the defeatists!

Duke...Doctor and John Wayne in one! Or, FUCK CHRISTO!!!

We have no real fun here in the crossroads of Opportunity. It takes a guy named Duke Riley to show you how to do it. A tatoo and performance artist who uses both media to make his point, whatever that may be. He describes it this way:

My work addresses the prospect of residual but forgotten unclaimed frontiers on the edge and inside overdeveloped urban areas, and their unsuspected autonomy. I am interested in the struggle of marginal peoples to sustain independent spaces within all-encompassing societies, the tension between individual and collective behavior, the conflict with institutional power. I pursue an alternative view of hidden borderlands and their inhabitants through drawing, printmaking, mosaic, sculpture, performative interventions and video structured as complex multimedia installations. 

In the most recent case, a well, living and breathing re-enactment of the surprise attack of the USS (United States Submarine)Turtle in NY Harbor in winter of 1776-1777. Well, most renactments are pretty lame. Duke pretty much nailed this one, substituting the QE2 for Lord Howe's flagship. Including not damaging it at all. A Defeatist moment from American History, and no one got hurt.

Hey, AXE -- read any good books lately

Well, yeah, I have. Just finished Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus . Bageant is a coot who splits his time between Belize and Winchester, Virginia. A misanthropic  recovering  rock and  cult area journalist he left a paying gig as editor of Military History (how do you get a gig like that? And, how do you leave it?) to return to his childhood home of Winchester, and engage in a guerrilla-holding action in the Class War, not unlike John Singleton Mosby before him. " Despite the bad name he has with liberals these days, Jesus did have the right idea. He'd get right down there on the street and grunt with the people, feeling them all over and healing their boils, feeding them and preaching his ass off while everybody hollered and saw the light as blind men popped open their eyes and lame folks started doing the Dead Sea Macarena. No maintaining a professional distance, no opinion polls for that guy. He just went out there and "got 'er done" in plain sight of everybody. Including the Jewish religious mafia and the Roman super-state thugs of the time -- which is why he got whacked." Joe isn't as elegant a stylist as Hunter Thompson, but there's a lot of similarity. He also appears to have ripped Hunter off for about a gram of blow in the 80s, but that might be poetic license. He actually appears to care about the people he writes about. His thesis seems to be simple -- the Democratic party consists of well-intentioned idiots who are concerned with the "little people" out of a misdirected sense of noblesse oblige -- but, they'd never want to talk to these folks. I actually feel some guilt, because it is so true, and I really don't want to talk to these mouth-breathing,uneducated idiots. However, that's why the bad guys keep winning -- the people who are busy voting against their own interests because they're concerned that Rosie O'Donnell and Boy George are taking over the country; they shop at Walmart because it's all they can afford and "they sell "made in America" stuff !" (Huh? Well, they used to and nobody sells American-made stuff anymore because nobody makes the stuff you need except the Chinese; the slant-eyed gook bastards...I'm getting on the second shift at Walmart! Hooray! --) will vote for the party of the Boy George who's done more to fuck up the country through crass stupidity and inaction where action is needed and frenzied action where reflection is needed than anyone since James Buchanan. These guys don't don't complexity; they don't write in Ciceronian periods and they do not read, except maybe the TV listings and the want ads when they get busted out in a corporate resizing. Visit Joe at his site and read the book.  I was amazed to learn that there's a new Promise Keeper thing going around called "Christian Masculinity" using Stonewall Jackson as a model...Jackson was a Christian fundamentalist/nationalist psychopath who rode around eating lemons and used his tactical brilliance and operational genius to make Robert E. Lee's strategy possible. When shot by his own men, the south mourned...his men, not quite so much.

Joe continually makes the point that these folks are real, and are fucked. The R's take them for granted and screw them out of predatory capitalism but will talk to them and pretend to listen; the D's look on them like they're a bunch of illiterate lepers and hold their breath while talking at them. Those of us who escaped from their world like me and Joe know how they feel...when Barack Obama talks southern, they know its phony... when John Edwards, aka Eddie Haskell, talks about poverty to them, they figure he's talking about the people below them on the socio-economic scale. Hell, Clem, that Edwards boy is slick...he's wantin' to give our taxes away to them entitlements...but, Brother Rumsfeld looked like a good old boy preacher and the president calls ole Karl Rover "turdblossom" so y'all know he's ok.

I'm also reading some stuff by Mark Buchanan. Buchanan does some blog writing for NY Times and is a science writer focusing on the power of human and biological networks. I'm getting ready to dive into "Ubiquity -- Why Catastrophes Happen." I've just finished a series of mysteries by Qiu Xialong set in near-contemporary Shanghai. Qiu is a poet and something of an expert on TS Eliot, teaching at George Washington University in St Louis and writing poetry in Chinese and mysteries in English. He's from Shanghai, one of the "educated youths" who got some re-education during the Cultural Revolution, then got one of the early fellowships to come to the US. His protagonist, Chief Inspector Chen, is a poet and a rising cadre in the party as well as heavily involved in politically sensitive cases...actually  makes a lot of sense when you read them.

On the Roman history front, I've an extract of Gibbon that I keep in the car these days to read when I can't find a paper, and am reading at 69 AD -- The Year of Four Emperors. The similarity between Bageant and Tacitus is something I really don't want to talk about. But, Brutus, Cassius, Cato and Cicero strike me as models for today's Democrats. They babble about the Republic but are unable to connect to the people. While I have to grumble at stretching the analogy, the resemblance between Mycaeneas in HBO's Rome and  Lee Atwater is striking...

Wasn't me, I didn't do it...

Spent most of Saturday sitting in traffic on the 15 and the 10. Mrs. AXE decided that rather than mail a return of a pair of boots that didn't fit to Nordstrom, we should drive to Ontario Mills -- a huge outlet mall for those of you who are not hanging out in SoCal -- and turn it in at their Rack. I had other things in mind -- reading, writing, lunch, a nap -- but anything for peace in the family. It was peaceful -- when I passed the traffic jam going the other that was backed up for miles -- I didn't say a word. We found Nordstrom and they  couldn't take the return. Couldn't figure out how to do it. Too hard. Go to a real Nordstrom. Right -- I said the first thing I'd said for hours -- "We're mailing it!" and drove back. Backup started as soon as I got on I15 headed for the crossroads of opportunity. Stax 50th Anniversary on the CD and again not saying anything. What is there to say?

As we approached the bright lights and big city of Victorville, which is bigger than Barstow, I decided to stop for  dinner. After all, I had had nothing to eat all day and they a variety of roadside places -- they have  both an Olive Garden and a Red Lobster. Oh, joy. We tried the Roadhouse. I'd been told that the prices were good, the food was good and they give you a bucket of peanuts to eat as an appetizer. Yeah. And you can throw the shells on the floor...great. Seated by a party of 20plus hillbillies all of whom would make a NFL lineman feel svelte, the food was at best mediocre -- my 12 ounce NY strip with onions was a slice of something other than NY strip, wasn't twelve ounces and wasn't medium rate and there were no goddamn onions;  the service sucked; the stuff was overpriced; but you could throw all the goddamn peanuts around that you wanted to.

While I am willing, existentially, to regard everything as my fault, I have to wonder about the inbred idiot who told me that the Roadhouse was great. I need to wonder more about why we have things like expressways that crawl, restaurants that confuse some kind of ambiance with service and brands like Nordstrom that confuse their brand with silliness. Thankfully, I can say that this this was not my fault. I didn't do it.  The AXE thinks that things that work out to be preserved instead of replaced with things that probably will not work...

Fuck Buddha...and the lotus tree he rode in on!

It's been a while since we've issued a DATWA -- which used to mean something but I'm damned if I remember what -- but by the Blessed Mother's Bloody Tampons, this crap is getting to be too much!

Buddhism: Your Daily Meditation

What we know as 'life' is the analytical realization in the seriality of time of our eternal reality.      - Why Lazurus Laughed by Wei Wu Wei

This drivel is starting to look a lot like a speech by George W. Bush. Only delivered by a fucking mime-hobbit-Lordi impersonator. We need to take out Buddha...

By the way, Petraeus really sounded like a Defeatist today, or like Jamie on Mythbusters...not sure which. “My sense is that there would be an increase in sectarian violence, a resumption of sectarian violence, were the presence of our forces and Iraqi forces at that time to be reduced,” General Petraeus said at a Pentagon news conference."...Yo, 4 Stars..who ever said anything about drawing down Iraqi forces?  Is that the new strategy? The Iraqi Army and Security Forces declare the conflict over and we move them to Iowa?  And this gem --"''I am well aware that the sense of gradual progress and achievement we feel on the ground in many areas in Iraq is often eclipsed by the sensational attacks that overshadow our daily accomplishments,'' Petraeus said, conceding there is ''vastly more work to be done across the board.'' No fucking kidding. That's how insurgency works... A lot of people I really respect are convinced this guy is brilliant and a great leader, but if this is critical thinking, we're fucked.

Awshit. We already knew that...see the Buddhist-shit above.

Drivin' by MP3

The AXE has a XM setup in the AXE mobile --  a 2006 Dodge Charger that bottoms out in the drive-way and that I'm thinking of having customized...jack up the rear, put a brushguard on it, have the portrait airbrushed on the roof and then cruise up and down the California byways and highways at 2 mile below the speed limit to just make the CHP crazy. However, I flew up to the beautimous Shire this week, and drove my wife's Suzuki Grand Vitara back. Not bad, actually. But, to avoid listening to Mrs. AXE's total Barry Manilow-Rick Nelson collection, I plugged in my MP3. Ok, first of all, anyone who thinks you shouldn't drive wearing one is an idiot. Helluva lot less distraction than punching radio buttons or looking for CDs.

So, what did I listen to?  Lots of Blues as usual; some classic stuff like Traffic; and, Drive By Truckers. I also had some Gary P Nunn and Cowboy Junkies and Alehandro Escovedo. "Bit I could paint all the colors of your evening gown while I'm waiting for  your blonde hair to turn grey..."

So, the four terrorists are together and getting used to each other...alternately hissing, chasing and grooming while rolling around in some catnip. Ms. AXE has announced plans to rearrange everything. And, I find myself thinking more of the significant other...waiting her blonde hair to turn gray.

Somewhat surreally, forsure...

This is a week of absurd, postmodern nonsense...the resolution of the Duke lacrosse case at the same time Al Sharpton is taking aim at Imus. Hey, Imus' remark made damn'all sense to begin with. Anyone who's watched the women's game in college or in the pros knows that the game is tough, fast and physical. Sue Bird of the Seattle Storm and UCONN has broken her nose in a playoff game and played in the next game...she left the court under her own power, at a dead run because she knew what had happened and was hoping to get some gauze and get back in the game. But with the "over-reaching and unethical" tag placed on the Durham prosecutor, the irony of Sharpton in a tie going after Imus is intriguing...can anyone say Taiwan Brawley? And, what is that lovebird up to these days? Not playing for Rutgers...

Tiffany has been watching Henry V in the Kenneth Branugh version and after watching Emma doing French along with Paul Scofield decided that she needed a herald...and, she plucked Kurt Vonnegut. Well, I gotta say that my favorite was probably Mother Night, despite the wiredly weird Nick Nolte version. (is it me, or is the last good movie he made not Another 48 Hours?). I didn't care much for Slaughterhouse 5. but loved Cat's Cradle. I first picked up his stuff in a little bookstore near Syracuse University where I'd go after my weekend job as a hospital janitor near the university; it's also where I got Thus Spake Zarathustra, my copies of Ramparts and The Evergreen Review and a bunch of other stuff that made me the man I am today...

Oh, and then there's IraqIranAbsurdistan. Robert Gates appears to be a serious anomaly in the upper regions of this administration. An honest man who speaks his mind by just ignoring the president. The extension for the current troops and the in-bound troops has nothing to do with timetables...it has to do with numbers. Tell the Army to train 3 new divisions from scratch and assuming they can get the manpower...which I doubt, by the way...it'll take at least 12 months to train, equip and form them. There simply aren't enough soldiers and Marines to go around...so it goes like this.
"

Word of the extensions reached the American military command post in Juwayba, Iraq, in a rural area east of Ramadi, overnight when a sergeant spotted it while surfing the Internet. It was greeted with a mixture of anger and resignation among the few soldiers who were still awake. “We’re just laughing,” said Capt. Brice Cooper, 26, the executive officer of Company B, First Battalion, 26th Infantry Regiment of the First Infantry Division. He was chuckling nervously, his frustration palpable. “It’s so unbelievable, it’s humorous.”The soldiers crowded around the outpost’s few computers, sending e-mail messages to their families and parsing Mr. Gates’s words in the hope of finding possible loopholes that would exclude them from the extension. The unit was scheduled to return to its base in Germany in June. The extension meant it would probably have to stay here until September.“I’m fixing to lose my girlfriend,” one soldier grumbled." There is no good answer...the First Herd is permanently stationed in my old German stomping grounds in Northern Bavaria, and that's a helluva lot nicer in the spring than Iraq has been since, oh, Nebachanazzer...SUUURRRRRGGGGEEEE!

The news that the White House is looking for a  WAR CZAR to head up the State and Pentagon's efforts to handle Iraq-Iran-Absurdistan fronts is amusing. First of all, they actually had 3 four-stars already turn them down. The best line was from General Sheehan..."The biggest problem is that they don't know what the hell they are doing..." It's hard to describe how hard it is to get one of these guys -- or most old soldiers -- to say no if called. ( My boss retired 70% disabled. He came in grumbling about a report that we submitted about reserve status saying that he didn't understand why he was listed with a "termination" date for his inactive reserve status. I said hell, that's weird, let me track it down -- but, that was not until I'd checked my status and saw that I was still "indefinite...") People don't get four stars  because they are willing to not take risks. However, we are trained to take calculated risks...just marching soldiers into the meat grinder isn't a great idea. Until someone has a great idea, it'll be really hard to get someone who has served for decades to think this is a great idea.

Does anyone honestly think they're looking for anything besides a scapegoat? The word is probably out among the retirees -- you don't want to follow Pete Scoonover back into harness; they don't listen, they don't remember, and they lie. Someone like Barry McCaffrey is not going to not answer when they ask him, "Gee, is there a problem?" They might have feelers out for Stormin' Norman, but that would be a mistake. He has no tolerance for idiots.

Meanwhile, I am in Tacoma, waiting to close on this house and drive back with Mrs. AXE and the Tacoma Terrorist cell to the Crossroads of Opportunity. It's weird after almost a year in the desert...they have water here that just sort of comes out of the sky...

The truth? I pity the truth

You know, the truth about religion. Ever since the paegeant a girl friend dragged me to at the Catholic school where she was student teaching back in the middle part of the last century, I have been able to stare with some degree of shocked schlock...somehow, Christ Risen and the Easter Bunny co-existed. I think that influenced my decision to be a soldier instead of a Jesuit. As a Jesuit, I would have had to endure that sort of crap. As a soldier, I could shoot it...of course, the whole poverty, chastity and obedience thing was a problem to. My fondness for girls, guitars, guns and fast cars made Jesuit an unlikely career choice. So, I am what I am -- an anti-theist with strong Jesuitical leanings.

So, the news that there is no archaeological record of Exodus is probably going to horrify some, confuse others and not bother two groups -- those who believe despite history, and those who didn't believe because of history. No one has pointed to a rosetta stone with the story of Pharonic  army that went off into the Red Sea. Someone would have mentioned it somewhere...or the plagues. You kinda think there would be a record of the plagues. Likewise, lots of small cities pillaged and plundered by the Jews in their ramblings around the vicinity of the Promised Land. If you haven't caught Lewis Black on the Bible and God grab a copy of "Red, White and screwed "

Tertullian was an oirly fadder a da choiuch as Fr Kinsella used to say in Church History 101. He claimed to believe because it was absurd. At one time, I thought that made sense. Hell, I thought Buddhism made sense. Go figure... Believers believe despite not because...and, they're ok with that. I envy them.

But, no manna. No eternal barbecue with the burning bush. No waters gushing from rocks. No hordes of Jews wandering around worshiping golden calves (they were fucking slaves! where the fuck they get enough gold to make a calf? From the chariots of the drowned Egyptian charioteers, I guess. )

Why Tiffany is better than Buddha

Buddhism: Your Daily Meditation

If there is only empty space, with no suns nor planets in it, then space loses its substantiality. -Buddha

Drivel. Seriously, if time travel were possible, I'd head back to India, find Siddhartha Guatama and nail him in the side of the head with a 2X4. Emptiness is empty. Shit.  What would we lose? Kung Fu Movies?

Rat, on the other hand, has got it going on!

Happy Fantasy Irish Day -- with a novelle Irish dish

When Shane McGowan is the subject of an editorial  in the Times, there may still be hope for the world. The office here at the Fort adjacent by 40 miles to the Crossroads of Opportunity had an Irish potluck today. As our half Korean-half Canuck Finance manager said, " I didn't know you were Irish..." Well, sure and now, I am. With a name like Crusader O'AXE, a Holy Cross degree in philosophy and sacred theology and a somewhat laughing anti-optimism for which we American Celts   are famous, what did he think I was? Well, he thought I was one of those White Anglo-Saxon Protestant guys..So, Californians aren't always as sophisticated as you might think. One gal of Norwegian descent found a recipe for Colcannon, which tasted as authentic as breakfast in Connermara...cold, blah and frightening. Corned Beef is an Irish American dish -- finding it on a menu in Dublin or Limerick except in places that cater to American tourists, and you'll be out of luck. Lamb, fish and pork are biggies...I had made a County Longford  Stew, which was ok -- except I used Sam Adams Cream Stout instead of Guinness which didn't have the bite I needed.

(AXE's recipe -- take a pint of Katakowa's Cooking Burgundy and a pint of stout, two cups of diced onions and some diced peppers. Heat mix to boil and then simmer for 20 minutes. Take two pounds of stew beef and pork and cover with chopped garlic, rosemary, celery salt and parsley and bake at 400 for 20 minutes. Clean and remove eyes from a pound of red potatoes. Combine the stuff in a large crock pot and refrigerate for at least a 24 hours. Marinate 1 pound of baby carrots in Balsamic vinegar for 24 hours. Add the carrots. Salt, pepper, parsley, garlic, rosemary, parsley and thyme to taste. (the Axe's taste calls for a lot of each)  Cook on high for 3 hours. Refrigerate for 24 hours. Cook on high for 3 hours. Refrigerate for 24 hours. Heat on high until just before a boil and reduce heat to low. Fold in a pint of heavy, sweet cream and at least one cup -- I like two -- of oatmeal. Continue to heat until it's time to eat. )

No "Irish music" though, thank god. Bing Crosby singing Tooralorralorra is really not my people's stuff. Play Pogues, the Dubliners , New Dubliners, the Popes or some real Irish stuff like Rodney Crowell, Johnny Cash, Roseanne Cash, or Del McCourey.  Or, of course, U2 and Bruce Springsteen.

The significant other is a petite blonde Navy Nurse first generation Irish chick  from the Bronx. Before we said "Slainte and Goodbye for this life..." she gave me a solid silver Waterford Pen and promised me a Black 47  t-shirt. Here's the deal -- most Irish Americans are solidly middle class. The Catholic stuff is fading, but it will take a generation or two for the influence of the Irish Christian Brothers and all those nuns to die out entirely. We have a fairly strong tendency toward alcoholism . The best book about Ireland is probably The Ginger Man by J P Donleavy , an American who wandered into Trinity College after WWII and has since lived like some sort of Anglo-Irish Aristocrat in a bloody castle. Ireland is the European version of Redmond.

And, we actually do believe with Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello and Steve Earle and Shane the idea that there really isn't much funny about peace, love and understanding. Oh, and St Patrick was an English bastard. And, if you know Mary Kelly, ex USN currently in the Bronx or Long Island chasing around a couple of dachshunds, possibly some pigeons and looking quizzically blonde and bemused, the AXE still is...well, the AXE. And misses her desperately...

Deer Hunting with Jesus...

Let me begin by speculating that Jesus would be pretty good with a bolt-action, 30.06 with a couple of rounds to go out and hunt dinner. That said, this is an excellent site and has a real defeatist tinge to it.  That tinge is probably a gray-green camouflage with some neon highlights, but what the fuck. This is a bit from one of the comments that is incredibly on target -- we get drooling loonies writing to us, Joe gets people who actually think. We need more comments from the non-drooling loonie portion of our readership...anyway, this is what happens when blog readers start responding.

"My compliments to you on your writing style, and on your clarity of thought. We happen to be about the same age, but I grew up in Wisconsin, mostly Norwegian-German, but with, indeed, a small dose of Scots Irish, so our windows on reality do have different transmission characteristics. I am, as it happens, pretty much a suburban, lower middle class liberal intellectual puke, but I did spend a bit under four years in the USAF, where -- to my amazement -- I discovered that there were other people in America. So, while I do not have a serious familial acquaintance with the Christian jihad, I am uncomfortably aware that it exists, and is probably still growing. To me, it sometimes seems like the irresistible allure of religious certainty is eventually going to disprove evolution by reversing it. We appear to have a severe predisposition to belief in religious absolutes, even as many argue that we have a hardwired prediliction towards language. I suppose (I am not a evolutionary biologist) that the existence of the capacity for faith was selectively useful in our prehistory, when an objective assessment of our chances of surviving predators, disease, famine, and disaster would have been sort of a downer. That is, "Who cares how bad it looks, fuck anyhow" probably led to more offspring."

Which would inevitably lead to more peasants able to toss their groats into the collection plate.