10.22.2011
Well, That Was Easy
Occupy Eugene has moved, and no arrests were made. That's a good thing, of course.
Indeed, Eugene Police (who have had an armoured personnel carrier for over a decade and aren't afraid to use it) broke out their $1400 cop Cannondales and blocked traffic for the two mile March across the Willamette River (pronounced WillAMette, damnit) and into the massive Alton Baker Park.
The whole thing was taking on the aura of a siege just a couple of days ago. The planning meetings were (and still are) held in secret and you can't attend unless you're vouched for--pretty much like the mafia as depicted, in, say Donnie Brasco, except for the whack-you-and-your-family-if-you're-wrong part. This is an attempt to keep out cops, COINTELPRO, FBI, DHS, and just plain good Germans who somehow buy the absurd admonition spewed from the truly dangerous Janet Napolitano to be a narc--to become, as Burroughs warned in A Thanksgiving Prayer and elsewhere -- A Nation of Finks.
But suddenly the city is cooperating, despite the dire warnings the legal team received late Thursday that arrests would commence, en masse, belongings seized, and, I think in a particularly cruel twist--dogs sent to the pound. Lane County Animal Control is notoriously tiny, and a large influx of animals would require many to be euthanized. Nice, eh?
But the City Council, Mayor, Chief of Police and City Manager were bombarded with thousands of calls--a phone tree that grew faster than a celebrity sex tape--
Poof. Crisis averted. Like ju-jitsu as Ghandi might do it.
So, you know, I was all fired up and LOTS of lawyers massed there, ready for gas and batons and tasers--and then, utter calm.
I admit, 'twas a bit of a comedown. But the best result, for now.
While I personally don't like the new site, as it is removed from any major traffic, the word is it's just for now. And the protesters aren't staying put at camp all day. They sent word they plan to march back into downtown this morning.
So I don the Green Hat, and off I go. I will try to get some decent video and pics up soon.
Peace.
10.21.2011
Immortal Technique: OWS Does Not Support Obama
Thanks for clarifying.
The clip clarifies a lot, if you will sit through it...it's about ten minutes long.
MSM, it ain't.
Headed back out there.
Not planning on getting arrested today, but if I don't post again before dawn Saturday, you can assume I'm in the stripy hole.
10.20.2011
Some Advice
Don't forget to eat before the march. You'll pay for it, as I am now, when the adrenaline burns off like a Nigerian gas flare.
But I can tap out a little bit here, before I crash into a very deep sleep.
Occupy Eugene marched on Chase, B of A, Wells Fargo, among others. The Chase folks were the most entertaining: They actually closed the bank. A woman in an ill-fitting suit spoke somewhat frantically into a cell phone, one imagines to either Headquarters (The Barbarians have come! We are following The Procedure, closing the bank and barring the door, sir--) or her husband (The hippies have come to kill us! Tell the kids I love them--), but we'll likely never know.
There was some chanting, some good old expression of displeasure:
and then we marched somewhere else.
Sure, there was one guy who carried a (paper mache) pitchfork with an effigy of a man in a suit impaled on its tines--and some will no doubt argue that takes it too far--but it is only a metaphor--
If you participate in the most massive financial crimes in history, you should expect to piss a few people off.
Some William Black will light a fire in you if you're unclear just how crooked the banks have become.
So now, with that, I hope y'all sleep well.
I know I will.
Man from Nantucket
Sure.
We all know about this guy, the thing he could do, and the thing he would do if his ear was a different orifice--
But this most infamous of the nasty limericks (ever notice how "limerick" sounds dirty, all by itself?) contains a profound observation regarding human behavior--
If it's there, we'll exploit it.
If it can be fucked, we'll fuck it.
So with no small measure of dismay and horror I will head out into the hinterlands this summer, hoping to see a bit of what's left, before we dam it, cut it, pave it, burn it, harvest it or otherwise fuck it--
I have just enough gear and money to make it till September. Keep your fingers crossed that plenty, or at least sustenance, awaits on the other side.
More, later.
We all know about this guy, the thing he could do, and the thing he would do if his ear was a different orifice--
But this most infamous of the nasty limericks (ever notice how "limerick" sounds dirty, all by itself?) contains a profound observation regarding human behavior--
If it's there, we'll exploit it.
If it can be fucked, we'll fuck it.
So with no small measure of dismay and horror I will head out into the hinterlands this summer, hoping to see a bit of what's left, before we dam it, cut it, pave it, burn it, harvest it or otherwise fuck it--
I have just enough gear and money to make it till September. Keep your fingers crossed that plenty, or at least sustenance, awaits on the other side.
More, later.
Why
did you come out?
The woman standing next to me held a sign in the shape of an upraised fist. The question obviously gets asked frequently at any Occupy camp, and everyone places their personal spin on the End Corporate Control meme--
But I think her answer is easily the best reason...maybe the only true reason.
She said: "I was tired of being sad about this by myself." Then, beaming, "Now I'm not so sad."
The woman standing next to me held a sign in the shape of an upraised fist. The question obviously gets asked frequently at any Occupy camp, and everyone places their personal spin on the End Corporate Control meme--
But I think her answer is easily the best reason...maybe the only true reason.
She said: "I was tired of being sad about this by myself." Then, beaming, "Now I'm not so sad."
10.19.2011
The Occupation
continues. I held a sign for three hours today, at this corner.
The vast majority of drivers honked, waved, raised a fist or flashed a peace sign. A pretty woman in a black truck dropped off a tureen of soup and hugged the sign holders before the light changed. She pulled away, closing the door behind her and blowing kisses. One of her bumper stickers read: Should You Trust the Government? Ask a Native American.
There was the occasional stony faced driver, staring straight ahead, afraid to look, of what they might see, and of course a few middle fingers flying high, and one loon who kept circling 'round and calling us "Obama's useful idiots."
Then, out of nowhere, Terry Sherven plugged in a guitar and sang Can You Hear? (video from YouTube as I can't get blogger to upload the video I shot on the street in Quicktime):
He's hitting Western state Occupy movements, and the tune could well become a rallying cry.
If you haven't dropped in on your local gathering, I encourage you to do so. If you can't stay long (most of the occupiers are the long term un-and-under-employed like me) then stay just a little while, bring some cookies, tarps, medical supplies--you get the picture.
We're staying out there. We'll eventually get busted, but we--and occupiers across the world--will keep coming back, in ever increasing waves, until the corporations and their servile politicians are swept out to the Fukushima sea...
Peace.
Frame This
George Lakoff, a distinguished professor at UCal Berkeley, claims in an article published today that some protestors at OWS had asked for his advice, and he waxes eloquent about properly framing the issue--with the purported goal of prevailing in the 2012 elections.
Lakoff clearly cannot see very well from the parapet of his ivory tower.
The OWS protest has exactly jack to do with any election anywhere--except as a wholesale rejection of that system.
See, George, we've tried elections, and regardless of whether "we" control both houses and the white house, or whether "they" do--illegal war, looting of the treasury, torture, rendition, assassination, wiretapping--all of it, not only continues unabated, but has only gotten worse under the current regime.
But I do see your point about framing the issue. So I suggest that you, Professor George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley, immediately resign unless torture-memo author Professor John Yoo--(your esteemed colleague, paid and protected by tenure by the same organization) is fired immediately. (More on Yoo's allowable torture--it includes children's genitalia!--can be found here and here.)
Your trite "advice" in the article aside, the fact you have remained utterly silent on this abomination exposes you as ignorant and foolish at best--
Or complicit at worst.
Either way, your credibility takes a fatal hit.
Until you resign or Yoo does, then, shut the fuck up, eh?
In the meantime, I suggest you go down to the local #occupy gathering, and LISTEN.
I'll have more from our own Occupy Eugene later today.
Update 1:
To the critics who've written protesting my pillorying of Prof. Lakoff, saying, more or less, butbutbut Noam Chomsky works for MIT:
It is true that Lakoff and Chomsky have written extensively in what is generally a progressive vein. But Chomsky went out in the street and was bloodied alongside Howard Zinn. Chomsky had the fortitude to stand up and defend free speech when it was a holocaust denier speaking, because, as he eloquently noted: "If we don't believe in free speech for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
Chomsky acknowledges the futility of elections and the usurpation of the political process by corporations.
Lakoff just sucks off Democrats, wipes his mouth, and tells us the 2012 elections are important, after Obama proved unequivocally that Corporations rule.
As for what I've done, I don't think you want to get into a pissing match over who is "more authentic," which seems counter-productive, but for establishing cred purposes, I have spent twenty hours since Saturday as a legal observer for the local occupy movement, and I'm about to head back down there.
In any event, I don't think you can argue that Lakoff has written a syllable criticizing torture or his employer's overt support of it. Show me where, and I'll concede the argument.
My point is that Lakoff--and a whole host of nominally progressive writers, journalists, and teachers today--are stuck in the "Democrats are better than Republicans" paradigm.
I also humbly submit there are times when silence equals complicity; when your coworker takes the position that, should the president deem it necessary, he could have the testicles of a child crushed, it is, I think pretty goddamned obviously, one of those times.
Noam Chomsky never remained silent, knowing full well the damage he was doing to himself professionally. Watch "Manufacturing Consent"--it's free on the innertubes--and it'll clarify the distinction I make between Lakoff, who hasn't the courage of his alleged convictions, and Chomsky, who got his head busted and sucked Mace, and never went easy on MIT or the MIC...
I hope you are helping your local Occupy movement, cause electoral politics is the show they want us to watch.
We disempower them by making them irrelevant.
10.15.2011
10.11.2011
Squealing Swine
Goddamn.
That didn't take long.
Not even a month into the OWS protest, politicians smell blood in the water--
But this time, it's their OWN--
Most self-designated nominally progressive groups in the U.S. are no more committed to the true change needed--the utter dismantling of corporate power and a massive redistribution of wealth, both in the form of control of natural resources essential to sustain all life AND THE MONEY SUPPLY--than they are to, say, slowly pulling out their own eyes.
That is, when politicians are attempting to co-opt a movement, you can be certain they're worried.
Right now, they appear to only fear for their pensions, their salaries, the boatloads of campaign cash and a plethora of perks, and of course, mistresses and boytoys that won't be putting out after the sugar stops flowing--
But they also sense the possibility the system itself could be brought down, which causes them to fear the mob in the night.
Sure they do.
Their greed knows no bounds, and they provably, tangibly behave in a manner that can't but destroy us.
They have polluted our lands, our waters, our air, and our very bodies. They've polluted our souls.
Enough. It is time.
Join in, any way you can, and Take It Back. It has always been ours. It will always be ours--
Unless we fail to act.
That didn't take long.
Not even a month into the OWS protest, politicians smell blood in the water--
But this time, it's their OWN--
Most self-designated nominally progressive groups in the U.S. are no more committed to the true change needed--the utter dismantling of corporate power and a massive redistribution of wealth, both in the form of control of natural resources essential to sustain all life AND THE MONEY SUPPLY--than they are to, say, slowly pulling out their own eyes.
That is, when politicians are attempting to co-opt a movement, you can be certain they're worried.
Right now, they appear to only fear for their pensions, their salaries, the boatloads of campaign cash and a plethora of perks, and of course, mistresses and boytoys that won't be putting out after the sugar stops flowing--
But they also sense the possibility the system itself could be brought down, which causes them to fear the mob in the night.
Sure they do.
Their greed knows no bounds, and they provably, tangibly behave in a manner that can't but destroy us.
They have polluted our lands, our waters, our air, and our very bodies. They've polluted our souls.
Enough. It is time.
Join in, any way you can, and Take It Back. It has always been ours. It will always be ours--
Unless we fail to act.
9.19.2011
We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Programming...
I know few of you have the time, but rather than the latest Hollywood BS/Redbox/Netflix/Hulu tripe, take a gander at this.
Spread the word, eh?
7.18.2011
Hedges Don't Hedge
Chris Hedges, as usual, nails it
The only way the rule of law will be restored, if it is restored, is piece by piece, extradition by extradition, trial by trial. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft will, if we return to the rule of law, face trial. The lawyers who made legal what under international and domestic law is illegal, including not only Rizzo but Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William J. Haynes and John Yoo, will, if we are to dig our way out of this morass, be disbarred and prosecuted. Our senior military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw death squads in Iraq and widespread torture in clandestine prisons, will be lined up in a courtroom, as were the generals in Argentina, and made to answer for these crimes. This is the only route back. If it happens it will happen because a few courageous souls such as the attorney and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, are trying to make it happen. It will take time—a lot of time; the crimes committed by Bianco and the two former officers sent to prison this month are nearly four decades old. If it does not happen, then we will continue to descend into a terrifying, dystopian police state where our guards will, on a whim, haul us out of our cells to an amusement park and make us ride, numb and bewildered, on the kiddie train, before the next round of torture.
If you've not run across Hedges before, he is one of too few voices that refuse to be tempered by the mainstream media onslaught that we are in danger from terrorists and government spending on social programs.
Where are the voices in media decrying shrink-wrapped pallets of cash, the multi-trillion dollar bailouts to capitalists who are all free-market-don't-regulate-you'll-kill-the-economy, that is until they destroy the economy, the $2.3 Trillion Rumsfeld admitted was missing from the Pentagon budget (announced, conveniently enough, on September 10, 2001?
Any person who tells you our financial problems--any of them, including government debt--is due to social program expenditures or teacher pensions is simply and gloriously wrong.
Maybe they're lying, maybe they're merely stupid--
But. They. Are. Wrong.
If you need a little more convincing that we do indeed need to watch the little man behind the curtain, check Glenn Greenwald's brilliant speech here.
Cry, if you must.
I did.
The only way the rule of law will be restored, if it is restored, is piece by piece, extradition by extradition, trial by trial. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice and John Ashcroft will, if we return to the rule of law, face trial. The lawyers who made legal what under international and domestic law is illegal, including not only Rizzo but Alberto Gonzales, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William J. Haynes and John Yoo, will, if we are to dig our way out of this morass, be disbarred and prosecuted. Our senior military leaders, including Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw death squads in Iraq and widespread torture in clandestine prisons, will be lined up in a courtroom, as were the generals in Argentina, and made to answer for these crimes. This is the only route back. If it happens it will happen because a few courageous souls such as the attorney and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, are trying to make it happen. It will take time—a lot of time; the crimes committed by Bianco and the two former officers sent to prison this month are nearly four decades old. If it does not happen, then we will continue to descend into a terrifying, dystopian police state where our guards will, on a whim, haul us out of our cells to an amusement park and make us ride, numb and bewildered, on the kiddie train, before the next round of torture.
If you've not run across Hedges before, he is one of too few voices that refuse to be tempered by the mainstream media onslaught that we are in danger from terrorists and government spending on social programs.
Where are the voices in media decrying shrink-wrapped pallets of cash, the multi-trillion dollar bailouts to capitalists who are all free-market-don't-regulate-you'll-kill-the-economy, that is until they destroy the economy, the $2.3 Trillion Rumsfeld admitted was missing from the Pentagon budget (announced, conveniently enough, on September 10, 2001?
Any person who tells you our financial problems--any of them, including government debt--is due to social program expenditures or teacher pensions is simply and gloriously wrong.
Maybe they're lying, maybe they're merely stupid--
But. They. Are. Wrong.
If you need a little more convincing that we do indeed need to watch the little man behind the curtain, check Glenn Greenwald's brilliant speech here.
Cry, if you must.
I did.
7.13.2011
Yes. Well.
Apparently all it takes to shift one's mood from apocalyptic despair to grinning mirth and optimism is a week deep in the happy confines of the Oregon Country Fair.
If you hail from the Midwest as I do, "Country Fair" conjures up images of massive produce and livestock displays, and butter sculptures, sure. Cotton candy, carnival rides (manned by suspiciously maimed personnel missing digits or hands or entire lower arms, one presumes from working with machinery with many moving parts designed solely to hurl humans about in ways only the young or mad can enjoy without puking)...squealing pigs, corn on the cob steamed and dipped in vats of melted butter, quilting demonstrations--your basic agricultural fair.
The Oregon Country Fair, is, um, nothing like that.
Like Burning Man, trying to explain it poses many problems, not the least of which is the fact that the "Real Fair" is an invitation-only private party for the 4000 or so volunteers who remain in the camps through the night. Burning Man is huge, fiery, public, MadMax. The OCF is sedate, private, hippie-hobbits in the Shire with plenty of Pipeweed and the odd mushroom bon-bon.
Point is, it pulled me back from the brink, and I remember why I love humanity, even as I plumb the depths of misanthropy.
If you hail from the Midwest as I do, "Country Fair" conjures up images of massive produce and livestock displays, and butter sculptures, sure. Cotton candy, carnival rides (manned by suspiciously maimed personnel missing digits or hands or entire lower arms, one presumes from working with machinery with many moving parts designed solely to hurl humans about in ways only the young or mad can enjoy without puking)...squealing pigs, corn on the cob steamed and dipped in vats of melted butter, quilting demonstrations--your basic agricultural fair.
The Oregon Country Fair, is, um, nothing like that.
Like Burning Man, trying to explain it poses many problems, not the least of which is the fact that the "Real Fair" is an invitation-only private party for the 4000 or so volunteers who remain in the camps through the night. Burning Man is huge, fiery, public, MadMax. The OCF is sedate, private, hippie-hobbits in the Shire with plenty of Pipeweed and the odd mushroom bon-bon.
Point is, it pulled me back from the brink, and I remember why I love humanity, even as I plumb the depths of misanthropy.
5.02.2011
Lament # 10
I can feel it creeping up on me, soft and slow, like a slug or stunned cephalopod, and it knows my weaknesses and where to hit me and it’s oh so subtle but one minute you’re striding brightly through the world and all worries are manageable and then the weather drops or serotonin fucks off to the amygdyla or likely altogether, and bam you can’t think, can’t concentrate, can’t string two coherent sentences together in any way that makes you happy and the women are scornful except the weird, the damaged, and especially the damned, a sexy smile simply won't drop your way or you were oblivious or worse, like a Lou Gherig’s victim, aware, but unable to move and do anything about it.
4.23.2011
The Nuclear Porcupine
A note on the origins and title of this blog--
As a simple Google search demonstrates, there are several genuine Gern Blanstons out there--
I plucked the name from an obscure Steve Martin routine off the vinyl issue of Comedy is Not Pretty. Despite my apparent misspelling and a possibly fictitious controversy over Martin's use of the name, I used it simply to send a veiled signal that I hail from a sarcastic segment of what was once termed "the Nowhere Generation".
We are too old to be Xers and too young to have participated in the sixties unless our parents dragged us. We grew up in the 70s and watched the hippies turn a genuine revolution into a coke-addled polyester nightmare of disco and yuppies and the me generation, resulting in Reagan's election in 1980...and we've seen how that worked out.
Of course, that is a lot of detail that matters not at all, so long as the writing holds up.
But I originally planned to call this Blog The Nuclear Porcupine, because that's how my hypertrophied misanthropy frequently makes me feel...completely toxic and unhuggable.
Just sayin'.
As a simple Google search demonstrates, there are several genuine Gern Blanstons out there--
I plucked the name from an obscure Steve Martin routine off the vinyl issue of Comedy is Not Pretty. Despite my apparent misspelling and a possibly fictitious controversy over Martin's use of the name, I used it simply to send a veiled signal that I hail from a sarcastic segment of what was once termed "the Nowhere Generation".
We are too old to be Xers and too young to have participated in the sixties unless our parents dragged us. We grew up in the 70s and watched the hippies turn a genuine revolution into a coke-addled polyester nightmare of disco and yuppies and the me generation, resulting in Reagan's election in 1980...and we've seen how that worked out.
Of course, that is a lot of detail that matters not at all, so long as the writing holds up.
But I originally planned to call this Blog The Nuclear Porcupine, because that's how my hypertrophied misanthropy frequently makes me feel...completely toxic and unhuggable.
Just sayin'.
4.16.2010
If I Disappear...
...it could be because I went Mad for the Gale and Refused to Come In, and now I can't whine as my body slams against the cliffs in the towering Big Sur surf that drove Kerouac over, bits of brain and kelp and bone matter roiling about me in pinkish sea-foam...
Or maybe I got a little too close to The Man this time, right before they blew him to flaming bits, DMT or Salvinorin A or maybe the multiple concussions I sustained as a lad cutting off all access to any decent pre-frontal lobe sense of self-preservation--
Or perhaps I was stabbed and robbed whilst in an opium/hashish stupor in a thatched hut deep in a misty Myanmar jungle, strange animal and human cries falling dead and muffled as if on snow--
Or maybe--and this is my favorite, I think-- I was ripped to death by bear, by just being stupid, camping yet again in an off-limits section of Cascadia, getting stoned while I tossed out a pad and my bag and another pad for the dog, careful to stay above the incoming tide and build a small fire downwind, then just forgetting and sleeping next to nearly a pound of smoked salmon...
The point is, the scenarios above describe arguably unsavory and untimely ways to die.
But I'll take any of them over being tortured to death or hunted for sport on another human's say-so.
Or maybe I got a little too close to The Man this time, right before they blew him to flaming bits, DMT or Salvinorin A or maybe the multiple concussions I sustained as a lad cutting off all access to any decent pre-frontal lobe sense of self-preservation--
Or perhaps I was stabbed and robbed whilst in an opium/hashish stupor in a thatched hut deep in a misty Myanmar jungle, strange animal and human cries falling dead and muffled as if on snow--
Or maybe--and this is my favorite, I think-- I was ripped to death by bear, by just being stupid, camping yet again in an off-limits section of Cascadia, getting stoned while I tossed out a pad and my bag and another pad for the dog, careful to stay above the incoming tide and build a small fire downwind, then just forgetting and sleeping next to nearly a pound of smoked salmon...
The point is, the scenarios above describe arguably unsavory and untimely ways to die.
But I'll take any of them over being tortured to death or hunted for sport on another human's say-so.
4.14.2010
Just a Farmer in the Empire
Shit. Recently returned from a four-month gig that involved serious winter wilderness. I sit here hunched over the keyboard, hair down to my shoulders (with serious tow-head from high-altitude UV) and a full beard, neck and all, that I had to keep trimming away from my mouth. I feel like Jeremiah Johnson and shit.
The beard is gone; the hair goes today. I'm pretty sure I've experienced what the antihero of Camper Van Beethoven's "The Lottery" describes: People see me comin'/And they move to the other side of the road.
I used to wear suits all the time, and I hated it, but I will say this: People, particularly women, aren't spooked by the guy in the suit and tie.
Yeah. Another life. Funny, though, how I stopped grinding my teeth away as I slept, and I could ditch the SSRIs and my health has improved to where I'm running up goddamn mountains as I press in on 50.
On the downside, all of the early crops except peas and raspberries have basically failed. The weather took a nasty turn in March. So there's a lot of replanting to do. Living off the land is great, but you must be willing to accept a lot of factors out of your control.
Somehow, lack of control is much easier to handle when it's just the weather, even if humans are warming the planet.
A government that claims the right to detain anyone, anywhere, forever, and torture them to death, is a far more pressing danger. A government that spends trillions in a few weeks to save corrupt financiers, then bellyaches like a little bitch about Social Security, unemployment benefits, jobs programs, healthcare, or any other crumb, is a government that Does Not Serve Its People. Nomi Prins has an excellent bit that shows just how fucking much we could have done with the bailout cash. And that doesn't include the 3-6 illegal wars we are currently waging, nor the over 700 military bases scattered about the U.S.'s quickly fading empire.
From Nancy "no impeachment" Pelosi to the Prez and his filthy, corrupt swine-appointees, to the soon-to-be-fascist-majority Supreme Court. Oh, yeah, and the Republicans.
Anyone still believe that there's a dime's worth of difference between the parties?
There isn't. Nearly everyone not in the political class or among their corporate owners, from the students to the retirees, all races and creeds, are having the same corporate dildo rammed right up our ass.
The sooner we realize it and come together, the better.
But I'm not counting on it. I've more faith in the weather.
The beard is gone; the hair goes today. I'm pretty sure I've experienced what the antihero of Camper Van Beethoven's "The Lottery" describes: People see me comin'/And they move to the other side of the road.
I used to wear suits all the time, and I hated it, but I will say this: People, particularly women, aren't spooked by the guy in the suit and tie.
Yeah. Another life. Funny, though, how I stopped grinding my teeth away as I slept, and I could ditch the SSRIs and my health has improved to where I'm running up goddamn mountains as I press in on 50.
On the downside, all of the early crops except peas and raspberries have basically failed. The weather took a nasty turn in March. So there's a lot of replanting to do. Living off the land is great, but you must be willing to accept a lot of factors out of your control.
Somehow, lack of control is much easier to handle when it's just the weather, even if humans are warming the planet.
A government that claims the right to detain anyone, anywhere, forever, and torture them to death, is a far more pressing danger. A government that spends trillions in a few weeks to save corrupt financiers, then bellyaches like a little bitch about Social Security, unemployment benefits, jobs programs, healthcare, or any other crumb, is a government that Does Not Serve Its People. Nomi Prins has an excellent bit that shows just how fucking much we could have done with the bailout cash. And that doesn't include the 3-6 illegal wars we are currently waging, nor the over 700 military bases scattered about the U.S.'s quickly fading empire.
From Nancy "no impeachment" Pelosi to the Prez and his filthy, corrupt swine-appointees, to the soon-to-be-fascist-majority Supreme Court. Oh, yeah, and the Republicans.
Anyone still believe that there's a dime's worth of difference between the parties?
There isn't. Nearly everyone not in the political class or among their corporate owners, from the students to the retirees, all races and creeds, are having the same corporate dildo rammed right up our ass.
The sooner we realize it and come together, the better.
But I'm not counting on it. I've more faith in the weather.
6.03.2009
The Roof
problem has been solved, I think, but as always, in the short term, and this time the roof is mobile.
In other news, Eric Holder and our humble president continue to shield War Criminals, which has a surprising effect--surprising only because it is a well-drafted law, quite crystalline in its clarity, and may be translated as, essentially, IF YOU TORTURE, MOTHERFUCKER, YOU'RE A WAR CRIMINAL, AND IF YOUR VICTIM DIES, YOU DIE, AND SO DOES ANY CUNT WHO TRIES TO GET YOUR BACK, NO EXCEPTIONS.
Here, W., et al would be the "torturin' motherfuckers" referred to in this vernacular version of the statutory language, and "any cunt" would be, well, Eric Holder and Barak Obama, among others.
WTF else can be said? 'Cept bring them down. All of them. Now.
=================================================
Internet access will be limited soon. Will post again, though I know at this point it's just screaming into the void...
In other news, Eric Holder and our humble president continue to shield War Criminals, which has a surprising effect--surprising only because it is a well-drafted law, quite crystalline in its clarity, and may be translated as, essentially, IF YOU TORTURE, MOTHERFUCKER, YOU'RE A WAR CRIMINAL, AND IF YOUR VICTIM DIES, YOU DIE, AND SO DOES ANY CUNT WHO TRIES TO GET YOUR BACK, NO EXCEPTIONS.
Here, W., et al would be the "torturin' motherfuckers" referred to in this vernacular version of the statutory language, and "any cunt" would be, well, Eric Holder and Barak Obama, among others.
WTF else can be said? 'Cept bring them down. All of them. Now.
=================================================
Internet access will be limited soon. Will post again, though I know at this point it's just screaming into the void...
5.26.2009
The Brink
Hmmm.
This doesn't look good.
I can sympathize on a real level with these people now.
As of August, I don't know where I'm going to live.
Not in the "where will my job/adventure take me?"-sense, but in actual fact, I don't know how I will be able to keep a roof over my head.
As of August, no roof.
Ready access to the 'Net will cease long before that, like June 7th-ish.
Maybe I'll be able to post after that, maybe not. But, let's face it, after taking much time off of blogging, no one reads, 'cept maybe the tapper crowd.
I'll try to stay positive, of course, but I think I know for the first time what is meant by staring into the Abyss, and having it stare back.
This doesn't look good.
I can sympathize on a real level with these people now.
As of August, I don't know where I'm going to live.
Not in the "where will my job/adventure take me?"-sense, but in actual fact, I don't know how I will be able to keep a roof over my head.
As of August, no roof.
Ready access to the 'Net will cease long before that, like June 7th-ish.
Maybe I'll be able to post after that, maybe not. But, let's face it, after taking much time off of blogging, no one reads, 'cept maybe the tapper crowd.
I'll try to stay positive, of course, but I think I know for the first time what is meant by staring into the Abyss, and having it stare back.
9.28.2007
Why I Sulked
It started, I suppose, before my time, when firearms and motorcycles were banned in 1996, and reached its peak in 2004, the last time I went. That year, the preliminary literature, suddenly—astonishingly--promoted Burning Man as “kid friendly” despite the ever-present back of the ticket promise that YOU RISK SERIOUS INJURY OR DEATH BY ATTENDING BURNING MAN.[1] When we pulled in at
For example, on Thursday, a woman woke me up at
Had I witnessed the event, I no doubt would have suggested to Mommy, with deadpan concern, that she gather Jr. and juice boxes and flee back to suburbia, preferably before a roving Death Guild patrol kidnapped her and her child for a slow, Satanic sacrifice, under the kliegs in Thunderdome.
Sure, these are trifles, and I certainly had better options than sulking. I should’ve made a joke about the sat-phone to the woman then cooked her breakfast. I should’ve gifted my place in line to the uninformed kid. I should’ve simply ignored the fact that Jiffy Lube and/or Burning Man, LLC, didn’t tell the police to stick it, pun intended, regarding the wicker sodomy sculpture.
I concede the’04 festival had its moments. Like smoking salvia divinorum in a geodesic dome with carpets and pillows and candles and my friends Jens and Shalom watching out for me…(I’ll try to get to that later, but don’t fuck around with this stuff, not before talking to me or someone else who has been there...I’m still processing that trip, three years hence, truly terrifying, shamanic-level experience) and making ice cream at 2 pm on the Esplanade with Ben and Anita (who met at Burning Man in 2002 and are getting married this year--Congrats, kids!) and serving it up to every parched (and amazed and delighted) Playa person who emerged from the dust; finding Eli, a kindred spirit I only see at the Burn, who wasn’t apparent when I first turned up in his camp. Upon inquiry, a tripped-out dude in dusty black leather and dreads smiled and pointed to the van at the end of the shade structure. He spoke with a Brixton accent: “He’s in there—pop your head in and say hi.” The grin should have warned me. I slid back the door, and there was Eli, kneeling with a tiny video-camera, filming a guy shaving (what I assume was) his girlfriend’s pussy. Engrossed, neither of them even looked up. Eli, however, without missing a second of filming, glanced over from behind the viewfinder with one smiling eye: “Hey! Great to see you Gurn. I’ll be right out,” and he was, with a hug, a joint, an offer of DMT (which I declined, because of the salvia the night before)--and a copy of the video on a flash chip.
But despite the obvious link, to me Burning Man could be neither the purifying flame seen by the yoga-tarot chick nor the one I sought for myself. Indeed, I’d stayed away for over a thousand days, and intended to keep staying away, because even in
Next: Despite everything, a Return to the Burn.
[1] Thank the lawyers, most of whom know such a disclaimer is actually pretty worthless. There have been several deaths and many more injuries at Burning Man over the years, but earlier attendees understood that the
In any event, lawsuits are no longer unthinkable, and now Burning Man exists as a relatively new (about 15 years in most states) type of entity dreamt up by the corporate lawyers, the Limited Liability Company. I can create one for you, too, if you ask nice.
[2] Burning Man, recall, is a gift economy, so offering money for anything is not only verboten, it’s rube-level ignorant and crass. These writings assume you know the basics. If you need a primer on the event, go here, and for my own first impression, here.
[3] In other words, in a community where public nakedness, sex, bondage, etc., are commonplace, U.S. Supreme Court cases ensure the sculpture could not possibly be deemed “obscene”— thus it’s protected under the free expression clause of the First Amendment. Jiffy Lube had every right to tell those cops to fuck off, like they did in 2001.
9.27.2007
I'm Not Going
I left her house in the shaggy hills of Eugene , Oregon
And then I was in the W.O.W. Hall, watching Les Claypool for the “gee, I think I’ll throw it in the street” sum of $5. In retrospect, the reason it was $5 was probably because Les wasn’t playing bass. The box office guys sure didn’t let on, and I’m assuming they knew. Indeed, unless you already knew Claypool was making a movie spoofing the post-Dead/Phish jam-band scene, you were pissed off like me ‘cause Les wasn’t even apparently on stage. You know, the skinny, big-hat weird-beard bastard thumping away on the Thunderbroom in the look most known from his animated rendition in the opening credits to South Park
Naw, I learned later instead he was there, in a convincing fat suit and overalls, with long hippie hair, gold-rim glasses, a Trey-on-heroin beard and playing drums for chrissakes. It was a little different from what I expected, but these expectations were formed mostly slamming about a deep-mud mosh-pit as Primus headlined Lollapalooza, maybe 1992, at Riverport in a driving rain-
But I think of Les today, partly because I feel he still owes me a fin (okay, $10--I had a date) but mostly, because as part of his ripping on the whole jam band scene, he sang a little tune entitled Are You Goin’ to Burning Man?
As the fat drummer sang on, I caught him smirking at the three generations of hippie-freakers-by-the-speakers, whirling away with no apparent sense of irony. But I stood stock still, like Entwistle amidst the chaos of The Who, and finally understood the whole show was a put-on.
Burning Man, to me—and apparently, to Claypool—had become a joke.
Next: Why.
9.09.2007
A Logical Response to Despair
I've finally faced up to it. Political blogging is a wank.
Hell, activism in general is sheer unadulterated wankery. I’ve blogged.
I’ve called and written Congress, repeatedly, not only my “own
representatives,” but most of them, including the morally bankrupt-jellyfish Nancy Pelosi, war-mongering Hillary Clinton, and habeus
corpus-hatin' Gordon Smith. I protested the Iraq war, before it began, in Hyde Park in February, 2003, with a million-plus pissed off Brits. I protested in the states, multiple times. I’ve functioned as videographer and Legal Observer at
protests on federal land and was meticulously filmed, from three feet
away, by our “justice” department, you know, the one that can imprison you for no reason whatsoever and torture you to death without telling a soul, not even your mother (read the article; the WaPo headline is quite misleading)--
Needless to add, I filmed the DOJ guy filming me.
Not
a fucking thing has changed. The occupations and torture and new wars
and fixed elections and propaganda media and gutting of the middle class
and the inexorable economic extermination of the lower classes
continues at increasingly breakneck speed.
Trust
me kids, though I’ve passed the Bar Exam in three states and drafted
amici briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, and billed thousands of hours at
one to three hundred dollars for each--I’ve worked alongside ex-cons in
ditches, legal and illegal aliens in the vineyards, and plain ol’ poor
folk framing houses on a non-union job. I’ve seen it up close. The
nonrich, that is, both the poor and the middle class, have been
purposefully dealt a brutal series of blows in recent years.
They’re
trying to kill us off, using some sort of Darwinian-eugenic
phantasmagoria of twisted logic. The uber-wealthy have decided that the 7
-soon-to-be- 9 billion humans on the planet are simply too many, and
the gears are being placed to grind that down to 2 billion or so, and
probably by the end of the century.
Abbie Hoffmann, before his final overdose, wrote simply: "It's too late. We can't win, they've gotten too powerful." But I was 26 when he committed suicide, kicking ass in law school and preparing to Dominate my Profession like some kool-aid drinking freak-yuppie protégé of the bond-trader/masters of the universe from The Bonfire of the Vanities. I thought Abbie was just ill, misguided and tired. But now I’m forced to consider that maybe the old Yippie was right at the end. Or even, all along.
Heh. Aren’t I just a little bundle of dew-washed joy? I could be wrong about the lot of this, of course, but that’s my call after taking a good look around these last few years.
So the burning question should be obvious:
How long before the hammer really comes down?
Time
to live for the moment, folks. You can fight, you can flee, or you can
continue to do fuck-all until the cuffs cinch ‘round your wrists and the
noose about your neck. Time to wax orgiastic or at least philosophic on the meaning of life and celebrate, hard, in these last moments before Death, capital “D” Death, the Death of what makes us human. Time to Get It On, in every sense of the word, with the Man, with each other, and absolutely with the Lunatics in the Asylum. Time
to reconnect with that vital essence that is everywhere at once, time
and distance irrelevant, constant, alive, and reassuring. Time to heed my mystic, who threw two tarot arrangements, both of which indicated The Tower as the primary card.
The Tower, yeah. At the time, I had no idea what she was really getting at, but I was distracted. She sat on her bedroom floor and lay cards from the Aleister Crowley deck in a Celtic Cross between her spread bare legs, translucent lycra Danskin still damp from 90 minutes of hot yoga,
glancing up as she turned each card, almost gasping when she ended a
second time with what she called “the motherfucker of all cards”, The Tower. She lay back on a pillow, lips pouting over a fat spliff. She told me I had a Dresden-sized conflagration of change in my immediate future. She fired up, held the smoke, and extended it to me. "I sprinkled a bit of opium in this" she said, exhaling. "I hope you don't mind."
She was trying to seduce me, of course. And it was about bloody time.
That encounter aside, I don’t buy into mysticism, specifically. But I do
believe some people have access, and tarot opens the window for some of
them. This chick was plugged in. Somehow, her words rang true.
What the fuck am I babbling about? I’m not sure, exactly. But I am certain I seek a conflagration, one of apocalyptic proportion. Time to Burn It Up. Time to Burn It Down.
And from the ashes the Phoenix arises, or some such shit, right?
Perhaps I've made it too obvious where I'm headed with this. More, soon.
9.06.2007
Well, shucks.
Out of curiosity, I just googled this blog and it turned up on a list of recommendations.
In 2005.
On New Year's Eve.
We don't know what this may imply about her state of mind, but still, someone named aIMEE linked to me in a comment at Americablog, and had a nice summation. If you really want to see the text, click on Comments and scroll down about halfway in the Haloscan window, where she says I write "[a]cerbic, profane rants with great stories and links."
It's obscure, sure, but what the hell. We take what we can get, eh?
I don't know who aIMEE is, but I bow to thee, nearly two years late. It was enough to get me to write again.
A'ight, then.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In 2005.
On New Year's Eve.
We don't know what this may imply about her state of mind, but still, someone named aIMEE linked to me in a comment at Americablog, and had a nice summation. If you really want to see the text, click on Comments and scroll down about halfway in the Haloscan window, where she says I write "[a]cerbic, profane rants with great stories and links."
It's obscure, sure, but what the hell. We take what we can get, eh?
I don't know who aIMEE is, but I bow to thee, nearly two years late. It was enough to get me to write again.
A'ight, then.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9.04.2007
WARNING/GUARANTEE
To borrow from the late Frank Zappa, these writings contain material that a truly free society would neither fear nor repress. Furthermore, reading this stuff is guaranteed not to condemn you to eternal fire and torment with pointy sticks and whatnot in Hell.
For reasons explained below, I’m axing the political commentary for now, but you can still find it in the archives.
It turns out that after two years of trying to ignore it, the fever is still on me and I still have things to say. So I’m firing up the computers again, and I intend to produce at least a few good bits before fall.
And, as always, these are works of fiction, full of lies and made up facts. But then, anything conveyed by mere language is fiction, innit?
For reasons explained below, I’m axing the political commentary for now, but you can still find it in the archives.
It turns out that after two years of trying to ignore it, the fever is still on me and I still have things to say. So I’m firing up the computers again, and I intend to produce at least a few good bits before fall.
And, as always, these are works of fiction, full of lies and made up facts. But then, anything conveyed by mere language is fiction, innit?
1.19.2007
Letter to Senator Harkin
Dear Senator Harkin--
Thank you for your email updating me on your "anti-surge" bill and asking for a contribution.
I have been a long-time supporter of yours, particularly when you were running for president and flouting "trickle down" economics and touting "percolate up" instead--
And I fully support the legislation you have proposed to clarify that additional troops require specific congressional authorization--
But let's be frank, Senator. For whatever reason, your party, the party for which I vote overwhelmingly in every election, has simply acted in the worst interests of the country since Bush 43 was installed in 2000. You permitted private corporations to control 85% of the votes cast in the United States via the Help America Vote (sic) Act, you ceded our Bill of Rights, all of them, via the Patriot Acts I and II, the Military Commissions Act, the retroactive granting of immunity for War Crimes, domestic warrantless spying, opening of citizen's mail, torture, the suspension of habeus corpus...and the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court (Alito and Roberts) that will permit these abominable and perverse subversions of the Constitution to become/remain the law of the land.
In short, it will take a little more hefty an action than opposing the admittedly ill-advised troop surge on your part--and the whole of the Congress, for that matter-- to convince me that the lot of you are anything other than complicit in the destruction of U.S. democracy.
You have one hell of a lot of work to do Senator, before you ever come knockin' on my door for money. The list above doesn't even begin to address the tortuously long list of damage that must be reversed JUST TO STOP THE DECLINE, never mind return us to where we were, oh, say, when Clinton left office.
The people, sure, they oppose the troop surge, but I think I've made my point that your support of this measure, while laudable, simply won't be enough to convince most people that anything meaningful has changed. Indeed, your assertion that the troops already in harms' way will always be supported ignores the very obvious fact that funding their withdrawal removes them from danger altogether, which is the type of "support" the voters indicated in November.
All of this should be, to me, blazingly obvious to you. Perhaps you need a policy analyst to point these things out. Contact me immediately should you wish my assistance.
I'm not kidding. The system appears broken from here, sir, but I'm willing to be disabused of this notion.
In any event, I'll be watching the Congressional agenda to address all of the items I listed above in the near future--
And legislation to bring our troops safely home,
And one helluva lot more.
Peace and Democracy,
Gurn Blanston
Thank you for your email updating me on your "anti-surge" bill and asking for a contribution.
I have been a long-time supporter of yours, particularly when you were running for president and flouting "trickle down" economics and touting "percolate up" instead--
And I fully support the legislation you have proposed to clarify that additional troops require specific congressional authorization--
But let's be frank, Senator. For whatever reason, your party, the party for which I vote overwhelmingly in every election, has simply acted in the worst interests of the country since Bush 43 was installed in 2000. You permitted private corporations to control 85% of the votes cast in the United States via the Help America Vote (sic) Act, you ceded our Bill of Rights, all of them, via the Patriot Acts I and II, the Military Commissions Act, the retroactive granting of immunity for War Crimes, domestic warrantless spying, opening of citizen's mail, torture, the suspension of habeus corpus...and the appointment of justices to the Supreme Court (Alito and Roberts) that will permit these abominable and perverse subversions of the Constitution to become/remain the law of the land.
In short, it will take a little more hefty an action than opposing the admittedly ill-advised troop surge on your part--and the whole of the Congress, for that matter-- to convince me that the lot of you are anything other than complicit in the destruction of U.S. democracy.
You have one hell of a lot of work to do Senator, before you ever come knockin' on my door for money. The list above doesn't even begin to address the tortuously long list of damage that must be reversed JUST TO STOP THE DECLINE, never mind return us to where we were, oh, say, when Clinton left office.
The people, sure, they oppose the troop surge, but I think I've made my point that your support of this measure, while laudable, simply won't be enough to convince most people that anything meaningful has changed. Indeed, your assertion that the troops already in harms' way will always be supported ignores the very obvious fact that funding their withdrawal removes them from danger altogether, which is the type of "support" the voters indicated in November.
All of this should be, to me, blazingly obvious to you. Perhaps you need a policy analyst to point these things out. Contact me immediately should you wish my assistance.
I'm not kidding. The system appears broken from here, sir, but I'm willing to be disabused of this notion.
In any event, I'll be watching the Congressional agenda to address all of the items I listed above in the near future--
And legislation to bring our troops safely home,
And one helluva lot more.
Peace and Democracy,
Gurn Blanston
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