Lately I’ve been chasing my father all over Hell – figuratively speaking. I don’t expect to catch him; he died seven years ago, taking with him some secrets I wish I could have asked him about, and others that I know I couldn’t have. He left behind some intriguing clues about himself, but remained something of a mystery to the end. [Read more →]
I must apologize to my legions of loyal reader (hi Jeff!). Due to some unforseen circumstances, I am unable to present my usual brilliant commentary in this space today. I promise to return next week with something staggeringly witty, but for now, I will just share my list of good and bad stories of the week with minimal narration. Thanks for your understanding. [Read more →]
In honor of Halloween, below is an excerpt from the Zombie Kama Sutra, which is sort of like the regular Kama Sutra that we living people all know and love, except that it’s aimed at the Undead. This excerpt features some highly disturbing and erotic images of zombie sexual positions. Please stop reading if the thought of such matter disturbs you.
IN the beginning, the Lord of Beings created men and women, and prescribed therefore about one million rules by which those men and women must necessarily regulate their living existence. Yet, these rules have not applied to the undead. For too long have these wayward, shambling, unholy creatures attempted to engage the acts of courtship, embracing, unions, seduction, and etc.
Death should not be used as an excuse for chaos.
To that end are written these more than one thousand chapters, intended as a guide to those who have risen from the grave by whatever means, be it metaphysical, mystical, biological, or extraterrestrial. These important “rules to be dead by” shall provide to the Zombie the proper knowledge in regards to conducting oneself in all manner of intimate relations. [Read more →]
When will my time come for scenery
And will it be too late?
After all
Decades ago I was never able
To get excited
About filling the lungs with ozone
On Salthill Prom.
And when the strangers
To whom I gave a lift
Spoke to me of the extraordinary
Light in the Western sky;
I often missed its changes.
And, later, when words were required
To intervene at the opening of Art Exhibitions,
It was not the same.
What is this tyranny of head that stifles
The eyes, the senses,
All play on the strings of the heart.
And, if there is a healing,
It is in the depth of a silence,
Whose plumbed depths require
A journey through realms of pain
That must be faced alone.
The hero, setting out,
Will meet an ally at a crucial moment.
But the journey home
Is mostly alone.
When my time comes
I will have made my journey
And through all my senses will explode
The evidence of light
And air and water, fire and earth.
I live for that moment.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Well, it’s interesting. We face the prospect of more of the same, or the insane, or a pizza salesman. The Irish get a poet. Granted, the presidency of Ireland is less the powerful spot held by DeValera for decades, from the end of the civil war to the 60s and more an elected version of the British Monarchy. He presides, and he then makes state visits.
But, given a choice between a business man best known for being one of the assholes on Dragons Den or the former Chief of Staff of the IRA, the Irish chose a part-time politician and full-time Irish poet. While not Seamus Healy, Michael Higgins like Louis McNeice and himself brings something worthwhile to the whole mess. And for that, perhaps we should look again to the Irish and possibly the Icelanders to preserve civilization after the glance up the skirts of capitalism we’ve endured the last few years in particular and decades in general. The women have taken over Iceland and the poets are taking over Ireland. Not a lot to say…for us.
I have developed a habit as I walk into the my office in the morning of flipping on the computer and then playing the guitar for a bit. While I seem to be finding myself listening to a lot of Celtic revival stuff of late, I started this morning with Boolavouge and then The Rising of the Moon. We’ll see…Oh, and Feck is a slightly restrained version of fuck…in case you were wondering.
Where there is suspicion there is hope. Anything less than defiantly blind credulity must be taken as something of a triumph, especially amongst the young. If you want to see suspicion in all its varied glory make this a habit: whenever you meet a young jew (and it comes up) ask, are you a Zionist Jew or an Anti-Zionist Jew? If immediate suspicion is in the jewish character it seems to have been mostly boiled out of the semite undergrad. Mostly, as with all questions these days, you will receive the quizzical expression of a kitten nursing a cigarette. They are not used to new questions, these pupae, without getting the answers in advance, and presume you have begun speaking a foreign language. Possibly fictional. For some reason the usual method of fence straddling is likewise not employed. It is that expression, Zionist. They know they have heard it and it is not good. “But it does seem to have something to do with jews, which I am,” so they are at least hesitant to join in the hoots, the damnation of the bankers, the presumption of their jewishness, the denunciation of Israel and the perpetual explanations of how the jews are at the root of it all.
Given the givens of our day, as I said, this is triumphal and all opportunities must be explored. [Read more →]
Oh, was I excited to get this book! I loved the first book in the series, The Strain – recommended it to everyone who was tired of sparkly vampires. The Fall was a little less successful (often the case with the middle book in a series), but still a very good read. I have been anxiously awaiting the final installment, in part because I figure the movie can’t be far behind.
The Night Eternal
We’re all familiar with the genius of YouTube; how it lets the unknown masses contribute to pop culture as freely and often as they’d like. But lately I’ve taken a particular shine to YouTube’s vast array of fan-made music videos (i.e. fan-chosen footage splattered onto musicians’ songs).
A few such gems recently caught my attention.
They are enthusiastically for elimination, these chilly, sodden folk who gather at my doorstep. Eliminate debt, eliminate taxes, eliminate property, eliminate poverty, eliminate wealth and the wealthy too and once in a while, publicly eliminate on the sidewalk. Who claims they lack coherence? They Occupy Wall Street and Main Street, meaning they reside there; sleeping rough, eating roughage and are roughly handled, so they complain, by the authorities, the media, the neighbors, business, academe and above all by harsh and increasingly cold Reality. I depart from most of the critics of the Occupiers however. No, their problems are not strictly speaking in their heads. There is, actually, an underlying, unifying rationality among the commies, hippies, dippies and loons. Finally polling has investigated our modern Bonus Marchers and found a diagnosable malady; not just debt but student debt. [Read more →]
Have you ever down twinkled?
Do you even know what down twinkling is, you boar-faced, capitalist gasbag?
I bet not! Please allow me to me explain then.
I’ve been writing this column for over a year now. The reason it is called “Artistic Unknowns” is because my original idea was to focus on the issues surrounding being an unknown artist, yet one who soldiers on in art despite obscurity — an artist like yours truly: busy in a professional and personal artistic context, despite the realities and responsibilities of living everyday life. Sure, the column has branched off into my opinions about the nature of art (some which have been well-received, some, not so much) but the recurring theme has always been folks like me — the busy, if publically unknown, artist. I’ve tried to “write what I know.” [Read more →]
Have you heard the latest neutrino jokes?
Here’s one:
Neutrino.
Knock, knock.
And here’s another:
“We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” said the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.
Don’t get them? Well, in a Wall Street Journal column, physicist Michio Kaku put it this way: [Read more →]
Recent demonstrations by the disaffecteds occupying Wall Street and calling themselves the 99%, coming as they have on the proverbial heels of another populist revolt, the TEA Party, suggest that one thing is clear: people on the left and the right have had it with the status quo in Washington D.C…
…or have they?
Not likely…and I blame The Lion King. [Read more →]
Baseball fans are fortunate to be witnessing one of the all-time great careers right now. We hear all the time about so many great players from the past, such as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle. Legendary players who many of us have only heard about but never got to watch play. History is likely to put Albert Pujols into that category, if the first eleven years of his career are any indication. There would appear to be nothing he can’t do. He is the best hitter in the game, is a tremendous fielder, and he makes the St. Louis Cardinals whole lineup better. He is currently attempting to lead his team to a World Series title. As great as he is, there is a bit of baggage there as well. This week, we got to see the best and the worst of Albert Pujols, all within the space of a couple of days. [Read more →]
10. You saw the nurse filling the syringe with Diet Snapple
9. It makes you so delirious, you seriously start considering voting for Michele Bachmann
8. It has a 100 percent guarantee from Dr. Kevorkian
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When Steve Jobs died, among the many words of praise and thanks for him on my friends’ Facebook status updates, there were a few people upset at the attention his death was getting in the media. Maybe you saw similar sentiments from a friend or two. One friend dismissively wondered why we were “making a martyr out of the guy who created the iPhone.” At least one other passed judgment on Jobs, on the day of his death, for not giving more money to charity. He was selfish and rich and why were we treating him like some great guy when he hadn’t devoted his life to helping people but kept his money for himself? Certainly there are others out there who feel the same way. I wonder how many of them have done a fraction of what Jobs did to improve the lives of people. Tonight’s 60 Minutes featured ways the iPad is helping people with autism communicate and learn.
Reading the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page for insight into the economy, business or economics in general — or just about anything else except the arcane study of the Right Wing elite and where Murdoch’s head is at today — is a very strange exercise. It’s kind of like looking at a symposium on race relations and gender equitality chaired by an intern from World Net Daily where the participants are Louis Ferdinand Celine, Ian Paisley, John Hagee, Michelle Bachmann, the Grand Mufti of Teheran, Dennis Duke and Clarence Thomas. They may have a lot to say, but it will be either ignorant or just plain batshit crazy, with a tinge of duplicity and lies. Which they all believe. [Read more →]
Like many children of the Cold War, I grew up anxious about Nuclear Armageddon, so when Gorbachev eased relations between the USSR and the West I was grateful. For many years I viewed him as a hero, pure and simple. It was not until I moved to Russia that I realized his reforms had been intended to strengthen the USSR, not destroy it.
Oops.
Gorbachev had a rough ride in his homeland in the 1990s, where he was almost universally despised. These days he appears to have settled into the role of Russia’s Jimmy Carter: well- meaning, not quite forgiven, but no threat. [Read more →]
When I was in second grade, I was enrolled in CCD at our church. The point of this venture was to instill me with a more fundamental knowledge of my/my parent’s faith — to help me realize more fully what it meant to believe in God, and what it meant to be Catholic. There was a textbook, with pastel paintings of Jesus and his disciples, portraying his efforts to help the sick and feed the poor. There were tests — memorizing the Commandments and reciting the Our Father. I needed to learn these things to make my first Holy Communion, to advance in my faith. The weight of the spiritual world was essentially resting on my shoulders, being this was the first rite of Christian passage that I actively was participating in.
But none of that mattered. The fear and anxiety of the tests and the practicing and the ultimatums (“If you don’t learn this, you won’t be able to get Communion,” which loosely translated into “You won’t be able to wear a pretty white dress and have your own special party”) completely paled in comparison to my true source of anxiety every Sunday: the open staircase that led to our classroom.
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Plagiarizing was once clear-cut. Those intrepid college students who drove to a paper mill (which back in the day was a real warehouse full of papers) and bought someone else’s paper — they knew they were cheaters. If someone wrote a paper for you, you knew you were a lazy cheater. Xeroxing a big chunk of an encyclopedia and putting it word for word into your paper: Obviously, cheating! [Read more →]
Thursday “fun” link.
Libya’s esteemed leader gets escorted to Hell. (Not for the faint of heart, btw).
Judy McFarland’s life is a mess. Her marriage is crumbling, her school is going bankrupt, her best friend just died. She’s started to think about escape — her youngest son will be graduating soon and then she could leave, get a divorce, do whatever she wanted. Unfortunately, she doesn’t wait until after graduation. In Rebecca Coleman’s The Kingdom of Childhood
You really want to feel sorry for Judy. The school she has loved and supported for more than 20 years is financially unstable. Her husband, Russ, is withdrawn, caught up in his own career struggles and out of touch with the family. Her daughter, Maggie, away at college, is rebelling against the very principles her parents found so important. Her son, Scott, is silent and sullen (a typical teenager). Her best friend, Bobbie, died of cancer and every day, Judy has to walk by the classroom where she used to teach. It’s a miserable situation for anyone. [Read more →]
What would you think of a monetary system with NO borrowing, NO taxation and NO reserves? It is simplicity itself. When the government needs some dough to build a fighter jet or provide orthodontia to a retired race horse, they just print it up. All bonds will be retired, on schedule and as issued (except TIPS, we’ll have to do something about them) but no more will be sold. Taxes? A dusty anachronism. And since this is fiat money, not based on crappy Italian cars but rather on the forceful declarations of government, there is no need to keep gold or silver stocks as the US currently does. We will call this Infinity Money, an appealing brand name. Inflation? Oh hells yeah! Hyperinflation? Perhaps so but now in the computer age the handling of numbers forty digits long is no great chore and as in the Weimar Age, once the numeric string is too long and the tail end isn’t worth a single grape we just cut off a dozen or so zeroes from all accounts on a date certain, I’m thinking midnight every Friday so you can restart the melting of your valuables fresh on Monday. This solves many, many problems. For one, we are constantly told that the billionaires and krillionaires are maliciously keeping trillions in their vaults so they can lounge among the greenbacks and deprive Danish Lit majors of productive employment. No more. Anyone who hoards our un-earned money will see it evaporate like dry ice so high-risk, high-growth investments will be the only recourse. The consumer likewise will not keep his money in his pocket because his pocket (or more accurately, his card) now has an extra-dimensional rift within it that will empty out the value at the pace of a flushing toilet. Consumer spending spikes. Investment spikes. Savings? Well, there won’t be any actual savings but there will be investment in goods and services. It is said in Weimar Berlin that the streets were awash in cocaine and prostitutes of all descriptions. Now that is an enviably energetic economy! [Read more →]
Gilad Schalit is a free man today and he became a man in the custody and care of Hamas. Schalit was a nineteen-year old jew from a nation of jews, stolen like a comely goat from his post, as he was a soldier; a jewish soldier from a nation of jewish sodiers. As far as can be divined, the raid that claimed him was conceived and launched, involving months of tunneling by many hands, for the very purpose of capturing a jewish soldier and ransoming prisoners from the jewish jail. Schalit was of no consequence personally. He was just a jew.
For five years Schalit has paid the price for that crime. As yet we have no word from him as to what conditions he was kept. Almost certainly those were far better than exist in Palestinian jails in Gaza and the West Bank, which are filled mostly with “collaborators”, either with jews (and just the allegation of this can get one killed in the street) or the other entity. In Gaza, Hamas jails those with sympathy to Fatah. In the West Bank, Fatah jails those favorable to Hamas but in either case a five year sentence would be grueling and would show a mark or two. Schalit seems to have been kept in marketable condition as befits his status, not as prisoner of war or justice, but as a commodity. [Read more →]
Often, inside a fat guy abides a small man. This is the reality exposed to the nation last week by the antics of New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie. What else is there to make of that display? While the media and candidates are chewing their cuticles down to the nub, Christie prances in a gunslinger approved performance where he rattles the tools around in the back shed while telling the expectant world that he is not up to anything. And then, he really isn’t. Well, he’s not up to running but he IS up to a perverse faux obeisance at the Reagan Shrine, including some ritual canoodling with the widow Reagan, a pro forma popping of Christie ’12 balloons and then an immediate, fawning, truly disgusting appearance with Mitt Romney where they each break their own necks patting each other and themselves on the back. Noted expert on all things, Christie declares that no comparison of any kind can be legitimately made between Romneycare and Obamacare. Not suprisingly, he offers no foundation for his absolutism, simply a promise to write such nonsense out of sane discourse. Here, in a Mormon approved ceremony, Romney and Christie exchange lachrymose compliments and pledge until Death do They Part. Chris shows that he is down for the struggle with reason and perception and willing to endorse whatever inanity necessary to grease the skids for Mitt to the nomination and then the coronation. Christie might as well have simply announced while extending a signet ring: L’establishment de Republique? C’est moi! They say that Christie is conservative for New Jersey. Yes, and as a New Jersey native I can also inform you, he is quite fit. [Read more →]
I used to read the Times of London primarily for the book reviews and Jeremy Clarkson’s columns until Murdoch decided to overcharge for the privilege. I do still pull up The Guardian for a variety of reasons. One is that Ana Marie Cox, the equally lovely, younger,equally red-haired version of Dulcinea Dowd who would have been a lot of fun listening to chat with Molly Ivins about Michelle Bachman, has returned to professional blogging and is now doing it for The Guardian. Very cool. The other is that they frequently have columns like this one — the author’s defense of his belief, nay conviction, that the Prime Minister of Great Britian is a slithering reptile.
I do not know why we can’t routinely get it this right… Here are some of the great lines from the piece that should be printed out and posted on every thinking person’s desk when looking for inspiration on how to effectively eviscerate the trolls toiling the bells of American economic justice and freedom.
… writes vividly and from the heart and, if his byline photo is anything to go by, appears to be a perfectly reasonable man (specifically, Ross Kemp). He deserves the benefit of the doubt. But I fear in his rush to reprimand the “Modern Left”, he has overlooked one key fact: David Cameron is a lizard. Yes, David Cameron is a lizard. A lizard that devours live foals in its lair. And as far as Archer is concerned, it’s perfectly fine for this limbless, non-human, Cameron-reptile-beast-thing to squirm across the stone floor of its den merrily excreting the bones of its victims, yet I’m “depraved” simply for writing about it. This is the tragedy of the Modern Right. They’re idiots. Well, let me spell it out: You cannot dehumanise a lizard. Not without humanising it first, by giving it a little top hat, say, or a monocle. Maybe put some lipstick on it. And a wig. Teach it to walk sexy. That’s the way. (Mike’s comment — Like a pitbull, or a momma Grizzly!)
Seriously, we need to spend time practicing to be this good. There is an art, a craft, a honed skill to political commentary and invective, and these awful people deserve the best of that art.
Sports may often feel like life and death to a fan, but in the end, it is all just a bunch of games, right? Death should not be a part of sports. There are many things in this world worth dying for, and I imagine that very few people would list the playing of a game very high on that list. There is little worse than when a human being loses his or her life while playing sports. It just seems like such a waste. On Sunday, IndyCar driver Dan Wheldon was killed during a massive wreck only eleven laps into the series’ final race of the season in Las Vegas. [Read more →]
10. As a youth, he was always having wet dreams
9. They were thrown together when he was out scuba diving one day and accidentally got caught up in a tuna net
8. After seeing the recent Morgan Freeman movie, he was inspired to go out and get some of that ‘dolphin tail’
[Read more →]
