LAURAL'S DISH
Laural is our dog, my dog. Everyone else heads off to school, "people like me and Laural" stay home. He's a fine companion, but you have to understand. If he's having a really good time he tries to bite you, me, anyone. Not hard, just…similarly, if you're scratching his belly real good, but then shift to his (apparently less preferable) ears, he'll growl at you. The irregular spelling of his name results from the time that Alexandra and I were mulling the possibilities, in a tunnel in Newton Abbot, when we came across the graffiti: Laura L is a dog.
Laural loves to eat more than any living being ever created, and he will eat absolutely anything. We've weaned him from rocks but he once tried to eat an unopened can of Carlsberg Export. surprise! So his dish frequently has unusual things in it, bits of this or that, absolute treasures that others might consider slightly unfit for human consumption, for whatever stupid reasons.
Beneath please find my literary reflection of Laural's Dish:
29 January 2010
I'm a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
--SALINGER, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
Holden Caulfield only wanted to be a burning bush.
22 January 2010
UNCHARITABLE THOUGHT OF THE WEEK:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20100115/twl-floor-collapses-in-weight-watchers-c-41f21e0.html
“Ok, we're going to do something a little different this week, people…we're going to skip the actual weighings….as a matter of fact, that's it for this week. Let's do better next week! See you in 7 days! Don't forget to pay your dues on the way out!”
Oh, I hope I am converting. I don't mean what you think. I hope we are converting hearts. Not even Almighty God can convert a person unless that person wants it. What we are all trying to do by our work, by serving the people, is to come closer to God. If in coming face to face with God we accept Him in our lives, then we are converting. We become a better Hindu, a better Muslim, a better Catholic, a better whatever we are, and then by being better we come closer and closer to Him. If we accept Him fully in our lives, then that is conversion. What approach would I use? For me, naturally, it would be a Catholic one, for you it may be Hindu, for someone else, Buddhist, according to one's conscience. What God is in your mind you must accept. But I cannot prevent myself from trying to give you what I have.
--Mother Theresa, Love: A Fruit Always in Season
This quote seems to be where everything is converging for me, this week. For a couple reasons. It turned out to be the passage that I was meditating on Tuesday, I've learned that maybe my raunchiest roommate ever has become a Buddhist priest, and the tv show, The Waltons. Plus, there's the world…plus, there are the worlds .
I don't know much about Buddhism, but what little I've picked up along the years has led me to believe that it's not all that much about individualism, at least in the sense that we think of it in the Western world. I wonder how that's all worked out? Well, obviously, presumably.
And then there's Mother Theresa, and The Waltons and the Southern Baptists. I was really interested in a conversation that my parents were having one time, when I was ten or so. I still remember it very clearly. We were, still are though we've gone somewhat different ways with it, a Christian family, and my Mom was suggesting that maybe Buddha came to save the people in Asia, and Muhammad came to save the Arabs, and Moses the Jews, and so on. My Father wasn't hearing of it, which is as I understand still the most common approach to the matter in the Bible Belt South. You can see a brilliant but acrobatic treatment of this sort of thing in Dante's Inferno, where he can't find the great Greek thinkers anywhere better than Purgatory, because they died before Jesus could die for them, you see.
Well, maybe, but I think I'm with Mother Theresa and my Mom-rather than Dante and my Dad-on this one, though my explanation may undercut the credibility of that endorsement,.
I used to get all upset and concerned, but I just don't worry about dogma much any more. Whether Jesus was God, or The Son of God, or just a really incredible guy who figured out how to turn on some esoteric currents….it‘s just not something I worry about. He's way ahead of me, so far ahead of me that I'm not going to catch up in this lifetime, so there's a lifetime worth of wisdom to chase. That-it seems to me-is all I really need to know, all that I'm able to…more than I'm able to get my arms, and mind and spirit around at this point. I'm not saying that I never ponder the question, or consider the position of others pondering it, or have no thoughts at all…just that as a practical matter I find it more distracting than rewarding
So, even if I believed in the physical reality of Hell, I'd be pretty sure that Gandhi isn't there, nor Muhammad Ali on his way, nor Bob Marley…even if Judy Mowatt is confused about his deathbed conversion. It doesn't seem to be what God would do to good people, or any people for that matter. Of course I've just admitted that I don't begin to understand much of it, which I think may be a reasonable place to start.
I've always been a Christian, for as long as I can remember, except for one afternoon after reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason I decided to be a radical young agnostic. I mainly sat around in a park for a few hours, but it didn't feel right, so I went back to being a radical young Christian. What Paine's work did for me, though, was clarify something that I continue to consider important: it liberated me from the dictatorship of the Bible. To any rational mind the Bible is self-contradictory, a preacher who was a close friend of my parents said that “it can be used to prove anything,” and I figure he spent more time on that than I have.
There's just not enough years for me to spend much time on the Old Testament, which is a wonderful historical document reflecting the incredible history of the Jewish people, but consistently inconsistent (see Baruch Spinoza on this) and in my mind trumped by the teachings of Jesus. Of course much of the New Testament is reflection on those teachings, and often spectacularly profound (“Make Love thy great quest, then desire spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy…” -I. Corinthians 14 is my favorite ), but as Paine points out, in order for you to take it as the unadulterated Word of God you have to believe that (1) God directly inspired the authors, whoever they might have been (and there is not agreement amongst those who spend the most time considering the matter) and (2) God then told, at least the majority of, the guys composing the Council of Nicea how to vote, as they omitted a great deal of the work before them from the Bible, interesting and often profound work now relegated to the Apocrypha. In fact the matter has become further confused by various denominations including books of the Bible that other denominations do not….oh yeah, given the rather dramatic difference in translations you also have to believe that (3) God directly inspired at least one of the translators, and then (4) YOU, to figure out which translator to believe. Check out The Layman's Parallel Bible, to see what I'm talking about.
I can only speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure that I would have noticed if God told me which translator to believe, and I cannot tell you that any such event has transpired. Of course it may be possible that I missed it, you never know, I‘ve never been the most observant. I CAN tell you that God gave me a heart, and brain, and spirit, and that somewhere in all that I pick up feelings and sensations and thoughts and beliefs that feel right, that put important things into focus…that's what I can tell you, and that feels like a lot to me.
Now, while I'm going on like this I should at least mention The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke & John), which actually depict the life of Jesus and so, to me, are by far the most important. Because I believe, my sense is that Jesus is where the heart of it is at. Not in commentators, though they can illuminate the corners and corridors of the heart, which is no small role either. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) would seem to be the better historical documents, but whoever wrote the Book of John (which disagrees with the Synoptic Gospels on even what would seem fairly simple factual matters) was by far the greatest writer involved…and so, I think, did a better job of catching the spirit of it all, which is obviously also very important, perhaps even of the utmost importance. Check out The Five Gospels for the best scholarly consideration of what I'm talking about.
But The Waltons ? Waaal, all my life I've considered The Waltons and Little House on the Prairie about the dumbest of all possible tv shows, without ever actually having sat through one of them. This opinion was in large part developed, no doubt, because of the sorts of people who would publicly admit to watching them: typically a somewhat religious lot who struck me as rather less interesting, for their lack of attendance at the finer parties, probably.
Anyway Theresa grew up watching both shows, and just loves them, so I bought her a few DVDs of the early seasons of them for Christmas and she….how could I not have seen this coming?….has actually been watching them. Truth is, to only a lesser extent I have too. And it turns out that the shows-while usually doofy and often awkward-are (morally and aesthetically) pretty good and very clearly aimed at a conservative target audience, but with the intention of loosening up their perspectives, along the lines of Mother Theresa's quote, above. Let people take God where they find God, that can't be wrong. Wow, that's pretty cool.
I understand that none of this addresses why any God would allow the suffering of children in Haiti. Truth is, I don't know. I do feel that-as a creature neither omnipotent nor omniscient-humility is my proper reference to the cosmos.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18/20100117/tpl-almost-one-in-four-britons-back-blai-5b839a9.html
Another issue where I used to be a lone voice in the wilderness. If anyone belongs in prison-and I believe that some people do-Tony Blair and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney belong in prison.
What happens when the Democratic Party stands for nothing more than the profits of healthcare insurance companies, war without victory or end, and business as usual within the political boundaries defined as acceptable by corporate America?
Democrats get bored and don't vote. It's that simple. President Obama was elected based on a radical strategy that relied on awakening a huge portion of the electorate. They woke up and voted for him, he didn't do what he said he was going to do, and now they're back asleep. It's not going to be easier to wake them up the next time.
Hopefully this won't lead to another 20 years where they're afraid to disagree with the Republicans on anything other than abortion, and we're assailed by low-lifes like Clinton claiming that the real problem is that Obama tried to do too much. In fact it took the Obama administration about 12 seconds after the results were in to start talking about diluting healthcare reform even further . Um….how long until we just pay the bill for the whole thing disappearing?
I'm sure that Barack Obama is a pleasant person, good husband and good father. When you present yourself as a warrior, however, and engage the fray by running the opposite direction…it does present a rather wonderful and ironic twist on the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize, does it not?
The fact is that exit polls showed that 60% of Obama voters who switched their allegiance to the Republican Brown in Massachusetts were in favor of a public option in healthcare. 85% of Democrats who chose not to vote favor the public option. The problem is not that President Obama was too ambitious, the problem is that he didn't do enough different from the Republicans to keep his own voters interested.
There is a serious possibility that both major parties will implode through civil war throughout the 2012 campaign, with conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats all fighting against the same corporate obstruction sitting in the middle, as embodied by the president and Mitt Romney. It's not a scenario preferable in any way to what we thought we were electing in 2008, but you can't say it wouldn't be interesting.
Could be a hell of an opportunity for a Ross Perot-type to sign some checks and throw some dice, too.
RANDOM SERGE GAINSBOURG LINKS OF THE WEEK:
Francois Mitterand said of him, “He was our Baudelaire, our Apollinaire…” Brigitte Bardot was his girlfriend. He made a record entitled "Cabbage Head Man" in reference to his own ears. But was he really “the Gallic Johnny Thunders?” Thank you, Scott, for bringing this astounding individual to my attention:
http://beemp3.com/download.php?file=7036882&song=Sea%2C+Sex+%26+Sun
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=102632379766114&ref=nf
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6:32 a.m. Clayton and Myles are in the living room, discussing dinner. Theresa is off to Totnes for half the weekend, for a Child Protection course. Clayton will serve as chef, this limits the menu to frozen entrees. They decide on frozen pizza, then frozen pizza & frozen chicken strips. Clayton thinks some of those triangular frozen potatoes might be good with this, and Myles suggests a few frozen fish sticks on the side. Voila, a four course meal! Theresa breezes into the room, preoccupied with a new DVD that arrived in yesterday's post (Season 2)...
THERESA: You guys better not be watchin' The Waltons while I'm gone.
CLAYTON (ponderous, almost mocking): Weeeeel, maybe just one or two...
THERESA (artificially abrupt, playing): Well, just know that you'll be watching them again!
15 January 2010
http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20100108/pl_politico/31255
BETWEEN AMNESIA AND LIFE SUPPORT: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, ONE YEAR ON
Candidate Barack Obama did a brilliant job of articulating my political beliefs, concerns and ideals. President Obama has been as assertive in betraying them.
Candidate Obama railed against and promised to destroy the corporate "culture of greed." President Obama fed it our taxes in the form of corporate "bail-outs." Robbing the poor to give to the rich. Not even original. STRIKE ONE!
Candidate Obama portrayed himself as the "peace candidate." President Obama has poured tens of thousands of troops into a war in Afghanistan that is-if anything-less winnable than was Iraq. Forget the waste of money, brave Americans and innocent Afghans are dying for no good reason. Blood on his hands and not a small amount of it either, STRIKE TWO!! (as if that only counts as one strike)
Candidate Obama promised to deliver "universal healthcare." President Obama is crowing about a brilliant bill in which we're required under threat of criminal prosecution to pay money to corporate insurers, who will then effectively regulate themselves in determining whether to give us any healthcare at all. um....STRIKE FUCKING THREE!!!
That ridiculous posturing about global warming in Copenhagen....STRIKE FOUR!!!!! and on and on and on....polls reflect that millions of Americans are playing variations on this very simple game of Strike Out the President. Nearly one in four voters once supported him, but now oppose. Not that nearly one in four of his voters now oppose...
Nearly one in four Americans once supported the president, and now oppose him. A different kind of landslide.
What I take as a rather desperate ploy on Facebook depicted the president smoking a cigarette, and asked whether or not you planned on voting for him in 2012. With his long gaunt face pulling on his smoke, Barack looked like nothing if not a hip Harlem jazz cat: the cool guy with a heart of gold who knows what's happening and where it's at, the guy too good to be a particularly enthusiastic or successful gangster, but able to resolve any situation while raising the minimal amount of concern. 72% of respondents said that we have no plans to vote for re-election.
President Obama is there to be had in three years. He's the biggest, fattest sittingest duck I've ever seen in that position. The question is whether there is anyone strong enough-in our increasingly ill and feeble body politic-to rise to the challenge. Candidate Obama reached across party lines to challenge the economic zeitgeist as manifest in corporate greed: having continued the Reagan/Bushes/Clinton legacy of looting everyone else for the benefit of those who already had most of it anyway, his populist credentials are now somewhat less inspiring.
In 2012 there will not be stadiums filled with tens of thousands of liberal college kids screaming for Obama, though the potential is there for like numbers to be screaming against him on the streets. Obama rallies will rarely, if ever, present the very American spectacle of being mass events "of the people," they will more often be choreographed CNN op's from safe havens like the Rose Garden or West Point (like his announcement of more troops to Afghanistan...trying saying that in public, Mr. President) or speeches to nodding (half asleep) elderly captains of industry leaning on tables with too much polish and wishing that the barely relevant little man would finish up so they can get back to serious business.
I'm not saying that no one will show up to applaud (and protest) the president. If they could pull 50 people to watch Bob Dole, Obama should be able to beat that. Any Speech major should be there, for rhythm and inflection. His celebrity pull should be enough to keep him competitive with, you know Jordan, or Kelsey Grammar or Nikki Sixx. But the historic wave of well wishes and hope is gone.
The Obama Movement is all but dead, but unlikely to rest peacefully. The voters are not dead, our ideals are not dead...as always the crowd behind a fallen standard will at least initially diminish behind a new leader. If Afghanistan doesn't get much worse, or even stabilizes at terrible, and polls show that the electorate is pleased enough that the "economic recovery" has encompassed Wall Street and are willing to believe that it might reach Main Street in an acceptable time frame this century (the only possibility being "trickle-down economics")... Obama will face a token challenge from within his own party. If Afghanistan gets worse-as it's most likely to do-and people aren't willing to take a smile and a promise on the economy, the challenge should be more formidable. In any event, Obama will face a challenge from within the Democratic Party, and the question is not whether that will weaken him but how much, and indeed whether he can even survive. It's not difficult to imagine Russ Feingold, for example, playing Gene McCarthy to Obama's LBJ, and after that all bets are off and there's just a free-for-all. The Corporate Democratic Party might even withdraw Obama and trot out Al "Start Me Up" Gore as a "unification candidate"...ahem (Trojan Horse Alert, majorly, you heard it here first)!
In other words, the Republicans should have a very easy time of it. Which Republicans? is the problem. Corporate Republicans are running the party, and in doing so running much of the grassroots away from it, towards the Libertarians and splinter conservative parties, or just the hell away from it whether they have anywhere to go or not. Who could possibly unify the Republican Party? Mitt Romney? No way in hell, he's the embodiment of the very worst of what Obama's got moved towards becoming and no one's confused about it. Sarah Palin? I don't think so. I suspect that she (probably fairly) already suffers too much from DQD (Dan Quayle Disease: perceived as a joke whether you are or not) to ever recover. Mike Huckabee might have, before one of his parolees (already a weak point on the right) murdered several policemen in Seattle. It's a hell of an opportunity for someone to come out of the woodwork-particularly if they opposed the Iraq invasion and the bail-outs...I figure that the right person could get nominated on a CV that tops out at dogcatcher. Metropolitan docatcher, though, gotta show you can manage somethin'. And if they play their cards right they can win.
Is there any hope that Obama will turn good? Well. For the past thirty years America's best hope has been that the president will turn good, and it ain't happened yet.
Not so long ago he knew what to say and he said it very well. Then he, like Clinton before him, folded to the point of effective collapse the moment he was faced with Beltway Reality ( Clinton, of course, had less to fold, standing for very little even as a candidate, it was mainly a paperwork folding...I'd love to read a verbatim portrayal of FDR's initial response to Beltway Reality).
But to be fair....wasn't supporting American industry, including the imaginary ones like credit, the obvious thing to be done in even a relatively minor economic crisis? Yes there was no simple bottom-up solution, the greater problem is that he hasn't addressed the underlying inequalities and instability that led to the problem, and has instead entrenched them. But isn't it also true that sending troops to Afghanistan is at least better than invading Iraq?: after all, we really are at war with al-Qaeda whether we like it or not, and secular Iraq was probably-besides Israel-our strongest ally against them in the Middle East? Yes, but we're not going to be any more able to destroy the Taliban than the Russians (who couldn't have cared less about casualties or collateral damage, and weren't answerable to an electorate) were, and our presence there is the single strongest recruiting tool that al-Qaeda has, in Afghanistan and Yemen and everywhere else. Brave young Americans who have entrusted us with their lives are losing them in yet another war that won't be won, and is in reality counterproductive It's also fair to point out that Candidate Obama never claimed that he would pull out of Afghanistan: the problem that peaceniks like Michael Moore and myself have with him is not that he's reneging on Afghanistan, it's that he's having so much difficulty reading a fairly obvious situation, and with such disastrous and long-term results.
If President Obama starts being honest and saying things like "This alleged healthcare 'reform' is a fucking sham in so many ways: I didn't get through anything like industry accountability and it's going to cost more than it needs to, and it basically just replaces one mess with a new one that we can only hope will be slightly better, but I do believe that we're going to be able to treat more sick people than before, and at this moment in time maybe minor advances are all we're going to be able to do, it's not much but I'll build on it...I know it's not what I promised, but it's the best I could do"....if he starts being honest with the people, there is some hope for him and a parallel possibility that he can stem the loss of public support. If he insists on declaring victory every time that he doesn't sell-out entirely...I never supported Clinton. It's funny how often the last hope for a bullshitter is to acknowledge the truth that everyone else already understands.
And less funny how rarely they manage to find it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/bloomberg/20100112/pl_bloomberg/a2cergfz6jsi
(As Laural's Dish was being set down for you to enjoy, the above story broke, designed to get banks to collectively pay back some of the tax money that was donated to them by the past two presidents-or at least to get us to believe that they might. While giving back some stolen money is better than none at all, it's also fair to say that the Obama Administration has never lacked for grandstanding behind good ideas that they don't follow through on, that's kind of the point. The Obama Administration once "planned" on providing universal healthcare, and still "plans" on leaving Afghanistan a peaceful democracy somewhat akin to Switzerland, and "plans" on ending global warming through a series of aspirational values that include neither actual targets nor sanctions for lack of effort. Early on, perhaps, "plans" can be exciting. After credibility is stretched beyond the breaking point, they're just more evidence that you really do know better. Giving away less of our money to those who already have way more is only a good idea relative to giving away more. If this plan follows the trajectory of the healthcare "reform" we'll open by giving them slightly less now, but promise to give them way more just as soon as they say that they need it, and promise that it's true.
If this is a policy that Obama plans on actually fighting for-and it's certainly not one that could be implemented without-it's a tentative move in the right direction. Unfortunately it fits the past year's narrative better as a hollow gesture designed to detract attention from the comprehensive collapse to corporate will on healthcare. I suspect that the president underestimates the difficulty of healing a ruptured faith.
Is it likely that Obama will be denied the Democratic nomination? Possible, not likely. Is it likely that the Republicans are going to find a unifying leader who will defeat Obama by dazzling the electorate? Very unlikely. More likely that Obama is so unpopular by 2012 that anyone can beat him, but the Democrats are too out of touch to admit it and run him anyway. All of which makes it that much more tragic that he's blowing this historic opportunity to...do what he said he was going to do, as we all applauded and believed him.
(Clayton hangs up the phone on yet another one of those conversations with a bureaucrat that ends with him straining diplomacy in rather heatedly pointing out that their regulations are pointless, that no one knows what they are anyway, that they are applied inconsistently, and that the only apparent interest that the government has is in punishing others for only understanding the regs slightly better than the government office does itself....Clayton is rather proud of himself for having terminated the call prior to it becoming something even dumber, but still frustrated that 90 minutes of five phone calls have left him unable to locate any representative willing to go out on a limb and state what the government's policy or position actually is)
CLAYTON (shaking his head, and throwing on a cup of green tea) : Man, I'm a good person aren't I? I mean, I like people, my first inclination is to get along with people, isn't it?
THERESA ( scrunching up her nose ): I think so....
CLAYTON (double-taking) : Well, yeah, I guess that's about where I'm at, too.... (smiles) but what a bunch of fucking moe-rons ....you think I'll ever get better?
THERESA ( smiles ): I'm thinking about making pasta with sauce...
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I guess I updated the film book a little bit yesterday, too. Here they are (in order of how well I think they'd be received in my old French Film class at LSU):
8 January 2010
We got a really good (for the British Riviera) snow on Wednesday. I like extreme weather, and this is about as extreme as it gets in these parts. I like fairly extreme weather, not crazy extreme. I enjoyed the mild Southern California earthquakes when I was there (is this weather, Clayton?), but my favorite is the thunderstorms that hit the French Quarter at 3 o'clock every afternoon in August.
But anyway, a wee bit o' snow....we'd barely got out of the house and some guy drove by on the three inches that had fallen, and leaned out the window and said, "You aren't used to this, are you?" He wasn't going quite slow enough for me to tell him the long version of how on Orcas Island I'd had to dig our wood pile out of 12 feet of snow in a State of Emergency declared by the governor (the governor!)...it was a lull in the storm, and I knew I had a few hours of sun shining off the snow so bright it hurt your eyes, so I took the speakers out on the second-floor balcony and blasted Hawkwind and Parliament and just went at it. I got that wood out, too, and we had a great wood stove in that house. As far as State of Emergencies go, it was a really good one for us.
So we weren't going to miss out on a few inches of snow, not when it so rarely happens. We took a walk down by the quay, down by the double locks, where they kept widening the river back in the 18th and 19th centuries, to allow ever....to allow....they were building ships bigger and bigger in those days, and so they needed wider and deeper water for the hulls or something. One time the Lord Mayor contracted the dredging project out to his brother-in-law, and the brother-in-law split with the loot. A corollary to Exeter's proud pirate tradition that includes Sir Francis Drake's favourite pub in the world, The Shippe Inn. I had a pint and a shot of Jameson's there Christmas Eve morning, on my way to shopping. They were playing the Eagles.
People like to walk their dogs in the fields past the double locks. Myles leaned down to pet an old greying-faced Scottish Terrier and it jumped up and tore his glove off and ran off with it! The elderly owner apologized repeatedly, though she should have seen by my mirth that it wasn't particularly necessary. Bit one of the fingers right off, too. Great dog, I'm going to be laughing about the five minutes I spent with it for years.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_tax_fights
I have been wandering around saying, for the past year, that this whole impending-depression thing is a trick. Corporate profits are down because they've already accumulated the wealth held thirty years ago by the middle- and underclass. They've effectively clear-cut their economic forest to the point where there aren't enough trees left to make it worthwhile. So it must feel to them like their business is suffering, their world is off. And let's not be confused about it-their business is their world to them, and they put a lot of time and energy and talent into it.
Given the rather abrupt timing of the announcement that the global economy was on the verge of collapse, it may also be true that those old white guys with really long desks were worried about what affect a President Obama might have on their profit margins; whether he might, for example, be more concerned about the health of the poor than the profit margins of healthcare corporations. Any such concerns, obviously, were misplaced.
So I've wandered around, pointing to crowds of people scurrying around purchasing cheap hamburgers and plastic toys, asking anyone who will listen if it looks much like the Great Depression to them: soup lines, and rows of empty houses with broken windows. It has not.
It was a trick. And even if it wasn't, they'll trick us every time they can. They think they're supposed to. The bigger the trick the bigger the profit. This one was a pretty fucking hefty trick, another one we'll be paying on for generations unless we get the ball back.
So I'm guardedly enthusiastic about even this limited governmental interest in making corporations comply with the contracts they sign, with making them fulfil their promises in return for our handing over our taxes to them. Their contribution to society is, after all, more than somewhat limited: if you give me $30 million I can create jobs too, and as much as I like cheap hamburgers and plastic toys I might be able to find something even better to do (beer tents for the homeless springs immediately to mind).
But it's just a first step. The very real global economic karmatic imbalance will continue until such time as we've made the corporations clean up the environmental mess that they've created, and we've seized the earnings and assets of everyone who's profited by the breaking of the public trust.
Don't think we can trash oil now for what they did then? It's not dissimilar from the tobacco industry, is it? The big difference being that at least smoking is voluntary. Don't think we can trace assets accurately enough to seize personal property in an equitable manner? Courts do it every day to drug dealers, who have quite frankly done a lot less damage.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100102/ap_on_hi_te/us_stranded_motorists
I've always considered Ozzy Osbourne a dirtclod. I have to admit though, I laughed out loud when I read that he had his chauffeur drive him around so that he could scream obscenities at drivers consulting their GPS telemetry....
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I read a really good horror book. Well, actually, I read the first 285 pages the first day (and I don't read fast, though I read this sort of thing faster than literature), and I've kind of slowed down 60 pages from the end. I'll probably finish it off this weekend.
It's Slash by Slash with Anthony Bozza. Billed as "The most insane autobiography you'll ever read" by The Observer, it may or may not be that, but it's certainly more than that. It's authentic horror. It's way scarier than the Stephen King books I read. I tried to like Stephen King back in the late '70s and early '80s, when all the cool people were into him. I liked him more than Tolkien, but I couldn't ever really get going with him. I read Carrie and maybe 50 pages of The Stand before giving up on him entirely. Later in the decade I was so impressed with the film of The Dead Zone that I went and read the book. I liked it better, but not enough to spend any more time reading him at the expense of everyone else. The highlight of my Stephen King reading career is when he described a diner "filled with the ghosts of dead cheeseburgers."
So Slash's book is real horror, and not just because of his depiction of the monster Axl Rose! Actually he's not too tough on Axl, for the most part. Not when you consider the dynamic of control freak vs. free spirit. There's bound to be a lot of posturing and jockeying for position, what's amazing is probably that they managed to work together for as long as they did. They are, there's no question about it, both extreme cases of what they are. That was the magic that was the death. I remember a moment of clarity seeing them at the Rose Bowl in L.A. in '92 (second time I saw them there, actually)...it was just after the Rodney King riots and Slash was wearing a t-shirt commemorating them...and it just hit me that these guys weren't fucking posing, that they were probably the closest thing to authentic anarchists that I'd ever been in a room with (is the Rose Bowl a room, Clayton?). And there were moments and psychic glances and communications...the intensity between them was becoming notably darker but they were still more angry at everything else than they were at each other. Yeah I was stoned, but I very clearly sensed all that.
I'm a little past that in the book, so I still haven't got to the part where Slash explains what he could have possibly been thinking when he decided he should be in a band with Scott Weiland. I can't imagine the depths of mental depravity that would lead any bright man and talented musician to that sort of decision. Horror I'm telling you, absolute horror!
The horror of it is, partially, the drug abuse. I mean, he's still alive so that's nice...it's more the lack of a decision making apparatus involved that's so horrifying. It's not the addiction in Slash's case, if anything I'd say that he's alive in large part because he doesn't have a particularly addictive nature. If you compare Slash's sordid tale with Anthony Kiedis' Scar Tissue you get very different avenues to and from what looks like the same sort of heroin addiction from outside. Where Anthony talks about being driven, Slash talks about making unconsidered decisions. When Anthony talks about giving himself over to his higher power and 12-step programs, Slash talks about his frustration at the interference of interventions and his refusal to get clean with any assistance at all. Slash is more clear on the horrors involved, more detailed about what he found there; Anthony is determined to deter, but not interested at staring at the wreck for too long. Anthony is more frightened by the past, Slash is more oblivious to the dangers of the future as he feels them to be more external and so in some sense nonexistent unless he gives them life. Someone in therapy research is no doubt working on this "Which smacked out rock star are you?" questionnaire somewhere: while they're both certifiable heroin fiends their dependencies are very different:: Anthony's is driven from inside, from his genetic or spiritual makeup, it is need based. Slash's is driven by the absence of some fundamental psychological governor, his dependence is almost entirely a psychological one. Of course he experiences the symptoms of a physical dependency after wallowing in there so long, but for Slash the physical aspect is time-reversible. For Anthony it is there every morning when he wakes up, for the rest of his life. I don't know which is more dangerous-Anthony's involuntary commitment or Slash's inability to employ perspective, but they are clearly very different things.
Drugs aren't what make it such a good horror book though, they're just a symptom of it. It's such an effective horror work because it illuminates the shadows of a human being so effectively. It's clearly worked from tapes for the most part-Bozza may throw in a literary flourish here or there (and doesn't edit the tapes seamlessly), but he very effectively presents the authentic voice of the subject. And does so more coherently, needless to say, than the subject could have done on his own; which is the entire point of having Bozza around, he did very well.
I don't know that it's deep enough to draw a psychological profile that includes causation to any significant degree, but the reality reflected is sufficient: Slash is a bright, talented, nice, empathetic guy who has done a lot of stupid-and some very bad-things because of some combination of missing psycho-emotional regulators, and diminished inhibitions directly related to the induction of external chemicals into that already defective psyche. He senses all of this more than understands it, and so is matter of fact about it all in an acceptance of-not rejection of-guilt. Just that guilt is a particularly tertiary emotion, so far as the subject is concerned.
So, yeah, the reason that the book works so well as horror is because it mirrors your own life to the extent that the reader will indulge it. Slash's approach magnifies corners of the reality that we all share. Addiction and multiple personality disorder and bipolar syndrome (much less "defective psyche") are terms that we use to describe a certain level of traits that we all share to some degree. If it becomes pronounced enough, we call it by name. If it does not, we allow the seemingly insignificant demon sanctuary in dimissive denial.
It's great horror because Slash comes off as very human, just like us, except that he doesn't quite get why it's not such a good idea to let your demons out.
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go back home, Laural! Go see what's in your real dish!
...or what's more recently been put in your dish!