Sunday, March 29, 2015

hairy reed will b replaced by shroomer

Unfortunately it looks like Hairy Reed will be replaced by another mediocrity -- Charlie Shroomer, Sen. from the grate state of NY.


I've had this guy's namba since 2013, when I wrote this little piece about him. Needless to say, lots has changed since then, mostly due to the collapse of global oil prices, & the realization that the global economy is contracting because of the unfinished business of 2007-08. But Shroomer's one o those oblivians who doesn't change -- he never learns or forgets anything.

"He Must be High on Something," Someone Said

Yesterday our illustrious senator Charlie Shroomer, shown here preparing to examine a witness, ate a buncha shrooms and then had hard words for the popular Russian dictator, Vlad the Inhaler, re: the latter's date with Edward Snowden.

"If you do this there will be serious consequences!" the indignant legislator growled with a growl.

But despite the threats of Sen Shroomer, or the shrieks of Sen Huckleberry Graham, or the towelmouthed mumblings of Mike Lee, the senator from Toxic Waste, the czar of all the Russias was not seen shakin like a dog shittin peach pits. In fact, he didn't even seem to notice.

Why should he? Putin is the immensely popular, democratically elected dictator of the biggest oil producing country in the world. He's in the catbird seat, while the United States is in deep kim chee, over money, endless war, accelerating inequality, Stalinist surveillance, and on and on.

Meanwhile in Russia, life is good. The money from western Europe to pay the bill for all that Russian oil and gas keeps rolling in, and it's party time. Putin doesn't have to deal with a crackbrained legislature trying to starve poor people, or idiotic arguments over abortion, guns, Terry Schaivo, the flag, and praiyer in our skewels. At the same time the material underpinnings of life in the US are strained to the breaking point, and the future here is very uncertain.

This is an astounding reversal of historical fortune. The Russians have suffered more than perhaps any other people on earth, having endured autocracy, Bolshevism, the worst war ever visited on any country in history, followed by a bloody repression which likewise set world records. But he who is last shall later be first, and vice versa, and as the great Yogi Berra once said, "History ain't what it used to be."

Have another helping of mushrooms, Chuck. Lindsey Graham is about to turn his underwear around backward and give a stern if somewhat falsetto lecture to Vladimir the Czar, who has recently gone Czarinaless. No matter, this veck will never truly be on his oddy knocky, for he has a high functioning gulliver on his pletchoes, and therefore need not deign to slooshy the grazhny slovos of bezoomny shroomer, nor the creechy goloss of Sen Huckleberry.

--June, 2013

Friday, March 27, 2015

friday cat blogging








Sammy likes her new recliner.

Sunday, March 22, 2015

criminal intent



Racism is mostly a function of guilt. Tell white folks they're guilty and you'll get a hysterical and angry denial, nearly every time. They combine iniquity with stupidity by doing so, since People who commit terrible crimes are objectively guilty. Anybody who thinks I'm talking about people's fee-fees is way off. I'm speaking of the actual condition of literal guilt.

For example:

The 18th and 19th centuries white Americans practiced murder, kidnapping, and imprisonment of their victims for life.

In the 20th and 21st centuries we refined things a little. Now we send unstable & racist white po-lice into our central cities for the purpose of terrorizing the population by randomly shooting young black men. Some of these R armed & dangerous, but most are harmless & docile. All the police, on the other hand, R armed and dangerous. Even worse is the gulag we've constructed for young men of color & quite a few women 2. Millions are currently warehoused & serving excessively punitive sentences on overblown drug charges. The "war on drugs" is a war on young black guys. It's been going on long enough now that denying it is futile.

It's getting worse, not better. Every timeI I think about this situation, I wonder how people can be  so unaware of what they're doing. They stay unaware by constructing elaborate racist schematics, and by becoming totally obsessed with "the other." 

Self-justification is everyone's chief refuge from awareness of how horrible they've become. From the "peculiar institution" to the "war on drugs," the history of whites in the USA has been characterized by denial, avoidance, euphemism, and failure to deal with the monsters in their own past and their own psyches.

The "peculiar institution" was a methodical mass kidnapping for purposes of stealing labor by force. It's noteworthy that the best estimates of mortality on the vessels transporting Africans to their New World bondage run about 1/3, whidh means genocide has to be factored into rthe equationan as well. In rough figures, it would mean roughy 14 million made it to their new lives as prisoners, and about 7 million died at sea. The genocide was unintentional, but nonetheless real, and occurred over a period of 200-plus years

It was a record unmatched until modern times, when Hitler brought mechanization and railroads to the science of murder, and accomplished in a few short years what it had taken western Europeans 200 years 2 get done. Maybe "accomplished" is the wrong word.

Some will be offended by what I've written here, but I can back up every word, Sometimes the truth is a blunt instrument.

Portrait: Denmark Vesey in 1822, the year of his execution.




Friday, March 20, 2015

friday cat blogging

Hi kidz! It's already time 4 another episode of the Friday Cat. I dug out this old pic of beautiful Sammy on the deck railing of her second home, in Port Ludlow, WA.

We hope you like eet.

Friday, March 13, 2015

friday's cat

Sammy's fave place in her old home was the back of this recliner.

She likes her new one here just as well

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

diet of worms, pt 3

The Worm Moon

"What a state you're in,"
They say as a stray
Tear dribbles off my chin.
I say, "Pay it no mind."

"You have offended the gods,"
The Priestess says,
"You are banished from the temple
To wander beneath the Worm Moon."

Cast adrift in an eyeless desert,
I sit alone on a metal bench,
A cup of coffee and a cigarette,
Staring at the blank hills,
And they stare blankly,
Eyelessly back.

This is how it ends:
Not with a bang,
Or a clang,
Or a "hot dang,"
But with a faint hiss
As the air leaks out.

Nothing remains but a marionette;
A ridiculous figure as I trot
Across the empty parking lot,
Clutching a box of laxative
To lubricate the fading bones and skin.


(Photo: red compost worms)

As the temperature begins to warm and the 

ground begins to thaw, earthworm casts,

appear, heralding the return of the robins. The 

more northern tribes knew this Moon as the 

Full Crow Moon, when the cawing of crows 

signaled the end of winter; or the Full Crust

Moon, because the snow cover becomes 

crusted from thawing by day and freezing at 

night. The Full Sap Moon, marking the time of 

'tapping maple trees, is another variation. To

the settlers, it was also known as the Lenten 

Moon, and was considered to be the last full 

Moon of winter. 

phoenix moonshine



La full Worm Moon of March.

Photo: Kit Wood

Sunday, March 08, 2015

The kardashian buttocks and the venus of willendolrf.




















Even if U have little acquaintance with the poisonous cloud called the National Media, I'm sure you've heard about Kim Kardashian's ass. Probly seen it too.

     Kardashian's unique & expertly crafted & sculpted hindquarters convince me that in terms of ethical progress, humankind is going Neolithic. Devo's message back in the 70's (if there was a message) was that humans have devolved and are devolving -- Think of it as evolution in reverse.

That's a wrong take only because whatever develops is evolution by definition. But I understand & agree with what they said, way back thar in tha semnie's.

I'm afraid not of the image of Kim Kardashian's botuffin glutei, but of what it says about us. It seems we have reverted to worship of the Venus of Willendorf:  


Ever wonder what old Venus W. looked like from behind? Just like Ms. Kardashian.
 C'est vrai! 






Saturday, March 07, 2015

frIday cat blogging, saturday edition

Couldn''t get on line yesterday Bcuz I was between internet providers.Got me a new modem & finally got back into the world of internet tubes this morning. 

Yesterday there wasn't much to do except take a nap, in z chair, with z katt.

Sunday, March 01, 2015

ole hick'ry



This rigamarole this country is in right now over the teaching of history might come down to a debate about the relative virtues and defects of the guy on the $20 bill. 

Andy's victory over the Brits at New Orleans in 1815 touched off the nation's first period of true greatness -- the "Era of Good Feelings." His massacre of the Creek Nation at Horseshoe Bend, Alabama the year before New Orleans cleared the deep south for settlement -- my slave-owning ancestor Francis Brice was able to buy land formerly occupied by the Creek Nation as a result.

The crimes visited on the Cherokee people mentioned by Esdraelon were solely the fruit of Mr. Jackson. The Supreme Court tried to stop it, and Andy's comment was (Chief Justice) "John Marshall has made his decision -- let's see him enforce it."

We're talking about a tiny little guy of 5'6 or 7", 120# tops. He was all sucked up and skinny due to lead poisoning; carrying lead in inaccessible places in his chest and left arm, from several duels. In at least 2 of these he was shot badly, but got off the ground & coolly shot his opponent to death.

You must understand of Jackson that rage was his default setting. He had a life-long penchant for the relief provided by ragegasms. 

Jackson did away with the First Bank of the US, and had absolutely no understanding of modern  economics. The First Bank, of course, was the great-grandfather of the Federal Reserve. Was he right or was he wrong? Was he a great hero or a bloodthirsty bully? A visionary or an ignoramus? A man of the people or a racist dog?

Or was he -- and this is what I think -- all of those things simultaneously? How is that possible?

Life is strange, & very complicated. Never more so than in the US, a great and dreadful country.

All the contradictions and flaws and virtues of the young republic were wrapped up in the person of Jackson, the founder of American democracy, and the real originator of the Democratic Party.

Sometimes historical reality is too complex to be expressed in words. All I know for sure is at this stage, & quite by accident, Andrew Jackson is the perfect person to be immortalized on our primary, hence most important currency, the $20 bill.
SANDERS-WARREN 2016

Photograph of Andrew Jackson by Matthew Brady, 1845. Jackson died on June 8, 1845. within weeks of the photo sitting, at 78.