tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47095156051865215962024-02-20T10:23:17.431-08:00Frontier HippySlacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-69688475737069830332013-07-11T13:41:00.002-07:002013-07-11T13:44:44.292-07:00On The Use Of The Term "Liberal"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<h1>
</h1>
<h1>
On The Use Of The Term “Liberal”<o:p></o:p></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Before I moved to Lake Charles, La., it never occurred to me that
I might be what’s called a “liberal” on talk radio. I hated the Clinton
administration. I hated NAFTA and GATT, Clinton’s campaign lie about refusing
to give China most-favored nation trading status and his military adventurism.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
To the degree I formed opinions about partisan politics, I
did so purely according to personal inclination. I certainly didn’t want to be
involved in partisan politics in any way, least of all by voting for this or
that. I thought then what I still think now: that partisan politics is a joke
and a hustle. I followed partisan politics because I thought it was often
amusing, in an absurdist kind of way, and because politicians reveal a tremendous
amount about human behavior.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Then I moved to Lake Charles and started writing for
Lagniappe Magazine. And I found out I was a liberal. I didn’t figure this out for
myself. I was told I was a liberal by the people who live here. I was told this
over and over and over and am still being told.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It must have begun shortly after I started writing my Up
Front column early in 2000. A few months after the column’s debut, some
stranger pulled me aside in a local restaurant. “Thanks for speaking for us,”
he whispered in my ear. Then he walked away at a pretty brisk pace.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thanks for speaking for us? Us? Who are us? I wondered. It
was a curious thing. But I suppose I forgot about it as soon as I got back to
whatever food and beer were waiting for me at my table.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A couple of months later, I was sitting in a spacious and
upscale office, talking to the broker who sat in a leather chair behind a big
desk. The door was closed. Throughout the conversation, he’d been talking to me
in his customary voice. But then the conversation shifted to what I wrote for
Lagniappe. And the broker did a remarkable thing. He started whispering — in
his own office.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Thank you for supporting us liberals in the magazine,” he
whispered. “There aren’t many of us here.” After he said that, he turned the volume
of his voice back up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two things flabbergasted me about this encounter. First,
this person thought I was a liberal. Second, he was, apparently, so scared
about being a liberal in Lake Charles that he would only whisper about it even
when he was secure in the safety of his private office.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Down through my years in Lake Charles, I’ve been told on a
pretty regular basis that I’m a liberal. I almost always hear this second-hand.
Here’s an example of the sort of remark I frequently hear: “So and so says he doesn’t
read your stuff because you’re too liberal.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These comments always leave me befuddled. I feel like I’ve
been accused of trespassing in a country I’ve never set foot in. I feel like a
character in a Kafka story: tried and convicted without ever knowing what the
charge was.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although I’ve never done it, I’ve thought about dragging out
old copies of my Up Fronts and saying to some accuser, “What about this?” What
about the numerous times I’ve slammed President Obama for failing to keep his
promise to close Guantanamo Bay; for his use of the Justice Department to
prosecute U.S. citizens he knows were mistakenly arrested according to the
terms of the Patriot Act; for his continuation and elaboration of the program
of unconstitutional spying on U.S. citizens that was initiated by the Bush
administrations; and for his farcical and wasteful beer and Slurpee summits?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don’t think it would matter if I said “What about this?”
to those who say I’m too liberal. Partisan politics and ideological politics
aren’t amenable to reason, logic, rational argument or extended argument. If
they were, what wonders the human animal might achieve.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Partisan politics are the things of platitudes, power and
expediency. If there were ever a thing less worthy of being taken seriously,
it’s partisan politics. And indeed, it’s just by not ever taking it seriously
that we get whatever enjoyment, humor and knowledge there is to be gotten from
it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But some people take partisan politics very seriously — in
fact, as seriously as they take anything. My guess is that almost all those who
say they don’t read my stuff because it’s too liberal are the sort of people I
call “talk radio people.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a rule, when I’ve been around such people, I haven’t
enjoyed their company. It seems to me that they’re always mad at the world.
They often speak as if they were angry at something — often something the exact
nature of which goes unmentioned. Sometimes they talk in such an aggressive and
emotional way that they begin to frighten me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It would be convenient to say that they construe all sorts
of things that aren’t really political as being political. But I think the
anger is more pervasive than that. It goes beyond the political. It’s easy for
a person to become irritable when all the things that are important to him are
going wrong. And the mixture of irritability and ideology is like an unstable
explosive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The sort of people I’m talking about quickly become angry at
me if they dislike some trivial opinion about a trivial matter that I’ve
haphazardly uttered in order to make conversation. They aren’t mad about my
politics; they’re mad because something I’ve said about an indifferent topic
irks them. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I hope that more or less brings me to the only point I want
to make in this essay. It seems to me that in Southwest Louisiana in 2013, the
word “liberal” is an adjective that means “uttering or writing statements that
are disliked by anyone who consistently listens to talk radio, views Fox News
or endorses tea party ideology.” And it’s not far from meaning “uttering or
writing statements that are disliked by anyone in Southwest Louisiana.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I guess the key thing to take out of that is that I feel the
use of the term “liberal” in regard to Brad Goins has little or nothing to do
with politics. I think politics is a sewer and I don’t take it seriously. How
could I be a liberal?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the other hand, I am someone who takes a pretty
lackadaisical approach to the expressing of opinions. Half of what I do in Up
Front is work toward a cheap joke. If a politician of either party acts like an
oaf, I figure out some way to have at least one laugh at his expense. And I
sure can’t make fun of Louisiana Democrats when there aren’t any Louisiana
Democrats to make fun of.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To create the sort of political satire or irony I create, I
freely ride on any hobby horse that happens to be around, freely jump on any
bully pulpit in sight and freely express all sorts of opinions about sundry
matters that don’t matter a hill of beans in the general scheme of things.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I used to find a lot of humor at the prospect of ordinary
people who fly into foam-at-the-mouth rages at the mere mention of this or that
“liberal” or “conservative” fad. But I’m beginning to tire of the joke. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Maybe 13 years of living in a place where people are afraid
to utter the word “liberal” except in a whisper or as an insult has given me
pause and gotten me to ponder the matter a little too much. Isn’t there
something just a little extreme in all this? Is there something unhealthy in
it? Is there, possibly, something potentially dangerous in it?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The hours and hours and hours of self-censorship I put
myself through as I write Up Fronts — is this good journalism? Is it a failure
of nerve? Or is it a very prudent act of self-protection that I should engage
in even more?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Power is a real thing. Politics is useless except as a means
to power. Partisan politics, or any ideological politics, is never systematic
and is therefore never worth taking seriously. Politics as it is practiced by
the typical politician is farcical.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But the current use of the word “liberal” — that’s nasty.
And as any halfway decent columnist will tell you, you’d better think long and
hard before you put a dirty joke in print. Some people don’t like that kind of
joke. And some people have a very low tolerance for things they don’t like.<o:p></o:p></div>
Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-52574430828651797542013-01-28T08:39:00.000-08:002013-01-28T08:39:56.429-08:00The Threw Ups
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<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">The Threw Ups<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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A few weeks ago, one of my tumblr friends, who has the user
name hahathisurlistoolongtobepopular, told me she’d like me to promote her
music on my tumblr blog. When I told her I could promote the music in my column
in a real blog, she seemed really happy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When I linked to YouTube, I learned that her musician name
is Jenny Threwup and that she’s the force behind the musical act The Threw Ups,
which I’d heard of. Threwup puts Daniel Johnson first on her list of
influences. If you’ve listened to Johnson’s music or seen the documentary about
him, you probably already have at least a rough idea what Jenny Threwup’s music
is about.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Her music may also remind adventurous listeners of such
outfits as Half Japanese or The Frogs. But I think her work is more carefully
planned and organized than that; I’d say she sounds a bit more like The Roches
did in their early days.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If none of these names means anything to you, I’ll try to
give you a good idea what to expect in Threwup’s music. It often sounds like
acoustic folk circa early Dylan; perhaps even a little like Appalachian music.
One similarity to folk is that the lyrics of each song tell a story.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The way in which certain lines in the lyrics are repeated
several times in a row introduce a bluesy element to the music. This is hardly
chance. The fine cut "Little Instrumental" opens with some really big
blues guitar riffs. (The guitar is acoustic, as it is on almost all the cuts.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Threwup ends the song "Can't Complain" with a very
funny-sounding short screech. "Uhyeah ah" is a real change-up, with
its humorous title, its vocal chorus and its electric guitar, which has a pleasing
super-dirty sound.<o:p></o:p></div>
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"Remember, Remember” has some lyrical rock riffs, as
well as some impressive guitar work. This cut will certainly be the most
accessible to listeners who aren't used to experimental music. "Shave
Heads" has a hook that will be accessible to fans of both folk and
mainstream rock.<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is lyrical overlap with acts like Daniel Johnston or
Sparklehorse. One thing that means is that some good surreal language pops up
from time to time. I especially liked this from “Give At All”: "When I
jump the window, I jump through the door."<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you want to hear Jenny and The Threw Ups’ music, it’s
easy and free. Just go to You Tube and search for Jenny Threwup. Each cut is
less than two minutes long; some are half a minute. You can listen to the whole
set in 15 minutes or so.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s fun, quirky, DIY music that delivers something that’s
interesting but not overworked or overthought. (BTW, on Ryan Gosling’s recent album,
he enforced a rule that if a song couldn’t be recorded by the third take, it
got cut. Such Gosling lines as “my body’s a zombie for you” would fit right
into a Threw Ups lyric.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jenny’s a resident of Germany. If you want to encourage her
about her plans for an EP (and see some good art as well) check out her tumblr
blog by searching for the user name above.<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-31348791043946769732013-01-28T08:28:00.000-08:002013-01-28T08:29:13.447-08:00New Translation of Boethius<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<h1>
</h1>
<h1>
Big Questions Answered</h1>
<h2>
A New Translation Of Boethius</h2>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius</div>
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Edited and Translated by Scott Goins and Barbara Wyman. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012. (Ignatius Critical Editions). 278 pages. $7.95</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
A Review By Brad Goins</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Two Latin scholars have produced the latest translation of
one of the masterpieces of Medieval thought. Like almost all Western books of
the time, The Consolation of Philosophy was originally written in Latin. The
brand new English translation is on shelves now. Before we delve into it, let’s
take a brief look at the story of the book’s hero: Boethius.</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius came from a family of Roman leaders. He became a
Roman consul in 510 and lived to see both his sons become consuls. It was the
first time in more than a century that two or more people from the same family
had been consul simultaneously.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius served king Theodoric, one of the Goths who’d
conquered Rome after invading from the north. Goths were usually considered barbarians
by those Romans whose ancestral roots were in Rome. With his brutal violence
and opportunistic behavior, Theodoric certainly lived down to the stereotype. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the beginning of his great book, Boethius begins by
making the claim that he’s the rarest of things: an honest politician. He says
he went into politics “for the sake of keeping my conscience clean … I have
preserved the law and never been afraid to offend the powerful … I risked
myself by using my authority to protect the unfortunate, as they suffered
countless attacks from the unchecked greed of the barbarians!” (page 17; note
the not-so-little dig at Theodoric in the last word).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius has reason to be angry — and frightened as well.
Theodoric had charged Boethius with conspiracy and treason and had imprisoned
him.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was in prison that Boethius imagined he was being visited
by Lady Philosophy. She was a personification of the philosophy that Boethius
found so comforting before loss of power and harsh punishment left him in a
state of anxiety that drove all philosophy from his mind. “Deprived of
possessions, stripped of honors, and disgraced in the eyes of man, I have
suffered punishment for doing good” (page 22), he says.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Consolation of Philosophy is divided into four books
(each about 40 pages long). In each book, Boethius asks Lady Philosophy to
answer a big question that’s troubling him. His first big question can be
phrased like this: Why have I suffered misfortune when I’ve tried to do good?
From this big question follows a subsidiary question: Why do the wicked
prosper? Another, smaller, question is perhaps good evidence of Boethius’
strained nerves and state of mind: “Shouldn’t fortune have been ashamed” for
the way it’s treated him (19)? </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At first, the shaken Boethius puts his questions in a loud
and aggressive manner: “Fortune has raged against me” (16), he says, and he
returns the favor.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lady Philosophy slowly begins to calm him. She says he’s
“dazed” (10) by his fortune. And though she promises to be gentle with him, she
can’t resist a little tough love: “I can’t bear your childish self-indulgence,”
she says (42).</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Lady Philosophy As Therapist<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At his point, Lady Philosophy begins a fairly elaborate
psychological analysis of the suffering Boethius. She begins her diagnosis by
directing to Boethius one of the book’s most famous lines: “You no longer know
what you are” (28). She says, reasonably enough, that he is suffering from a
“storm of passions” (26).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You are pulled about
by conflicting feelings of pain, anger and sorrow … your wound … has hardened
and grown scarred by the constant pricks of your anxieties,” she says (26).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the first time Lady Philosophy demonstrates her
unerring ability to detect the role of anxiety in extreme human suffering. Just
two pages later, she’ll say, “this is the nature of anxiety. It has the
strength to make a man lose his footing, yet it can’t overthrow him completely”
(28). Anxiety is strong enough to cause pain; not strong enough to stop
thought, fixation or obsession.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lady Philosophy elaborates on anxiety’s apparent ability to
bring about a near paralysis of response and initiative. ”Every sudden change
in circumstances seems to overcome a soul, almost like a flood” (31).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s not that Boethius is especially neurotic. Nor is he
overreacting to any extreme degree. Anxiety is inescapable. “Man’s condition
produces anxiety,” says Lady Philosophy (42). Although her analysis of the role
of anxiety in human life and action precedes the analyses of anxiety by
Kierkegaard and Freud by a millennium and a half, it’s thorough and realistic.
It certainly anticipates modern ideas about anxiety.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As Lady Philosophy is aware of Boethius’ delicate condition,
she tells him she’ll start with gentle philosophical cures for his condition.
One home truth, though, that’s not all that gentle is a common sense conclusion
that one wouldn’t necessarily have to be a philosopher to reach: “Don’t be
surprised when we’re tossed about … when we ourselves have chosen to be
displeasing to the wicked” (13). And if she’d said “wicked and powerful,” she
wouldn’t have been wrong. Philosopher or not, she knows if you’re going to mess
around with a brute such as Theodoric, you’ve got to expect something worse
than a bark.</div>
<h1>
The Wheel Of Fortune</h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Book 2 continues Boethius’ notion that he’s somehow been
betrayed by fortune. Gentle or no, Lady Philosophy is quick to tell Boethius
that Fortune is essentially “fickle.” She says he’s foolish to rely on or
expect fairness from fortune. Fortune has “endearing friendliness to those she
tries to deceive … until she leaves them … and overwhelms them with unbearable
pain … She … brings grief when she departs” (33).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The idea for which Boethius is certainly best known is that
of the Wheel of Fortune. Unfortunately, in our time, this idea has been pretty
much entirely associated with a game show. But in earlier centuries, the Wheel
of Fortune was a powerful metaphor that represented the way in which people
obtain good fortune only to lose it in a matter of a few years. It’s a little
as if one is going up and down on a Ferris wheel that moves very slowly.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lady Philosophy sees this approach to, and interpretation
of, human life, as a sort of game. “This is the power, this is the game we
always play,” she says. “We turn our wheel on its flying course; we delight in
changing the low to the high and the high to the low. Rise up, if you wish, but
on this condition: don’t consider yourself injured when you descend, as the
rules of the game demand” (36).</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Blessedness<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In Book 3, Lady Philosophy moves toward the stronger
philosophical medicine she promised Boethius. Since the earthly gifts of
fortune don’t give lasting contentment, something else may. This source of
contentment, it turns out, is “blessedness,” which, says Lady Philosophy, every
human being seeks.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While the concept of blessedness may seem impossibly vague,
Lady Philosophy does in fact say some surprisingly concrete things about it.
For starters, it “is not anxious” — it is free of the human anxiety Philosophy
has made so much of (67).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is “a state that needs nothing belonging to anybody else,
but rather is sufficient in itself” (67). It is “simple and indivisible” (82).
It can be discerned by human reason. And it is God. “Reason shows that the Good
is God,” says Philosophy. “God is blessedness itself” (91).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some aspects of blessedness (its self-containment,
indivisibility and simplicity) seem to this reader to give The Consolation a
distinctly mystical flavor. It’s made all the more mystical (again, to this
reader) when Boethius seems to connect
to the notion that “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21). For
instance, Lady Philosophy asks, “O mortals, why do you seek outside yourselves
for the happiness that has been placed within you” (44)? And in a verse
passage, she says “reason finds that what is labored for without / can be
discovered — from a treasury within” (100).</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Why Do The Evil Prosper?<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius’ big question in Book 4 is this: “If the ruler of
the universe is in fact good, how can evil exist or go unpunished” (109)? Why
are the wicked rewarded and the good punished? How can a good God be in charge
of such a situation?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of Boethius’ philosophical arguments — such as the one
that evil is nothing or doesn’t exist — may not seem especially compelling in
our time. But Boethius is careful to make sure that all his arguments are
logically consistent. For instance, he argues that “evil is nothing since the
one who can do everything [that is, God] is unable to do it” (104). Such
arguments can lead to very entertaining paradoxical statements, such as the
following: “Now it might seem strange to say that evil men, who make up the
majority of mankind, don’t exist, but this is the way the situation is” (115).
It’s a delightful philosophical exercise to imagine that the person who seems
to be standing next to you simply doesn’t exist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What Boethius means when he asserts that evil doesn’t really
exist is something like this: it is the nature of man to seek the highest good.
And when something doesn’t follow its nature, it’s as if the thing isn’t really
alive. A man who doesn’t seek the highest good isn’t really a man (Boethius
argues).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As for the apparent prosperity of the wicked, providence
provides hardships to those who will learn from them and keeps hardships from
those who will be overwhelmed by them (137). Events “reward or test the good”
and “punish or correct the bad” (141).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, all the arguments in this section are cogent and
logically valid. It’s just that, with a little work, one can construct equally
strong arguments in opposition. But that is true of any philosophical text
worth reading.</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Can People Have Free Will?<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although The Consolation of Philosophy is a work of
philosophy, it’s one of the most accessible ones ever written. A person with no
experience in philosophy can enjoy the book with little difficulty.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Having said that, I’ll note that book 5 presents a few
passages that may be a bit tough for the absolute philosophical novice. But I
suggest sticking with it to get to the moral and ethical advice that The
Consolation offers in such an eloquent and comforting form.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the fifth and final book, Boethius’ question is this: How
can human beings have free will if God knows beforehand what will happen?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Although the answer is a little tricky, the gist is that for
God, what’s called “foreknowledge” is simply seeing all things — past, present,
future — happen as if they were happening in the present. We already know that
the human mind can see things happen without at the same time making them
happen. Why couldn’t God’s mind operate in the same way?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People want to make God unnecessarily complex, argues Lady
Philosophy. They underestimate God’s simplicity, and in particular the
simplicity of God’s mind, which “understands all things simply and considers
them as if they were being done now” 169.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Again, it’s an argument that may not seem as attractive now
as it did when it was made. But it’s well-reasoned and advanced. And I like the
hint of mysticism that I (at least) find in the notion of the simplicity of
God’s mind.</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Lyricism<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius’ book is written partly in prose, partly in verse.
Boethius is probably underrated as a Latin poet. At any rate, in this new
translation, you’ll find plenty of extremely eloquent and moving lines. Enjoy
these few:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lady Philosophy says “ … night is poured on earth from
above” (11).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She adds, “Death tumbles and tangles both lofty and humble”
(59).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
She tells the story of Orpheus in eight words: “Orpheus his
own Eurydice / saw, lost and killed” (108).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And again, she turns to the stars: “From the star-filled
shores of the sky / the discord of war is banished” (140).</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Stoic Ethics<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius was the greatest practical moralist of the Medieval
era. He wrote the sort of insightful and useful aphorisms about everyday ethics
that had been written in classical Rome by Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius and
that would be written after the Medieval era by the likes of Montaigne and La
Rochefoucauld.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius’ ethics are often right in step with the stoic
ethics that dominated Rome for centuries. Stoicism was Rome’s secular religion.
While it may not have had the force of law, it was so widely followed it might
as well have.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The stoic influence in Boethius is impossible to miss. It’s
there, for example, in Lady Philosophy’s early advice to Boethius: “Fear not,
hope not” (15).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Interestingly, stoic discourses in ethics are fairly common
in the verse in The Consolation. Consider these stoic precepts:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
… to discern truth</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
with a clear light …</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
banish joy,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
banish hope,</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
banish fear …</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The mind is shackled</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
when these rule. 30</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“… either sorrow exhausts, or / hope, fleeting, torments the
captive” (118).</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Practical Ethics<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here is just a taste of Boethius’ practical advice about
ethics — advice that’s always easy on the ear and, more important, can be put
to use in challenging situations in everyday life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“You mustn’t waste away in your heart desiring to live by
your own law, though you reside in a kingdom inhabited by all men” (Lady
Philosophy, page 36).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Don’t let thoughts weight your mind” (166, also Lady
Philosophy).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some lines are personal favorites. Consider this gem from
book 5: “To learn about the things that delight me most will be like finding a
place to rest” (Boethius, page 147).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And this: “Make sure we don’t do something completely
illogical by following the opinion of the people” (142, Lady Philosophy).</div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Critical Edition<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Keep in mind that this is a critical edition. If you read
the many detailed and carefully prepared footnotes, it will be as if you are
reading a second book: a book about the many figures who influenced or were
influenced by Boethius. This illustrious list includes such names as Virgil,
Ovid, St. Aquinas, St. Augustine, King Alfred (who translated The Consolation),
Chaucer (who prepared a translation as well) and Dante.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another facet of a critical edition is the selection of critical
essays in the back of the book. Space limitations forbid me to do anything more
than hit some highlights.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the essay “The Ladder of Knowledge” by Mitchell
Kalpakgian, the author provides a brief catalogue of the fascinating
philosophical paradoxes in The Consolation: “Boethius [wonders at] the
paradoxes that Philosophy … presents to
him: all luck is good luck; there is no such thing as chance; evil is nothing”
(180). </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The essay “Lady Philosophy as Physician” by Jeffrey S.
Lehman makes a striking complement to Lady Philosophy’s evaluation of Boethius’
mental state. Lehman argues that Boethius “begins [the book] in a state of
total passivity” (188).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lehman also advances the interesting argument that Boethius
advances from a (passive) poet to an (active) philosopher in the course of the
book.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Natural and Supernatural Responses to Suffering” by Rachel
Lu is one of several essays that make the point that Boethius wrote The
Consolation with “the realization that he personally was likely to face torture
and execution in the very near future” (213).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s the same situation in “The Death of Boethius” by Regis
Martin, who says Boethius faced “an absolute certainty of being tortured”
(253).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Martin writes about the events leading up to this situation
in a poignant way: “As we watch him perform at the top of his game, this
brilliant and gifted young man, flush with power and wealth and every possible
success, we suddenly see it all disastrously fall away” (253).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lu’s essay also addresses the common argument that because
Boethius never mentions Christ in the Consolation, the book’s God is not a
Christian God. Lu argues: “the Consolation explores pagan philosophy in a way
that seems targeted to underscore its harmony with Christian revelation. This
is clearly not an anti-Christian work” (214).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This review offers a brief introduction to the latest
translation of a great read and one of the best handbooks for everyday living
that’s graced the planet. At a list price of $7.95, it is the publishing
bargain of the year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-2596764000928056402012-08-20T11:31:00.002-07:002012-08-20T11:31:45.513-07:00
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIbENM62-Ay42BKZaGJ9REYrxMiQCSTO0WCOk1rjuhUNQ4Xi7JyGvzXKQ1kwpqYqmdiv7xzNj0g5JVzRMdCWupvgkNM3PMkFKxYJ2Gny71CCw4cYNUjlC5AHAErErf1DhSX5xgypZ93qU/s1600/goat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIbENM62-Ay42BKZaGJ9REYrxMiQCSTO0WCOk1rjuhUNQ4Xi7JyGvzXKQ1kwpqYqmdiv7xzNj0g5JVzRMdCWupvgkNM3PMkFKxYJ2Gny71CCw4cYNUjlC5AHAErErf1DhSX5xgypZ93qU/s320/goat.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Stelly On The Great Reformer<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought it was time to go for a while without writing anything about Louisiana politics. That was especially the case
given all the giddiness about Gov. Bobby Jindal as a vice presidential
candidate.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I thought there was even more giddiness nationwide than in
the state until I saw the results of a late June CNN poll of 1,500 U.S. adults.
Of these poll subjects, 43 percent said they had never heard of Jindal. On the
up side, that's exactly the same percentage who said they'd never heard of Tim
Pawlenty. Three cheers for the informed electorate, and for the three chairs
that can accommodate it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jindal was getting at least some national attention. The Associated
Press released a major story on July 15 that bore the headline “Gov. Jindal
rehabs image by focusing on Louisiana.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This story, which was run as the front page lead story one day
in the American Press, maintained that Jindal was trying to rehabilitate his
image in the country as a whole. It didn’t concern any kind of work on his
image that he was doing in Louisiana.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The AP story, which was surprisingly thorough, seemed to say
much of Jindal’s national clout comes from enthusiastic support by prominent
conservatives. The article mentioned “repeated rounds of budget cuts to
education and health care” in Louisiana during the Jindal administration, and
pointed out that state “critics have complained about his deep cuts to state
higher education funding.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, why did I write about state politics when I was determined
not to? Well, the AP story quoted a local! In particular, the story quoted Moss
Bluff politician Vic Stelly, who pretty strongly suggested that underneath his
regal habiliments, the Great Reformer may not be so great and may not be a
reformer.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"He's very self-serving," Stelly was quoted as
saying. "All the so-called reforms, it'll be years down the road before we
know if they amount to anything. I don't think they will."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The AP noted that Stelly had “recently resigned from the
state's top higher education governing board over complaints about the Jindal
administration's cuts to colleges.” Stelly’s pretty sharp. This time, he became
one of the few in the state who resigned before Jindal had a chance to dump
him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And suppose Jindal does get a VP nod. Could I manage to see
Jindal leave the state of Louisiana for 8 to 16 years? It would be hard. Very
hard. The hardest thing I’ve ever done. But I believe I could manage it. And I
can’t wait to see what he’d do to the national education system.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">About Town<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Boethius has come to be considered the greatest of the
practical moral thinkers of the Medieval era. A new translation of Boethius’
key work, The Consolation of Philosophy, has just been published. And that’s
important, because the translation is by my brother.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s right. The Consolation of Boethius, as edited and
translated by Scott Goins and Barbara Wyman, was published by Ignatius Critical
Editions just a couple of weeks ago.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I haven’t read it all yet, because when it came out, I was
right in the middle of reading Charles Dickens’ Nicholas Nickleby, which is a
powerful long book. But I’ve read enough of this new translation of Boethius to
know that there are many footnotes to the text and they’re very thorough.
Whenever one reads a classic that’s properly annotated, it’s just as if one
were getting a new education. (And in this case, it’s an education that comes at
a very low price; the Consolation is going for just $7.95 at Amazon.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As you’ll have noted above, this is a critical edition. That
means the text of the Consolation is complemented by six essays by Boethius
scholars.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ll tell readers more about the book after I’ve
spent some more time with it. But you may not want to wait. At $7.95, you’re
not going to find a better book deal this year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Scalise Doesn’t Miss Calls<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I read the following headline on July 19 on the state news
blog The Dead Pelican:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Scalise fights back against President Obama's call for more
big government ...”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I clicked the link, I expected to see a video of
Scalise speaking. But in fact, I was linked to a YouTube of President Obama
giving a speech on the sidewalk in front of the E-Z-Livin' Smoke and Boudin
Emporium in Wagon Rut.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Obama said, "I am calling for more big government. I'm
actively calling for it. Government is big. But it's not big enough for me. I
want it bigger. And I want it bigger now. I'm calling for it. Calling loud. Make
it happen!"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At this point, a young man, shaved nearly bald, who was
lounging on the sidewalk with a can of Steel Reserve, asked a question.
"Mr. President,” he said. “Mr. President! What do you mean by ‘big
government’? What is it?"<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Well, young man," said the president, "big
government means that the government will send you a check every month, and a
pretty big check at that. You can use that check for whatever you like, so as
to free yourself up to lead whatever lifestyle will give you the most personal fulfillment."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Far out, Mr. President," said the young man. "I'm
not voting, but if I were voting, I'd definitely vote for you."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
"Well, sir," said the president, "I'd suggest
you register to vote if the new restrictive voter registration laws in your
area allow you to. You should vote against the enemies of my new bigger
government — enemies like Rep. Steve Scalise of the fearsome land of Metairie,
La. He’s the worst of the bunch. He fights my new bigger government relentlessly,
with all the unflagging tenacity of the mongoose attacking the snake or St.
George attacking the dragon. He gives me the insomnia. He haunts my dreams. He
inhabits my nightmares. He keeps sleep far from me. Vote against him, sir! Vote
against him!”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At that point the video ended. In defense of the Dead
Pelican, I'll point out that the headline it used was the exact same headline Scalise
used for a video he posted on YouTube. Why a news blog would repeat a
congressman's headline verbatim, I can't say, unless it's that The Dead Pelican
is at least as conservative as Scalise and just liked the way the headline
sounded. If only journalists could use headlines because they like the way they
sound. If it worked that way, I could have used the headline “Mellow Greetings,
Earth Man” for this story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I don't know how these Louisiana politicians do when it
comes to politics. But when it comes to self-promotion, nobody can beat them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">No Austerity For Me, Thanks<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In mid-July, the Associate Press reported that austerity
movements in Europe have reached the point that they’ve started to affect rich
people. Here’s the evidence: In Spain, the king has been asked to reduce his
salary by 7 percent. That’s right: 7 percent! That knocks him down to just $334,000
a year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember when some gubment budget cutters told me to scale
my salary back to $334,000. Brother, did I ever raise he1l. I threw dirty napkins
on the floor, flipped rubber bands against the wall and said dirty words. They
got the message. It’ll be a long time before some gubment bureaucrat tries to
make me get austere again. <o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">‘Whatsa Da Shape A Da World?’<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In international news, Iraqis who had been told to go to Syria
to flee the violence in Iraq were told to return to Iraq on the grounds that
the violence in Syria had become more severe than the violence in Iraq.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Goins Revere<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Here’s a passage from the transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s July
18 radio broadcast:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“This new movie, the Batman movie … Do you know the name of
the villain in this movie? Bane. The villain in the Dark Knight Rises is named
Bane. B-A-N-E. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran,
and around which there's now this make-believe controversy? Bain …<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you think that it is accidental that the
name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain
in this movie is named Bane?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course it is not accidental. I know because I documented
the filmmakers’ conspiracy against Romney. I secretly recorded a conversation
of the key filmmakers with my Eclipse Portable Media Player when I was on the
set of the Batman film on April 1, 2011. Here’s the smoking gun transcript:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Director Christopher Nolan: “Lookit, I think if we’re going
to have a realistic chance of doing that shot from behind the skyscraper set, we’re
going to need at least a 30-ton crane, and I think we ought to get that lined
up and knocked out now.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Cinematographer Wally Pfister: “Well, I don’t see the point
of doing that until we have a complete shooting schedule. Even at this point,
I’m not really sure exactly what you want me to shoot. I think it would help me
a lot if I could get at least a working shooting schedule.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nolan: “I think Andrew knows what the shooting schedule is.
Can he put it together and email it to you or do you want him to text it?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Set Dresser Ted Altman: “Excuse me. I’m really sorry to interrupt.
But don’t you think the movie should have a villain with a name that makes a
reference to Mitt Romney’s past?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nolan: “Oh, hell yes.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pfister: “Why didn’t I think of that?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nolan: “What should we call the villain?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Pfister: “Yeah, forget about the shooting schedule. Let’s
think of a name for this sucker.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Altman: “Well, how about Bane? Only, we’ll spell it B-A-N-E.
But, obviously, it’ll be a reference to Bain.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nolan: “That’s pretty damn smart. What’s your name again?”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just for the record, the villain Bane appeared for the first
time in a Batman comic book in 1993 and for the first time in a movie in 1997.
I learned that by spending 30 seconds on the IntraWeb.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
People thought at first that Limbaugh would back away from
his accusation. No such. I emailed him my video of the secret conversation I’d
filmed. That must have given him fresh inspiration, because on the next day, he
said this on the radio:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“They're trying to make me look like an idiot. A tinfoil-hat
conspiracy kook. When all I am is Rush Revere warning you in advance, ‘The
Liberals Are Coming!’ I see them hit the trail before you do. And what you're
gonna have to do is, if you don't admit it yet, you're gonna have to start
admitting it. I'm always right about it.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, I see them hitting the trail too. They look just like
pixies hitting the gossamer trail to dream land.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We can all learn from Limbaugh’s second set of comments.
Here’s the lesson. If you want any amount of political power whatsoever, you
must remember that the best way to convince people you aren’t a conspiracy kook
is to tell them you aren’t a conspiracy kook. Are you reading this Michele Bachmann?<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">News You Can Use<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Never keep potatoes in a balloon for more than two weeks at
a time.<o:p></o:p></div>
Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-88283111021465898902012-08-16T09:38:00.000-07:002012-08-16T09:39:26.623-07:00<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFalLcxfbK4Z_hGOY5eEMn5vxjoQX7eRe0A6pptPsMKw2gVpjGC1rPUbzm2zLcP-Vo54FGpSgQp9YcsxB6nVhdTMt9D_VGliVVU6gFv2loaOQQvzgDc6lmoPeUu5cYljFN7WZfznA6ZKI/s1600/cd-cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFalLcxfbK4Z_hGOY5eEMn5vxjoQX7eRe0A6pptPsMKw2gVpjGC1rPUbzm2zLcP-Vo54FGpSgQp9YcsxB6nVhdTMt9D_VGliVVU6gFv2loaOQQvzgDc6lmoPeUu5cYljFN7WZfznA6ZKI/s320/cd-cover.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Summer Of Whatever<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Local band The Downhearted have just dropped their second
CD, Summer of Whatever.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While I don’t think it’s quite right to call this a retro
record, it does dip into a pretty long period of past popular music, giving
nods to some of the more melodic punk masters, such as, maybe, the
Replacements, and such post-punk melody makers as, perhaps, American Music Club
or Smashing Pumpkins. The disc’s second track, “On The Borrowed Time,” sounds
like ‘60s pop until you hear the Sonic Youth-style riff in the chorus.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Clock You” begins with a beautiful, twangy guitar hook that
would fit in pretty well on a Nick Lowe record. The instrumental bridge resembles
‘60s garage music of the MC5 variety.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“The Madness Test” (which has been released as a single)
also starts off with a tasty hook, this time of the multi-instrumental variety.
This hook goes right through the cut, sometimes in a delicate, quiet keyboard
delivery.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Burn Down” makes it three in a row that start with
memorable hooks. This one is in the form of a crisp, lyrical post-punk electric
guitar solo. The song has a second melodic hook in the instrumental bridge that
follows the first chorus. The chorus line — “Our love, it will burn down” —
reminds me a little of Joy Division, both in its lyrical content and sound. The
whole song has a distinctly melancholy sweetness.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The closing cut, White Sangria, is a simple, short acoustic
ballad that reminds me, in lyrics, melody and tone, of Donovan.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Lyrics throughout this CD are thoughtful and a bit complex
(though without ever becoming burdensome or vague or too abstract). Consider
these lines from “Exhausted Heart”:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What horrid nonsense,<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This time I spend without you and apart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What wasteful days.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Exalted love with exhausted heart.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They have the poetic sophistication of Morissey, but none of
his sentimentality or hyperbole.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of the songs on Summer of Whatever are love songs. But
they relate to the adult complications of love and stay far away from the “I
love her and she loves me, la di da da di di di” content of most rock.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Nirvana’s Nevermind album was so big, a friend told me,
“What I like about it is the hooks.” </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s pretty close to the way I feel
about this record. Half the cuts have hooks that will certainly move you. Get
Summer of Whatever for a record that sounds a whole lot more interesting than
most of what’s called alternative and independent these days.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The cover art is done by C. Delle Bates of Orange, Texas, who
also did the art for the band’s earlier Animal Lisa EP.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Summer of Whatever was mixed and mastered by Matt Moss of
EMF Productions in Lake Charles. It<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"> can be downloaded free on <a href="http://Louisianaindieradio.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Louisianaindieradio.com</span></a>
and <a href="http://Lakecharles.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Lakecharles.com</span></a>.</span></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">I Promise This Column Will Do Nothing<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reporters say Gov. Jindal is touring the country,
campaigning against the Supreme Court’s decision about The Affordable Care Act.
On July 4, Politico quoted Jindal as saying, “It seems to me like the president
measures success by how many people are on food stamp rolls and government-run
health care.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, that’s hardly news to me. When I was growing up in the
1960s and 1970s, all my aunts and uncles and cousins in the country said those
exact same things to me — hundreds of times. They even used the same phrases:
phrases like “food stamp rolls.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So I’ve known for half a century that the problems of the
country are caused by the people on the food stamp rolls and government-run
health care. Why do they cause the problems? They take money away from rich
people!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was a little boy, my middle-class parents could
afford to get me all the health care I needed – and then some. But now that I
can’t afford health care, I guess I’ve become one of the people who’s causing
all the problems and taking money from rich people. I just wish I could
remember where I put the money.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jindal did make one statement that was pretty clever:
“Obamacare, it doesn’t do what the president promised.” Saying that something
isn’t the way the president says it is … that’s not bad. But wouldn’t it be
even better to provide three or four examples of concrete evidence that the
president’s statements were false? Well, maybe for you and me. But for
everyone? Naw. A single simple abstraction is much, much more easily remembered
than a bunch of concrete evidence.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Want to be a successful politician? Make it simple and say
it over and over.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">The News<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Cops: Pa. man aims at groundhog, shoots friend’s toe.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— CBS, July 4<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">The News Made Easy<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Behind America’s Anxiety Epidemic”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s the headline of a July 4 Atlantic Magazine story.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just what is Behind America’s Anxiety Epidemic? As a
journalist, I can answer that question in a simple, easy-to-understand manner.
Americans don’t have any money. Next headline, please.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Zombies: 27 Percent Real<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It’s been many a long year since I thought a headline such
as “Poll Analyzes How Presidential Candidates Would Handle Alien Invasion”
might be a joke. Although this headline was written for KFSM of Fort Smith,
Ark., it apparently refers to a real poll that was conducted by National
Geographic.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Two-thirds of those surveyed said Obama was more prepared
than Romney to handle an alien invasion. But that’s neither here nor there.
What made the impression on me were these words: “Americans … hold much more
confidence in the existence of aliens than superheroes. The survey found 71
percent of Americans think aliens are more likely to exist than for there to
ever be real-life superheroes, vampires and zombies.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once in a while, I have to find out the hard way just how
out of touch I am with the society of which I am a part. I’ve been going along
laboring under the misconception that not a single adult in the United States
believes superheroes, vampires and zombies really exist or could ever exist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But am I really so different from my peers? I thought about
it. Do I think it’s really impossible that a superhero, like Iron Man, could exist
and could create perpetual free energy by melting and recasting 2 ounces of
metal whose name he made up? Well, I decided, not only is it possible, but it’s
somewhat likely, if you think about it. It’s a reasonable thing for a guy to
do. I’d give about two to three odds it really happened.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What about aliens? Of course, I don’t believe in aliens.
That would be silly. But if you mean the aliens kept on Level 6 at Area 51 in
the spectral disginenacubator between the Montgomery Ward Steam Cleaner and the
Mountain Dew machine that still sells Mountain Dews for a quarter, well, of
course I believe in THOSE aliens. I mean, they’re in the photo in the Gemstone
File, right?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Zombies? I used to think it was farfetched that people
who’ve been dead and decaying for some time could have teeth, jaws and muscles
that are strong enough to bite through living, healthy flesh. But suppose the
playing of Celine Dion songs at funerals releases an enzyme into the body that
strengthens decaying flesh. It’s possible. I say there’s a 27 percent chance
that it happens; which means there’s a 27 percent chance zombies are real. Yikes!
Time to work on the cardio!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Furthermore, am I 100 percent sure that no mythical
creatures at all exist? Of course, not. That would be nihilistic. I mulled it
over, and made a list of mythical creatures, along with what I think is the
percentage of likelihood they are real:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— unicorn: 2 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— the loch ness monster: 6 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— Joe Arpaio: 6 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— Pegasus: 8 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— flying triceratops: 18 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— Bat Boy: 29 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— John Shaft: 36 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— James Bond: 37 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— the Blair Witch: 38 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— men in black: 39 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— the little doll in the Saw movies who rides on a tricycle
and says stuff: 46 percent<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
— Foghorn Leghorn: 49 percent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I saw that National
Geographic had conducted its pointless survey, I got a suspicion. “I bet,” I
thought, “that National Geographic now has its own network. That means that
National Geographic is no longer trying to please people who pay for its
magazine; it’s trying to please high-school and college dropouts who pay for
cable TV.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I was right. Just check out the trash National Geographic
throws on the air to entice the audience. A program called Chasing UFOs
features a team of three people who, I suppose, chase bright shiny stuff in the
sky. In “Teenage Love Huts” a father builds a little getaway where his
daughters can meet their boyfriends. Another show is called “An Abduction
Story.” An interactive website feature titled WHEN ALIENS ATTACK bears the
warning Prepare for the Invasion!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I looked up a 1984 issue of National Geographic on eBay. The
topics of that magazine were American waterfowl, Africa, Antarctica, chocolate,
and Grenada. Not everyone liked National Geographic, of course. Some people
thought it was boring. But as far as I could tell, everybody thought all the
stories were about things that really existed. Nobody, as far as I know,
thought Antarctica might be some made up place. As for the aliens living in the
serpentine tunnels hidden under the ice on what was once the mighty island
kingdom of Lemuria, they probably weren’t mentioned in 1984.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Person In The News<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At a recent press conference, Brad Goins announced that the
Brad Goins Vigor and Zest Academy Of Journalism And Cat Psychology will offer
student vouchers for the upcoming academic year.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Vouchers will be $2,000 per student,” said Goins. “Since the
name of our LLC is Brad Goins, please make checks out to Brad Goins. Parents
who pay in cash get a 10 percent discount.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Our goal at the Vigor and Zest Academy is to take our
students back to the fundamentals of a true American education. We aim to
remind students of the traditional vital connection between cats and journalism
and enable them to reconnect with their cats’ psychic hearts.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When the Louisiana Department of Education was asked for
comment, an anonymous spokesperson said, “I’ll have someone send the wagon.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">News You Can Use<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meat pies should never be worn on the sleeves.<o:p></o:p></div>
Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-81624818057316679082012-06-27T07:21:00.001-07:002012-06-27T07:21:20.827-07:00<!--StartFragment-->
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<h1>
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<h1>
The Music Man<o:p></o:p></h1>
<h2>
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">When It Comes To ‘Old Time’ Louisiana Music,
Ron Yule Has Played It, Promoted It, Built The Instruments And Written The
Books</span></h2>
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Ron Yule’s life has been an homage to old-fashioned country
fiddle music. It’s the kind of music Yule is inclined to describe as “old-time”
or “old-timey.” He puts it this way: “I love old time music so much, sometimes
I think I may have been born 30 years too late.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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The music came into Louisiana by means of immigrants with
European roots. In search of work, they came to the state with their fiddles in
tow and their memories of the centuries-old fiddle tunes of their ancestors
intact.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The music was performed in the houses and on the porches of
rural Louisiana. It developed into Cajun, bluegrass — even swing. And in the
face of modern changes that weren’t kind to traditional, acoustic music, it’s
survived, albeit in a somewhat diminished form.<o:p></o:p></div>
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For decades, Yule has been preserving this music: by performing
it, by building fiddles, by teaching others the crafts of performance and
instrument-building and by organizing fiddle festivals.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And he’s undertaken one other big task:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he’s tried to document the history of the
music he loves. To date he’s published five books on Louisiana country fiddle
music, bluegrass.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule’s whole attitude toward old-time fiddle music has been
reverent. But this reverence hasn’t saved him from conflict with religious
institutions from time to time, which is perhaps to be expected, given that
there was a time when many considered the fiddle the devil’s box. “I got fired
from a gospel group because I told the guy I was going to play at honky tonks,”
says Yule.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Still, he performed in a bluegrass gospel outfit, the
Revelators, from 1978-1995. He’s no stranger to churches, having played the fiddle
in church basements in his home state of Texas before he ever made it to his
long-time home of DeRidder, La. Today, he hosts jam sessions at the Lutheran
church fellowship hall in DeRidder, where the musicians play swing along with
the old-time music.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And he jams with Eddie Richard, a priest at Our Lady of Prompt
Succor Church in Sulphur, who’s been playing the banjo 25 years and has released
his own bluegrass CDs. Yule’s known Richard since the 1970s — the decade when
Yule first began playing with fiddler Lum Nichols and Clifford Blackmon and
Blackmon’s wife Sue. Today, he still plays with the Blackmons and Richard.<o:p></o:p></div>
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These musicians and others play in a loosely affiliated
group of as many as 15 people who usually perform under the name Medicare
String Band. Yule says the “members have to be on Medicare or paying Medicare.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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They play most often at nursing homes. That’s a venue Yule
has been frequenting since 1971. People at nursing homes “understand the music
we play. We fill a void in their lives by coming and picking for them for an
hour or so. When you play a nursing home, you may get no response from the
patients, but if you can see a foot or big toe tapping to the music, it makes
it all worthwhile.<o:p></o:p></div>
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“They like my kind of music — old fiddle tunes … [They
relate] to it. When they were younger, that was the traditional rural folk
music [they listened to].”<o:p></o:p></div>
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To this day, he likes to play what he’s always liked to play
— “old country” music, avowing that “the most modern” country he might perform
on stage would be a Merle Haggard song or two. “I like very little country and
bluegrass music written after 1970.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Early Musical History<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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It was in the coffee shops of Austin, where Yule was a University
of Texas microbiology student, that he developed his love for old-time fiddle
music in the 1960s. In those days, he listened to Aubrey Lowden, who played at
the Broken Spoke and Skyline clubs. Yule spent time playing with such Austin bluegrass
musicians as Doc Hamilton and Charlie Taylor.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule started off playing the guitar, which he enjoyed well
enough. But he wanted to play some other instrument, and in particular, a
fiddle or accordion, because each of his grandfathers had played those
instruments. Yule went instrument shopping and the fiddle won out because it
carried the lower price tag — $19.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He began playing that fiddle in 1968. He kept playing it
when he went on to earn his master’s in microbiology from McNeese State
University. (After graduation, he became a health inspector for the State of
Louisiana — a position he held until 1999.)<o:p></o:p></div>
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After he settled in DeRidder in 1970, he played service
clubs and “singles clubs” in that town. He remembers some of them as “pretty
rough places.” He learned to be wary of one club goer in particular — a fellow
who’d already had one ear ripped off in a fight and who “showed up just to
fight.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule played in numerous country and western bands in the
1970s and ‘80s, most often with Roy Burks and the Country Playboys and Buck
Tyler and the Musicmasters.<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Festivals<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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Yule entered his first fiddle contest in 1968 at the Old
Settlers Park at Round Rock in Texas. Everybody — all 22 fiddlers — won first
place.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A while later, Yule started bringing along a tape recorder
to capture whatever musical sounds he could hear at the Beauregard Parish Fair
Fiddle Contests.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1973, he began producing fiddle contests and promoting
bluegrass shows throughout Louisiana and Southeast Texas. From 1974 to 1976, he
and his wife Georgia founded the Southwest Louisiana Fiddler and Bluegrass
Club. As Yule relates in his book Louisiana Bluegrass, the group’s major events
were the annual Longville Lake festivals and the VFW #3619 fiddle contests.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule continues to promote shows, including the Beauregard
Parish Fair contests, which have been going on since 1925. Yule’s run the
contest since 1975. “I always seem to be able to bring them out of the
woodwork,” he says. “This is [the result of] years of experience.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule says that often, fiddle contests can have “a beauty
pageant mentality.” As a result, “when it comes time to play, they’re nervous.”
He likes to get contestants to the point that they’re “cold as ice” when they
take the stage. A young student who went on to play French horn as an adult
told Yule “I could do that because you got me up in front of people so I wasn’t
nervous.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule says the requirements for a good fiddle contest are
good judges, a good PA system and one other thing — “You must make sure the losers
show up.” You do this by offering small prizes for every performer, regardless
of the quality of the performance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule won the 2000 state fiddling championship. But he says
that on a few occasions he’s never even made it to the stage. “I just enjoy playing.
I don’t worry about winning.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Fiddlin’<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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Yule has always been primarily concerned with “rural country
fiddlers.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Playing the fiddle is all about listening,” he says. “You
learn by ear.” The occasional fiddler who learned to read music would have been
“violinin’” rather than “fiddlin’.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“I used to ask all my students when they asked me to teach
them the fiddle,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>‘Can you dance? And
sing in tune?’ If you can’t keep rhythm and have good intonation, you’ll never
make a fiddler.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Playin’ the fiddle is playin’ dance music — even if it’s gospel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has to have rhythm.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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In his book When the Fiddle Was King, Yule writes that the
fiddler was “basically a player of dance music … When fiddle music gets beyond
toe-tapping, rhythmic, danceable music, it becomes violinin’, or at least
something else. Modern day fiddlers … must make the music danceable or it gets
away from its country roots.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Many of the musicians who shaped the music Yule loves were from
families of Acadians who migrated from Nova Scotia in the 1700s. They brought
the fiddle along because it was small and easily stowed away for migrations.
Migrating families would readily have remembered the fiddle music of their
French or British homelands. Rhythm was provided by country people who played
with spoons, broom handles, tubs.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule believes Louisiana fiddlers are playing tunes that have
been played since at least the 1700s. He cites such traditional tunes as “Soldier’s
Joy” and<o:p></o:p></div>
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“Old Spinning Wheel.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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He says the fiddle developed from a bowed instrument the
Europeans used in the 8<sup>th</sup> or 9<sup>th</sup> century, which
eventually became the viol. The modern violin began around the 1500s. Yule can
name early Italian violin makers right down to Stradivarius.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1973, Yule began repairing fiddles. Through the 1990s, he
constructed and repaired not just fiddles, but also dulcimers, banjos and
basses. “Nothing is any more exciting than stringing up an old fiddle that has
laid dormant for years and listening to it take on a voice — a life of its own.
Sorta waking it up,” says Yule. “I help anybody learn how to work on violins. Pass
it on.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yule had been taking on a fiddle student here and there
since the 1970s. But in the mid-1990s, he “began teaching fiddle on a large
scale.” From his new, large group of pupils, he formed the popular Fiddlin’
Gals ensemble. Twelve of his students wound up being divisional champions at
the state fiddle contest. One, Emily Young, won the Grand Championship in 2006.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the popular imagination, it’s the musician’s prerogative
to bellyache. Yule prefers a more stoic sort of fiddler. “When I play, I forget
about any illness I have; any problems I have. When you’re playing, you’re not thinking
about the ills of living or how much you hurt.” For some time now, Yule has
dealt with the challenges of arthritis as he’s played.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Fiddlin’, says Yule, is “all about music … It’s all about
getting together and having a good time. I never want this to be work.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Bluegrass Odyssey<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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By the 1960s, writes Yule in his book Louisiana Fiddlers,
“old-time and Louisiana country fiddlers … found a haven in … bluegrass music
and the popular fiddle contests” in Louisiana. (We’ll discuss below the
developments in 20<sup>th</sup> century technology and entertainment that were
drawing bluegrass away from its roots.) This development inspired Yule to
undertake an odyssey in pursuit of the performance of bluegrass music in
Louisiana.<o:p></o:p></div>
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He drove around in pickups, seeing as many bluegrass bands
as he could. “I hardly slept at all. I picked with every obscure band.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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He remembers talking with Eddie Richard “about how bluegrass
is dying.” Yule conjectured, “Maybe bluegrass has returned to the living room
and the front porch, which is where it should have stayed.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-21524164704848387452012-06-26T09:21:00.001-07:002012-06-26T09:21:19.245-07:00<!--StartFragment-->
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<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;"><br /></span></h1>
<h1>
<span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">‘You Speak Up’<o:p></o:p></span></h1>
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When I got my review copy of Louise: Amended, a new memoir
by Louise Krug, I got a story that was riveting. It’s the story of a <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>young woman who was “used to getting by on her
looks.” She lives “near Santa Barbara where only the very rich can afford to
live.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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She’d like to be a journalist and is set to start a job
reporting about “gardens, weddings and pets” for a local paper. But the night
before the job begins, her brain starts to bleed.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Symptoms are serious. She drags her right foot when she
walks. She finds the sounds of tires on pavement unbearable even with the car windows
rolled up. She’d like to go to her new job, but can’t button her blouse.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When she makes it to a hospital, she’s told to consider the
risky craniotomy: an operation by means of which her bleeding “cavernous angina”
will be cut out of her brain.<o:p></o:p></div>
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During a long delay, she lives first with her mother in
Kansas, then with her father in Michigan, struggling to do the most mundane
tasks. Eventually she finds herself at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in a line
of 50 people on gurneys awaiting surgery. Her surgeon, “wearing leather sandals
and red socks,” writes “craniotomy” on her forehead with a Sharpie.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the procedure, she’s told she’ll have trouble walking.
She starts her recovery by crawling. A while later, “ten seconds of staying
upright is an accomplishment.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Months after surgery, she still can’t walk in a straight
line. “The left side of my face is so weak that I have to hold my lips together
in order to chew and swallow without food falling out,” Krug writes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Is this progress? Krug writes: “The surgery, everyone says,
was a success.” The words express her great ambivalence about whatever progress
she makes after the craniotomy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It’s an ambivalence that often veers towards resignation. She’s
dismayed by what she’s lost — for instance, her entire sense of what her life
was to be: “Louise has started to admit that she will not go back to Santa
Barbara. She will not be pursuing that dream of toasting champagne glasses with
the rich and beautiful …” As these words show, Krug sometimes writes about
herself in the third person. She’s so altered she’s become foreign to herself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Her post-surgery mood has a strong element of low
self-esteem. She dates men she considers second-rate. When she finally meets a
man worth dating, Nick, she thinks that “he, an attractive, normal guy,
deserves an attractive, normal girl.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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These quotations make it clear that as a writer, Krug is immensely
skilled at developing character. Early on, when Krug’s parents see her overwhelmed
boyfriend Claude as a bad guy, she informs the reader that Claude is thinking “this
has happened because he has bad luck … He got picked on in grade school … He
has a string of ex-girlfriends who hate him.” He’s limited by his own damage.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Krug’s ability to build characters is complemented by a gift
for providing insightful depictions of the human condition, especially as it
takes form in the contemporary USA. Of herself, she writes, “I grew up in the
Midwest, restless, thinking I was meant for something different. Something
better. We all did.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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She does just as good a job of pinpointing another instance
of the disappointment that follows great expectations. Of the divorce between
her parents, Janet and Warner, she writes, “The problem was that Janet liked
dinner parties and activities like karate and tennis. She liked the company of
other people. Warner had a total of three friends ...”<o:p></o:p></div>
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These passages show that Krug is a master of minimalist prose
style. Consider this beautiful description of the plain life in Krug’s mother’s
hometown in Kansas: “It is early spring, and the big, empty sky is gray. There
are no hills, and small black dots are cows. At the grocery store, real farmers
with overalls and hats buy food just like everybody else.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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Throughout the book, Krug expresses displeasure with people
who send her get-well cards with such “preprinted phrases” as “God has a plan”
or “everything happens for a reason.” She stays true to her skepticism about rose-colored
predictions and pat explanations. The book ends with no miracle cure; no
glorious epiphany: just a long, hard slog to some sort of accommodation with
everyday life.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But in the six years that follow the catastrophe, Krug manages
to marry a good man and have a daughter. And she’s able to show her daughter how
to get by and know what’s worth appreciating: “I want to show her that you look
people in the eye, you speak up, you stand as tall as your body will allow, and
you say your name.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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You can buy Louise: Amended for $10.96 at amazon.com.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-83344685554180461922012-02-08T11:15:00.000-08:002012-02-08T11:15:25.333-08:00Bad Machine, Droopy Drawers, Speaking Jive To Power<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYnZY8zCMZ9681mHfTrltFdzNvO7ciZpBGZnZKmOsxNySN-t0W8gDYNS4Lw3P6h-OZAm5icz-dvVH0WUcwmvgW8qxkAFVlKIikC0RUPlrEx5oGJng3R6aAN3rlAN_rKHW_y0foyz3KOM/s1600/eo7lz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="298" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqYnZY8zCMZ9681mHfTrltFdzNvO7ciZpBGZnZKmOsxNySN-t0W8gDYNS4Lw3P6h-OZAm5icz-dvVH0WUcwmvgW8qxkAFVlKIikC0RUPlrEx5oGJng3R6aAN3rlAN_rKHW_y0foyz3KOM/s400/eo7lz.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;"><br />
</span></span></h1><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Bad Machine<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">The Bad Machine tour will come to Luna in Lake Charles, La., on Saturday, Feb. 11. The tour features musicians Scott H. Biram and Lydia Loveless. The publicist for the two was kind enough to send me links for the latest CD of each musician. Let’s take a brief look.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Biram’s Bad Ingredients CD begins with very old school blues, played by acoustic instruments no less. But as things progress, one starts to hear the sort of blues ZZ Topp would have produced had it started as a garage band with its recordings produced by Iggy Pop. There are loads of fuzz and reverb. Along with the blues, the garage sound is the most prevalent sound here. Even when the songs veer to the sort of straightforward electric blues you might hear from, say, George Thorogood, Biram makes it sound quite a bit rougher and nastier.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One slow song with the sinister feel of a Johnny Cash ballad provides a bit of a change-up. On the other hand, “I Want My Mojo Back” adds fuel to the fire with a burlesque sax that actually sounds likes it's screaming at times. Biram's voice, while not really a scream, often becomes a sort of hoarse growl.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">If you like wild records, Biram’s got one.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Lydia Loveless’ Indestructible Machine is an uptempo record. The fastest tempos range from thrash to those of The Clash and early Elvis Costello. The songs are driven by loud percussion.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">"How Many Women?" is a country ballad and “Learn To Say No” is straightforward country pop. In some songs, Loveless bursts out with a real country twang. And “Crazy” features a fine country violin. Indestructible Machine may be considered a country record. Spin ranked it No. 4 on its Country/Americana charts. If it’s country music, it’s country that’s thoroughly mixed with certain kinds of punk music much of the time.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Certainly, the most interesting lyrics on the records are those for “Steve Earle.” Loveless is either outing Earle as a stalker or laying down some kind of inside joke. “Do Right,” with its ultra-fast bluegrass picking, has lyrics about the singer drinking gasoline. “I’ve been trying,” she sings, “but I just can’t find a good reason to do right.” Interesting stuff.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With both these records, the lyrical content is largely about hard living and the generally unpleasant consequences thereof.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">If the recordings are any indication, the show promises to be intense and high-energy. The show starts at 9 pm; cover is $8.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Sonic Adventure<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Luna will offer patrons another sonic adventure when New Orleans-based Crowbar plays on Saturday, Feb. 18.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Crowbar plays a kind of metal that’s called doom, or sometimes sludge. Tempo is unusually slow. There’s a lot of layering of guitar with plenty of fuzz and assorted noises. The sound is very percussive. If you’ve heard earth or SunnO))) or early Swans, you know the sound. Based on the cuts I’ve heard, Crowbar has it down. The European press has dubbed Crowbar’s sound “doom-core.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The singing of Crowbar’s Kirk Windstein ranges from a wild screeching (close to screamo, but more comprehensible) to a somewhat less aggressive ‘90s “alternative rock” style.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Although it has nothing to do with the music, it’s worth noting that the members of Crowbar aren’t trying at all to look photogenic or hip. They look like a bunch of guys who just showed up at the small town wrestling match after an afternoon of PBR.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Finessing L.C.’s Droopy Drawers Law<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Well, how about all this big talk about education reform in Louisiana? With stories getting that much play, there’s always the chance that the really important stories will get overlooked.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">And that’s what almost happened with the recent story about Caddo Parish Commissioner Michael Williams’ move to make it illegal to wear pajamas outside the home.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Take some time to let that one sink in. As you do, ponder another huge story that almost got overlooked — the story of Lake Charles’ droopy drawers law. It was a revolutionary law. A paradigm shifter, a game changer, a tipping point. Yet how many in the media have reported on it five or six times, as I have?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, back to the proposed Caddo Parish pajama-wearin’ ban — just what, exactly, is the problem that is to be outlawed?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">"The moral fiber in our community is dwindling," Williams explains. "If not now, when? Because it’s pajama pants today, next it will be underwear tomorrow. I observed a couple of young men in loose fitting PJs on, probably with their private parts about to come out and no underwear.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Saints a’mighty! That does sound like a disaster waiting to happen, doesn’t it? And I believe Williams. Why? Well, for starters, he’s an original thinker. How do I know? His language is novel. Just look at the phrase, ‘If not now, when?’ Have you ever heard a politician say that? I sure haven’t. (The answer, by the way, is “sometime after you leave office.”)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m also swayed by the logic of the “because it’s … next it will be …” argument. Again, I ask you to consider it. Let’s apply the formula. Because it’s jaywalking today, next it will be armed robbery tomorrow. Makes sense!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Williams plans to write an anti-pajama-wearing ordinance and present it to the commission. I hope he writes as convincingly as he talks.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One good thing about these sorts of stories is that when they do get covered, they usually get covered by national media. This story, for instance, was released by NBC National News. NBC ran that nice long colorful quote from commissioner, moral authority and Louisiana public figure Williams right in the middle of its nationally distributed story. You know, you just can’t buy publicity like that. If you could, it’d be pretty cheap.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Williams quotation was picked up by the Wall Street Journal, which used it in a Jan. 19 article titled “Why Not Wear Pajamas All Day?” WSJ prefaced Williams’ words with this statement: “As with a lot of teen behavior, some adults are annoyed.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The article states that many fashion-conscious youths, and teenagers in particular, are using pajamas as part of a carefully designed loungewear look they wear everywhere. Such big companies as Abercrombie & Fitch and Aeropostale are running marketing campaigns designed around the look. And we all know the question that’s used to gauge every fashion marketing campaign everywhere: Sure, it plays in Manhattan; but will it play in Shreveport?<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Speak Jive To Power<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">It would be rude to say that politicians sometimes say dumb things. Besides, is a thing really dumb if it’s brown-nosing?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">See what you think. Right after the recent swearing-in, state Sen. Danny Martiny, R-Metairie, who had earlier sought the post of state Senate president, introduced new Senate President John Alario with these words: “He has a way of rubbing your face in the dirt and making you thank him for it.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">No. No, he doesn’t. Whatever he has, he doesn’t have that. All the times I’ve had my face rubbed in the dirt, I never once felt like I ought to be giving thanks to somebody.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like a good politician, Martiny is telegraphing that he’s willing to get his face rubbed in the dirt if that’s what it takes to make Alario forgive and forget. I’m guessing the over-the-top flattery will be enough to get the job done.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Speak Power To ‘Imbeciles’<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">In an open letter to President Barack Obama, written on Nov. 28, 2011, Leon Cooperman, a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, wrote, “[The 1 Percent] are not the scourge that they are too often made out to be" and are not "a monolithic, selfish and unfeeling lot." (BTW, Goldman Sachs was the No. 2 contributor to Obama's 2008 campaign, putting a click more than $1 million in the kitty.)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At a December, 2011, investors conference in New York City, Home-Depot co-founder and billionaire Bernard Marcus made it clear he was not unfeeling when he responded to an audience question about his reaction to the Occupy movement. "Who gives a crap about some imbecile?” he said. “Are you kidding me?"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Note the feeling in those words. It’s the feeling of sympathy; of gentle concern. It’s the heartfelt expression of a humanitarian who’s eager to understand, to reach out, to bridge the differences and build the dialogue. The words pulse to the beat of a heart full of love for a struggling humanity. Unfeeling? Nay. It is feeling at its most exquisite. It is feeling of most delicate empathy given voice.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">In an interview with Bloomberg conducted at the time of the conference, billionaire Tom Golisano founder of Paychex, said, "If I hear a politician use the term 'paying your fair share' one more time, I'm going to vomit." Now, what did Cooperman say? He said the 1 Percent are accused of being selfish and unfeeling. Well, that certainly doesn’t apply to the words “I’m going to vomit.” A fellow who’d say that isn’t selfish; he’s just abdominally challenged.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">And why are his intestines in such a turmoil? He’s stressing himself out by trying too hard to be productive! Don’t believe me? Well, just check out what John Allison, former CEO of BB&T Bank, said when he had lunch with a Bloomberg reporter during the conference: "Instead of an attack on the 1 Percent, let's call it an attack on the very productive."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, I may think I’m productive or I may not. But suppose I tell you to your face that I’m not just productive, but very productive. What sort of fellow do you think I am? Well, I’ll guess you’ll probably think I’m humble, unassuming and self-deprecating. You’ll probably think I’m a doer and not a talker, and that I’m the kind of guy you’d really like to hang out with and listen to. And because you’d know I was being really sincere, you’d believe I was very productive: so productive, in fact, that I was a great deal more productive than you and therefore worthy of a much higher salary than you.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So, why would some people think these fellows are unfeeling? I think I know. Let’s look at some unfeeling stuff a guy in the 1 Percent wrote in a Dec. 1 Bloomberg editorial. Nick Hanauer, known to be worth at least $6 billion, wrote, "Rich businessmen like me don't create jobs. Let's tax the rich like we once did and use that money to spur growth."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think this is what Cooperman was getting at with the word “unfeeling.” When a guy says “tax the rich,” isn’t he being pretty unfeeling to rich people? I should say so. That’s what they call a no-brainer.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Another BTW — just what is the 1 Percent? If you're taking home $350,000 or more per year, you're part of the club. <o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Person In The News<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">At a recent press conference, Brad Goins announced that he had formed a new group called the Board Membership Advocacy Board. The group, said Goins, will promote membership in boards of directors.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">“It’s not that people who sit on boards meet a pressing public need,” said Goins. “No. People who sit on boards have the opportunity to put on business suits after work and go hang out with other people who put on business suits after work and are the members of lots of boards. I’m a member of 13 boards myself. That’s how I’ve gotten where I am today.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Goins is presently a member of the following boards: the International Board of Directors, the Directors’ Board, the Comprehensive Board, the Board of Directors of No Particular Sort, the Board of Boardship, the All-Purpose Board, the Board of Last Resort, the Board Member Search Board, the Board of Game Boards, the Board of Ambitious Young People, the Board of Disappointed Middle-Aged People, the Board of Red Ties and the Board of It’s Not The Heat It’s The Humidity.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He stated that his present public service objective was to become a member of more boards. “It’s my way of giving back to the community,” he said.<o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-27415577938849040552011-11-09T10:25:00.000-08:002011-11-09T10:25:40.690-08:00Zombieproofin', Drunken Lawn Moving, 0-0-100<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdH-YFxHo7qZe0zgLKsSHoheOl98yd8r1yYijvMcQLRhzDshainvs8WPEL0wmOagVRUIGcuzOtwjdgEtfID6S_Ha2TY6Kdb21fGgjiwJPBcdRWCRuuLiEW1cLtwp4H3vK54RvNj-znxpY/s1600/*policechase.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdH-YFxHo7qZe0zgLKsSHoheOl98yd8r1yYijvMcQLRhzDshainvs8WPEL0wmOagVRUIGcuzOtwjdgEtfID6S_Ha2TY6Kdb21fGgjiwJPBcdRWCRuuLiEW1cLtwp4H3vK54RvNj-znxpY/s320/*policechase.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;"><br />
</span></h1><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;"><br />
</span></h1><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Chronicling Southwest Louisiana and the Cajun World</span></h1><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;"><br />
</span></h1><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Zombieproofin’<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Those who think of Louisiana as bringing up the bottom of lists may or may not know the state is near the top of the list when it comes to zombie-proof architecture.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With NASA releasing a paper on what should be done if aliens invade, maybe it’s not such a bad idea for Louisiana architects to be thinking of ways to use architecture to circumvent the zombie threat. The architectural firm behind the recent Zombie Safe House Competition effort is <a href="http://www.architectssouthwest.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Architects Southwest</span></a>, which is based in Lafayette. Artists, architects and others were invited to submit designs for structures that could best withstand a fierce attack of zombies.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One entry was the Zombie Ranch, which is (hypothetically, of course) powered by a big turbine that’s turned by zombies as they chase around bait traps. Other designs feature houses that float on air or are built into cliffs or atop abandoned oil rigs. One design looks exactly like a birdhouse.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">You can see the entries at zombiesafehouse.wordpress.com. Architects Southwest will have chosen a winner by the time this issue hits the stands.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Zombie movies have long considered the relation of architecture to the zombie menace. In George Romero’s first zombie movie, Night of the Living Dead, barricading oneself in a solidly constructed basement turned out to be the one viable defense against zombies. Subsequent Romero films explored the feasibility of keeping a shopping center, a military bunker and a high rise free of zombie infestation. The films have shown that architecture is only as good as the people who use it and that zombies are hard to stop.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px;">You Mean That’s Illegal Too?</span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Please excuse me for delaying the Up Front look at the vital October elections while I make a brief police report. In the last Up Front, it was revealed that the Ville Platte gubment had outlawed the act of walking on Ville Platte streets. Now, it might be possible to convince a Louisianan he couldn’t walk on his own street at night. But what Louisianan worth his salt would ever submit to being forbidden to driving his riding mower while he was drunk?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Bobby Punch, a 22-year-old resident of Lafourche Parish, was recently obliged to endure the indignity of being arrested while he was on his own lawnmower. Punch probably hurt his case somewhat with his apparent inability to keep his riding mower in his own lawn. After cutting down some shrubs in a neighbor’s lawn, Punch took his mower on the road, forcing cars on Highway 1 to back up behind his mower.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nothing puts a Louisianan in greater jeopardy than forcing other drivers to slow down. Police were all the more interested in that Punch was in the mood to drive on both sides of the center line.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">After they arrested Punch, police found that he had a blood alcohol concentration of .312. They obliged him to take a sobriety test at the station. In an unintentionally humorous note, WVUE-TV reported that Punch “performed poorly.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One of several crimes Punch was charged with was “Not Driving on the Right Side of the Road.”<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Election Report No. 2,109<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The races for lt. governor and secretary of state turned out to be real mud-slingin’ and character-assasinatin’ smackdowns. It was fascinating stuff, but not fascinating enough to get the public interested in the races.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Predictions were correct; barely a third of Louisiana voters made it to the polls for the elections of statewide offices, such as those of governor and lt. governor. It was the most anemic turnout since at least 1975.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It will go on that way for a while. In Louisiana, the Republican Party is in like flint and the Democratic Party is in a rout. The Democrats will eventually rebuild and become aggressive opponents. But I predict that process will take quite a while.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">You’d think that transitional process might slow down the flow of political news in the state. Most likely it won’t. Any party that’s in power eventually grows accustomed to power, gets complacent and starts making mistakes. Things will stay interesting. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Of course, on the local front, there was election news that came as a great relief to all, regardless of political affiliation. The great anxiety about who the next tax assessor is now at an end. With the cessation of the long-term agonizing about the outcome of the tax assessor’s race, stress-related illnesses in the are will decrease, and workers will no longer call in sick, or will simply find themselves unable to get out of bed as they struggle with and succumb to the mental anguish of tax assessor uncertainty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">One thing’s for sure: no trial or tribulation we go through hasn’t been endured by others who came before us. I remember many and many a time hearing an elder at the old country breakfast table saying, “Lord, I just don’t think I’m goin’ to be able to relax and enjoy my biscuits and gravy until I know who the tax assessor is goin’ to be.” Well, now we can all rest easy and get back on our feed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">0-0-100<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The Up Fronter keeps reading that the Republican presidential candidates want not only to roll back taxes on the rich but also to increase taxes on the middle class. Pooyee! Have the Republican candidates developed a taste for the wacky weed? If I’d spent a decade trying to think of a more effective way to come in second to Obama in spite of it all, I wouldn’t have been able to think of a more surefire election loser.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the Republican candidates, Herman Cain, has a tax plan he calls 9-9-9. Part of the plan is that a 9 percent sales tax will be imposed on the entire U.S. population. Imagine that. You wake up one morning and all your expenditures increase by 9 percent. Now that’ll put a spring in your step, eh?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s been a while since I mentioned my campaign for president in the Up Front column. But I am running for president and my campaign is almost as hot as Buddy Roemer’s. I’ve come up with my own tax plan. I call it 0-0-100.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here’s how it works. I pay 0 percent tax, people who make more than $250,000 pay 0 percent tax and people who make less than $250,000 pay 100 percent tax. I think this bold plan will eliminate once and for all the tiresome discussion about whether rich people pay too much taxes and people who aren’t rich pay enough.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">We Are in the Northern Hemisphere<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Herman Cain may be getting some attention. But when it comes to making comments that trigger the raising of brows and dropping of jaws, Cain is still a neophyte in comparison to presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann, who’s previously earned Up Front space with her unorthodox utterances. In an Oct. 19 Republican candidates debate, Bachmann said, “He [Obama] put us in Libya; he is now putting us in Africa.” This is like saying Obama put something in Monroe and is now putting it in Louisiana.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">If Bachmann didn’t think Libya was in Africa, where did she think it was? Back in the 1970s, when President Gerald Ford said in a debate that Poland wasn’t communist, everyone figured (I guess) that Ford knew what continent Poland was in.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Not everyone could get worked up about it. The morning after the debate, the lead story on Google News was “Ohio Police Hunt Escaped Wild Animals.” As the guy in Anchorman says, “Ooo, that’s a hot lead.” The Republicans could get more coverage for these debates if they could knock the number down to five or six a day.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">More on Avoiding Victory<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">The award for Funniest Political Tweet of the Issue goes to Time columnist James Poniewozek who wrote “Herman Cain leads NYT/CBS poll. Does he have enough time, staff to avoid winning the GOP nomination.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The day the poll was released must have been a very bad day indeed for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who was able to muster only 6 percent.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">Don’t Be The Last To Be Steampunked<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">What's the hip new word everyone is using? Steampunk! No consumer product or experience wants to be the last consumer product or experience on the block to describe itself with this awesome, bodacious and extremely popular term.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Let’s see what’s new in your steampunk world. Of course, there’s Tim Burton's automated feature Steampunk Willie, in which Micky Mouse subdues Pete with coal gas delivered through a hookah. Justin Beiber's new CD, My Little Steampunk Girl, is set to drop any day. There’s the new talent show, Bristol Palin's Steampunk Explosion, and two new reality TV shows: Steampunk Brides, in which brides-to-be compete to incorporate the heaviest amount of cast iron into their bridal dresses, and Steampunk Staten Island, in which a group of young, photogenic boot models sit around a luxury loft drinking beer, cursing, whining and listening to Rasputina MP3s.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Finally, look for the two New York Times bestsellers The Huff and Puff Principle: Using The Green Steampunk Law Of Attraction To Grow Your Life by </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Victoria, Mistress of Charlton Grange,</span><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"> and the latest Sookie Steampunk vampire novel Dead As A Hydraulic Punch Press.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Still not sure exactly what steampunk is? Just watch that old Will Smith movie Wild, Wild West and you’ll know everything there is to know about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">‘This Has Got To Be Weird’<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Now, to shift the focus to something that really is hip, word is that Tim Burton is working on a film version of the hippest of old TV shows, Dark Shadows, and Johnny Depp will play the suave and sinister vampire Barnabas Collins. Burton is just the man to tell the story and Depp is ideal for the role of Collins.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">An entertainment blogger for Yahoo incorrectly identified Dark Shadows as a 1970s show. While episodes aired briefly in the 1970s, the show became a controversial hit in the mid-1960s. The Up Fronter can remember being forbidden to watch the program when he was a young boy. Depp says, in a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly, </span><span style="color: #1a1a1a; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“I do remember, very vividly, practically sprinting home from school in the afternoon to see Jonathan Frid play Barnabas Collins. Even then, at that age, I knew — this has got to be weird.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Dark Shadows was a cult phenomenon from the beginning, and the Yahoo story may be an early instance of the sort of thing that will take place as young writers struggle to pin down a pop culture phenomenon they’re unacquainted with.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-font-kerning: .5pt;">Those who haven’t had the Dark Shadows experience are invited to watch the creepy adventures of Barnabas; his neurotic, vampiric assistant Willie; and the con man Jason, Willie’s silver-tongued partner in crime. DVDs of old Dark Shadows episodes are a little expensive if they’re bought at full price. But they’re available on Netflix for the regular prices.<o:p></o:p></span></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18.0pt;">News Counseling — $150 CHEAP!<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">The Up Fronter recently saw on the cover of some magazine — it might have been People — that Ashton Kuthcer and Demi Moore were going to marriage counseling. How, I wondered, is that going to work? I imagine it happening something like this:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Counselor: OK, so, uh, Ashton, you’re, like, uh … married … so, uh, you can’t uh, like, go to, uh, clubs by yourself and, like, spend the night with, uh, models.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ashton: Wow! I never thought of that! That’s amazing advice. This marriage counseling stuff really works.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The whole thing gave me an idea for a new business — news counseling, which I’ll be happy to provide at a cost of $150 an hour. In the first session, I’ll explain that news about celebrities isn’t really news unless I write it.<o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-46518405044510997252011-10-11T12:00:00.000-07:002011-10-11T12:00:02.759-07:00Your Governor Wants To See You ... NOW!<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">News From the Bayouland (and in particular, Lake Charles, La.)</span><br />
<h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><span id="goog_469680752"></span><span id="goog_469680753"></span></span></h1><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjySt_izSamPHM_iXt4CGT6_F48P1UVD0U7_SEC72ZUovYa8kVW4-qdarJ2Ska7xCKtE7eZ5F7dRZFx8_sM6Lh2N2SVqmtPDV9CiZAljsgj3y65q-MA46oyvo7S4-PxkivaBozc9R58ocI/s1600/Flat+Out+No.+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjySt_izSamPHM_iXt4CGT6_F48P1UVD0U7_SEC72ZUovYa8kVW4-qdarJ2Ska7xCKtE7eZ5F7dRZFx8_sM6Lh2N2SVqmtPDV9CiZAljsgj3y65q-MA46oyvo7S4-PxkivaBozc9R58ocI/s320/Flat+Out+No.+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 18pt;"><br />
</span></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Your Governor Wants To See You … NOW!<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">This was the big news from WAFB-TV in Baton Rouge: “44 percent of Louisiana's public schools have received a failing grade in the newest school performance scores. … Bobby Jindal has been briefed on the scores, the source says, and is said to be very disappointed.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Uh oh. Governor is very disappointed. I wonder what happened to the schools. Were they spanked, or grounded, or maybe something even worse? I’m not a school, but I’m going to try really, really hard to be good and not disappoint governor.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">I Just Love Your New System<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">The mutual admiration society whose members are Govs. Bobby Jindal and Rick Perry produced an interesting statement a while back, when Perry said, "When Bobby Jindal comes up with a new way to deliver health care … we'll snitch that in a minute and implement it in our state."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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Perry, who was being interviewed on CNN at the time, apparently really did say "snitch" rather than "snatch." But I’m not one of those self-appointed arbiters of politics who judge a politician's performance in terms of whether he got a particular letter wrong. I’m a different kind of self-appointed arbiter of politics.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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The key issue isn't Perry's vocabulary, but the little matter of whether Jindal's health care delivery system works. Then there's the equally little matter of whether Perry will in fact implement the system in Texas. Many of us are in the habit of thinking that when a politician promises to do a particular thing it's a clear sign the thing in question is exactly what he's planning not to do.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Almost Like No Election At All<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">For those who are overwhelmed by the tension of not knowing who the next Lake Charles, La., tax assessor will be, the upcoming election will be a matter of tremendous urgency. Others will be pleased that their nighttime viewing of True Blood and Dexter won’t be interrupted by any election updates.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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In Baton Rouge, at least one major figure in the political sign business is on record as saying that the lackluster campaign is putting a hurt on revenue. "Business doubles in political years and triples in active political years," says Stephen St. Cyr, owner of Vivid Ink in Baton Rouge. "This is almost like an off year … The big races will be in 2012." Well, we've heard that before, haven't we? (St. Cyr was quoted in the Sept. 6 edition of the Greater Baton Rouge Business Report.)<o:p></o:p><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">We can take consolation, though. This is Louisiana, and even if the elections are painfully bland, some shocking political event is bound to take place within days after the final results come in. Sooner rather than later, politics will once again get interesting in the Louisiana way.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Roemer’s Main Street Move<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Some political junkies in Louisiana must have been surprised to read that longshot Republican presidential candidate Buddy Roemer supports the Wall Street protesters. But support them he does, and rather enthusiastically at that.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
In a recent press release, Roemer wrote of “the young Americans currently taking part in the Occupy Wall Street movement.” The ex-governor went on to make these dramatic comments:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
“Please know that I stand by you … It is Main Street that is being foreclosed on; and it is Main Street that is suffering while the greed of Wall Street continues to hurt our middle class … Both parties are guilty of taking the big check and are bought by Wall Street … Wall Street grew to be a source of capital for growing companies. It has become something else: A facilitator for greed and for the selling of American jobs. Enough already.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
It’s possible these statements were made to draw attention to the Roemer campaign, which remains conspicuously marginal. As late as Sept. 7, Roemer was excluded from a debate of Republican candidates because he had failed to earn 4 percent of support in a single major national poll. I’m not sure the Roemer bandwagon is picking up riders even in his own state. It took two days for the story I’ve reported here to show up on the state news service The Dead Pelican.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Apparently, even Lake Charles is doing a riff off the the Wall Street protests. The Occupy Lake Charles walk is set to take off from the corners of Ryan and Alamo Streets at noon on Oct. 15. I wouldn’t bet the family inheritance on the long-term success of this movement in Lake Charles. But I suppose it’s good that some people still have the spirit. If any readers want to learn more about this, go on to Facebook and search for “Occupy Lake Charles.”<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Walk While You Can<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">Suppose there was was a rash of burglaries in the town you lived in. How would you like your elected officials to respond?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
I suppose many folks would suggest that local police do whatever they need to do, within the law, of course, to target car thieves. That might be seen, by many, as a straightforward, sensible approach.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
The mayor and city council of Ville Platte, La., have a better way. Their idea is to make it illegal for citizens to walk on the streets of Ville Platte.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
That’s right. The powers that be decreed it was illegal to walk in Ville Platte after 10 pm. People who got caught breaking the law could be fined $200 and given a 30-day jail sentence. I guessing the rationale was that things would be pretty rough for car thieves who ply their trade on foot.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
That busybody organization the ACLU filed suit against the Ville Platte law. As usual, the ACLU was advancing a wacky left-wing notion, in this case, the notion that the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees U.S. citizens the freedom to walk in their neighborhoods. Oh, one other thing — the ACLU also alleged the walking ban was “creating a monetary windfall for the City and thus, a tremendous incentive to continue the curfew.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
The area NAACP also got involved, apparently on the grounds that a lot of poor black people can’t afford to own cars and find themselves obliged to walk whether they want to or not. It sounds like a small version of what was going on after Katrina, when a bunch of white folks were saying, “Why didn’t those people leave New Orleans?” and a bunch of black folks in New Orleans were saying, “We don’t have cars!”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
At any rate, the ACLU suit must have annoyed either the mayor or city council, as the law was suspended, at least temporarily.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
That’s really too bad. This law would have freed Villa Platte law enforcement from the heavy burden of having to keep an eye out for pedestrian car burglars. It’s true that citizens would have been unable to take a walk at night. But in hard times, everyone has to make a sacrifice. That’s what I’ve heard.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m going to give Ville Platte’s law a 7 on the Silly Scale, which will put it quite a bit higher than Lake Charles’ droopy drawers law, which only merits a six. It’s one thing for politicians to tell people how they have to wear their pants. But to tell people they can’t even walk down their own street — now that’s doing something.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">Newshound Carries The Day<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">The Woofstock Festival took place at the Lake Charles Civic Center on Oct. 8, and it was a tremendous success — for my dog Barnabas! My wife, Nydia, dressed Barnabas up as the Lagniappe Newshound. He wore a fedora hat with a press pass and a stylish tie. He worked the crowd and aimed to please his many fans.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Barnabas managed to earn the 2<sup>nd</sup> place award in the dog beauty contest. I’m not sure exactly what qualities a dog must possess to win a beauty contest. But whatever they are, Barnabas must have them in droves.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
There was a good turnout for Woofstock, with booths stretching from Lakeshore Drive to Bord du Lac. Everyone was preaching the gospel of dog rescues. (Barnabas, a relaxed and happy mastiff, was a rescue.)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Johnny “New York” Latham was the emcee of the event. He introduced me to a few members of the Flat Out Roller Derby team. A couple more members came over to introduce themselves to the Up Fronter and Barnabas when we were taking a well-deserved rest on a park bench. Johnny “New York” will keep Up Front readers informed about the next Flat Out Roller Derby bout, which will take place Nov. 20 at 5 pm at Skate City on Nelson Road.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Another star of the show was the T&I Culinary Institute, which was selling very tasty apple turnovers for just 50 cents per. The crust in these savory treats was rich and buttery. High school students who want to learn to cook appetizing foods are invited to check the institute out.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
The Up Fronter wishes future Woofstocks success in promoting the cause of animal rescue.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">A More Informativer Headline<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">What was the outcome of LSU quarterback Jefferson Jordan’s recent arrest for participation in a 1:30 am bar fight? Intellectual growth. Consider the following comments, which Jefferson made in a Oct. 3 news conference:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #212121;"><br />
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<span style="color: #212121;">“I'm a lot more wiser and I'm a lot more smarter than what I was back in August.” That was one of two times he used the phrase “more wiser” in his remarks.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #212121;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #212121;">I know I always become a lot more articulater and a lot more lucider and a lot more intelligibler when I read statements by big-name athletes who’ve acquired great wisdom from their brawling experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #212121;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #212121;">A reporter asked Jefferson if he wanted to apologize for what he did to the team. No, said Jefferson, he figured he didn’t need to apologize to the team because the team was there when it happened. Makes sense!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #212121;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #212121;">Besides, it wasn’t as if Jefferson really did anything. Consider his words: “I was just being a college student. I wasn't trying to get myself into trouble. I was just enjoying myself with my teammates. And a certain situation happened to me off of my popularity.” He didn’t do anything in this situation. The situation happened to him. I get it. I wonder, does it always work that way? For instance, the next time Jefferson throws a touchdown pass, will he think he did that or will he think the situation just happened?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: #212121;"><br />
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<span style="color: #212121;">I don’t know. But there’s one thing I’m pretty sure of. Every football fan thanks his lucky stars that a basic grasp of English grammar isn’t a prerequisite for a starting position on a university team.<o:p></o:p></span></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">The 10/12 Exit<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">After only four years, the publication of the big, glossy 10/12 magazine is coming to an end. The last print edition of 10/12 will roll out in November. The online operations will wrap up at the end of the year.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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The magazine had been printed for four years by publisher Rolfe McCollister and his Louisiana Business Inc. in an effort to report business developments in Louisiana along the 10/12 corridor.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">McCollister didn’t skirt the issue of the magazine’s premature death; in fact, the story about it was the lead story in the magazine’s internet newsletter. McCollister cited “the need to focus resources on new technologies,” and in particular, “the development of new online and digital distribution opportunities,” as reasons for the departure of 10/12. New websites for Louisiana Business publications 225 and inRegister are among the projects planned.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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In this case, it may be that the corporation is being up front. In the last three years, consumer migration to the internet, and particularly internet usage on such devices as smartphones, has gutted the magazine and newspaper industries. It may be that in spite of its sophisticated layout, graphics and color schemes, 10/12 just wasn’t able to stem the tide.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">The Bounty of Reality TV<o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">After the recent suicide of<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 14pt;"> </span>Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Russell Armstrong, we shouldn’t really need any reminders of the bounteous gifts that have been bestowed on our culture by reality television. But it looks like we’re going to keep getting the reminders anyway.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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The latest reality TV blessing comes courtesy of former 16 and Pregnant stars Josh Rendon and Ebony Jackson-Rendon, who were just arrested for endangering the welfare<b> </b>of their 2-year-old daughter Jocelyn. On Sept. 27, Arkansas Children and Family Services <a href="http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2011/09/21/7884013-child-services-takes-toddler-from-16-and-pregnant-couple"><span style="color: windowtext;">removed the girl from her home</span></a> in the Little Rock Air Force Base. According to the police report, "every room in the residence had human and dog feces on the floors, walls and clothing. The house was full of flies and, in some areas, maggots."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The daughter wasn’t the only one removed from the squalid domicile; animal control took away three dogs.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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In addition to the endangerment rap, Rendon and wife were charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, the maintaining of a drug premise and unauthorized use of another person's property to facilitate a crime.<o:p></o:p><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">We don’t want to let the sensational nature of this story distract us from the merit of other reality television blessings. For instance, the title 16 and Pregnant is a blessing in itself.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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And if all of that isn’t blessing enough for you, there’s this, just in from ABC: pastor Ted Haggard, the former president of the National Evangelical Association, is set to appear on the spin-off series Celebrity Wife Swap with his wife Gayle. According to the story, Haggard, who, in 2006, more or less admitted to engaging in homosexual activity, will pair up with a wife rather than a husband in the swap.<o:p></o:p></div><h1><span style="font-size: 18pt;">You Compressor, You! <o:p></o:p></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal">I’m sure we all realize that from time to time politicians provide explanations and arguments most people won’t find really compelling. Let’s take an example. Suppose you’re a Florida Republican who’s responsible for scheduling Florida’s Republican straw poll. Would you be swayed by the recent argument by South Carolina GOP chairmain Chad Connelly? Said Connelly:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
“If you guys in Florida want to be the bad guys and compress this calendar and lose out for all the voters in America and have a calendar that’s chaotic and compressed even if it’s against your own state GOP, then go for it."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
So bad guys are guys who compress calendars. This Connelly fellow seems to be arguing that he owns the moral high ground as a result of his opposition to the highly abstract concept of the compression of time — or more specifically, calendar dates. Even those Republicans who do know what a compressed calendar is may reason something like this: “OK, if the worse that can happen is that we wind up compressing the calendar, then we’ll risk it.” After all, they haven’t gotten into politics as a result of their overwhelming passion for the proper regulation of calendars.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
Connelly’s comments will have a profound effect on such crucial themes of the philosophy of time as the relatively of simultaneity, the causation solution, endurantism and perdurantism, and, of course, the central issue of the nature of the compression of time. The comments will, however, have no effect whatsoever on the U.S. electoral schedule. Connelly’s remarks were reported by The Hill on Sept. 29.<o:p></o:p></div>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-44975719688752241412010-05-18T12:20:00.000-07:002010-05-18T12:20:51.305-07:00Dreams, Piano and the Tyrant of Men<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTXtwD-gteY-gfVtMxHaXrW7wUKg9AxsnVppQLz86s9210KaSzLCmltfY27LaSl49DmfEnqZKdpRVFPIm0m2nzshqskxmw3nOlt6uoCOBFYsxNSJiPXztvprbv3p_AA7YYt7jts3KaXA0/s1600/neuro_exam_finger_abduction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTXtwD-gteY-gfVtMxHaXrW7wUKg9AxsnVppQLz86s9210KaSzLCmltfY27LaSl49DmfEnqZKdpRVFPIm0m2nzshqskxmw3nOlt6uoCOBFYsxNSJiPXztvprbv3p_AA7YYt7jts3KaXA0/s320/neuro_exam_finger_abduction.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Lebensessenz is a pianist and songwriter who presently lives in Brazil, but would like to get gigs in the U.S. While his music is often lyrical and compelling, what's just as compelling is the intense personal story behind the compositions.<br />
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You can get hints of that story both in Lebensessenz's song titles and in his autobiographical essay "A Monologue About Lebensessenz," which can be found on his My Space page.<br />
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Lebensessenz says the motifs of the music are derived both from his "hard times" and "strong emotions." The hard times sometimes find musical expression in songs about dreams. (At least three songs have the word "dream" in the title.) The "strong emotions" aren't necessarily negative; for instance, Lebensessenz cites "happiness" (and perhaps in particular happiness over the recent birth of his daughter) as one of them.<br />
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But what's usually underlying his music is a keen sense of, and sadness about, loss or abandonment. Hard times related to loss have made Lebensessenz's music sensitive to matters related to love, intimacy and the denial of these. He's written a song cycle on <i>The Sorrows of Young Werther</i> — the best known literary work about unrequited love. And one gets an almost physical impact from the starkness of his 2008 CD title: "Tu deorum hominumque tyranne, Amor!" ("You, Love, Tyrant of Gods and Men." One of the record's songs is titled "Cruelty.")<br />
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As for the losses and abandonments that shook him hardest, in his essay he's explicit that these relate to his treatment at the hands of a distant father and to two important intimate relationships that ended badly. One reason we know the almost constant distance and apparent indifference of the father are important is that Lebensessenz writes a great deal about his feelings of rejection and sense of inattention on the part of his father and the effects of those feelings on Lebensessenz’s composing and compositions.<br />
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His father, who was, he says, a "fabulous musician," didn't live with him. The father, who was big on music theory, felt his son "needed to play with the correct methods" -- not something Lebensessenz was keen on at the time. As time passed, says Lebensessenz, "I wanted his help and his teaching, but, through a reason that I don't know," the father didn't want the same thing.<br />
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Even when the father was present, he seemed somehow absent. We are told he didn't comment on the early recordings of his son's music. “Why doesn't he say anything about what I do?" wonders the son. "It hurt me so much, but with time I just tried to forget it."<br />
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The result of all this was a son who was self-taught when it came to playing the piano. After the son’s composing began, the Father did, at one point, overhear the son playing the composition "Der Walzer von Lotte" ("Lotte's Waltz" – one of Lebensessenz’s most moving pieces and a surprisingly energetic work). The father told Lebensessenz 's mother that the songs were "sounding good." This Is the first time the father is seen as being aware and attentive to his son. It’s a moment Lebensessenz will mention more than once.<br />
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In a song cycle based on Schiller’s work The Robbers ("Die Rauber"), one song, “The Letter,” is about a character in the Schiller novel who writes a letter asking to be forgiven by his father. The son experiences "anxiety waiting for an answer."<br />
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Part of the result of Lebensessenz’s father’s distance and apparent indifference is the composer’s feeling of loss of the father. In the long process of creation behind the body of Lebensessenz’s work, there are times of fragmentation and total loss, at least as far as the work is concerned. He says that two early tapes of his music got lost in mysterious ways. In 2006, he says, he started to write a romance, but, in a statement that is itself mysterious, he says the romance now exists only in fragments.<br />
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Both in his writing and music titles, Lebensessenz makes frequent reference to states one easily associates with a sense of inattention at the hands of a valued object, or rejection by, distance from, loss of, such an object. The composer returns and returns to references to night, solitude, melancholy. "Most of my compositions,” he tells us, “emerged through nocturnal moments." The waltz Lebensessenz writes based on material in Werther is danced in the night. In 2005 he uses a computer to compose "Der Abend des Abschields" ("Farewell Night"). The title’s twin reference to night and separation is linked to music built on "longing, platonic passions" – the sort of passions one can develop for much sought-after objects who aren’t available. A 2006 composition is titled "Das Drama de Einsamkeit" (“The Drama of Solitude).”<br />
<br />
When he became an adult, Lebensessenz asked his father "to help" him "with some exercises, but he was not so interested." He rationalizes his father’s lack of interest by considering that the father may think the son will lose interest. There is, perhaps, more rationalizing; in "refusing to help me,” writes Lebensessenz, the father wanted to give him “an answer to find my own way"<br />
<br />
As years pass, Lebensessenz will engage in rationalization about his father that is more elaborately conceived and less convincing; he will state that he’s come to the realization that his father’s "silence of old times had its importance. He said few things, but it was sufficient ... “ And at about the time Lebensessenz realized this, he experienced a loss whose existence we don’t need to conjecture about: “In the same year, I lost him." In 2009, he is still rationalizing for the father; his album is titled Ihr Leben war fur mich ein Beispiel" ("Your Life Was An Example To Me"). But one song is titled "Days of Voluntary Exile." The solitude that has so often been the legacy he’s taken from his father is still with him.<br />
<br />
After inattention, perceived loss, real loss of the father and a loss of two crucial intimate relationships lost as finally and as mysteriously (that is, with as little description) as the loss of the early cassettes, it is small wonder that Lebensessenz chooses to title a CD "Tu deorum hominumque tyranne, Amor!" ("You, Love, Tyrant of Gods and Men"). His music at this time is, he says, melancholic, introspective; his music continues to have "melancholy, sadness." Solitude remains, entrenched, and with its sometimes companion fragmentation: "Again I see myself alone.” Fragmentation of work still reflects fragmentation of life by the loss of key people; he says he remembers "the ruins of things that ended badly.”<br />
<br />
But it is a distortion not to note the degree to which Lebensessenz says his music has been formed by feelings of happiness. The happiness is also expressed in the writings, and in particular in statements of such individuality that they are heartening and show the composer is driven by an energy that is, at least during much of his composing time, able to match the weight of the loss he carries. Here are some examples of the sort of aphoristic statements that Lebensessenz seems to be able to put to express with great facility:<br />
<br />
The work, he says, is "a learning"<br />
"There are no secrets in what I do"<br />
"When I face good or bad situations, I play; when I'm quiet also, I play with all my heart."<br />
"There are things that only me and my piano knows."<br />
<br />
The music, which Lebensessenz calls neo-classical, always sounds like music of the 20th century and the first decade of this century. Quiet passages can sound like Satie or Poulenc. (There are also rare, extremely sparse passages that are reminiscent of Morton Feldman.) More complex, and slightly louder, post-Romantic stylings may sound a bit like, say Scriabin.<br />
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Then there are the pieces in which Lebensessenz performs in the neoclassicism so popular at the moment — a kind minimalist neoclassicism. While his pieces of this ilk can sometimes sound as calm and simply melodic as those of Harold Budd, more often they have the fast, driving quality of Robert Moran or Michael Nyman. In these driving pieces, which are liberally flavored by lyrical passages, the melodies are simple. The chord sequences are simple enough, and close enough to those used in rock, that even those who've never listened to classical music will be able to appreciate the music immediately.<br />
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A visit to Lebensessenz' My Space page will give you seven or eight MP3s of his songs to listen to, his blog, information about his CDs and books of essays, and ways to download or order.<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000E6EGZU&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003S2T&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
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<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1934648965&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-89688213602544027272010-05-15T11:00:00.000-07:002010-05-15T11:00:17.171-07:00On True Crime<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIhIkoDRRCxlxfpFITyjWJ6VLCCRRfZD9hGEjqnvtc5U7LtprUx2ChbzM4V_7BDZy9C5VXEAGcJGqzrM1S7OLtfdLWowVnaeng6rUOpeXXgeOkMBYN7ytbnMU_BUS07gh3RlleNGRyPPM/s1600/what-if-elektra-killed-hulk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIhIkoDRRCxlxfpFITyjWJ6VLCCRRfZD9hGEjqnvtc5U7LtprUx2ChbzM4V_7BDZy9C5VXEAGcJGqzrM1S7OLtfdLWowVnaeng6rUOpeXXgeOkMBYN7ytbnMU_BUS07gh3RlleNGRyPPM/s320/what-if-elektra-killed-hulk.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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Would you convict a man who had a pet ant to life without parole?<br />
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That's a serious question. I'll say more about it at the end of this essay.<br />
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First, let me tell you a story a friend once told me about his trip to a porno shop. It's an uneventful tale. What struck me was an observation, which I think I can express in words close to an exact quotation: "As soon as I went in the store, I smelled that smell that porno shops always have, and I got that feeling you get when you're doing something taboo."<br />
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What interested me was that he felt sure he was breaking a taboo even though he was doing nothing illegal.<br />
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Many of our taboos have nothing to do with legality. Suppose I give a speech to a group you belong to. And suppose I begin by picking my nose, burping, putting one of my feet up on the podium, pulling up my trouser leg and calling the audience's attention to my bright white athletic socks. In this story, I break at least three taboos in a few seconds. But I do nothing illegal. <br />
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The taboo against going to porno shops is of greater interest than the trivial taboos in my speech story be cause pornography has an effect on American culture that's far-reaching, profound and — because porn is taboo — off-limits to analysis. Before the Internet and DVD came along and vastly extended the range of porn, the sale of XXX videos was a $20 billion-a-year business. One of every five videos sold was rated XXX.<br />
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Obviously, many millions of Americans were privately engaging in an activity that in public they would assert was taboo. Such a phenomenon must indicate something significant about American culture. But outside of the Village Voice and a few academic journals on popular culture, the phenomenon receives no critique whatsoever for the simple and obvious reason that the subject is taboo in this country.<br />
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All of that is a belabored way of getting me to the point where I tell you that I frequently read true crime books even though I know it is taboo to do so. Just as it's easy to find evidence of significant consumption of porn, it's easy to demonstrate that many people engage in the legal taboo of reading true crime by noting the significant presence of true crime books in any bookstore.<br />
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The taboo nature of true crime is lampooned to splendid effect in a book that is itself taboo — American Psycho. I refer to the scenes in which the killer protagonist disgusts his dining companions with details about serial killers he's gleaned from his reading.<br />
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While the scenes are humorous, I think the author, Brett Easton Ellis, was playing around with the reality (as he was during most of the book). The truth is most Americans do know at least the basic facts about such notorious killers as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffrey Dahmer, and most who did not know would want to. Furthermore, Gacy's true-life story was less outré than that of the fictional sensation Hannibal Lechter.<br />
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In the situation depicted in American Psycho, the group aware ness of taboo arises when a speaker relates the dirty details of dirty deeds says something like, "Boy, I really get into reading about people who do stuff life this." Not until that comment was made would folks raise their eyebrows.<br />
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As an independent thinker, I read what I like without any concerns about whether the material is taboo in this or that place. I admit that if I'm in a bookstore whose counterperson has a sophisticated look, I won't buy a true crime book. There's still certainly that much of the bourgeois in me.<br />
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My motivations for reading true crime have changed over time. My first true crime reading spree began in the mid-1980s when I realized I was interested in what I called "marginal culture" — the culture of those who indulge in unusual acts or thoughts. At the time, I thought the gap between the marginal and the typical was much larger than I presently think it is.<br />
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These days I read true crime because reading it is the least demanding thing I can do without doing nothing at all. That's the case because I don't own a television.<br />
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At this point, I might as well mention that doing nothing is taboo. I say that not just to make a banal comment on the insanely frantic pace at which we choose to live, but also to point out that if a person genuinely does nothing — or comes as close as people can to doing nothing — he'll fear he's suffering from mental illness. In the psychiatric trends that obtain at present, "doing nothing" is a symptom of severe depression, and hence taboo. All of this may inspire even the most jaded person to think, perhaps at an unconscious level, that he "should" do something.<br />
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I fear that at times, such thinking is my motivation for picking up a true crime book. Reading true crime is a minimal way of doing something. It's an act that requires next to no intellectual activity. Like fictional works that fall in the category of subgenre, true crime is formulaic in the extreme. The reader never needs to struggle to impose order on the text.<br />
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Of course, it's the failure to use the formula in a thoughtful way that makes most true crime books the dreck they are. People read true crime books for one of two reasons: either they want to learn the gruesome details of crimes or they want to learn about the freaky personalities and idiosyncrasies of over-the-top criminals. The successful true crime writer will keep the focus on these motifs and never stray from them.<br />
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Most true crime books fall apart the moment the investigation of the crimes begins. In any major case, the sequence of events from the start of the investigation to the announcement of the verdict will involve dozens of individuals at various levels of the criminal justice system. Even a brilliant writer cannot develop so many characters. Yet most true crime writers try to do just that. The reader is inundated with banal detail about a multitude of players. Detective So and So, the reader is told, was tenacious, put in 14-hour-days, gobbled down Cheerios for breakfast at 5 am and paused once in a while for a Dunhill. Clotted with such tedious and pointless details, the book becomes a bore and is tossed in the trash.<br />
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I recently read the aptly titled book Rough Trade by talented true crime writer Steve Jackson. I kept noticing that Jackson rarely used even a sentence to describe one of the many individuals in the criminal justice cast. Often his only description was a short parenthetical phrase ("Police Sgt. Bill Smith, an old-school street cop, arrived ...").<br />
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Writers such as Jackson, or the more talented Jack Olsen, Ann Rule and Aphrodite Jones, keep their works engrossing by focusing squarely on the criminal at all times. <br />
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But why would one want to read such works, even when they're skillfully crafted? If one wants to<br />
learn about freaky people in a fast, easy manner, or if one simply wants to make time pass, reading true crime is a viable activity. For those with no such desires, there's no reason to read it.<br />
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To say that true crime is taboo, has a limited audience and is usually poorly written is not to say it's worthless. Most true crime books provide a good view of the human condition, provided one is willing to read between the lines, and work backwards from the adult's expression of violence — the key subject matter — to the influence of the childhood role models for whom the criminal learned violence was an acceptable form of behavior.<br />
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Without exception, children who eventually grow up to be the subjects of true crime books are victims of repeated severe psychological, sexual and violent abuse by at least one caregiver, and usually by more than one. People who think criminals commit crimes because they read a particular book are people who haven't read true crime books. <br />
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The abusers who transform a child into a violent criminal are usually, though not always, relatives of the child. And it is inaccurate to assume the abusive caregivers are always adults. In the most dysfunctional families, children may be abused by caregivers who are 12 or 14 years old and have long since learned methods of abuse from adult role models.<br />
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But what does this have to do with the human condition? Aren't such extreme cases aberrations? They are. But the aberrations are skewed reactions to experiences that are universal. Early on, babies fear abandonment when they can tell a parent is leaving a room or house. And all children, when they are very young, fear they will be abandoned or rejected when they sense parents are displeased with their behavior. Parents with certain dispositions express disapproval of children's behavior by withdrawing affection from the child or becoming resentful or angry. Most parents, of course, will not do these things to the point of being abusive.<br />
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Children's fears of abandonment or rejection will be more or less pronounced depending on the parents' gifts at parenting. But even relatively minor childhood fears don't magically disappear when the child reaches the legal age of adulthood. Societies could not exist if people did not to some degree fear rejection or abandonment. Most adults deal with these fears by just coping with them in a catch as catch can manner or by channeling the fear into manageable neurotic symptoms.<br />
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The adult who's the subject of a true crime book learned from damaged caregivers that violence was an acceptable way of dealing with fear. At first, such adults don't seem to have much in common with us. But their behavior, extreme as it is, is a response to fundamental insecurities all people have: insecurities the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan described with the term "lack." Throughout their lives, said Lacan, people lack a sense of completeness; of being fully understood and accepted by another.<br />
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In the rare moments when the brutal criminal sneaks through the filter of violence and expresses the feelings that motivate the violence, what he expresses is the same sense of lack, of incompleteness, of ultimate alienation, we all carry deep inside. This explains why a talented writer who carefully interviews and quotes a vio lent criminal can create passages that move a reader to intense empathy — empathy, not sympathy — with the criminal.<br />
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This brings us to the case of Riggans, the man whose brutal crimes Steve Jackson wrote about. When Riggans was interviewed in the Colorado State Penitentiary, he didn't cry about the wives who'd divorced him or the women he'd killed or abused. But he cried profusely when asked about a pet dog he'd had as a child. In a home where the people dispensed no affection, Riggans found it in a pet. That led a prosecutor to wonder whether Riggans had a pet in his jail cell. He did. A pet ant.<br />
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The three judges who determined Riggans' fate felt it was painful to pass judgment on a man so severely alienated he sought affection from an ant. But they also understood that if Riggans were released, he would certainly murder again. Their solution: life in jail without possibility of parole.<br />
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The book is taboo; the story is worth telling.Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-40785897686663000362010-05-11T13:24:00.000-07:002010-05-11T15:57:41.947-07:00Fat Millie's Lament and the Metal Machine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4ZbNfxrcYAXzLHtSgGaLAjtOBu28w0bjVtZXneNKI_Fn432geGxR1YjKMBC58cPR5WiWgO-A12pni6bXyoXR4PRue0j9x7iLjc66cC2PuiQaHw6HJiT3k2MrdVYorD3vOhTJi-T7UJs/s1600/spiderman-and-cars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4ZbNfxrcYAXzLHtSgGaLAjtOBu28w0bjVtZXneNKI_Fn432geGxR1YjKMBC58cPR5WiWgO-A12pni6bXyoXR4PRue0j9x7iLjc66cC2PuiQaHw6HJiT3k2MrdVYorD3vOhTJi-T7UJs/s320/spiderman-and-cars.jpg" /></a></div><br />
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This entry is the result of an effort to generate interest in this blog by creating a piece that will contain a host of potential search terms. In this case, the terms will relate solely to music.<br />
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In particular, it's hoped the entry will attract the interest of those with special tastes for dark ambient music, doom metal, black metal, experimental classical music, triphop and drum and bass. To maximize the number of potential search terms, I'll simply list performers (and in many cases, composers or songwriters) who make the kinds of music I've listed. <br />
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The list for black metal includes bad-news-making Scandinavian bands, such as Emperor and Belphegor, and their American counterparts, the not-bad-news-making Xasthur and Azrael. A stunning Greek version is Rotting Christ, whose short songs, usually built with traditional pop structures (but not pop delivery) are replete with soaring and substantial melodies.<br />
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Xasthur makes the least structured music of the bunch, with a sound that mixes overlayered grinding guitars and the simple melodic chord progressions associated with all sorts of minimalism.<br />
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For doom, the earth2 recording has yet to be surpassed for its calming effect; for agitated or frustrated individuals, early Swans is ideal doom.<br />
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The reach of dark ambient is vast, embracing Lustmord, Metaconqueror, Lull, Robert Rich and the dozens of recordings of Steve Roach.<br />
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Performers melding all the sounds mentioned thus far, and power electronics as well, are Navicone Torture Technologies (the project of a fellow who calls himself Leech) and Abyssic Hate — two acts whose recordings can always be counted on for rapturous beauty.<br />
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Less rigorous in its demands on the listener, but sometimes as lyrical, is the work of such triphop DJs as DJ Spooky, Coldcut, DJ Shadow and others. Comparable melodies (thought to be vaguely in the tradition of jazz) are found in the breakneck drum and bass beats of Kenny Kenn, DJ SS and the David Bowie album Earthling. To venture further into experimental electronic music, and formulate lists of the talented crowd that gets classified with such tags and terms as experimental techno and shoegaze music, would be to introduce a number of potential search terms too big for this writer to manage.<br />
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As for experimental classical composers (whose work often overlaps with dark ambient or power electronics), the very long list includes such names as John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Luciano Berio (hear, for example, his Laborintus 2), Sal Martirano (for example, L's GA), Kenneth Gaburo (for example, Fat Millie's Lament), Maurizio Kagel, Luigi Nono. Such composers paved the way for the great, early nonacademic noise works, such as Lou Reeds' Metal Machine Music, the compositions and anguished and angry performances of Diamanda Galas and Joanna Went, and what I feel is the greatest recording of noise music to date, Yoko Ono's Fly. (For what it's worth, I'm guessing that New York No Wave owes a greater debt to experimental jazz than to experimental classical. While I'm not an unusually honest person, I'll admit I'm not familiar enough with experimental jazz to write about it with any kind of real authority.)<br />
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Additions to this very short list are heartily welcomed<br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004OCVJ&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000000X78&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0012GMXS8&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B00004TVH4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003Z4Z&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000B63ISE&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-65625395265836042092010-04-23T13:54:00.000-07:002010-04-23T14:02:25.715-07:00Ding-A-Ling Prose And The Slippery Word<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8hRSFWiWU_f_5v-GsUU19YtRit7IZ3JW2ZocKQ2bE-A7jSuew1-jRFxXH30cy9fbqZg_o7UliG38UxRPYthMztKV7sQv6pzxRZD-kmAW8A7ERaEaSj2oEBdzq0CCt2ICDBqkpaLqF3ls/s1600/Nyarlathotep+-+Large.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8hRSFWiWU_f_5v-GsUU19YtRit7IZ3JW2ZocKQ2bE-A7jSuew1-jRFxXH30cy9fbqZg_o7UliG38UxRPYthMztKV7sQv6pzxRZD-kmAW8A7ERaEaSj2oEBdzq0CCt2ICDBqkpaLqF3ls/s320/Nyarlathotep+-+Large.jpg" /><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0671025988&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=bpl&amp;asins=0312253990&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=bpl&amp;asins=0192893203&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=bpl&amp;asins=B000EU1HQM&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&amp;o=1&amp;p=8&amp;l=bpl&amp;asins=B0002606AQ&amp;fc1=000000&amp;IS2=1&amp;lt1=_blank&amp;m=amazon&amp;lc1=0000FF&amp;bc1=000000&amp;bg1=FFFFFF&amp;f=ifr" style="padding-top: 5px; width: 131px; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px;" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" align="left" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"></iframe></a></div><br />
<br />
I sometimes have a little fun with self-help programs, which fall somewhere on my long list of targets. As a concession to potential opponents, I'll state that I think there are most likely a few good self-help programs floating around out there. I sympathize with those who try to use them.<br />
<br />
What I want to do now is distinguish between solid self-help advice and fluffy feel-good prose. I never look at books with titles like Chicken Soup for the Soul or Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned in Kindergarten. First, I consider such titles an insult to my intelligence. Second, I have no wish to read vague, flowery prose whose sole purpose is to shut down readers' brains and give them a fleeting sense of animal satisfaction.<br />
<br />
Some local publication recently published a piece of feel-good slop called "Ten Rules for Being Human." I'd like to amuse myself for a time by unpacking some of this ding-a-ling prose.<br />
<br />
The so-called 10 rules are vague and nonreferential and imply a constantly positive valence. In short, they're designed specifically to make the reader feel good about himself regardless of the reader's condition or environment.<br />
<br />
One of the wearying aspects about American culture is that one is always obliged to be positive no matter how dire the situation is. Even when people get a diagnosis of Alzheimer's, schizophrenia or incurable cancer, they feel they must come up with some sort of positive statement about the prognosis. In much less extreme cases than the three I just listed, I've sometimes found myself wanting to say to a person, "Well, I really don't see anything positive in your situation." But I just stay silent, because I know that it's pretty much forbidden to say things like that.<br />
<br />
Having said that, let me go back to my description of this list as one of so-called rules. I want to be clear: nothing in this list is a rule. The items in this list are assertions about what it is to be human. For example, it is asserted that people will learn lessons, will repeat lessons and never stop learning lessons. A rule would have to take a linguistic form such as "You must learn lessons." There is nothing like that in this list. There are no rules here. There is nothing the reader is obliged to do or refrain from doing.<br />
<br />
Let's start looking at the text itself. No. 3 on the list asserts "there are no mistakes, only lessons." Item four asserts "lessons are repeated until they are learned."<br />
<br />
If there are no mistakes, how exactly does one "learn" a lesson? The assertion that one can learn the lesson assumes that there is a correct way to respond to the lesson — in which case it has been "learned." If one does not respond correctly, one has made a mistaken judgment about the lesson, in which case one has yet to learn it.<br />
<br />
Now we are told "When you have learned [a lesson], you can go on to the next lesson." This is an assertion that human life presents lessons in a linear, sequential form. For example, one may first learn the lesson of what must be done to secure a job. Then one may learn the lesson of what must be done to secure an apartment.<br />
<br />
The assertion leaves no room for the notion that lessons might overlap; might come in clusters; might come in an infinite variety of orders or in no order at all. There is no room for the notion that a lesson — say, for exam ple, the lesson of ways to enter new groups — would be accessible at some times and inaccessible at others.<br />
<br />
No. 6 reads as follows: "'There' is no better place than 'here.' When your 'there' has become a 'here,' you will simply obtain another 'there' that will again look better than 'here.'"<br />
<br />
Can we conclude from this item that people who live on the "here" of Riverside Drive do not feel that they live in a "better" place than the "there" of Ward 9 in New Orleans? Is it reasonable to conclude that a black male living in the "here" of Compton should think that a person living on Long Beach does not live in a "better" place? In New York, is the "here" of Harlem qualitatively indistinguishable from the "there" of Long Island?<br />
<br />
I know from experience that while it may not always make sense to talk about places being "better" than other places, it certainly makes sense to talk about the cultures of some places being different from those of other places. In Southwest Louisiana, where I reside, difference is strongly discouraged and independent thought is blasphemous. People in this area are expected to be team players, refrain from the questioning of all authority figures and just basically get with the program. In Portland, Ore., where I lived at one point in the past, difference and the degree of one's independence of thought don't have any effect on social relations. Portland is the most libertarian city in a very libertarian state. The approach in Portland is live and let live. People there base their self-concept on what they have in their heads and what they do and accomplish. They don't feel the need to coerce others to accept their points of view about anything. It's taken for granted that a multiplicity of points of view is to be expected; is not a problem; and is never a hindrance to social discourse. It seems to me most unlikely that a sensitive or shy or introverted or creative person who has dedicated herself to the high arts or to complex thought or literature would feel as good in the "here" of Lake Charles as she would in the "there" of Austin, Taos, Ann Arbor, Santa Cruz or any number of places.<br />
<br />
Now, back to the list. Time and again claims are presented in this list without one shred of evidence being offered in support of the claim. Let's look at No. 7, which reads "Other people are merely mirrors of you. You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself."<br />
<br />
OK. Let's apply this claim. If I hate my spouse for striking me with a closed fist, this means what I really hate is the psychotic aggression in my subconscious mind?<br />
<br />
Did I get that right? If I hate to be beaten, that reflects my own hatred of my wishes to beat others — and that's the case even if I've never beaten anyone else or felt the conscious desire to beat anyone else. If I hate to be yelled at, that reflects my hatred of my own wish to yell at others, even if I'm utterly unaware of any such wish.<br />
<br />
If I understand No. 7 correctly, I cannot hate what a sadistic, sociopathic thug or control freak does to me without at the same time concluding that I must subconsciously wish to engage in the behaviors of the thug that I find so repulsive and must therefore hate myself on that count.<br />
<br />
I cannot get my head around No. 7. If a complete stranger is rude or treats me with lack of consideration, must I hate something in myself to hate what the stranger does to me? Just what in myself would I hate? Would I hate my preference that people treat other people with common decency?<br />
<br />
On to No. 8. It's designed both to make the reader feel good and to lure him into the current pop psych fad of "empowerment."<br />
<br />
"What you make of your life is up to you. You have all the tools and resources you need. What you do with them is up to you. The choice is yours."<br />
<br />
Now, can I conclude from this that I can make my life what I want it to be if I have Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, severe mental retardation, leukemia or a painful terminal cancer? If I am paralyzed from the neck down at, say, age 18, can I just use all those tools and resources up in my head to make up my mind I'm going to feel chipper while I spend the next 60 years lying in bed staring at the ceiling?<br />
What about the single mother of two children who's working a minimum wage job; has no savings and only a high school education; whose friends are as poor as she is; and who's just lost her last relative, who left her nothing, having nothing to leave her? What little miracle is this person supposed to whip up with her poor, skimpy network and the "resources" in her head?<br />
<br />
What about the fact that more than 25 percent of this country's citizens don't have health insurance? Is it the case that a quarter of the population is just too lazy to make the choices and take the actions necessary to get health insurance? I don't think so. The insurance is overpriced and the people are underpaid. People can't change that basic state of affairs by thinking a certain way about it. It's not just a lie but a vile lie that gross economic inequalities can be erased with acts of individual will. On occasion, some single-minded, hard-working individual will rise out of destitution to a position of economic se curity. But for every one who does there are a thousand — or 10,000 — who are as single-minded and work just as hard and die on the treadmill of the working poor (and now, the middle class poor as well).<br />
<br />
OK. No. 9: "Your answers lie within you. The answers to life's questions lie within you. All you need to do is look, listen and trust."<br />
<br />
Like all the items, this one suffers from sloppy language usage. Due to the nature of American culture, almost all Americans who hear or read the phrase "your answers" will assume that the answers are both definitive and positive. In the rush for a positive outcome, it may be forgotten that the choice we are given is often the choice of the least bad alternative. <br />
<br />
There is no simple, positive an swer — whether within you or with out you — to the state of dying a slow, painful death in the twisted wreckage of a car. You will search in vain for "answers" to intense physical pain that lasts for a long period of time. Where is the answer for the myriad individuals undergoing torture, genocide, famine; for those who are being beaten or raped or murdered while I write this column? The author provides no evidence that there are any types of "answers" about anything whatsoever. She does not even provide an example of an answer. And I suspect I'm not the only one whose sense of logic is troubled by the assertion that while "there are no mistakes" there are "answers."<br />
<br />
"All you need to do" to get the answers, we are told, is "look, listen and trust" what is "within you." First, that's bad grammar. One could look at, listen to and trust what is within one. Second, it's ridiculous for me to "trust" what is within me if I know I'm schizoid, bipolar, severely depressed or have a tendency to extreme guilt, shame or anger. If I am in such a position, I should, far from trusting what is within me, carefully scrutinize what is within me at each shift of mood to be sure I'm not creating my own problems with my neurotic or psychotic thought patterns.<br />
<br />
Sloppy, vague, insubstantial, feel-good language doesn't give us psychic security or even psychic direction. Pain, adversities and unexpected reversals are going to come. We are not going to find "answers" to all of them. Sometimes, no matter what we do or how hard we try, we're simply going to feel bad. In most of the world, there's no law against feeling bad.Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-84604946428965353062010-04-20T13:00:00.000-07:002010-04-20T13:00:07.060-07:00The Great Book of the Couch<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgikrtsGyByCj3m09MmUPaeTTJflQCkRfAPGNPmB31f8ST4fp4mnOAziP-7lw-R4ryYl14HpJcIGU0Jz5t-pEEGU3VkLZs7WbZEDAOsFl3alMMOuLuDamTeekZZAGzu9BIUU0CC3wTZWVU/s1600/large_07-31-nz-cabbage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgikrtsGyByCj3m09MmUPaeTTJflQCkRfAPGNPmB31f8ST4fp4mnOAziP-7lw-R4ryYl14HpJcIGU0Jz5t-pEEGU3VkLZs7WbZEDAOsFl3alMMOuLuDamTeekZZAGzu9BIUU0CC3wTZWVU/s320/large_07-31-nz-cabbage.jpg" /></a></div><br />
<br />
As I write this, it's 2:18 p.m. according to my Mac. Thus far today I've eaten two biscuits with gravy, half a link of sausage, two individual pizzas and three individually wrapped Reese's SnackBarz. Who knows what I will send through my stomach and liver before I finally take my sleeping pill and drift off into insomnia tonight?<br />
<br />
I feel like the narrator of Saul Bellow's novel <i>Henderson the Rain King</i>, who tells the reader at the beginning of the book, "I'm a bum." <br />
<br />
I could say I'm a slacker. But before I did that, I'd want to make clear that there's a long and great American tradition of literature about people who just kind of hang out and work little or not at all. Read the great 1960s and 1970s novels by Bellow, Norman Mailer, Walker Percy, Joan Didion (her essays too), Robert Stone, Marco Vassi, Thomas Pynchon, Richard Brautigan, Ronald Sukenick and on and on and on.<br />
<br />
And all these people were working in the great tradition established by Herman Melville in the 19th century in his story "Bartleby the Scrivener." You remember Bartleby. He was the guy who answered every request (and order) with the phrase, "I prefer not to."<br />
<br />
These books and stories are about people who've given up on that old American idea that you just have to show up and be ready to work and you'll be successful and happy. And the 1960s and 1970s fictional works were written in a time when Americans who weren't rich actually had some money.<br />
<br />
So, having said all that, I go on to say, Call me bum. Call me slacker. If you ever see me with my mouth open, put a pork rind in there.<br />
<br />
I used to blame my outrageously bad eating choices on stress. Now I think they're just habit. I don't feel right if I go to bed without having had at least two or three kinds of sausage during the day. And I go to bed early. Real early. Would you believe, say, 7 pm?<br />
<br />
When I say I go to bed, I don't mean what most people mean when they say, "go to bed." What I'm referring to is not really going to bed; its going to couch. For me, the quintessence of slackerism and slackness is not eating biscuits and gravy with cracklins on top. It's lying on my couch doing nothing.<br />
I thought I might one day follow in the footsteps of Ivan Goncharov, Samuel Beckett and John Kennedy Toole and write a book about a guy who did nothing but lie around all the time.<br />
<br />
But then I decided there would be something not quite right about this. As I see it, my whole life has been a book about doing nothing. My life has been a long song of praise to lying on the couch, staring at the wall.<br />
<br />
There are some who think doing nothing is a form of being lazy. That's a grave error. When I say I lie on the couch and do nothing, many, if not most, will assume I mean that I lie on the couch and watch television, or at least listen to music.<br />
<br />
If that's what these people think, they and I are on two different pages. When I say I do nothing, I mean I do nothing. Absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
And thus it is demonstrated that what I do (or don't do) has no relation to being lazy. For if most people actually did nothing (as I do), they would immediately become unbearably bored. They would soon be in acute distress. They wouldn't be able to stand it. After five, 10 minutes max, they'd have to turn on a TV or grab a magazine or pick up the cell phone.<br />
<br />
I'm light years beyond that. I lie down in absolute silence and I do not move.<br />
<br />
Oh, I don't say I never get up and put a CD on the boombox. That happens once in a while. But I'll do such a thing only after a long period of deliberation about whether I'm up to doing it. And actually getting up off the couch will require a tremendous act of will. It'll be something I'll have to build up to. I'll lie on the couch thinking things like, "OK, Brad. You can do this. Come on. You can make it." Seriously.<br />
<br />
Now someone reading this may think, "Why, this fellow's powerless to do anything. He has clinical depression!"<br />
<br />
I'll go with that diagnosis as long as we both agree I'm suffering from junk-food-induced clinical depression. And if any person with the appropriate medical credentials is willing to give me free anti-depressants, I will happily take them.<br />
<br />
But I don't want the basic nature of my life to change. I lie there on the couch, looking at all the books around me, thinking, "You know, Brad, you could get up and read one of those books." But then I think, "Oh no, not another book! You've read 10,000 and you've got another 10,000 to go. I'm tired of reading. Let's just defocus. Defocus. Ah. Now, doesn't that feel better?"<br />
<br />
A book is a great project of diversion. And what is there about me that has changed after I've read yet one more book? I am, as the Floyd sang, "another day older and another day closer to death." All I've done is amuse myself for a few hours. And by the time I quit reading, it's time to go to sleep. There's no time left for just lying on the couch doing nothing. <br />
<br />
I'm over half way through this essay and I still don't have the slightest idea what it's about. Let me just make up some topics out of the blue. Let's say it's about my perpetual tendency to do much, much less than could ever be expected of any American man. The idea of being successful, practical, ambitious; these things are inscrutable to me. The idea of staying active for the mere sake of staying active I find distasteful, and the idea of staying active because I'm expected to or supposed to is downright disgusting to me.<br />
<br />
What about the idea that there's something wrong with me if I don't have a social life? I say, "Fine. Let there be something wrong with me. I'd rather have gangrene than have a social life." And the notion of taking steps to prepare for the future seems ridiculous. What? I'm supposed to prepare for the nursing home? That's crazy. I say let the nursing home prepare for me.<br />
<br />
Even after I've trotted out and dismissed all those potential topics, the essay still seems a wee bit aimless. But that's OK. I have plenty of time to make up a topic before I get to the end.<br />
<br />
What's it like to be the bum, the slob, the neurotic, the curmudgeon, the cynic, the introvert, the hermit, the underachiever? Well, I don't know if it's quite right to say that such a life requires a great deal of work. But it does result in a great deal of cognitive dissonance. To be such a person is to be a fish out of water. The moment I encounter a group of human beings, I'm lost. I don't care what anybody's children or grandchildren are doing. I don't care how cute anybody's baby looks. I don't bother about discussing current affairs because I know that if I do, the other people will just trot out their respective ideologies and shove them down my throat. And if I tried to initiate a discussion of philosophical ideas, why, they'd just look at me as if I were some kind of freak. And since they're already doing that anyway, why should I make the stupendous effort of forcing myself to say something they don't want to hear?<br />
<br />
No, when I'm in a group, I just stand there, smile, look pretty, and think, "Make it stop! Make it stop! Make it stop!"<br />
<br />
If I wanted to make myself sound better than I really am, I might compare myself to Sherlock Holmes. There's a Sherlock Holmes story in which a doctor tries to intimidate Holmes by showing off his physical strength and threatening Holmes. He insults Holmes' insular, intellectual, gentle life, calling Holmes "the meddler; the London busybody."<br />
<br />
The doctor is macho; a man's man. I'd be scared to death of him and say, "No problem, sir. I assure you, you've seen and heard the last of me."<br />
<br />
And in fact, Holmes says this is the most frightening case he's ever worked on — but not because of the <iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0143105485&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>doctor. Holmes is frightened by another aspect of the case that I won't mention here so as not to spoil the story.<br />
<br />
Holmes defeats the doctor not through strength, but through his quiet, solitary Holmesishness. While the overconfident doctor strides around his estate like the cock of the walk, Holmes lurks in the shadows, waiting for the right moment, slowly and carefully working out all the right moves: an antisocial ninja of the 19th century British countryside who ends up snapping the manly doctor like a twig.<br />
<br />
It would be a mistake to think that Holmes, for all his bitter pragmatism about humanity; for all his sideways, cerebral approach to experience; is really comparable to me in a fundamental way. You may recall that Holmes was driven; was only happy when he was working on a case. In that sense, he is a sort of mirror opposite, a sort of Janus face, to me — a person who's only happy when his life is free of work.<br />
<br />
I could conjure up some kind of bogus philosophy of the couch, or actually try to write some sort of crudely lyrical paean to the couch. But that sounds an awful lot like doing something.<br />
<br />
How much better it is just to type out the words as they come into my head. I type the words, I borrow money from my mother so I can pay my rent, my credit card companies charge me interest and the world goes round. What is wrong with this system? Well, there are a few things wrong with it. But it keeps me passive, so I like it.<br />
<br />
And when I die, what will I, the consummate underachiever, have accomplished? What will anyone have accomplished? The ordinary person looks back over his or her life, and thinks, "I busied myself with this and that. And in the end, what did it all matter? What difference did it make in the general scheme of things? And now I feel it all drifting away. That's what I did. I busied myself with this and that."<br />
<br />
As for me, I'll say, "I busied my self with this and that — only less so."<br />
<br />
Like Holmes, I can take a certain pride in what I do. Yet again, I've managed to write a full length essay about absolutely nothing.<br />
<br />
"Well, so what?" someone says. "Jerry Seinfeld put together a hit show about nothing more than 10 years before you wrote this."<br />
<br />
Beaten to the punch again! An underachiever even at underachieving! I couldn't be more pleased.<br />
<br />
When I leave this vale of tears, the great book of the couch will be complete. Floating on the astral plane, it will drift there, waiting for anyone who dares to plunge into this anti-epic story of the ordinary man who was nothing but what was in his head.<br />
<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0760777640&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0374529949&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B0031Y03WW&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0802130208&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0553212419&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-26526350637986763272010-04-14T10:24:00.000-07:002010-04-14T10:24:53.038-07:00"We Do Not Loan Out Our Under Things" — Pristine Gibberish and Deep South Music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hs01ZNY-AlcoH1L25iZzqqINGCjuAve5FfkVuXD7Uf93G4Za7NfyvRoGUh_0NXm8biX-f9RokhQVxaMgRdPMvxUKCpgmP9n2KlvCegGRmcWdIJ6pt-_dYtudL84mT570ytHH5BiG6fc/s1600/Slayer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9hs01ZNY-AlcoH1L25iZzqqINGCjuAve5FfkVuXD7Uf93G4Za7NfyvRoGUh_0NXm8biX-f9RokhQVxaMgRdPMvxUKCpgmP9n2KlvCegGRmcWdIJ6pt-_dYtudL84mT570ytHH5BiG6fc/s320/Slayer.jpg" /></a></div><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001HGGTH4&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Summer, 2010, ushered in two new CDs by a group of folks who are playing and promoting the music of Abita Springs, La. (home of Turbo Dog beer) and south Mississippi.<br />
<br />
<i>I Remember the Night Your Trailer Burned Down</i>, by pianist, singer and songwriter Bobby Lounge, is a series of long New Orleans piano rolls in a variety of styles, including blues, ragtime, boogie woogie and gospel. The rolls are of the rapid-fire, bang-'em-out variety. This isn't gossamer make-it-sing stuff.<br />
<br />
Even more impressive than the virtuosic fireworks of the piano playing is the raucous, absurd humor in the songs' lyrics. Lounge has staked his claim in Southern culture on the skids subject matter, and let his sense of the ridiculous run wild. Try not to laugh as you read these passages:<br />
<br />
• "He won't show you nasty movies ...<br />
"He won't take your night shift down at Popeye's fried chicken." -- "I Will"<br />
<br />
• "They ran Tippy out of town on a morals charge ...<br />
"Tippy met some Communist Chinese.<br />
"They toasted him with wine until his head was swimmin'.<br />
"They tattooed him all over with motorcycle women ...<br />
"The queen said, 'We do not loan out our under things.'<br />
"He said, 'Ma'am, just send me home to Abita Springs.'"<br />
— "Take Me Back to Abita Springs"<br />
<br />
• "It's pitiful, 'cause Shauna don't know who her mamma is.<br />
"He said Rosa said the other evening she came in there and looked up at Rosa and said, 'Memaw. Memaw. Be my momma memaw. Be my momma memaw.'"<br />
— "I Remember the Night Your Trailer Burned Down"<br />
<br />
I can't remember the last time I heard such pristine gibberish on a popular music recording. Just keep this CD on your player and you can throw away your copy of Chicken Soup for the Humor-Impaired.<br />
For more information, visit www.Bobby Lounge.com or write John Preble c/o Abitian Records, 22275 HWY 36, Abita Springs, Louisiana 70420.<br />
<br />
The second CD, <i>New Mardi Gras Classics</i>, presents 16 songs about Mardi Gras that have been written over a 40-year period.<br />
<br />
The Abitians, who have the lion's share of the cuts, are real genre-jumpers. In "This Is Endymion," the calypso sound is dominant, but there are nice touches of rockabilly and melancholy burlesque guitar. That same guitar, along with some sweet sock-it-to me organ, shows up on the tribal burlesque rocker "King Zulu." This cut would have been the perfect accompaniment for a screening of a stag film in the dark back room of a downtown New Orleans storefront in the 1950s. The calypso vibe is dominant again in "When the Levees Broke." <br />
<br />
"The King of Bacchus" is a mock Dylan ballad, with such clever lines as "No facts-based logic could prepare me for this."<br />
<br />
In one cut, a man with a gravely bass voice sings,<br />
"I'll wear some high heal shoes and a boustier<br />
"To some it may be a little risqué.<br />
"I'll be the cutest thing you ever saw.<br />
"I want to be the prettiest girl on Mardi Gras."<br />
<br />
"Mardi Gras on the Mind" is purist hillbilly music.<br />
<br />
But with all this genre-jumping and mixing, the Abitians are still perfectly comfortable playing "Mardi Gras in Evangeline," which is a straightforward traditional Cajun rocker.<br />
<br />
"Mardi Gras Season" offers the most insightful line of the CD: "It's so much fun when you're not you."<br />
<br />
This is a sound endorsement of a New Orleans Mardi Gras that has meat on its bones: that allows for absolute improvisation and near absolute self-indulgence in street theatre — the kind of thing one sees in Charles Gatewood's Mardi Gras street photos of the 1970s.<br />
<br />
Dash Rip Rock, a band that's starting to work Lake Charles, La., venues, pulls down the best hooks on the record with "Orpheus Night," an upbeat pop number with lots of playful guitar twanging.<br />
<br />
You can tell from the pictures on the inset that there aren't any woe-is-me 20-year-olds on these records. Some of these musicians have been at this a long time. It's a recording with good execution all the way through that never takes itself too seriously.<br />
<br />
For information, visit www.abitianrecords.com.<br />
<br />
Both discs are being promoted by the UCM Museum (pronounced You-see-'em Museum), 22275 Highway 36, Abita Springs, 70420. This place is a DIY art center. Don't expect to see any Blue Dogs paintings here. The museum caters to low-brow and outsider art and little models of old-fashioned service stations and the like.<br />
<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B001OFCN4Q&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000003TBN&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0867194421&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-50410042328038630342010-04-02T09:02:00.000-07:002010-04-02T09:26:03.113-07:00Evil Word Gods And The Biological TelescopeIf you're reading this blog, you're probably well aware that dozens, maybe hundreds, of fine rants appear on the Internet every day. In the reviews that follow, your correspond will introduce you to three that stand the test of time. They are guaranteed to provide satisfaction and amusement for as long as any freak anywhere is able to track them down. Prepare to be puzzled.<br />
<br />
<b>Val Valerian "The Markabian / Orion Scenario for Planetary Control" and "The Markabian / Orion Model of Earth's Future" </b><br />
(www.geocities.com/Area51/Aurora/4519/scenario.hmtl)<br />
<br />
The long distant origins of this planet's culture, according to this author, were pleasant enough. Earth's culture was started by "fun-loving beings who created mock-ups of games" with "planets, forms, colors, sounds and lots of action and sensation."<br />
<br />
If it weren't for the unintentionally humorous language — "fun-loving beings" and "lots of action and sensation" — this scenario would have a lot in common with the theological concept of the universe as the game of God, which is found in Buddhist, Hindu and Christian traditions, and perhaps in others.<br />
<br />
Our author calls his version of this construct "the master game." Immediately after interjecting the phrase, he writes, "But that's another story."<br />
<br />
So what story does the author tell? His story is one of "cosmic players" — immortals who go from one incarnation to another in a long effort to leave human beings "subjugated and enslaved."<br />
<br />
The "master players" are "Markabians/Orion Group/Reptilian Groups." They've created the world we live in now — AKA "the Markan Scenario" — and appear to serve a "master player" named Xenu.<br />
<br />
The master players first started messing with Earth 75 million years ago when Xenu undertook an "atomic blasting" that pretty much wiped out living things on Earth. In a fancy flourish, the reader is told "Xenu was his name and terror was his game."<br />
Master players demand conformity from human beings. They get it through the use of "government extension" and "influence by mind control." The fear of government extension may have motivated the "Markabians" to "[work] flat-out to defeat President Reagan and Margaret Thatcher." Our author is perhaps working from a pre-neoconservative view of conservatism. One could hardly think of the Republicans of the W. era as taking a strong stand against excessive government control. <br />
<br />
At any rate, Markabians are striving to bring about a "One-World-Police-State" through a tricky device: the offer of "peace, friendship, new technology, trade, and economic and political alignment," all of which is to be delivered by aliens called "Markab."<br />
<br />
It's not clear how Markabians will deliver this offer to earth folk; it may come, says the writer, through a "biological telescope receiver."<br />
<br />
The text confused me a bit when it used the word "Markab" to describe both the aliens making the peace offer and "world bankers." <br />
<br />
The most astonishing part of the text (aside, perhaps, from word of a massive nuclear attack circa 75 million B.C.) is the promise that all the people of the earth will hold a simultaneous "world vote" to decide whether to accept the Markab peace proposal. If the Markabians win, we are told, folks will lose their "chance for an exciting, independent, expanding future." No matter how many times I'm told I have a "chance for an exciting, independent, expanding future," the news always surprises me. How have I become so thoroughly convinced that my future, like my present, will be boring, dependent and meager in options? Perhaps it's Markabian mind control that's led me to believe these things.<br />
<br />
As for the present texts, I can't imagine you'll find much reading material that will cram this amount of interesting information into four pages. The mythos presented here is almost as detailed as Lovecraft's and more systematic. "Markabian/Orion Group/Reptilian Groups" are at least as intriguing as sottoths, and as easy to imagine. (Really, what does Nyarlathotep look like? I have no idea.)<br />
<br />
As for language, I think it'll be tough to beat such phraseology as "biological telescope receiver." Of course, any reference to mind control is always tantalizing.<br />
<br />
There's much to recommend these texts; nothing that I can find fault with. This mythos is different, but has lots of bite.<br />
<br />
(If you want to read Valerian's out-of-print 400-page-long books, you can find them for sale on the internet at prices starting at $100.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Randy Crow "Antichrist Anointed President because of Rigged Diabold Voting Machines — Abominations Fault Ukraine Election"</b> <br />
www.randycrow.com/articles/112904.htm<br />
<br />
While many Bush detractors have tagged the emperor with derogatory names, few have found as colorful a moniker as Randy Crow, who habitually calls Bush "antiChrist Little George."<br />
<br />
Crow is just as colorful when it comes to describing the program he thinks Bush wants to institute: "a zioni$t communi$t police state." Crow's not afraid to play fast and loose with capitalization, spelling and the free exchange of one type of symbol for another.<br />
<br />
For the most part, Crow's critique resonates with that of most of Bush's critics. But there are differences. One, the notion that Bush is a communist sympathizer, we haven't seen elsewhere (as far as I know). Information about such theories is welcome. Some may recall the popular right wing rant in book form None Dare Call It Conspiracy that declared Richard Nixon was a communist sympathizer.<br />
<br />
Crow also maintains that Bush wants to "engage the United States is [sic] a self defeating war by attacking Iraq, Iran, Iran, India, and China." Were any country's leaders dumb enough to engage in an attack of all the countries Crow has listed, defeat would, I agree, be inevitable.<br />
<br />
Of all the things Crow could pick as the No. 1 problem in the U.S., he chooses "communi$m." To this and 25 other problems he lists, Crow offers a "solution," which is this: "Tell the People the Problems and the People will Solve The Problems." Crow seems to have great confidence in the as-of-yet-unexercised will of the people to familiarize themselves with current issues and think them through.<br />
<br />
Without really, as far as I can tell, explaining what the "zioni$t plan" is, Crow levels a devastating attack on it by describing it with the single word "stupid." He argues that "communi$ts" and "zioni$ts" are identical, and both are "paranoid."<br />
<br />
This large, paranoid group, Crow asserts, will somehow persuade Russia, India and China to lob nuclear missiles into California and New York.<br />
<br />
Near the end, the text degenerates into rant babble:<br />
<br />
<i>With zioni$t and blood flowing all over the globe and the end of the world a near done deal, Democrats, Republicans, zioni$ts$ will say OK God you're cool, we will vote for Randy, zioni$ts will give up their money is God religion.</i><br />
<br />
I don't know what that means. But after it happens, says Crow, "the world will start acting right."<br />
About time.<br />
<br />
<b><br />
Gene Ray "Nature's Harmonic Simultaneous 4-Day Time Cube"</b><br />
www.timecube.com<br />
<br />
In this 76-page long manifesto, the author, who describes himself as "the wisest human," presents an often belabored and vague, and sometimes incoherent, explication of his concept of the "4 day Rotating Creation Principle of Cubicism."<br />
<br />
To get the most out of this document, the reader should try to follow Ray's advice and "think cubic." The accent in this text is decidedly on the number 4, and in particular the relation of the number 4 to the ways in which people measure the passage of days and minutes.<br />
<br />
Ray's phrase "4-Day Time Cube Creation Principle within 1 Earth Rotation" seems to mean that each 24-hour earth day contains within it 4 days. But the cubic principle extends beyond the traditional concept of one day per every 24 hours. For people too are cubics: "There is no human entity, just human Cubics — as in 4 different people in a 4 corner stage metamorphic rotation." This could mean that each person will, at some point, be at each intersection of some sort of unseen cube. On the other hand, it could mean a million other things or nothing in particular.<br />
<br />
Sometimes Ray uses that old rant trick of simply declaring the opposition is not only wrong, but cerebrally challenged; for example, consider this mathematical foray: "-1 x -1 = +1 is stupid and evil."<br />
<br />
Still, several of Rays recurring motifs — and there are many, many recurring motifs here — are appealing to this reader. Ray is skeptical of the notion of self, perhaps even feeling there is no such thing. ("You think self, you are evil.") We tend to believe these days that selves are constructed with words inside the head. Ray is also skeptical about words, feeling that they're inaccurate or misleading — at least in the ways they're presently used. ("You word murder your children ... Adult word worship is an evil adult scam.")<br />
<br />
Since teachers, as Ray accurately asserts, use words to indoctrinate, they are, in Ray's words "evil word gods" who are "teaching commercial plunder of nature." That last clause indicates he may see a danger in a too-eager trust of words and a personal immersion in consumerism.<br />
<br />
Fortunately for the reader, Ray's manifesto often turns into indecipherable rant word salad: "Evil 1 day Biblekills children."<br />
<br />
In similar passages, he sometimes seems to be getting very close to something that sounds sensible: "Burn the bible, honor Childhood via which adults evolve. Babble Power is suicidal." But at other times, the meaning is just elusive: "Creation has two sex poles & 4 corner races of humans. God is cornered as a queer." So, 4 corners up, God down. Read this and maybe you'll get the message. For adventures in cubic thinking, this text remains unsurpassed.<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0345350804&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0899666612&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkz7bmMQj8eHhvh8sEFHQYJtGKM5PcmrzbBijGEMOgWfS550aeoA01eji7MzqVSk786qSYdRI97L_NRb4f3fWVIjWqsFVX_dCpLeJk5E96ccMrWtTKyWVsx3hLsQqOhL3QQia3IqNkZE/s1600/2009-30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAkz7bmMQj8eHhvh8sEFHQYJtGKM5PcmrzbBijGEMOgWfS550aeoA01eji7MzqVSk786qSYdRI97L_NRb4f3fWVIjWqsFVX_dCpLeJk5E96ccMrWtTKyWVsx3hLsQqOhL3QQia3IqNkZE/s320/2009-30.jpg" /></a></div><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0922915679&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-10514127285783865362010-03-22T07:56:00.000-07:002010-03-25T09:10:43.146-07:00On Bad Writing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbbkZMXiDsRtOdTgOJpzwD4Z2vtSEr5UrXpYP1il2PLjjMmv2aZ0Jza46U5KVq9MetoNoG1tB83T3h9TgtgUPPjAD2Uy_tF0LIJevGT4f3yFGZ7SAeWvH9JV5S_F59eYFBuSI4YDd2RPE/s1600-h/signs_think_twice_08_preview.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbbkZMXiDsRtOdTgOJpzwD4Z2vtSEr5UrXpYP1il2PLjjMmv2aZ0Jza46U5KVq9MetoNoG1tB83T3h9TgtgUPPjAD2Uy_tF0LIJevGT4f3yFGZ7SAeWvH9JV5S_F59eYFBuSI4YDd2RPE/s400/signs_think_twice_08_preview.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451553454684524850" /></a><br />
When I taught university-level English courses, I told my students it was useful to study bad writing. The idea was that if we could figure out what things made writing bad, we could avoid those things, and thus reduce the likelihood that we might produce bad writing.<br />
<br />
I also taught that all writers have two fundamental tasks to perform. They must:<br />
1. Have something to write.<br />
2. Write it in such a way that the reader can understand it.<br />
<br />
In the bad writing I'm about to discuss, writers fail about equally on both counts.<br />
<br />
Let's explore. The poorest writing I've seen is that done in a certain kind of periodical I'll call "true confessions magazines." I've only read one of these, but it was a howler. <br />
<br />
Remember, the stories in these magazines are all supposed to be "true." The most badly written story of the bunch was one concocted by an author who claimed to have been the mother of a teenage son. The son, she wrote, had taken explosives to his high school and killed 16 students.<br />
<br />
Immediately I knew the story couldn't possibly be "true." To state the obvious — if a student killed 16 students at a school, we'd all have heard about it innumerable times. As our media experience repeatedly demonstrates, the killing of even a single student at a school immediately generates a multi-day national media event.<br />
<br />
Worse than the obvious falsehood about the killings was the explanation of the "mother" for the behavior of her "son." He did this horrible thing because he wore black clothing. That was the writer's sole explanation. It wasn't that the black clothing was a symbol or expression of deep-seated psychological disturbances. No, it was the mere fact that he wore black clothing. The kid was an all-American youth who immediately turned into a monster the day he put on his first black overcoat.<br />
<br />
The writer failed on count one. She had nothing to say. She threw together a tasteless, facile rip-off of the Columbine story. <br />
<br />
In trying to account for writing of such wretched quality, I keep in mind that the writer may well have been someone capable of producing good work who merely dashed off some fast, poor work in order to get fast money from a magazine with extremely low standards.<br />
<br />
Harder to explain is the work of writers who are established in their fields and tend to receive positive reviews (at least in some quarters). Let me focus on genre writing, which is thought by serious critics to be little more than a refuge for bad writers.<br />
<br />
Let's turn to point two above: The way in which the writer says what she intends to say. The characters in the books of horror writer Clare McNally use language that sounds so contrived and stiff that an attentive reader will refuse to see the language as credible. In the novel Ghost Light, a six-year-old character says to another character of his age, "Someone has fastened a lock to the door!"<br />
<br />
I put it to you that no one raised in the United States would ever say such a thing. The standard spoken American English expression for what McNally tries to convey is something such as: "Somebody's put a lock on the door."<br />
<br />
Almost as clumsy is overly formal language used in a popular literature narrative. Zero at the Bone, a true crime book about mass-murderer Gene Simmons, was written by a Paul Williams, who apparently has an academic background in poetry composition. He quotes his own poetry liberally throughout his book. He writes the sort of verse students are taught to compose in university creative writing seminars — verse that can be deciphered by those willing to engage in intellectual concentration, but not by Joe Sixpack. The book's title is a phrase from an Emily Dickinson poem. I see no application of the phrase to the life or case of Simmons. The writer just wants the true crime reader (of all people) to know that he knows his Dickinson.<br />
<br />
In the first 10 pages of the book, Williams treats the reader to such obscure academic lingo as: "that iambic closure," "immobilis in mobile," "the isinglass patina," "an ell of the wall," "iambic tom-tom." Such language in a true crime book, a genre second only to porno books in hastiness and sloppiness of writing, is about as appropriate as a cycle of Latin sonnets.<br />
<br />
Depending on the nature of one's sense of camp, one can see inappropriate language as amusing (as I did in the Williams book) or annoying (as I did in the McNally book, which I quit reading at page 50).<br />
<br />
Let's now turn again to point one: what is written. Those who write either true or fictional stories ("narratives," if you prefer the fancy term) will earn respect for their work only if they make the effort to develop characters who are distinct from each other and are at least minimally interesting to the reader. Character development needs to be an essential part of what storytellers write.<br />
<br />
The failure to develop characters is recognized by horror book readers as the most common flaw of horror writing. I quit reading John Shirley's fairly well-known novel Wetbones after 200 pages because I couldn't distinguish one character from another. The book's two male protagonists are young men who work together as script writers in Los Angeles. After 200 pages, the only way I could differentiate the two was by reminding myself that they had different names.<br />
<br />
But Shirley's no fool. Consider the following observations he makes on the human condition in his novel: "Garner had to search for his little girl in this endless sea of irrelevancy and indifference and preoccupied people and deteriorating places. This is crazy, this is hopeless ... "<br />
<br />
Or this: "Line up the ifs like toy soldiers, move them around the way you want, try to make yourself feel better. It's still just playing with ifs." <br />
<br />
Or: "He had preached at himself by preaching at other people."<br />
<br />
Shirley likes to take time to think about life. He won't take the time to contemplate what sorts of people might lead this life.<br />
<br />
I quit Reading Richard Laymon's horror novel Darkness Tell Us after the first two chapters. Laymon introduces 10 or so characters in these chapters. I could only get a sense of one of them: the misfit and outcast (the character type that is, for whatever reason, the one that always seems to get fleshed out even in poorly written horror novels). The first sentence of the third chapter contained the name "Glen." I had to flip back through the first two chapters to see whether I'd been reading about a character who had that name.<br />
<br />
In contrast is a novel by horror writer Edward Lee, whose many devoted fans seem to take pride in his reputation for bad writing. In Lee's Flesh Gothic, there are some clanky passages. But in this novel, the gaffes don't matter much. Lee's careful to begin by devoting a chapter to each of the more than 15 major characters. While this makes for a somewhat slow initial read, the approach pays off in spades in the last 300 pages, when the reader feels compelled to find out what happens to these characters whom he understands better than his own acquaintances.<br />
<br />
It's not necessary that one identify or feel deeply for a character. But one must at least know enough about the character to feel an interest in what happens to her. It is no great feat for a good writer to create credible characters who are more interesting than the people we know.<br />
<br />
When established horror writers create flat characters, they do so, I think, because they've gotten too caught up in the plot to take the time to envision the personalities of their characters. Novels by these writers build to a rapid sequence of shocking events: the payoff for the horror book reader. The bulk of the creative work has gone to the creation of what is the most exciting part of the narrative. The writer's intoxicated with the plot twists she's contrived to make the knock-out climax or ending.<br />
<br />
In terms of how they write what they write, it's often possible for the writer to play around with or even mess up the words and still deliver a readable story. But if there's a story, character development seems to be a requisite of good writing. You can have fun with language. When it comes to character — watch out. I can imagine that some extremely experimental writer, such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, might write a good, solid story that contains a plot devoid of a series of discrete actions — for example, a plot that consists merely in the narrator's description of a photograph he is presumably looking at. But even in such writing as this, the intrepid reader (which is the only kind who will make it to the end) is working backwards to construct in his head the kind of character who's looking at the photograph.<br />
<br />
In order to be interested in stories, whether true or otherwise, we need to know that the things that happen have happened to or been done by creatures that strongly resemble the people we are or we know. We can watch full-length movies about pigs and mice and dogs, provided these creatures act (and "talk" or "think") like people who are familiar to us. <br />
<br />
And the tortured efforts that networks go to to convince us that the people on reality television shows are just like us convey a message that's all too true. If it weren't, how would any sociologist ever explain the popularity of the things?<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0843954124&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-27683206461910579252010-03-21T08:53:00.000-07:002010-03-25T09:27:03.362-07:00Cortez, The Distressed Hillbilly<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj4I2wnVHK8pPIneL35Ce86mj2QB4xAzVdCq7ZpWkwFBynFtALBrxU58G6AKxuVxn8oCgCSflbCYW_jkPrYfus0gqSyCm7wvfmXwgQSmEOmQn1vsda4kVfG7LxmPGc5roHbgEkDaN7TQY/s1600-h/hillbillycabintruck.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj4I2wnVHK8pPIneL35Ce86mj2QB4xAzVdCq7ZpWkwFBynFtALBrxU58G6AKxuVxn8oCgCSflbCYW_jkPrYfus0gqSyCm7wvfmXwgQSmEOmQn1vsda4kVfG7LxmPGc5roHbgEkDaN7TQY/s400/hillbillycabintruck.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5451124410313846274" /></a><br />
Thanks to Aaron Thomas, a native of Southwest Louisiana, who brought by Cortez del Mar's recent CD You Did This To Yourself. <br />
<br />
With a little imagination, you can see this CD as a musical portrait of the gothic backwoods mischief of a bunch of inbred country musicians who spend many long nights drinking Everclear and listening to albums by American Music Club. You pick up the vibe from such lyrics as "Here's to something sinister" ("Bigger Skies") and "You know I'm a little crazy" ("Sugar Skull"). And the "Cities of Gold" line "Just wait till I get you alone" doesn't sound like a promise of tender romance. <br />
<br />
Gothic content notwithstanding, what makes the whole shockabilly approach work is that our skewed singer is relating tales that come from the hard living of real life. In "All Smiles," he sings to his lover about "all the pain there in your chest." In "Cities of Gold," he reveals the kind of honesty that only comes from people who've given up the effort to put up a good face: "I'm not sorry or sad. Should I lie?" Those are the kind of lines Johnny Cash felt compelled to growl out now and then.<br />
<br />
Mar's recent CD You Did This to Yourself. I had the idea this band was from Lafayette, but I was mistaken. Thomas says most of the band's members live in Sulphur (right across the river from Lake Charles).<br />
<br />
In the CD, Cortez leads with its strongest suit: a soaring, euphoric minute-long instrumental intro. Beautiful hooks are layered on by electric guitars and keyboards. It ends abruptly, and the audience is introduced to the distressed hillbilly vocals that will be its companion for the next 45 minutes. Think of the voice of Mark Eitzel after he's been through one of the prodigious drinking nights he's always writing songs about; or imagine Chris Isaak taking the mike right after he's chugged a couple of bottles of cough syrup.<br />
<br />
Though there are lots of change-ups (which I'll describe), the default sound on the disc is a downbeat, quiet, steadily paced country-tinged rock with a melancholy cast. Departures from the default sound include "Sea of Sound," an upbeat power pop number with lyrical hooks that could have come straight off a 1980s SubPop record.<br />
<br />
"Cities of Gold" starts as a mix of mariachi, a Cash Ballad and "Ghost Riders in the Sky." This chirpy little gem about personal and shared misery ends up with some good, creepy off-key guitar string plucking, weird off-key piano tinkling and what sounds like — of all things — a French horn solo. Compare this ending to the off-kilter cabaret music beginning of "Burning Whiskey River," with its fine Link Wray-style electric guitar decays.<br />
<br />
I don't know whether Cortez fits into the postrock category. You can hear some of the crazed hillbilly stuff in Godspeed You! Black Emperor. But aside from that, I don't hear a lot of overlap. Don't buy this disc expecting to hear a Mogwai or Sigur Ros record. As for the shockabilly vibe, this disc sounds closer to the sort-of mainstream shockabilly of The Reverend Horton Heat than the psychodrama shockabilly of Shockabilly. The bottom line: if you're interested in avant country rock ballads on real-life topics, you'll want to have this recording. If you want to listen to country rock ballads about idealized life, just turn on the radio to any station that doesn't have an angry guy talking on it.<br />
<br />
CDs like this one indicate there are almost amazingly talented bands right here in Lake Charles, La. But they don't stay here long. They don't have venues to perform in and thus can't build a big support base. <br />
<br />
Of course, Lake Charles always has the option of embracing and supporting bands like this. Hell, for all I know, pigs always have the option to fly. But I don't expect to see a pig flying in my lifetime. Whether they fly or not, you can keep track of the band's progress on its site cortezdelmar.com.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/You-Did-This-Yourself-Cortez/dp/B000G8P9YS?ie=UTF8&tag=fronhipp-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">You Did This to Yourself</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=fronhipp-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=B000G8P9YS" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important; padding: 0px !important" /><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000QL7L1E&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000002MIV&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B002COABGK&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B000V697Z2&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-3213207839029473282010-03-19T12:33:00.000-07:002010-03-25T10:15:10.031-07:00Neopets and Creepy Moves<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsZzY9YZsX5sT9jumKLWXrqNE00eu45CxDl2H-hiptaaAJxAtd41lRA01S26qnlcH15ugCceW-a3ub1ddWxTGur6Gv5fjVnYuWh49PNzH_EuRYZxHu3aBwRsLNvvvpuu6s2nYyjYFyE4I/s1600-h/baudrillard.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 222px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsZzY9YZsX5sT9jumKLWXrqNE00eu45CxDl2H-hiptaaAJxAtd41lRA01S26qnlcH15ugCceW-a3ub1ddWxTGur6Gv5fjVnYuWh49PNzH_EuRYZxHu3aBwRsLNvvvpuu6s2nYyjYFyE4I/s400/baudrillard.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450438635888899346" /></a><br />
It's never been news in my lifetime that we are living in both a material and a virtual world.<br />
<br />
In theory, the virtual world of the present resembles by ever greater degrees our thoughts and feelings about whatever we mean when we use terms such as "reality" or "the real world."<br />
<br />
It's true that none of the television shows that ran when I was a kid had anything to do with the realities of anyone's everyday life. But when I first heard the Rolling Stones' song "Jumpin' Jack Flash" on the radio, I knew it resonated with emotions I had; I just didn't know what the emotions were.<br />
<br />
The virtual world that exists 40 years after the release of "Jumpin' Jack Flash" has this distinction: it's interactive. One can make choices about one's place in it. If I have the right program, I can make "Jumpin' Jack Flash" sound any way I want it to just by moving a mouse around. In an online game, one can go down one hall or another; talk to another character or keep quiet; even take actions that will get oneself killed (in a virtual sense).<br />
<br />
How does virtual interactivity affect the life of the typical American consumer? The marketing think tank Trendwatching (see trendwatching.com) gets at it when its representatives write (in somewhat overworked prose):<br />
<br />
"The new consumer ... creates his or her own playground, comfort zone, universe ... At the core is control: psychologists ... agree ... that human beings want to be in charge of their destiny, or at least have the illusion of being in charge. And because they can now get this control in entirely new ways, aided by an online, low-cost, creativity-hugging revolution ... consumers now weave webs of unrivaled connectivity and relish instant knowledge gratification. They exercise total control over ... identities in cyberspace at a whim, wallow in DIY/ customization/personalization/co-creation to make companies deliver on their terms. (They make) ... virtual worlds in which they can truly be whoever or whatever they want to be."<br />
<br />
In its description of a general on-line virtual experience, Trendwatching listed, by my count, 12 states of interest to the contemporary consumer: possession, comfort, a sense of control, economical alternatives, access to new technology, acquisition of information, gratification, socialization, a sense of identity, collaboration, an opportunity to create and reality creation.<br />
<br />
In the long passage I quoted above, Trendwatching didn't specifically mention Internet games. When it turns to online gaming, Trendwatching quotes experts who see gaming as meeting consumer's desires for these states:<br />
• escapism<br />
• the "drive to explore" (Mediaedge)<br />
• the "promise of reward" (Mediaedge)<br />
• a sense of accomplishment (economist Edward Castronova)<br />
• the experience of "feeling ... be friended" (Castronova), and<br />
• "feeling ... loved." (Castronova).<br />
<br />
Now we're moved into the uneasiness many associate with the "simulacrum." What's the simulacrum? Philosopher Jean Baudrillard believes contemporary consumers — that is, you and I — live entirely in an illu sory world created by electronic media. He calls this the simulacrum — a fancy term for the imitation.<br />
<br />
An imitation is by no means bound to afford an accurate representation of what it imitates. Reality, Baudrillard would say, is seeing a space ship blow up with your own eyes at the very place where it blows up. The simulacrum is seeing and hearing 1,000 media representations of a space ship blowing up.<br />
<br />
Let's use the term "simulacrum creepiness" to describe a situation in which my experience of electronic media inclines me to experience potentially dangerous states of mind or symptoms of mental illness, such as, say, unwarranted terror or traumatic disappointment.<br />
<br />
Consider the idea that a game makes me "feel loved." I can easily understand that a person would have nostalgia for a game he spent a lot of his youth playing. But when a person tells me he thinks the game loves him — or even that a participant in a mas sively multiplayer on-line game "loves" him — I start thinking "ther apy."<br />
<br />
Does a corporation that puts its advertising in a on-line game want the user to feel loved? If it did, it would presumably at the very least have to insert an ad that works.<br />
<br />
Let's start with the basics. What makes an ad in a game effective? Trendwatching can get us started:<br />
<br />
"In-game communication [such as advertisement] should always facilitate escapism ... There's a delicate balance between enhancing realism and obstructing escapism. Wizards with cola cans or aliens brandishing chocolate bars are almost certainly wrong."<br />
<br />
In one respect, those who advertise in games are realists who have the advantage over idealists, cynics and Luddites; Nicholas Longano, CMO of Massive, describes the advantage: "If (the game is) set in the 20th century or beyond, you expect to see advertising. Advertising enhances the sense of realism," he tells Business Week. <br />
<br />
Smart marketers know that if they can figure out a way to integrate their brand smoothly into the game's story line, there's a possibility they can get gamers to use their products and services. A 2005 study by Nielsen Interactive Entertainment found that in-game advertising increased players' awareness of the product by 60 percent. Product awareness isn't the same thing as product consumption, but it's enough to put a smile on the marketer's face.<br />
<br />
Locate the role of the simulacrum in this quotation from MediaEdge: "The opportunity and challenge for brands is to figure out how to add something relevant to virtual worlds: providing players and inhabitants with experiences they actually enjoy and could even co-create with you."<br />
<br />
I felt a shiver of simulacrum creepiness there. Can I really co-create with companies run by people who have 100,000 times the amount of assets I have? Does the owner of a chain of multi-million dollar seafood restaurants co-create with an oyster shucker? I doubt that happens even in the virtual world.<br />
<br />
Let's look at the specs of ads imbedded in games. Games about race cars can have brands on the virtual cars or on billboards along virtual race tracks. One expects race cars to bear advertising to begin with, so when an ad appears on a virtual car, the ad seems perfectly realistic. Such an ad — one that seems to belong — is called "imbedded." It's one of the millions of details imbedded in a long believable storyline.<br />
<br />
Virtual billboards can be changed at any time. Brands using them include Honda, Cingular, Reebok, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Honda, NBC, Verizon, Warner Bros., and a few jillion others.<br />
<br />
In the NBA's cleverly named 2K6 video game, more than 200 of the virtual basketball players wear Nike shoes in the game. Users improve their performance by collecting various types of Nike shoes and storing them in the game's "Nike Shoe Locker."<br />
<br />
The PC game of the television show "CSI" was a collaboration between Visa and Ubisoft that resulted in a game plotline in which credit-card fraud protection was a central motif. Visa got 10 minutes of exposure in the game CSI 3: Dimensions of Murder. Nokia and General Motors also worked in ads.<br />
<br />
Before we get stuck in games, let's look at imbedded, as well as pretty much open, advertising in virtual "being spaces." A being space, such as the 50-million user Habbo Hotel, is a virtual meeting place where people can communicate with friends or strangers online and engage in a multitude of online tasks and diversions. Being spaces aren't games that one wins or loses. Consider them gigantic online communities.<br />
<br />
Each of the 50 million regular users of Habbo Hotel creates an online persona called a "Habbo." Habbos explore the hotel and create and decorate their rooms with furniture ("furni") that are purchased with "Habbo credits." Habbo credits are paid for with real-world credit cards, whether mom's or dad's or the user's.<br />
<br />
Habbo rooms can be named after an advertiser. The advertiser's virtual billboard is placed in its virtual hotel room. The virtual maids and personnel who come and go in the room speak ad lines that promote the product.<br />
<br />
In Habbo Hotel Germany, L'Oreal's Party Proof Gel opened two sponsored rooms: the Party Proof Club and the Party Proof Lounge. At mid-year, the first had been visited by 174,920 users and the second by 99,996.<br />
<br />
In Canada, Habbo Hotel leased its largest club space to "Miles Thirst," a Habbo who's a virtual walking, talking advertisement for Sprite. Not only does Miles have Club Thirst, he has "virtual pouring rights" in Canada's Habbo Hotel, meaning Sprite's the only virtual soft drink users can get there.<br />
<br />
Miles Thirst opens up his penthouse to all Habbos twice a week. If you visit, you get two Habbo credits, which are worth 40 cents in real-world money.<br />
<br />
Sprite ran a television commercial for its Habbo Hotel set-up on MuchMusic. After that, Club Thirst became the most popular site in Habbo Hotel.<br />
<br />
Here we come to another simulacrum creepiness moment. Most people are aware of risks that can arise when users start to think of virtual characters as actual flesh-and-blood people. There's a host of users who adore the set of electrons that is Miles Thirst. "Miles" has gotten more than 9,000 emails. Many include accounts of very personal experiences and of daydreams and fantasies that center on Miles. I realize we're mainly talking about kids here. But when a kid is expressing intense personal emotions to an ad, what's going on? Is the kid all right?<br />
<br />
Speaking of kids, there's concern about advertising in the Neopets site, since it's geared towards children. The site draws 70 million Neopet owners ("Neopians"). They can communicate electronically with each other, and play more than 160 games in several zones. Zones and games are sponsored by such companies as Nestlé, McDonald's, General Mills, Atari, Frito-Lay and Disney. Neopets is itself owned by the monster corporation Viacom.<br />
<br />
I don't know that I necessarily find all this troubling. In an age when every consumer is disconnected from every other consumer in the material world, it may be helpful if some consumers find solace in the ad-imbedded virtual world. And I know that marketers have to earn a living.<br />
<br />
If one has a concern, one can look toward the source of the marketer's clout: the corporation. Aside from the occasional Enronesque fiasco, the corporation is always silent.<br />
<br />
Don't shoot daggers at the player; don't rage at the imbedded ad. Ponder what is imbedded within the imbedded ad.<br />
<br />
If the corporation wants me to believe the corporation loves me and co-creates with me, I may find myself wondering what the corporation really wants to do to me. The corporation is the entity on which I depend for my shelter, water, food, clothing, heat and health care. Can I afford to ignore its moves — however imbedded they may be?<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0472065211&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0415070384&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=1400066891&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-74754386316267063832010-03-18T11:08:00.000-07:002010-03-25T10:20:02.523-07:00Marginal Culture, Marginal Writing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX5QAx17-D5Gmq87YUHsH1oHlkgkT835_gGXFpyo-6v8ncpKm4q80mz-0YT6IUdxl_l9Bji7kvJLYYqJcfTf8sajMYZwL2jW19j8qNVrsRPVadmrZRHJ-3xoqLbappWTJ61p7wk70mUnQ/s1600-h/800px-Nietzsche_Olde_01.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 294px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX5QAx17-D5Gmq87YUHsH1oHlkgkT835_gGXFpyo-6v8ncpKm4q80mz-0YT6IUdxl_l9Bji7kvJLYYqJcfTf8sajMYZwL2jW19j8qNVrsRPVadmrZRHJ-3xoqLbappWTJ61p7wk70mUnQ/s400/800px-Nietzsche_Olde_01.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450326697048743906" border="0" /></a><br />
Radical Calls To Impossible Actions<br />
<br />
I figured out what marginal culture is through the process of induction. It all started, I think, at some time in 1987, when I noticed what a peculiar assortment of books I'd been reading in the previous few months.<br />
<br />
I'd read about movies made on minuscule budgets and the amateurish hustling directors who made them. I'd read true crime books. I'd sought out books about people I considered conspicuous failures in their personal lives (Nietszche, Pollock, Strindberg, etc.). I rented a P.O. box and started an organization whose letterhead I used to appeal for copies of rants of all types on the grounds that I was forming a "free information database."<br />
<br />
While some might consider the material I was reading just so much junk, I had the feeling it was all shaping a particular and peculiar view of the human experience in my head.<br />
I discussed the situation with a friend, who said he had been reading exactly the same sorts of materials, and that these were the materials that were likewise being read by the small number of people he wished to associate with. We both agreed we were hooking into an odd and noteworthy cultural phenomenon.<br />
<br />
But what kind of culture were we investigating? I didn't have to look at the data too long to figure out I was reading about misfits, freaks, fish out of water and guys who were so ordinary that their unblemished banality made them de facto weirdos. To some degree, and usually a large one, these people failed at everything they tried to do. Some were way beyond the whole question of success and failure; one might have been a diary-keeper obsessed with the notion that the supervisor who'd fired him two decades ago was a CIA assassin; another might have been a self-publisher convinced the Vatican was administrated by the Trilateral Commission.<br />
<br />
Others about whom I read were simply eccentric in the extreme: they were robot builders; music makers who used jackhammers, industrial saws, caves and explosives as musical instruments; performance artists who tore up their bodies for nauseated audiences.<br />
<br />
I wound up tagging the collective written work of all these authors and subjects "marginal culture." The projects to which they devoted themselves, or their lack of success at these projects, kept them at the margins of social activity. Their preference for the workings of their projects over the niceties of social interaction made it likely that few of the marginal people were popular with their contemporaries or are popular today with present-day book readers. (There are exceptions. The writer Edward Lee is popular, and it must be a great strain for the typical reader to imagine in even a vague way the bizarre worlds he creates with words.)<br />
<br />
Each marginal writer or subject of marginal writing was or is off in his or her own little world. That puts each in stark contrast with the drones contentedly immersed in the mediocre mechanics of everyday living — the zombies whom you and I must tolerate and work around just to survive.<br />
<br />
Before I was even 20, I'd said to a friend, "Life is banal." Never, as far back as my memory goes, have I been able to generate any interest in the conversation about fripperies that is zombie talk: the discourse of middle-class American society. People talk about how so-and-so is "doing." Some other so-and-so is said to be going to such-and-such a school. He's in such-and-such a grade and making such-and-such grades. Another so-and-so is working at such-and-such a place. And how is he doing? Oh, he's doing pretty good, I guess. He's started dating again. Oh, really? Who's he dating? Oh, so-and-so. Really? How's she doing? Oh, she's doing pretty good, I think ...<br />
<br />
And on and on and on it drones. When I can manage to think in the mist of this verbal spew, the only thoughts I can muster are, "Who cares? Do the people talking care about what they're saying and hearing? Why do they keep talking?"<br />
<br />
But people will always do as they have always done and talk as they have talked. That's why one seeks out marginal cultural. Vicarious experience of marginal culture is the means of escaping the democratic populace; of fleeing the discourse of those who find it fascinating to discuss Wal-Mart parking conditions.<br />
<br />
The marginal is anything that falls far outside of convention. The marginal shaman has the useful power of making the everyday and banal magical by putting it in a context for which it was never designed. A simplistic but precise example is that of the writer who took Donald Rumsfeld's press conference meditations and ramblings and published them in the form of poems.<br />
<br />
Readers of the marginal can make a text marginal by placing it in a context different from that used by the text's author. To take another painfully obvious but apt example, if a writer puts in words his experience of terrifying, complex and far-reaching paranoia, he creates a piece of writing that's in the margin. Now, if the reader reads the text not as an cautionary guide to the dangers of mind control or the revelation of a vast conspiracy, but as an unintentionally humorous schizophrenic rant, the reader places the text in the margin.<br />
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Any text the reader sees as kitsch (whether it was meant to be kitsch or not) is a marginal text. Also qualifying are any texts the readers sees as evidence of outlandish and indemonstrable theories and ideas, radical calls to impossible actions, evidence of lunacy, demonstration of appallingly bad taste and documentation of lives lived in squalor and monstrous excess. Street people, pimps, crackheads, backwoods loons, serial killers, homeless schizophrenics, channelers — their stories lift us out of our habitual stress and tedium and give us relief. We feel, for a moment, as if there might be real life on the planet.<br />
<br />
There is a gargantuan storehouse of marginal writing that extends far beyond library walls to the boxes in vanity publishers' warehouses, the graffiti-covered walls of dead factories, the diary-filled boxes of estates and the rant-covered telephone poles in the urban wasteland.<a target="_blank" href="http://www.amazon.com/Nietzsche-Critical-Life-Ronald-Hayman/dp/0140062742?ie=UTF8&tag=fronhipp-20&link_code=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969">Nietzsche: A Critical Life</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=fronhipp-20&l=btl&camp=213689&creative=392969&o=1&a=0140062742" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important; padding: 0px !important" /><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0440614163&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-23999750424824017692010-03-17T12:33:00.000-07:002010-03-25T10:22:42.175-07:00Foot Loops: State And National Flavors<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjothHpRBZ9bja92E9-wvrurZF08bw2BsNOmsIHZLxXxki4R7sAZNxgiB8rNEA5cWAVcj3esxA5H0n14APAbUPcAJrdw-u55zVRJHF2z0IVOtXY9Jtb7YVPjDYZ2ukrPfn3G5WQWeMqltM/s1600-h/Evstafiev-Radovan_Karadzic_3MAR94.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 314px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjothHpRBZ9bja92E9-wvrurZF08bw2BsNOmsIHZLxXxki4R7sAZNxgiB8rNEA5cWAVcj3esxA5H0n14APAbUPcAJrdw-u55zVRJHF2z0IVOtXY9Jtb7YVPjDYZ2ukrPfn3G5WQWeMqltM/s400/Evstafiev-Radovan_Karadzic_3MAR94.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450327499257496162" border="0" /></a><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Froot Loops: State And National Flavors</span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
The March 5 edition of The Dead Pelican carried the irresistibly interesting headline "Louisiana Cops Plan for 'End of the World' Scenario." When I clicked the headline, the Pelican hooked me up with a Feb. 27 story Kurt Nimmo wrote for something called Infowars.com.<br />
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Said Nimmo, The Shreveport Times had reported on a local police exercise called “Operation Exodus.” Bossier Parish Sheriff Larry Deen said he aimed to protect Bossier Parish’s grocery stores, hospitals, gasoline stations and so forth "in the event of a catastrophic event, such as war or a terrorist attack."<br />
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Well, of course I know the terrorists are just lining up to attack Bossier Parish. So, what's Deen going to do about it? According to Infowars, the plan involves the use of "volunteers ... dispatched to vital areas to protect them." These volunteers won't just be using just riot shields and batons. Deen would have them using .50 caliber machine guns mounted on something called “the war wagon.” As of Feb. 20, reported Infowars, police in Bossier Parish were training volunteers "in hand-to-hand combat techniques."<br />
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My initial thoughts were, "OK, this will be one more chance for national media to have a hearty laugh at loopy authority figures in Louisiana." But as I read on, my bemusement turned to astonishment as I realized the reporter not only took all this stuff in Bossier Parish seriously but also thought it was a great idea.<br />
<br />
Writer Nimmo broke out the heavy ammunition. He quoted Paul Joseph Watson as writing, "Numerous public figures, including Sen. Christopher Dodd, leading economist Nouriel Roubini, top trend researcher Gerald Celente, the head of the International Monetary Fund, the head of the World Trade Organization, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, former national security director Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair have all warned of coming civil unrest and global instability.” (BTW, Watson writes for PrisonPlanet.com.)<br />
<br />
Next came a link to a video of trend forecaster Celente. Under the headline "Fox Business: Gerald Celente Predicts Revolution" and over the subhead "PREDICTING OBAMA'S IMPACT" sat the image of Celente. (This isn't the only time Celente has appeared on Fox News. On Fox News Sunday, he deplored "Obamageddon," and on The Glenn Beck Show, he called the Obama stimulus package "fascism," It was for a different media venue, The Washington Post, that Celente predicted the "Panic of 2008." He may wish he could unpredict that one.)<br />
<br />
"OK. Maybe the story's a little biased," I thought. But then Nimmo called the Bossier Parish end-of-the-world scenario inevitable, referring to "the inevitability of civil unrest as the economy continues to unravel." See, I would use the term "possibility" rather than the term "inevitability" and the term "if" instead of "as." But I'm stupid that way.<br />
<br />
At this point in the story, I got that ecstatic feeling I always get when I realize I'm in the presence of the froot loop, the loony toon, the nut bucket. This was the real deal My ecstasy grew more intense as Nimmo ended the story with this riveting sentence: "Short of dismantling the Federal Reserve and arresting and prosecuting the bankers, there is no solution short of training police to shoot starving food rioters and declaring martial law." (Nimmo has a thing about bankers; at another point, he got behind the notion of "throwing out the banksters.")<br />
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Whew! Ahem. After I caught my breath, I clicked on the home page of Infowars. Sure enough, the first prose I saw told me "an ultra-secret global elite controls technology, finance, international law, world trade, political power and vast military capabilities." Wow! Where do I sign up?<br />
<br />
As I investigated the page, I found ads for "the most lethal self-defense system in the world," dehydrated food sold at patriotfood.com, a "bank" that enables its clients to "Plant A Full Acre Crisis Garden," a "New Crisis Cooker," and notice that a "Millionaire Patriot Wants YOU Armed and Trained" with "a new, FREE Springfield XD HANDGUN." T-shirts proclaimed membership in the "Tyranny Response Team" and called on buyers to "Resist The New World Order." Headlines read, "Can Obama Assassinate Americans?" "MSNBC Continues Propaganda Campaign Against Patriot Groups" and, my favorite, "Hooray For Starbucks." Don't believe me? Just go to Infowars.com and look around.<br />
<br />
I eventually realized the site was constructed by the Alex Jones radio show staff. (In fact, the thing is called "Alex Jones' Infowars.") Jones describes himself as "a prominent figure in the 9/11 Truth Movement." Even though the political personage who takes the most hits on the site is Obama, Jones is correct in saying he is not partisan. He takes pot shots at W. and the Neo-Conservatives. And his guests have included Ralph Nader and Gore Vidal. They've also included such fascinating cuckoo birds as David Icke, who believes the world is run by giant reptiles (but also makes insightful and perfectly valid observations about human behavior).<br />
<br />
For the sake of fairness, I'll concede that Nikko's story contained some thought-provoking ideas, such as these from The Christian Science Monitor's Bill Bonner: "The establishment tells us the worst is over. The mainstream economics profession is guilty of dereliction of duty. They should be telling people that this ‘recovery’ is a scam. They should be warning investors that the markets could fall apart any day.” And then there were comments Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead made to Reuters: “I see nothing but large increases in the deficit. I just want to get people thinking about this, and to realize this is a road to disaster. I’ve always been a positive person and optimistic, but I don’t see a solution here.”<br />
<br />
I don't have a problem with things like Infowars being on the Internet. In fact, I'd glad they're there. So .. let's all raise a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon to all the citizen volunteers sitting on top of the "war wagons," cradling their .50 caliber machine guns and waiting for the terrorists to arrive. I predict they'll be able to wait exactly as long as they want to.<br />
</div><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">Not So Cunning Testimony</span><br />
<br />
The good news, or sort of good news, is that all the froot loops aren't in Bossier Parish. Take the case of the recent testimony of Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic at the Hague.<br />
<br />
When a war criminal is on trial, he isn't just trying to avoid jail or execution; he's also trying to salvage some hint of decency, and possibly even dignity. At any rate, in a perfect world he'd be trying to do that.<br />
<br />
No such luck with Karadzic, who has the habit of dictatorship. Like the late Slobodan Milosovic and long-time Ukrainian strong man Viktor Yanukovich, Radovic just looks like a thug. He may be 64, but every time I see a photo of him, the first thought that enters my mind is, "I don't ever want to meet this guy in a dark alley."<br />
<br />
Karadzic isn't just a thug; he's also a goofball. True to form, he's so desperate to save his skin he's willing to tell stories he knows no one will believe. He's not sophisticated enough to come up with the kind of stuff that would make a judge pause and think, "Hmm. There could be something to that."<br />
<br />
In his testimony, he said Bosnians were both sniping at and bombing other Bosnians — on purpose. He says notorious bombings of Sarajevo markets in 1994 and 1995 were "faked." How, exactly, is a bombing faked? Remarkable as it sounds, Karadzic had an answer for that: "Perhaps it was corpses that were planted."<br />
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And why were the Bosnians engaging in all this wanton destruction of each other? That's easy, said Karadzic. They wanted to make the Serbians look bad. He said it was all a "cunning strategy."<br />
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Do tell. Karadzic is charged with being responsible for the Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 were killed. "It is going to be easy for me to prove that I had nothing to do with it," he said. "It is a myth." Karadzic belongs to the school that believes it's beneficial to say that things that are impossible are easy. It's interesting that when Karadzic testified at the Hague, he asked for more time to prepare his defense. Sounds like this project may not be quite as easy as he thought it would be.<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0953881016&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0952614758&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4709515605186521596.post-48660956233304615092009-07-28T11:17:00.000-07:002010-03-25T10:29:16.441-07:00Choosing Negativity<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2LHXW_IgHY72GyGAi-yv9HHTb4IU-okM9q5jMoZUBX3b3Ro63xYmC4KreDjfBuZR95_G3QPz-iNUhriQaiGnA2N5EbSs80QIqEq4K4l0YVLWsYDw2u_Cx4siUWjUSNWdqiJbOPjkMJE/s1600-h/familyjump.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE2LHXW_IgHY72GyGAi-yv9HHTb4IU-okM9q5jMoZUBX3b3Ro63xYmC4KreDjfBuZR95_G3QPz-iNUhriQaiGnA2N5EbSs80QIqEq4K4l0YVLWsYDw2u_Cx4siUWjUSNWdqiJbOPjkMJE/s400/familyjump.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450327957844797266" border="0" /></a><br />
I would like to advocate the option of choosing undiluted, unallayed, unqualified negativity. I posit that nihilism, pessimism, cynicism, misanthrophy and other negative mindsets can with perfect propriety be held with equanimity and without any qualms.<br />
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I also posit these attitudes can be perfectly free of the almost inescapable assertion of the glimmer of hope.<br />
<br />
I posit there is never any requisite for any person of any negative mindset to accept such platitudes as "There's always hope" or "Things'll work out" or "There's a light at the end of the tunnel." It's not just that it's often simply not the case that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I don't think there's any need for there to be a light at the end of the tunnel.<br />
<br />
The negative can stand, exactly as is, without any assistance from the positive. And I find nothing at all undesirable about that state of affairs. Obviously I'm expressing a very subjective stance. In other words, I'm not offering up an equation that I think can be proved.<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=fronhipp-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0714537624&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align:left;padding-top:5px;width:131px;height:245px;padding-right:10px;"align="left" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Slacky Bhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17643084824342232692noreply@blogger.com0