| |
| It's nearly Yom Kippur in this year of Birkat Hachama in my people's calendar (year of the Sun, occurs once every 28 years) and I'm in a good mood. To pay homage to my late aunt Annie, who died ten years ago this coming Sunday, and the late "Sexy Sadie" Atkins (who was just a pawn in Manson's foul hands) (there's a connexion here, see, re: my uncle Greg and Annie living out in CA and CO back in 1968 and '69 and their fandomage for the Beatles' "White Album") I decided to show up this morning at Shrine of the Little Glower -- er, Flower (you know, the big penis church on Woodward founded by the late and not-so-sorely-missed Charles "Turn Your Head And" Coughlin -- the organization has however mended its ways since then so I forgive 'em) and send a few thoughts skyward in their honor. Yes, I'm getting more mystickal as I age. Still am exceedingly unorthodox in every sense of the word but as Lou Reed sang, I'm beginning to see the light. | |
|
| An Alphabet for Schoolboys
Consisting of simple verses replete with sound
advice on manners and learning and admonishments both
moral and otherwise
By P.J. O'Rourke
National Lampoon, sometime before 1986
A is for Algebra, thoroughgoing bore.
To pass it is asked you, no less and no more.
For though algebra's dreary complex, and abtruse,
Thank God, out of school, it's of no further use.
B is for Beer. It makes you act lewd
And stupid and loud. It's a ruinous fluid
For people with taste, for people who think.
Beer is not nice. It's a bad thing to drink.
The consumption of beer is low-class and risky.
Stick to gin, vodka, cocaine, and whiskey.
C is the mark you should always have made.
It's a simple and forthright and manly-type grade.
For an "A" gives your peer group sad indication
Of a social life lacking inspiration,
While "B" is overreaching for most humankind,
Yet displays lassitude in the genius mind,
And "D" is the sign of a mental defective,
And "F" invites violent parental invective.
"C" is the best. It shows moderation,
The goal of philosophers in each age and nation.
D is for Drugs, that's to say, marijuana.
A most common flora with your age of fauna.
This herb is mind-widening; it improves your
perspective,
And makes you intuitive, kind, and perceptive.
It heightens your senses, sets your psyche free,
Causes you to care for ecology,
And imbues you with other qualities that
Let people sneak up and crap in your hat.
E is for Effort. Never let it show.
If you look like you're trying, people will know
That you have aspirations, that you are ambitious.
They'll consider you dangerous, pushy, malicious.
Traditional society is not forgiving
Of the upwardly mobile. They're made to work for a
living.
F is for Failure, a horrible curse.
Success is the only thing known that is worse.
People like goof-offs, losers, and quitters.
Towards champions and victors they feel little but
bitter.
Pretend you succeeded and say that you spurned it.
But if you succeed, don't let on that you earned it.
There's something for which folks have more hate
reserv'd
Than for chance success. It's success deserv'd.
G is for solid Geometry
Which mystifies you as it mystified me.
So much so, in fact, I'm afraid I'm not deft
Enough to go rhyme it. I'll make another rhyme on
F:
F is for Fun -- toot-toot! beep-beep!
Have it all now. It doesn't keep.
H is for Hard-ons, erections in your pants,
During gym, in the lunch line, and at the Y dance.
Don't blush, don't blow off your head with a Mauser
Because of the rude bulging tent in your trousers.
Just wait, relax, thirty years from this fall
You'll feel total elation to have one at all.
I stands for Integration, interethnical mix,
Where busing gives society's inequities the fix.
Don't slug your new schoolmate or whack is nappy
dome.
Don't slap him or tease him or arson his home.
Cheer him instead on field, in gym, at race,
And win money bet on his oddly hued face.
J is for Jack-off, a.k.a. masturbation.
Do it each school night and twice on vacation.
It's much less expensive than what you do with your
dick
When you're grown up -- as you will find all too
quick.
K is for Kleenex suffused with your love.
(Vid. poem for J directly above.)
L is for Latin, a language so peaked
Even the Romans of yore do not speak it.
If you don't believe what I say, go see
Reruns of "I, Claudius" from the BBC.
M is for "Most Popular," also "Best Dressed,"
"Best Dancer," "Cutest Couple," and all of the rest.
The sleek cheerleader, the lead in the class play --
She'll wind up fat; he'll turn out gay.
The boy who's presently a football star,
In a dozen years will sell used cars.
The girl who's now the Homecoming Queen,
She'll end her days divorced in Moline.
Half of her court will be bottomless dancers.
The class stud will die of testicular cancers.
While the Student Council President
Will be an Ashram resident.
And for the sake of mercy there should be a UN
moratorium
On the kind of things that happen to the earnest
valedictorian.
Remember, the future visits every duress
On the victims of adolescent success.
Besides, so what if you aren't a social lion?
Neither was Zola nor Albert Einstein.
N is for Nike. It's a missle not a shoe.
Get yourself an oxford in cordovan, not blue.
O is for Offal, served in the cafeteria.
Regard it as you would a vaccination for diptheria.
Lunchroom food is made in order to prepare you
For the treatment you'll receive from the girl who
will marry you,
And for military, business, and personal strife,
And the rest of the shit you'll eat later in life.
P is for Prom night, most important by far
If you enjoy vomit and hand jobs in cars.
It's a night no sensible person would fail
To forget, with exception of one small detail:
The picture your parents are sure to have took*
Which they'll frame and hang in the vestubule nook.
This picture will publish in all the newspapers
If you have a car wreck or become a child raper.
So be sure your tuxedo is plain and fits right
And looks as though owned and not hired that night,
And be sure that your hair is properly plastered
To your skull like a man's, not a hippy disaster's
(Nor parted in the middle like a local
sportscaster's).
This photo may get international play,
Depending on what you do or you say.
And you don't want the world to think you a loon
If you happen to die or shoot the President soon.
*There is absolutely no excusage
For this past participle usage.
Q is for Questions of every kind,
The sign of an unwell and feverish mind.
Don't succumb to the ill of curiosities.
The cure is worse always than the disease.
He's only more worried, he who knows.
For your peace of mind let me propose
The motto immemotiral of the Bengal Lancers:
"Don't ask questions. You'll only get answers."
R is for Rah-rah, rah-rah, rah-rah,
Boom-a-lacka, boom-a-lacka, sis, boom, bah.
Control yourself, remain demure.
School spirit is fearfully immature.
Your high school fight song will strike a false note
When you're older and pretending you went off to
Choate.
S is for Scholastic Aptitude Test.
Be sure to do better than all of the rest.
That way you'll get into Harvard or Yale,
And land a job in the government if you pass or you
fail.
And government is a lucrative field
With loads of influence and power to wield.
Plus and government job insures that eventually,
When you're caught, you'll serve time in the best
penitentiary.
T is for Tender kind charity.
Work hard at getting rich if you ever want to see
Any of it. Since charity is most felicitous
When its object is rich to the point of
conspicuousness.
U is for the Unemployment rates,
Still rather grim in most cities and states.
There may be no jobs no matter what your knowledge,
By the time that you matriculate from college.
So work and study and practice night and day
At something to give you social entrée.
There may be no jobs, not for doctor nor denist,
But you'll marry an heiress if you're real good at
tennis.
V is for Verse, all adolescents write,
Mawkish, self-pitying, derivative, trite.
But at least, today, all verse is free,
So verse is easier than it used to be.
For poems once were written in doggerel thus:
A-scamble for rhyme lest the scan make a muss.
But nowadays, due to the work of a pack 'o
Modernist bards and poetical wackos,
There aren't any rules. You can do what you want.
You don't have to, e.g., end this line with "daunt."
Just to your emotions give long-winded venting,
And show it's not prose by frequent indenting.
Just one restriction you can't throw out:
Don't give the poem to the girl it's about.
W is for Women. They're awful, mendacious,
Nasty and selfish, cruel and salacious,
As thievish as gypsies, more crazy than Celts.
Be sure that you never fuck anything else.
X is for the attitude of eXistential anomie.
The French mean nothing by it, and neither do we.
So don't go around acting like Jean Paul Belmondo.
Aspire instead to three cars and a condo.
Y is for Your future, supposedly pared
By nuclear-holocaust world-end nightmare.
Don't get disconcerted by apocalyptic jive.
It's been just about to happen since 1945.
And no matter the MIRVs, ICBMs, and SAMs,
It's not going to happen before final exams.
Z is for Zany, eternal class clown,
Who won't stop kidding, who won't sit down.
Bane of the Boys' Dean, cursed by the teachers,
Source of amusement in classrooms and bleachers.
Zany is cute in a kitten or pup.
But as an adult, please shut the fuck up. - Mood:amused
| |
|
| Been doing some historiographic parallel philosophizing, and I'm wondering what you think. Dig:
Washington and the Virginians: Romulus and Remus (Founding Father[s])
Jackson: ?
Lincoln: Spartacus
Roosevelts: Alexander the Great
JFK: Julius Caesar (playboy)
Nixon: Augustus (transformer -- here we enter Empire, as posited by the rise of Led Zeppelin and the Velvet Underground, which is phallus and vagina)
Sam Phillips: John the Baptist
Elvis Presley: Jesus of Nazareth (renewal force)
Me (gratuitous plug): Paul/Saul (remember that I'm half Hebe, half goy)
Bill Clinton: Caligula.
George W. Bush: Nero.
9/11: Masada (Jews attacked at the top of the world)
Katrina: Great Fire of Rome
Obama: Galba
Jindal: Otho
Bloomberg: Vespasian
The Mayan end-of-days thing (21 December 2012): Vesuvius.
Care to fill in the blanks or add any others? Jimmy Page, Pontius Pilate and Johnny Rotten are kinda coming to mind at present. I do so enjoy this kinda thang. | |
|
| Hatfield: McCoy
Litvak: Galicia
Mason: Dixon
Billy Yank: Johnny Reb
Romeo: Juliet
West Side: East Side
Yin: Yang
Up: Down
God: Satan
Adam: Eve
What goes on in your mind | |
|
| letter to the editor Sunday, August 2, 2009 8:46 PM From: "Joseph Waldman" <josephwaldman@yahoo.com> To The Transcript:
Seven or so years ago, I wrote an exceedingly nasty, bitter, and end-of-the-rope column for you.
Those were dangerous days.
I write now to say that that was stupid. A mea culpa, if you will. Ohio Wesleyan, for better or for worse, gave me a damned good education (scholarshipwise)
Hope all is well down in Delawaretown (the legend of Waldman doth not go away easy, eh?)
Yrs,
Joseph Waldman
OWU '02
=======
http://www.geocities.com/josephwaldman
Why in the world do you think we're here?
Surely not to live in pain and fear!
- John Winston Ono Lennon, 27 January 1970
We place no reliance
On Virgin or Pigeon
Our method is Science
Our aim is Religion
- Aleister Crowley
In the light you will find the road.
- Led Zeppelin (James Patrick Page, John Paul Jones, John Henry Bonham, Robert Anthony Plant), 1974
Q: What do you think of the MC5?
A: I think seldom of the MC5.
- Holmes Sterling Morrison (The Velvet Underground), 1970 |
| |
|
| O, no no no, Bobby Jindal, you did not just say that! Oh, snap! Going, going, douchebag nothing-like Gandhi! Fellow bobbleheads of the Conan and Rachel Maddow type will recognize that bit from a few years ago when Hillary made some comment about Gandhi owning a 7/11. This, of course, pre-Macaca. Ah, Bobby Jindal. How do we dump on the man? Let us count the ways: 1) Loooooooooooooseeanna! Soo-ee! Where Huey Long's not dead, he just stuffed an' put on de mantle! 2) Louisiana is French. Sorry, but it sucks. It's a fun place to be but it's boggy and sappy and the people eat too much. 3) New Orleans is great as the mouth of the Mississippi but that's about it. Gimme Savannah o'er it any day of the week for real Southron weirdness. 4) The dude took his name from The Brady Bunch. Seriously. Was he that stupid as to sit there with his eyes glued to the tube in the early Seventies and do nothing else? Sheesh. Maybe there really was something wrong with people born in the Nixon Administration. Bad DNA. 5) Inverse/reverse/perverse -- okay, the GOP trotted him out to be the mirror to Obama. Gen-X, brown, outside-the-box, whatever. Fine. That doesn't mean he's not a douchenozzle. What's great in this day and age is that men and women of all races, creeds, colors, orientations, and brand loyalties are able to make it to the top and fuck up just as badly as our bumbling idiot forefathers did before us and them. That's the beauty of America. Even the dumbfucks get a chance to try (and fail, with all due haste and luck, because this is, after all, a fully functioning rock 'n roll democracy, and a market body politic at that). 6) He's short. Severe Napoleon complex. Sorry to say but it's sometimes true. 7) The exorcism thing. No, really. In this day and age? C'mon, dude. I know voodoo is the fad down there but it ain't the real Haitian stuff; it's American voodoo, just a tourist trap with fries on the side. 8) Bad Injun! (Seriously, gotta love the ability in this day and age to make fun of all our silly stupid stereotypes. We are a deliciously funny melting pot, this land of ours). 9) Palin-Jindal 2012!!! The GOP might just be clueless enough to go for it. And they'll get their asses handed to 'em on a platter. It'd be good, though. Sacrificial lambs. Then the next time around they can run a mixed sex/ethnic ticket consisting of people who actually have brains. 10 ) Obama would beat his scrawny little ass in a pickup game of b-ball any day of the week. - Mood:amused
| |
|
| In my mind's eye there are now and could only ever have been five great American novels: Moby-Dick, Huck Finn, Gone With The Wind, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and Gravity's Rainbow. | |
|
| I have this historian's-brain retro-fix in my mind: what if Lincoln were alive today? Not in the glorified hindsight sense, but just as an ambulance chaser? Can't you see him doing ads like Sam Bernstein and having his face on the back of the phone book? "Have you been enslaved? 1-800-CALL-ABE is there for you!" - Mood:amused
- Music:Battl Hymn Of The Republic, crossbred with Dixie
| |
|
| Lovely days. Had a blast of an inauguration day on Tuesday with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) kleenexwoman at the Oak Park Park and at my house and down in faaaaaaabulouth Ferndale (seemed apropos). Now tomorrow my insanely Katholik kousin Katie (love her dearly, but she's kind of a douche, and a slave to dogma) is getting hitched, and just to spite my insane aunt Cindy and her partner Jan (rhymes with "man"), there will be no dancing, nor music. Way to be unhappy, Katie. Sorry, but isn't marriage supposed to be about life and joy and all that stuff? Grow up, kiddo. I meanwhile will do my damnedest to punk it up with my exceedingly cool cousin Pete and his girlfriend (can't remember her name right now) and my sister and David L. I smash all idols and stomp terra to the best of my ability at all times. </lj> | |
|
| Well, we done did it and what a good day it was. (I trust you watched, or at least heard, the proceedings from the Potomac.) I imagine things are as happy in Memphis as they are in Detroit, and with good reason and no small amount of historical significance. Both Dr. King and Elvis the King are smilin' and noddin' from heaven tonight.
I spent the day with a dear friend of mine (galpal from way back when; fell in love with her but it turned out she was a lezzie; oh well); we held hands and cried and screamed hosannas at noon. Then we went out to a park, the Oak Park Park, that was my special place when I was just a wee lad, and walked in the snow, and just thought, and talked, and looked at the sky, and it was good. And when we were heading back to my car we crossed paths with a young dad and his boy who were playing on the very same wooden truck I used to play on in 1982, and we chatted, and it was good, and cool. Just like starting over, as a wise man once sang.
Anyway. That's the word from Detroit. As you reminded me (and it's kept me going) the sun will come out tomorrow, and now we've gotta get shit done. So keep on keepin' on and keep on bein' cool. Aisle of View,
JW - Mood:happy
- Music:rock and roll with all that soul
| |
|
| So I'm channelsurfing at the upper reaches of my cable spectrum and what do I stumble across but some sort of rodeo bronco-busting yee-haw whatzit dirtpit shitforbrains breadandcircuses sandpit thang, wherein chinless wonders of the goyische sort (no brains, tiny dicks) feel the need to assert their (ahem) "manliness" by jumping on a poor dumb animal and pull its nuts up toward its stomach with some sort of wire and then spin around in said sandpit (where the previous week, I'm sure, was monster truck rallies, previous to that pro, sorry "pro", "wrestling -- assholism on all accounts) until he's thrown off.
Is there something I missed here in the way you tend to treat animals? Because if you don't see the problem there you're a criminal worse than Hitler, bin Laden, Jack the Ripper, or John Wilkes Booth combined.
Straighten up and civilize. Do so with most haste. Or else it will be done for you, and you won't much like it.
JW, in one of his dictatorial/preachaman moods - Mood:mad
| |
|
| today was an interesting day.
more later. | |
|
| http://www.nirvanaguide.com/images.php?id=931029 10/29/93 - Michigan State Fairgrounds Coliseum, Detroit, MI Set * Radio Friendly Unit Shifter • Drain You • Breed • Serve The Servants • About A Girl • Heart-Shaped Box • Sliver • Dumb • In Bloom • Come As You Are • Lithium • School • Polly • Milk It • Rape Me • Territorial Pissings • Smells Like Teen Spirit • All Apologies • Jesus Wants Me For A Sunbeam • On A Plain • Scentless Apprentice Notes * After "Scentless Apprentice," Kurt threw down his guitar and stormed off the stage, ending the show early, upset that he was hit in the head by a shoe from the crowd. Circulating Recordings * AUD #1 - audience audio o Equipment: built-in > Realistic SCP-29 (cassette) o Lowest Generation: ANA(M) o Length / Sound Quality: 85 min / B+ o Has a cut in "School." * AUD #2 - audience audio (incomplete) o Equipment: Aiwa CM-30 > Toshiba (cassette) o Lowest Generation: ANA(M) o Length / Sound Quality: 65 min / B o Missing everything after "All Apologies." o Has cuts in "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter," "About A Girl," "Heart-Shaped Box," "Territorial Pissings," "Smells Like Teen Spirit," and "All Apologies." Other Performers * Bobcat Goldthwait • Boredoms • Meat Puppets | |
|
| Led Zeppelin is forty tonight (in America).
Also that night was Apollo 8.
Shades of this on their "Early Days" & "Latter Days" album covers.
Mmm hmm. Synchronicity. | |
|
| WHY I'M NOT AFRAID OF THE DARK
by P.J. O'Rourke
When I was a child, I was, as most children are, afraid of the dark. I insisted on a night-light in my room *and* a lamp left on in the hall. I did not like to go to the basement after sundown or into the attic at any time of day. The stairway to this attic, in fact, opened into my bedroom, and I could not comfortably get in bed until I had checked the door lock at least three times. I hated to look into a dark window from a lighted room, and if I was left home alone, I would pull the shades and drapes. Outdoors the dark was somewhat less fearsome, at least when I was accompanied or there were plenty of streetlights around. But to be outside by myself on, say, a windy night without moon or artificial illumination was horrifying. So much is not unusual. I understand it is considered normal and even healthy for a child to feel this way. But when I grew older the fear did not diminish. On the threshold of puberty I was more frightened of a dark room than I had been when I was five. As my mind developed and my imagination improved, nameless dread gave way to vivid phantasmagoria, and general mental unease was replaced by specific terror. I was no longer afraid of just the dark; now there were *things* in that dark. Summer camp was agony. Staring out the cabin windows, I slept so little watching the wolf ghouls and bear ogres formed by the breeze in the treetops that I had to be sent to the infirmary and there slept not at all on a bunk above a boy who had been bitten by a spider and claimed his leg was rotting. I could smell it all night long. I once spent my Christmas vacation with an aunt and uncle and had to share the bed with a younger cousin who had the disquieting trait, as some people do, of sleeping with his eyes open. I would have killed him if I hadn't been sure he was one of the undead already. I developed a custom during those two weeks of getting up and going to the bathroom six or seven times after I'd gone to bed -- in order to be back in the light with the adults. It was a habit that took years to break. And when I was fully thirteen years old I could not fall to sleep in a Florida motel room because the owner had decorated the place with a luminescent picture of Jesus on the Mount of Olives and the phosphorous paint formed horrible patterns in the dusk. the thing was awful on the wall, worse under the bed, and still unacceptable facedown in a dresser drawer. It finally wound up outside behind the ice machine, and if the owner of the Gulf View Courts in Pensacola would like it back, it's probably still there now.
The fear, of course, was unpleasant, but the embarrassment at having it was worse. I was, I thought, for all practical purposes an adult. I would be in high school the next year. Soon, I hoped, I would be taking girls to bed, and presumably that would be in the dark. I wished for -- more than anything except perhaps those girls -- freedom from that panic.
As it happened, quite apart from my fear of darkness, I was having an uncomfortable childhood. My father had died when I was nine, and my mother, a kindly but not very sensible woman, had remarried to a drunken oaf. He was a pestering, bullying sort of man whose favorite subject of derision was my fondness for books. But when I did try my hand at sports and fishing and so forth, he teased me for my ineptitude. He described me as a "hothouse flower" when I stayed inside, and claimed I was running wild like a juvenile delinquent when I went outdoors. I was accused of spinelessness when I did not respond to his goading and of impertinence when I did, told I was dumb when I was quiet, and to shut up when I spoke. My mother tried to intercede, but this only made things worse and made me feel like a coward and a mama's boy besides. As for the remainder of my family, I had only a pair of nattering younger sisters, and I did not like them any better than I liked the rest of the household. Weeknights at home were the most difficult. Our house was cheap and small, and it was impossible to get away from the others. My bedroom was above the living room, where they all sat and watched television from sundown until bedtime. I could hear every word they spoke, many of these words being about me and what a problem I had become. Then my mother would come upstairs every half hour or so to ask, "What are you doing?" And if I tried to go down to the basement -- which, as I mentioned, I didn't like -- my stepfather would yell, every time a commercial came on, for me to leave his tools alone. This was very painful. Not many of the tools were really his. Most of them had been my father's. And if I tried to sit in the kitchen, which at least kept them from talking about me in the next room, then I would be criticized for moping. Therefore, most evenings, wet or dry, cold or warm, I would sneak out of the house and walk around. The single explosion of abuse that I'd receive when I returned was preferable to the constant multiple irritations I received if I stayed. And though I was scared of the darkness outside, I was not as scared of the darkness as I was exhausted with my family. Most of the time I was not even really that scared. We lived in a city neighborhood. It had lawns and trees and so on, but there were busy streets nearby and I would meander along the well-lit storefronts, avoiding alleys, parks, and other dark places, supporting my timidity fairly well, and hoping and mooning and worrying the way adolescents do. I tried to calculate my return with precision, so that I would be late enough for the stepfather to have drunk himself to sleep but not late enough for my mother to have called all the neighbors, or worse.
There was one night, however, when I would not have gone out if things hadn't been much worse than usual at home. My sisters became engaged in some prolonged and stupid screaming match with each other and I had slapped the louder one to shut her up. This set off a general row in the house so that by the time I bolted for the door my sisters were shrieking like banshees and my mother was crying aloud and my stepfather was bellowing threats and the dog was barking and the television was blaring in the background of it all -- a scene I still envision whenever I hear the phrase "hell on earth." It was moonless and very windy and there was an overcast that blotted out the stars but was too high to reflect the city lights. It was early spring, I think, and still cold, and the wavy forms of the naked tree branches were especially macabre. I stuck close to the store windows and huddled in well-lighted doorways several times for warmth. I was doing just that when a police car stopped. What was I doing prowling around in the middle of the night? said the officer. I wasn't prowling, I said, I was just walking home and got cold and stopped for a second in the doorway to get out of the wind. He pointed out that it was not my doorway to stop in and that, anyway, stopping in doorways was suspicious activity at that time of night. He asked me where I lived and I told him, since I could not think of a lie. He said I'd be *plenty* warm, he thought, at least on one part of my body, if I were to arrive there in a police car instead of immediately under my own power. So I strode off in the direction of my house, attempting to look purposeful, and turned into a darkened playground where I was out of sight and a police car couldn't follow me. There were no lights at all on the playground, and besides the spectral things I always felt around me in the gloom, I was worried there might be quite corporeal bums or drunks or, worse, older teenage boys there too. I was frightened but I was stuck. I couldn't go back to the main streets or else the police, I was sure, would get me. And I couldn't go home. I couldn't bear to do that. So I stayed where I was, trembling and miserable, and after a while I began to think. I did not really believe that there were monsters in the shadows, and I didn't see any drunks or teenagers, but this did nothing to allay my terror. I must have read somewhere that it was useless to rail against panic, that the source and causes of fear should be examined and meditated on, to see if the fear will respond to reason. And I was not completely ignorant of primitive psychological theory. I asked myself why I was afraid of the dark. Nothing very bad had ever happened to me in a dark place, that I could remember. No, the worst things in my life had transpired in broad daylight or well-lit rooms. It, the darkness, must "symbolize" something to me, I thought. I had only recently heard about symbolism and I thought it was a swell concept. Perhaps, I thought, darkness symbolized the death of my father. But I could remember being afraid of the dark before he'd died. And, in truth, I had not been that close to the man. It was his absence in the present, not his loss in the past, that was sorely felt. I didn't think his death was it. I decided darkness must symbolize something more general for me. Evil, I decided. That's why I imagined monsters in the dark. Monsters are evil because they do evil things, which is what makes them monstrous. But I recognized that as circular reasoning. No, I had to consider what evil really was. Evil was harm and destruction. Murdering people, that was evil, or burning their houses down. These were the sorts of things evil forces might do, the kind of forces that darkness symbolized for me. Such forces might rage into a home like my own and murder one of my sisters or both of my sisters or even my mother and tear the house to pieces, breaking it into little bits and then blowing the ruins to smithereens with nitroglycerin and setting fire to what was left, and then take my stepfather and break both his arms and slice off his feet and poke his eyes out with red-hot staves, disembowel him, skin him alive. And then they'd attack the rest of the neighborhood and the police force and the school and burn and bomb and steal and break everything in that part of Ohio, from the filthy oil refineries on the east side of town all the way to the moldy, boring cottage we rented every summer at the lake. And who knew what such evil forces might do after that? I didn't. But I sat on the swing set considering suggestions for a very long time. And I have never been afraid of the dark since. | |
|
| But here's to twenty-oh-nine.
- Mood:contemplative
| |
|
|  Damn Midwest. | |
|
| Flashback to the days of confusion with my band in college, The Waldmen (they needed a bass player bad and thus monikered themselves after me to get me to join, and I bit the bait), up on the Stuy Smoker stage, playing Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers", which is a good song, especially considering that it was the night after George Harrison died and everything was fine in harmonious bliss.
I mean, there's a rule of four to a rock and roll band. The Beatles and Led Zeppelin both knew this. George and John were the guitarists: up front, the thinkers. Paul and Ringo were the dopes in the back who went dum da dum da dee dee dum and clash bang boomerang sang cymbal bass drum kick pedal hi-hat whatzit. In the midst of those four, as the synoptic gospels taught the Xians, is the sweet spot: absolute harmony. So too it was with Led Zeppelin. Personal chemistry works magickal wonders, that sweet feeling in your heart when you hear one of their Celtic hymns. Page and Plant had chemistry; Jones and Bonham did too; but they all did a dance and made it a ROUND TABLE!!! And Queen knew this, too! Smart dudes, they were. Futuristic. They bridged the gap, which is why Freddie died when he did. But like all good back-brain dinosaurs (which we all are in the end), they regenerate like petroleum, with new mixes but the same amount of love and bickering that goes only all too well in this wretchedly beautiful tribe we call human. | |
|
| Tybee Island is quite a sacred place to me. That's where my great-grandfather and namesake died back in 1972, lying on the beach, glass of whiskey at his side and with a cigar stuffed in his mouth, looking out on the Atlantic Ocean's gentle waves.
Damn it, I *knew* there was a reason I was channeling Titanic way back in that awful first year of college, when my two most beloved grandparents died at just the wrong -- or maybe the right? -- moments. It's the Immigrant Song, that sacred space where that ship went down, down to the depths of Atlantis and the Bermuda Triangle. It was about love. Love and life. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Dee-gaw, that's it! | |
|
| 1) Mormons may be dumb as fuck but they're gentle people. That doofus Joe Smith, with his divining rod, was not entirely off base in looking for water in Independence, Missouri and Salt Lake City, Utah. Sometimes you have to go down to the basement to cool your head off. Proto-hippies, in a weird way. Certainly they invented the road trip, so I guess they're proto-Beats, too. Being beatfic is good. Bobbleheadedness -- moptopped Beatles, right? It's the headbanger's ball. We're all having a good time.
2) There is a fundamental difference between Nirvana and Pearl Jam, to wit: Nirvana is pure. Water. Waters to waters (as Bob Spitz so eloquently began and ended "The Beatles: The Book" which is anyway all the babble Bible is really all about from beginning to end, history being a self-perpetuating self-evident wave rather than a downward pointing triad. Pearl Jam on the other hand, is angst. Rotten seed. Semen mixed with backed-up kidneystones. Jesus, no wonder Eddie Vedder was so angry all the time. Rage ain't good. (And Rage Against The Machine can kiss my fucking real working-class-hero ass, with their preppie Hahvahd guitar player and anti-corporate corporate hypocrisy. They breed chaos, and fuck anyone who says otherwise.) This may be why Cobain blew his brains out in that magickally weird year of Your Lord 1994 (these things work in sevens from the year 1980, when rock and roll hit its peak and maturity with the deaths of Lennon and Bonham within three months, the breakup of Zeppelin coming just four days before Chapman did his foul deed), and specifically in April, the month Nixon, that shady history-hinge rat genius, croaked, and the month before Jackie Kennedy went to heaven and Nelson Mandela came to power.
3) There should be a number three but I don't have anymore. Ta for now. | |
|
| I think I cracked the code.
Obama's dad's from Kenya, right?
Invert the syllables to get: "Ya ken".
From this it is only a small step to "Yes We Can!"
Y'dig? - Mood:amused
| |
|
| Ancient Egyptians were just eternal teenagers. They wanted to have all their stuff with them in the afterlife. Stuff is good. This is punk. This is Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Clashing Colors. A teenager's bedroom. You've gotta take your stuff with you into the afterlife. All will be one and one will be all. This is the key that unlocks the riddle of the Sphinx. Triad. Triangulation. The Third Way is Best. In The Light You Will Find The Road. Back to Eden we go. History is not like a downward-pointing triad, as the myth of Xianity would have us believe, with that fakir Yeshoua of Nazareth as humanity's lowpoint where we had to make up stories to make us feel better. History is more like a wave (Dark Side of the Moon? Wizard of Oz?). Self propagating. Self-evident. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A one a two a one a two a three a go. One two three four five six roadrunner. The rule of Seven. The Modern Lovers. The Astral Plane. Neotranscendentalism.
More later. Tawk amongst yi'selves. | |
|
| Yogi Bear is my new hero.
Neoliberty is good. That's punk. Green and purple.
Dass is all. | |
|
| Books are sacred. That is why we scroll the roll. | |
|
| the word of the day is "sweetheart"
thank you, jenna h. & cindy j. | |
|
| I have this weird obsession with numbers, especially when it comes to music. Of course there's the basic physix of the whole thing, but there's also the human element -- what makes up a band, how many people should go into it.
Leaving aside orchestral Old World bullshit, and dealing only with the one true Amurican art form -- rock 'n roll -- I posit that duos suck, trios are cool, quartets are the ideal, and quintets are just too fuckin' much and run the risk of becoming . . . lord help us . . . jazz. To wit:
- Duos mean folksy bullshit. No balls.
- Trios mean a triad. The basic Sun Sessions elemental magick from which everything else flows. There is a reason Nirvana was named what it was.
- Quartets mean quadrophenia, the earth in balance, NEWS, ZoSo, etc.
- Quintets mean yer gettin' into Pearl Jam (fuckin' jackoffs) and Springsteen (corporate do-nothing) territory. NO GOOD.
Discuss. | |
|
| american undid those klownprinces of krime back in the sixties
with the martyrdom of jfk mlk and rfk
three "k"s together ain't all that bad
you can walk it like you talk it and a poet and a prophet | |
|
| There are two iconic cinematic cowboys: John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. The former is/was a douche; the latter is cool. Dig: Everyone named after John Wayne (Gacy, Bobbit) has been a white-trash good-for-nothing or outright evil. All full of shit. (It's the difference between Lee and Levi when it comes to jeans, too. Anyone named Lee is a dick. Robert E. Lee, Lee Harvey Oswald, etc. Whereas Levis are menschen by virtue of their very name.) Clint Eastwood, on the other hand, is cool, efficient, neo-punk spaghetti Western. The good kind of Republican (such a thing is sometimes possible). This is why he was referenced in BttF.
Discuss. | |
|
| nonononono this cannot be happening it is nearly seven years to the day since george harrison departed this earth and the taliban was ousted god fucking damn it why does this shit always happen as it should god fucking damn it god fucking damn it god fucking damn it god fucking damn it. | |
|
| ha, i finally got it:
lee harvey oswald was a punk ahead of his time.
that's rock and roll. | |
|
| "Lenin Jefferson" would be a great name for a band.
Discuss. | |
|
| NPR just posted something about the "40th anniversary of the White Album" -- that being the commonplace name for "The Beatles", a nice album, but ultimately official corporate bullshit; and at any rate it incited the Manson Murders. So bollox on it.
I reposit: that there were three better albums of 1968. To wit:
1) The Who's Tommy. We are only now beginning to realize just what effects Hitler's hordes had on Pete Townshend's grandma's slippery hands wot gave him his first, unusable guitar, which of course he smashed. Born in the war? You bet your ass. April-May 1945 was a bad, weird time on this globe. Many many evil men departed the earth, but more than a few more or less good 'uns popped up to replace 'em.
2) The Velvet Underground. Not to be confused with the Banana Album. "How do you define a group like this," wrote Lester Bangs (selah, selah), "who moved from 'Heroin' to 'Jesus' in two short years?" But what this album is all about is the blues, methinks. "Pale Blue Eyes" is nothing if not a classic A-D-E 12-bar blooze (albeit filtered through the adenoids of a middle-class overeducated Noo Yawk Jew). "What Goes On" is the ultimate garage rock anthem. And "Beginning to See The Light? Orgasm City.
3) Led Zeppelin. And awaaaaaay she goes . . . - Mood:amused
| |
|
| I have this madcap theory that what went wrong in 1944, 1948, and 1968 -- that is to say, the dumping of Henry Wallace as Veep; the machine politics of the Democratic Party being corrupt and levering in Harry S. Truman, who was a good guy and all but made the Cold War inevitable by ruining the magickal dynamix of the Big Three by siding with Churchill and Attlee against Stalin, instead of it all being in balance; and the horrors of Nixon and Chicago -- are all undone with the oncoming Obama administration. Yes, I'm waxing poetic. Comments? - Mood:mischievous
| |
|
| Vodka and coffee make for an excelllent cocktail</i>. | |
|
| Bachelor leftover casseroles from the fridge -- wot my friend David Lorch and I are wont to call "Disco Stew" -- are one of the best things in a man's world (gals too, if they can keep up). I had: - Leftover "spaghetti carbonera waldmana" - wot I called a mush I made the other night of the aforementioned pasta, five eggs, sour cream, and about a half pound of mixed cheese. - A big ole slab o' meatloaf. Good things go together, right? Yes, they do. Into the microwave, onto the plate, and I'll be sleeping it off for probablyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzz  - Mood:amused
- Music:stomach gurgling
| |
|
| Posit: The Bush 43 Administration will go down (so to speak) as the most double-entendre/pornographic in history, with the possible exception of Warren G. Hardon's. Dig: you've got and/or had
- George W. "Bush"
- "Dick" Cheney
- Tom "Ridge"
- "Colon" Powell
- "Cunnilingus" Rice
- Michael "Jerkoff"
- "Dirk Diggler" Kempthorne
- Samuel "Bod"man
- James "Climax" Peake
et cetera, et cetera. There are prolly a bunch more I'm missing. Anyone care to chip in? - Mood:amused
- Music:bow-chika-wow-wow version of "Hail To The Chief"
| |
|
| . . . with shades of Winston Churchill. - Mood:excited
| |
|
| Joseph: I have this sudden intellectual jones for a return to good old fashioned machine politix
Megan: hmmm...
why?
Joseph: I'm from chicago originally, and say what you want about the mafia, the daley machine worked, and works
Megan: true
Joseph: efficient government, especially in an information age, is not entirely a bad thing
we could see a melding of e-democracy and old-fashioned cartoonish graft and corruption of the jimmy hoffa sort to create something truly awful and splendid | |
|
| Many thanks and a big ol' dirty-Amurican cross-Erie Canuckish chest-bump to my dear Miss Beth for this. - Mood:happy
| |
|
| It's a helluva day for America.
I was too wired to just sit there on my duff like I've been doing for O too long so I decided to drive down to Ferndale and hang out at the local GLBTQ community center watch party. Hey -- if you wanna find a good party, who better than all those whom Hitler woulda wanted to exterminate, right? Hebes, fags, Gypsies, and Jeeeeeehovah's Witnesses (I'm sure they've got their own thing). Put on my old "I'm Straight But Not Narrow" button from college, and hadda blast. Met a bunch of cool people, and watched the ball drop (in a manner of mixing metaphors -- that'd be the eleven-o-clock pronouncement of TOTAL AND IRREVERSIBLE BLACKITUDUNAL GOODNESS ON THE PART OF THIS NATION OUR DEMOCRACY IN ACTION ALL HAIL AND SING SELAH SELAH SELAH!) and all is well. | |
|
| CONFESSIONS OF A BIPOLAR BUSH-HATER
FAREWELL TO DUBYA, LAST OF THE PREPPIE PRESIDENTS
by Joseph Waldman
Southfield, MI
2 November 2008
holed up for what's gonna be an election day for the record books
It's been a helluvan eight years, hasn't it? Too weird. Way too weird.
I used to hate George W. Bush along with all the rest.
When I was eight years old and his daddy was running for President, I sensed something rotten in the DNA. Chalk it up to the Jewish half of me resenting the WASP half or whatever you want. I dunno.
But here's what weird: Come 20 January, I'm actually gonna miss the little sonofabitch.
You know, in some ways, he wasn't all that bad.
America took a lot of shit under his helm. We took a battering to our national psyche as in no other time in our tapesterial history. The body count alone attests to that.
But somehow the dumb bastard smiled his -- our -- way through it.
Okay. We had two boomers at the helm. Two sides of the same coin for their generation, with all that comes with it.
For whatever reason they were indestructible. Atomic mutants spawned from the winds of Hiroshima in the autumn of 1945. Shit just bounces off 'em.
And maybe that's what it took. Mistah bin Laden, he's the same thing, too. An arrogant little mama's boy. He couldn't stand Bush, so he toppled the Towers.
But somehow Bush stood up to him by merely doing nothing. Shit, the man is gentler than I thought. He's not bad, not evil -- not like Cheney. He's a puss. And maybe that's what we needed, to make the world a kinder place. Yes, I said it. A kinder, gentler place. Ain't nothing wrong with that. One can be saccharin-sappy with such and still have a spine of steel.
A few weeks after 9/11, in my college newspaper column, I made reference to "this Phoenix empire rising from the ashes". I think that's what it is. American alchemy: we turn shit into gold. So out of the chaos of the Bush years we will get President Obama.
Kinda nice, eh? | |
|
| Ode To The Modern Lovers
(I wrote this about eleven or twelve years ago and it's stuck in my brain right now for some reason)
The Modern Lovers were so great
And if you go to school
And find yourself without a date
You'll know which way is cool
They did their sessions with John Cale
If that is what you seek
To find a band the critics hail
Led by the high school geek
Yes Jonathan Richman was the best
He truly was a prophet
Ten great songs without a rest --
Don't tell me to get off it.
So you may play your Sonic Youth
But some of us, we know the truth. - Tags:pomes
- Mood:!!!
- Music:Radio On!
| |
|
| Mott the Hoople reference on TDS just now. | |
|
| What were Lincoln's last words?
"Ow, you shot me!"
and then , . .
What were FDR's last words?
"Eleanor's a WHAT? *errrrrgh*" (dies of stroke)
I also have the JFK conspiracy theory to end all conspiracy theories. It was John Connally who did him in. Connally was pissed off that JFK kept kicking the back of his seat, so, in the missing frames where the limo is behind the Stemmins Freeway sign, he reached around and stuffed a grenade in his mouth. That explains the magic bullet and everything. - Mood:amused
| |
|
| "Electricity comes from other planets" -- Lou Reed | |
|
|
