the defeatists!

If A means B, in a parallel universe, does Z mean petunia?

 

F. Scott Fitgerald is one of those tragic American authors whom I personally want to beat up, take their lunch money, and duct tape to a telephone poll. Preferably in Alberta, in January. But, that doesn't mean he did write well or have some interesting insights. One of his more interesting quotes is "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

Reason this occurs to me this morning is that I have had two competing earwigs going on simultaneously for the last day or so. One's a classic rock macho song, one is an alt-indie feminine thing. Both are pretty good songs, but neither belongs in my head, bumping up against each other like ships tied to a wharf. In Juarez. In the Wintertime...

The first is this classic rock piece from a movie I've never seen and that has all that 80s rock stuff going on -- lots of midi, boring beat, and what sounds like bells in the chorus...

Ok, not as horrible as it could have been. But, it's not really my sort of thing, and I have absolutely no idea where it came from to invade my consciousness. It's not a guitar song really; while I find the eyes the most interesting and the most attractive physical aspect of a lot of women, I can't say that this one is top five in my list of "eyes" song. While it could be worse, and just thinking about these might trigger something resulting in my flipping out worse, it beats the hell out of "Eye of the Tiger" for example. Still, if I have to wander around in eye-music, I prefer this one:    

Or this one from a different genre, but still pretty great... 

So, that is one that makes no real sense. And then there's the other one that has no reason to be there...Tegan and Sara. I like Tegan and Sara. I like Canadian music, I have a lot of lesbian friends, I find these sisters from the great white north incredibly talented and doing interesting music. Hell, I like a lot of lesbian musicians, from Dusty Springfield through KD Lang and Melissa Etheridge.  But, this isn't my favorite T&S number and I know at least where it came from -- I was driving back from a haircut, on a frontage road along I-15 outside Victorville when Mighty Manfred queued it up on The Underground Garage. But, he played a lot of stuff, and how this one anchored itself in my head irritates me no end.      

Now, the first Tegan and Sara number I heard still seems to be my favorite. And, there's nothing that really strikes me about Hell as a trigger. So, I'm confused...if two very different and conflicting musical ideas are clashing around in your head, what does that mean?   

O

Miscellaneous Miscellany, Mischevious, Malicious, Malevolent, Malcontented

 

Music.  The incredible Crispin Sartwell and I had a brief discussion of Etta James over at his blog “Why the Selection of Newt Gingrich for Pope is part of my master plan to save the universe?”  Crispin’s Blog is highly recommended if you’re looking for a IFC sort of always on, sort of off philosopher with a rock and roll bent. (Except for the fucking card tricks, which can rapidly devolve to the level of cat pictures.)  Basically, we agree that Etta James was incredible as a performer although, as with many blues and rock and country and fucking Tibetan throat singers her earlier, simpler stuff was better. Some of her producers were like second rate Chet Atkins adding strings and horns to something that just needed more bass, stronger rhythm and more reverb! There are exceptions to this general rule – musicians mature and get better and more interesting and versatile. Marianne Faithful falls into this category, I think as do The Allman Brothers, Emmy Lou Harris and Steve Earle. But as her range decreased and her weight ballooned and plummeted– cocaine, heroin, abuse, and gastric by-pass add up to a helluva drug combination – she remained a great performer but a different one.

 

Etta James is definitely in the Edith Piaf-Billie Holliday-Tammy Wynette tradition of female singers on the edge –victimized and exploited but never a victim.  I refuse to see her death as tragic. Pretty sure she ran out of steam – pneumonia, diabetes, dementia, high blood pressure, kidney failure and dialysis –and is no longer in pain. The behavior of her family in fighting over who was going to control her estate testifies to something about human nature…as a general rule, people suck.

In general, 2011 and early 2012 have not been great for the Blues. Lots of incredible talent has died—what I find interesting is that they seem to be surviving to ripe old ages which is kind of re-assuring. Etta James was 73; Johnny Otis was in his late 80s; Hubert Sumlin was in his 80s. While there have been some really smart band leaders like Howlin’ Wolf and Robert Earl Keene over the years who made their musicians pay into Social Security and Medicare, the traditional musician ends up either so rich it doesn’t matter or more likely – very much more likely – dead broke or surviving based on income from some other source like Matt Murphy and Blue Moon Marini, working as fry cooks in a catfish diner.  The Blues Review has a good summary of the folks who crossed over to play in St Michael’s Blues Band in 2011. 

Afghanistan. Norman Mailer wrote an allegorical novel in the late 60s called Why are we in Vietnam? Basically, the answer seemed to be because we can. Not a great answer to an important question, but despite the geo-political nonsense, it really seems that ultimately that was the answer. Somebody had a great fucking idea, and then it went sideways. Well, if Vietnam went sideways, Afghanistan has spun into an entirely different dimension. 

You know, the Russians advised us against this; Russian officers asked both formally and informally if we were fucking crazy or what? Well, Afghanistan made sense to destroy al Queida and to kill Bin Laden. Trying to add the Afghans to the ranks of the Muslim Jeffersonian Democracies that the Neocons were inventing in Central Asia was batshit crazy and stupid. The last successful strategic victory in Afghanistan was by the Moguls who just waged a war of virtual extermination and conversion. That was a while ago. The British got their ass handed to them, continuously; the Soviet Union was destroyed as a result of their fun and games -- Stinger Missiles and the Muhajadeen did more to make Gorbachov tear down the wall than Reagan was awake for -- and now we're stuck. The Brits are leaving; the French are leaving; the Dutch are leaving. We should be going and get gone. 

Look, some Afghans wanted us to toss the Taliban out and to have some cultural and economic liberation. They got it. Now they want us to leave. The people who wanted us to leave still want us to leave only more so. The people we're training, arming, feeding and supplying in the Afghan Army and Police Force want us to leave, express hatred for us and are shooting NATO trainers. Karzai is threatening to make a seperate peace with the Taliban and fight with Pakistan against us. Pakistan is having fun cutting the lines of communication. Anybody in the mood for The March of the 10000?

We're stuck and losing soldiers, money, prestiege and influence in a war we don't understand and can't win. Outside of waging a war of extermination and then paving the goddamn place so Pakistan and India can use it as a parking lot, there is no up side and no effective strategy going forward. The war made slightly more sense at the time and was less costly than the Iraq debacle. That didn't make it a good idea; and every day we're not withdrawing a lot and figuring out how to disengage is a really bad plan on our part. Afghanistan has been broke since Alexander visited it in 400 BC or so; why did we choose to pick up the Pottery Barn receipt on this one? 

It's a brutal, awful theo-klepto-psycho-cratic place. So, have a wide open asylum program for people who want the hell out. As for the rest, isolate it like the geo-political virus it represents and let them cheerfully kill each other. 

What the Hell is Going on With the Republican Party? Well, damned if I know, but I suspect that we're getting to see a rare instance of devolution. I find the symbolic nature of South Carolina's "war with the Federal Government" to use Rick Perry's phrase interesting. There most be something about the water in the Gamecock state. I heard a member of the executive branch of State Government say that he's an Evangelical Christian, a Tea Party Member and a Romney supporter...ok, how can you call yourself a Christian and be a Libertarian? I asked that question on Twitter, wondering if there was some special version of the Bible for these people. Some one responded to me to the effect that there was, most of the Old Testament. Well, Lewis Black had put that to rest a couple of years ago, despite everything else. "Why does he believe that? He read it in the Old Testament which is the book of my people, the Jewish People...which wasn't good enough for you Christians...was it!?"

 
 So, assuming that it's possible to somehow be a Christian and cheer for executions and letting people die and not caring for the poor, indigent and helpless but to focus on stoning women and using the bible to spread Free Enterprise, how can you be a Christian-Libertarian and a Romney supporter? 

Now, I kinda liked Michelle Bachmann. She's insane, of course, and kind of attractive in a depressed-MILFy-madwoman kind of way. An evening with Michelle Bachmann would be like taking a car ride with Lucy Jordan on amyl nitrate and Ecstasy...and lots of ritalin. Jon Huntsman seemed like a reasonable guy with a lot of great ideas compared to whatever the hell Perry, Santorum, Paul and Romney had for ideas. But, what the hell, he started babbling in Mandarin, and these people are largely opposed to things like public education...what was he, some kind of Metrosexual Communist? After watching and listening to Santorum a bit, I wonder if he doesn't realize exactly how crazy he is; could Rick Santorum be a double-agent of the devil, trying to give Evangelical Christians who are Catholics a really bad name? 

So, the obvious non-Romney face of the Republican party is actually Newt Gingrich. Barney Frank has been on the record saying that he had not thought that he had lived a good enough life to deserve a presidential campaign where Newt Gingrich was going to be the Republican nominee. Well, there's a way to go yet, but I'm betting Barney has a bunch of angry Catholic friends lighting candles all over Boston and Cambridge because nothing short of divine intervention explains the second coming of Newt Gingrich. And now, the third. 

Now, as a lifelong Democrat, I have to admit to staying home for the first election I could vote in, George McGovern in 1972. Nor did I vote for Jimminy Carter, which I kind of regret. Nor Mondale. Nor Dukakis. However, by the time Clinton ran, I had come to accept that by not voting I was voting -- not caring was allowing the greater of two evils or an actual evil or an innocuous with good intentions to triumph with my ok. So, I started voting...but, the Democrats had gone through a period of ideologically driven purity and pie in the sky social engineering dreams that were insanely unsupportable and unelectable. So, a lot of us stayed home for a couple of decades. Well, the left-center-moderates should be able to see and understand what that did for us really well after the Congressional debacle of 2010. It's really kind of simple -- in normal circumstances not including defeating totalitarianism or preserving the union -- government will occur best when it's plus or minus 20-40% from the middle. The pendulum will swing, and the wider the variation from the national consensus the crazier will be the correction. 

Now, Barrack Obama has advocated policies and programs and legal solutions to the right of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, (two famous American communists, just ask the John Birch Society) which seem to some to radically socialist and Kenyan. Among the some is, of course, Newt Gingrich. Mr. Meglomania. Gingrich is using racial buzzwords, playing to the old Southern Strategy...How can you be Black and a Republican? How can you be Gay and be a Republican? How can you be Mexican and be a Republican? How full of self-loathing do you really have to be? Or how unaware?

The Master of Disaster...so, I think the Republican Party is wandering around in the conspiracy-paranoid riven ideological desert that the Dems spent the 70s and 80s in. Could get interesting...should get interesting...might even get better. For a while...but then you have Democrats cutting education in their Tea Party state budget proposal by $53M but tossing Noah's Fun's Family Fun and Dinosaur Theme Park a $50M tax break. How full of self-loathing does a Democratic Governor have to be to recommend some insanity like that? I suppose it might create a few low paying park attendant jobs, more than making up for the loss of teaching positions. Now, if Rand Paul and Yertle Turtle McConnell can get Kaintuck an exemption from the Fair Labor Standards Act they can probably hire pre-teens to work there and in the schools for 30 cents an hour. Kinky will have to update his version of El Paso...Cretin from Kentucky?

 

The inevitable end of the beginning of the end...

This is the Romney Bot 10000 or what Mitt Looks Like with the Makeup Removed...Is it too early to point out that Romney's big win of barely meeting expectations in Iowa and New Hampshire have netted him a total of 6 possible delegates. ( The Iowa delegates can actually do any goddamn thing they want to do...they're not bound to the candidate at all. So it's about 6, +/- human nature? Or have two small to medium somewhat oddball places solved the problem of democracy? Who the hell knows? But the media seems to see Romney as a jaugernaut just chewing up the terrain in a Harvard Business School Blitzkrieg. Yeah...Well, things can happen, if we let them...

 

There is a marvelous article online at the Economist that makes a really simple suggestion -- stop worrying about the dogfight in the Republican party and pay attention to and force Romney to say in simple declarative sentences what it is that he intends to do as president. Since I personally think he is absolutely clueless as to what he wants to do in general, I suspect that it could be a far more enlightening exercise than wondering about how Newt Gingrich can paint himself as the populist opposing a malefactor of great wealth. Won't happen, but it is an interesting idea...

 But then, so is this. They're making a porn parody of Star Wars... I'm wondering how this will impact the world of nerds, nutcases and plain old fashioned strange people who obsess about it. Some of these folks are exceptionally smart; some are exceptionally strange; some of them, as Leonard says of Sheldon in The Big Bang Theory, " one lab accident away from being a super-villain." Most are harmless, since the whole Star Wars/trek/thor/comic book thing is a way of handling their subliminated and frustrated sexuality and drive for power in a world that really doesn't fit them. (Note how easy it is to unintentionally pull the chain, so to speak, when writing about porn.) Given the whole Mormon, holy underwear thing that Romney has going against him, it's possible he might be able to inspire some of these folks...but, probably not, since he doesn't really seem to see himself as and that whole Master of the Universe -Venture Capitalist thing leads to something rather different indeed....

THE ROMNEY BOT HAS A RADICALLY DIFFERENT SELF IMAGE AND DREAM IN HIS ELECTRIC SLEEP!

 Since Porno films today tend to go straight -- wouldn't a Star Wars porn film need a lot of homosexual overtones, undertones and so on?--to video anyway, we'll probably be spared a raft of stories about nerves flogging the old dolphin in theatres...or, maybe not. 

THIS IS ROMNEY BOT BETA VERSION! 

On a vaguely related note, Hostess Bakery is filing for
Chapter 11, again. What is Mitt Romney going to do to save the Twinkie? (Actually, this kind of ties into the Star Wars porn thing, if you think about it...and, has anyone noticed how much Mitt actually resembles Max Headroom?) Let the market take it's course? But, what will Karl Rove and Grover Norquist wash down with their bottles of virgin blood and Dr Pepper as they plot the destruction of the social welfare net and the ability of the poor to afford toilet paper while the Koch Bros industies destroy the environment making it impossible to obtain leaves, corn cobs and so on for use in lieu of...) 

It's really not fair for me to pick on Romney for being an artifical, androidal rich bastard replicant who has devoted a life to strange cults and oddities like Capitalism and Joseph Smith. Granted, their religious ideology at it's basis is sufficient to make Scientology seem at least companionable and the 72 Virgins thing seem a reasonable alternative. Hell, Catholicism and Buddhism and Unitarianism and any religion has a lot of oddities. I was reading -- finally, I've been inspired by the hype and the Swedish versions of the movies -- to read The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo and was kind of amazed to find out the importance of the Apocrophya to motivation behind various characters. Not as amazed at Calle and Lisabeth, but then, they were kind of sucked into this madness by that point. For the none theologically minded, the Apocrophya are the books that the Jews left out of what became the Old Testament but that survived and continue to influence thinking on these issues. Not unlike the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Gnostic gospels...except maybe weirder. Now, religion does odd things. It can do wonderful things, but when you get into all that messy miracle, divine, intervention, afterlife shit, things get strange. Unfortunately, it's difficult to not take that stuff seriously when you're dealing with people who take two years of their lives out to prostelytze and annoy. (Being accosted by American Mormons on McConnell Street in Dublin was an excellent excuse many years ago for some Bushmill's in the coffee...for the next decade!) They believe this stuff... Rick Santorum scares me and his madness is something I grew up with...Pat Buchanan scares me, and his madness is something I actually can relate to quite well...

 

But, we should really follow the whole Romney thing not as a personal thing -- although it is worthwhile from a satirical point of view to do so and I'm all for satire -- but from a hard policy point of view. Governor, what exactly do you propose to do about -- jobs? And then follow-up -- there is a rule of thumb in interrogation, quality and so on. There is a significantly limited number of questions about anything that someone who may want to dissemble or is stuck in some ideological world view that they can answer without inadvertently discovering the truth of their beliefs or revealing their lie.

"Yo, Mitt-face, what are you going to do about the Middle East?

"I'm going to put troops back into Iraq, take down the Mullahs in Iran, and support Zion...err...Israel. Yeah, Israel, that's the place.

"So, you're going to re-invade Iraq? 

"They'll welcome us with open arms to protect them from al Quieda and the Sunnis and the Shi'ites and the Kurds and the Iranians!

"Sure about that? They told us to leave, you know because we wouldn't agree to their idea of a status of forces agreement. Do you want American soldiers subject to Iraqi criminal justice?

"Nobody wants that."

"Well, that was what the Iraqis wanted to have us stay." 

"I'd use more diplomacy..." 

"Yeah, ok, now Iran...How are you going to take down the Mullahs? Are you going to invade? Bomb? Use Nuclear missiles? Pray a lot? Keep using sanctions?"

"That's more than one question."

"Not so much questions as a precis of your options to take down the Mullahs? Maybe diplomacy? And, what gives us the right to impose regieme change again?"

"The people of Iran want to be free!"

"Just like in Iraq?"

The problem with the Romney-bot beta version was that it was toooooo smart. Kerry had actually thought about these things. Romney hasn't...and it shows. As Molly Ivins said, and we really miss her and need more people like her and pretty goddamn soon! "Nothin' but good times ahead."