosters on max.

We're what, a quarter of the way there?

Bibliolatry Of The Highest Order

2010-09-09T09:40:00.005-04:00

Regular readers of blog will know that I like books. A beautifully mustachioed pastor in Florida is planning to burn a bunch of copies of a single book, the Koran by one Mohammed. Now I haven't read this Koran, but by all impartial accounts it's a knock-off or, more politely, spin-off of the previously published Torah and Gospels. Not high on my reading list. I'd rather read the 1001 Nights, really (why isn't that a sacred text?).

Nevertheless, the idea of burning books, even shoddy books, rubs me the wrong way. (I was bemused to see on a news report that some of the Korans the pastor is planning to burn are Dover Thrift editions. Cheap bastard!) Common consensus has it that Muslims will take to burning people in response to the burning of their sacred text. This rubs me in a wronger way. Are not people, according to my God and theirs too I think, made in God's image? Are books made in God's image? Isn't valuing a book over the image of God idolatry or, if you will, bibliolatry of the highest order?

Still better to worship a book than a TV set, I suppose.

Anyone Want To Go On A Date?

2010-09-06T18:07:00.008-04:00

"Emerging adulthood" is the new term for young people like me delaying immersion in bourgeois mediocrity. Why the delay? Because we don't have religion and nationalism ("go forth and multiply," "propagate the race," "as God intended"), or even romanticism (Sex and the City has perhaps permanently discredited male idolatry of the female, not to mention pornography) to make it seem like more than bourgeois mediocrity.

We know we are superfluous. (When I say "we" I am extrapolating from "me.") The West wants migrants because for them, for now, material success is novel enough to satisfy. They can be the first member of their family to graduate university, to be a doctor, to be an engineer! White people go into the humanities, Asians go into the sciences. Why? Because white people are looking for meaning (they won't find it), and Asians are looking for success. The disillusioned, half-white children of Asians will go into the humanities, and the new batch of Asians will replenish the sciences. What a beautiful system!

I've dated upwardly mobile people. I'm a downwardly mobile person. My parents achieved the heights the upwardly mobile wish to achieve. There is nowhere for me to go but down, and no reason for me not to go down, because I no longer buy into their scale of up and down. I don't care about keeping up with the Joneses, I don't like the Joneses, the Joneses don't even like the Joneses. Let the Wangs take over. Let the Smith-Wangs take over. Darwin was right, but "gaming" is no reason to live.

Life, Being What It Is

2010-09-02T01:06:00.004-04:00

We, the lonely, can glorify solitude all we like. The fact remains, we are animals bred for company. If we don't obey our human nature we suffer. I try to make my suffering creative by writing about it, but there's nothing original for me to say. I'm simply reformulating what Kafka said, who in turn was reformulating what the author of Ecclesiastes said. I lack the pretensions of the author of the Koran, who claimed to be "correcting" sacred texts when he was merely running roughshod over them in service to his ego.

In Darwinian terms, the parlance of our times, there's only one reason to write: sex God sex. I had the opportunity to fuck from words, but chose invective instead. Why? Because I am ill-bred. I can't hunt. I can only be witty. Wit is a means but for me it has become an end.

I'm too lazy to pursue the opposite sex. I talked to a friend who had been introduced to the "game" approach to women, but there was sadness in his voice. Sensitive souls like us aren't built for modern romance. Or even ancient romance. We are built for love of God, but born in a time when God is dead.

A wise man once said: women seem wicked when you're unwanted. Women aren't wicked. I am such a genetic failure that I actually respect women who've made better choices. I think in advance, "it would never work, why intrude on someone else's life with unnecessary complications?" I'd have to be a lie for it to work, and I don't want to be a lie or a liar.

"Love is the infinite placed within the reach of poodles. I have my dignity!" Céline said that. A brilliant writer, but a hateful abortion of a man. He's an extreme case, but aren't all brilliant writers abortions of men? Men don't write, they hunt. Money, pussy, gadgets, cars, etc. Eventually they grow weary of the chase and settle for love.

We are superior. We have our dignity. Noble sentiments but bullshit. There is no infinite but love! "We" are the failures! Kafka had no children, no lover lovely enough to lift him from his subjective depths.

Love may be an illusion, but it is an illusion supported by instincts bred into our soul. I don't know if I even have the proper instincts. I'm too ironic, detached, meta-meta-meta (I hate postmodernists because I am one). I'm tempted to end with this line: "I will die alone, and a good thing too."

But realistically I will settle for love like any other poodle and quit writing, or at the very least quit writing things like this. I am so pessimistic I am pessimistic about my pessimism!

Take Me On A Genocide Tour

2010-09-01T01:41:00.001-04:00

The war criminal President of Sudan was recently invited to visit Kenya. Kanye West once said George Bush doesn't care about black people. True or not, the bigger problem is that black people don't care about black people.

Daniel Pearl Will Have His Revenge On Karachi

2010-08-31T00:59:00.002-04:00

He'll come back as water, to drown all the fakirs,
Leave a prayer mat of sludge on the ground
- with apologies to Kurt Cobain

Lessons From Snooki On Sexuality

2010-08-29T11:28:00.005-04:00

The stars of Jersey Shore are said to be stupid, but I think Snooki might be on to something when she says "Men don't know how to treat women and that’s why the lesbian rate is going up in this country."

There are two competing PC narratives about sexuality. The one, sexuality is fluid, we're all a little gay (or presumably, straight). The second, sexuality isn't a choice.

Obviously there exist total straights and total gays, but there are also a number of people somewhere in between. I wouldn't be surprised if among this number, many are retreating to their own sex and increasing the lesbian rate.

Unfortunately I can't remember where, but I read an interesting critique of homosexuality ("Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" is not an interesting critique) once. The author argued homosexuality was basically narcissism. While men and women in heterosexual relationships are forced to learn to accept and love otherness, homosexuals are both literally and figuratively engaged in mutual masturbation.

Since our culture teaches us that otherness is a myth and differences are socially constructed, many men don't know how to treat women anymore. By the same token many women don't know how to treat men, but progressive bromides aside, the onus is still on men to take the initiative. When we take the initiative as if we were dealing with a member of the same sex (aren't we are taught men and women are the same?), we fail and so heterosexuality fails.

Being gay is easier than being straight. The social stigma is made up for by the fact that it is incredibly to meet people and have sex. As Stephen Colbert says, men know what men want. If I were bisexual, I'd certainly err on the male side, because that way less miscommunication and head games lie.

As it stands I'm hopelessly straight. Yet by all accounts, females are more fluid in their sexuality than men. So surely it's reasonable to suggest more women are becoming lesbians due to a combination of male ineptitude fostered by cultural delusions of equality and the general narcissism of the times.

Love Thy Fellow Man

2010-08-27T22:29:00.002-04:00

Really. Do it. Love thy fellow man. Not for God's love, not for cocaine. Because we are all sagging sacks of skin that poop, masturbate and die. God's image? Maybe once in a lifetime. Otherwise it's boredom, boredom, beastliness, boredom. Talk for hours. Talk religiously. Convention? Ten years from now we'll all look retarded. A hundred years from now? We can't even imagine. Convention is the putrid shell of the times. Socrates, Jesus, a caveman, me and Napoleon have this in common: we are sagging sacks of skin that poop, masturbate and die... and probably love, hate, try, fail, think, act stupid. The rest is window-dressing, really. Nationality? Who remembers the Armenians? Who remembers the Visigoths? They may be in your blood, even my blood, but we don't remember. Maybe they survive in the way you glance furtively? Every thought has been thought before. I'm saying nothing that hasn't been thought probably five, six, seven times before. All I can do is restate it in the current idiom. Love thy fellow man. As ugly as they are, so are you!

Song Of The Day

2010-08-27T00:12:00.005-04:00

Figures that the only good contemporary protest song was written by a guy who's been around since the 80s. (Equal opportunity offender, he also has a song wishing St. Paul had died in a shipwreck.) Kids these days don't know shit, rap and rock are both dead. Luckily we have Julian Cope. C'mon, play it MTV!

Julian Cope - All The Blowing-Themselves-Up Motherfuckers (Will Realise The Minute They Die That They Were Suckers)

All the blowing-themselves-up motherfuckers
Will realise the minute they die that they were suckers (x4)

Babe, we're from the future
& they're from the past
It's strictly verboten
For them to have a laugh

Babe, we think it's funny
When we hear what they believe
But it ain't so funny
Now they're making us grieve

All the blowing-themselves-up motherfuckers
Will realise the minute they die that they were suckers (x4)

Hey, they're from the future
& we're from the past
Our Western experience
Was not built to last

They better get serious
& show them respect
Their god is mysterious
& they're the insect

All the blowing-themselves-up motherfuckers
Will realise the minute they die that they were suckers (x4)

Hizbullah

The Myth Of The Hipster

2010-08-26T07:29:00.003-04:00

Hipsters don't exist. They are meta-meta-figments of the cultural imagination. Seriously, they are so ironic that even blogs devoted to hating hipsters talk like hipsters. To wit:

We talked about fashion and shit on Lemondrop. Revel in our on-camera awkwardness. How to Dress Like a Hipster (and Ditch a One-Night Stand Like One)

This article is totes irrelevant seeing as how the day I submit to producing progeny will also be the day I put on sweatpants and go for a jog in Central Park with my super supportive contingent of workout buddies (read: never to the 10th fucking power).

If you guessed by the combination of awkward self-consciousness and unconscious narcissism the above was written by women, you guessed right. Slavoj Zizek is something of a hipster too, but he says something relevant between two-thirds gobbeldegook:

. . . the most sceptical attitude, that of deconstruction, relies on the figure of an Other who 'really believes'; the postmodern need for the permanent use of the devices of ironic distantiation (quotation marks, etc.) betrays the underlying fear that, without these devices, believe would be direct and immediate as if, if I were to say "I love you" instead of the ironic "As the poets would have put it, I love you" . . .

Obama begets Tea Party, Weimar begets Nazi party, because people hate this "post-" (racial, national, sexual, cultural, modern) shit. Fortunately hipsters don't actually exist, or else there'd be a real backlash.

The King Of Illiterature

2010-08-24T15:38:00.000-04:00

Sources say:

Us Weekly reported this morning that Spencer Pratt is penning a tell-all book about his relationship with ex Heidi Montag, including new details about her tormented relationship with her mother, Darlene Egelhoff. (No mention of a publisher.)

Two comments. One, how can you write a tell-all about someone completely devoid of interest? Isn't this akin to writing a horror story about a friendly ghost? A fantasy story about life in a paper mill? A science-fiction story set two days from now? You could pick someone randomly off the street and write a better book.

Second. I'm sick and tired of any old asshole writing a book. This goes for celebrities in particular, but also academics writing about tea rituals in fifteenth century Korea and assorted people "living a year biblically" or some other moronic gimmick. There should be no more than fifteen books published a year, to be chosen by a committee of elders.

The Street

2010-08-23T00:00:00.009-04:00

Closer to 9/11, I remember hearing a lot of talk about the "Arab street." We had to listen to what the Arab street was saying. Now it's clear to me, as a perusal of a comments section or poll numbers show, an American street also exists. This street has not forgotten the Arab street dancing with joy on 9/11, and judges Islam accordingly.

I am not part of the "street." I'm far too judicial. But I also recognize the value of such folk. No nation can survive without a mass of gut-driven patriots. They're the ones who enlist in the army (another reason why the attempt to win "hearts and minds" through soldiers is retarded). A nation of pure liberals cannot survive. Of course, a nation of pure conservatives doesn't deserve to survive, and dies a slow death of stagnation: see the history of the Ottoman Empire.

Getting the support of the street matters more than getting the support of liberals, because liberals will support you anyway. They're judicious like that. The Muslim campaign against Islamophobia may impress liberals, but what Nixon identified as the silent majority has an operating bullshit detector. Political correctness in general is not only intellectually repugnant, it's counter-productive. People may mouthe what they have to mouthe professionally, but they resent being told what to think and will think the reverse out of spite.

This is why, as a Jew, I have intense dislike for "anti-Semitism is everywhere" hysteria. People like the Anti-Defamation League defame Jews by making us seem like cowards who can't take a joke. Fortunately the American street tends to like Jews, probably because we don't bomb things and generally contribute to society. On the other hand, the Russian street, German street, etc. sure hated us, so I'm cognizant of the dangers of populism.

I don't want to see anti-Muslim pogroms. But if Muslims really want to approve their image in the West, they need to address the street, not merely the liberals who are already in their corner. They're not going to do that through provocative gestures like building a mosque at Ground Zero. If the whole aim of the project is to improve Muslims' image, do the organizers not see it is having the reverse effect?

Muslims need to focus their ire, publicly, on the people who are committing what Jews call Chillul Hashem. I'm frequently angry, and most Jews are frequently angry, at people like Bernie Madoff whose actions are invariably taken as representative of the whole. (A rabbi said of Lev "Trotsky" Bronstein: "The Trotskys make the revolutions, the Bronsteins suffer for it.")

Bin Laden is worse for his people than shady Jewish financiers and commies because he explicitly committed his atrocities in Islam's name. When people do something in your name, you have an obligation, at the very least to your own sense of dignity, to loudly proclaim, "not in my name." Not to get defensive, to be equivocal, to say "yes, but..." Speak to the street, not the ivory towers. (Says the man in the ivory tower.)

To Thine Own Self Be True

2010-08-22T18:42:00.013-04:00

I'm not sure how facetious a column entitled Why I Wish I Were A Guy is meant to be, but taken at face value it suggests a distinct flavour of ressentiment. The columnist notes:

The inbuilt failure of womanhood is brought home to me every time a list is published. . . . Time magazine recently published a list called Best 100 Novels of All Time. There were only 16 women on it. . . . There are 35,000 works of art in the Louvre’s collection and only 13 are by women.

Do such statistics represent a failure of women to produce works of genius, or a patriarchical power structure keeping women down? There's a similar ambiguity around statistics like the disproportionate number of blacks in jail. Are blacks targeted by police, or are they simply more prone on average to criminal behaviour?

The ancient Greeks distinguished physis (nature) from nomos (social order). Everything is socially constructed... up to a point. You can't deconstruct a penis (or at the very least you shouldn't). My race, sex, appearance and to a large extent culture are non-negotiable givens: they are fate. The major point I take from Nietzsche is that one must love fate without falsification.

The self-hating Jews, the self-hating Westerners, the self-hating males and females are abortions. Judaism is an interesting example of how nomos blends into physis. Is Judaism a race or a religion? It is both. You can reject the religion in good conscience, but to reject one's blood is spiritual suicide. We must all learn to live with and love the face our ancestors gave us, even its blemishes.

On that note, the columnist writes:

As a man I wouldn’t have to be good-looking. Believe me, women don’t care about this.

I don't believe you.

Beyond The Pale Is The Place To Be

2010-08-19T11:45:00.005-04:00

I don't normally comment on municipal politics (because they're boring), but I'm making an exception for Toronto mayoral candidate Rob Ford. Here's the Toronto Star's take on the "controversy":

The controversy began Tuesday night at a mayoral debate televised by CP24. A Tamil member of the audience asked the candidates to comment on the role of refugees in the city.

Ford responded: “We can’t even deal with the 2.5 million people in the city. I think it’s more important that we take care of the people now before we start bringing in more.”

Ford — who in 2003 said there should be a “refugee freeze” in Toronto —went on to say that the official city plan indicates a million people will be coming to the city over the next decade.

Advocacy groups pounced on the statements. By the afternoon, even the premier was weighing in.

“I just don’t think it’s representative of Canadians. I just don’t think it’s representative of the society that we aspire to build here together,” Dalton McGuinty told journalists at Queen’s Park.

The other candidates' response:

Waiting patiently for their turn, one by one, over and over again, the leading mayoral candidates stepped forward Wednesday to eviscerate frontrunner Rob Ford over controversial comments on immigration he made at a Tuesday debate.

George Smitherman declared it a “turning point in the election” and said ‘sorry’ wouldn’t go far enough.

Sarah Thomson said Toronto had finally seen the “real Rob Ford.”

Joe Pantalone asked if the Etobicoke councillor wanted him to “get back on the boat.”

"Sorry" wouldn't go far enough?! He is implying he wants migrants to "get back on the boat"!? My faith in the people of Toronto has been restored (actually I never had any in the first place) by Rob Ford's lead in the polls. Low political participation in the West may, may have something to do with the fact that most politicians speak liked hollowed-out shells without original thought mouthing groupthink bromides.

Canada is a huge country. Saying maybe all new migrants shouldn't congregate in Toronto is beyond the pale? Personally I'd go further and force them to live in underpopulated areas, but that's just me.

A columnist writes:

It was always anticipated that the more Ford spoke, the less voters would like him. The controversial councillor is living up to expectation.

There is no evidence voters are liking him less the more he speaks. I for one like him more, simply because he's a big fat man who plays by his own rules. I like Prince Philip, I like Silvio Berlusconi, I like Joe Biden, I like "gaffes" and I like people who don't apologize for "gaffes" even better. Rob Ford hasn't apologized. Three cheers!

Unchristian Feelings

2010-08-17T08:42:00.004-04:00

Despite its affirmation of the necessity of war, Gandhi intepreted the Hindu text Bhagavad Gita as a symbolic account of man's struggle with himself. Despite being founded by an arguably naive pacifist, Christians have killed millions in his name. I am thus skeptical of clear-cut distinctions between peaceful religions and warlike religions.

That being said, Islam is in the unique position of being the only major religion founded by a warlord. One can certainly interpret jihad in purely spiritual terms, but the founding example of violent jihad obviously creates difficulties. Liberal protestations cannot change human nature, which is prejudical for reasons of survival. When most people see Muslims committing atrocities in the media, they associate those atrocities with the doctrine they are committed in the name of and judge individuals accordingly.

Like all religions, Islam is a great confusion of literalist stupidity and allegorical beauty. Christ was a master of allegorical beauty. Yet although I admire the tenacity required to turn the other cheek, as a Pharisee I am committed to legal reciprocity. I will not donate money to Pakistani flood victims because I know they would not do the same for me.

Holy Apocrypha: Unorthodox Verses

2010-08-10T12:14:00.011-04:00

My heart has opened unto every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Ka`ba of the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah, and the book of the Qur'an. I practice the religion of Love; in whatsoever directions its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith.
- Ibn al-`Arabi

No abyss is deeper than God. He embraces everything: himself and everything else.
- Hans Urs von Balthasar

To place oneself in the position of God is painful: being God is equivalent to being tortured. For being God means that one is in harmony with all that is, including the worst. The existence of the worst evils is unimaginable unless God willed them.
- Georges Bataille

The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
- William Blake

The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.
- William Blake

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
- Martin Buber

A man who was afflicted with a terrible disease complained to Rabbi Israel that his suffering interfered with his learning and praying. The rabbi put his hand on his shoulder and said "How do you know, friend, what is more pleasing to God, your studying or your suffering?"
- Martin Buber, Tales of the Hasidim

God is not without sins: He created the world.
- Bulgarian Proverb

In most cases we attach ourselves to God in order to take revenge on life, to punish it, to signify we can do without it, that we have found something better, and we also attach ourselves to God in horror of men.
- E.M. Cioran

If truth were not boring, science would have done away with God long ago. But God as well as the saints is a means to escape the dull banality of truth.
- E.M. Cioran

In pious times, ere Priest-craft did begin,
Before polygamy was made a sin...
- John Dryden, Absalom

We shall find God in everything alike, and find God always alike in everything.
- Meister Eckhart

The text of the Bible is but a feeble symbol of the Revelation held in the text of Men and Women.
- Havelock Ellis

God builds his temple in the heart on the ruins of churches and religions.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Conduct of Life

Anthropology is the secret of theology. God is man worshipping himself. The Trinity is the human family deified.
- Ludwig von Feuerbach, Essence of Christianity

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
- Sigmund Freud

Man is the species that can always destroy itself. For this reason, religion was created.
- Rene Girard

The forms and phrases by which a religion is transmitted must be regarded as nothing more than the symbolic expression of a spiritual reality. As that expression is of quite a different order from factual knowledge the one cannot in any way confirm or invalidate the other.
- Maurice Goguel

God didn't build himself that throne
God doesn't live in Israel or Rome
God doesn't belong to the Yankee dollar
God doesn't plant the bombs for Hezbollah
God doesn't even go to church
And God won't send us down to Allah to burn
God will remind us what we already know
That the human race is about to reap what it's sown
- Matt Johnson, Armageddon Days Are Here (Again)

We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have named this circle God. We might have given it any name we wished: Abyss, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light, Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence. But never forget, it is we who give it a name.
- Nikos Kazantzakis

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

God often, as it were, hides himself, and will not hear; yea, will not suffer himself to be found.
- Martin Luther

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.
- H.L. Mencken

Somewhere in the other side of nowhere is a place in space beyond time where the Gods of mythology dwell. These gods dwell in their mythocracies as opposed to your theocracies, democracies, and monocracies. They dwell in a magic world. These Gods can even offer you immortality.
- Sun Ra

Atheism must mean the destruction of the moral God not only as the ultimate source of accusation but as the ultimate source of protection, as Providence. But if atheism is to have any religious significance, the death of the providential God should point toward a new faith, a tragic faith which would be to classical metaphysics what the faith of Job was to the archaic law of retribution professed by his pious friends.
- Paul Ricoeur, The Religious Significance of Atheism

The divine is perhaps that quality in man which permits him to endure the lack of God.
- Jean Rostand

To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as if He did exist.
- Miguel de Unamuno

If God has created us in His image, we have more than returned the compliment.
- Voltaire

. . . the Godhead moves and manifests the world in much the same way that a centipede manipulates a hundred legs - spontaneously, without deliberation or calculation.
- Alan Watts

God is absent from the world except through the existence of those in this world in whom his love lives.
- Simone Weil

Jesus Kurtz

2010-07-31T18:46:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I feel like Jesus, "forgive them father, they know not what they do." Other times I feel like Kurtz, "exterminate the brutes." I'm too compassionate to be a fascist, too cold to be a socialist and too extreme to be a moderate. I want to end in some Hegelian union of opposites, but feel more realistic trailing off...

Graffiti Is Art

2010-07-30T19:00:00.003-04:00

Re: Graffiti update: Second Richmond vandal arrested

First off, anyone wearing a Tapout shirt should be arrested before they commit a crime. Second, "Fuck the Chinese"? Really? The Chinese? REALLY?

The Answers You Seek Will Never Be Found At Home

2010-07-28T23:44:00.002-04:00

To balance my earlier comments about gays, I must confess that "Smalltown Boy" by Bronski Beat is a masterpiece. Pop before it was all about producing ringtones, though it would make a great ringtone.

The Trouble With Having A Penis

2010-07-28T04:23:00.000-04:00

The trouble with having a penis is having nowhere to put it.

Come The Revolution

2010-07-17T02:52:00.005-04:00

Even since I began this blog the Internet's gotten larger and weirder. Funny videos and social networking are fun, but let's not forget the basics: stealing music, downloading pornography and reading/writing unpublishable opinion pieces (blush). My generation's already dead by information overload coupled with skin-deep comprehension, and I would fear for the future if I cared what kind of world my grandchildren will live in. I'm 24 or 25 (I honestly can't remember) but I already feel like a relic of a distant age.

Enough of that. Someone once posted a comment here, "shut up and get in line like the rest of us." I have shut up, like literally blocked off the neural currents that make me bitter about the world, except when I post here. The reason is that I am biding my time until the revolution. I predict in a decade's time a growing neo-luddite movement of which I will be the Trotsky, in the sense that I will be swiftly shunted aside and killed by ice-pick.

See: "Come the Revolution" by Julian Cope

Foreign Policy

2010-07-07T03:41:00.006-04:00

Reading about the guy who went on one-man mission to kill bin Laden, I asked myself: why only one? What is wrong with our civilization that there aren't hundreds of bounty hunters and n'er-do-wells (sp?) combing the tribal backwaters of Pakistan hunting for his scalp. But I guess it's easier to attain fame and glory being a contestant on The Bachelor or getting shot nine times for no good reason.

Bush is a failure for a host of reasons, but high among them is his failure to kill bin Laden. Fuck Iraq. He should have literally demolished mountains, torn apart villages and given root canals to sheep-fucking villagers to get at that asshole. The Americans defoliated Vietnam for a lot less. Also we should be diverting the money we waste bribing Taliban warlords and rebuild those giant Buddha statues in titanium as a last fuck you before we leave Afghanistan.

Dear Gays

2010-07-03T18:26:00.003-04:00

I don't care where you stick your dick. But pride - ostentatious, flag-waving, pride - is a mortal sin. I'm not proud of my attraction to putrid mounds of woman-flesh; why should you be proud of your attraction to the literal backsides of humanity? I would no more parade my love of moist vulva than my love of a good flank steak. If your biggest source of pride is your animalistic lust (I don't care what for), you should be ashamed.

Canada Day Anthem

2010-07-01T10:45:00.003-04:00

"I see a Serpent in Canada who courts me to his love"
- William Blake, America: A Prophecy

Low - Canada

I'm not scared of waking up
I'm not afraid of getting cut
'Cuz you can't take that stuff to canada
You can't take it anywhere

You could la la la la la
And you could lie to all your friends
But you can't take that stuff to canada
You can't take it anywhere
I used to have a golden tongue
But now the words just feel like stones
'Cuz you can't take that stuff to canada
You can't take it anywhere

My Free Speech Zone

2010-06-26T12:33:00.000-04:00

I'm direct linking because I believe in community control over resources.

Living not too far from Toronto, I've seen the above poster plastered about town. Now as far as our Dear Leaders go, I agree with Jarvis Cocker:

Well did you hear, there's a natural order
Those most deserving will end up with the most
That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top
Well I say, "Shit floats"

If you thought things had changed
Friend, you'd better think again
Bluntly put, in the fewest of words:
Cunts are still running the world

But I still won't be participating in any "Free Speech Zone."

Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination? Injuns already run their reserves like third world fiefdoms.

Migrant justice? My grandparents were migrants and they didn't need pastey white cunts speaking for them.

An end to war and occupation? War and occupation are coeval with human existence. Be specific for Chrissakes! But if you mean an end to the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, I agree: it's not the West's job to fight for the indigenous sovereignty of Kurds, migrant justice for displaced Marsh Arabs and an end to the Taliban war on women. But it's the attitude of idealist assholes like you that put us there in the first place.

Climate justice? As a Canadian, I agree: we deserve hotter winters!

Income equity? Why rob the poor of the one thing they have to struggle for, and make them slaves to their iPhone like everyone else?

Community control over resources? Show me anything in North American life resembling a community and I'll agree that "community control over resources" does not just mean the displacement of corruption from the private to the public sector.

I'm all about attacking the roots, but you motherfuckers are branches of the same rotten tree.

The G20 Welcoming Committee Of 1

2010-06-22T00:24:00.007-04:00

Toronto is "welcoming the world" to the G20 summit. Here's my Hamilton welcome.

SOUTH AFRICA: Your country is only successful because of white people.
MEXICO: You peaked with the Aztecs.
UNITED STATES: Your gulf deserves to die.
ARGENTINA: Still masturbating over fascist trophy brides?
BRAZIL: Asses and soccer does not a country make.
CHINA: Why do you need so many people?
JAPAN: Your womenfolk dress like cartoons and your menfolk sit in their closet-sized rooms masturbating to tentacle porn.
SOUTH KOREA: Kim Jong-il has more personality than you.
INDIA: If your country's so great, why are you all moving here?
INDONESIA: Your plethora of islands is matched by your lack of accomplishments.
SAUDI ARABIA: If your women weren't so ugly they wouldn't have to wear bags over their heads.
EUROPEAN UNION: Belgium writ large. And not even Belgians like Belgium.

The Problem With Modern Justice

2010-06-20T22:08:00.006-04:00

The problem with modern justice: no one is hanging from a lamppost for the oil spill. I'm not saying the American government should execute the management of BP. I'm saying the management of BP should do the honourable thing and commit ritual suicide to atone for their failure.

I don't want to live in a shame-based culture. But I don't want to live in a shameless culture either.

When National Socialism Comes To America, It Will Arrive With Tig Ol Bitties

2010-06-18T11:49:00.002-04:00

Something else Katy Perry has in common with Hitler (besides pretending to like girls and slagging Lady Gaga):

Katy Perry helps launch Volkswagen Jetta

Cousteau Says

2010-06-12T14:45:00.001-04:00

There are plenty of fish in the sea, but most of them are cunts.

Poem For Heidegger

2010-06-09T21:39:00.005-04:00

Cuntface moustache
with your whiskers in Hannah Arendt's snatch
Holderlin is boring
You'd wipe out spastics if you had the chance!

Heidegger you're a small man
riding Nietzsche's moustache
"Being" is just another word
for nothing left to say

Heidegger you're a right prick
wishing you were Greek
I found your precious Heimat
buried in shit and six feet deep

Terra Delenda Est

2010-06-08T20:01:00.001-04:00

The World Cup: one more reason to hate the world.

V Is For Vagina

2010-06-03T03:40:00.003-04:00

Queers against Israeli Apartheid, meet Homophobes for Western Naifs.

The Plurality Of The News

2010-05-28T19:01:00.004-04:00

Two rather revealing news reports when juxtaposed.

From BBC News:

Gunmen have launched simultaneous raids on two mosques of the minority Ahmadi Islamic sect in Lahore, killing more than 80 people, Pakistani police say. . . .

Mr Hassan said the worshippers were "easy targets" for militant Sunni groups who consider the Ahmadis to be infidels.

And the Toronto Star:

The spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims came to town Friday to break ground on a remarkable project that will include a museum of Islamic art and an Ismaili Centre, both set in an exquisite seven-hectare park. . . .

The intention, the Aga Khan noted, is to illustrate the “plurality of Islam,” something about which North Americans could always stand to be reminded. As he also said, he hopes the museum will address the “clash of ignorances” so characteristic of our time.

Perhaps Muslims could stand to be reminded about the "plurality of Islam?"

Maybe our equivalent of the Aga Khan (Rupert Murdoch?) can build a museum demonstrating the plurality of Anglo-Saxon secularism in Lahore.

Who Remembers The Cathars?

2010-05-28T14:11:00.005-04:00

Whether left or right, when it comes to ideology, idiots rule. Here's a bit of conservative idiocy on display.

Dennis Prager in The National Review:

But there were never any Christian Auschwitzes — systematic genocides of every man, woman, and child of a particular race or religion. Nor were there Christian Gulags — the shipping of millions of innocents to conditions so horrific that prolonged suffering leading to death was the almost inevitable end.

The New York Times:

Eight hundred years ago, these castles in Languedoc, a region of vineyards and olive groves that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees in the southwest corner of France, were hideouts of the Cathars, a zealous religious sect that denounced many basic tenets of the Catholic Church. Pope Innocent III was alarmed by the Cathars’ growing popularity, so in 1208 he declared a crusade to eradicate them.

Waves of cross-bearing warriors from northern France and Germany obeyed the holy call, laying siege to Cathar strongholds, slaughtering the heretics and pillaging their lands with a savagery that was startling even by the standards of the Middle Ages. In Béziers, at the northern edge of resistance, over 15,000 men, women and children — the entire population of the town as well as hordes of hapless refugees — were butchered. (The crusader monk Armond Amaury famously told his troops, when asked whom to spare, “Kill them all, God will know his own.”)

And from a conservative list of the The Fifty WORST Books of the Century:

Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (1979)
Bored with the real Gospels and real Christianity, professors of religion were thrilled to find out how important-not to mention feminist and pre-Socratic-these fragments were.

The "real" Gospels and "real" Christianity according to who? Paul? Constantine? Pope Innocent III? As far as I can see, the Cathars went out like true Christians: nailed to the cross by a mob of bloodthirsty hypocrites.

The Republic Of Kush

2010-05-22T14:54:00.003-04:00

From some column:

How do you name a nation? The southern part of Sudan is set to become the world’s newest country when people there vote on independence in a referendum scheduled for January. But while many of the institutions needed for a country are being put in place, there is no agreement as to what the new nation will be called. 

New Sudan, South Sudan and Southern Sudan have all been mentioned. But there is a danger in associating themselves with the original Sudan, a country whose international brand has been ruined by Omar al-Bashir, the president indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in Darfur.

My suggestions (because you asked): Nubia or Kush.

Inside The Termite Mound

2010-05-16T08:19:00.003-04:00

Big cities are strange places. A babble of languages. A moving picture show of unattainable flesh. A liberating anonymity that like all liberations, ends in disappointment. The Jews didn't crucify Christ, the city did, just like it fed Socrates hemlock. Nowadays we ignore our local eccentrics. To be hip in the city is to be cutting-edge, but never to fall off that edge. Lead the charge but always glance backward to see if you're being followed.

I dream of throwing money-lenders out of temples and splashing sheep's blood on advert models. Live here if you must but be in and not of, move among but don't belong.

The Gospel Of Lemmy

2010-05-10T23:57:00.009-04:00

AFTERLIFE:
You're a financial wizard, a top tycoon,
A sweet lounge lizard, with a silver spoon,
You know you never had it, quite so good,
'Cos you didn't know, that you even could,
But the time has come to pay,
Turns out to have been a play,
Whatever happened to your life?
Stone Dead Forever

DEMONOLOGY:
I spit in the eye of Satan
And I will spit in thine
The devils that surround thee
Liveth only in thine eye

DIVINE WISDOM:
"Let's be honest, I don't give a fuck about Ethiopia, you don't give a fuck about Ethiopia. If Ethiopians stopped giving a fuck there wouldn't be so many fucking starving kids would there? Send them some fucking contraceptives."

DOCTRINE:
I got rock n' roll, to save me from the cold
And if that's all there is, it ain't so bad

EROS:
If you squeeze my lizard
I'll put my snake on you

HOLY WAR:
I march before a martyred world, an army for the fight
I speak of great heroic days, of victory and might
I hold a banner drenched in blood, I urge you to be brave
I lead you to your destiny, I lead you to your grave
Your bones will build my palaces, your eyes will stud my crown
For I am Mars, the god of war, and I will cut you down

LORD'S PRAYER:
We shoot power to your heart, a mighty thunderbolt
We charge all batteries, we save your soul
We don't know when we're licked,
But we turn lead into gold
We know alchemy, we bring you rock and roll
We are the ones you love, or we're the ones you hate
We are the first and we just still might be the last
We are Motorhead - born to kick your ass

OMNIPRESENCE:
Lemmy walked into a Ramones video and Beavis says to Butt-Head, "Whoa! Butt-Head, look! It's Lemmy! It's Lemmy! What's he doing there?!" Butt-Head responded, "He's Lemmy, dumbass. He can walk into any video he wants."

THEODICY:
"I think all things are alive. If they're not, how do they fuck you over so much?"

WHORE OF BABYLON:
Lemmy often referred to the song "The Chase is Better Than the Catch" as "The Face is Better Than the Snatch."

ZEN:
You know I'm born to lose
And gambling's for fools
But that's the way I like it baby
I don't wanna live forever

And don't forget the joker

Over The Bridge, Spitting

2010-04-25T15:55:00.001-04:00

Lonely as I am, at least I'm not a pussy like Anthony Kiedis crying under a bridge.

No One Masturbates To Tolerance

2010-04-07T02:49:00.005-04:00

Stereotypes in porn: because the penis is the final arbiter of good taste.

Work Mate Spawn

2010-04-05T16:11:00.003-04:00

Christian Lorentzen writes:

Oh, the glory of "having it all" (career, spouse, spawn), a curious mantra whereby life is conceived as a series of choices: make the proper choices in the appropriate order, and you will have it all. Failure is a matter of faulty decision making, mismanagement of options, turning down the job offer (or record contract), dumping the girlfriend you should have clung to. On this view the only adversary an individual faces (besides, implicitly, himself) is time. Years pass, and the options dwindle until only two remain: seeking and settling. Seeking for the aged means running the risk of total failure; settling brings a decorous end to risk. The dichotomy affords the settled the privilege of gloating. More important, it denies the agonistic nature of life in a market economy. Individuals don't simply choose, they compete against practically all friends, foes, and strangers, buffeted by the tides of history, and mostly they are defeated. The lie that goes by the name of "settling" disguises this defeat as a matter of choice.

Grow up, shut up, and settle; the only alternative is insanity (Greenberg, I so far neglected to mention, has recently been discharged from a mental ward). That is the moral of Greenberg. It is a romantic comedy designed to prove that the romantic comedy is moribund, because romance is impossible except in its grimmest form: mutual consolation.

I have nothing to add.

Rock Against Freedom: A Tribute To Dictators

2010-03-21T14:42:00.015-04:00

Head Wide Open Records is proud to present Rock Against Freedom: A Tribute To Dictators, the only compilation album ever to feature tracks from both Cabaret Voltaire and The Lox featuring Lil Kim & DMX. The best artists from every relevant musical genre - hardcore punk, industrial, arena rock and Bad Boy-era hip hop - have come together to celebrate that much-maligned symbol of the twentieth century, the dictator. Who can deny that the resplendent Shah of Iran, who once had his air force scatter 17,432 roses (each representing a day of his life) over Tehran on his forty-eighth birthday, was the political equivalent of Freddy Mercury? Or that 50 Cent, valuing nothing but personal loyalty and gold, is the kind of man typically running Liberia? As of late, the non-free world has been devastated by the deaths of veteran tyrants Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet, as well as the debilitation of the seemingly immortal Fidel Castro. Even Muammar al-Qaddafi, undisputed leader of Libya and supervillain mastermind, has been pacified by the lure of Western reconciliation. With the rise of the terrorist as the new public enemy #1, the classic authoritarian dictator has been brushed to the side. While Kim Jong-il continues to hold the fort for the beleaguered forces of international socialism, even his semi-successful nuclear tests seem more a desperate cry for attention than anything else.

Whither Peronism, Nasserism, Titoism, Ceauşism, militant anti-communism and absolute monarchy? In the heady days of the Cold War, both left and right had friendly tyrants to make excuses and bullets for. On the communist side: the more-Marxist-than-thou Enver Hoxha, self-proclaimed "Genius of the Carpathians" Nicolae Ceauşescu, the slippery Ho Chi Minh, original North Korean bad-boy Kim Il-sung and the only man ever to hold the south Slavs together, Tito. On the right-is-right side: anti-communist watchdog Augusto Pinochet, Paraguayan Nazi patron Alfredo Stroessner, Chinese nationalist holdout Chiang Kai-shek, the ever-luxuriant Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Samuel Doe, Reagan's Liberian shoe-shine boy. Now there's an ideological battle royale! And, of course, we had a rogue's gallery of the simply batshit crazy: jovial cannibal Idi Amin, self-proclaimed Emperor of Central Africa Jean-Bédel Bokassa, voodoo kingpin François "Papa Doc" Duvalier and Pol Pot, the only socialist to make Stalin seem kindly by comparison. America had their boys, the Soviets had their boys and even France managed to keep a few African despots in their stable. Plus you had your miscellaneous rump-fascists in Iberia, wily Arab autocrats and a few lone wolfs here and there to spice up the dish.

Now? Hugo Chavez talks a big talk in South America, but his bravado has been lacking in corresponding action. Africa is still full of two-bit tyrants, but none with the colour of the resplendent god-chiefs of yesteryear. The regime in Myanmar is tough but colourless, Syria can barely bring itself to domineer Lebanon anymore and Belarus's Lukashenko is a two-bit Russian stooge. Of course there's the Great and Little Satan-baiter in Iran, but Ahmadinejad's nuclear saber-rattling and apocalyptic fanaticism don't change his status as a plebean stooge of the Ayatollahs. A dictator should be humble before no one, least of all God and his moth-ridden (quoth the Shah) so-called representatives on earth. Say what you will about the fascists and Stalinists of yore, but at least they put on some kick-ass parades. The Taliban and their jihadist ilk would ban parades, and even the wholesome music featured on this compilation. Their rhetoric is repetitive, their agenda is unoriginal and their methodology is hopelessly nihilistic even by other terrorists' standards. Mussolini and Stalin may not have agreed on much, but they could agree that religion should leave the dictating to the dictators. On that nostalgic note, here's an album to remind us of the way things were:

Full Tracklisting:

1. "Outside the Trains Don't Run on Time" by Gang of Four
2. "Idi Amin" by K9's
3. "Money, Power, Respect" by The Lox featuring Lil Kim & DMX
4. "Der Mussolini" by D.A.F.
5. "Funkahdafi" by Front 242
6. "Blues for Ceauşescu" by Fatima Mansions
7. "Mao Tse Tsung" by MDC
8. "Shah Shah A-Go-Go" by The Stranglers
9. "Il Duce (Fascismo Vincere Mix)" by Big Black
10. "One Vision" by Queen
11. "Godlike" by KMFDM - 6:30
12. "We Don't Need Freedom" by Saccharine Trust
13. "Master Race Rock" by The Dictators
14. "Fidel Castro" by La Floripondio
15. "Follow the Leaders (Original Mix)" by Killing Joke
16. "Il Duce" by Adam and the Ants
17. They Walked in Line" by Joy Division
18. "Lenin" by Moskwa TV
19. "Do the Mussolini (Headkick)" by Cabaret Voltaire
20. "Chairman Mao" by Robert Wyatt

DOWNLOAD HERE

Reigning Men

2010-03-16T22:27:00.001-04:00

Tony Judt reflects:

On another occasion, a student complained that I “discriminated” against her because she did not offer sexual favors. When the department ombudswoman—a sensible lady of impeccable radical credentials—investigated, it emerged that the complainant resented not being invited to join my seminar: she assumed that women who took part must be getting (and offering) favorable treatment. I explained that it was because they were smarter. The young woman was flabbergasted: the only form of discrimination she could imagine was sexual. It had never occurred to her that I might just be an elitist.

THE ENEMY

2010-03-15T04:10:00.001-04:00

EMO NAZIS!!!

Sympathy For The Creator

2010-03-09T22:54:00.001-05:00

I wouldn't want man mucking about my garden either.

Buy For Me And I Will Rule You Gently

2010-02-22T09:26:00.002-05:00

Coup d'Etat: The Technique of Revolution by Curzio Malaparte. Choice quote: "Like all dictators, Hitler is merely a woman, and dictatorship is the highest form of jealousy."

Men Who Would've Changed History If They Hadn't Been Killed

2010-02-14T04:32:00.000-05:00

Alexander II: He would have saved Tsarist Russia!
Big L: He would have saved hip hop!
Barthélémy Boganda: He would have saved the Central African Republic!
Pim Fortuyn: He would have made the Netherlands relevant!
Bashir Gemayel: He would have saved Lebanon!
Jesus: He would have reformed Judaism!
Julian the Apostate: He would have saved paganism!
Ahmad Shah Massoud: He would have saved Afghanistan!
Walter Rathenau: He would have saved Weimar Germany!
José Antonio Primo de Rivera: He would have made fascism respectable!

Frustrated Beta Anthem

2010-02-09T13:52:00.005-05:00

"Thanks to late marriage, easy divorce, and the well-paying jobs that the feminist revolution has wrought for women, the bars, clubs, sidewalks, and subway straps of nearly every urban center in America overflow every weekend with females, young and not so young, bronzed, blonded, teeth-whitened, and dressed in the maximal cleavage and minimal skirt lengths that used to be associated with streetwalkers but nowadays is standard garb for lawyers and portfolio managers on a girls’ night out. . . . As might be expected, many males would like to help themselves at this overladen buffet. But there’s a problem: While it’s a truism that the main beneficiaries of the sexual revolution are men, it is only some men: the Tucker Maxes, with the good looks, self-confidence, and swagger that enable them to sidle up successfully to a gaggle of well turned-out females in a crowded and anonymous club where the short-statured, the homely, the paunchy, the balding, and the sweater-clad are, if not turned away outside by the bouncer, ignominiously ignored by the busy, beautiful people within."
- Charlotte Allen, The New Dating Game

TISM - Everyone Else Has Had More Sex Than Me

Everyone else has had more sex than me
Everyone else has had more sex than me

Everyone else has had more sex than me
Does anyone else get that feeling?
Teenagers naked
Couple and threes
Grandparents swing from the ceiling

Everyone else has had more sex than me
Everyone else has had more sex than me

Corporate capers and office amour
Shenanigans outdoor and in
Resist and then later your find out there's more
Regret in not doing the sin

Our lives have to die
Of that there's no help
My favourite way to end them
Is the orb-weaver spider's whose pedipalp
Enters the female pudendum

Then dies on the spot
His corpse there still stuck
Left for his rivals to curse at

He would rather die than not get to fuck
Personally I reckon it's worth it

Everyone else has had more sex than me
Does anyone else get that feeling?

Everyone else has had more sex than me
Does everybody else get that feeling?

Edited For Your Protection

2010-02-06T14:16:00.003-05:00

Photobucket has removed some pictures from my Top Ten Worst Kinds of Nazis post under the apparent assumption that making fun of Nazis makes me a Nazi. Obviously the fools never read Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in which our Protagonist remarks: "Not by wrath does one kill but by laughter." Obviously the Nazis never read it either. Fascism: the ability to read Nietzsche and not realize he's making fun of you.

How To Win Back America

2010-02-04T02:43:00.007-05:00

Barack Hussein Obama,
change your name to Barry,
mobilize your supporters into death squads
to murder the tea party,
then capture bin Laden
strangle him with your bare hands
and feed him to Bo.

(It worked for Teddy Roosevelt)