Sublime Surprise

Redirect!

2010-02-28T22:36:00.001-06:00

As much as I love this old site, it's time for a redirect to a bigger, better blog host.

Enjoy the new site.

2009-10-21T12:40:00.003-05:00

Guys, I've moved to Tumblr.

Here are all kinds of ways to keep up with me, though:

Daniel Green | Create Your Badge

Things that Happened Today

2009-09-08T18:29:00.003-05:00

Woke up and discovered that I couldn't hear out of my left ear. Hiccuping hurts like hell for some strange reason
Got to work planning on instituting a form for field instruction at the School of Social Work in its SharePoint site. Never got around to it.
Discovered that a coworker's new Dell Studio One automatically ejects any disc inserted into it, much like a child with strained peas or a Baptist with alcohol. Toted the whole case, with all peripherals, which weighed close to 35 lbs on my shoulder all the way across campus to the Union. Once there, was told that unless my coworker had registered it online, they couldn't do in-house maintenance. Hauled back across campus.
Let some grad students use my personal PC to edit their PowerPoint presentation, because they didn't know the computer lab downstairs had Office '07. Neither did I.
Ate at taco Tuesday at Qdoba's. For the hell yes.
Set up a computer downstairs for dedicated work-study use. Windows 7 elicited oohs and aahs. As it rightfully should.
Came home and vegged instead of working on re-evaluating my sources and direction of my research project. God. That stack of sources doesn't look inviting at all, and the thought of rearranging them either by topic or time period doesn't exactly have me jumping out of my seat and dancing for joy.
Wrote this, and wondered when this thing when from being some sad attempt at comedy to some run-of-the-mill "this is what I did today" blog.

2009-09-07T00:31:00.001-05:00

Any time Arkansas wins, I sleep a little better. Stay thirsty, my friends.

2009-09-03T21:38:00.001-05:00

Daily Mugshot

The Fall of Heroes

2009-09-01T11:16:00.002-05:00

The petition for an Alan Turing apology has been gaining steam and press coverage as of late. It certainly makes one think about how we truly treat heroes in this world. There's an old adage that people will kill their own prophets. If they don't kill them, they're more than happy to exile them, destroy them or otherwise discredit them for a few years. Turing is certainly one of the more tragic examples of this, but he certainly isn't the last nor the greatest.

Alan Turing was, in a word, amazing. One of the first pioneers of what would become computer science, the man had keen insight to the language that they would use and the mathematics behind the first programs written. His insight was almost preternatural, and he would find life-saving applications for his work at Bletchley Park.

Bletchley Park was the first ever electronic warfare center. Based northwest of London, the men who worked there were ceaselessly breaking Nazi codes, analyzing information, and passing the pertinent facts on to the Allied armed forces. With some help from the tenacious Polish Resistance, the wizards of Bletchley Park were able to provide priceless information on U-boat operations, Luftwaffe attacks, and Wermacht positions as the Allies first struggled to survive, then sought to drive straight into the heart of Germany. Turing was a key figure in this, and some have said he was THE main mind behind one of the most important advantages the Allies held during World War II.

What did he receive in return, this techie hero? After the war, he was outed as a homosexual. He lost everything. His pension, his benefits, his recognition, everything. On top of it all, he was forced to undergo chemical castration in accordance with British laws at the time. For the lives he saved, the efforts he made, the intelligence he provided, he was rendered sterile and chemically imbalanced.

We shouldn't act surprised at this, unfortunately. Turing is, after all, just another glorious person who meets an undignified end at the hands of the people they've saved. Look at Simon Bolivar, the man who single-handendly liberated most of South America from Spain. Heavily influenced by the American Revolutionary War, he hoped to create a confederation across all of South America out of the newly-liberated states. Unfortunately, petty rivalries among the nations not only drove him from power, but halted his dream of a unified South America until the recent formation of the Union of South American Nations. He died alone from tuberculosis, nearly broke and reviled among the nations he helped to free.

Recently, historians have begun to put Benedict Arnold into this category. There is no doubt that, at first, Arnold was the most ingenious commander of the insurgency and completely devoted to the cause of colonial independence. His capture of Ticonderoga and ability to turn what a rout into a strategic withdrawal should have placed him in the highest honors, alongside Washington. This man even funneled his own personal funds into his army, when the Continental Congress could no longer allocate funds. In thanks for his efforts, he was investigated by Congress, passed over for promotion, and watched as credit that was due to him alone went to opportunistic, back-stabbing politicos in the Continental Army. Benedict Arnold didn't become a traitor because he saw the cause failing or because he was offered money. Benedict Arnold switched side because the British offered him the decency that the Americans just wouldn't give him.

These aren't the only cases, though. The English sailors who defeated the Spanish Armada were left to languish onboard their ships, unpaid and suffering from scurvy and plague. The Native Americans of the American armed forces were left to the reservations after every war, dying like Ira Hayes out of desperation and alcoholism. There are countless others that have done more than anyone should have ever asked them to do, only to meet an inglorious and unbefitting end.

It makes one think twice about doing anything for anyone, doesn't it?

Poetry Time

2009-08-31T16:10:00.001-05:00

A Haiku

By Marion Berry

No, officer, no!

Don't use your handcuffs on me!

Bitch done set me up!

Invictus

2009-08-30T19:31:00.002-05:00

Another weekend in Fayetteville. Recorded an episode of "Doctor Who" off of SciFi/SyFy in HD, ate at Mellow Mushroom with the parents, and did nothing, more or less.

Oh, yeah. There was that whole pull-my-hair-out-because-of-my-lost-history-seminar-paper-which-might-be-the-fulcrum-of-my-admission-to-a-reputable-graduate-school-and-whatever-hair-isn't-out-goes-gray scenario. Nothing big.

I've already been accepted to Australian National University's Master of Diplomacy. It's good, it's credible around the world, and its alumni seem to really go places. Double masters in one and a half years in Canberra, ACT, Australia. Every alumni I've talked to has had no problem coming to the States, finding prestigious jobs, and moving up in life. The very things I want, dammit. For some reason I can't explain why I'm still fighting tooth and nail to get into Melbourne's history program. My referees (as in, a letter of referral) want me to stay away on the basis of the quagmire that was their report, some ANU alum have told me to pick ANU over UMelb (not like they would have a bias), and even the Aussie I work with has told me that the only perk UMelb has over ANU is that Melbourne > Canberra in terms of sights and events.

Yet, here I am. Staying up late, editing drafts of my horrible Honors thesis, writing 2500-word research proposals until 2 am, and more or less groveling via email with my prospective thesis advisor to the point I know the time difference by heart. Part of me wants to just say that it's because I actually had to PAY to have my application considered there. Another part of me says that it's that obstinate, stubborn sunnuvabitch in me that keeps dragging this out until it's finished.

Then, there's ego. A part of me wants to go ahead and have two different schools offer me admission. Sure, it won't be a fight or a beauty contest or anything (That much is for sure). But there is a part of me that yearns for every bit of acceptance, every bit of recognition and merit that I can freaking reach for. The last two years have been like Viet Nam for my heart and mind, and I honestly feel like I am finally due some kind of return. Post-London Little Rock, wandering and working in a post-traumatic daze with a roommate who let his idiot wife run the show once she moved in. There was unemployment, and before that the horrible job. There are money issues. There are banks and credit cards out to screw over every living human being. There's the job that, no matter how much I love it, I feel like I can't leave at 5 pm. I'm so on edge as of late that the littlest thing will set me off, in a big way. And on top of it all, I'm sick now.

God, I hate being sick. I am never as much of a baby as I am when I get ill.

I'm not the kind of person who has ever, not even once, believed that "it will all get better." That kind of fatalism is reserved for the weak-willed and the unimaginative. It doesn't just magically get better, ever. It takes work, initiative, a plan. Gather information. Talk to people. Get insight. Triage. Don't just sit back, let life steamroll you, and when you're so numb from the darts life has put in you suddenly decide to declare life is all better.

Maybe that's why I keep fighting for Melbourne. Maybe that is my way of trying to make it better, as symbolic as it might be.

Missy Gee, I am nowhere near the writer you are.

Pattern Recognition (By Koestler, not Gibson)

2009-08-25T09:05:00.005-05:00

Humans are naturally prone to make reductionistic statements about elements of this world. I don't hold it against us, we're wired to think that way. Pattern recognition and grouping is one of the key elements to our survival thus far. An example? A bear mauls a man and kills him. Another man sees it. In his mind, a bear becomes synonymous with death. Therefore, men become careful around bears. It's a built-in defense, one that focuses on doing what is safe rather than what is unnecessarily risky.

Unfortunately, this extends to other men, too. Pattern recognition and grouping is the basis of racism, sexism, most -isms and stereotypes. What once served as a conservative and reactionary approach to life that was better safe than sorry has now turned into a major constraint on society. It's something that we should rise above, but is, admittedly, harder for some than others.

Some of the ways this arises from time to time is surprising though. I've noticed it a lot recently when it comes to politics. A good case of this is a friend of mine who has been living in Sacramento, CA for a while now. She made a remark a couple of months back about how much it astounded her that there were conservatives there! In California! Of all places, why there! I didn't want to sound like a total historian prick, so I didn't tell her that California was the home state of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, two men not exactly known for their liberal tendencies. Also, I didn't want to say "Oh, dear L. California is a state of 36,756,666 people. There are bound to be differing opinions within a population that vast!"

Either way, it stuck with me. The health care hullabaloo (debate is too kind a word to describe this mess) has made it all the more noticeable. There is a certain comfort that comes marching in lockstep with your comrades, but there's much more danger to be had in doing so. Both sides of the aisle need to learn to look past their ideological nose.

The right has certainly had more airtime and focus with the sheer madness they've come to embody in the last few weeks. Swastikas, hung effigies, and "death panels" have become so commonplace that they're no longer as shocking as they once were. Townhalls, instead of becoming forums, have become shouting matches. It's as if the United States has suddenly found its own form of football hooliganism.

First, let me make one thing clear to these people. You are all tools. The people leading you are using your passion, your ferocity to do nothing more than further their own careers. Look at the people whipping you up. A governor who resigned in the face of ethics violations and an inefficiently-run state. A former representative, former Speaker of the House, who resigned after facing insurrection by the pragmatic wing of his own party. A pill-popping, illegal-immigrant-hiring radio talk show host. The only group of people who are more washed out than this are the people spearheading the Birther movement! Why, you raucous group of activists, would you let yourself be led by people with no political capital, no contacts, and no appeal beyond a condescending smirk from primetime news anchors? These people offer you no hope and no true direction. They simply show up, make ill-founded inflammatory speeches, and then shove their hands up your asses like the puppets you are.

Change your tactics. If you want there to be change, then do so legitimately. Don't feed your kids lines to spout off at townhall meetings. Don't scream and shout at townhalls. Call your Senators or Representatives, write them letters, email them. Your posturing and tactics are nothing short of childish, something that doesn't belong in the Capitol. Not contacting your officials through the accepted, legitimate means is essentially trying to bargain from a position of weakness. You've doomed yourself to failure from the very beginning! Don't be surprised if it turns your representatives are snickering at you behind closed doors, I know I do so openly.

As for the left, you're becoming more and more akin to the GOP of 2000 than you would ever care to admit. You've come to penalize voices of dissension within your own party, and cast ever-incriminating blanket statements over any opposition. Sure, a good bit of this is politics-as-usual, it's the name of the game. But it's time for you all to realize that the more you drive out those voices that are not in complete harmony with yours, the more you hamstring yourself. When there is complete, total monotony on ideas and process you get the PATRIOT Act. You get Gulf of Tonkin resolutions. You get genuinely bad ideas with worse long-term consequences simply because you allowed yourself to turn into ignorant-minded sheep.

The Blue Dogs have come under a lot of attack from these Democrats as of late. Sure, point out that they receive huge sums of cash from pharmaceutical companies. While we're doing that, let's also look at what these men have done with their lives. Mike Ross ran a series of rural pharmacies, and is well aware of the unique nature of rural medicine. Vic Snyder, while not a Blue Dog per se, was a family practice physcian for years before entering the General Assembly. Raise cynical objections about their past and their careers all you want, but these are the kinds of men the Democrats need to be bringing to the forefront of this debate, not trying to push aside. Right now, you need legitimacy, expertise, and a bit of Capitol Hill bargaining. Who better to do it than men within the Democrats, yet moderate enough to reach out to the Republicans? Failure to embrace this sort of mentality will lead you to an unimpressive 2010, and perhaps a shocking 2012. God knows the Dems already have a reputation for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory as is.

The timbre and cadence of politics in the United States is honestly starting to frighten me the more I think about this. I may just up and move somewhere else to escape all this. Australia looks good...

2009-08-22T16:22:00.001-05:00

Daily Mugshot

Knowledge from Jimmy John Liautaud

2009-07-25T15:27:00.002-05:00

Everyone knows that the Vito with hot peppers at Jimmy John's is the most compelling argument for a loving deity ever mustered by the mind of any man, but the sub shop is absolutely amazing (Probably right now because they are blasting Guns 'N Roses so loud that I have a toothache now). The atmosphere (We don't give a shit, just have some good food), location (Dickson FTW), and workers are.....baller.

This did it for me though. I've been reading this on the wall at Jimmy John's:

16 Things That It Took Me Over 50 Years to Learn

Never, under any circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night
If you had to identify, in a single word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will acheive, its full potential, that word would be meetings
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"
People who want to share their religious views with you almost never want you to share yours with them
You should not confuse your career with your life
Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance.
Never lick a steak knife.
The most destructive force in the universe is gossip.
You will never find anybody who can give you a clear and compelling reason why we observe daylight savings time.
You should never say anything to a woman that even remotely suggests that you think she's pregnant unless you can see an actual baby emerging from her at that moment.
There comes a time when you should stop expecting other people to make a big deal about your birthday. That time is age eleven.
The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe we are above average drivers.
A person who is nice to you but rude to the waiter is not a nice person (This is very important. Pay attention. It never fails.)
Your friends love you anyways
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.
Final thought for the day: Men are like fine wane. That start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the snot out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

And that's why I don't go to Subway.

They're playing Warren Zevon now. Arrrrrooooooouuuuu!

Nature of the Beast

2009-07-21T20:49:00.002-05:00

Something I've been thinking about a bit lately as I burn through Netflix's collection of spaghetti westerns and Edo pieces is what it means to make an American movie.

Is there such a thing as an American movie in the first place?

Sure, a movie can be produced by an American company. Distributed by an American studio. Directed by an American, have a thoroughly American cast, an American-written script, and so forth. At that point, you could disembowel the movie and it would bleed red, white, and blue all over the cutting room floor making this point moot. Me, 1. Me, 0.

In all seriousness, though! I have a point! Eventually. I got this idea watching Sergio Leone movies (Read: FUCKING BADASS CELLULOID EXPERIENCES OF TRUE GRIT AND PROPER APPLICATION OF BULLETS FOR YOUR AMUSEMENT AND PLEASURE). Truth be told, I've been thinking this over ever since I had David Welky's American Film History class in 2006 (Do you know what thinking the same idea over and over again for three years will do to you?!). He brought up the James Bond series as an example of a foreign movie that could easily be classified as American, because of MGM's involvement and the distinctly American spin put on the series.

So, what makes an American movie? Is it a theme? Some ephemeral idea or feeling that comes out and screams "'MERIKAH!" in your face? You could easily make this point. Sergio Leone is a perfect example. You can argue with ease that his movies were made for American audiences, somewhere between a lecture on crass materialism and idols gone wrong and unadulterated adoration for what is the most genuinely American film genre. Shot in Spain, filled with foreigners, directed and scored by Italians, it was undeniably aimed to American audiences and markets. It's no secret that Sergio Leone's aspiration was to break into the American markets, and with the cheap budgets and sets he (initially) offered to Hollywood, they were more than happy to oblige. The problem with this argument is one of markets: The United States is still one of the largest, most influential film markets in the world. It's a natural gravitation for most directors to try and break into the diverse homeworld of cinema. Was Leone American because of aesthetic and ideology, or because of the almighty power of a fistful of dollars?

I am so proud of myself for that lame pun. Let me have my moment, please.

On the other end of the spectrum are those movies made for Americans, by Americans, and catch on around the world. These films are so grandiose, so amazing, so universal that the world can't help but stop and take account of what we have made. Casablanca is a fine example. Some scholars have gone so far as to claim that Casablanca might be a near-universal movie due to the high level of stereotypes in the film, lowering most characters to a lowest common denominator that is understood worldwide. Basically, everyone understands that Renault is the way he is because he is French, or, as Groundskeeper Willie would put it, a "cheese-eating, surrender monkey." We know the Nazis are bad because, well, they're bad. Indiana Jones doesn't fight good guys, for Chrissake. And then there's Rick. Cynical, drunk, and detached to the point of nonchalance in the face of impending tyranny and destruction, he's a philosophy major's ideal lifestyle. Despite this, he comes around and faces the fact that he must stand up to the coming storm. He sacrifices, he loves, he makes hard choices to do the undeniably right thing. In short, Rick validates experiences that all of us must face at some point in time. So, the point is, can a movie that is this universally known and recognized be truly claimed as our own, or is it something that belongs to humanity as a whole?

On the otherside, can a movie made by an entirely alien cast and crew be entirely American? I'm sure it can. I've brought up the James Bond series, made by EON, starring British actors, with British directors. At this point, I'm trying to rack my brain for more examples. Maybe Sukiyaki Western Django, a Japanese film through-and-through, but delivered in English and set in the American west. If anyone has any suggestions for this one, please tell me.

So, when it comes down to it, what makes a film American? Intended audience? Message? Actors? Director? Studio? Market?

Hell if I know. I just ramble here and hope someone can point me in the right direction.

Do you believe in miracles?!

2009-06-23T08:54:00.002-05:00

It's been too long since I last posted.

We've always turned to sports to try and anesthetize our momentary pain and loss. It's a national trait, and it's one that only makes sense. We have a strong sense of symbolic measures, and have a way of transforming them into a concrete meaning for each individual person. Times of trouble call for something amazing. They're always be a rider on a white horse at the last second, the calvary will arrive right before the fort falls, or Christian Bale will just blow up Skynet.

Or something.

Think about it. After Iran, after stagflation, the energy crisis, after Bonham kicked it, we turned to Lake Placid in 1980 for any glimmer of hope. Jesus Christ, did we find it. A bunch of college kids ended up beating the Soviet Union's team of glorious people's socialist ice hockey players in what is still considered one of the biggest upsets in sports history. People remembered what it was like to believe in miracles again. Did ice hockey fix everything? Good God, no. We still had to put up with the Culture Club and Ratt, but people had something to hold on, to some kind of victory they could claim as their own.

The Patriots provided another moment after September 11th. Granted, the entire country outside of New England hates them now, and for good reason, but the Patriots was the team that most Americans were pulling for in Super Bowl XXXVI. The 2001 World Series was similar as well. The New York Yankees faced off against the Arizona Diamondbacks, and many people across the country became Yankees fans, just for one series (Except for those who had the common sense to back up the NL).

This years seems like sports was a mirror, parodying real life inside the fields.

Michigan, Detroit especially, has been given a blow it may never truly recover from. The lifeblood of the state, the automotive industry, has teetered and fallen and it remains to be seen if it will rise again. Thousands are unemployed, foreclosures are sky-high, and Kwame Kilpatrick is bringing more trouble down on Detroit (Seriously Kwame, just man up and go to prison). At a time when they needed it the most, Michigan was given the Detroit Lions and a close-but-no-cigar appearance by the Detroit Red Wings. When Michigan needed a good win, a good team, something symbolic to hold on to, they just couldn't quite reach it.

Arkansans have seen the same thing. Granted, our basketball and football teams were all freshmen with new coaches, but that only helped to mitigate the sting we felt this year. Sure, the Hogs beat LSU and got the boot in what was arguably the best game of the season, but the rest of the season was somewhere between paternal frustration, and outright anger. Almost losing to Western Illinois University?! The Kentucky game?! Chrissake. Basketball was marginally better, with our major upsets of Oklahoma and Texas. The rest of the season? What's that? I didn't hear what you said. Guess we should move on to baseball.

Baseball. The Diamond Hogs were our Red Wings this year. I am incredibly proud of our baseball team, most commentators didn't even think they could make it to the College World Series, let alone go as far as they did. We went against all odds, and LSU is an all-round better team. It just would have been nice to made an appearance in the finals. It was a good run, but man did we need a victory to claim as our own this year.

With memories of the Olympics fading fast, and a major break until the World Series, looks like we're just going to have to rely on summer blockbusters.

Oh, shoot.

TAG TEAM BACK AGAIN CHECK IT WRECK IT LETS BEGIN

2008-12-22T23:47:00.001-06:00

(11:41:26 PM) DG: I'm going to become a wrestler
(11:41:30 PM) DG: name: JFK
(11:41:47 PM) Drew Henderson: gimmick?
(11:41:55 PM) DG: signature move: back and to the left back and to the left back and to the left back and to the left back and to the left
(11:42:01 PM) Drew Henderson: lol 4 real
(11:42:53 PM) DG: JFK Jr.
(11:43:00 PM) DG: signature move: flying by instruments
(11:43:20 PM) DG: he tries to do a flying pin, but just goes headfirst into the sea of people.
(11:43:25 PM) Drew Henderson: hahaha
(11:43:36 PM) DG: RFK
(11:43:39 PM) Drew Henderson: oh god
(11:43:49 PM) Drew Henderson: please let these guys be a 3 man tag team
(11:44:30 PM) DG: signature move: the Estevez
(11:44:38 PM) DG: A hit so shitty, yet it still makes you see stars
(11:44:46 PM) Drew Henderson: dang
(11:44:58 PM) DG: That was the weakest joke
(11:45:04 PM) DG: yet the best founded.
(11:45:07 PM) Drew Henderson: i liked it

How Gene Roddenberry wrote a President

2008-11-03T21:24:00.003-06:00

Star Trek, with its multi-faceted multimedia empire, is an iconic part of Americana. It is a uniquely American experiment, a projection of American idealism and utopianism into the blank canvass that is the future where dreams and follies can be realized in their fullest with even the slightest of negative consequences can be swept aside or solved in 22 minutes. It is a future where a socialist, peaceful Federation doesn't even field a single ship devoted to purely military ends until decades after its founding, and the most militant governments eventually succumb to their own flaws and greed within a season or four. While the original television program started in the 1960s, it has continued on to this very day and some of the recent series have succeeded in grabbing the imagination of a new generation of would-be Trekkies. One of these series, Voyager, was especially interesting to me.

In the series, the USS Voyager is catapulted across the Milky Way galaxy into unmapped sections that no human has ever seen or travelled. The lone ship completes a harrowing voyage across the Delta Quadrant and eventually makes it back to Earth through some phoney-baloney physics crap. The show was like Sideways, you either hated it or loved it. No matter which side you stood on, you had to give Voyager praise for one character: Seven of Nine.

Oh yeah. Seven of Nine. The former Borg bitch who turned into the hottie that James Cameron only wishes the Terminatrix in T3 could have been. Those catsuits are a testament to women everywhere, at least the really hot blonde ones. In addition, Seven of Nine was an intelligent, strong-willed, independent woman who saved the USS Voyager time and time again. She also, from time to time, seemed to have a budding lesbian relationship with Voyager's Captain Janeway. In short, she was a revolutionary character for the Star Trek series.

The woman who played Seven of Nine was Jerri Ryan, a woman who also made a name for herself on the Fox series Boston Public. She is an absolutely gorgeous woman, and her love for gourmet cooking and cuisine has led her to become somewhat of a surprise guest chef in many high-end restaurants around the world. During the time she was acting on Voyager and Boston Public, she married to Jack Ryan, who would eventually become a GOP Senator from Illinois. Jerri Ryan eventually filed for divorce from her husband, then-Senator. She alleged that she had been forced to commit sexual acts in several clubs around the world at his insistence, including one where whips, chains, and clubs dangled from the ceiling (Think Matrix: Revolutions).

As a result of the scandal, Jack Ryan announced he would immediately cease his re-election campaign for the open seat in the Senate. In a hurry to try and fill the opening, the GOP flew in Alan Keyes to try and create a credible candidate to face off against the then-unknown representative from the Illinois state legislature. Alan Keyes, already being one of God's greatest jokes, lost the election miserably to Barack Hussein Obama.

So, in short, Star Trek is responsible for the rise of the 44th President of the United States of America.

Hell, all Star Wars can claim is to be a six-part anti-Nixon rant.

An Open Letter to Sarah Palin concerning her connections to the Alaskan Independence Party

2008-10-12T20:41:00.002-05:00

12 October 2007*

Dear Governor Palin:

No one can deny that your ascension through the political apparatus of Alaska has been nothing short of meteoric. It has recently come to my attention that some of this may be due to your loose affiliation with elements of the Alaskan Independence Party, a secessionist political party that consistently demands Alaska no longer be a part of the Union, but rather secede outright or become a commonwealth like Puerto Rico.

Look, secession is a bitch. Just trust me on this one.

Sincerely yours,

Daniel R. Green

Resident of a former Confederate state

*yeah, I know. Commie date format.

The Single Greatest Threat to Ralph Lauren

2008-02-03T22:27:00.001-06:00

For some time, there has been a feeling in the souls and minds of men that there is some other force at work in this world. Some kind of ethereal, evanescent presence that has a hand in all affairs mortal, transcending the very capacity of description, definition, nomenclature. Like dark matter, it is something that has its very existence defined by what it doesn't do rather than the physical characterstics it might have that we can observe, cold and mechanical from our scientific towers.

We were wrong.

Yes, there is a force at hand that is powerful and most often is the single greatest source of disorder and sower of discord in the known universe. The Greeks called him χάος, or Chaos. The Norse, the ultimate race of badasses this planet has known besides the 1980s American Gladiator cast, called him Ginnungagap, or the empty expanse without rule, rime, or reason between the primodial forces responsible for the creation of the world. I have a much different name for him, one without such overtures of awe and minute stature in comparison to this force.

I call him Aaron Walter, the biggest douche this universe has or ever will see.

And yes, that is taking into account the economy-sized douches at Sam's Club.

The evils of this one human being defy convention. That this much harm, pain, suffering, and malice can come from one singular being who has been immersed in the very moral fabric that had brought up most others to be sane, rational, loving beings is truly mind-blowing. Dwelling on what him such a huge fucking prick is pointless, though. What is important is to make yourself aware to his crimes, how horrible this human being (if he is indeed such) is. Thus, I give you part one of Aaron Walter's crimes against humanity and animals and inanimates and, oddly, himself. (tm)

Perhaps the most startling thing is the mental handicap that Aaron Walter has. He is the sole known person afflicted with Aaron Walter's Syndrome, a mental state in which the higher cognitive functions are completely and totally inoperable unless Aaron undergoes near-constant anal stimulation. As in the case of most sort of stimuli that result in altered synaptic patterns, as his evil, evil brain becomes used to one level of stimulation, Aaron must then up the level of stimulation in order to become basically functional, not quite unlike a crack fiend choking on a fetid, crusty phallus just to get the fix he needs to regain what he experiences as normalcy. As a result of trying to up the ante on this stimulus problem for years on end, it's not uncommon to see Aaron bending over in the middle of the busier Little Rock thoroughfares in an attempt to swallow up a respectably-sized Vovlo with a lower-upper class family via his gaping anal orfice. It is estimated that this kind of sensation allows Aaron to have mental faculties approaching that of a shitty little kid with Downs.
Aaron Walter went to Valapraiso. During his tenure there, various small animals were found in the surrounding area missing various body parts, a la Dahmer. Nothing was ever proved, but hey. I'm just bringin' up a pretty fuckin' interesting point, jackholes.
It is now know as a fact that this insane, filthy degenerate is directly responsible for the innundation of New Orleans. In what some have come to call the createst display of solo-bachial tendencies since the "Gods of Rock threesome" (which consisted of a drunk Mick Jagger, a high David Bowie, and an Iggy Pop who needs no drugs simply because his life alone is that much of a drug), Aaron consumed every single fluid liter of Canadian whiskey, Scotch, single blend, mixed blend, rye, bourbon, and painthinner masquerading as whiskey (I'm looking at you, James Foxx) in the matter of a few hours. The subsequent emptying of his Satanic bladder into Lake Ponchartrain created a wake so large and septic that the city was completely overwhelmed. The resulting media circus, taking advantage of a local thunderstorm with high wind speeds, was a carefully constructed ploy by the federal government to divert attention from the fact that the United States could be so easily overwhelmed by an individual who loves Phil Collins as much as this dirty dog-sodomizing whore does.
All I'm saying is, it's a hell of a coincidence that Aaron has gone by the names Mark David Chapman, Phil Spector, John Wilkes Boothe, Lee Harvey Oswald and claims to have a time machine. Think about it.
It is rumored that pregnant women spontaneously miscarry around Aaron. This explains the attrocious shape of the carpet in Dillard's Park Plaza, as well as the sudden disappearance of pregnant coworkers in the area. While never confirmed, the circumstancial evidence is so overwhleming in favor of proving this true that you would have to be as dumb as a pregnant woman hugging this sick bastard to think that it's a lie.
Upon investigation of secret films taken by the Red Army immediately after the Chernobyl disaster, a dimunitive figure with an overly-pronounced widow's peak was seen sitting with a big ass package of TNT, smoking a cigar, and cackling maniacally like one of Satan's brides. Further analysis is available, but Aaron might be expecting a phone call from the governments of Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia. By "phone call", I mean crack special forces breaking into his place, kidnapping him, slaughtering his family after committing unspeakable sexual acts to them, and making him disappear into thin air. You may not want to screw with La Cosa Nostra but you sure as hell don't piss off Putin, you dumbass.
He has been known to mix brown and black, eats disgusting cheese, and is a Cardinal's fan.

The second most insightful conversation I've ever had with Jacob Oliver

2008-01-05T18:13:00.000-06:00

(6:10:29 PM) DG: this Bhutto shit is out of control
(6:10:51 PM) DG: namely the weeping American psuedo-intelligentsia that is mourning her death
(6:11:05 PM) DG: They didn't know who she was until the the whole martial law hoopla a bit ago
(6:11:30 PM) Jacob Oliver: why are people surprised they finally killed her?
(6:11:36 PM) Jacob Oliver: I'm just surprised it took them so long
(6:11:54 PM) DG: it's like Diana
(6:12:01 PM) DG: only with people who are supposed to be smarter
(6:14:50 PM) Jacob Oliver: yeah
(6:14:52 PM) Jacob Oliver: fun note:
(6:15:35 PM) Jacob Oliver: Bhutto the First's execution was mentioned in Charlie Wilson's War, which I saw the night before little miss democracy got gunned down/blow'd up
(6:15:56 PM) Jacob Oliver: lesson learned - TOM HANKS KILLS RABBLE ROUSERS
(6:16:42 PM) DG: I KNEW IT
(6:16:47 PM) DG: TOM HANKS IN '08
(6:17:06 PM) Jacob Oliver: OMG HE'S GONNA EXPLODE NEW HAMPSHIRE
(6:17:47 PM) Jacob Oliver: HANKS/MCCAIN '08
(6:17:56 PM) Jacob Oliver: Kickin' Your Ass So You Don't Have To

London Calling, pt. 5: This is The End

2007-09-12T17:50:00.000-05:00

The silence of the car and the stillness of the air only exacerbate the tension building in me as I sit on the side of the road in the Delta. I'm surrounded by endless expanses of nothingness pregnant and oppressive with the force to make me realize my insignificance like some piece of forgotten flotsam on the face of the endless seas that girdle this earth. I don't have to have my eyes open to know that my knuckles are white from trying to throttle the steering wheel or that every single muscle in my face is taut from gritting my teeth. A cacophony of emotions burns, rising uncontrollably after so much work on suppressing them for weeks.

Or maybe, just maybe, I'm feeling them for the first time.

I explode into tears, with a violent scream I feel coursing through every single last fiber of my body as I shake myself and try to rip the steering column from its welds in my car. I weep. Jesus, I weep so hard that I lose control of myself. My body contorts and twists as it tries to fit itself into the fetal position, as if my body is trying to move to the one evolutionary comfort hard-wired into our very souls. My face hurts so much from the tortuous effects this effort of blatant emotional display forces upon muscles that are far too often unused for a society to be truly successfully expressive. There is a sort of dignity that comes from this sort of honest, cavalier display of humanity; however, I lose it as I slowly slide down in my car seat, moving from weeping into a sort of snuffling, self-drowning crying that almost lacks the energy to even exist in the first place.

I'm broken, ruddy-faced and tear-stained, stewing in a cheap suit soaked with sweat from an August funeral. And alone. So alone in this place, where the only landmark is a dead tree off somewhere and cicadas are so loud I can barely hear my own pathetic blubbering.

I get it, I'm nothing.

I first heard that Becca had died in the bathroom of a Village Inn. The seafoam green wall and the creme tiles on the floor and I were soon acquainted as I slid down the wall to lightly come to rest on the floor after hearing the voicemail from Aaron. The message never really set in, no matter how many times I replayed it and no matter how many customers walked in eyeing me like I was some insane junkie. It's been a week since I fled Conway for Memphis in some vain attempt to try and find salvation from this crucible. Salvation was just a veneer it seems, and losing Becca demolished the little dream I had of my reality.

Becca was an archetypal college friend. She was someone you could fall out of contact with for months at a time, yet would still know you on site and care about every little detail you could tell her. She was patient and kind, she was caring, she was honest. She was a blast to drink with, too. Jesus, the nights where that girl saved me by opening her place to me and my drunken antics. The Night of the Throw'd Chairs, one of my absolute favorite nights of all time, was all under the aegis of Becca. She was also a pillar throughout many of my classes. If it hadn't been for her support, I might not have made it through some of my classes. If the revolution had come, and backs went against the wall, she would have been in my Politboro.

Becca lived and died around Helena-West Helena, a sleepy town on the Arkansas bank of the Mississippi. That damn river is going to call me until the day I die, it seems.

The days between when I get the news and the funeral are a blur. I worked on the pipeline, I talked to plenty of people, I did things. Numbed, that was it. I was completely numbed to an infinite degree. The thing that kept troubling me was that me not feeling anything didn't keep me from thinking about my lack of feeling or, for that matter, Michelle. Not since I came back have I wanted to just hear her voice as much as I do now, and it's a pain in the ass to realize that I probably still love this girl. Confusion is not the emotion I want on top of mourning the loss of one of my best friends. A heart can only handle so much, and Tom Waits is calling me.

The road curves, guiding me through Fordyce, Kingsland, Rison, Pine Bluff, and the multitude of towns that depend on the fertile soils and unnerving flatness of the Delta for their sustenance, and very existence. It is this swathe of black soil and wide open space that feeds the mouths of the world, that gives life to an innumerable mass the world over. It is this living soil that will house Becca to its finality. Ashes to ashes, I guess. I don't want to ponder the whole life-death-circle-of-life bullshit right now. I'm tired of the phoenixes, I'm tired of the martyrs, I'm tired of the messiahs. I simply want absolution and manumission from this torment, and being the maladroit I am I can't seem to find any way out. I wonder, more seriously than I would like to admit, if somehow Becca died because of me. Maybe, somehow, I've had some sort of karmic retribution upon myself that is so enormous that it somehow steals innocents' breath in order to punish me?

Hell.

I stomp the pedal to the floor, speeding into the east and (hopefully) leaving that self-destructive train of thought to choke on my carbon monoxide, just in time to almost be caught by a state trooper. Not again. Some miles later, I reach the sole funeral home in Helena-West Helena in a complete and thorough daze that robs me of any sense of time or place. The automaton that ruled me when I was next to the Thames has taken over again, and before I know what's over or even before I can tell something has started, I'm off with a friend in my car to stay the night at the Isle of Capri Casino in Lula, Mississippi. After all, what better way to memorialize our friend who had a lust for life and genuine happiness than burying ourselves in the disorienting lights of slot machines and the intoxicants provided en masse, for free by the single greatest source of revenue for the impoverished State of Mississippi? What better way to remember the passing of a friend, what else can I do to forget the monumental loss of one of the most beautiful people than by doing whatever necessary to force my mind into not firing those synapses?

Being the shallow asshole I am, I'm almost late for the funeral when I decide to go to McDonald's for breakfast. The funeral is a nonevent, for me. I don't know these people. I don't know these memories. I don't want to. I'm fucking lost and adrift in myself as wave after wave of conflicting emotions dash my brain and heart into the hard rocks of life over and over again with unrelenting fury and inhumane delight. You want schadenfreude? If humans weren't ingrained with this disgusting trait, we wouldn't do half the things we do to ourselves to make our pain linger that much longer every time our miserable, filthy little hearts find themselves ruptured.

The burial is intense. The heat pressing down on the congregated people there from all walks of life, the sun that sets skin aflame with a simple kiss, the emotional tension and outpouring that is such a constant that it almost desensitizes you to its presence as soon as it is encountered. A Methodist reverend dedicates Becca's remains to the soil that has provided these people with their very way of life. Small talk follows, that inane sort of thing that people do instead of either falling silent in reverence towards the power of the moment or ripping your goddamn heart out and sticking a pin through it on your lapel. Negotiations begin on lunch and other worthless drivel, and the road calls again. Leaving, we see a honor guard from the Army approach.

It sucks being in a nation that enshrines people who die so young they never truly lived.

I don't know what brought it on. I don't know what sort of Joshua it took to break down my walls that had held in all the emotional responses I should have been feeling for the last weeks, but when it came I was unprepared. I weep on the side of US 79, somewhere south of Stuttgart for the better part of a quarter of an hour. My mind seems to have stopped working, I cry things out to no-one in particular, I make mad statements that have no subject, no verb, no direct objects. It's as if Irving Washington has taken his censoring to my very speech. These animalistic and pathetic utterances are not even worth wasting the time or energy on, but for some reason doing it makes me feel better. A catharsis that happens so naturally and fluidly it is almost like I'm not doing it myself. Everything is fuzzy and glazed over. I'm losing touch.

Suddenly, clarity. Sadness waxes evanescent and is replaced by sobering, clear, pain-fueled rage. RAGE. There is no fairness to this whole goddamn farce that I call a life. First, Michelle. Then, jail. Then, Becca. Where is the fucking justice in this, why is this happening so fast, with such intensity? Fuck karma. There is no way that karma exists if this is happening to me, I have done my fair share of lying, cheating, stealing, and general illicit intoxicants in my time, but nothing to warrant THIS. No, this is bigger. This is more pointed, like a knife aimed right at the heart. This much pain has to have a purpose, I refuse to believe this much misery is simply chance! I scream and rant and rave in my car. I curse Michelle with every name, every word I can think of for making me so numb I couldn't cry when someone far more deserving of my tears than her died. I curse her for every little thing she ever did to hurt me and to make me so blind that I can see no one but her in the single greatest moment of pain I've ever felt. I curse Lynn for not loving me anymore. I curse my parents for living in such an inaccessible part of BFE. I curse me for every single little transgression and sin I've ever committed in my life before I descend into tears again.

I'm volatile. I'm desperate. I want, more than anything else, some kind of peace. I beg God for help. I beg Him to kill Michelle and bring back Becca. I ask Him to kill me. I ask Him to give me the Michelle from two months ago, the one who loved me as much as I loved her. No, not her. I want someone who I can love like I loved her. I ask Him to simply leave me alone. I cry and cry and cry, my dirge for Tom Joad. Then, the tears stop. The anger dies. I sit, staring straight ahead in a moment of odd, shimmering tranquility that I imagine settled over Dresden when all was said and done. A moment that is so still and quiet that not even your lungs dare disturb it by drawing a single breath.

This adventure is over. I have roads to drive, gas to burn. I have to live.

Keep on rockin' in the free world, 'cause your pretty little face is going to hell.

London Calling, pt. 4: Burden In My Hand

2007-09-04T22:20:00.001-05:00

Assuming that all things are equal,
Who'd want to be men of the people,
When there's people like you?
- Arctic Monkeys, "Teddy Picker"

Good things are gonna start happening to me now.
- Navin R. Johnson, "The Jerk

When dawn breaks on Sunday, I'm up with it. Despite the copious amounts of toxins that I willingly (ignorantly?) dumped in my system the night before, I feel absolutely amazing. It's almost as if I've shed a filthy layer of skin, a dead sheath of epidermal loathing and hate that forced me to be wrapped in the very thing I've been trying to escape since I set foot on native soil. The company, the jokes, watching 300 on an amazing projector in Kevin's rec room. All of it helped to purge this necrotic part of my heart, or at least sufficiently opiate me to it.

Basically, I haven't even thought of Michelle in two days.

I manage to catch Kevin's wife and thank her for her ear before she's off to count pills, and chat it up with Kevin before I go. The least I can do to thank that jerk is leave him Chuck Klosterman's IV as a parting gift. If he's read even half of it, he must absolutely loathe me by now for dumping something like that on him. Sure, pop culture and the over-analysis of it is fine and dandy, but when you combine a pop culture critic with a man who's entire subsistence depends on furthering and sustaining pop culture as well, it's like a monkey with a hand grenade: You don't know what's going to happen, but you know it can't be good.

The drive to Little Rock is entirely uneventful, a blessing at this point. To put it simply, I'm vegging beyond vegging out. I hum every song on the radio in a tone that is not just tone deaf, but has no idea tone even exists. Tone is dead to my hum, and it'll wake up with a horse's head in its bed if it's not careful. What's really strange is driving away and hearing Kevin's voice on the radio for a good 30 miles outside of Memphis before I switch to another station.

Sometimes, you just can't lose a good friend no matter how hard you try.

Serene and sedate, I pull into Little Rock during the early afternoon. I honestly don't remember if this was the time I pulled in to our quaint little capital, but it felt like early afternoon. It felt like reading a book on the grass at Riverfest Amphitheater, it felt like riding a bike across the Big Dam Bridge, it felt like going to the beer garden at Dickey-Stephens Park and watching the Travs wallop some team while being pleasantly baked in the gentle, warm air along the banks of the Arkansas River (So, the Travs don't always win, but they do to the people watching them as per the laws of Arkansas sports). I'm happy, in a serene manner not entirely unlike that of a marshmallow Peep floating in a pranked fountain. So much so, in fact, that I don't really remember what I did that day until the early evening. I'm pretty sure I saw Lynn at UALR. I'm pretty sure I tried to call Aaron or even swing by in Jacksonville. I'm pretty sure I saw Mary at some point. I sure as hell know I went by Dillard's to harass and joke with Marcus all afternoon.

Marcus got off work and agreed to meet me and Mary at Carino's in North Little Rock. Mary and I, consciously choosing to be uncharacteristically punctual, arrive a full 45 minutes before he can even show up, giving us more than enough time to put away several bellinis. Marcus and his fiancée arrive, and the night gives way to hearty laughs, jokes, and do-you-remember-whens. Times like this, when I'm surrounded by unrelenting love at the dinner table, make me wonder what it was like to be around Christ as He lectured and preached to the masses. Christ, His most passionate sermons, and food are intrinsically linked as it very well should be. When our minds and hearts are being piqued and tickled, why shouldn't our bodies be equally warm and stable?

Eventually, dinner ends. My friends, damn true as they are and amazing to the end, part ways with me and I drive Mary around for a bit. We talk, we're brutally open with each other, we're entirely at ease and completely, rapturously enveloped in the moment. It's like being back in the pool, a feeling so good that I'm oblivious to everything around me, which is why I'm very curios to catch sight of blue lights in my rear-view mirror.

Cops don't and never have worried me. Sure, there are more than the fair share of pricks out there on every force, those that are drunk on the modicum of power they have, those that feel they are above the law instead of servants to it (Boys In Tha Hood, anyone?). More often than not, the police I've run into are congenial and professional. I've always treated them respectfully and gotten out of speeding tickets or other moving violations. And I don't even have a rack.

The guy pulling me over is a State Trooper, and his backup arrives almost immediately. I had spilled some bellini on my jeans while at Carino's, so their first concern is to make me take a breathalyser test. Since the day saw fit to turn 100+ degrees, their anti-Irish gadgetry has over-heated and won't work. I pass a field test with flying colors and immediately go through the rigmarole of having my license called in for a background check. No problem. I'm clean. I speed, I take little pens from the library, I lie, I take change left in soda machines. But I have no major crimes to....

....there is a fucking warrant out for my arrest?! In Conway?!

Have you ever had a moment where everything in the world you believed in came crashing down around you simply because one of the smaller things at the bottom that supports bigger things at the top turned out to either be a lie or was somehow invalidated? To shorten that sentence and sound all the more pretentious at the same time, have you ever had an existential crisis? I've had two. Finding out I was a wanted criminal was the second. The first was when a friend of mine from AGS, Elyse, confided in me that she absolutely loved giving blowjobs. I don't know why I made that out to be such a big deal, but my world was pretty much based on a few simple presumptions about the nature of reality:

The Rolling Stones are a better rock band than the Beatles (The Beatles are unquestionably pop, meaning the Stones win on a technicality)
Apocalypse, Now! is the best Vietnam movie. Ever. And one of the greatest of all time.
If a town has far too many shoe stores in proportion to the people residing within it, it isn't worth living there, mentioning it, canvassing districts there during a primary election, or anything more than a general life-passing-a-small-town-by sort of phenomenon. Usually these places are either small out-of-the-way towns that were granted interstate access, or former small towns that became squashed between two larger, more meaningfully existing cities.
Elyse is cute, intelligent, virginal, and most certainly does not get visceral pleasure from giving men oral sex. This is a matter of fundamental importance to the existence of the universe as we know it. It really is. It's a catechism for Christ's sake.
I'm entirely mediocre in every regard except for my mastery of ad hominen attacks involving compound curse words (See: Assfucking shitwhore).

I think it was because for a split second after Elyse told me this, I figured that all innocence in the world had just become evanescent (Last American Virgin, anyone?). Fucking Holden Caulfield. I'm stuck in the goddamn rye field with you after all, trying to save innocence that is only doomed to be lost. So, that's that meaningless anecdote.

The arresting trooper was far nicer to me than I would like to think he is to most law-breakers he takes into custody. He actually apologized for handcuffing me, telling me he knew I wasn't going to make trouble but that it “a procedural precaution.” Fair enough. He even held my cell phone to my head so I could make the single most embarrassing and humiliating phone call of my life to my dear old mum. On the ride to the station, he even went so far as to ask me why I was so tired, why I wasn't with Mary, and that I should gladly forget that Michelle had deigned it worthy to remove herself from that equation that I call my life. This wasn't an arrest or extradition. This was two actors in some cosmically misaligned drama throwing caution and the script to the wind and ad libbing a few lines of black comedy. There is no way that this is anywhere in the same ZIP code as real.

The Conway officer picking me up wasn't bad, either. In fact, he handcuffed me with my hands in front after the trooper told him I was “a good kid who just made a stupid mistake.” Joke's on him, I used that chance to text every single person I knew in Conway to come bail me the fuck out of jail. Joke's on me, nobody came save for Mary. The guy riding with me wasn't too much for company, though. Being drunk and having just beaten your wife will do that for a person. Understandably so.

When my jolly troupe (Mr. Officer, Mr. Drunkard, and myself) arrive at Faulkner County Detention Unit II, I am finally served my warrant and go through a bit of a cold tremblor as the extent of my crimes that made me wanted man are no more than $2.76 worth of a hot check.

Say what you want about comedy, but absurdism is absolutely amazing for a laugh in a dark moment (Dr. Strangelove, anyone?). The deputies in the jail all shoot me looks like I'm worth killing on the spot when I laugh at the fact that I was arrested in one town, hauled to another for extradition, and then hauled to a prison in another county over an amount that won't even buy a small popcorn at a movie theater. That may be why I was last to be processed and thrown into my cell with three other guys long after everyone else was pulled for fingerprints and mugshots.

Yes, processed. Stripes (Smell odd). Fingerprints (Nifty, all digital!). Mugshot (I'm oddly photogenic). Shower in front of a deputy (The ultimate in humiliation). Thrown in a room with nothing to sleep on but the concrete floor (Been there). Yeah, the ol' fuzz finally caught Tom Joad.

This place unnerves me in a way that almost makes me doubt that I'm really here. Even though I see the people outside my door, the way they completely ignore the prisoners here is an insult that just breeds self-loathing. It makes you wonder if you truly aren't good enough for these good people, these right people anymore. I sometimes wonder if criminals are repeat offenders so often because they don't know how to validate themselves after living an existence in which they are practically denied the acknowledgment that they even take in oxygen. It sounds trite and insignificant, but this place honestly makes me wonder if Michelle was right when she yelled some of the things she did at me that last night.

I'm set to be arraigned at 1:30, whenever that is. Probably an hour and thirty minutes after I'm served two rubbery hot dogs, if logic doesn't fail me. Still, that leaves a lot of time between the applesauce and white bread and rubbery hot dogs to burn. The denizens of cell #22 resort to the one thing that all American men have turned to in times of dire need and absolute malaise: Paper football. We play paper football over and over and never tire of it. We bounce the “ball” off the wall. We try and shoot it through the slot in the door that the food trays were delivered through (The deputies catch on and shut the door within minutes). In a place where time has no meaning and where meaning has no pertinence to begin with, where else do we have to go but back to the comforts of high school boredom?

Two dollars and seventy-six cents. Sure, a law is a law. I broke a law, and I have to pay for it. But seriously. What is the fucking point in shackling my ankles and wrists to go before a judge for two dollars and seventy-fucking-six cents?! For the cost of my stripes, hours for the manpower (trooper, CPD officer, deputies, the judge), my three meals, and the gas to transport me here, the state could have probably done something more worthwhile. Orwell himself couldn't have penned a more biting satire than what this state is willingly doing to itself. Compared to many of the guys in there, I get off easy. I pay a $3 (HA!) bond and walk out after only 18 hours in jail.

I flew home from London a broken, hurt, despairing person who was in a dive straight into self-inflicted oblivion. Then, I waged a war with demons that won and drove me east. Finally, I drove home, happy and free only to end up behind bars with a guy who looked like the Unabomber and had a toenail that he could peel back to keep a small stash of pot in. Sometimes, life throws you a curveball. Sometimes, it just intentionally walks you.

In less than a week, life was going to bean me in the temple with a Nolan Ryan fastball and there was nothing I could do about it. Everything I had worked hard to free myself was going to return, with a bloodlust from hell.

London Calling, pt. 2: When The Man Comes Around

2007-08-27T21:57:00.000-05:00

Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I'm a drunkard.
Captain Renault: That makes Rick a citizen of the world!
- Casablanca

I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be there in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be there in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they built - I'll be there, too.
- Tom Joad, John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"

Dulles is horrible for trying to sleep off whatever troubles see fit to chase you across continents, oceans, and memories.

I've paced the terminal at this sweeping monolithic testament to hope of the early 1960s more than I care to admit. Partly due to nervous anxiety, partly due to drunken urges that never seem to pipe down, but mostly due to just a sense of boredom in light of the sudden evaporation of Michelle and that maelstrom on the other side of the Atlantic. When something as omnipresent and burdensome as that is suddenly gone, the freedom is an alienating and unforgiving feeling that borders on hysterical fear. I actual find myself wishing I were back in that mess, just for the sick familiarity I grew so quickly accustomed to. Instead, it seems that certain aspects of breakups do obey internationally-agreed-upon statutes concerning the law of the sea. Leave the 200 mile exclusive economic zone of any nation that has provided a home to any sort of ill emotion, and I guarantee you'll feel like a million bucks.

(I wonder if she's in his arms right now...)

Dulles is, more than anything else, a wonderful tombstone to the idea of building anything with the future in mind when it comes to architecture stylings. It soars and swoops into the air on the promise that Kennedy's Camelot would make a bright, secure future for all Americans. In a way, it seems fitting that I should stare at the white concave expanse hovering above me and try and make it not-so-obvious that I'm crying as I think about what I just fucking destroyed on the other side of the Pond.

I wonder if my tears taste more like pale ale or champagne.

My flight leaves at 6 AM, bound for Atlanta. From there, it goes straight into that little town that launched the man who helped define the 1990s for most Americans. But first, I have to handle that phoenix of the South. When my flight leaves, it's easily taken care of. All it takes is a few more beers to get buzzed, and I silently sit next to a Hassidic Jew heading to Little Rock with me.

(I wish she were here with me more than anything else)

Sitting there, in Hartsfield-Jackson, made me think about myself. For some damn reason, I thought of Tom Joad and Waylon Jennings. I don't know why, of all the people I could attempt to sympathize with or turn into some sort of exemplar for my peculiar situation, I would come to a country legend lacking a left foot and a murdering character from a Steinbeck book. Maybe it was because I didn't want to do myself the oh-so-white-boy bullshit course of trying to make myself out to be a Thích Quảng Ðức or Mother Theresa. More than likely, it was because a strange convoluted mixture of jet planes, travel while feeling down, calamity, and a sense for a rebirth in the face of crisis brought these two to mind. I love these men. I'll call myself Tom Joad from now on.

(Why....what have I done?)

Somewhere over Tennessee, I wrote this out in my mind:

WHEREAS the Olympian gods of ancient Greece saw fit to punish Prometheus, bringer of light and hope to mankind, by periodically destroying his liver by way of raptor

WHEREAS the liver continues to stay out of line with previously agreed-upon limitations on the cessation of organ growth and regeneration

WHEREAS the liver, having been previously linked to hope and fire and continues to grow, makes itself an easy target for punishment in these dark times

It is RESOLVED that a State of War exists between any sort of fermented beverage and the liver of Tom Joad.

I fly into Little Rock with no problem at all. Marcus, my old roommate, shows up to pick me up from the terminal. Seeing him and my car make me want to weep. It's as if this is truly all I need to feel welcome and at home here. Why wouldn't it, either? On the one hand, I have camaraderie and trust and love and intelligence in Marcus. On the other, I have absolute freedom and power to choose my location in the world in my car. It's no wonder Americans have so many cars, so many highways. We love our freedom, our power to choose no matter how trite or insignificant a matter it may be, and we love this country of ours that spans a continent and holds within deserts, mountains, prairies, and the most amazing people in the world. Hence, my car is my escape. I plan to utilize it in the next few days as much as I can.

First thing is first. I stop by Mary's to take a shower, and chat up her mom about Chicago, built on the ashes of Ft. Dearborn (Christ, everything I find and love seems to be built upon or within the destruction of itself. Amazing how our circumstances shapes our perception). I don't know what I do for the next few hours. I relapse into the sort of automaton daze I was in along the Thames, only now I stroll along the roiling Arkansas River through grass pocked with various memorials to conquering Spaniards and a Polish calvary commander who deemed our struggle for independence worth his efforts. At some point I revisit Marcus, immaculately dressed as he is, at his job and chat for a bit there. I think I did, anyways. I made phone calls at some point. Talked to Jack. Mary.

(Fuck, what is the deal? Can I redeem myself to her in any way, whatsoever?)

That's when I got a call from Keith.

Keith had gone to Memphis a semester (year? I lose track of time so easily) earlier and I had heard very little from him except by way of Facebook message. He had been one of those friends who, while we could go weeks without having a substantial conversation sometimes, one night would more than make up for that as we talked about everything from metal to Wendy's to the Honors God Squad to politics to the Fonz. In short, Keith was a fucking honest friend who did cause a bit of an acute aching in terms of missing a fun guy, but not so much as some of my other friends; after all, how could I miss someone who easily made any leave of absence worth all the while within 10 minutes of conversation or after 3 minutes of singing Prince.

That night, my war began on the banks of the Arkansas River with Mary, Keith, Jack, and a surprise visit by our friend Salvador.* President Clinton Avenue was our front line. The enemy was soundly defeated.

(I wish, more than anything else, she were here right now. I need her.)

Somehow that night, I found myself in an apartment that was once familiar to me but now had the visage of some kind of bombed out abandoned villa. I don't remember driving there. I don't remember walking in. I don't remember laying down on....a futon. Yeah, a futon. I don't remember driving? Jesus! Is it the drinks, or is it the trauma? Maybe I just went on autopilot while I decided to torture myself over everything I ever did to Michelle and over what I just lost in her and showed up here. I see myself in the mirror for the first time, wondering why I'm there and how long I've been staring into the glass slab without seeing myself.

For a second I see her. I feel her hands holding me. I, for a split second, have deluded myself into seeing the one thing that I neither want nor need yet do, yet I can't admit to either. I suddenly find myself weeping. Not crying, not that sort of bawling you do when your face contorts and hurts from the physical effort of crying. No, weeping. The kind where your hands do things that exacerbate your pain yet try and alleviate it at the same time on their own will (My scalp hurt for days). The kind where your entire abdomen contracts and rips and pulses like some kind of crazed zydeco band following an epileptic conductor, the kind that exhausts you to the point where you don't mind passing out on a bathroom floor you just saw cockroaches on.

Flying across the goddamn Atlantic didn't help a single thing. That delicate rose, that twisted, thorny beautiful splash of vibrant color and passion that nature plants in our hears that has been named "Heartbreak" has taken root here, in my home away from home. I have to run. I have to flee. I have to escape. The war on Tom Joad, the penitence I have taken upon myself for my crimes and my emotions running wild must be taken to a new front.

There's another river I have to cross.

(Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani?)

*Salvador, Mary, Jack, and I went to Governor's School. For those who didn't go, you can't even comprehend the bond that place instills

London Calling, pt. 1: Train in Vain

2007-08-27T21:47:00.000-05:00

No fun to be around
Walking by myself
No fun to be alone
In love with nobody else
- Iggy and the Stooges, "No Fun"

You know, there's a million fine-looking women in the world, but they don't all bring you lasagna at work. Most of them just cheat on you.
- Silent Bob, "Clerks"

As Bokonon says: "Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
- Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"

It wasn't until I ran away from Michelle that I finally saw the Britain I had been promised.

Most of this was on account of British Airways and a ticket bought at the absolute last second in an attempt to not only save my sanity, but to try and keep Michelle safe from me. Never has anyone in my life hurt me so deeply, quickly, and irrevocably as to drive me to strike them. Never. It's not who I am, right?

Right?

I don't know. At this point, I don't know a damn thing except that I am a jet-setting heart-broken boy soldier who's hopping world capitals (How en vogue). All I know is that I hurt. All I know is that someone I loved (that would be Michelle, for those who need a clearly defined subject at all times) somehow not only fell out of love with me in the span of three weeks, but managed to find a little beau on the side almost immediately. All I know is that she had a track record of doing this (I'm strike three). All I know is that while that ad-hoc conglomeration of stone and cobble and obscure monuments and Victorian and Gothic and Tudor and Stuart and Imperial and Neo-Classical architecture did nothing to me, but I still loathe the very fact that there is an island at the same latitude as Minneapolis-St. Paul with the average temperature of the northern American Piedmont (A large part of me wonders if the Blitz wasn't a good idea, after all). All I know is that Laci is the cutest stewardess I have ever seen in my life, and she keeps refilling my tiny champagne glass with this nice concoction called Buck's Fizzy.

All I know is I hate someone; Whether it be the beau, myself, Michelle, or all three is up to you to decide.

I ran away from Michelle early in the morning. Ten AM or so, Greenwich time. Never told her. Never said goodbye in person. Never hurt more in my life for doing it. But I was gone to see my last bit of London before I ran away from the one person who honestly made me want to disappear more than anyone else. I wandered around the Thames for close to four hours. The Tower of London, the Britain at War Experience, the Tower Bridge, the HMS Belfast, the Tate Modern.... I honestly don't remember much. I went there, I saw them, but it wasn't me. It was some automaton leftover from a Romero film shuffling his feet through these landmarks to British culture and imperialism, some shell-shocked victim of an unspeakable act who perceived and travelled to those different things. Not me. That wasn't me, then. I had decided to take a very tactical leave of absence from that animated cadaver by that point, and I was off in the cosmos weeping over one of the most beautiful things mankind had never realized it had lost forever. Or so I thought at the time.

British Airways is the absolute embodiment of everything good about the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but not so much the Crown Dependencies. That's what they get for being constitutionally vague with their status in relation to UK proper, though. All's fair in metaphor, I say. By the time I was on the blue line heading towards Heathrow's terminal 3, I was haggard. Worn. I don't want to say aged. That kind of powerful effect on someone is reserved for death of a family matriarch, an irreversible change of events in one person's life that is pregnant with its own meaning, maybe waking up and realizing that for the first time in your life you are a complete and total failure by any and every sense the word could possibly have. The Presidency aged Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and somehow gave Ronald Reagan a coating of teflon since he physically couldn't age any further. This didn't age me so much as it killed a part of me. If you go to London, look for that part of me. It's buried next to Joe Strummer and it's epitaph reads "Passion is a fashion." British Airways did plenty to at least opiate that loss. I got an immediate upgrade to business class, and had the attendants checking me in take a look at me and ask:

"Sir, is everything quite alright?"

Wait. What? Christ. No! Fuck. This lovable, helpful guy could see right through me. Any facade I had put up was gone. Invalidated. Futile. Shit. Was it that obvious? Hell, I guess dragging your heart behind the Tube by piano wire has a certain effect on the way you look.

"No, sir. I'm alright. Just....tired. Very tired, sir. It's been a long week; I'm ready to be home again."
"Ah, yes! Back to the States! Well, we have you on a business class flight to Washington, again. You will be coming in at.....10:40 their time."
"Thank you, sir."
"Have you ever flow into Washington? I hear it's a wonderful town."
"No, I've never been to DC."
"DC?"
"Nevermind..."

I was airborne 4 hours later. In the meantime, I had managed to get completely gassed in a restaurant that luckily had the cheapest prices on beer in the entire fucking island that called itself an empire once-upon-a-time. By the time I had left British airspace and crossed into Irish, I had done the Irish proud and put away half a bottle of champagne on my own, constantly attended to by the beautiful and personable Laci (After my appetizer she asked if I had ever seen Washington, and what I was doing when the plane landed). I downed a wonderful vinaigrette salad with rock shrimp as a appetizer, one so large I accidentally confused it with my entree. Said entree was the most delicious alfredo pasta with salmon fillets I have ever had. Also the first.

If people could lose their virginity like I had my pasta, wars would end.

I flew into Washington, DC, capital of the single greatest nation in the world by virtue of measure of Saleen Mustangs, teeny eensie weensie yellow polka dot bikinis, bourbon, Michael Bay summer blockbusters, heavily-iced classic Coca-Cola, New York City, Chicago hot dogs, miles and miles of virgin forest, Cajun cuisine and culture, art galleries that allow photography, blues, rock, Brooklyn hip-hop, military hardware, big lakes, big buildings, and former whaling taverns that have still been able to stay open on Cape Cod over the years. I disembarked, found my bag (I almost grabbed a serviceman's bag who was returning from Qatar), and made it through customs despite having a BAC level that would have probably put Di's driver to shame. I stumbled into the main terminal, itself a testament to the failure of architects to ever plan for the future when designing buildings, and somehow found a place serving booze throughout the night.

At some point I rode a taxi somewhere. I don't know where, how, why, when, or who was driving. I just know I did. I had been, in the last 8 hours, drunk in two major world capitals, over Eire, in international waters, and the Commonwealth of Virginia. I had been given the lucky break of the most luxurious flight of my life, with some of the best food I had ever had, given to me by one of the cutest women I have ever laid eyes on, with some decent champagne to accompany my torment and meal. "I just know I did." That would prove to turn into the motto for the rest of the month, whether or not I was ready or willing to concede to that factoid of karmic destiny.

Say whatever you want, but flying British Airways goes a long way towards helping a broken heart.

Christ, it was good to be home.

I Saw a Tapir.

2007-08-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

'Tis better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Bitches ain't shit.
- Dr. Dre

Alright, before we begin another romp into pop culture infused cynicism, comedy, and outright pointless stream-of-consciousness non-sequitors, it's time to do a bit of personal history. Calling me a late bloomer when it comes to women is not entirely deserved, but it's not exactly wrong either. If anything, it's kind of akin in some really strange way to a Page/Plant reunion tour. It isn't quite what you expected it be, at the same time it is amazing and the closest thing to a holy experience you will ever have while also somehow disappointing you to the point where you have an existential meltdown as you suddenly realize the Snowdens of yesterday are truly lost once and for all.

Yeah, that's it. My love life has conspicuously lacked a John Bonham for going on eight years now. (Count the pop culture references in the last paragraph. The lack of them should let you know what kind of mood I'm in.)

So, let's do a bit of tallying akin to the most asinine Major League Baseball statistics:

See previous posts for first bitching rant.
Oh yeah, let's talk about my first major relationship. A girl that is, by almost all accounts perfect for any good person, is drug through hell by my on-again-off-again shenanigans and interloping Honors College snoops and bitches (Class of 2006, you will NOT be missed).
Hey, remember the time I got a text message telling me that one of my exes who is by all accounts antisocial or maladjusted in the most disturbing ways was pregnant? Oh yeah, the text was from said ex.
God knows how many people in the intermission when I decided that I was freaking scared to death of a relationship (after that last one, can I be blamed).

Now, it's happened again. The best way I can phrase it is as a joke:

Person #1: Hey, did you hear about Daniel Green?
Person #2: You mean the guy who flew 4,000+ miles to suffer a heartbreaking breakup?*rimshot*

So, I'm stuck in London. Surrounded by far too many closed circuit televisions for a nation that isn't ruled by some despotic post-Soviet egomaniac. It's an alright city, but being surrounded by 8,000,000 unfriendly, strange faces without a single friend for hundreds upon hundreds of miles is kind of, ya know, a downer. I mean, even the damn art in the galleries won't look me in the eyes (I'm not joking here, I went to the National Galleries and there is a conspicuous lack of those creepy/awesome paintings with eyes that follow you around the room. I smell a conspiracy). At this point, federalism would be a welcome construct to experience again. This brings me to my main point. The other day, I was at the London Zoo watching the animals with you-know-who, and something occurred to me.

Zoos and lesbians have so much in common it isn't funny, thus making their connections to failed relationships even less funnier on some sort of cosmic scale (I only say cosmic because I am so tired of using 'exponentially').

Zoos and real-life lesbians are some of the most frustration things to modern man. By 'modern man' I mean 'not females.' With both cases, all we want is for a simple thing to the one simple trick that makes it famous. With animals in zoos, we want to majestically gallop. Swing from rope to rope. Roar. Fly and expose their magnificent plumage. Say "Polly want a cracker" or at least some sort of mild expletive in front of a geriatric. Basically, we want animals to act like some kind of National Geographic special, complete with the British voice over (I am so sick of nasal Limey accents at this point that I would LOVE to hear some Southern drawl). Yes, this also includes some possible doing of the horizontal mambo in front of kids who then ask their parents what the animals are doing (Duh, giving each other piggyback rides). With lesbians, men want them to majestically gallop. Swing from rope to rope. Metaphorically.

The ultimate frustration with both is that never do either. More often than not, both zoo animals and lesbians end up laying around beds of straw and looking at the bipedal creatures on the other side of their enclosure with a vague sense of annoyance and/or disinterest. The strange bipedal creatures, in response, throw apples. It's a system that has worked for millenia. It's a system that has, for better or for worse, taught humans that disappointment is the only true way to handle and live life. Think of life as one big Weezer album released post-Green. Or a better one, Prince's discography when he was purposely trying to suck. Even more important, it teaches us that what we are taught to want and what we are indoctrinated to believe only happens every once in a while. Attaining what we are taught is the ideal is something akin to one human out of six billion winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not counting organizations here, as obviously that shoots my entire argument down. So, there. Whoever said selecting whatever parts of reality suit you best has never talked to me. Or a Protestant group trying to write its doctrine. To put it in a more accessible manner, the chances of one of us getting what we are told is absolute perfection before we die is about the same as Franz Ferdinand recording another good album, Howard Dean becoming president, London becoming fully air-conditioned, most of American suddenly realizing that Grey's Anatomy is absolutely the most idiotic show polluting our airwaves, or the Cubs and Saints becoming respective national champions the same year that every Major League Soccer game sells out without Beckham's help.

Our relationships are the same way. Will we ever find what we need? No. Never. Not fully. Especially if we refuse to change our expectations or adapt our lives. Well, not adapting is the same as doing yourself in while listening to "The Passenger." Not bending, never bowing to the fact that a moment or a time in your life or a person is more than you can handle or not quite what you expect is probably the absolute worst thing you can ever do for yourself. Why hurt yourself by letting something slide by your expectations when you can meet in the middle and find so much more happiness?

And that's why I still go to zoos.

Flow-of-thought musings on the Facebook iLike Music Challenge

2007-07-28T14:44:00.000-05:00

-Hey, who is this Aimee Mann? She pops up every 5 questions or so....

-Wait, what? How could I screw up a question on the Arctic Monkeys? They're, like, one of my favorite bands of all time. Evar! Stupid mouse...

-Do I look like somone who would even consider listening to Avril Lavigne?

-Wow. These guys like Aimee Mann.

-CREED?! I thought we were trying to recover from our genocide on music. Why are they on here? Why?! WHY IN GODS NAME IS CREED ON HERE?!

-Is every reggae-esque song on here Bob Marley's? Surely there's some UB40 or, err....some other reggae guy.

-Can I honestly be blamed if I can't tell Jack Johnson songs apart? No, I can't. Piss off.

-Aimee Mann. Again.

-Dude! Yes! I just set a points streak record thing. Woohoo for 129 points in a row right!

-Damnit. Lost it on the next question.

-The only reason I can even get All-American Rejects songs right is 'cause of that annoying, nasal voice. Yeah, that'll work. Keep telling yourself that, Danny boy.

-WHO IS AIMEE MANN?

-OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS TINA TURNER SONG

-OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS MARIAH CAREY SONG

-OH MY GOD I HATE CREED!

-I have had four questions in the last five minutes that are somehow related to "Nothing Else Matters" and/or Metallica. This is nuts.

-Wow, I just got back up to 75%. Take that, Aimee Mann!

-I should have been nicer to Aimee Mann. I'm sorry Aimee Mann. Please let me break 80% right.

-Man, am I the only one who remembers that sketch off of the Animaniacs with Slappy Squirrel and The Who? "Who are you?" "The Who." "Who?" "Who." "Are you the band? "Yeah." "Well, what's your name?" "Who." "You!" "Who!" "YOU! What. Is. Your. Name!"

-One more Aimee Mann question, and I am out of here.

-THATS IT. SCREW THIS JOINT, I'M OUTTA HERE

A Get Together to Tear It Apart

2007-07-01T21:48:00.000-05:00

I got a feelin' it didn't come free
I got a feelin' and then it got to me
When you don't feel it it shows they tear out your soul
And when you believe they call it rock and roll
- Spoon, "The Beast and Dragon, Adored"

The most important debate I have ever seen never really took place.

I've lived through what I think is a fair share of presidential elections. While I was too young to remember Bush vs. Mondale, most who do would agree with me when I say that those debates might very well be the ones referred to in that shining jewel of a hook I so artfully constructed. Eh, not so much. I remember Bush vs. Clinton vs. Perot. I remember Clinton vs. Dole. I remember Bush vs. Gore. I remember Bush vs. Kerry. All of these debates, crucial and testing to the mettle of the American electorate, as they forced themselves to sit in front of what must be the most fucking senseless waste of time since The Cure For Insomnia in some sort of ancient rite of not only proving endurance and fearlessness in the face of such adversity and lobotomizing rhetoric, but also showing that Americans must be the most idiotic optimists in the world when it comes to political arena.

No, the most important debate I ever saw was true grassroots. It showed what the people of this nation thought, felt, tasted, smelled, screwed, shot, snuffed, snorted, drove, danced, slept, ate, metabolized, masticated, sipped, slurped, and addicted themselves to. It was also the single-most engineered piece of crap to ever be pulled over on the American younguns' since ad companies decided to appeal to their wallets, instead of their brains, thus creating the oh-so-empty yet oh-so-feared youth demographic.

By the time the Hives vs. Vines phenomenon had run its race through the hearts, minds, ears, airwaves, and pockets of America, something had happened. The feud, the fight between the Hives and the Vines was pretty much nonexistent from the very beginning. Both were the ten-second darlings of the media during the wonderful days of the garage rock revival in the late 90s, as bitter rivals. The sad thing about it was that the people going out and shelling out cash for these CDs knew at the very last moment that they had been had.

Sure, there were huge differences between the Hives and Vines to someone who just listened to the singles or the radio. The Hives, to those who grew up in the post-blink-182 world of pop-punk, sounded like some anachronistic prophet of the punk movement from the late 1970s. They sounded gritty, dirty, stripped, and they were infectiously hip and peppy. Throw in the gimmicky yet wondrously suave suits setup they pulled off, and you have a new geist in music that is just short of mod, just short of punk, but deliciously independent of both while being both. They were hyper, happy, and fun. They were Swedes.

The Vines, on the other hand, sounded like the grunge movement, only all grown up. They kept the power of grunge, those mumbled lyrics and over-distorted chords with tons of feedback that seemed like an anthem to God knows how many dissatisfied teens. Where the Hives were making kids jump and dance, the Vines were making them jump up and down and pound their steering wheels while racing around their hometowns in some strange attempt to relive Fear and Loathing before they had ever even read it. They were somewhat grungy in look, but remarkably clean while still managing to look urbanite chic with their track jackets and screen shirts at was to be the forefront of a clothing boom before it even happened. They were Aussies.

The two bands, those Hives and Vines, even had their differences carried into their music videos. The Hives went for style and substance, creating videos that I will still swear to this day that Franz Ferdinand simply copied. These videos captured that tingling sort of energy that never seems to dissipate no matter how many times you listen to it or how many occasions you dance to it with or without the assistance of any sort of mind-altering chemical. It's pure garage pop-punk with a mod face. One word: Bowlcuts. The Vines, on the other hand, had videos that had tons of violence. Either at the hand of Thor via lightning strikes that destroyed the band or through the most insanely-jacked up PCP addicts in a mosh pit ever, they had pure destructive rage and anger. If anything, they had this strength of youth dynamic to their stuff. They were having fun. Partying. No ties or business to take care of, unlike those damn Hives. To the whole world (at least the part that cared), it seemed like the Hives and Vines were polar opposites.

The highly-musically-aware were thrilled. Finally, a true rock feud in our day and age. Sure, there had been Slayer vs. Metallica. There had been Simon vs. Garfunkel (teehee). There had been Ozzy vs. Alcoholics Anonymous. That was old stuff, from the generations prior that had managed to survive the throes that inevitably come with the cresting of the massive waves that are new generations. The flotsam left behind by these massive, yet all too uninfluetial, bodies in the end left some relics on the beach to be examined and drug behind by some sunburned baby from climes and locales far from the site. That is what we were. Yes, we. I was one of these people who wanted this feud. I wanted to see a modern Beatles vs. Stones. Stones vs. Who. Who vs. Zeppelin. Page vs. Plant. Rockers vs. Mods. Metal vs. Punk. Pop vs. Grunge. This set me on fire. I was far too invested in this crap than I should have been considering all the problems I had with my high school years (Who am I kidding, I had no problems at school).

See, when you have few friends in high school and musical artists say what you're thinking better than you ever hope to (they still do, actually), you tend to get irrationally consumed in what little tidbits of musical news reach you from the outside world. Sure, there was the WWW. But, when dialup was the weapon of choice for ISPs and South Arkansas was your home, something as big as the Hives vs. Vines made you absolutely tremble in a way that Moses bashing the hell out of that golden calf did. You could almost feel the same heat and light as for the first time, you felt like you were a part of something (Fuck elections, man. This is music!)

The climax, that explosive moment of sheer energy and passion that was the confrontation between the two bands came on the MTV Video Music Awards in 2002. The Hives started first, with a performance that was ripped straight from How to Please a Crowd: The Ultimate Handbook for Bands by one Iggy Pop. All it lacked was some self-fondling under pants and crowd walking. And cutting. And rolling in honey. Okay, so it was Iggy-esque. The Vines....went nuts. If I had known at the time that their lead singer, Craig Nicholls, had Asperger's Syndrome I might not have been surprised at how he acted or why he just started screaming nonstop instead of actually trying to sing. I just through they were a horrible live band. No, not horrible. Too often people describe a band that refuses to meet the crystal perfection of their albums with repetition of its caliber over and over again as bad. Different. Live. Powerful. Strong.

It was a huge disappointment, for me. About two weeks before the much-hyped battle of the bands, I had bought the Hives CD in Little Rock on a field trip. As I listened to both of the CDs I became more and more convinced that instead of two different bands with two distinct groups of fans who would love to just go for the jugular instead of to a concert the Hive and Vines would just be a mediocre musical Janus. Not to say the bands were mediocre, but that the attempt to turn these two sides of the same movement into separate entities were almost as shoddy as fans limited recognition of it. It was a bust. It was a disappointment. I'm not going to wax melodramatic here and say it was the end of the world. Not at all. As involved as I was with music and that particular incident, it wasn't nearly as disheartening as my proms or even my entire senior year. It was just a disappointment was all.

And that's why I vote.

Seger your Irons

2007-06-09T19:07:00.001-05:00

The best fucking action movie ever made is Die Hard With a Vengeance. Argue this with me and you have yourself a date with the business end of my cricket bat.

What makes this movie so good; nay, PERFECT? Is it the solid plot filled with twists that never cease to entertain or become tepid? Is it the incessant playing of "Johnnie Comes Marching Home"? Is it the complexity of which the characters of the film dance about each other passing like two really loud, jet-powered, gun-toting trains in the night? Is it Samuel L Jackson playing Samuel L Jackson, or for that matter that his character is named "Zeus"? Is it the trademark "Yippee-kai-yay, motherfucker" that McClane delivers so smoothly? Is it that Die Hard With a Vengeance might just be the most fun movie ever made?

No. It's Jeremy Irons, the most famous of those guys. You know, those guys that show up everywhere but no one knows except either the most die-hard fans or those sad people who devote their lives to celebrity news. His character, a royally pissed of Eastern European mercenary or some kind of German migraine-stricken Riddler or who the hell knows. All that matters is that Mr. Irons has the most awesome German-esque accent ever, and he bombs New York like Belfast in the 1970s. Little boom here, little blast here. Whoops, there goes a train. Oopsie, sank a ship in New York harbor. Uh oh, I opened the movie blowing up a back-to-school sale on the Upper East Side (Why in the hell does the Upper East Side have a back-to-school sale? Shouldn't it be a back-to-Juliard sale?)

What it comes down to though is that Monsieur Irons is one of the greatest actors that is one of those guys. Those guys are everywhere. You know them. You've said it before "Hey, it's that guy! The guy from [movie name]!" These guys are the glue of Hollywood. The give us some of the most memorable roles in Hollywood without sucking huge paychecks out of studios or acting like little attention whores. Some of the most famous those guys are that guy who plays the sergeants in movies like Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and Pearl Harbor. Then, there's that guy that always gets the role of the freaky friend like in You, Me, and Dupree and The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Some of the most famous actors today were at one time those guys. James Earl Jones was that guy in Dr. Strangelove: Or, How I yadda yadda yadda. Once upon a time, Benicio del Toro was a unintelligible gangster in The Usual Suspects and a dog-kid-thing in one of those PeeWee movies. Speaking of PeeWee, anyone remember Laurence Fishburne being the cowboy on "PeeWee's Playhouse," or that kid who blasted the shit out of that boat in Apocalypse: Now!? (I hate punctuating sentences that end with that movie)

My point is this. His Highness, Jeremy Irons, is the perfect example of the virtue of a mediocre career. Let me clarify what I want to say before some random Jeremy Irons fan decides to crucify me. Jeremy Irons is a terrific actor, and does some of the most influential behind-the-scenes work in both Hollywood and in the music industry. He is a hard-working man who masters all set before him and has been spared the ceaseless Sauron-like eye of the paparazzi and fans that, while claiming to adore him, would like more than anything to see him fuck up and give him holy hell for it until the day he died.

I'm talking about you, David I-don't-have-a-real-career-not-since-Chris-Farley-died Spade.

In a way, Jeremy Irons has won. He has the respect of audiences and directors. He has cash. He could get chicks from every corner of the world if he weren't so freaking intimidating with that gravelly voice, and that includes those chicks who put big rocks in their lip and those chicks who wrestle alligators about a mile from my house. This virtue in mediocrity in turn brings me to Bob Seger.

When I say "rock" some of you will think of a sedimentary, igneous, or metamorphic geological feature. This means you have you been homeschooled and were forced to be locked in a closet with a huge, freaky picture of Jesus. Logic dictates that if you are attempting to break out of your holy shell, you should first begin the sad process of resocialization with something only marginally Satanic. Like "Sesame Street." Bert and Ernie's insinuated buggery is much less damaging to your psyche than anything I will ever write. Also, try and figure out what's up with Grover. Get your priorities in line, kid. Come read this in 10 years, maybe.

For the rest of you, you think of God's gift to white men who are desperate to point at a music that sounds nothing like stuff that permeates African-American culture and scream "YOU SEE! THAT SOUNDS NOTHING LIKE ELVIS! WE DIDN'T STEAL A SINGLE BLESSED THING!" When said thing is spake, other names come to mind besides Bob Seger. You think of Aerosmith. The Rolling Stones. AC/DC. Eric Clapton. Led Zeppelin. Neil Young. KISS. Blue Oyster Cult? BTO, maybe? Ratt, Poison, or Quiet Riot? Hell, no one listens to those guys. Who am I kidding, this list is dead. You guys get the point. You will be hard pressed to find ANYONE who screams "BOB SEGER!" when prompted to name a rock artist.

Once again, the virtue of mediocrity.

Bob Seger is, by no means, any inventive artist. He will not have the idiotic, drooling, blind hipster crowds itching for his latest release like RISDI students do for Radiohead, which is not entirely unlike what underaged girls do right before turning a trick for a hit of crack. He will not have the raving masses screaming for him to do a reunion with the Silver Bullet Band like what happens on a Page/Plant reunion tour, or Pink Floyd at Live 8 (Did you catch that? IT WAS AWESOME). When it comes down to it, Bob Seger has been bypassed by bands that are better at showmanship than they are at rock.

Not so with Mr. Seger. The man has a voice that was made for rock. He is the musical equivalent to Emperor Jeremy Irons. His voice sounds like it was born to a mother named Eternal Heartbreak and Anguish and a father named Jack Daniels, but not Jack Daniel Henderson. He has the best freaking rock voice ever and he has been passed over for Axl freakin' Rose, the only man who has the money he has yet still chooses to look like a carnie.

Bob Seger and Jeremy Irons are my exemplars. I would love to have that life where I do well, get moderate reception, but steer clear of the radar when it comes to catastrophic failure.

I could sleep well at night knowing that I am one of those guys.

addendum
I stand corrected...
(8:17:42 PM) DG: Bob Seger. Thoughts?
(8:18:03 PM) Eric Turner: is he still alive?
(8:18:06 PM) DG: Yes.
(8:18:20 PM) Eric Turner: then he rocks

Bash.org got nothing on me. ( I lie, they do )

2007-03-29T21:28:00.000-05:00

(21:15:09) **me: How did the woods go
(21:15:24) Jacob Oliver: fucking ridiculous, man
(21:15:36) Jacob Oliver: okay, so...my brother gets the truck stuck in the mud behind our house
(21:15:58) Jacob Oliver: my mom eventually called my dad, and he told us not to do anything else until he arrived
(21:16:19) Jacob Oliver: (note: at this point, we had found a jack and were about ten minutes from solving the problem)
(21:17:24) **me: Nice
(21:17:30) Jacob Oliver: when he arrived, he drove back and forth repeatedly and waaay too fast, thus raising the number of submerged wheels from one to four, and the level of immersion from about five inches to over a foot
(21:17:42) Jacob Oliver: no room to get the jack under the goddamn vehicle
(21:19:34) Jacob Oliver: so, after exponentially worsening the problem, he demanded that we shovel all dirt from around the wheels, wedge in logs, and drive out--since most of these logs were too big and he forbade us to use the chainsaw (which was designed and purchased for this purpose), we had to move half the earth, which didn't work anyway, because the body of the truck was actually resting on the ground by then
(21:19:57) **me: ROFLcopter
(21:20:09) Jacob Oliver: eventually Andrew's girlfriend's dad came over with a wench, and thus around 8 hours of backbreaking labor ended with NOT A GODDAMN THING BEING DONE
(21:20:10) **me: So, you spent some time in playing with your dad's wood
(21:20:21) Jacob Oliver: nein
(21:20:27) Jacob Oliver: THOSE ARE MY GODDAMN LOGS NOW
(21:20:29) **me: I bet it was a hard tug
(21:20:34) **me: You make it sound so big
(21:20:35) Jacob Oliver: that's what she said
(21:21:03) **me: Wow. Sounds like you had to work it for a long time
(21:21:11) **me: Did it wear you out, your dad's huge log?
(21:21:19) Jacob Oliver: is this the only reason you wanted to get this story, was for these jokes?
(21:21:22) **me: Yes
(21:21:28) **me: and I will Facebook them at some point
(21:21:33) Jacob Oliver: because if it is, I'm pissed at you but have a lot of respect for you at the same time
(21:21:38) Jacob Oliver: you
(21:21:39) Jacob Oliver: are
(21:21:41) Jacob Oliver: the
(21:21:42) Jacob Oliver: world
(21:21:44) Jacob Oliver: 's
(21:21:46) Jacob Oliver: second
(21:21:48) Jacob Oliver: biggest
(21:21:49) Jacob Oliver: dick
(21:21:52) Jacob Oliver: .
(21:21:57) **me: the first is your dad and his huge wood?
(21:22:02) Jacob Oliver: yep
(21:22:19) **me: God, I rule.

Workin' for the Clampdown

2007-03-21T19:31:00.000-05:00

Let fury have the hour, anger can be power
D'you know that you can use it?
- "Clampdown," London Calling

I am angry.

Let me rephrase that: Hell hath no fury like a senior who has to change his history thesis because one of the most important events in 20th century Arkansas history has a disturbing lack of fucking primary sources. On the way back from a most fruitless and infuriating trip to the Butler Center in Little Rock I screamed, cursed, gnashed teeth, punched my car, ground gears, flipped off drivers, and wanted to KILL something. I started off listening to Iggy Pop to serve as a foil to my mood, but decided to further exacerbate my mood by playing God's Single Greatest Gift to Angry White Men. If my mood and my actions at the time were a drinking game, it could best be described as thus:

For ever shot you take, take a shot.

Yes. Cyclical logic makes me happy. It's easy, for Chrissake, and I do NOT want anything complicating my life right now. Anyways, God's Single Greatest Gift to Angry White Men. There are times in the world when we encounter something that effects our mood so much that we can't help but lose control of our emotions as some uberstrong outside influence tells us what to do. When it comes to being angry and feeling good about being angry, The Clash is without a doubt that God not only exists, He wears leather, loves safety pins, has a neon green mohawk, is angry as hell, and is from Brixton.

Listen to them. Pop in their first album (either the UK or US version) and tell me you don't want to just go out and slaughter entire villages Viking-style with a smile on your face and a surge of endorphins that make you just feel so glad to be alive whilst removing that capability from others. It is gritty. It is stripped-down. It is fast. It is pure moshpit andrenaline coursing through your veins with three-chord riffs that make you want to strike a pose not unlike Venom and rip something into its constiuent organs with the subtlety and grace of a flying Cadillac in a Jerry Bruckheimer film.

For a more sustained anger, put in Give 'Em Enough Rope and let the bloodlust overwhelm you like a fox on 'roids who has just been dumped in the Overweight Chicken's Coop for Eldery Chickens Who Have a Hard Time Fleeing Predators. It's righteous. It's fast. It's a touch more refined and longer. Besides, punk covers of When Johnny Comes Marchin' Home coupled with unintelligble lyrics that you know are basically screaming rants about injustices in the world do more for a society's homicide rate than air-lifted machetes into Rwanda with tags attached saying "Apply this edge to enemy craniums." Sure, there are more quiet spots in this album, but you gotta catch your breath every once in a while when you're breaking crap.

Stay away from Sandinista! and Combat Rock. London Calling, their opus work, is really hit or miss. It's much more subtle anger that is produced from this one, a seething sort of rage that turns one into a postal worker; a timebomb of anger; a college student ready to find a damn clocktower and doing God a favor and putting a few more Longhorns in hell with nothing more than simple glance that hit one just the wrong way.

So, I've been blasting the Clash for a while. There is an unused TV in my corner.

How much for a baseball bat, and where is an empty field?

Relativity for Idiots; Or, How You Should Learn To Stop Worrying And Love Me

2007-02-16T20:15:00.000-06:00

There are some places in this world where the people residing in certain locales fail to either live up to the history of the place or the potential of the place. It's a sad phenomenon, something akin to a gold miner walking out of a mine in disgust because he just discovered veins of platinum, silver, lead, and uranium but deciding it's more worthwhile to instead to take up abstract art that draws every single ounce of its inspiration from some unholy combination of Prince during his I'm-going-to-make-bad-albums-on-purpose era and the United States Internal Revenue Act of 1986 in its full, unabriged glory, being compared to the Internal Revenue Act of 1954. Make sense? Of course not, there are too many commas in that last sentence to make sense. Neither does entire region of Arkansas south of the Ouachita River.

Basically, this place sucks. In terms of the general theory of relativity, where the idea of "suck" can be measured via gravity's impact on the fabric of space-time, I could stand on the fucking surface of Jupiter and scoff as your spine was fused into a single, inch-high vertebrae. Except for people from Jasper, Texas. Those people, as unfortunate as they are to be from that infinitesimal pinprick of suck in an infinitely deep well in space-time, have the insanely awesome ability to go clubbing in black holes with Elvis, Meatloaf, Corey Feldman and all the other celebrities that are dead, whether they realize it or not. Regardless, this place sucks and I will trump any and all of you whom deem it necessary to engage in the timeless game of "My Town Sucks More Than Yours," you pathetic hipster freak.

El Dorado, in particular, is an angry geriatric who's children have left it (gender is indeterminate due to sags, wrinkles, and the distinct probability their genitalia just falling off on the ground with plopping sound that is not entirely unlike an over-ripened exotic fruit being dropped in Kroger's).* It realizes that not only has its glory days of easy ass and high tolerance to alcohol passed, but it also realizes that no matter many Nazis ('cause its a faux pas to acknowledge the Italians actually played a meaningful role in WWII) it killed in the war, it will soon be just as dead as Tampa Bay's hopes for a MLB dynasty in the 21st century or Corey Feldman's acting career.

I've talked this over with some of my friends, my little term for people who will sit down long enough to talk to my bloodshot, fuzzy-faced, mumbling ass to actually listen to me. It's a term that's all the rage right now, you can thank me later after it enters the lexicon. I hear it's que-ed up right after "que-ed up" and "LOLocaust."

Some of them agree. Others look at me, spit out their t'baccy, "say" something in decibels that we call "yelling" that is entirely unintelligible due to a terminal infection of Twang, and promptly fail out of my college. They then gravitate back towards the seductive appeal of El Dorado's suck, where their kind are welcome to interbreed regardless of relation or any other social taboo. These people then enroll in a community college that, bless its non-existent heart, really honestly tries. They then get an Associates degree in incest, drive their well-intentioned professors to alcohol and pills and the high bridge over the Ouachita, and go on to further drain tax dollars from more deserving people by merit of simply leaving footsteps upon our Earth.

The ones that agree with me never cease to amaze me. The main reason is because I take an incredibly long time to get to my point, as you've figured out so far. Trust me, it's at the very end.* The other reason is because I really am an insufferable asshole, but not so much as Corey Feldman.

The fact of the matter is that I can't call a single girl in this town in a platonic manner without being hounded, harassed, and just generally annoyed by some redneck. To be honest, I think it's the same one. I swear I hear the same drawl, the same scratching sound of his drunken soul trying to escape the miserable life it has found itself in and go join Plato as he swoops around the sun, the same disgusting smacking sound that I can only hope is not the result of his ingestion of the nearest stranded driver on a county road. I call him Cletus Bocephus McMomfuck (How in the hell redneck culture came to co-opt the Latin -us suffix so efficiently as they did and with such little protest from Italy is beyond my comprehension).

I would like to take this time to clarify something I said earlier. Simply put, I said that Arkansas south of the Ouachita River was an abysmal hell-hole, devoid of any redeeming human qualities (it's quite beautiful otherwise), a bit of nature that proves that either God is retarded or hates us, and the thing that would make Dante realize his version of hell was as inconvenient as getting floor-level tickets to a Rolling Stones concert for free.* I will not, out of principle, mock other towns the way I have here. Dissatisfied youth always mock their own town, and look to any other town with bright eyes. It's been that way since Goethe (nerds off the starboard bow). I spared you Camden, Hope, Magnolia, Lewisville, Stamps, Buckner, Texarkana (AR), Strong, Huttig, and De Queen. You remember that. YOU REMEMBER THAT!

So, continuing. What bothers me more? The fact that Cletus Bocephus McMomfuck treats his "woah-mayn" like a commodity, a good that can be controlled and regulated with little regard to their feelings or wants? The fact that this girl is either taken and not telling me, allowing herself to hang around such a cyclical DNA strand, or a bitch who lives for the thrill of infidelity? No, none of that really bothers me. It's depressing. Not in the sort of way Nine Inch Nail's EP depressed me, or even watching how a worthless book void of any real content like Blue Like Jazz can become so insanely popular. No, it depresses me more along the lines of walking into a nursing home and seeing a varicose, genitalia-less, Alzheimer-y geriatric hum a Scott Joplin tune in the wrong key.

God, I fucking hate Corey Feldman*

*Face it man, you would rather think about that than think about them porking. Sociology books be damned, old people do not have sex.
*This isn't it. Stop being so impatient. You've waited this long for California Democracy**, you can wait for my God-given insight.
**Multiple entendre!
*Fuck you, Joshua Aaron Kennedy. Fuck. You.
*Halo 17. Yes, I Wiki'd it.
*That's my point.

Business in the front, Party in the back

2007-02-15T03:04:00.000-06:00

Dear Mr. Jack Daniel Henderson,

In no personal way whatsoever, with no malicious harm intended, and by no practical or legitimate fault of you own, I sincerely wish you would just drop dead already.

It's not because you have a name so much more infinitely better than mine in any possible regard. It beats mine in terms of pertinence and longevity in relation to a nation riddled with an obsession for nostalgia and nostalgicky things, as well as alcoholism. It also beats my name in terms of the distinct possibility that one day there will be a court ruling that will enable you to get a payment from the Jack Daniel distillery to reimburse you for all the free advertising you've been giving to the world and the schoolkids at Smackover High School (While it's not in the works yet, I pray that it is for the sheer comedic value that would come from the nutshot it would be to American corporations). While I will admit that when I first discovered your full name my jaw did drop, a reaction that was only previously elicited when I discovered there was a man in the United States Army named Optimus Prime, this is not the real reason I want you to die.

I don't feel this insatiable urge for you to croak because I have this odd feeling that you don't like Daft Punk, the Arctic Monkeys, or have ever sat on the food of a decrepit 1994 Dodge Intrepid, 3.3 liter v6 watching a barge go through the lock at Toad Suck dam and wonder if any dirty, perverted minds out there would find something so blatantly mechanical and lifeless to be a euphemism for vaginal penetration. An addendum would be that I have a feeling that you think the basic concept behind the show "Knights of Prosperity" is funny, but refuse to actually watch it for some reason (I myself have too much crap so I have my legitimate rationalization for my worthless life, thank you sir.) Also, I am willing to put money on it that you think it was a crying shame that Orson Welles' last role was the voice of Unicron in the original Transformers movie and that you use the cliche "so bad it's good" way too much for your own good.

Please don't get me wrong. I know you have done much good in the world, and I have taken it into account. For instance, you lived during the apex of many of the best rock acts in the history of the entire history of historical past-noteworthy-events. In addition, there is the distinct possibility you're the Duke of New York, A #1. I'm even willing to take into consideration that you slew the Iceman those climbers found in France or Italy or Azerbaijan in the 1990s because he made a pass at your wife, which proves your powers not only reach into the here-and-now but also into the freakin' Bronze Age. Despite these noteworthy accomplishments, I still just want you to die already.

Seriously, already. Just keel over for the love of Christ. I've wanted someone to die more in my life, and out of more friendly reasons at that.

You see, I've heard something about you Mr. Jack Daniel Henderson (May I call you Mr. Jack Daniel Henderson? It loses something if I don't spell it all out. Mr. Jack Henderson. Mr. J. D. Henderson. Mr. Daniel Henderson. Mr. Jack. No, not as awesome as Mr. Jack Daniel Henderson). I've heard it from Jacob Oliver, and I think that once I heard it from my brother Chase "I love Concussions" Green. By now, this epic idea must have been scrawled into the cosmos, much in the same way that Ziggy Stardust's very essence was drawn from the stars. That is a horrible analogy. Let me try again.

By now, this epic idea must have been permanently and visibly impressed, merged, and possbily, subordinated the very fabric of the space-time continuum, the same from which the enigmatic Twinkie came into existence from, and from whence Roger Waters got the phenomenal idea to make an opera about the French Revolution. Indeed, this event which you have planned trumps all end-times including, but not limited to, Ragnarok, the Tribulation and/or Rapture, the Zoroastrian Final Judgement, and the Islamic Qiyamah. So, no pressure or anything, but you have planned a soiree so good it trumps the apocalypse itself. Ya know, just don't choke.

Dude, you want to have a kegger and blast Journey's opus "Wheel In The Sky" at a reception following your funeral. I can't wait for that, and neither can you.

13th Amendment, Redux

2007-02-13T17:45:00.000-06:00

I know exactly what it means to be degraded.

First off, don't give me that whole you're-a-white-male-who-is-responsible-for-all-injustice-and-inequality bullshit. Look at me, you think I could do anything along the lines of world-wide white hegemony? I can barely write two theses at once. I can't even ask out a girl I like without getting (visibly) shaky. But to get off this tangential little escapade, let's talk about some good ol' fashioned mass media degradation.

It was about four years ago. I was the lowly weekend DJ at KLBQ 98.7 FM in El Dorado, in the ugly Cold War bunker of a building on the corner of Timberlane and Hillsboro (Which, subsequently, leads me to believe the thick walls that place has will save me when Armageddon befalls us). My boss, the local celebrity Brett Miller, knew I had a hard time with girls. He also knew that most of that wasn't my fault for the following reason:

(Daniel's intelligence) = (collective intelligence of El Dorado x 4)²
(Daniel's compassion) = (collective compassion of El Dorado x 4987987)²²
(Daniel's religious views) = ([religious mindset of El Dorado] - sheepherd mentality + critical thinking + abstract thought)

Dating = Compatibility
Daniel's compatibility (X) = intelligence, compassion, quiet moments, dorkapalooza
South Arkansas compatibility (Y) = muddin', beer-swillin', book-burnin', unabashed serfdom to the Southern Baptist Convention

X≠Y

That's basically it. So Brett, honestly trying to do a good thing for the sake of doing a good thing for what he thought was a good person, decided to try and help me out when it came to Valentine's Day. Basically, he thought he would use the almighty power of radio to try and help me get a date for Valentine's Day. It doesn't stop here.

No, he auctioned me off on the air. Well, originally he was going to auction me off. Then he decided to take whomever sounded like the best caller, so he was basically pawning me off on whatever unlucky soul happened to sound hot/cute/nice/desperate enough to spend what was slowly turning into an ensured Valentine's day from hell. The gift package for either having pity on my Valentines-Day-stag-ass or just being that masochistic to resort to not only going out with me but also doing so ON THE FUCKING RADIO was the following:

Dinner for two (or $50 worth of food) at Mel's Seafood
Two tickets to Stars Theater
Splendid embarrassment for an average listening audience of a few thousand that money can't buy, but mostly because radio is still a free medium

Q99 got one phone call for me. One. We were on-air with this miserable stunt for hours. I still have it burned to CD somewhere around here, I listen to it when I need to remember how bad my life could be. Anyways, one phone call. It wasn't even the girl for Chrissake. It was her damn mom trying to hook her lonely, just-broken-up-with daughter with me 'cause she thought it would be good for her. I am not making this up. The only person to call in to get that Valentine's package from hell/South Jersey wasn't even a girl who wanted free food, it was her MOM doing it for HER.

To this day, I think I can trace all of my insecurities and neuroses back to this. But, that's akin to some alcoholic idiotic whining bitch tracing all her problems back to a deadbeat dad who left the family before she could even form memories. My point to all this? Iggy Pop rocks hard.

So, I meet the girl. Kacey Tomanio, who's father is known for being a hardass at Brookshires and who's entire family is so stuck up the ass of this one nutso church in town, was fairl inextinguishable from other people except that she had these incredibly gorgeous big blue eyes and this little smirk that said "smartass" and "innocently coy" at the same time, somehow. She, on air, emasculated me a tad bit more by confirming that she didn't want to do this but her mother suggested it would be a good idea; however, she did claim that I looked "alright."

You don't want to know the rest of the story. It's total bullshit. She went crazy. Twice. First, she went all I've-had-a-horrible-past-and-I-absolutely-hate-myself-and-so-should-you crazy. Then, she went all I-felt-the-hand-of-God-literally-touch-me-and-push-me-to-the-floor crazy. Then, she broke up with me because Jesus told her to. Last I heard, she had gotten knocked up so she could/would have to marry her ex.

This was basically a big humiliating debacle for me. My friends at high school heard it, and laughed. They laughed again when she actually showed up and said her mom made her come. They laughed again when I choked when it came to asking her out, on-air during rush hour. Brett laughed, although it was with me and after the fact. Same with his wife, although there was a tinge of that sort of social awkwardness you feel when you see a character on your favorite TV show doing something obviously dumb and being completely oblivious to it. I feel all the humiliation and shame and worthlessness crashing down on me again.

Happy Valentine's Day.

The Ten Commandments

2007-01-07T13:33:00.001-06:00

Within a few weeks, the University of Central Arkansas was visited by two different groups of far-right Christian proselytizers, come to spread the gospel of hellfire, damnation, homophobia, Antisemitism, and other messages of Jesus Christ's love for humanity. It's all in the Bible, under the Gospel of Douche and the Epistle to the Westboro Baptist Church. If you don't have the same version as these fine exemplars of Christ's love then I'm afraid that you've just bought yourself a one-way express ticket to hell. Also, if you're a male and have long hair, shorts, premarital sex, drink, smoke (anything at all, including tires when showing off for some Sigma Kappa's on the sidewalk), are Catholic, masturbate, curse, or don't give unquestioning drone-like service to the Republican Party you will go to hell. If you're a female, then you're going to hell if you have short hair, wear short skirts, tank tops, spaghetti strap tops, halter tops, tube tops, smoke, drink, curse, have premarital sex, take or practice any birth control, aren't subservient to a male of any sort, or adorn yourself with jewelry.

The second group, a group of people who looked like a fine collection of rejected extras from Witness with their bonnets and skirts and whatnot, had probably the most offensive display of pro-life paraphernalia I have ever seen. There's one way of going about informing people of the pro-life arguments, and then there's forcing your beliefs down someone else's throats by abusing a free speech area to fill it with repulsive images of supposed abortions right outside of where people eat lunch. What are you trying to prove? That you have no sense of where to draw the line? That your life is so pathetic and worthless you have to forgo a normal life for yourself and your children to throw your collective efforts into a cause so you can have enough meaning in your life to justify you not being aborted? Indecent in the least, and absolutely disgusting at the most, this is just a more radical version of a geist that has been sweeping UCA for some time now: Over-zealous Christian proselytizing.

What is it that makes these people think and act the way they do? Why do these people pursue their goals with a fervor equal to that of a mujahedin? Well, luckily for us, there have been numerous excavations done in Israel in recent years, uncovering a plethora of ancient Christian texts and various materials. The Gospel of Judas has filled our news recently, but there have been numerous unearthings just as important as this apocryphal text, one in particular. Found in an Essene fortress close the Dead Sea, a simple list carved into a stone tablet in classical Hebrew discloses a set of rules for the budding religion of Christianity and its adherents. Without any further time wasted on trivial details, I give you the Ten Commandments For On-Campus Protestant Proselytizing. (Amazing that this actually predates Protestantism by a good 1300 years. Our God is an awesome God, and such.)

I - Thou shalt not recognize nor respect the simple command of "no." Yea, these heathens are but an uneducated lot, who must be taught the particular version of the Gospel that thou hath adhered to by promising fealty to the (name of particular sect is missing here). Much like the babe who will not sip upon a cup of warm ale to cure his colic, the Word of Our Saviour must be forced down their throats in order to save their wretched and unworthy souls from the damnation that they other deserve (and we still secretly believe they are going to).

II - Thou shalt act in accordance with that of an oppressed minority when rejected by an infidel, even though thou art the clear majority in the nation, being white, middle class, and Protestant.
Yea, for whilst thou art simply a religious professional, your rejection means that you are, most assuredly, being rejected because thou art Christian. Let there be woe! Gnashing of teeth! Crying! Whining! Seeking of camaraderie and empathy from other people in a comparable and secure socio-economic standing. Yea, for whilst thou art spared the lions and the cross and the floggings and public humiliation and immolation and slave labor that befell your religious forefathers, you must believe and claim that you are as, nay more! persecuted than ever before despite the fact that ye constitute well over 75% of the nation's religious identity.

III - Thou shalt abuse free speech areas for radical diatribes of whatever Christian ideology you have.
Thou shalt read the introductory paragraphs to see what model thou shalt follow.

IV - Thou shalt adopt a seemingly innocuous appearance of nomenclature to make the congress of believers seem more "cool."
Verily, calling thine church services on Wednesday night "Wednesday Night Worship Service" is not enough! Take on a name worthy of a failed PR campaign for a nightclub! Thou shalt design a logo and make flyers, banners, bumper stickers, and keychains! Thine name shall be of a most short nature, like StuMo, The Rock, The Well, Elevation, WOW, 2fifty2, YOW, Ye Church ALIVE!, The House, and Greek letters that are only slightly incognito on campus. There is no end to the marketing blitz thou must undertake! Remember: Tis better to cheapen and materialize the name of our Great Saviour and promote Him and the Great Bumpersticker-Inspirer-In-The-Sky than it is to be the quiet zealot praying in the closet, secure in thine faith and sharing a truly intimate relationship with the Lord.

V - Thou shalt try to lure people into taking the Gospel by offering them a most generous slicing of pizza.
Ethics be not of concern! Ye Olde Gospel is of priority to thee! Not telling the folk partaking of the pizza and the chips and Dr. Pepper gone flat in plastic two liter bottles is a tacit, and subconscious, encouragement for the witnessing of the Gospel! Verily, doing this in the name of Jesus is not a lie!

VI - Thou shalt have not a single second of education in theology nor philosophy, yet thou shalt declare thine self a theological prodigy.
Whilst this may appear contrary to the cause of Mother Church(es), it is most necessary. Yea, spouting thine mouth off on basic philosophical issues and misinterpreted verses to anyone who will listen to thine idiotic banter is the most Christian thing a true believer can do. Verily, making statements contrary to Christian theology and arguments such as humans will never understand the God who made us is the most Christian of arguments and will most assuredly draw heathens into the fold as they are stunned by thine armchair, amateur, pedestrian knowledge!

VII - Thou shalt not convey love, nor peace, nor hope, nor anything of Christ.
Verily, thou shall use a most illogical version of reverse pyschology to draw them into the faith of a man who preached unconditional love, peace, friendliness, acts of kindness, and so forth. Yea, thou shalt be ornery, cold, unresponsive, elitist, gossipy, and as hypocritical as possible for this will appeal to their heathen intellects in some manner which we haven't thought out yet.

VIII - Thou shalt decry everything as a sin, worthy of much damnation and hellfire!
Sex, cigarettes, rock music, movies, Democrats, homosexuality, fine art, fine wine, fine cheese, Europe, Russia, Communism, free-trade agreements, foreigners, Jews, Oxygen TV, Disney, clothes, hairstyles, caffeine (for Mormons), the internet, secularism, humanism, philosophy, foreign-made cars, books not printed on onion paper, not going to church on Sunday, intelligence, critical thought, questioning the God-given mandate of the GOP, Barak Obama, abortion, microfibers, not driving SUVs, hybrid cars, not buying magnetic ribbons, not reciting the Pledge of Alliegance, the Bill of Rights, dance, trance, trip hop. Stephen King, Mexicans who work for less wages, the modern welfare state, separation of church and state, studying other religions, cheap beer, the BBC, Disney and all its affiliates (ABC, ABC Family, ESPN, Lifetime, Pixar, Miramax, Touchstone, etc), XM radio, Sirius radio, standard transmissions, Greek mythology, Norse mythology, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the internets and all rumors therein, Green Party, Ralph Nader, independent voting, WIC, iMacs, iPods, iBooks, iRaq, iRan, Gary Cooper, Steve Buscemi, the stock market, Hollywood, Britpop, zombie fiction, microfibers, and any other denomination beside thine own.

IX - Thou shalt fuse politics and religion in one most highly divine mixture of bumper stickers and ill-informed single-issue votes with little or no concern to the destruction of the intrinsically sublime metaphysics of thine religious beliefs
The democratic process shalt be yet one more arena in which thou shalt bring the logic of all the above steps into half-informed political manifestos. Yea, though not a single Republican hath taken a single step towards banning or limiting abortion, making them pro-choice by default, the votes of your spiritual brethren shall most assuredly be in their favor. Also, God loves guns and every single Founding Father had a most red sanguine fluid basis to their life and was a God-fearing (name of sect missing), despite all evidence otherwise.

X - Thou shalt, in a most impressive combination of any of the above commandments, make such an ass of thine self that any hopes for conversion is shot whilst either ruining a day for a heathen or providing unintentional comedic relief at the expense of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

Thesis!

2006-12-01T00:45:00.000-06:00

(22:46:14) DG: Moldova's biggest export - sex slaves
(22:46:42) Eric Turner: I watched quite the depressing documentary on the black sea sex trade a while back
(22:46:58) DG: yeah
(22:47:05) DG: depressing because they're all dumpy
(22:47:08) DG: the slaves
(22:48:36) Eric Turner: one was really depressing, the lady was quite attractive, but her family lived in a shack near cheronobyl, her brother needed treatments just to live past 14, so she went in the sex trade, escaped, but had to return to pay for the procedures. Then the kid died. she still hasnt returned from turkey
(22:48:56) Eric Turner: but hey, once the european union gets in there, the sex trade will go away. or just become unionized.
(22:49:08) DG: or subsidized
(22:51:22) DG: with universal sex slave rights across the EU
(22:51:34) DG: and free travel within its borders with no duties
(22:51:39) Eric Turner: american kashmir's views on the european union- new world order, or desperate attempt to keep europe relevant
(22:51:58) DG: Yes.
(22:52:37) Eric Turner: and turkish admission to the EU?
(22:52:57) DG: Turkey reminds me of this
(22:53:13) DG: Ever notice a Goth kid in high school suddenly wake up and realize his crew is a bunch of losers?
(22:53:24) DG: And he wants to hang out with the indie kids?
(22:54:02) Eric Turner: yes. my friend dated a girl like this. I hated this bitch and made her leave our group. I am france.
(22:54:14) DG: And she was Turkey
(22:55:15) DG: and was there anyone from the outside saying NO DONT LET HER IN
(22:55:55) DG: they would be Ghaddafi.Qaddafi/Wammalammadingdong
(22:55:57) Eric Turner: well, she had things our group was lacking in, that is, an easy lay. But I saw her for what she was. A crazy psychotic manbitch
(22:56:52) Eric Turner: poor libya. Libya is the goth kid even the goth kids dont like. All they had going for them was a WMD program and they sold out to the preps.
(22:57:08) DG: Libya is Alice Cooper Goth
(22:57:27) DG: Classic in its own way, but so outdated
(22:58:25) Eric Turner: italy is the talented yet troubled kid who would be at the top of his class had he any stablity
(22:58:54) DG: perhaps schizo?
(22:59:09) DG: different voices taking over every few minutes......no stability.......
(22:59:52) Eric Turner: at times he thinks he is popular with everybody, but then he compares himself to jesus.
(23:00:57) DG: and he has some chronic diseases that, while infintesimal, just wont go away
(23:01:05) DG: (San Marino, etc)
(23:01:30) Eric Turner: belgium is the poser
(23:01:55) DG: No man
(23:02:02) DG: Belgium is the kid who runs EVERYTHING
(23:02:42) Eric Turner: well, no belguim is the kid who knows everybody and hangs out with everybody but has about as much personality as a chair
(23:03:41) DG: and belgium has a locker between france and germany
(23:03:52) DG: and sometimes, germany just runs right over belgium to kill france
(23:04:36) Eric Turner: eh, that hasnt happened since sophmore year. Once belgium decided to make france and germany friends. and give him control over their lives.
(23:04:49) Eric Turner: scandanavia is the emo crowd
(23:05:36) DG: Really? I would say that's Russia.
(23:05:59) DG: Bad poetry, crappy role models, dark and depressing in a not-so-dark-and-depressing sort of way
(23:06:15) DG: Smells bad, totally cosmetic
(23:06:28) Eric Turner: russia is more the kid in the trenchcoat who, while not really evil, just dosent get along with everybody
(23:06:46) Eric Turner: scandanavia are the kids who have good lives and lots of friends but still try to kill themselves anyway.
(23:07:17) DG: ...via tax cuts to their wrists?
(23:07:25) Eric Turner: zing
(23:07:47) Eric Turner: the balkans are the wannabe gang members
(23:09:28) Eric Turner: who wound up fighting each other. And as a result, are years behind their classmates. some are in juvi.
(23:10:23) DG: or fight each other over stealing their brands.
(23:11:05) Eric Turner: who knows what the fuck germany is
(23:11:21) DG: Deiter
(23:11:25) DG: off of Sprockets
(23:11:40) Eric Turner: oy?
(23:11:50) DG: SNL sketch from the early 90s with Myers
(23:12:07) Eric Turner: explain in lackluster detail
(23:13:39) DG: Typical weird GErman stereotype Americans had of Germans during the late 80s pre 90s
(23:14:20) Eric Turner: they are all offspring of macguyver?
(23:14:34) Eric Turner: and <3 techno?
(23:15:13) DG: yesh
(23:16:02) Eric Turner: and the iberian nations? britian?
(23:16:32) DG: Britain is the kid who thinks he's too cool for everyone else, and when you get right down to it, really might be.
(23:17:13) DG: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprockets_%28television%29
(23:19:47) DG: Iberian nations are asleep at the back of the class
(23:20:28) DG: and have been ever since that awesome gridiron dynasty sophomore year. then the rest of the team decided they hated them and some pesky scratchback named Bolivar ran 'em off.
(23:28:45) Eric Turner: switzerland is the teachers pet.
(23:29:32) Eric Turner: and the kid who will do others homework for money/to not get beat up
(23:59:15) DG: you know
(23:59:22) DG: I think I may just copy this into my blog tomorrow
(23:59:42) Eric Turner: why not write a thesis on it

The Voice

2006-08-22T16:18:00.000-05:00

Al sat silent.

But had you been present two days earlier, you would have heard him. You would have heard him shouting, crying at the top of his lungs. You would have heard him beating, beating his furious little fists against the side of his aluminum prison. You would have heard his feeble cries, slowly dying down as he came to the grim realization that no one was listening, and if they were, no one cared. You would have heard him fall silent again, until he worked up the will to give the old college try one more time, since maybe this time someone might hear. Right now he was silent.

How long had he been here? There was no way of knowing. He was alone in the dark. No light penetrated into his cell, and as a result Al didn’t even know what his prison looked like. It was tall, though. At least, he couldn’t reach the ceiling. And as far as he could tell, from spending hours and hours pacing his floor, it was round. He didn’t have a watch with him, but even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to see it in this darkness. So Al didn’t know how long he had been here, how long it would be before he got out, or if he even would get out.

The minutes crept by. Minutes turned to hours, hours turned to days, and other clichés describing how excruciatingly long the amount of time Al had been there proceeded to take place in the darkness. And Al slowly went insane, not knowing if he would ever get out. Not knowing how long he had been captive. He was like that guy at the beginning of I.Q., that movie about Albert Einstein’s niece falling in love with that mechanic guy, and Einstein helped the guy out. Anyway, Al was like that guy at the beginning of the movie that agreed to go into a time deprivation experiment, where they kept in a little room and never let him know what time it was, and the slowly went freaking insane. I’m pretty sure that was in I.Q., although admittedly it’s been a while since I’ve seen it.

Perhaps Al was thinking the same thing, because now he was lost in his thoughts. He was thinking about his mother and his sister, and if he would ever see them again. He was thinking about the girl he loved. He was thinking about Walter Matthau and Meg Ryan on that motorcycle, going to save the day, or something like that. He was thinking about anything, except what happened next.

A phone rang.

Al shot up. Had he really heard that? The noise had been faint and distant, but he was sure he’d heard something. He listened fervently.

Another ring.

His heart leapt. What was happening? What did a phone call mean, anyway? Did it have anything to do with him? Perhaps not, but perhaps so.

“Hello?” thundered a voice from the Other Side.

Al pressed his ear right against the wall of his cell, desperately determined to hear what words were about to come out of that telephone. He stood absolutely still, absolutely silent, and waited with baited breath. He heard a voice, this time belonging to the mysterious calling.

“Um...yeah...” The voice paused, and Al thought he heard a few faint stifled giggles.

“Hello?” repeated the thundering voice.

“Yeah, yeah. Um...do you have Prince Albert in a can?”

Yes! thought Al. Yes, yes, yes! He listened excitedly now.

The thunderous voice sighed wearily. “Yes, I do.”
Yes!

“Well...” Al heard almost uncontrollable laughter now, “You better let him out!”

Al jumped with excitement, and waited eagerly for the response from Thundervoice.

“No.”

And then Al heard the unmistakable sound of a phone being placed squarely back on its hook.

Unwritten Laws, all Brit-like.

2006-08-03T18:21:00.000-05:00

The life of someone stuck in Arkansas can be a trifle bit monotomous. Repetitive. Culture-free. Filled with the incessant country twang that permeates the blue roads of this state. Yes, Arkansas is not exactly known for being the cultural mecca of the United States, overbooked with activities and filled to the brim with cheerful people; no, that honor belongs to some other state (Actually, it probably doesn't, I've heard, seen, or been to a perfect state).

But we're not all bad news.

This state has several key things that make it not only culturally important, but also an exemplar in regard to surrounding states. So, without further ado, unwritten laws on why we are to be proud to be Arkansans:

Ray Winder Field. Go look at that place. It is old, ancient, and our gem of sports history. It is one of the oldest ballparks in the nation, and has had a consistent showing of the same minor league team for well over 100 years. There are numerous major league teams that wish they could say the same for their venues, riddled with ads, corporate whoredom, and gimmicks designed to sate the eye rather than the soul.

Twist, Arkansas I am a blues man. It is deep in my heart and soul, growing up on the skirts of the Delta and living around the land that churned out the anguished souls who created the grandfather music of all other music we enjoy today. So, it is with great pride that we Arkansas can claim the rights to having helped give BB King the inspiration for the name of the greatest blues guitar ever: Lucille.

Jim Guy Tucker. Wait, what is this no-good, lying, son-of-a-bitch doing on this list? Simply put, we get our corrupt governors the second we find out what they're doing wrong. Not like a certain southern state who had a governor who's name started with an H and ended with uey Long. I went there, coonasses. Suck on it Louisiana. SUCK. ON. IT.

Highway 61 Before Bob Dylan revisited it, it was the route that Muddy Waters took to found Chicago blues. Robert Johnson sold his soul on it. And it passes through Arkansas en route to St. Lou. We had to have sheltered some of these guys. We get points, foo'.

THE MONSTERS OF COUNTRY! Johnny Cash. Conway Twitty. Shove it, Texas.

SEC In terms of college sports, specifically football, the SEC is where it is at. Do we win all the time? No. Are we the highest ranked teams? No. We put our hearts and soul into our games. The traditions, the rivalries, the genteel Southern respect. If LSU is playing someone outside the SEC, usually a Big 12 team (the Abercrombie and Fitch of football: cheaply made, too expensive, and all looks) or a Pac 10 (the Hollister of football: if you don't get this step off), I will cheer for those Tigers whilst I wear the crimson.

Clinton Look at what this pimp did. Great economy, great global standing, and got away with Monicagate. Oh, also, suck on it Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. We won this race. Twice.

2006-07-31T16:37:00.000-05:00

The Rest of the Story

2006-07-28T20:30:00.000-05:00

The Glorious Leader's News and Comments are brought to you by SmartSpread! And now....Paul Harvey News and Comments.

Good morning Americans, and now -- news!

As we all know, the current situation in the Middle East is one of upmost importance. Our brave soldiers are dying there by the dozens everyday to secure our precious freedoms here. And yet, the remnants of the UN today continue to issue declarations against our righteous cause, our brave men, our indiscriminate use of nuclear warheads against brown-skinned subhuman fanatics in an attempt to make sure our nation and freedom as a whole stands secure.

Speaking of secure, Marilyn Stankowski of Minneapolis writes to me, saying "Glorious Ruler Harvey, I haven't lost a single night's sleep since I ordered the SleepNumber bed that you ordered us to get on your daily radio broadcast. I get a full nights sleep so that I can contribute to the arms industry of the Republic. Thanks, Chairman Harvey!"

Now in health news, the University of Wisconsin reports today that listening to this radio broadcast on a triplicate daily basis my enhance your life in the workplace, elevate your vitality and outward appearance in the Party, and may even save your life...

The most lasting piece of news from this day may be this: Those people of the world who do not side with me, the chosen God-Emperor will die a horrible and fiery death at the end of my Minutemen III thunderbolts.

For what it's worth, police officers in Trenton, New Jersey pulled over a man for being out past curfew and driving in the opposing lane. While staring into the barrel of a tank, he mildly raised his hands and said "No shoot me, I no terrorist!" and then laughed.

He was promptly blown to hell.

Paul Harvey -- good day!

This Is the Most Important Post You Will Ever Read

2006-07-24T21:11:00.000-05:00

By the time you read this, I will be dead.

But please don’t let that deter you. Don’t reflect on it, thinking, “My God, how can he say something like that?” Just keep reading. It’s important that you do. It’s important that as many people as possible read this as soon as possible. That’s because what I’m about to relate to you is what they don’t want you to know, and they’ll do anything to stop you. But they can’t get us all.

The story begins when I came across an article written by the late John Hodgman, in which he exposes some secrets of Yale University. Many of them are unsurprising, such as that of the invention of the first submarine in the underwater canals or a school singing group stealing the crystal skull of Alexander Hamilton and presenting it to Dick Cavett when they were on his show in the 70s. These are fairly inconsequential, but one secret caught my eye. Mr. Hodgman has made me privy to the fact that Yale is the seat of the Secret World Government.

Now, I was obviously skeptical. I of course had no knowledge of this Secret World Government, the reason for this perhaps having to do with it’s secretive nature. The idea seemed ridiculous, but nevertheless I unconsciously began to keep my eyes peeled for any totalitarian activity.

It was a few months later when I ventured to the city of Orlando on holiday. Orlando is a city I’ve visited before, and have never ceased to be amazed by its unrivalled juxtaposition of family-friendliness and a godforsaken sense of being lost in nightmarish hellscape filled with gaudy gift shops on every block. I never realized this before reading Hodgman’s work, but such a dizzying and disorienting locale serves as a perfect place to run a secret organization, such as the Secret World Government, secretly, and keep it secret.

This thought occurred to me for the first time as I approached the world’s largest facility for keeping aquatic creatures on dry land, just so Man can to stick it to God, SeaWorld. However, being fairly uninterested in this prospect, I noticed something that most tourists don’t see as they’re waiting to take pictures of whales and walri.

It was a large black cube on the interstate. Or rather, that’s what it looked like. The sign near the roof called it the Harcourt Brace building, but that sign’s a liar. It stood, an enormous cube covered from top to bottom in black plate glass, looming eerily over me. An ominous marker for what had to be ominous goings-on inside.

That’s when I understood--here is where it happens! It all makes sense! Hodgman had revealed the Secret World Government, and Yale was no longer safe! Where would be the safest place to relocate such a large-scale operation without anyone noticing? Orlando was the obvious answer. After all, who could find a secret political body in a city in which one can be inside Disney World without even knowing it? The place is a war zone: Disney and Universal are rocked every night by explosions.

But who’s behind it? Who’s pulling the strings? Certainly we could say that it’s healthy competition, but only a child could be so naïve. In all actuality, the war between Disney and Universal is nothing but a smokescreen. It all looks real enough--Disney owns this town, controls everything, and siphons dollars right out of people’s pockets. When Universal tries to move in on Disney turf, Disney does what it has to do in order to hold on to rub out the little guy. The result is a war, complete with whackings and bribes, right in front of the cops, the D.A., the courts, the judges, and city officials. That’s power you can’t buy.

But that ain’t how it really goes. The truth is that Disney and Universal are both being run by the Secret World Government. As for the law in this town, there’s very little bribery going on. That’s because the city government’s just a front anyway. There’s only the secret world one. And it operates out of SeaWorld.

When people think of the tourist spots in Orlando, Disney and Universal always, always spring to mind before SeaWorld. Poor little SeaWorld, right? Wrong. In reality that’s just the way they want it, keeping a low profile to run the world while the world looks the other way. Disney may own this town, but SeaWorld pays it. Disney is just the Falcone to SeaWorld’s Ra’s al Ghul. As for Universal, it’s obviously not the Rebel Alliance to fight the Galactic Empire, as it would have you believe. It was actually put together by Paul Lynde, commissioned by SeaWorld to stir up trouble. And boy, did he ever.

All this occurred to me as I sat in Shamu Stadium, watching the whales do tricks. That’s when it hit me--who’s doing tricks? As I saw a whale and a girl swim side by side, one lifting the other in the air, I contemplated if the girl had trained the whale, or if the whale had trained the girl. After all, the girl’s livelihood depends on the whale’s cooperation. Who’s really in charge here?

Why does a dog wag it’s tail? Because the dog is smarter than the tail. If it were the other way around, the tail would wag the dog.

Wag the dog, indeed.

I have to wrap this up, as it’s late, and they’ll be coming for me soon. Make as many copies of this as you can. Tell as many people as will listen, and tell the ones who won’t as well, if for no other reason to just piss them off because they wouldn’t listen to you. The fate of the world hangs in the balance. Shamu must be stopped. He’s nothing but a large, aquatic Stalin, sans-moustache. This is the most important thing you will ever do. You are part of the biggest event in human history. My only regret is that I will not be around to see what happens.

I love you all.

Mixed Metaphors

2006-06-11T16:21:00.000-05:00

Cinderella wept. Her one chance for justice in her miserable life under her stepmother had just been swept away. A dress she had found in her attic, resplendid with beautiful laces and fabulous sparkling trinkets, had been ripped to shreds by her two despicable sisters to secure their spots at the ball where the prince of their realm would find his new bride in a manner all too befitting of a Fox reality TV show. She fell to floor as resignation and fatalism overcame her in a way she had never felt before. She had often almost given up hope before, but now this was too far for even her.

Suddenly, a gleaming light appeared before her eyes a motherly looking woman, dressed in a conservative blue gown appeared before her. "Oh child," the Chernobyl-esque glowing woman said, "do not lose hope in justice! For I am your fairy godmother, and I am here to make your dreams come true and allow you to take your rightful place in this world following years of torment." Cinderella didn't know what to do. She quickly did a check in her mind to make sure she hadn't eaten those mushrooms again, then decided that this supernatural woman must be real. "My fairy godmother?"

"Yes, fairy godmother. Note the Scillian accent and the tiny inefficient wings."

"Oh, right."

"Cinderella, the Powers-That-Be have seen your suffering and injust treatment," the fairy said quite soothingly. "They have bestowed upon me the right to give you anything you need to go to the ball tonight and win over those harlot sisters of yours to become the reigning oppresive absolutist monarch of this realm." Cinderella gasped. Finally, the dream that every little girl in the world has ever had was about to come true. She was going to become a princess based on looks and dancing abilities alone with a little supernatural help. Suddenly, through a dramatic plot device that allows us to skip over several superfluous paragraphs, Cinderella has a gown, tiara, carriage, horses, carriage driver, Gucci bag, earings, and the famous glass slippers. Finally, the godmother handed over one very special relic to the very excited girl.

"Cinderella, this disguise will disappear at midnight. To ensure that you can keep up with the time, I will give you this clock." She handed Cinderella a clock, just a tad bit too small to be a wall clock and too large to be a wristwatch. On it was the Roman numeral XII, and nothing else.

"What is this?" Cinderella inquired.

"A clock, my dense debutante." The godmother snorted.

"No, no, no. What kind of clock is it? I've never seen anything like it before, and why is only the twelth hour marked on it?"

"Errrrrr, about that. I was supposed to give you a very important clock for you to keep up with your time. This is the clock of The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. See, when it reaches midnight not only does your dress return to tatters and whatnot, but the world experiences a nuclear holocaust. Sorry, about that, it was all I could get on such short notice."

"Oh."

"Yeah, no biggie. Just get home early is all. Or else all humanity perishes at your irresponsible hands and such."

--------------------------------------------

The ball was going remarkably well. Cinderella had caught the prince's eye from the very second she had entered the grand chambers, and had danced the night away. They had laughed. Giggled. Drank. Joked. Talked. Smoked out. Debated. Argued. Flirted. The night had flown by, and when Cinderella checked the Doomsday Clock, she saw with a quickly-rising pulse rate and a turn of her stomach that it was not more than 5 minutes from midnight. Hurridely, she bolted from the room and fled to the carriage to try and get home on time. As she fled, one of her spectacular glass slippers fell off and she ran down the obscenely long procession of stairs that led to the magnificently disgustingly-detailed porte to the palace. The prince, running after her like she was his fathers milkmaid, saw it and bent to reach for it right as a light brighter than a thousand suns, a heat hotter that a million ironsmiths, and a wind a five times greater than Ann Coulter's flap hit him and disintigrated him and everyone else in the world.

And the godmother cracked open another cold one and cackled, giving Walt Disney a high five in hell.

They Came To America

2006-05-24T20:05:00.000-05:00

I'm half italian (sic)
Matt Boyce

I am possibly descended from Mary, Queen of Scots. Most doubtlessly Scotch-Irish for sure.
Candice Hoke

Why in the hell do we, red-blooded Americans, hold on to our legacy of ancestors from other nations? Why should we hold on to the national pride that has devastated people in other nations? The French have had a series of incredibly unstable governments and catastrophic oppressive rulers within the last 200 years alone. The Irish, while successfully attaining their Free State, fought a terrorist war of attrition that killed numerous of their fellow countrymen in Ulster and innocent lives in Great Britain as well as led to a compromise of ethics as they allied with the PLO in Lebanon and helped traffic arms to FARC in Colombia. The Germans... Well, let's not go there. The Italians have had a fractured democratic state post-war, and will always be remembered for being the birthplace of fascism.

Yes, there is art. Royalty. Buildings. History. Law. Philosophy. Mathematics. So on and so forth, but the fact of the matter is that this country was founded by people who obviously found enough faults in nations in the rest of the world to create a place where they could all run to. The Irish starved and moved here en masse, so much so that the Irish population of the United States is greater than that of the Irish Republic. The Chinese ran here and heavily influenced the culture of the West Coast. Jews in Eastern Europe fled the pogroms to come to a land infinitely more welcoming. Africans......

Errrr....

Anyways, to put things in context, you have to remember WWBMS. Or, What Would Bill Murray Say?

We're all very different people. We're not Watusi, we're not Spartans, we're Americans. With a capital "A", huh? And you know what that means? Do you? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts.
- Bill Murray as John Winger in Stripes

What You Say?

2006-05-16T22:12:00.000-05:00

A Glimpse into the Pysche of Josef Stalin

2006-05-14T20:51:00.000-05:00

[HAVE YOU EVER..]
been kissed? Da! By many a fine peasant girl under pain of the gulag!
lied to a friend? Josef Stalin only speaks the truth, whatever he says is the truth.
dyed ur hair? Nyet.
dressed punk? Punk?
kissed a girl? Da, for same reasons I've been kissed.
saw something u didnt want to? Da, Nazi pig-dog tanks of facist oppression at the gates of Muscovy.
danced in the rain? Nyet, in Soviet Russia rain dances in you.
lied to ur parents? Da, then purged them.
went barefoot in the snow? haha! Do you see Glorious Leader Stalin in a gulag? Nyet.
made ur own clothes? See above, comrade.
[IN THE LAST 24 HOURS..]
got in a fite? Da, with my alcoholism. I lost.
took a shower? Nyet. Showers in the USSR are trying to kill me.
gave a dirty look to someone? I'm Stalin.
cried=( ? NYET! STALIN MEANS STEEL FOR A REASON MOZILLA CAPITALIST PIG!
did a cartwheel? Da, I'm the best in the glorious Union.
went to school? I am the school.
shopped? Nyet, I only demand.
danced? Who dares to dance better than Stalin?
got sick? STALIN = STEEL!
did something u regret? The Leader is ircorruptible!
discovered something new? Pravda said we invented baseball first!
[IN SCHOOL YOU...]
run to class because ur always late? Class starts when Stalin says to start!
act perfect? Act?
act hyper? Nyet. I am cold, slow, and solid. Stalin means.... you get the point, da?
are a nerd? No head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and defeater of Adolf Hitler is a nerd!
in band?? Stalin is the band.
[RIGHT NOW UR..]
in ur pjs? I always sleep in my uniform. Unless I don't sleep. Steel, comrade, steel.
drinkin water? Sure. It's clear...
listening to music? Glorious Soviet workers' hymns!
watching a movie? Da! Collectivized Farm Fuck VII
iming someone? Nyet! Someone IMs me!
talkin on the fone? No, fone talks to me!
eating? Nyet.
[CLOTHES..]
hot topic or abercrombie and fitch? USSR Army Uniform wholesaler
thongs or briefs? Stalin feels a bit awkward
boxers anyone?!?! Da, only if they can beat Rocky
sweatpants or jeans? Military pants/
longsleeved shirts or short sleeve? Long, for Marshal Winter.
tube tops or tanks? Tube, comrade, and should you question it....
[CURRENTLY .. ]
current clothes? grey coat, grey pants, black boots, grey hat, RED STARS!
current mood? I hate the West. I hate the West. I hate the West. I hate the West.
current music? The ice cubes in my....water
current taste? Borsch!
current make-up? Revlon's Khmer Rouge!
current thing I ought to be doing? Purging. Again.
[ LAST PERSON .. ]
you hugged? Nikita Khrushchev, for being such a great, loving, loyal comrade.
yelled at? The entire populace of the Ukraine
IMed? Molotov.
you touched? Stalin refuses to answer this.
[ EiTHER/0R .. ]
coffee or hot chocolate? hot chocolate. coffee is satan
big or little? Big, like the Union!
lace or satin? Cotton from collectivized farms!
new or old? New heavy industry!
vogue or cosmopolitan? You capitalists ask me to chose between a dance and a drink? Is like comparing borsch to vodka!
[DO YOU..]
put on a "front"? Da, on the east.
have a crush on someone? Da, I built Soviet steel crushers on the backs of the peasants.
if u got a tatoo where wud u get it? I would get a gulag prisoner tattoo on you for asking Steelmansky a stupid question.
[RANDOM QUESTiONS..]
waht is the online symbol u use the most? DCP (die capitalist pig)
u have a boyfriend or girlfiend? Girlfriends abound!
who's hotter, Josh Hartnett or Chad Michael Murray? Stalin!
what was the last thing you said? To the gulag!
who would u want to be stuck in an elevator with? Crazy capitalist horsefaced Tyler singing man.
do you like stickers? Only if they have scents of glorious people's tropical fruits.
do u play with mad libs wen ur bored? In Soviet Russia, my Mad Libs play you!
are you suicidal? Just once when I could make out the iron cross on individual soldiers outside Moscow.
is your window open? Nyet. Don't want to catch capitalist flu.
what was the last pair of shoes you bought? New Balance.
do you have a little brother? Da, all of Russia!
does he draw you cute pictures? Of tractors on farms.
where do your grandparents live? Under the ground
what do you think of when you hear the word click? The sound of a finished purge.
are you a moron? NYET! I am smartest man in USSR!
do you like trampolines? Nyet, I fell on one once and Zhukov laughed. I had to purge him.
have u ever accidentally sucked something up in the vacuum? Nyet, Stalin makes glorious peoples' topless maid use vacuum
did you see American Pie 2? Nyet!
do you cut yourself? Da, while listening to Taking Back Sunday and crying as I read the capitalist pig-dog Salinger.

What's a Man Worth?

2006-05-09T19:16:00.000-05:00

Life is precious. It really is, especially when another life is known intimately and closely. Then, life becomes absolutely priceless. Or so we are told. Unfortunately, everything in a capitalist society such as ours comes with a price tag attached, and the human life is no different. In an age where the cost of everything, its worth to the world and to the owner especially mean more than the actual contents of the building, the human body seems paltry compared to the pricing of things like Westminster Palace or the contents of the palaces of St. Petersburg; however, the human body has some of the most interesting methods of determine its worth to the world.

First would be the simple pricing done by life insurance for amount payed to recipients of the policy. This is perhaps the most common payment form available to the average person, and the pricing is based on a wide variety of information and facts. For instance, was the person in question the primary caregiver to any children, if there were any to begin with? Was this person an active member of the community? Was this person a living petri dish of SARS, AIDS, ebola, polio, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacterium, and so forth? Or was the person clean as a whistle except for those nasty cold sores that they claimed were not THAT kind of herpes (And why shouldn't we trust them)? Basically, the value of the person is made by comparing the impact that their absence would have on the immediate community to their believed worth. Now, this is fine and good for fiscal recovery following the death of said person, but it completely falls short when trying to determine what kind of life they lived in the here-and-now.

So, let's try and figure out how much the human body is in terms of chemistry! After all, the human body is nothing more than a collection of atoms at its very basic form. So, let's examine the basic elements of the human body. Carbon, seeing as we're organic. Calcium, with those bones and whatnot. Iron, in our blood. Oxygen. Nitrogen. Hydrogen. Trace amounts of uranium from failed Soviet nuclear-power satellite's reentering the atmosphere and depositing their nuclear fuel across North America. For added measure to boost both our worth and throw in some really freakin' cool elements let's say the human body also contains selenium, einsteinium, mendelevium, hitlerium (139 on the chart), magnesium, manganese, aluminum, platinum, gold, silver (these last three are important for our friends from Detroit), potassium, all the noble gases, all the alkalines, and for good measure let's double the dosage of uranium. This all adds up to something. What it is, I know not. NASA does, as does the NSA. But not I. Strike two.

This is where a more utilitarian means of measuring what someone's life is worth. I say utilitarian because it sounds good, not because I care to use the word in its correct usage. This is the blogosphere, it's all about appearing to be intelligent. To recover from that digression, the second way of evaluating what a man's worth is is by measuring what they contribute to society versus what they detract or draw out of it. In the welfare state of post-scarcity models, it becomes incredibly easy to do this. Does the person in question give more to the state and the people than he takes away? To add a good degree of fairness to this, is he or she of the capability to actually contribute more than take or is he and/or she in a position where they truly need the state to meet the basic needs of survival? So, using this criteria every single American is worth less than shit, seeing as our government is in debt, social security is in trouble, medicare can't ever stand up on its own, and welfare is a joke at best. A new way to determine the way someone is worth something must be found!

Now, having failed in every other method thus far we have to come to a way to make a human being's worth not only estimate-able but also fair to all considering circumstances. Chemical worth is out. Fiscal contributions for impact on the community isn't good enough. Social contributions doesn't help much here. How can we find out the worth of a man?

Urine

Of course, it's so goddamned simple. What better way to analyze the worth of a man than get some strange nurse-like people to analyze the liquid excrement you produce in order to determine your worth as a human being! Why didn't I think of it earlier! Urine holds all the answers to our quandary. Why, I bet that urine could tell us a lot about a person. Maybe there's an enzyme secreted that tells who a hard worker is, or a partial protein that can be used to determine who a lazy-ass, mullett-wearing, Skynard-loving, PBR-drinking, crusty backwoods retard is. Why, I bet urine is the only source of a new alternative energy source! That must be why they constantly try and get it from us when we apply for jobs, play on sports, and so forth.

God, I'm brilliant. Urine is the way to tell what a man is worth. I'm so glad the government realized this so long ago and decided to force us all to comply with it.

A Matter of Principle

2006-05-06T22:50:00.000-05:00

From time to time, we all are offended. How it happens is simple to understand. Someone takes something we believe in and either treats it something less than what we believe it should be treated as or simply calls one of us a fool for believing in it. At its most simple definition, it's when someone douses a fair bit of urine on what we happen to believe in, sometimes literally.

Now, like most people my age and in my situation, namely cynical college students pursuing a liberal arts degree, I don't get offended often. No, usually the more offensive something is the harder I guffaw or chortle, depending on the barometric pressure on that particular day. For instance, Prussian Blue made me giggle a bit when I saw them doing square dances in a swastika marked out on the floor. The markee of said swastika was most likely a blind rhesus monkey suffering from Parkinsons, seeing as the swastika was all askew on a linoleum floor that has perfectly fine ingrained lines provided. That's just my highly-educated guess. Another example would be the segment SomethingAwful did once on jokes with realistic endings. An example:

Jesus is hanging on the cross and John approaches.

John says: "Jesus, its John. How may I serve thee ain thy time of need?"

Jesus replies: "YEEEAAAAAAAARGGHGGGHGGHGGGHGGHGGH!!!!!"

Pure. Unadulterated. Comedic. Genius.

Something infamous in our recent history did cause me a bit of offense, though. A little woman in Florida who experienced a medical condition not unheard of in these times was catapulted to the forefront of news when her atrophied and listless viscera made it on to the nightly news in one more battle for the so-called "right to life." We all sat, captivated by the slight stream of salivation that was born under her tongue and rolled its way across her face to a waiting napkin or other absorbent paper material held by a loving hand. We watched, heartbroken, as her emotionless face twitched ceaselessly and stared ahead with those vacant, non-seeing eyes of hers.

Terry Schiavo offended me to no end. Why? Well, every court in the nation that a Schiavo case was in (I, II, III, and IV) was held in ruled that she was in a "persistent vegetative state." For those of you out there that doesn't know what that means, Terry's parents included, that means she's a brain-dead, non-reactionary, non-feeling, non-speaking body that doesn't know its time to die has long past. So, taking into account that the courts ruled she was brain dead, her husband claimed she was brain dead, and most neurological doctors, excluding the ones paid to say otherwise, all said she was brain dead it should have been an open and shut case of medical something or another.

No, of course it couldn't. That pesky pro-life argument had to pop up here, and this is exactly why I got offended. Comparing a fully functional, thinking, feeling, seeing, laughing, loving human being to what Terry Schiavo became is an offense to sentient life in this universe. Saying that this...

...is the same as this...

...should be totally offensive to everyone who can read, write, speak, move, play, screw, tan, work, think, or love.

Besides, the whole argument could have easily been solved by looking at another point. She got that way due to bulimia-induced coma. She already made it pretty damn clear she didn't want to eat.

Lorenzo St. Dubois

2006-04-30T17:12:00.000-05:00

Just a sign of things to come

Where Boys Fear To Tread

2006-04-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

Yakov Smirnoff, situated in his castle in the impregnable fortress of Branson, rules the southern regions of Missouri from his principality in the Ozarks with an iron fist, benign though it may be. He often gives presentations and decrees to masses gathered in his hall in Branson, and comments upon the nature of his homeland, the vast and unknown enigma that is Soviet Russia. Often times, while remarking on the unimaginable backwardness of his former homeland denizens of his in the front rows can swear they see the Glorious Leader getting misty-eyed as he delivers his biting commentary on the policies of Soviet Russia.

Rightfully so, for Russia has faced a serious problem that has not truly been experienced or comprehended by those of us outside of its enormous tracts of land. Russia, often decried by pundits and armchair experts as backwards, has a rightful reason for being so as it has been haunted and chased by a specter of unimaginable evil and terror. For centuries, tsar, premiere, and president alike have all stood against the one thing that the colossal empire has had to face again and again and has barely been able to defeat in a cataclysmic war for the very existence of the Slavic monolithic state: Zombies

Yes, most of Russia's massive resources and capital has been invested in controlling and attempting to eradicate a seemingly-unstoppable menace. It is this revelation that suddenly some of the less understood actions of the Cold War suddenly become clear.

Beginning with the early years of the USSR, Lenin was forced to create a top-down, centrally planned role for the citizenry of the Soviet empire, called the NEP. For years believed to be the New Economic Plan in the West, it is now known to stand for the New Eradication Plan. In the aftermath of the Revolution and Civil War, the zombie hordes had found numerous sources of nourishment in both the dead bodies littering the battlefields, and the massing amounts of Whites and Reds tromping through the countryside. In fact, a scene with zombies feeding on both dead bodies in the field and raiding a White camp at night were filmed for Dr. Zhigavo, but were edited out when it was realized that a movie over 4 days long was a tad bit too long for American audiences. It was this NEP that created an initial schism in the Communist party, as the more conservative branches wanted everyone to defend themselves while the liberals argued it was the duty of the state to defend everyone as it was the state's duty as a representative of the people. In the end, the NEP proved itself worthwhile as Zombie levels were lowered to pre-1913 (WWI) levels.

Stalin succeeded Lenin, and with it brought to the table a more radical and constraining policy for destroying zombies. Viewing Trotsky's policy of "exporting the revolution," a nice euphemism for Trotsky's hey-lets-dump-these-undead-jerkoffs-on-the-rest-of-the-world-and-get-ourself-some-rest-from-the-undead-menace ideology as being both too impractical and insane for the Soviet nation at the time, Stalin took it upon himself to declare "Socialized Zombie Killin' In One Nation" as his mantra. Taking it upon himself to lead an anti-zombie revolution from the top down, Stalin began several controversial plans to strengthen the Soviet people against attacks from the roaming undead. The first was collectivization. Taking into account the Jungian archetype of farmers armed to the teeth with firearms and Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stalin forced them to live and work together on farms owned by the state, hoping to turn each farm into a bastion of heavily-armed humanity should the war against zombies suddenly take a turn for the worst. The end result is a policy that starved the entire Soviet Union, as the farmers pooled their PBR and played chicken on massive Soviet tractors at a top speed of three.

The most lasting vestige of the Stalinist anti-zombie platform was the Five Year Plan. Realizing that keeping a bunch of peasants in their ancestral lands and far from the eyes of the benign Soviet anti-zombie organization, the NKVD. Realizing that the only way to keep the Soviet populace out of the zombie-infested wilds was to busy them building factors and metal smelting plants and whatnot, Stalin enacted a plan that, much to his surprise, not only successfully kept the citizenry from the grasp of zombiekind, but also catapulted Soviet Russia into a fully industrialized status that it never lost. The human cost was tremendous, but there was not a single record of a single human involved with the First Five Year Plan falling prey to the undead. No, they only fell to bitter cold, starvation, and gross ineptitude on the jobsite which was acceptable to Stalin, the Politburo, and the people of the USSR. In fact, it was so widely accepted as a victory against the evil dead that it was adopted by nearly every subsequent leader of the USSR.

A policy not adopted by later leaders was the policy of the gulag. Stalin, believing a zombie science only in its infancy, mistakenly believed that the zombie infection of Solanum was a chronic infection rather than an almost instantaneously terminal disease. A result of this misinformation led him to assume that anyone coming into contact with zombies was infected, and slowly becoming a zombie from the inside out (We now know that the virus can only be transmitted via saliva and blood, and instantly attacks the brain). Thousands were shipped to the prison camps of Siberia in a paranoia of a sudden outbreak of zombies in urban centers and new workplaces created by the Five Year Plan, and many took advantage of this to report in personal enemies as possible threats sending untold innocent civilians to a harsh prison life.

World War II and its aftermath brought about a new paradigm to the zombie conflict. After signing a security pact with Nazi Germany, Stalin began to focus his efforts on eradicating the zombie menace within the frontier of his nation. Unbeknownst to Stalin, the Nazi empire had weaponized zombies and enlisted them into elite armed groups that swore fealty to der Fuher alone. Called the Sombie Soderkommandos, or SS, these elite forces wreaked havoc across Europe from 1939 to the cessation of combat in 1945. It was this that made the German attack against the USSR so devastating and successful. The Soviet soldiers, seeing hordes of their greatest enemy wearing the uniform of another nation, were shocked to the point they were destroyed piecemeal by the advancing Wermacht. Following the Soviet destruction of the elite 6th Zombie Army in Stalingrad, The tables had turned and the USSR took its war against zombie-kind to Germany itself.

The Cold War was rife with anti-zombie activities for the USSR and its new-found superpower status. Armed with an atomic bomb they tested against a mammoth group of zombies corralled into a pen in Kazakhstan, the USSR was ready to commence a world-wide crusade against zombies. It was at this crucial moment that Stalin, that heavy-handed benign dictator that ruled the USSR with clarity and grace passed into a zombie-fighting warlord's Valhalla and was replaced with Nikita Khrushchev. Khrushchev was an oddity in terms of zombo-political ideology. He commenced his reign by immediately decrying Stalin's plans of the secret zombie police and the gulags, but was only able to do so with due to latest information being provided by the isolation of Solanum by Soviet necrologists, proving the gulags were an unnecessary blight on the face of the Party; however, hindsight is always 20/20. Khrushchev embarked on a worldwide PR blitz against zombies, although this was widely interpreted in the West as a savage attack on capitalism by an uneducated Ukrainian farmer with no respect for decorum. Some of his most famous supposed faux pas in the international relations arena were actually zombie related. For instance, when telling then-vice president Richard Nixon "We will bury you," it has gone unnoted by most Western media that he was pointing to a zombie that had infiltrated the press section. When banging a shoe in the UN, he was actually demonstrating to the Filippino ambassador how he had once killed a German zombie during World War II, not responding as an attack against capitalism as reported by Western media. It was his exportation of anti-zombie nuclear warheads to Cuba that finally did Nikita in, as his forced withdrawal of the weapons from the island led to even the most staunch Khrushchev supporters in the Politburo-now-renamed-Presidium to vote him down.

In the years following Khrushchev, the leadership of Brezhnev, Cherenkov, and Andropov were unimaginative and zombie population growth actually began to hinder the economic output and growth of the USSR. In these dark days, even the collectivized farms began to encounter zombies and the farmers were more concerned with increasing their marksmanship on an increasing number of undead and swilling PBR than tilling their land or whatever it is a collectivized farmer actually does. During this time, the USSR began to fall into disrepair and the sort of apocalyptic fatalism ever-present in a Romero film, despite the fact that the zombie population was far from out of control.

Enter Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. A visionary in a time of dismay and stagnation, Gorbachev came to believe that the USSR could be refined by the combination of two ideas: Glasnost and Perestroika. Glasnost is roughly translated into "openness," but is only short for "openness to new ideas for killing the undead scourge that plagues our massive nation." Perestroika translates into "restructuring," in English, and like its counterpart Glasnost is short for something else, namely "restructuring of the way we can kill those buggers." A radical interpretation of these ideas was undertaken in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, with incredible anti-zombie effects (Chernobyl and parts of southern Belarus remain zombie free to this day). Unfortunately, the people of the USSR misinterpreted Gorbachev's policy as meaning democratization of the Soviet system and Party and allowance of free market elements inside the Communist haven, and Gorbachev, believing he was seeing a mass-adoption of radical ideas of zombie killing, mistakenly allowed it to proceed until he realized that the USSR had actually been destroyed by his measures taken to save it. In fact, it wasn't until the August Coup that Gorbachev realized how misinterpreted his policies had become. So, on 25 December 1991 at 7:30 pm Moscow time, the USSR was replaced by a plethora of new states, each facing a varying level of zombie population.

Today, Russia is plagued by both a resurgent zombie problem and constant misinterpretation by Western media. Fighting a constant war against a chronic zombie outbreak in Grozny, the world has come to condemn Russian attrition against what it misconstrues as a ethnically diverse people in the south of Russia. This problem has only be excabberated by the subsequent school crisis in Beslan and theater hostage crisis in the heart of Moscow. Recent actions taken against a zombie horde assembling in the main square in Minsk, Belarus was interpreted in the West as a sign of autocracy by Europe's last dictator, and Putin's backing of him as yet another sign of the democracy that Putin doesn't believe in.

Don't for a second be fooled. If anything, the actions of the USSR and seemingly-autocratic leadership of Putin is the only damn thing saving this world from its most fearful plague and threat. Do you think Putin has it easy, facing a threat no one thinks is real and is constantly under attack from the nations of the world for being a dictator-in-presidents clothing? No.

Remember, without the Soviets and Putin, you could be one of them

What Is and Should Never Be

2006-04-19T12:58:00.000-05:00

I saw a movie.

It was some time ago, close to a month or maybe close to two. It was a while ago, which is the point, and I've been so swamped with work since then that I've lost track of time, which isn't even remotely related to any point that might possibly be brought up in this vaguely-worded entry. I saw this movie with two people, Michael Herring who avidly wanted to see it, and Daniel Hall who went along for the ride. I was pretty much in the middle, as the trailer looked interesting but I was pretty ambivalent about its outcome or any sort of theatrical criteria.

This movie, my God this movie. It had a plethora of CGI, an abundance of gizmos that allow things like breaking any law of physics and the so-called "pocket dimensions." There was a strong heroine who was not only capable of beating numerous male enemies with strength, but also allowed her heart a bit of freedom and let her emotions free instead of bottling them up in some kind of strange femme-assassin stereotype. The move was dystopian, with a leader who is horrible and sick and twisted to the extreme. This film was something new, in ways, but more of a sort of reinvention of a meme.

The movie was Ultraviolet, and it sucked.

My avid fan friend, Mr. Herring, was touting the trailer for months, showing the High Definition trailer on his parents' Mactel to anyone who would sit still long enough to see it (Which, is not too hard to do, given the amazing trailer being played on the amazing Mac box). Unfortunately for us, the trailer contained every single last bit of that movie that was even approaching anything close to decent. The movie's plot was full of holes the size of the greater Little Rock metropolitan area, there was a definite overwhelming tendency to throw massive amounts of technology and terminology inside the movie with little or no backstory behind most, or any of it. Horrible acting. A dependence on CGI as eye candy to distract the viewer from the atrocious plot was a key element, one that is insulting to anyone who has an IQ above 30.

After researching this, I found that there was a strikingly similar television series in Britain. Airing in 1998 on Channel 4, the series name was Ultraviolet. Both series are about vampiric beings, and both try to explain the vampire mythos by creating a new, more scientific basis to the mythos rather than that bloody awful demon crap. In the movie Ultraviolet it was a pathogen that made people light-sensitive and strong and fast and such. In the TV series science could beat the vampires via carbon bullets instead of stakes, allicin (an antibiotic element in garlic) gas grenades, and special ultraviolet (haha!) lamps to fry the vamps. While I'm not too sure about this, I think there's a definite correlation between the two series, enough to initially support the idea that Ultraviolet is an adaptation of Ultraviolet.

Now, Anglophilism has a firm footing in the United States. Adaptation of television shows from Britain fill our channels, with a ill-fated adaptation of the The Office being on lately, Who's Line Is It, and other type shows are around. Now, there is one show above all else that proves once and for all that British Television does not necessarily instantly mean it is better television.

People's evidence 1: Heil Honey! I'm Home!

Sweet. Jesus. Christ. In. Heaven. This show is proof, once and for all, that television is hell. The synopsis and idea definitely goes beyond the pale in terms of shock and just outright bad ideas. The synopsis is:

Adolph Hitler and Eva Braun live in suburban Berlin, right next door to the Goldensteins. Take a wild guess what ethnic/religious group they would be from. The show, despite never lasting longer than its pilot, managed to make every single Jew joke in the book.

Which book? The National Socialist's party manifesto.

The show is like some retarded cousin of I Love Lucy. The male neighbors can't stand each other, the women love each other and are responsible for most of the hijinks. For instance, Hitler orders Eva to not tell the Goldensteins that Neville Camberlain is coming over for dinner (If you don't get the irony of this thing, go back to your high school history). Of course, Eva accidentally lets this tidbit of information slip and it ruins Hitler's dinner with the PM of Britain.

I cannot bring into being the words necessary to express the ideas of lunacy and insanity that must have allowed Channel 4 to bring this show to bear. All I can say is watch it yourself and sit with your jaw open. Then look at Ultraviolet. Make your own conclusions.

Song to Aotearoa

2006-04-13T15:22:00.000-05:00

There aren't many places in the world that cause someone to feel a certain admiration in when they read about it. No, in this cynical age all we mostly feel disdain for other nations, or laughing contempt, or even outright pity quickly erased by a very dark sense of humor. For instance, often times the only thing most Americans can talk about on the subject of France is their military track record. We all know this history too well, and we all know the jokes (Why do French rifles have rubber on the bottom? So they can throw them down without damaging them! OH NOES!). In academia, the joking takes a more professional turn when France is analyzed:

5 Republics
2 Empires
Innumerable Anarcho-Communal Interim Governments

Yes, simply put, the United States is full of cynical people now who probably delight more out of relishing the taboo and finding humor in the darkest situations one can find (A good example is an episode of Curb Your enthusiasm where Larry David finds out that his agent's cousin was a gay Jew in Poland, to which Larry laughs and responds "Some luck, eh?"). But every now and then someone will find a state or idea or person that they can trust and believe in and admire. For some, it borders on a philia as with the case of Anglophiles or even Europhiles in general. Of course, we can't overlook the otakus and their Nipponophilism.

For some time, I have considered myself an Anglophile. I love Parliament. Watching it on CSPAN is better than some pro-football games I've seen, with those Brits ranting and raving and what not. The Eye of London, Westminster Palace, 10 Downing Street, Piccadilly Circus, St. Paul's Cathedral, the Ghille, Hyde Park, Trafalger Square, Buckingham Palace, Royal Albert Hall. Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Stones, The Who, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Mescaleros. Douglas Adams, George Orwell, William Golding, HG Wells, Charles Dickens. John Cleese, Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, etc. You get the point.

Well, something happened recently to change my mind. The more I've been reading and studying it, I've falling more and more in love with New Zealand With many thanks to Jennifer Miller, I'm totally in the Zealophile camp. See, New Zealand is, without saying, one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Despite it being thoroughly industrialized and developed, it has escaped the ravages of industrialization that would have otherwise ruined the beautiful landscape of the two emeralds of the South Pacific. Not only that, but they have a proud history of fighting alongside their brethren in the Commonwealth and are completely dedicated to the idea of the global community and international cooperation, but not the point where their unique political views and needs are sacrificed for the whole. For instance, a US-Australia-New Zealand defense organization (ANZUS) was nullified on New Zealand's part when they refused to allow nuclear-powered or nuclear-armed ships inside their water as it was against their national ecological laws. The US cancelled their obligations to uphold the mutual defense of a nation that picked and chose their parts of allowable defense. I see it as a nation asserting their will and not being afraid to stand up for themselves. Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.

Well, getting back to the lovely Ms. Miller, she sent me an email today with a collection of the greatest thing I have ever seen. A vodka company, 42 Below, has launched the greatest PR campaign since French Connection, United Kingdom (FCUK) launched their line of fragrances named cocaine, heroin, and so forth. Behold, I give you the greatest alcohol ads since Absolut confirmed Steve McQueen was the "absolut man."

Enjoy.

Thanks a ton, Jennifer

Serpentine Calculation

2006-04-12T02:06:00.000-05:00

There is a fear currently gripping this nation, as well as most of the world, of a nuclear Iran. In fact, it is considered an issue with consequences and reprecussions so strong and awe-inspiring that the world is actually taking every step possible to avoid an armed confrontation instead of doing what we usually do (Proxy wars and unilateral invasions are our normal modus operandi). Despite this, it is publically known that an armed strike against the Islamic Republic's nuclear sites has not and will not be ruled out by the current administration nor any predecessor administrations. Yes, much talk is going around about a surgical airborne strike by either commandos or by stealth bombers of some sort. Maybe a mass rushing of fighter-bombers right over their targets. Maybe a B-52 flying over them with a lone Texan-esque character making the Final Ride in a Strangeloveian fashion. It is in these times that we forget the most potent weapon available to mankind.

See, the thing best suited to killing is something reptilian in nature. Cold-blooded. Methodical. Calculating. Instictive. Heat-seeing. Possibly poisonous. Possibly a constrictor. Brightly colored, or donning perfect naturl camoflauge. Titanic in scale with length larger than that of a man and weight more than a small horse, or so small and incognito that no one ever sees what it was that hit them. Silent and deadly, or hissing and loud to pysche out the opponent. Capable of stealthy escape in seconds flat, or holding their ground and inflicting fatal wounds in seconds. Yes, reptilian is an apt metaphor for the kind of cold-blooded killing machine necessary for such missions that require nerves of steel and a constantly flicking tongue.

In fact, the United States has in its past experimented not with instilling this values in its men in uniform, but rather putting uniforms on these things that embody these traits best. During the Great War, it was an alligator hailing from Louisiana that stored in the Red Baron's plane that finished him off. During the Revolutionary War, the famous Turtle was not so much a ingenious sub design so much as it was a powder-laden sea turtle. After attempting a brief tenure with mollusks and a botched under-the-table-bomb with a squid against Hitler, the United States renewed its reptillian agenda with new fervor, inflicting enormous casualties in North Africa by unveiling the simultaneous new tactics of carpet bombing and heavy usage of the spitting cobra bomb. It was during the Cold War that the Department of Defense (DoD) found the greatest reptile suited for the task. After a strategy meeting, the DoD found one reptile above all else was perfect for weaponization.

What was it that led to the downfall of man in the Garden of Eden according to lore?

What was it that killed Cleopatra?

What are poisonous, primitive creatures that slither and slide and frighten us to our core, making us pull our feet back in fear from under dark desks and away from the undersides of beds?

What was the Anaconda Plan, that infamous Union plan to destroy the Confederacy, named after?

What is the one and only goddamn thing that Indiana Jones is scared of?

SNAKES

Having decided on the weapon, there was still a question of delivery, with careful consideration for realistic limitations, cost vs. benefit, research and development, and so on and so forth. Looking at the vast American arsenal that lay before them, the DoD took into consideration intercontinetal ballistic missiles, sub-launched ballistic missiles, artillery shell delivery methods, amphibious ship delivery, and even inserting snake "sleeper cells" deep into Soviet territory that only required an encoded message to go from incongruous Soviet ctizens to insane killing machines (In fact, there are still some of these cells waiting for the code word in the zoos of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Minsk, relics of a bygone time). After much deliberation, the delivery platform was decided upon as well.

What was the vehicle that allowed the Pearl Harbor attacks to be so successful?

What also allowed the bombings of London, Dreisedn, Berlin, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki possible?

What vehicle did Tom Clancy use to destroy a joint session of Congress in his book Debt of Honor?

What started the War on Terror?

What did Americans invent before anyone else could?

PLANES

So, what is the most terrifying weapons that this world has ever seen? A weapon so frightning and awe-inspiring that calling it Biblical would be an understatement? A weapons system so fear-inspiring that it would have even more of a deterrent capability than our aging nuclear arsenal?

SNAKES ON A PLANE.

Allahu ackbar.

In Praise of Longshanks

2006-04-11T00:33:00.000-05:00

What else can one say for Wales besides it has geographical situation in the British Isles analogous to an appendix?

Well, as my good friend Eric Turner describes it, "The Welsh are Irish who couldnt swim and have the first known language created by bashing a keyboard." I'll come back to the keyboard thing later, I want to talk about Wales proper. With such scenic names for hamlets like Gorsafawddacha'idraigodanheddogleddollônpenrhynareurdraethceredigion and Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, who wouldn't want to visit one of the constiuent nations in the United Kingdom, one that can lay claim to such national treasures as the flocks of sheep that roam the rocky hills and barrows of the principality?

Simply put, Wales is insane. I mean it in every sense of the word. One need only to look at the two town names listed above to realize this in a superficial manner, but a more in-depth discussion of Welsh history via their own language helps to convey this point more cloesly and in an indsiputable manner:

'r Cymraeg , cara odiaeth Celtic bobloedd , ca 'n hwy hanes 'n reddfol i mewn 'n hwy 'n arddun caerau chan haggus a fawn. 'r Cymraeg made enw achos themselves ar ôl yn adeiladu 'n hwy brifddinas caer chan Hagguspeatgerg , 'r 'n amlyca haggus a fawn caer y tu allan i chan Budapest , a gostega arferiadau hyn 'n organaidd ddefnyddiau i mewn adeiladaeth at hon iawn ddiwrnod. Rhywbryd am 'r chordda chan 'r calendr Cymru benderfynedig at arhosa yn bod fel gwareiddiad a jyst anhedda i lawr fel bagad chan dafad amaethwyr a jyst fel damweiniedig at areithia yr un dafodiaith. 'n hysbys chan 'r yn prifio bygwth chan 'r Saesneg , hynny Celts a could nofia did fel a 'n ddihangol at Eyre blwc arall ran gogledd a ymarferedig yn ergydio logs a yn llithro chlegrau ar draws hiâ blwc yn gwisgo kilts mewn gobeithia a 'r Saesneg would ca 'u fel bizzare a goresgyniad barnwyd 'n orffwyllog cystal ( 'n Anffodus achos 'r Albanwyr , 'n hwy herwhela chan yn taro feinedd b i mewn i feinedd dyllu lawer buarthau ar gerdded 18 adegau ar barnwyd esmwythyd fabolgamp at 'r Saesneg a 'n barod goresgynedig ). Bu yn ystod hon amsera 'r Cymraeg discovered baen 'n anllythrennog fel chrynswth. Hefyd , bu yn ystod hon amsera na Darwin a eiddo damcaniaeth involving filiwn epaod acha deipiedyddion came at 'r hystyriaeth chan 'r Cymraeg 130 blynedd ar ôl 'r chyhoeddiad chan Gwreiddyn chan Rhywogaeth yn ystod 'r ddyfodiad chan 'r Chyfrifiadur Heneiddia. Yn gobeithio at ddod hon damcaniaeth at test , arbenigwr banel chan simians aeddfedwyd a archebedig at chlepia i maes chyfres chan chymeriadau acha allweddell. Hun canlyniad was fel yn boddhau at barnwr a bu benderfynedig 'n hwy 'n gyfa 'n genedlaethol 'n ysgrifenedig dafodiaith. Fel , 'r yn clepian chan a syphillitic cynddeiriogedig epa ag 'n dlawd eyesight a a 'n anaelau chyflwr chan chynddaredd 'n droëdig i mewn i 'r 'n genedlaethol dafodiaith chan Cymru.

In simple, basic, God-bless-Edward I-for-conquering-them English, it goes something like this:

The Welsh, like most Celtic peoples, have their history rooted in their beautiful cities of haggus and peat. The Welsh made a name for themselves after constructing their capital city of Hagguspeatgerg, the most famous haggus and peat city outside of Budapest, which still uses these organic materials in construction to this very day. Sometime around the turn of the calendar Wales decided to stop existing as a civilization and just settle down as a bunch of sheep farmers who just so happened to speak the same language. Aware of the growing threat of the English, those Celts who could swim did so and escaped to Eyre while other ran north and practiced throwing logs and sliding rocks across ice while wearing kilts in a hope that the English would find them so bizzare that invasion was deemed insane as well (Unfortunately for the Scots, their game of hitting a small ball into a small hole many yards away 18 times over was deemed a luxury sport by the English who promptly invaded).

It was during this time the Welsh discovered they were illiterate as a whole. Also, it was during this time than Darwin and his theory involving a million monkeys on typewriters came to the attention of the Welsh 130 years after the publication of Origin of Species during the advent of the Computer Age. Hoping to put this theory to test, an expert panel of simians was gathered and ordered to bang out a series of characters on a keyboard. One result was so pleasing to a judge that it was decided their entire national written language. Thus, the banging of a syphillitic enraged monkey with poor eyesight and a fatal case of rabies turned into the national language of Wales.

Yes, Wales will always be an oddity in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and North Ireland. Even when compared to the kilt-wearing, haggus-eating, log-throwing, bagpipe-playing Scots, Wales still comes in at number one for stranges principality in the UK simply out of virtue of one of the most insane languages ever seen in the Latin alphabet. Even Serbian and Bosnian looks great in Latin compared to that mess. There's a reason they have no representation in the Union Jack. Now you know why.

Codified Proselytizing

2006-04-08T21:46:00.000-05:00

Within a few weeks, the University of Central Arkansas was visited by two different groups of far-right Christian proselytizers, come to spread the gospel of hellfire, damnation, homophobia, anti-Semitism, and other messages of Jesus Christ's love for humanity. It's all in the Bible, under the Gospel of Douche and the Epistle to the Westboro Baptist Church. If you don't have the same version as these fine exemplars of Christ's love then I'm afraid that you've just bought yourself a one-way express ticket to hell. Also, if you're a male and have long hair, shorts, premarital sex, drink, smoke (anything at all, including tires when showing off for some Sigma Kappa's on the sidewalk), are Catholic, masturbate, curse, or don't give unquestioning drone-like service to the Republican Party you will go to hell. If you're a female, then you're going to hell if you have short hair, wear short skirts, tank tops, spaghetti strap tops, halter tops, tube tops, smoke, drink, curse, have premarital sex, take or practice any birth control, aren't subservient to a male of any sort, or adorn yourself with jewelry.

The second group, a group of people who looked like a fine collection of rejected extras from Witness with their bonnets and skirts and whatnot, had probably the most offensive display of pro-life paraphenalia I have ever seen. There's one way of going about informing people of the pro-life arguments, and then there's forcing your beliefs down someone else's throats by abusing a free speech area to fill it with repulsive images of supposed abortions right outside of where people eat lunch. What are you trying to prove? That you have no sense of where to draw the line? That your life is so pathetic and worthless you have to forgo a normal life for yourself and your children to throw your collective efforts into a cause so you can have enough meaning in your life to justify you not being aborted? Indecent in the least, and absolutely disgusting at the most, this is just a more radical version of a geist that has been sweeping UCA for some time now: Over-zealous Christian proselytizing.

What is it that makes these people think and act the way they do? Why do these people pursue their goals with a fervor equal to that of a mujahedin? Well, luckily for us, there have been numerous excavations done in Israel in recent years, uncovering a plethora of ancient Christian texts and various materials. The Gospel of Judas has filled our news recently, but there have been numerous unearthings just as important as this apocryphal text, one in particular. Found in an Essene fortress close the Dead Sea, a simple list carved into a stone tablet in classical Hebrew discloses a set of rules for the budding religion of Christianity and its adherents. Without any further time wasted on trivial details, I give you the Ten Commandments For On-Campus Protestant Proselytizing. (Amazing that this actually predates Protestantism by a good 1300 years. Our God is an awesome God, and crap.)

I - Thou shalt not recognize nor respect the simple command of "no." Yea, these heathens are but an uneducated lot, who must be taught the particular version of the Gospel that thou hath adhered to by promising fealty to the (name of particular sect is missing here). Much like the babe who will not sip upon a cup of warm ale to cure his colic, the Word of Our Saviour must be forced down their throats in order to save their wretched and unworthy souls from the damnation that they other deserve (and we still secretly believe they are going to).

II - Thou shalt act in accordance with that of an oppressed minority when rejected by an infidel, even though thou art the clear majority in the nation, being white, middle class, and Protestant.
Yea, for whilst thou art simply a religious professionary, your rejection means that you are, most assuredly, being rejected because thou art Christian. Let there be woe! Gnashing of teeth! Crying! Whining! Seeking of camaraderie and empathy from other people in a comparable and secure socio-economic standing. Yea, for whilst thou art spared the lions and the cross and the floggings and public humiliation and immolation and slave labor that befell your religious forefathers, you must believe and claim that you are as, nay more! persecuted than ever before despite the fact that ye constitute well over 65% of the nation's religious identity.

III - Thou shalt abuse free speech areas for radical diatribes of whatever Christian ideology you have.
Thou shalt read the introductory paragraphs to see what model thou shalt follow.

IV - Thou shalt adopt a seemingly innocuous appearance of nomenclature to make the congress of believers seem more "cool."
Verily, calling thine church services on Wednesday night "Wednesday Night Worship Service" is not enough! Take on a name worthy of a failed PR campaign for a nightclub! Thou shalt design a logo and make flyers, banners, bumper stickers, and keychains! Thine name shall be of a most short nature, like StuMo, The Rock, The Well, Elevation, WOW, 2fifty2, WOW, YOW, Ye Church ALIVE!, The House, and Greek letters that are only slightly incognito on campus.

V - Thou shalt try to lure people into taking the Gospel by offering them a most generous slicing of pizza.
Ethics be not of concern! Ye Olde Gospel is of priority to thee! Not telling the folk partaking of the pizza and the chips and Dr. Pepper gone flat in plastic two liter bottles is a tacit, and subconscious, encouragement for the witnessing of the Gospel!

VI - Thou shalt have not a single second of education in theology nor philosophy, yet thou shalt declare thine self a theological prodigy.
Whilst this may appear contrary to the cause of Mother Church(es), it is most necessary. Yea, spouting thine mouth off on basic philosophical issues and misinterpreted verses to anyone who will listen to thine idiotic banter is the most Christian thing a true believer can do. Verily, making statements contrary to Christian theology and arguments such as humans will never understand the God who made us is the most Christian of arguments and will most assuredly draw heathens into the fold.

VII - Thou shalt not convey love, nor peace, nor hope, nor anything of Christ.
Verily, thou shall use a most illogical version of reverse pyschology to draw them into the faith of a man who preached unconditional love, peace, friendliness, acts of kindness, and so forth. Yea, thou shalt be ornery, cold, unresponsive, elitist, gossipy, and as hypocritical as possible for this will appeal to their heathen intellects in some manner which we haven't thought out yet.

VIII - Thou shalt decry everything as a sin, worthy of much damnation and hellfire!
Sex, cigarettes, rock music, movies, Democrats, homosexuality, fine art, fine wine, fine cheese, Europe, Russia, Communism, free-trade agreements, foreigners, Jews, Oxygen TV, Disney, clothes, hairstyles, caffeine (for Mormons), the internet, secularism, humanism, philosophy, foreign-made cars, books not printed on onion paper, not going to church on Sunday, intelligence, critical thought, questioning the God-given mandate of the GOP, Barack Obama, abortion, microfibers, not driving SUVs, hybrid cars, not buying magnetic ribbons, not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, the Bill of Rights.

IX - Thou shalt fuse politics and religion in one most highly divine mixture of bumper stickers and ill-informed single-issue votes.
The democratic process shalt be yet one more arena in which thou shalt bring the logic of all the above steps into half-informed political manifestos. Yea, though not a single Republican hath taken a single step towards banning or limiting abortion, making them pro-choice by default, the votes of your spiritual brethren shall most assuredly be in their favor. Also, God loves guns and every single Founding Father had a most red sanguine fluid basis to their life and was a God-fearing (name of sect missing).

X - Thou shalt, in a most impressive combination of any of the above commandments, make such an ass of thine self that any hopes for conversion is shot whilst either ruining a day for a heathen or providing unintentional comedic relief.

An Ethos for our Time.

2006-04-01T11:38:00.000-06:00

"What Would Jesus Do?"

A fine question to ask one's self, the most personal idea of imitatio dei that has come about in recent times. This Christian revolution which, for all intents and purposes was just another clothing fad and directly predates the rubber bracelets we all wear today, but had some meat to its ideology. Who better for a Christian to try and live up to than their ultimate moral exemplar? Who better for Christians to emulate than the one who selflessly offered help to the poor and sick, fed masses (with a little help from a divine power), cured people with little care for return payment, and would smite the occasional fruit tree for not fulfilling its purpose. All but the last one considered, it is a worthy and admirable cause to try and follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth.

Too bad our world isn't ready for it. No, our world needs something that deals with the problems of today, today. It needs something that is strong and fair, but isn't afraid of self-defense and amazingly strong tactics. We need someone to follow who could truly stun the world over with his amazing prowess in multiple areas like escaping POW camps, driving Mustangs, playing poker, and getting the hot chicks, and all without having to fire more shots from his gun than necessary. He does it through intellect, homegrown skills, and pure manliness. Ladies and gentlemen, ask yourself from now on....

What Would Steve McQueen Do?

Yea, through a riveting Q&A session, let me prove to thou the validity of this one great lord. Our communion of raw steaks and black coffee, fitting of our lord, shall be served afterwards:

Q: O! cruel fate. Verily, I hath been incarcerated in a camp designed for the purpose of holding prisoners of war. How doth one go about securing the wherewithal to escape this most auspicious of prisons?
A: Truer words hath never been spoken, you are in a most fortunate spot. When thou doth ask WWSMcQD?, or more simply WWSMD?, remember these simple, easy to follow steps. First, thou shalt be a royal pain in the ass to the vanguard soldiers securing you stay in this facility. Then, thou shalt be constantly confined to a confinement that is indubitably solitary. Finally, thou shalt be let in on a adventure, romantic though it may be, to escape and flee across the verdant pastoral hills of Bavaria towards the land of the Swiss on a motorbike. Indeed, thou shalt be so fast in your flight, you shall arrive at your destination before a aeroplane in flight can. So sayeth the Book of the Great Escape

Q: Blast! A man I meant to converse with in a most interogative manner hath escaped in his Dodge Charger? Whatever is a person in my unfortunate position to do?
A: This one is quite simple, childe. Mount your iron-sided Mustang and give chase through the hills of San Francisco! Yea, our lord rewards his followers well, for your quandry will inevitably experience a crashing and burning the likes of which have not been seen since the Gospel of Bullitt.

Q: A desperate commune of yeomen have beseeched me for my help in defending their town from a gang of ignoble ruffians. Shall I help them?
A: Aye, help them. But beware! For while one man may be able to take down a platoon or even divison of stormtroopers, Western bandits are of a higher calibre. Thou wilst need at least 6 more men of a most magnificent character to defend this urban collective, all for the most meager of prices as our lord did in the epic The Magnificent Seven.

Q: I'm a Hollywood actor looking to make more money in my movies. How do I do so?
A: Do your stunts like the great Steve McQueen, ass.

An Open Letter to Jack Hues

2006-03-25T21:45:00.000-06:00

Dear Mr. Hues;

During the 1980s, the entire world fell into a form of postmodern disrepair on a level unmatched since the advent of Generation X. We returned to a stronger, less friendly form of conservatism and proceeded to indulge ourselves in some of the most gluttonous and decadent practices known to man. Cocaine was consumed more than ever as more of a testament to sums of liquid capital rather than a need for a high, perfume was bought in OPEC-standard barrels for use in one night, and cars got more gallons per mile than vice versa. Hyperbole? Yes. Unnecessarily overdone? Not at all.

This brings me to you, Mr. Hues. There are many unanswered questions from the 80s which plague us to this very day. How did Reagan go from being union chief to das uberkonservative? What made the jackets Winner Only? Headbands? Shoulderpads? Pastel suits? New Coke? McDonalds in Moscow? MULLETS?! GERALDO?! DONAHUE?! PHIL COLLINS?!

Simply put sir, there are too many questions left unanswered from that decade. I have started an organizations, Citizens for the Acquisition of Resolution to the Eighties (CARE), membership numbering one thus far. As the self-explanatory name shows, the main mission of this group is to seek answers to these unanswered questions from our recent past. This is why we've (I've) come to you, Mr. Hues. In 1979, you started a band with Nick Feldman named Wang Chung, Chinese for "perfect pitch." For a while, your band languished in mediocrity until approached by William Friedkin to score his movie To Live and Die in LA. It was here that your band took off in the US charts. Then, you recorded your album entitled Mosaic. On it, you had three singles, two of which were "Let's Go," and "Hypnotize Me."

It was your best single to date that came off of this album. It reached #2 on the Hot US 100, #4 on the US Dance, and #25 on Rock, an impressive ecumenical hit. The name of this song, "Everybody Have Fun Tonight" has one famous line which has caused great men of thought and simple men of work much thought and perplexment. It has caused bodhisattvas on mountaintops to meditate on it for years, and crass athiests in alleys and on streetcorners to create a web of profanity that surely caresses the Van Allen belts. Your line, the one that has created such an impact in the world, is such:

Everybody Wang Chung tonight.

Mr. Hues, this lyric has caused everything from emergency meetings of the National Security council to prolonged discussions amongst pretentious college students in coffee shops. The heavens quake in fear and the seas are silent in awe at the potential meaning of this cryptic lyric. Theology as we know it may hinge its very existence on the esoteric knowledge you have imparted to us through the seemingly-innocent and seemingly-unintelligent means of post-punk synth-pop. The usage of hyphens within my previous statement pales in comparison to your unknown lyric.

Mr. Hues, you owe it to the world to disclose the meaning of this lyric, as profane or divine as it might be, to the masses of the world. We have waited, we have debated, we have lost enough sleep to garner the answer. Please, Mr. Hues. tell us....

How does one Wang Chung?

Sincerely,

Daniel R. Green

Precipitation

2006-03-20T13:59:00.000-06:00

It's raining. It's been raining ever since I arrived in this town. Six-and-a-half inches, my dad reports as he does his periodic check on the rain gauge outside that I've never cared to look for or notice. Half a foot of water in two and a half days, with no sign of ceasing soon.

Rain, rain, go away
Darken someone else's day.

There's something about this town. I don't really know how to describe it, or if there's anything there at all to describe. What I do feel, though is that there is some vibe, some aura, some unique feeling to this town that makes it feel like a perfect accomplice to the weather that has plagued this place since I returned on Saturday afternoon.

See, my town is one of the last industrial towns in this state and most of the products here come from the ground. First, we have Chemtura, formerly Great Lakes Chemical Company. Basically, it made a plethora of chemicals and refined products out of brine, most of which were bromine oriented (Halon, fire retardants, so forth). Then, we have El Dorado Chemical Company. I don't know what in the hell these guys do, something with nitrates though. Kaboom. The only thing this town really needs. Oh, then there's Cooper tire plant here. Prescolite does some electrical crap, and Hubbell, the lighting fixture place, has a few big buildings somewhere where some people go to do some thing. Finally, there is the company in El Dorado that has a habit of blowing up every couple of years. Ensco as it was known when dad worked there, Terris as its known now after a buyout by some French company. Basically, Terris/Ensco serves as the colon for this industrial hub and processes the waste (Usually through incineration).

Finally, there's Lion Oil, this state's richest palindrome. Ha! You get it now! Lion Oil, Lio Noil. Anyways, this thing has been the lifeblood for some time in this town, as they continuously expand, rebuild, and branch out not only bringing in workers and revenue, but also by hiring local contractors and such to help them out. I work for their pipeline over the summer, it's called Lion Oil Trading and Transportation. LOTT is a subsidiary of Lion Oil Refinery, and LOR is a subsidiary of some big energy trust-type company in Jackson by the name of Ergon. Ergon doesn't completely own the LOR/LOTT setup though, just enough to completely fuck us over should they ever decide to dump the stock.

This is where I get to my point. This town has a big ego for a shrinking town. We want more banks, more chains, more stores, more big highways. People seem to forget this town is dying, and dying quickly. Maybe it's a combination of industrial-town blues as well as a deathbed regretting that has gripped this town hard. Maybe it's that they realize we're in Arkansas and so far secluded from the rest of the state we're practically insignificant. Maybe it's that there's this collective remembrance of the glory days of the 20s, when oil was everywhere, new towns like Norphlet and Smackover sprung up over night, and El Dorado was as big as Little Rock and far richer.

I don't know. I just have to cope with it. So I read and read and read, and hope that the rain washes whatever it is in this town away.

The Deniability of Our Existence

2006-03-17T11:23:00.000-06:00

Human beings have been pumping the air on our planet and the space through which it revolves with a plethora of broadcasts across the electromagnetic spectrum. Simply put, we are a very noisy planet. We've been broadcasting radio in its various forms (shortwave, AM, FM, VHF, UHF) since the late 1800s. Television is more contemporary of a broadcast medium, coming about either right before or right after World War I, depending on your definition of television and who's side you take. Today, even more signals are broadcast. Cellular phones, microwave transmissions, more radio and television stations than ever... The airwaves are a thick crowded mess out there. The one thing that perhaps no one ever thought of when first creating these transmitting devices that employ the electromagnetic spectrum as their medium was that, given enough power behind their transmission, any signal can escape Terra and bounce out into the cosmos beyond, flying across the universe just waiting for someone or something to pick it up and decipher it.

This is the main idea behind the movie Contact when an alien civilization from the star Vega send us a sequence of prime numbers. For those who haven't seen the movie, the scientists at the Very Large Array in New Mexico later find a television broadcast of Adolph Hitler from the Berlin Olympics in 1936 is part of the transmission as well, purported to be the first ever television signal with the power to reach a star 25.3 light-years away. This is where I get into the main idea for this posting: The inadvertent broadcasting of our media to the stars and the possible consequences it might have.

There are two main theories concerning this. The first simply is Contact. Very simply, aliens find our transmissions, discover we are developed enough to try and contact, then do so in a peaceful manner, even going so far as to send encoded transmission describing the finer intricacies of the technology necessary to get in contact with them. A very idealist, optimistic view of the universe, but when talking of alien worlds and alien species anything is possible and nothing should be ruled out in the least (Except holodecks and hot busty Borg chicks). The second, more familiar theory to us all, is the hostile alien invasion after 100 years of inadvertently turning our planet into a big neon sign saying "PRIME FOR THE TAKING!" via the electromagnetic spectrum. The baddies fly in, take us over, kill us off, force us to join against our will.... You choose the adventure. A lesser known option is the aliens come to find us in order to force their views upon us. Probably best embodied in the 1950s sci-fi classic The Day The Earth Stood Still, Earth is visited by a very intelligent humanoid alien named Klaatu that comes with a startling and important message: Come to peace, stop killing, and work together, or else an alien civilization will see to it that a force as destabilizing as warrior humans will never gain the capability to leave our planet. Somewhere between the two, I believe, and certainly reminiscent of the father-figure who knows how to beat hard with the rod only to play a game of catch with his son afterwards.

What, then, I propose is a fourth alternative become the norm for these scenarios: Aliens avoiding Earth like the Plague.

This idea has been expressed in a few books, movies, etc. But never with real credibility or in a believable fashion. So, here to sway all of you into believing that this is the most likely course of action taken by wayfaring aliens who happen to venture close to our planet, here is a semi-comprehensive list on all the reasons why our broadcasts across space have made us the Goth-kid-reject of the Milky Way:

-Laxative commercials
-Condom commercials
-Local car dealership commercials
-Strange, lucid prescription drug commercials
-Reality TV
-Brittney Spears
-Hentai
-Bill O'Reilly
-Tucker Carlson
-Crossfire
-Hannity & Colmes
-Richard Novak
-George W Bush speeches
-Howard Stern
-The History/Hitler Channel
-Xanga
-LiveJournal
-MySpace
-Christina Aguilera
-Squidbillies
-Televangelists
-eBaumsworld
-Anarchist Vampire
-LoveLine
-Country, post-Garth Brooks
-Anything with emo, screamo, hardcore, goth, poser-punk, pop-punk, or any other psuedogenre that primarily shops at Hot Topic for their clothing ensembles
-Law and Order: SVU
-80s Sitcoms
-Anna Nicole Smith
-Terri Schiavo
-When Animals Attack
-Lifetime, and especially Lifetime movies
-News Corporation
-Religious fanatics burning down international institutions because of a CARTOON
-fetish Internet-exclusive porn
-Pauly Shore
-Tanya Harding
-OJ Simpson
-Michael Jackson (unless he is a sleeper agent, like Dennis Rodman)
-Anne Heche
-Preparation H commercials
-Erectile Dysfunction commercials
-Amy Heckerling movies
-Wes Craven movies
-Vanilla Ice
-Chacarron
-maxi pad commercials
-YTMND
-YTMNSFW
-Ashlee Simpson
-Jessica Simpson
-Savage Love
-Mullets
-AOL Instant Messenger

Dear God. Perhaps instead of avoiding us, whatever-alien-civilization-that-be, no matter how peaceful, will feel compelled to eradicate us simply for the safety of the universe or the removal of any of the above-listed things. The scariest thing of all is, I could have gone on longer.

We're doomed.

Treason of the Radicals, part III

2006-03-15T14:24:00.000-06:00

With the potent combination of faith and talk, there exists today an atmosphere where vices are blown out of proportion and the smallest transgressions become the greatest crime ever committed against a given nation/group. Simply put, the ideas and needs of the self, to feel vindicated, righteous, and having a purpose, are fulfilled more and more by the media and the church of modern America; however, these constructs can only go so far to legitimize this sort of shameless self-gratification, the buzzword that has become cliché in this series. Basically, the church and the media make self-gratification palpable for the masses, but only on a small, personal level. There is no superstructure where self-gratification become apparent as anywhere outside of the home and the gathering of close people, until you encounter that very last portion of the constant-twisted Romantic ideals of the self.

Today, the American political system has been hijacked by the radicals of each respective organization. Today, the Democratic party is headed by Howard Dean, the screaming maniac from Vermont. We all remember his debacle during the 2000 Democratic Presidential Primary, and some of his quotes are show his militaristic us/them mindset:

I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for.
Howard Dean

Everything they stand for? Simply put, Mr. Dean is a demagogue on par with those of his counterparts on the right. He is out to stoke the fires, to raise the rabble, and to move the Democrats to the foaming-at-the-mouth self-destructive rhetoric and tactics they employ today. Once again, the image of self-gratification through the definition of yourself in response to an enemy, however real or perceived it may be, is apparent. Not only is it apparent, it is shocking. One of the biggest complaints against John Kerry's presidential campaign was his inability to come up with a clear-cut platform on which to run for President. What kind of man runs for leader of the free world on a platform that basically amounts to whatever-he-says-I'm-going-to-do-opposite?! Tragic, really, that one of our parties relies on this sort of basic appeal to indignation and childish tactics in an effort to gain votes.

Don't think the Republicans are any better. If anything, the neo-conservative heads of the current Republican Party is one of the most atrocious in their tactics employed to gain support and buy the votes of America through shameless validation of the self through tactics of holy-than-thou destruction of the others, as well as a penchant for lies, half-truths, abuse of power, and pure disdain for the modern American citizen. The truth to the GOP, as it stands now, is this: A corrupt party full of liars, thieves, nepotists, and villains on par with that of a sub-Saharan autocratic dictatorship. Lies have been made over and over. Today, backers of the GOP are quick to show their adept skills at legalism, by pointing out that the Iraq War was done for a plethora of reasons, i.e. Removal of a dictator, saving a population from human rights abuses, and so on and so forth. Yet, the matter of weapons of mass destruction has never been solved. Why is this the largest matter of concern to Americans?

Simply put, they were the justification for the invasion of Iraq. The current administration, for all of its anti-UN rhetoric and actions, still reverted to UN resolutions to justify their invasion, referring to resolutions that ended the Gulf War and the resolutions, specifically clauses relating to disarmament. Despite this apparent credibility gap, the administration continues to play this off as nothing more than childish attacks on the righteous people defending this nation through press statements and talking heads. This is not the exception, this is the rule for this current regime.

Up-armored Humvees. Abu Grahib. Hurricane Katrina. Valerie Plame. Yellow cake. Duck Tape and plastic. Lies. The sadder thing than this, than the fact that they think they can get away with this by playing it off through self-gratification of holier-than-thou and us/them paradigm, is that people allow it to happen and do so because they need to feel their selves have a reason to live and they find it easier to digest than actually sitting down and writing obscenely long blog entries.

Simply put, this is the nail in the coffin. I'm sick. I have nothing more to say.

Treason of the Radicals, part II

2006-03-14T09:55:00.000-06:00

The church, with its new position in the West as a Crusader against manufactured woes, has shown itself to be an institution wherein the self can be shameless and ceaselessly flattered with the creation of a paradigm of Us/Them and the destruction of a one's own society. Now, not all churches are like this, and I am not going to make the fallacy of construction by saying that every single denomination is a monolithic structure wherein all followers march in lockstep to a collective goal. This is the same mistake the United States made during the Cold War with its avowed Communist enemies (Until we learned to play Chinese-based Communists against Soviet-based Communists, e.g. the Sino-Vietnamese War). No, I know there are individual churches and maybe even entire denominations that do not fit the aforementioned qualities. Yet, the churches that take it upon themselves to declare holy war on the very society they are members of in a desperate last grasp of meaning in an increasing relativistic world are the ones that are the most numerous, the loudest, and the fastest-growing; however, it's when this is coupled with other sensationalist, fear-mongering constructs that make self-gratification easy to take part in and easy to to enforce.

This is the media today as we know it. The United States media, fully using the hysteria and sensationalism of the yellow press, has created an environment in which fears are promoted and spread through an ever-present medium. Simply put, the advent of the 24-hour news networks is, for all things considered, one of the worst things to ever befall the pysche of Western humanity. How often has it been that we have turned on our domestic news channels only to see one more upper class white girl has gone missing? How many times are we going to hear about runaway brides? Simply put, the American media today makes mountains out of molehills and creates an atmosphere in which smaller, insignificant stories become huge national scandals and stories that grip our deceived little hearts.

Simply put, our media is baseless. Useless. A waste of energy and space on the airwaves. Our media has, over the years, gone from a respectable institution to tabloids on the air. One man in particular is responsible for this new paradigm that has been brought upon modern media:

Rupert Murdoch. This man, the emperor of tabloids, the grand poobah of sensationalism, the reincarnation of Willam Randolph Hearst, the kind of man a James Bond villian could be based on. Simply put, this man has brought the trash and sleaze of base, emotional, tabloid classlessness to the constant talking heads of the 24-hour news networks. Is it any surprise that a man who got his start through unscrupulous business ventures and paparazzi-fueled tabloid publications would absolutely ruin the media of the United States once he tries to remake it in his own image? No, this man who routinely takes it upon himself to commit character assassination on a monthly basis has decided to reshape the news in the United States to fall more along his own idea of the Fourth Estate. Unlike other people who take chances to attack a man of this sort of wealth, power, and stature in the world, my main beef with this man isn't his questionable business practices nor his political ideology. My major problem with Mr. Murdoch's News Coroporation is the same problem people had with the yellow press.

Fox News, Mr. Murdoch's most famous vestige in America, made a name for itself in the days before the Iraq War as being an outlet for conservative opinion and unquestioning backing for the war. This was the rule, not the exception, as all 175 Murdoch-owned papers had editorials that backed the war. The main reason though, the rationale behind why Fox News was founded, is fairly simply to comprehend once you look at Mr. Murdoch's former business practices and modus operandi (The idea that Fox News was started to compete with Ted Turner's own CNN doesn't seem to hold much water, at least for me). Fox News shows a keen grasp that Mr. Murdoch has on the media markets, showing that he can not only acquire media outlets that serve his interests, but he also has inate feel for the markets, making it capable for him to provide services and information in a market that lacks something. In America, that would be news with a definite conservative spin in a market where cable television is reaching more and more families previously out of its reach in the rural, traditionally red areas of America. There is a definate liberal bais in the United States right now in the news media. Now, there are two main reasons why media in the US has this left lean, however slight or major one may perceive it to be (I'm not the only one who disputes the nature and degree of this purpoted liberal slant):

Supply and Demand - To be unabashedly honest, we live in a capitalist society. Whether we like it or not, those are the rules for the game we must play by. Now, media does not have any exception from these rules, meaning that they too are rules by the markets just like any other profit business. Taking this into account, if the majority of people with access to mass media have been, until very recently, traditionally liberal, why shouldn't media have a liberal bias? It provides news to their chosen demographic in a manner that is easily digested by the masses and returns key profits to the media construct.
Post-Watergate Attack Dog - Since the triumph of media over the Presidency that came with the Watergate fiasco of the mid 1970s, some have argued that whatever sort of ideology a President has while in office, the media will take the exact opposite and see to it that the administration's every move is criticizied and watched. If this is true, than the media has had a liberal bias consistently from Reagan to the current administration (Clinton, for all of his liberal banter, constantly waffled and will go down in history as a moderate president who could wheel and deal with both sides consistently).

Either one of these theories can explain why there has been a liberal bias for the last several years, no matter what degree it might exist to. In the first case, it was simply an abidement to the rules of the marketplace by a capitalist agency. In the second, an unfortunate consequence of successive presidencies that were not leftist enough to warrant a right-wing slant. Either way, Fox News provides a end to both circumstances as it shows Mr. Murdoch can either capitalize upon masses of new people acquiring cable broadcasting for the first time, or simply capitalizing on a lack of coverage from a different angle, or both simultaneously.

This is where my major grievance with News Corporation, specifically Fox News, comes in. It is a tabloid on the airwaves. It is base. It is emotional. It is sensationalist. It is war-mongering, starry-eyed, demagougic banter and trash with little or no respect for journalistic integrity and a tendency to be reactionary in gathering of stories and treatment of other networks (How often has a Fox News story been nothing more than refutation of another network, i.e. "Rathergate"). Now, this would be less problematic, perhaps even tolerable, if this sort of drovel was confined to one network. Unfortunately, when Fox News dethroned CNN as the cable news source, CNN wisened up and started copying News Corporation.

"In this country, Fox News has gotten a big, big audience that appreciates its independence. There's passion there, and it's pushed. ... It has taken a long time, but it has now changed CNN because it has challenged them -- they've become more centrist in their choice of stories. They're trying to become, using our phrase, more fair and balanced."
Rupert Murdoch

So, did CNN become "fair and balanced," to quote Fox's buzzwords, or did they pick up the same sensationalist entity by a different name? Simply put, CNN became even more sensationalist with many of their programs, falling back on flashier programs, more typecasted talking heads (like Tucker Carlson and Richard Novak as the typical heartless conservatives) and gone to an even more extreme version of the attack dog mindset.

It goes without saying that whatever the shape of media was, it is worse now. Our papers and television sets are filled with inane stories of naive rich white girls disappearing in the Bahamas, brain dead people being used as political cannon fodder by both parties in this nation, car chases, or other big flash stories that wouldn't have made it into the news 20 years ago. Basically, our news has turned into explosion-filled, poorly-written Jerry Bruckheimer film. What purpose does most of this serve? What point does the ticker on the bottom of the screen serve except to give us a drip-feed of fear?

Basically, media is an even more prevalent source of fear and self-gratification that the church is. It is constant. It is ceaseless. And when it meets the church head on, by allowing talking heads from an organization that is a shadow front for the church on (usually an organization with the name "Family" in there somewhere), the effects of the paradigms of the church, plus the fear and easily-consumable goods of the media combine to create a potent mixture for the flattery of the self and the creation of delusion and affliction on an unheard of scale. But what of our very politcal structure?

Treason of the Radicals, part I

2006-03-13T21:16:00.000-06:00


"Man has to suffer. When he has no real afflictions, he invents some.": Jose Marti

Truer words on the Western mind have never been spoken. The West, with its ceaseless infatuation with the self, that ever-elusive idea that each person is unique in his own right or in her own abilities, has never stopped with its sickening self-infatuation long enough to contemplate the true status of the world about it. Why should it? As long as there are constructs that exist for the pure purpose of gratification of the self, and so long as these constructs break down the world into packets that are easily digestible by the masses, the West will never have to wake from its self-glorification that is the constant creation of new vices, harms, evils, threats, and afflictions. This means that the basic ideology of the West, one that focuses not only on the being of one person as being individual (I have to restrain myself from using the Dilbert term "In-duh-viduals") will be one that constantly produces and invents new woes for the self-gratification of the self.

Why are woes and pains one of the greatest forms of self-gratification? Simply put, it gives someone a reason to feel like they have a reason to flatter themselves with the ideals of purity, innocence, and, ultimately, validity for whatever cause they have allowed to consume and define their life. If one has a villain, one has a purpose. If one has had a transgression against them, they have righteousness. If one has a poison, one can make a remedy. One aspect of this, one troubling dimension of this, is the definition of one's life not by their own terms by but being in opposition to someone else. Regardless, a woe or a conflict, no matter how invented it is, gives meaning and validity to a life and a self that is otherwise spent and useless.

Enter the church, the media, and the politicians of the United States of America. While I hesitate to call the United States a hyperpower, and I'm certainly not one to play the lyre and sing the epic of her great rise to world dominance, I will admit the singular status of this nation. We have the highest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the world, weighing in at first place no matter which criteria you use to evaluate it. In terms of per capita GDP, we rank third and are the highest ranked nation without major national subsidies or other sorts of socialized programs. Our political system is secure with regular exchanges of power in a peaceful manner. Our life expectancy is higher than our fore-fathers ever dreamed. Ethnic strife and racial tensions are now the exception, not the rule. Inter-religious conflict is something that is laughable in this nation. Our military is the most technologically advanced in the world, with bases in 132 nations.

I will not say it is without flaw, and I will not say it is the "greatest nation." Neither of those criteria can be applied to any nation built by man. Nevertheless, this nation has, within its borders, an environment that can best be described as harmonious. Religious groups don't practice mutual immolation on one another. Political parties don't start militias and slaughter one another in the streets of our cities. A tribe from one side of the mountain doesn't attack a tribe down in the river valley (The Hatfields and McCoys, for all practical arguments, stopped fighting in the late 1800s and the gang wars of the 1990s were just another example of white hyperparanoia). This nation lives in tranquility that is virtually unknown except to other industrialized nations of the Western world. Even the traumatic events of September 11, 2001 are the exception, unlike places such as Lebanon and the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.

So then, on to the perpatrators of these self-indulgent crimes. First off, the church. Not the Church, but the collection of people who accept Trinitarian doctrine as set down at Nicea and subsequent ecumenical councils. Growing up in the Methodist church, the more poetic version of the Apostles' Creed that I learned goes something like this:

I believe in God the Father Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth;

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord:

who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,

born of the Virgin Mary,

suffered under Pontius Pilate,

was crucified, dead, and buried;

the third day he rose from the dead;

he ascended into heaven,

and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;

from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,

the holy catholic church,

the communion of saints,

the forgiveness of sins,

the resurrection of the body,

and the life everlasting. Amen.

Beautiful when recited by the lay. Anyways, that's the church. The church, especially the branches of Protestantism indigenous to the Western Hemisphere, have always been the scare-mongering, anti-intellectual, opiating, hateful bastions for the gullible and self-indulgent. Simply put, at its very core the church professes an idea that Jesus Christ is your chaffeur into heaven. He died for your sins when He was up there on the cross. He actually felt your individual transgressions and was willing to do whatever it took to get you into heaven. You may pass Go, you may collect 200 dollars, you may put hotels on Boardwalk scotch-free. So, we have a deity coming to Earth to alleviate the sinful condition each man is born with for the sake of each individual human, not for humanity. How much more self-indulgent can something actually be?! To be blunt, it can't. But it can provide for an institution wherein lesser forms of self-indulgence can gestate. Simply put, by taking up the sword and shield, and crusading against the very society they are a part of, the church becomes a potent breeding ground for gratification of the self:

Enforced Morality - What better way of giving righteousness and validity to someone than by telling them the very society they happen to be a part of is immoral, corrupt, indecent, and vile. The creation of an Us and Them paradigm is, simply put, the easiest way to glorify one's self. How? Simply by destroying another person by creating an alien set of criteria they neither believe in nor adhere to and will automatically fail, becoming a self-predicting prophecy that ends positively for the Crusaders of American Protestantism.
Us/Them, Good/Evil - They are bad. We are good. Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia and Eastasia has always been our ally. What good is this kind of thought except to create two clear-cut, absolute communities with which one can contrast itself against the other, namely the Us group versus the Them group? Simply because one group falls short of an idea does not mean by any means that yours is exemplar. In addition to that, this sort of mindset fails within Christianity itself. For example, some of the more radical branches of Christianity adhere to a belief that even the most tacit approval of abortion is a sin, and therefore evil, vile, etc. So, then what of the more liberal branches of Catholicism, Methodism, Episcopalianism, Lutheranism, and some Northern evangelical churches? Are these people, their Christian brethren in the holy catholic church, evil, repugnant, hell-bound sinners? Yes, according to these far-right doctrines, they are. Within Christianity itself, this doctrine fails as the community that is, as a whole, supposed to be morally-upstanding and naturally gravitate to the same God-given ideas of right and wrong is torn asunder.

Of course, one can go on and on with the sins of the church. Yet one would be a fool to think that the plague of self-gratification that leads one to bury oneself in pity and remorse is perpretrated by the church alone. No, this is a recent development of the church. As science explained more and more of life and the universe, as society tended to move away from the morality imposed by a plethora of sects, the church found itself having to fight for its survival. Is it any surprise, then, that the most vocal, most ardent, most firebrand radical denominations of all are the fastest growing sects, while the most ecumenically-minded sects are dropping in enrollment? With the exception of the Latter-Day Saints, fundamentalism and Crusaderism has returned in force as the church finds itself appealing more and more to the base needs and emotional wants of the self.

They are not alone, though. Media and politics are right there by their side, providing easy access to the one thing every self needs to feel like it has a reason to strive to live: drama and psuedo-anguish.