This is a Mirror

This guy loves famous people.
See his hat? " I 'heart' Famous People"?
That would make a wonderful epitaph:

America
1776- 2007
We Loved Famous People

"I love famous people" is a more than a peculiar statement, it's a perverse new theology, the product of a highly irrational society, one that kills the fatted calf in bizarrely exuberant celebrations of the return of our prodigal children to the media spotlight while simultaneously ignoring events that we really should be paying attention to.
By qualifying our love of people with the word "famous", we have used semantics to tellingly, albeit unconsciously, acknowledge that we have turned our backs on our self-proclaimed national 'Christian' faith-you know, the one which adjures us to love poor (and presumably unknown) people? That one.

It also points to the corruption and downfall of language as a means of communicating ideas. If words no longer mean what they are supposed to mean, then communication will break down- and every endeavor that requires human communication will suffer as a consequence.This pretty much includes everything that people do, so it's a serious problem. Politics and policy are a good example of just how disastrous believing in lies can be .
Our political system has been crippled, perhaps slain, by the wounds inflicted by words with false meanings. "Freedom" = surveillance. Peace is war., etc etc...
George Orwell rolls over in his coffin and says "told ya so", but there's six feet of dirt and decades of stupidity muffling his admonishment.

I can hear the interred voice of Edgar Allan Poe, warning us, " Hey guess what? The only time those famous people even notice you is when they take time out of their famous day to hate you. Or rip you off." (Maybe that was Dorothy Parker- I always get the two mixed-up)

In this case, Mr. Famous Love is apparently ignorant of the difference between fame and infamy.
If you are best-known for setting records (since broken) in professional sports, you are famous.

If you later become a household name because you decapitated your ex-wife, your prior deeds are eclipsed and you are now infamous. You will be loved only by drooling half-wits and your high-powered attorneys, because frankly, no one else can stand to be around you.

Ah, if only that were true...instead, Mr. Famous Guy inadvertently* points out another sign of our national malaise- our prideful , yet ignorant and apathetic approach to our own national politics- many times I have heard people tell me "I NEVER vote because all politicians are crooked, it's all the same, it's boring etc etc."
This is often said with a perplexing defiant, defensive pride. If Al Gore had gotten one vote for every time I've heard someone boast about not voting, we wouldn't be in Iraq right now.

Well guess what? This country is in a mess - arguably the worst ever- and it's because you and you and you didn't vote. Or if you did, you believed the obvious bullshit and voted for the wrong man-twice. Even Diebold couldn't rig enough machines to skew the results of what should have been a landslide in 2000...and 2004. But fear and ignorance won the day- twice.

Fooled twice? Shame on you.

Yeah, tell me that Al Gore would have invaded Iraq..uh huh...it's quite possible that if Gore had won, Osama bin Laden would have called off the 9/11 attacks- the primary goal of the attacks was to goad America into a mis-placed and ill-considered war of savage attrition and it's very unlikely that Gore would have invaded Iraq- quite likely, he'd have finished the job his boss started by catching or killing Osama bin Forgotten - instead , the attacks led to an pointless, soul-killing war predicated on lies and an unquestioning national devotion to our sanguicolous leaders, a cabal loyal only to itself and driven by profits reaped on the harvest of war ; we allowed them to lead us blindly into a war that should have been obviously unjust and unwise to anyone NOT wearing a hat proclaiming their love of famous people.

Oh yeah, we love famous people. Again, I will use Mr. Famous Guy to illustrate just how utterly enervated and atrophied our national political will has become. MFG, unlike many celeb-gawkers, is politically active. Check out his choice of candidate:

Believe it or not, there are people who would be worse as President than George W. Bush. For example, I wouldn't want Charles Manson as President...or O.J. Simpson in any office that doesn't include steel bars, a stainless sink and a metal cot.

OJ [in] '07. That's how far we have fallen.

We love famous people. Godzilla help us.

------------
* I have been told that Mr. Famous Love is a prankster, in which case his garb is a wickedly pointed jab at what ails us- what ails us is us.

Wide Stance, Narrow Mind

I'm sure you've heard the story of Sen. Larry Craig (R-Top) by now. According to Craig, his splay-legged defecatory crouch led to his arrest in a Minneapolis airport restroom. Either that, or he was reaching for a non-existent piece of toilet paper in such a manner that an undercover detective felt obliged to intervene. In any case, he got busted with his pants down.
( Query: When you use public toilets, do you pick up stray bits of paper with your bare hands? Mr. Craig claims to. Yuck.)

Not surprisingly, Sen. Craig is an outspokenly anti-gay conservative Republican. He is so anti-gay that the words "I'm not gay" keep popping up on the tape recording of his arrest and I'm sure he'll repeat them when he resigns.

When uttered by 'straight' white conservative men, the phrases: "I'm not gay", "I support family values" and "I oppose the gay agenda" seem to be code for: " I suck cock in public toilets."

Remember this guy?


Even after Ted Haggard got exposed for doing meth with gay hookers he referred to his sexual orientation as a "problem." After three weeks of 'therapy' , Haggard publicly declared that he was cured and that he is now and always has been " completely heterosexual", whatever that means.
Haggard was a rabidly anti-gay conservative who passionately preached against his own secret practices until he got outed by a gay prostitute.


How about Tom DeLay? Sure signs that you are in deep trouble include:

- Having to explain your idiosyncratic style of defecation to a detective.

- Having Tom DeLay defend your honor.

Disgraced ex-Congressman Tom DeLay tried to cover for Craig and his ilk by pointing out that the kettle is also black. Delay's defense of Craig was bizarre. First he said he wanted to hear "the facts" - this is after Craig had plead guilty and the facts had pre-empted hours of cable news, including the GAO report that refutes the Bush claim that the 'surge' is working. He then began pointing fingers at Democrats and the "biased" media ; claiming that the Craig story was diverting attention from our victory in Iraq. What victory? What media bias?
The fact that DeLay is given any credibility at all seems to be at odds with GOP claims that the media has a liberal bias...having Tom DeLay speak about corruption is akin to having O.J. Simpson lecture on domestic violence. They are both experts, just not the kind you want on your side.


Do you know who William Bennett is?

He was Secretary of Education and the so-called 'drug czar' under the Reagan/Bush regime. He lost the ill-considered 'War on Drugs' and subsequently amassed a huge fortune as an author, consultant and public speaker on the subjects of ethics and morality.
In 2003 it was discovered that he had spent a considerable amount of that fortune on Las Vegas slot machines.

Can you see a pattern emerging? I have heard it referred to as "he who smelt it, dealt it."

With this pattern in mind, let me introduce you to Ron Luce.

Watch a chilling video excerpt here.

Luce is a self-appointed messenger of God and his mission is to protect the virtue of teenagers. He is very, very concerned about teenage sexuality- his ministry is actually named Teen Mania. Luce holds Nuremberg-style rallies called 'BattleCry' where pyrotechnics, Jumbotron TV screens and rock music are used to preach his message of abstinence and humility.

He claims the 'secular media' are brainwashing our children and he uses the trappings of a Kiss concert to deliver this message to an audience of chanting, swaying, brainwashed teens.
His justification for his campus dress code (long skirts, minimal flesh) is exactly the same as that of the Taliban- that men just can't be held responsible for the terrible things they might do if they catch a glimpse of feminine pulchritude.

I'm not the inveterate gambler that Bill Bennett is, but I'd wager that the odds are pretty good that Luce's pattern will eventually emerge, if you know what I mean.

Anyone wanna bet?

Honk

I have an early childhood memory of riding in a car with two of my adults, but without my brother. I think I was four or five and it was probably 1969 or 70, but I'm not sure and there's no one for me to ask.
We were winding our way through the West Virginia mountains and were forced to go very slowly because the car in front of us was barely creeping along. The steep mountainous roads were narrow, full of cutbacks and blind turns and it was impossible to find a passing zone; there was nothing to be done other than to follow the slow car at it's own pace. In hindsight, it had to have been going pretty slow; we were in a VW Beetle and I don't think that little car was much of an uphill racer.

I was in the backseat, reading comic books and I wasn't really concerned about going fast or getting anywhere. During my childhood I moved a lot. I was always going somewhere I didn't want to, often without any warning at all, so a slow ride to nowhere was fine with me.
I had my books, that is where I wanted to go.

My adults were considerably more tense.

"Goddamn son-of-a- fucking bitch, get off the fucking road!", screamed the male adult behind the wheel.

Where? How? There's a forest on one side and a cliff on the other.

My driving adult started honking the horn. Honk! Honk!

The car in front of us maintained it's sluggish speed.

"You stupid fucking asshole! Drive, you dumb motherfucker!" Honk! Honk!

Then he started tailgating the car, pulling to within a few feet of it's rear bumper. I looked up between the two seats to see what all the shouting was about and saw that the car in front had two elderly people in it and the female passenger had turned around in her seat and was looking at us.

It was a look of fear. She was trying to mouth some sort of message, a plea or explanation.
She ended with a weak, apologetic smile and held up her hand, palm facing us.

Calm down please. Stay back a bit, OK?

"Goddamned stupid fucking wrinkled old cunt," yelled my adult. Then he gave the old lady the finger. She blanched , turned around and said something to the gentleman who was driving. His panicky eyes reflected back at us in his rear-view mirror. He reached for something with his left hand.

In front of us, the car's Hazard lights started flashing.

Inside our vehicle, my adult was screaming bloody murder. He was preparing to throw a half-empty beer bottle forward through our open sunroof.

"Don't," said my other adult, a woman whose name I cannot recall.

She reached for the man's arm and our car swerved, almost colliding with a Ford Econoline coming the opposite direction. The driver of the van honked his horn, cursing us with his finger.

The two adults started yelling at each other and I went back inside my comic book.

After some time, we came to an overlook and the car in front of us pulled off the road, allowing us to pass. My adult cursed some more and flung the now-empty bottle out of our car as we sped by, the tiny VW engine revving in the trunk behind me.

I don't recall where we were going or where we were coming from, but I do remember one thing: I remember what I was told after we got there.

My female adult found a moment to talk to me alone. She thought that the man's violent display of anger and rage might have upset me and she wanted to comfort me. This yelling and throwing wasn't anything unusual in my experience, but she didn't know that, so she tried to explain an idea to me. An important idea.

"Allan, I want you to remember something. I want you to remember how [ my male adult] acted when we were on that road. When you are old enough to drive, you will be stuck behind cars just like that and I want you to remember this. This is important."

Important enough to stop reading Spider-Man?

"Yes. Put the book down. You see, sometimes cars break down and they can't go very fast. Sometimes cars get tired or sick or wear out and when they go up and down hills it is hard for them to go the same speed as the cars around them. But unless you are in that car, you can't tell what's wrong with it. There might be nothing wrong with it at all and it might the hill that is the problem, but you can't know that. Yelling and screaming at it isn't going to help it move any faster, the car can only go as fast as it can go. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

Yes, I lied, and returned to Spider-Man's world.

Today, I am ashamed to admit that I do not know who this woman was. I feel a sting of guilt and humiliation because she was trying very hard to teach me something and it took me over thirty years to understand it. Back then, I had no idea what she was talking about- all I wanted to do was read my comics. I didn't care about cars, all I knew of cars is that I seemed to live in them nearly as much as I lived in houses.

Like cars, houses sometimes broke and stopped working and the proper adult thing to do in either case was to yell, scream, get drunk and break things- in no particular order. That's what grown-ups did.

And when I grew up, that is what I did. Because I had forgotten what she said.

It wasn't until I found myself driving a fucked-up old Plymouth station wagon up a long, steep grade on a very similar stretch of road that I even recalled her words, much less understood them. The old beater was straining and it still wouldn't do more than 35, which was the posted limit, I believe.
It wasn't long before a trail of vehicles had queued up behind me, honking and flashing their headlights. I'm sure there was cursing, but I had one eye on the road and the other on the thermostat and couldn't hear them over the engine's death rattling...my car was struggling.

When the road widened to include a third lane, the parade of cars that passed each took their turn at cursing me .
Some of them yelled.
Some of them flipped the bird.
Others did both.

Every single driver had a deep and personal anger, hatred really,and it was directed at me- just for being on the same road as them. I was going as fast as I could and I wasn't breaking the law. I was just there and they hated me for it. It was mean in spirit, and worse, it was cruel. It reminded me of the past and that is always cruel. To some degree, anyway.

I wasn't in much better condition than the car that I was driving at that time. Circumstance and addiction had put me in a dark and haunted place, and by the time the last car- a BMW convertible driven by a woman who would have been beautiful if she hadn't been yelling "motherfucker!" at me- passed by, I was devastated. I arrived home in tears and went straight to the bottle and stayed there until all thoughts of screaming, all sights and sounds of honking cars and women who hated me had been blotted from my mind.
I was forgetting when I should have been remembering.

A lot of time has passed since then, but I remember what the mystery woman was trying to tell me. I know those words. I don't recall when they started making sense to me, but they do now.

It's not complicated.

It's simple. It applies to everything we do and since what I am doing right now is blogging, I will try to apply her wisdom to that.

Imagine that blogging is a sort of road- an internet highway, if you will.
Catchy metaphor, eh?
Let's consider blogs as cars and bloggers as drivers.

Imagine that there are thousands of lanes on this highway- more lanes than traffic could ever need. Most of the lanes are clear in both directions as far as the eye can see.

Now picture a sedan plugging along on the shoulder of this vast road. Maybe it's going as fast as it can, maybe not; in any case it's off the main lanes and it isn't blocking anyone. There are no flares or SOS signs.

In a passing car, another driver sees this, peels off the highway and slides onto the shoulder behind the slower vehicle. The driver follows the sedan at a distance of less than five feet.

From that close it's easy to read the bumperstickers on the leading car.

The stickers identify the politics, spirituality and sexuality of the car's driver, as well as a half-dozen other traits and opinions specific to that person.

They aren't the same as those of the driver of the second car.

So the driver of the second car starts cursing at the car in front. Personal words based on information scanned from stickers - words of hatred and rage, wielded like a weapon; a full-auto, hi-capacity handgun of hate. Aimed at the back of a stranger's head.

They honk their horn: HONK! HONK! GO FASTER!

And they curse: MOTHERFUCKER! I HATE YOU!

In the first car, the driver looks behind them and wonders: Why don't they just pass me?There are a hundred empty lanes. Why the hell are they yelling at me?

Meanwhile, back on the highway, cars roll by.

Some of the drivers look over and ask:
-What is that asshole yelling about?
-Why don't they just get back in their own lane and keep moving?
-Don't they have anything better to do?

When I see hateful, harmful and even abusive unsolicited comments left on the blogs of others, I tend to form a very low opinion of the person who left them.
Do you see them too?
What do you think?

It makes me think of a mad driver, too preoccupied with someone else's bumperstickers to notice that they themselves are driving erratically, swerving dangerously close to the cliff on the far side of the shoulder.

YELL! HONK!

Swerve.

There's a squeal of tires, a shriek of metal as the guardrail gives way.

10,000,000 lanes to choose from and some will always choose the cliff.

And they will honk all the way to the bottom.

Your Big Gay Baby

Have you ever fired a shotgun at a hobo? The traditional method involves removing the lead 'shot' from the ammunition and replacing it with chunks of rock salt.
This is slightly less fatal than buckshot but guaranteed to hurt like hell in any wounds it causes- but most hobos will jump from a moving boxcar at the sight of a shotgun, rock salt or not- a hobo trapped in the narrow confines of a railway freight car is an easy target.

But there are easier targets.

Fundamentalist Christian Homophobes, for example. Attacking them and their ludicrous 'beliefs' is easier than drowning slugs in a barrel of pickle brine.

These Christians, who hate Science when it teaches evolution or uses stem-cells to fight diseases, have opened up Pandora's Closet with this almost unthinkable uproar about Gay Babies- in theory, these Christians hope, science will allow them to determine their unborn child's sexual orientation , giving them the chance to 'cure' unborn queer babies of their homosexuality, which no serious modern scientist would call a disease anyway...

A Fundie Christian wrote this:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

My idea would be to guillotine the writer's penis in order to help him avoid the "inevitable effects of sin" - but why stop there? Let's remove his fingers before he pens more poison words - heck, lose the whole hand.
Dude.
Save yourself from the Sin of Onan.

This dogmatic freak is using religious insanity as an excuse for practical applications of eugenics theory.
Even the Nazis were not this crass- the Germans conducted their atrocities in the name of science and Nation and left God out of their vocabulary of horror- but this man implies that God would be OK with Man tinkering with the unborn if it kept them from being gay...hmm, what's next? Does Thalidomide prevent self-abuse? Does being born with a flipper instead of an arm keep you pure?

They could test for other 'degenerate' traits...what if you were a Christian Couple and the doctors told you that due to some miscegenation during the Third Crusade, there was a slight chance you might have a Muslim baby- or a Jewish baby...what if your child was destined to be an alcoholic or a vegetarian? A serial killer or the next Gandhi?

What if you made a drastic, irreversible decision about your baby based on a faulty screening test- what if your mistake turned your straight fetus into a gay one- or into a liberal- or made them creative- or atheist-or intellectually curious- or any other item off of the seemingly endless list of things that Fundie Christians cannot tolerate... I reject this idea of aesthetic fetal modification for ethical and practical reasons- if, for example, Oscar Wilde had been "de-faggotted" before birth, would he still have been an excellent author? What else gets destroyed, changed or lost when you start modifying the minds of the unborn? I trust science a lot more then Faith, but I'm not gonna let anyone- Labcoat or Frock- tell me I shouldn't love my child simply because they are gay.

I would have a gay child.
I would love them.
So what?

They'd be loved because they would be my child.

Even atheists love their children, although, in my case, not enough to force mutation on them in the womb.
I might reconsider if they were to be seriously deformed, but probably not.
What if some 'curative' treatment was applied to an unborn Stephen Hawking- perhaps he'd walk, but what would have become of his mind? Would he have been the same?
Aren't people like Mr. Hawking part of God's Plan? Some of us are strong, some are smart...together we are supposed to work it out and take care of each other.

Isn't that the idea? Not according to Fundie Freeks.

If Stephen Hawking was my kid, I'd be proud. Very, very proud.


Fundie Freak makes a great point here:

The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.

What he really means is that this will allow guilt-wracked Fundie parents to stop agonizing over why their kids turned out gay- it's not because of the painfully sado-masochistic homo-erotic imagery of the Crucifixion, it's not because their role-model Pastor likes giving head to the gay hotel hookers who supply his amphetamine habit; it's not because they were never shown the love and attention that they needed at home and wound up getting buggered by the priests- now they can blame it on the DNA. Simple and cleansing.

Fundie insists God created DNA and His "pernicious" handiwork can be seen in the DNA helix, Original Sin being just another genetic marker, but the Bible tends to contradict this Fundie statement:

Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment.

Ummm...riiiiighhhtt...

Personally, I think God a is pretty poor consultant when it comes to matters of conception, breeding , DNA and whatnot- at least one precedent comes to mind:

Once upon a time , this Old Guy named Zelophehad died , and he owned lots of land but he didn't have any sons, just daughters- and Jehovah was pretty sexist towards unmarried women and property (women were property, they did not typically own or inherit it), so there was some dispute as how to keep the father's wealth in the hands of his unmarried daughters - and, of course, in the tribe.

Moses was pretty much the spiritual go-to guy back then , so he was dispatched to go ask God about how to settle this dilemma.

This is what God told Moses:

"This is the word that Jehovah has commanded for the daughters of Zelophehad, saying, ‘To whom it is good in their eyes they may become wives. Only it is to the family of the tribe of their fathers that they should become wives."

What God was saying is : "Marry your father's brother's sons- marry your cousins and keep the money in the family."

This concept explains a lot about American Evangelicalism but it shows an alarming ignorance of genetics, especially from the Being who allegedly Created DNA.

Marry your cousin?

God should know better.

It amazes me that anyone could attribute 'Intelligent Design' to a God that is so intellectually dense that He doesn't even understand the basic chromosomal principles at work in His own creations.

Didn't God invent Mendel and those famous beans? Can't He read?

However, the agnostic idea that there may very well be a God, and that God is as thick as the proverbial brick, seems to gather steam every time I hear about these close-minded and dangerous lunatics; in fact , the idea of God being really powerful but a bit clumsy, a trifle stupid and dangerously incompetent seems quite logical.

After all, it's His image.

While Rome Burns

This is a start, but it's a little slow and it's a little late. And it contains a lot of unnecessary political timidity:

The White House is likely to face its most significant confrontation with Congress so far over its handling of the Iraq war after House Democrats agreed on Thursday on plans to debate a simple resolution next week that would oppose the escalation of the war but express support for funding the troops already on the ground

No rational person would interpret opposition of troop escalation as a lack of support for our troops, be they on the ground in Iraq, at home or elsewhere.
The argument that opposing the escalation is somehow 'unpatriotic' is absurd. It's a last desperate to defend the indefensible.
Listen to this bullshit:

However, John Boehner, House minority leader, attacked the coming debate as "nothing more than political theatre that means nothing. And I believe that it demoralises our troops in the field."

I would point out that sending our already tired soldiers and Marines back to Baghdad for a third or fourth deployment demoralises our troops.

Perhaps living in a state of kill or be killed for weeks and months on end in a strange and hostile land , bearing daily witness to carnage and brutality - while trying to do your duty for a President who gleefully proclaims: "you ain't coming home while I'm the Decider"- perhaps that is demoralising.

A case could be made that long, repeated deployments overseas can have terrible consequences at home.
.

" Since the 2003 invasion, divorce rates in the military have skyrocketed, with a 28 percent increase among enlisted, and almost 80 percent among officers, according to MSNBC. Experts estimate that there will be at least 100,000 war-related divorces by the time the war ends. The veterans and military families here today say that, for them, "It never will."

Divorce is demoralising.
PTSD is disturbing.
Orphans are a bummer.
And lets not talk about bombs or the nerve impulses of severed limbs.

-----
And lets not mention global warming.
There's still quite a few Republicans who claim that there's no man-made climate change.
They don't seem to understand that this is no joke.
To this delusional Congressman, our global crisis is little more than a fart joke:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., an outspoken skeptic of global warming, questioned whether the temperature changes weren't cyclical.

"We don't know what the other cycles were caused by in the past," he said. "It could be dinosaur flatulence. Who knows?"

Haha. Very funny. Maybe it's cow farts. Maybe it's an old lady in West, Texas. Maybe building more coal plants will solve all our pollution problems:

The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.

And if there is such a thing as global warming- which there isn't,of course- it's Nancy Pelosi's fault, according to an increasingly desperate sounding GOP who would rather talk about anything but the Iraq:

The jet that Pelosi has produces 10,000 pounds of carbon dioxide an hour, far more than the previous speaker used," said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C. Pelosi's predecessor was Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill.

Flying in a large Air Force plane, Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said, "appears to remove any spending controls from our operations and dramatically increases our impact on the environment especially climate change."

This attack was so absurd it caused the White House to issue a true statement to the media, setting a historical precedent for the Bush administration.

... presidential spokesman Tony Snow, "This is a silly story and I think it's been unfair to the speaker."

------

You know, if we could do this :

...(and include Cheney as an accomplice) then Nancy Pelosi would be President.

Then she could use Air Force One.

Winners and Loser

Wednesday we had a 'contest' post. It was based on information found on the Blooger dashboard telling us that we had published 1,000 posts.

Pretty simple, eh?

Nope. There were variables.

As if having a million furiously typing chimps wasn't enough to manage, I had to go and employ a human assistant that can't accomplish the most simple of tasks...count to one thousand, I ask him; write less about politics and more about sex and celebrities, I implore in a "constructive" manner; write something that'll require swimsuit pics, I suggest...bah!

I get variables.

Variables.

Christ-in-a-motherfuckin'-Cuisinart, even this seemingly simple enumeration was beyond my lackey's ken.

First: He forgot to account for all our unpublished drafts- I now know that I only publish 87.8% of what is written for Blooger- my rejects could fill several blogs. Several shitty blogs- you should see the crap that guy tries to foist off on me- a drunken chimpanzee could do better.
I should know, I wind up re-writing half the crap that does see publication.

Second: Some of those posts are re-runs. History repeats itself and so do we.

Third: A number were written by Susanne, who is an independent poster and isn't currently aware that there's a talking chimp calling the shots here. She may well have guessed the truth by now.

Lastly: I have no idea how many posts have been deleted. I'm guessing at least 100, but I don't trust my assistant. He writes god-awful drek , leaves it up just long enough to embarrass himself and then pulls it down....he thinks I don't know this.

So we have no idea what the correct answer is. Does it even matter?

It should be obvious to the web-savvy reader that there are no real Free Lunches or Big Prizes
on-line.
Click the Flashing Target to claim your Free Laptop!
uh huh.


Right, whatever...so who the fuck won?

That depends on your perspective:

If your glass if half-full, you can congratulate yourself. You are a winner! Depending on how the data is interpreted , all of the answers given are (were) correct. Even Sling's!

If your glass is half-empty....well, let's just say you didn't win. There's only room for one loser on this blog and that position has been filled since Post One.

If your glass is reduced to shiny smithereens and stored in a tattered Zip-Loc bag that leaks like a sieve- welcome to my world.


Would you spare us the bullshit and just get to the prize?

Well, all the entries were 'virtual', so the prize is likewise of a 'virtual' nature.

What's a virtual prize, you cheap bastard?

Use your imagination. Literally.


I am sorry that I have nothing more tangible to offer, but I feel like a winner every time you read this blog.

Thanks for that feeling.

Many Happy Returns,

Pissy the Chimp
Editor/Publisher, Camelsbackandforth

Bastards! (At least it's not disco)

This is a scan of an album cover from my record collection. The album is King Crimson's USA , a live album that sounded a lot better when I first heard it on 8-track cassette- King Crimson is a great band but this just isn't a very good recording, even by 1975's standards. It sounds like it was recorded in a giant aquarium with the microphones placed underwater, singer/bassist John Wetton has a wonderful voice -but not on this album. He sounds like me at a 1985 keg party on this record-but it was 1975 , so it could have been worse.

It could have been disco.

1975 sure did have different standards- note that this is a DJ copy- it's hard to see on the pic but the two "suggested cuts for air play" chosen by Atlantic Records : 21st Century Schizoid Man and Easy Money , clock in at 7:32 and 6:32 respectively.




Man, I'm a DJ in real life and I get a chuckle out of that- a record label suggesting that we play a seven-minute song!- and what's funnier is that the second song contains the word "bastard" and has a three-minute avant-garde experimental instrumental improv jam toward the end.

Cool. Hard to listen to for some folks but at least it's not disco...

One of my shows is early Sunday mornings and I'm not sure if I'm even allowed to broadcast the word "bastard" in the morning .
Ever since Janet Jackson "shocked the world" by flashing a tittie on TV, it's been downhill at the FCC- that 'incident' , in my opinion, should have warranted maybe thirty seconds of airtime, maybe part of a 'bloopers' segment on the Leno show or something- certainly not a weeks-long media circus and a complete overhaul of inherently useless FCC regulations.

We, as an audience, have some fucked-up priorities.

It was just a flippin' tit and I never would have even known it happened if the media hadn't acted like a bunch of 7th graders about it. Football fans don't watch the half-time Superbowl show and they don't give a damn about the commercials. It wasn't until the next day that I even knew about the wardrobe malfunction - my response: " So what? And who is Justin Timberlake?"

In 1975 the Record Companies encouraged DJ's to play a song with "bastard" in it, in 2007 the FCC is vague but threatening when it comes to profanity- what's OK at night in some areas is not OK during the days in others...it's very arbitrary and ill-defined and by the time you find out what's unacceptable it's too late.

The obvious things like 'fuck' are no-no's but others are trickier- for instance , I am allowed to bitch about FCC regs in the evening hours but if I call my boss a bitch on the air, the FCC can slam my ass...I mean my butt. Unless it's after six ( five on the west coast) , in which case it's ass...I think.
It's nebulous, intimidating and confusing and you don't get a second chance.

You are presumed guilty and it's up to you to prove you aren't. This sort of brouhaha is great publicity for millionaire DJs like Howard Stern but it's a real pain-in-the-ass for us real-life radio DJ's.

(Can I say pain-in-the -ass?
I don't know- what time is it? If South Park is on , you can say 'pain-in-the -ass'...)


When in doubt, it's safest to play something else.

The word 'bastard' might inflict irreversible injury upon the innocent ears and souls of the Kleenex generation- so I won't play 'Easy Money', despite Atlantic Record's recommendation- from listening to the production on this album, I suspect that King Crimson and Atlantic were at contractual odds- artists have been known to sabotage their own works just to lash out at their corporate masters- ask Lou Reed or Captain Beefheart.

So much for playing 'Easy Money'.

Besides, it's six-and-a half minutes long...

I will play something with more appropriate content and length, such as 'Land' by Patti Smith.

I Dream of Jinx

Yesterday I got a series of phone calls from London and that was cool. An old friend was listening to me play records that I used to play when we were housemates long ago.
Nice cycle, that.

Then I got a phone call from southern France, which was odd- who do I know in France?

Well, I'll be damned.
I thought you wuz in Australia!
Haven't seen you in ages- you found me on the internet?
Hahah! I guess it helps that my phone number hasn't changed in ten years.
I thought you were dead- you've been reading my blog and you haven't said anything till now ? You ass!
Last time we spoke, I was still drinking...oh.
That's why you stopped calling.
...I said that?
Sorry, mate, I really am.
The booze...
Yep, 17 months sober! You have been reading...how've you been?
Oh man.
That's bloody awful.
No?
You mean it's all sorted in your favor? Kids too?
Well bloody good job! Ha hah, I'm already talking like you!

Here, since you are paying for the call , let me spend 20 minutes telling you about how much better my life is right now - of course, I'm bloody sober, let me finish- a lot of good things have happened, even the bad stuff is damned funny in hindsight...

la la lala la la la la life is good and I go to bed feeling like Monday might not suck.

I step into the shower and notice the shampoo runs right through my fingers.
Shampoo?
I shave my head almost every day. I don't own shampoo.
I look down and my hands are skeletal, the shampoo runs across my bony knuckles and drips onto a mass of wet brown hair at my feet...holy crap, that's my hair!
Now there's blood.
What's going on?

When I wake up I'm covered in sweat even though the covers are on the floor.
Someone has placed one of those Roadrunner cartoon Acme anvils ("16 tons") on my chest and it's making it hard to breathe.
Just because I can't see this anvil doesn't mean it isn't there. The sun is rising and slowly the weight lightens enough for me to make it downstairs and gobble a couple of panic pills. I haven't needed them for a couple weeks, but I am glad I have them.

I need to piss , shave , shower and get ready for work but that dream was too vivid- I'm not ready to enter my bathroom yet.
That bathroom is where I started dying and sometimes I think I should move just to get away from it.

I sit downstairs in silence and pretend to read an old Superman comic; eventually my breath returns to normal and I call into work. My boss knows that I have days like this and agrees that it's better that I not come in after taking my emergency meds.

By noon the drugs are working and I'm fine, just tired ... I see that I have received an email from a beloved High School friend- I want to tell her about all the great new things that I'm feeling, because overall things really are good, but I'm afraid I'll jinx myself if I share too much good news.

Pretty strange sentiment coming from someone who disdains superstition.