god help the less fortunate

 Originally published at Omnemnmoverelapidem .blogspot.com, October 11, 2007, under the title "The Groovy Side of Torture."

Posters  in internet discussion groups and chat rooms usually emphasize the negative things about torture. There are also some very nice aspects to torture. We know this is true because there are some people who actually enjoy being tortured.

Some people even like to torture themselves, although this can be hazardous, and those who enjoy self-inflicted pain should probably always use the "buddy system" to insure safety, as the two bims young women in the picture are doing. 

TV
Take this guy for example -- a conservative Christian minister, a graduat of Liberty University, and a personal friend of the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Rev. Gary Aldridge, 51, was found dead in his home. Police said he was home alone at the time of his demise, and his death was accidental.

At the time he died Rev. Aldridge, pastor of the local Thorington Road Church since 1991, was wearing two wet suits, a rubber face mask, a scuba diving mask, a pair of slippers, a pair of diving gloves, a set of rubber underwear, two ties, five belts, and eleven straps disposed in various ways. For example, one plastic cord secured his ankles to his neck. He also had a dildo in his butt.

The cause of death was asphyxiation.

I hope this settles the debate about torture always being bad once and for all.

It also answers the question, "What do you folks in Alabama do for fun, anyway?"

nuggets from the catboxx iii -- the pope & the indians

First published on May 15, 2007, this essay will hopefully give readers a fuller perspective of the meaning of the papacy of Francis I, whose enlightened liberalism contrasts starkly with the reactionism and incompetence of his immediate predecessor. Benny XVI. Benedict, possibly the first Pope basically fired from the position in living memory (he's the only one in hundreds of years  who didn't die in office), combined  scholarly theology, with historical illiteracy, with disastrous results.

Hernan Cortes by Diego Rivera

Acting as if he were the latest incarnation of the dark and ominous priests who blessed the European conquests of the New World and the dismembering of its native cultures, Pope Benedict XVI declared while visiting Brazil yesterday that the Roman Catholic Church had purified America's natives, and that a revival of their religions would be a backward step.

The Church, the Pope added, had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas. Rather, he said, they had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest since they were "silently longing" for Christianity.

Indian leaders in Brazil and elsewhere reacted with outrage and disgust, and called the Pope's comments "arrogant and disrespectful." That's putting it mildly. This Pope, a former German cardinal, known as a serious scholar and accomplished theologian, has once again shown himself to be an ignorant and deluded fanatic who seems hell-bent on destroying what's left of the Church hierarchy's reputation.

Beginning with the gross and disgusting crimes against the Arawak people by Christopher Columbus, who was not particularly interested in converting them to Christianity, the European conquest of the Americas shifted into high gear with Hernan Cortez's Church-sanctioned invasion of Mexico shortly before 1520. By 1522, with his destruction of the Aztec Empire accomplished, Cortez began the systematic decapitation of native culture, replacing indigenous languages with Spanish and the MesoAmerican religions with Catholicism, whose cathedrals and churches soon became the central features of every city, town, and hamlet in New Spain.

An unintended but nevertheless useful consequence (in terms of easing the conquest) of the Europeans' arrival was the sudden unleashing of diseases against which the natives offered no acquired resistance. Some of these were brought by the Spanish themselves, and others by the animals or vermin that accompanied them. Unknown numbers, perhaps 90 percent, of the Indians died of these various pestilences.

By the time the aging Indian who called himself Juan Diego experienced his celebrated vision of the Virgin of Guadalupe in 1529, the conquest of Mexico was complete. But Juan Diego's Catholicism blended elements of the old Aztec religion with Roman orthodoxy; his Virgin incorporated elements of the Indian moon goddess Tonantzin. Fragments of the shattered Aztec culture remain embedded in Mexican Catholicism to this day, from its exuberant idolatry to the old native death cult preserved in its bleeding crucifixes.

The European conquest of the rest of what would become Latin America followed in quick succession, although the Portuguese reduction of Brazil's Indians was slower, less comprehensive, and continues down to the present day. Deep in the remaining rain forests of the Amazon basin, Indians are still being brutalized and torn from their old lifeways as more and more of their ancestral lands are "developed."

The conquest continues, and this is what made the Pope's ahistorical remarks yesterday so profoundly offensive. "We repudiate the Pope's comments," said Sandro Tuxa, a Catholic priest and Brazilian Indian who heads the movement of northeastern tribes. "To say the cultural decimation of our people represents a purification is offensive, and frankly, frightening."

The tragedy in all this is that Tuxa and thousands like him throughout the region are the voice of the Church at the grassroots, which is often doing necessary and courageous work among dispossessed people who have no other advocates. If the Church was an irrelevant artifact of the past from head to root, the Pope's profound stupidity wouldn't matter. But the roots are still viable, and apparently the Catholic Church is that most unusual of institutions, rotten mainly at the top.

nuggets from the catboxx iI -- made for tv

Originally publihed here November 21, 2009.

The New York regional yoga championships?

Yes, I'm afraid it's true. Maybe you already saw this piece when it ran in the New York Times fashion and fitness section a few days back.

During the three-day workshop I took with Gary Kraftsow, the founder of American Viniyoga, in April of '08, I remember his saying several times that "this is not competitive, and it's not a performance art." But I guess there are some who would disagree.

Asana competitions, as they should be properly called*, are the brainchild of the Choudhurys, Mrs. Rajashree and Mr. Bikram, who are also the founders of a highly successful, trademarked and copyrighted sequence of 26 vigorous postures and two breath exercises, practiced in a room heated to 105 degrees and known as Bikram Yoga. They're originally from India, but have adapted extremely well to American cultural prerogatives and ways of doing business.

Considering the current and growing mass appeal of asana practice, I'm afraid that I and the Choudhurys both see where this is going: Think "American Idol" or "Dancing with the Stars."

And I suppose there's no real harm done, as long as there are those who are keeping the faith, and keeping it real. So even though my peers and I graduated from yoga school a couple nights ago, we have another assignment.

But I have to say, I always thought doing a vigorous asanas in a really hot room sounds like a weird idea.

This is one more example among many of the inherent corruption of contemporary American culture, for which I find the influence of televisionsolely responsible. TV has established the template of public and private behavior in This Modern World, and demands that all activity be reduced to entertainment, even those activities traditionally defined as sacred or possessing inherent dignity. In this country today there is nothing so sacred that it can't be cheapened, and nothing so dignified that it can't be commoditized, in the manner of gymnastics competitions and beauty contests.

*Asana, or movement through a series of postures, is just one facet of yoga, which aims at the total integration of body, breath, mind, and spirit.

New York Times photo by James Estrin.

best nuggets from the catboxx -- history of the peace sign

This essay was originally published at the blog Omnem Movere Lapidem on February 23, 2006.

It's known and immediately recognized all over the world. Little kids are as familiar with it as they are with the red heart, the universal symbol for love, and draw both in the margins of their schoolwork. So it's surprising to realize that the beloved peace symbol, still sometimes known in Great Britain by its original name, "the CND logo," is fewer than fifty years old.

In 1958, as the anti-war, anti-nuclear movement was gathering momentum in England, the Direct Action Committee to End Nuclear War, one of several smaller groups that coalesced to form the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament, or CND, was looking for a symbol or slogan it could use to encapsulate the movement's message in a planned Easter weekend march and rally. Working independently, Gerald Holtom, a pacifist activist, professional designer, and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts designed the symbol and showed it to a few people in the office of the newspaper "Peace News."

To many, Holtom's peace sign looks like a sweptwing bomber seen from above. But the artist wanted a symbol that would incorporate the letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament), combined with a symbol of despair.

Holtom said at the time, "I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it." (Actually, in the painting Holtman references, "The Third of May, 1808," the man's hands are stretched upward, not downward, but the artist's mind's eye reversed the gesture.)

From the offices of "Peace News" the symbol was introduced to the Direct Action Committee, which produced five hundred large stick-mounted lollipops of it. When marchers carried these in the CND pilgrimage from London to Aldermaston, where nuclear weapons were and still are fabricated, it was the first public appearance of the "peace" sign, and appropriately an integral part of the first mass march and rally against nuclear proliferation.

Shortly after the Aldermaston march, the first buttons were produced by Eric Austin of the Kensington CND. He made these of white ceramic, with the symbol printed in black, and distributed them with a note explaining that in the event of nuclear holocaust, the CND badges would be one of the few surviving human artifacts.

The "peace" sign crossed the Atlantic to the U.S. within a few weeks, carried by Martin Luther King's associate Bayard Rustin, who had participated in the Aldermaston march. Some of King's followers began wearing it, and by the early sixties it was frequently seen in the form of lapel buttons at leftist rallies and demonstrations in places like San Francisco and Greenwich Village, where its meaning quickly broadened from the specific plea for nuclear disarmament to the more general sentiment of promoting world peace.

Knowledge and use of the symbol spread very quickly. Many G.I.'s even painted it on their helmets during the Vietnam War. Today there is scarcely an urban dweller in the world over the age of five who would fail to recognize this universal and beloved sign which encapsulates the human longing for an end to war, and the establishment of the permanent regime of peace.

Related: Wreath Wrath, and the History of the Peace sign

merry, merry times

 Good old Vlad the inhaler took a deep breath last weekend, and decided to wear the white hat for a while.

After pardoning two members of the punk/performance group Pussy Riot as well as springing a former political opponent, Michail Khodorovsky, who'd been languishing in prison for 10 years, Putin announced today that he is releasing 30 members of Greenpeace held in Russia following their protest  against Arctic oil drilling three  months ago. Charged with my fave crime "hooliganism," the international group of environmental activists, who are from 18 different countries, were facing a possible 7 years each. The Czar of all the Russias apparently has no soft spot for hooligans, but even they can bask in his mercy while he's wearing his white hat.

So what accoutnts foe this sudden gusher of mercy from the guy Americans have been trying to make into the modern incarnation of Ivan the Terrible? I hate to be cynical about someone doing the right thing(s), but with the Winter Olympics due to begin in Sochi in a few weeks, even Czars are aware nowadays of that peculiarly modern concept we call "PR" or public relations.

And going from the hardass and authoritarian father of his people to the merciful dad isn't tough at all. It's really just a matter of changing hats. 

at the front

Christmas is exactly like war, in that without it, our capitalist, consumption-dependent economy would collapse in an untidy heap.

We're dependent on war and Christmas for our survival. Also car manufacturing and the housing "industry," both of which are on life support at the moment.

Seems to me that collectively, we're like an addict who's certain his life sucks because he doesn't have enough money to feed all his addictions.

He, and we, are searching for the means to continue the way of life we're used to. But honesty and logic require us to stop and analyze our situation, rather than mindlessly running in the same old channel.

Even a fast and dirty analysis will tell us it's our desires that are causing pain and unhappiness in our lives, rather than our not having the means to satisfy those desires, which have been transformed by our economic regime into needs, or addictions.

For this reason, I'm quite willing to make war on Christmas the same way I've been making war on war since I was grown, by not doing it. I would also some day like to make war on suburbs and cars using the same method, but that's proving 2 B a little more difficult.

new week cat blogging

I        

                  
Mi gata is asleep on one of our Starvation Army chairs at d moment, dreaming of a home of her own. I don´t doubt she´s tired of motels and roommate situations. and her dream will soon enough come true. We were hoping for before Chistmas, but we´ll have to wait a bit longer.

Atrios the blogger has a talent for synopsizing analysis without distorting it. This morning, addressing the subject of the moment which we´re all sick of already but can´t stop talking about, he said

Reading through some silly "Duck Dynasty" fight threads around the internet, I'm reminded of how much "Christianity" is just a tribal marker for many people. It's about choosing teams and then cheering for your side. It's like being from Texas, or rooting for the University of Michigan. Of course there are serious believing Christians out there, but if people were that serious about their religion I'd expect that they'd know at least a bit more about it than many of them seem to. I don't mean "interpret the Bible the way I do," I just mean have some minor grasp of what's in it.

Also, too, "patriots" and US history.

Sawman

it seems like every time I go  outside

Something happens that I can´t abide:

Namely, some guy with a machine shatters my reflective bliss

every time. The rest of us get rzzzzzzz´d without a kiss

By some churl with a saw,

Who binds up with briars my joys and desires.

extreme isms

The Russian government has announced plans to block websites which encourage rioting and "extremist" viewpoints. The story at Russia Today also informs us that "Critics fear the law may infringe constitutional rights."

I didn´t even know Russia had a legislature, or a constitution for that matter. Not that it matters much, since the mode of government in Russia has been pretty much the same for over 500 years. You got the HMFIC, who used to be called the Czar (or more recently, the Party Chairman), and the rest is mayonnaise. TheSoviet Union had a constitution too -- and a lot of good it did them.

The RT story has the details. I just wanted to post this because I´ve noticed I have quite a few Russian  readers, and for those of you in PBurg or Mockba, if you dial up the old C-boxx one morning and find it gone, you´ll know I´ve fallen afoul of the Czar of all the Russias, or one of his blue-suited minons has found something "extremist" in the cranial detritus passes for thought in this space.

The keyhole kops

The damage done by Head clown Bozo Obama & his Feckless Fools of the NSA spreads daily.

A  Brazilian deal, $14.5 billion for fighter jets to be built by Boeing is off. The contract instead has has been awarded to Saab of Sweden.

The reason given: Brazil is really hot about the NSA spying on them, and President Dilma Roussoff is truly pissed about them spying on her.

Time for a cost-benefit analysis, except I don't think this administration is capable even of such a simple thing as number crunching. I swear, this crew of numbnutz could fk up a sòlid steel ball.

no way 2 duck the first

It's like this, dear reader. In this country, a person has the right to think what he wants & say what he thinks. Amendment I.

I've been hearing a number of progressives the past few days saying that corporations are not bound by Amendment I, in connection with this controversy. That's very dangerous line to take, unless you want to go back to the days of Plessy v. Ferguson.

If Phil Robertson was using that silly A&E "reality" show as a soapbox for baiting gays, I wouldn't take his part. But he never has, and was answering a question for an interview in friggin GQ, and responded by saying homosexuality is a sin. When pressed to explain his views further he lapsed into a kind of studied in-articulation that smart and cagey people use when they don't want to be pinned down. 

Im not too sorried abut Phil R. He's exactly what he presents himself as: a backwoods Cajun-Arikie  who grew up very poor and very wild. He's also a successful businessman and a shrewd judge of human character. He's also walked with the Devil, been saved and redeemed by Christ Jesus,  He's got 12 million viewers and a few mil in the bank. Possibly he's amused by the prospect of A&E killing the duck that lays golden eggs. There's even a good chance that Phil Robertson will decide at some point that he doesn't want to mess with TV after all, because it interferes with the real business of life -- hunting.

It's like this: either we all protected by the first all the time, or we're not. This does not include a right to get up in people's faces and be obnoxious and/or threatening. It just means we all have the right to think what we want and to say what we think.

The End

Ç@Tb0X€r

the machine machine

     I don't think America is capable of self-reflection, not anymore.  Don't know why that is.  Maybe because the Viet Nam generation and those who were paying attention during the reforms made by the Church Commission got too old and out of it...

People of the US might still be capable of self-reflection, if they'll turn off the corporate media 24/7 propaganda/noise machine. It's my experience that the majority of Americans, even many who are politically befuddled, still possess basic common decency, and anyone capable of empathy is also capable of insight. They also know from personal experience that wrongdoing entails paybacks.

Lincoln made clear at Gettysburg that he saw the hundreds of thousands of violent Civil War deaths as a blood sacrifice -- a necessary penance for permitting the crime of slavery to ever come to these shores. Every day that slavery continued in the US was another red mark in the providential account book, according to that way of thinking.

Today we find ourselves in a similar situation, because the US has been exporting death to the rest of the world, mostly Asia, for over 60 years now, in acts of unjustifiable aggression for which we the American people have yet to pay any price, save 9/11.

The government is incapable of reflection or insight, because it's become a machine fueled by money. Like any other machine, it has no soul, and nothing like a moral sense. Because it runs on money, its only values are those pertaining to the bottom line. Fifty years ago the machine belched, farted. and coughed, then shat out the Vietnam War, and the million or so who died in that act of casual brutality were added to our ledger. Ten years ago saw the beginning of C+ Augustus's Excellent Adventure in Iraq, about which my mentor Atrios had this to say a couple days ago:

Violence Is The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Of Our Problems

I wonder if Little Tommy Friedman is glad that Iraqis are still sucking on it. I wonder if he even thinks about Iraq much. 

I still get enraged at all of the people who were on board for that lovely little war. It really was just sport. Nationalism, hippie punching, revenge against people who had done nothing other than be born brownish. Basically, insanity. But they're all still very serious people.

...and many are stll in leadership positions, or, as in Tom Friedman's case, are rich pricks writing dumb columns for the New York Times. But Tom is an honorable man, as are they all, honorable men. Atrios is right of course, but I disagree about violence being a solution. Violence is necessary to effect the transition, which is to say, destroy the machine. Only after that can we talk about solutions -- reconstituting a government made up of human beings, elected by educated, informed, and active citizens in a democracy.

The quickest way to get there from here is to turn off Orwell's telescreen, which has poisoned the national mind and toxifies the national conversation.

Our right to privacy, guaranteed by law

A federal judge has ruled that the National Security Agency's data collection policies violate the 4th amendment.

"I cannot imagine a more 'indiscriminate' and 'arbitrary invasion' than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval," said Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush. "Surely, such a program infringes on 'that degree of privacy' that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment."

Since perhaps a majority of citizens nowadays carry around telephones that contain every detail of their lives encoded in ones and zeroes, yes, I'd say that "degree of privacy" is violated when the NSA seizes your phone records and sticks them in a file for possibly future reference.

Why are we even talking about this when we could just read the 4th amendment, which says,  "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

The judge's ruling that the NSA should cease and desist immediately from its unlawful procedures are postponed pending the government appeal of the case.

of brontosauri & men

Just as we were leaving Zion, my gal snapped this pic of me and Branwell, my pet dinosaur during our time in LaVerkin, Utah, which, as those in the know are aware, was where God located the first garden, you know, the original.

Branwell is only about 12 weeks, but large for his age and quite frisky. He'll do anything for artichoke hearts!

Unfortunately, I had to leave my little guy behind, in Zion, where such beasts as no one has ever seen are not just tolerated, but encouraged. However, there are no dinosaurs allowed in Arizona, and here in Maricopa County, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his Dippity, Chuckles Montgomery hold sway, dinosaurs are rounded up mercilessly and deported to the Jurassic without delay or ceremony, and their owners dispatched to the Duke of Maricopa's desert tent gulags for 90 days to six months.

And they don't have any unicorns here neither.

the catpiss chronicles

As the readership numbers for this little corner of Blogistan have increased significantly the past

month or so, it's been difficult at times to respond appropriately. The least of the difficulty has been the Great Retooling, which I'd been putting off, until my beloved and well-traveled Apple Mac finally  died two weeks ago. I'd had it since '08, a very welcome gift from my daughter during one of the hardest times of my life, and for the past five years it's gone everywhere with me.

The little inboard disc player died some time ago, and the keyboard was gradually being pounded into dust (several keys were dead already) when I spilled water into it in LaVerkin, Utah one fateful night. So out came the reinforcements which I'd been planning to bring into action since early fall -- just never got around to it (You know how it is). I must say, it's not been easy, but finally I'm up and running with a new i-Pad and wireless Logitech keyboard to go with it. This machine is not user-interface easy like the Mac was, and I'm still struggling with pictures. But it's doable, and with a stand for the pad, a real trendy looking little setup. Anybody who's thinking about going this way should consider springing the 50 for the keyboard, 'cause if you write a lot, the little touch-screen keyboard will drive you crazy. I'll have more to say about in the coming days.

But that's all boring tech stuff anyway, about which even I don't care that much. And by far the biggest distraction for this prompt, neat, and conscientious blogger the past couple weeks has been the catpiss. My new lady love and I just bought a house in Arizona that was saturated with the stuff, and we've spent as much time as we're physically capable of (she's 65, and I'm nearly 70) decontaminating our double wide. For a while we feared that horror of a smell would never be gone, and our purchase would sit idle for years as we moved through a string of fleabag motel suites, laboring in vain like a couple Sisyphuses and living on hope and hot showers.

The process began with ripping out the old wall-to-wall, of course, which thankfully we didn't do. We paid our neighbors to don their full hazmat suits (they do that kind of work), and we followed, first applying bleach to the floor, then sweeping and scraping it, and followed that by spraying on a deodorizer, and then a thorough coat of Kilz white primer. The place began to look better, but it still stunk like Pyewacket's pissoir, and we began to gnash our teeth and make big lamentations.

In desperation, almost, Ms. Kit called the Chem Doctor, and a couple of young guys came to the site yesterday and applied 7 or so gallons of Godnosewot to the worst spots on the floor. When I left there the place looked and smelled positively dreadful, but when we showed up today -- as the French say -- Viola! (just one of my little jokes ha ha). I guess this means I should sit down and type a nice email to Chem Doctor telling them your product works great, the guys were knowledgeable and friendly, and the sun rises from your butts because of all you did for us.

We'll be off next week, while the neighbor guys, Bob and Pete, paint the inside of our lavish new 2-piece manufactured shelter,  and lay new flooring. We'll kick it a mile or so away here at the Econolodge Inn and Suites -- it ain't Mesa's finest but it gets the job done -- and I anticipate writing a few tasty blog posts, cooking some serious and thoughtful meals, and spending some quality time with my cat.

And don't worry, we're going hardwoods this time. We've learned to just say no to rugs.

Big. Zucker

 We've known for some time that Kid Zuckerman's Excellent Enterprise, Facebook it's called, is up to no good, but it remains to be seen just how much of it they've bit off.

And now we know that all those partial posts we've written, but then thought better of and self-censored, that all of that stuff goes in the data-mining hopper along with the stuff we actually sent.

This article at Crooks 'n' Liars details this new revelation. It's been clear all along that the purpose of Facebook is to mine our data, which is then sold to advertisers and

who knows who. That's reason enough right there to avoid the place.

Yeah, I've got notifications pending. Who cares?

lonesome eagles

Did you see him in the river? He was there to wait for you.

Could you tell by the empty quiver? Brownskin Indian on the banks

That were crowded and narrow

Held a broken arrow?

Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield, Broken Arrow (1968).

Over at the DeadBreitbart web site, a sort of running memorial to the late Andrew aswellas a running sore on the internet, folks are fuming and fulminating over the numbers of bald eagles flying into the propellers of the windmills of which the wind farms that are popping up all over consist.

OK, I´ll admit there may be a problem here, although the timing of it appearing now is somewhat suspect. We've got about 20 years' work to do in the next five years if we're going to head off unprecedented environmental disaster.

People standing around Thinking up reasons why we can't get it done aren't helping. Can't you go play somewhere else? I heard that Prznit Obabama recently shook hands with Raul Castro, at Mandela's funeral. Why can't you be more outraged about that?

I realize that not all reasons for hating any and all environmentalism are trivial. I mean, lots of folks really hate curly light bulbs because they're so UGLY. And I certainly hope they'll take that up with somone who cares.

ya can't do that!

Juan Cole explains why dissent is impossible in a surveillance state.

We´re guaranteed some hypothetical "right to dissent," then find ourselves in a situation in which legal dissent is impossible. With dissent effectively criminalized, it becomes a revolutionary act, which is not the same as dissent.

The imprisonment of Chelsea Manning and de facto banishment of Ed Snowden prove it. Unless, of course, when Obama and the former occupant and all the other guardians of our liberty say ¨dissent,¨ they mean the kind of pointless complaining that doesn´t lead anywhere, i.e., the ¨right¨ to go blow off steam in a ¨free speech zone.¨

But let somebody put a little force into his or her dissent, say by saying that the heads of the department are systematic liars, then produce the government memos that prove it, and watch how fast the fine observances of our rights required by the Constitution go out the window.

large liner notes ii

Five Jacksons go into a bar, and one of them says, "We're here to do business."
Pp
And I say, "God bless the busy-ness of our beloved ancestors. And I wonder, can  Pepsi-Cola bring them back to life?"

such thoughts pass thru the fevered mind like water thru a sieve. My son! Do not venture into the Valley of the Jackals under the light of the full moon.

jesus and the jelly

Megyn  Jelly, long-time Fox News hand recently promoted to a face-of-the-network position, opened the pie hole yesterday, and declaimed on race, prnonouncing Santa Claus and Jesus Christ ¨white.¨

If this is as serious as it gets, the Jelliy Era at FN doesn t look too scary, as long as she limits herself to deciding the racial characteristics of nonexistent fictions, e.g. Santa Claus, or Jesus Christ.

As opposed to Yeshua ben Yusuf, or iesvs as his name was styled in Greek, a real historical person,  who bore little resemblance to that other, Jesus Christ factoid, cooked up by Paul of the New Testimony, neé Saul of Tarsus. 

cruzing to hell in a handbasket

Yes, I'm afraid it is real.

Horrifyingly fascinating, you know you want one, and soda I.

You can see the whole production somewhere (I'll look around and find that link), and even print out a copy for your colouring enjoyment http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/12/13/ted-cruz-coloring-book-becomes-top-seller?s_cid=rss:washington-whispers:ted-cruz-coloring-book-becomes-top-seller  

Rochester trust

Back in the day before the bank went bust.

Now of coarse, that was back in the  day when a bank was an extremely large piano-shaped  building, with an extraordinarily solid appearance, in order to convey the idea of permanent immutability, the fin-de-siecle bu.ilders borrowed from exremely ancient motifs from Greece.

This building lasted abutt 60 tears.

crime en chambre

Zo, I see in tha news that Sen. Murray of WA state has been hammering out a varshika bajata riporta or boduget that both houses of our legislature(truly, aparliament of whrores)

I don't know aobout you Dru, but when the Demorcrat starts talking about how we've got a deal all sewed up, my right hand goes to my wallet, and my left searches around for some kind of self protection.

And she's made a deal with Ryan, no less, the guy Charlie Pierce calls "the zombie-eyed granny-starver.

It'll be interesting to see the details in this so-called "plan," which should more properly be called a back-room deal between two sets of hired guns. Paul Ryan is sure to put the screws to ordinary working folks as hard as he is able, while the Senatress from Boeing pretends to exercie adult supervision.

big ol badass bucker rooneys

http://r2g2collection.blogspot.com/2010/12/money-on-my-mind-canvas-by-r2g2.html-
Basically, I see the "loyal" opposition as a bunch of people who have their mind on their money and their money on their mind. And I say "mind" rather than "minds," because we're talking 6-ply groupthink here. Nobody ever has to tell a Rehooligan what to do. They know instinctively.
All politics, especially US politics, especially contemporary US politics, is about money.

Money, money, money, money, money.

The Rehooligan 4-point policy (with apologoes tp atrios).
1. Squeeze the olds and the poors.

2. Give the juice to the rich people.

3. Also, too, keep the war going. Somebody will believe it.

4. Don't let them have it! Get the money.

bringin it all back home

I´m very glad to see the war coming home at last. As fast food workers went on a one-day strike for hgher wages in 100 US cities on Thursday, I could see the battle lines being drawn, with both sides steeling themselves for the struggle ahead. This one is going to be the finale, and I have a feeling we will finally decide what kind of a country and society we´re going to have

On their side, the owners have their corporate organizations, full of "yes" men (and women). They have the 24/7 propaganda engine of the corporate media, and of course, the national government -- executive, legislature, and a majority of the high court -- in their back pockets. And they also possess the awesome power of kapital
.
The workers have the high ground. and, literally in this economy, nothing to lose.

The corporatocracy also has full possession of the 4th branch of government, headquartered in the Pentagon and spread all over the world, whose operatives have one foot in government and another in ownership. It was this branch whose job it has been for the last 68 years to distract the workers from their real struggle, the one against the owners, by instilling fear and hatred of The Enemy in them, who changes from time to time (we were at war with Eurasia not long ago). So Afghanistan rolls on,   as it has for 12 years, but at this point the workers aren´t buying the threat of ¨terrorism.¨ and have no stake in the pointless struggle Afghanistan,

 

The US working class is no longer the easily-led herd of mindless fanatics and enraged nationalists they once were, however, and not so easy to manipulate as they were back in the fifties. If you're 24, working at McDonald's, holding down a part-time job, and still forced to seek govenment food assistance for yourself and your infant daughter to get by (which describes the situatioh of the young lady pictured above), you know that this country, this society, and the people who run it have problems which won't be addressed, much less solved, by a silly chimera like "Victory in Afghanistan."

It's time to finally bring the war home. Not the war in the MIddle East,  fought with explosives and bullets and currently fizzling toward its inevitable anti-climax, but a war of wills, to decide whose vision of America will prevail.

large liner notes

This is the device that sounds when it´z time togo. It´s a Western Electric 1957 model, nearly indestructable, with durable plastic headpiece and fuselage. Its bell is loud and startling, in a world of beeps. With normal care and maintenance it should last for all eternity, or at least until the earth ends, whichever comes first.

This is the first in a series of "large liner notes."

frumiousness in america

 Squidgeña-nahuatl, tursiops truncatus and frumious salutatiojs to ALLAH  youse guys.

¨ Because, you see, this relationship were doomed from the beginnin´¨¨ ´

And I thort it most extra ordinaruy, that she shed nary a tear as she said this. But was all deadpan about it, just laying it out flat like she done

Lost forever was the paradise found inside the perimeter of the little white pickett fence in the Gordon of Eadlin. Gone with the icy blast of northern winter air. Largely (but not totally thanks to ever-greens) vanished by this time of year, the garden lies lifeless and dormant.

 -- Dormez-vous, dormez-vous, --

resurrenction

Today we go to the new place, scrape the last of the cat piss off the floor (carpets came up and we bleached yesterday), and then we´ll apply the magic deodorizer. After that dries we might be ready to lay the new floors.

We got this place at a deep discount, which matches the deep cleaning we´re having to do. None of this is surprising -- eight years of wall-to-wall, two cats, and no catboxx. I don´t think the former resident ever did any cleaning, so we´ll get it all done in the next few days, and then start fresh.

It´s actually kind of fun, if a lot of work, to bring something back from the dead like this, truly a resurrection project.

picture this

This was going to be another installment of Friday Cat Blogging, except that pictures are a litttle beyond my means at the moment, plus we´re wrestling here with a spotty internet connection.

It was to have been a post about Sammy, the travelling cat, and how she has gotten used to moving from place to place, and in fact seems to thrive on it. I´ve never before encountered a feline who submits to automobiles without a struggle, and Sammy actually seems to enjoy the ride. A singular animal, to be sure, and enjoying the life of 1,000 motels.

It won´t last, though, because in about a week or so we´ll be settling into our new winter home, and will be there till mid-May, when once again our unique gata will once again experience the magic of the road, as we travel back to the north country.

snow is a 4-letter word

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WsOMeru8pxQ

Guess we won´t be seeing much of that in our new home, Mesa, AZ, this winter.

Bear with me, folks. i´ve got a new computing device called i-Pad, which has a lot of mystery to it, and a new wireless keyboard which doesn´t always transcribe the symbols indicated on the keys.

But I´m not complaining. It´s great to be struggling with a new machine in a relatively warm, dry, and snowless place.

Normal average mode

 Yesterday morning we left Utah, probably for good, excepting for the occasional family visit.

We will now resume normal behavior, which for us go isn't as normal as you might think.

But so what? No bird flies too high on his own wings.

getting it all together

(BRIGHAM CITY, UT) At the northern end of the Salt Lake

metropolis, in Box Elder county, you'll find the modest little town of Brigham City, named (of course) for Utah's founder.

Sitting in the Peach City Diner (delicious hand cut french fries!) with a crowd of adolescent missionaries and barely postpreadolescent priests, it's hard to imagine that the first, great physical link between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts was sealed by a solid gold railspike, driven with a silver hammer just a few miles east of here.

Construction began in the midwest, at Davenport, IA, and at San Francisco Bay on the Pacific coast. 1900 Miles of contiguous track from Omaha to Oakland opened for business on 5/10/1869. The South was beaten, and slavery gone. The Indians, still capable of mounting serious resistance in 1863 when construction began, were mostly finished by the time the road was done.

The native American peoples were nearly wiped out by smallpox, measles, and other imported diseases and conditions against which they lacked immunity. The historian Francis Jennings estimates death rates from the Euro plagues at around 90 percent, or the same rate of mortality that was documented in Mexico at the time of contact. Violence was the destiny of survivors of the plagues, and their fate was sealed when Custer's command was snuffed out near Deadwood City, SD, in 1876. Even more, though, mechanized transport, linking the coasts, opened the west to exploitation and Euro American penetration on a revolutionary scale.

Already the sustenance and habitat of the natives was being altered by aggressive, ambitious, and prophetic capitalists. They engineered systematic destruction of the vast herds of  bison, so as to "open" the west to "settlement" by a new set of humans and their bovines. And they would demand rairoads, to haul their cattle, and the bankers and finance guys, the consultants  and stock waterers would enjoy a golden cascade of riches. And they did. 

But think of it: before the Civil War the only way to get to Oregon from the east was to take a train to St Louie or Iowa, then get off and walk. Through wind and weather over a barren plain, two mountain ranges, and a large desert. By 1869, you could take a four day Pullman's Palace sleeping car, if you had the dough, and ride in comfort and security from most anywhere northeast of the Mississippi.

megalopolis

The current US population is 317 million.

I was wondering what percentage of us live in one or another of the 11 "megalopolises" --  clusters of large and medium-sized  cities which have grown together, filling up the rural spaces that once separated them.

The last watershed year in US demographics was 1920. Up until then the majority of us lived in rural areas, but that began to change after the civil war, and by 1920 we were 50/50, half rural, and half city folks.

The Great Lakes megalopolis is about 54 million (if we exclude the 6 million of Toronto/Windsor metro area in Canada). This is "rust bucket" America, where I grew up.

The Northeast Megaregion includes New York Metro's 20 million (which includes 8 biggest cities in NJ, 6/7 biggest in Connccticut, and 5 counties in NE Pennsylvania), Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston, has 52 millions.

Another enormous region, which stretches from Birmingham, AL northeastward to Raleigh/Durham, NC and includes Atlanta's 6 millions, has upwards of 17 million total.

The Texas Triangle (Houston, Dallas/Ft Worth, Austin) = 17 million

LA metro is 13 million plus San Diego County's 3 millin totals 16 million.

The Gulf Coast region runs in a narrow strip from Brownsville, TX to Tallahassee, FL (excluding Houston's 2 million already counted) and takes in New Orleans and Mobile, ending at St Petersburg, and is about 9 million.

The Everett/Seattle/Tacoma/Vancouver/Portland, OR corridor has about 8 1/2 million.

7 mlllion live in the Bay Area of northern california including San Jose.

Arizona (Phoenix and Tucson areas) have approximately 6 million.

The Front Range corridor, which runs from southern Colorado to Cheyenne, Wyoming (anchored at Denver/Boulder) contains about 4 million people. Frequently, the geographically separated 2 millions of the Wasatch corridor (Salt Lake City) of Utah is included, giving this fragmented "region" a total of 6 million.

The South Florida megalopolis is 5 million strong.

Total urban population in megacities is 165 and a half million.

.52 x 317 = 164.84. 52% Of us live in megalopli. This doesn't include people living in cities like Omaha, NE, which isn't part of a megalopolis. We're now overwhelmingly urban, just as 200 years ago we were overwhelmingly rural.

What does this mean? I don't know, nor do I know how good and true these numbers are, compiled in a few hours' research earlier today. Will they stand up? Anyone who can correct any of the mistakes which have almost certainly crept in here, please leave a comment, which is not always easy and seems to require a gmail account.

totem?

We recently learned that the closest thing my partner has to a totem animal is the tursiops truncatus, or bottlenose dolphin.

Mine is the octopus, which I think is a sinister totem to be saddled with. Octopi have horrible reputations among humans, but in reality they're rather shy creatures, intelligent for a fish, and not a menace except to whatever they eat.

I find it a bit strange that both our totem animals are marine creatures.

war machines then and now

Historians usually count the Roman general and aristocrat Trajan (98 to 117 CE)  as one of the "good" emperors. Following in the footsteps of his father, a successful military commander and provincial governor, Trajan was happiest leading armies, conquering new territories, and killing people he designated "enemies."

Under his rule, the empire grew to a ridiculous size, reaching its widest extent with Trajan's short lived conquest of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq). Before his Mesopotamian misadventure, he acquired Dacia for the empire, a huge territory north of the Danube in eastern Europe. A 100- foot-high column at Rome, the surface of which unrolls like a long, spiral comic-strip-like narration of Trajan's excellent Dacian adventure, and its gorgeously executed bas reliefs make his monument to himself both an artistic masterpiece and an irreplacable historical document.

Trajan saw himself as a warrior monarch and lived to conquer. Like the criminals of the Bush/Cheney regime, he made war on Baghdad just to be beating on somebody, and under his rule war became the purpose, first love, and main preoccupation of the Roman city state.

Trajan created the greatest war machine of ancient times. War and violence became the reason for Rome's existence, and the source of its downfall. All the human and monetary resources of the state were bent to this purpose, and once established the war machine devoured the state, which as time went on was impoverished by military necessity.

Modern critics of my thesis are sure to point out that the Roman war machine was puny and insignificant compared to ours, After all, we could destroy the world and all life on it if we wanted to, (do we want to?).

However, industrial technique, or "technology" amplifies the dark side of human nature, just as it does the bright, creative side. The evil work of the Roman emperors and its stranglehold on the resources of a once great nation, mirror our own.

In this regard, the history of the downfall of Rome exactly, and creepily, parallels our own. You can't conquer the world without making tons of enemies, nor exhaust the resources of a nation for destructive purposes without growing weaker. And all those enemies are sure to take note of their conqueror's growing weakness as the war machine hollows out the nation.

The reign ofTrajan, one of the "good" emperors, is sometimes counted as the high point of Rome's 1200 year history. Likewise, the US was at the height of its powers in 1945, at the end of WWII. In both cases, the decision to devote the resources of the state to war and the capacity for waging it continuously, led to precipitous declines in power and  prestige. 

The great 18th century historian Edward Gibbon said "the principal architect of the decline of the Roman Empire" was Septimius Severus,  who ruled  100 years after Trajan. But Severus, when he paid huge bribes to the army, by then the only source of genuine power in Rome, was simply bowing to the reality of his situation. Meanwhile, historians wax poetic about :"the glory" of the string of military dictators who followed Augustus, and Trajan generally gets the star treatment.

Some glory. The retired US Marine general and two time Medal of Honor winner Smedley Butler wrote in 1930 that "War is a Racket."  It's a basic observation, just as true in 100 AD when Trajan was putting together the greatest war machine ever seen until that time, as it is today.

I often hear people, including conservaties, saying that "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it." But it's not enough to know history, and if we want to avoid dropping into the same hell our Roman ancestors and role models endured, we really need to understand history, on top of knowing it.

A war machine is a great evil, and no good can come of having or using one. Inevitably, such an evil device will end up backfiring and destroy those who  wield it.