"And the wind shifts
and the dust on a door sill shifts
and even the writing of the rat footprints
tells us nothing, nothing at all
about the greatest city, the greatest nation
where the strong men listened
and the women warbled: Nothing like us ever was."
-- Carl Sandberg. 1920.
Henry Rollins: The One Decision that Changed My Life Forever
Rollins describes the seminal moment when he decided to leave his job as manager of Haagen Dazs to become the lead singer of Black Flag.
I admire NeoNeoCon. I'd like to be able to go into a long and insightful critique of the permanently deranged and outraged Palestinians and their outrage today about Romney, and couple that with my views about the media here that support the Palestinians' pathological droolings ... but if I did it would rapidly wear out my keyboard's
Continued...
Powerful Mitchell Falls at Dawn:
A sleepness night on a cold rock ledge overlooking the beautiful, powerful, noisy Mitchell Falls all came down to this. We were there for the pre-dawn morning light, gently illuminating the falls without the harsh shadows we had during the daylight shoot the day before, and themoonlit shoot the night before. Just before the light was almost right, Ken and I decided that it was time to try a new location, as we'd been on that rock ledge most of the day and night before and needed a change of scenery. So we quickly packed up our gear and climbed back up the cliff, heading out further along the gorge to get a more head-on view of the falls. -- Mike Salway
Elsewhere on the dark side of creation:
Homestead
It was found in the fog that shivered
the slivers of glass in the windows.
It was seen in the sheen of the moon
on the unworn wood of the floor.
It spoke with the slow, patient clutching of light
and tapped out the unknown codes of the flesh,
the indistinct worm of the years and the shapes
of desire, possession, and fate.
It was mute.
It was stitched in the spaces
of the wind's alphabet.
It was clothed in cool hands
gloved in wet weather.
It appeared on the paths
that admitted no passage.
It's rachety rhythms
were all made of match sticks.
It waited.
It's slashings were tattooed
on drapes of dank velvet.
It's gibbering laughter inserted itself
between doorway and jamb and continued to carve.
It's snickering plumbing
rotted the dinner.
They had left, they had left.
Indeed, they had left.
Of that all their objects would clearly attest.
Quirky, quick/unquick and randomly punctuated, but stay with it. At NeoNeoCon, this comment from one Artfldgr to a thread entitled Romney: the authentically nice politician?
The better man he appears to be the more their faults are seen.
Kind of like putting Helen Thomas next to Michelle Malkin…
In fact, this is actually the Left's hate of white males… after all, outside the constant litany of evil whitie etc… you have the example of the creators of modern civilization, the industrial revolution, the enlightenment, and end to slavery in their own sphere (while it still rages elsewhere), chivalry, the invention of written law, modern law, sea law, international law, international business, and on and on and on.
Romney not playing the proper part, ends up being traditional, strong, handsome, winning, nice, etc.
Anyone ever read Qayin and Havel?
Ever hear Obama mention my brother's keeper?
The Left is always trying to do “good things” for others with a hidden ulterior motive they pretend is never there, but is never absent.
They are never sincere
They are socially capitalistic, not economically. That is, they want to wheel and deal favors among plotters not merit among men.
And so, the socialists, the feminists, the communists, the progressives, the nazis, the maoists, etc.
All need scapegoats.
And they ALL select scapegoats that are better than they are, that they cant defeat in open fair competition.
They select the people they represent by their gullibility, moldibility, ignorance, ability to be bought, and negative qualities. while falsely praising them as to their better qualities.
If the Left represents you, you should be insulted, not happy
But ultimately, they all conjure up Moriarty. the infallible Holmes had Moriarty, the one thing that could defeat him and is worthy his opposition.
Well, the Left is forever calling up the same ghost under a different name to scapegoat. Moriarty, patriarchy, white men, Jews, etc.
But ultimately its the Cain and Able story…
(the other terms are Judaic)
Able works hard and his merit and sacrifice are rewarded as they are sincere, full of merit
But the Left. Cain, hates that when he tries to do good, it comes out bad because he seeks reward not doing good.
Able would do good without reward
Cain would not
Shall i point out that all mankind is descendent from Cain, as Able had a problem with his brother.
The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but He did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he was downcast.
The Lord. Reality.. as today.. blesses some, and not others. in this case, reality blesses the conservatives and hard working and so the Lord and Reality are one.. and the missives of the bible confer success…
But Cain, doing the same surface cargo cult acts with no substance, can't see why what he does is not worthy of Reality's blessing.
Then the LORD said to Cain, “Why are you furious? And why are you downcast? If you do right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it.”
Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
And so… the Left seeks to kill the offenders who are good, full of merit and through hard work gain the blessings of reality (God), because they work in line with reality and do not fight it (lao tsu / dao).
i can relate it to a dozen religions and lessons, but unless Joseph Campbell is resurrected for the conversation, most would be lost with my other examples.
Another variant of this same story is when a group of brothers sell their own into slavery.
The prodigal son is also another similar lesson, as the return of the son marks the mastery of the sins, and a return to what's important to reality.
But you can tell its Cain and Able because of Obama’s quotes on my brothers keeper.
“I hear politicians talking about values in an election year. I hear a lot about that. Let me tell you about values,” Obama said. “Hard work, personal responsibility — those are values. But looking out for one another. That’s a value. The idea that we’re all in this together. I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper. That’s a value.”
But Obama forgets who says this and to whom. And the negative in the bible always follows the Left neurolinguistic form… from Genesis and the snake, onwards.
The form of answering a question with a question… and leading the other to an answer without saying it, etc.
The form is first done by the serpent.
But Obama playing Cain, takes up Cain's response and fixes it, hoping this time, reward will be unlocked.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” “I know not,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
A lie followed by an answering question…
Cain jealously destroys ability in others, murders them, then pretends that the responsible are not responsible as such acts do not cause guilt which would perhaps hint that one should not get that reward.
Then He said, “What have you done? Your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground! So now you are cursed [with alienation] from the ground that opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood you have shed. If you work the land, it will never again give you its yield. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
And so, that method that Cain acts by, bears no fruit. Its socialism…
Cain wanted to share equally in the blessings of reality, but was not willing to do what reality wants to gain them. so Cain takes cargo cult shortcuts, thinks he is more clever than reality, and so, as long as Cain is Cain, Cain fails.
Down deep this is the hatred of the Left for Romney… to them, his merit and such is evil, and isn't a big deal. so they don't see his reward in money, good life, many children (more than obama), and so on, as earned.
Just as Cain could not see how able earned reward from reality (god).
And just as Cain, the Left thinks if they genocide the problem, it will go away, and in the absence of it, they then can have the merit.
But Reality's merit is for those who act in accordance with the wishes/principals of reality
At that point Romney ceases to be a person for them, and instead becomes an almost religious symbol of what they want but can't have given their choice of methods negates the desire.
And Cain lived in fear of other men (?), who have not been yet… and feared they would take retribution on him… so God, marked him and blessed him.
The good people will not kill Cain (for they are good), and so Cain is reborn to visit ill over and over on the good people.
Cursed to wander, he destroys any home he settles in, and is forced to leave, as any socialist leader eventually angers their people so much they would kill them as Cain claimed when they found out his real nature.
Fills from Base. Personal Cremation Urns for ashes: Personal Cremation Urns The personal urn does not come with hair. For hair we can digitally add hair if you wish, as you can see with our sample of president Obama. For people with longer hair we can add a wig from your specifications. This cremation urn comes on an elegant solid marble base. A Plaque and nameplate are also available.
A company called Cremation Solutions will create an urn that looks like your severed head, so your family and friends will never forget you as long as it's prominently displayed after your passing. -- Gizmodo
I'm sure this is just a prototype, an homage if you will, and there is no reason whatsoever for the Secret Service to conduct those background checks that are sure to commence in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1....
[Archival from 2006 but still, in light of recent events, worth repeating.]
If your life on the web is running too s l o w, if your browsing and grazing at this site or that is just b o g g i n g d o w n, what do you do?
Like any good cybernaut, you look for the "techno-fix."
There are, of course, many fixes to find. New connections, new computers, new hard drives, new browsers, new plugins, and more. But the first thing everyone should do is to take the cure common to all cyberspace slowdowns. You click on your browser menus and tell it to "Clear History."
"Clear History" works wonders for your cyberlife. As you move within the web, your History grows, and the more History you hold the slower your web brain, your browser, thinks and acts. Thinking slowly and acting slowly may be wise in life, but it takes the zip out of your online drive.
Continued...
I'm Captain Kink. I'm Mister Scratch.
I'm your smiling, deathless dentist, Doctor Pain.
I've owned the Earth since Adam's birth,
And co-authored the book on raising Cain.
But you learned too well my old hard sell,
How I used to tempt your souls with sin and tonic.
And since out-of-date spells don't populate Hell,
I'm gone post-modern, solid-state, and ultra-sonic.
I'm that modern manufacturer
Who swung Liz Borden's ax for her.
I gave you Neutron Bombs and Asian Flu.
I've got old friends in the Senate
(Why, so many I may just rent it,
And, for my summer place, the Kremlin too.).
Provincetown's "Fresh Sea Clams," 1940.
"Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." -- Yogi
Summer's at last heating up and so it's time for the cool to get cool by the shore. This will be especially cool this year because, so we hear, the coolest president in history may cool out on Martha's Vineyard. How cool is that?
It's even cooler when you consider that the cool One is sure to take the last final shred of whatever may have once, long ago, been cool about the Vineyard and grind it into fishmeal. When that's done, the Vineyard will look and feel, at last, pretty much like Provincetown, but without the Gay Pride floats and speedos. People worry about the coming fall and the heating up of swine flu, but I don't worry about fevers when I see that the all-consuming chill of "cool" is likely to get us first.
Cool's a funny thing. Before it was cool to be cool, being cool was actually sorta cool. But now that being cool is as required as a tramp-stamp at age 14 in order to gain admittence to a U2 Concert, cool's just not cool. Once "cool" is codified it's kaput. And since cool's not cool, there is no way to really be cool. Once you have a bunch of media lapdogs actually lapping on the lap of the President of the United States, even media's uncool. That would be okay since nothing cool is cool forever. After all, the groove must move to keep from becoming a rut.
Continued...THERE EXIST A PLETHORA of quotes about how things change but remain the same, so I'll spare you. It just seemed to me that two decades in high tech closed in my own little mind this afternoon as I was clicking through some of my back pages. In 1993, Wired was about to be launched and I was asked to write something for the first issue. The article, Wired 1.01: This Is A Naked Lady is found below, somewhat updated as is my habit over time. But what is really interesting, at least to me, is how little updating it needed. What was more interesting, at least to me, was this curious conjunction of Wired's current cover to an article from its first issue that closes with a meditation on the probable rise of robots for other, more wetware uses than just spot welding SUVs.
It all goes to show that while high tech may be tempting, we'll not see the end of that temptation in our lifetime. Then again, why would we want to?
UPDATE: I'm not the only one out there with memories of the "Naked Lady:"
James @ SciScoop does as well.Ah, there's RAM and then there's Mem'ries..."I remember her from back when I subscribed to The Source!!! I accessed it with a diskless TRS-80 Model III and an external Lynx 300 baud modem. Man, those were the days. I upgraded my TRS-80 myself from 16K to 64K (that's K-as-in-kilo, kids!!!) RAM and never did get the RF shield back on right, there was always TV static when I fired it up after that. "
"This is a Naked Lady" -- 1993-2004
Back in the dawn of online when a service called The Source was still in flower and 1200 baud was blazing,, a woman I used to know, would logon to that service as "This is a naked lady."
She wasn't naked of course, except in the minds of hundreds of young and not so young males on The Source, who sent her unremitting streams of detailed wet dreams night after night, hoping to engage her in online exchanges known as "hot chat"; a way of engaging in a mutual fantasy often found only at 900 services. In return, "The Naked Lady" egged them on with leading questions larded with copious amounts of double entendre. She also kept an open file on her computer where she kept copies of all her "conquests".
When we discussed this during the time in 1984 she spent writing a book on information services for me (Confessions of an Infomaniac Houghton Mifflin, Boston), she initially put it down to "just fooling around on the wires."
"Its just a hobby," she said. "Maybe I'll get some dates out of it. Some of these guys have very creative and interesting fantasy lives."
At the start, she was a rather mousy person, favored gray clothing of a conservative cut, and was the paragon of shy and retiring womanhood. Looking at her on the street, you'd never think that her online persona was one that excited the libidos of dozens of men every night.
But as the months online progressed and she became (through the dint of her blazing typing speed) the kind of person that could keep a dozen or more online sessions of hot chat going at a time, a strange transformation came over her. She got a trendy haircut, and had it streaked. Her clothing tastes went from Peck and Peck to tight skirts slit up to the thigh with tight sweaters to match. She began to regale me with descriptions of her expanding lingerie collection, and ask my advice on condoms and other personal items of nocturnal intent.
Her speech became bawdier and her jokes naughtier. Her choice of lipstick changed from Chapstick to "Passionfruit". She started to resemble an aging cheerleader gone to seed. After a while, it dawned on me that I was witnessing the total transformation of her character. In short, she was becoming her online personality; lewd, bawdy, sexy, a man-eater.
After the book was delivered, I left town. The last I saw of her, she was using her online conversations to get dates and favors from the men foolish enough to fall into her clutches.
The bait was an old bait....sex without strings attached, sex without love, sex as a fantasy pure and simple. An ancient profession whose costs always exceed expectations and whose pleasures invariably disappoint. The "fishing tackle", however, was way new at the time: online telecommunications. The "new twist" was that you didn't have to look your best and there was nothing to clean up afterward.
In the two decades that have passed since then there have been a number of other new wrinkles added to the text-based fantasy machine of online sex stories and erotic conversations that consumes an unknown and unknowable portion of the global telecommunications bandwidth. Groups have formed to represent all sexual persuasions. On the Internet for awhile there was a group called alt.sex.bondage.golden.showers.sheep. Most people at the time of its creation thought it was a joke. Alas, it was not, but neither was it's membership limited to Greek shepherds with cable modems.
You can send graphics from here to there and everywhere. NASA sends graphics of the Space Shuttle. Singles groups of all persuasions send photos and state preferences. And, yes, a large amount of traffic in these images is erotic in content. Sounds are starting to be sent. Movies, short clips called Quicktime, are being "netcast". All harbingers of ever more raunchy things to come. Because, for all the ho-ha that grows every louder by the day in our over-connected and soon to be entirely wireless world, the web reveals everything we are and that includes the fact that when it comes to sex, there really is no bottom to the human soul.
It is as if all the incredible advances in computing and networking technology over the past decades boils down to the ability to ship images of turgid members and sweating bodies stuffed with bodaciousness everywhere and anywhere at anytime. Looking at this, it is little wonder that, whenever this is discovered (And someone somewhere makes the discovery about twice a month), that a vast hue and cry resounds over the nets to root out the offending material and burn those that promulgated it. It is especially ghastly to the Guardians of Public Decency that this new technology, the flower of American Research and Development, supported by tax dollars, should have one bit of a byte devoted to shipping the image of an overweight Princess Leia in a leather body-suit brandishing a whip while stoking her beard. High tech is being perverted to low ends, they cry.
But it was always so.
There is absolutely nothing whatever new about the prurient relationship between technology and sexuality.
Sex, as we know, is a heat-seeking missile that forever seeks out the newest medium for its transmission. William Burroughs, a man who understands the dark side of sexuality better than most, sees it as a virus that always is on the hunt for a new host; a virus that always gets there first. There is something hard wired into the human psyche that simply and persistently likes to think about sex and see sexual images. Different genders and psyches have different tastes, but the overall desire seems about as persistent over the centuries as the lust for bread and burgers. To see how this works, lets look back in time to when other media were hot.
We could go back to Neolithic times when sculpture and cave painting were young. We could pick up the prehistoric sculptures of females with pendulous breasts and very wide hips -- a theme found today in pornographic magazines that specialize in women of generous endowment. We could run our flashlight over cave paintings of males whose members seem to exceed the length of their legs. A theme echoed in magazines with alliterative titles such as "Hung,Horny,Humpy and Hongray Honchos Rode Hard and Put Away Wet." We could travel forward in time to naughty frescoes in Pompeii, or across continents to where large stones resembling humongous erections have for centuries been major destinations of pilgrims in India, or to the vine-choked couples of the Black Pagoda at Ankor Wat where a Mardi Gras of stone erotic activity has been on display for centuries.
We could move up a little closer to our time and culture and remind people that movable type not only made the Gutenberg Bible possible, but it made cheap broadsheets of what can only be called "real-smut-in-perfect-English" available to the masses for the first time. You see, printing not only made it possible to extend the word of God to the educated classes, it also extended the monsters of the id to them as well. It is well to remember that one of the first novels, Clarissa, dealt with the seduction and deflowering of a young girl by a reprobate. Hot stuff for the times although it wouldn't make it past the slush pile in today's publishing companies.
Printing also made for the cheap reproduction and broad distribution of erotic images as well. Woodcuts at first, then etchings, then lithographs, and with the coming of chromo-lithography in the 19th century, color got added. All was not Currier and Ives in the 19th century, bogus themes from the walls of Pompeii were also very popular.
Depending on the tenor of the era, the trade in these images was more or less sub-rosa; always there as background noise in the communications mix.
"Psst, got any French postcards, my good man?"
"Come up and see my etchings sometime."
"Lord,check out this deck of playing cards! That's what I call a one- eyed Jack, if ya know what I mean. Nudge. Nudge. Wink. Wink."
All these widely distributed images were carefully drawn and portrayed, in various positions and acts, to excite the libido of many and make a tidy living for a few.
And then along came photography, a new medium and one that, until recently, did more to advance the democratic nature of erotic images than all the previous media combined. When you joined photography with photo-lithography, you created the first medium that could be used by many. It suddenly became both economic and possible for lots of people to enact and record their fantasies and then to reproduce them for sale to many others. Without putting too fine a point on it, the Stroke Book was born.
Implicit within these early black and white tomes featuring a lot of naked people with Lone Ranger masks demonstrating the ways in which human's could entwine their limbs and conceal large members at the same time, were the vast nascent publishing empires of Playboy, Penthouse, and Swedish Erotica. Still, the point was made that the new medium of photo-lithography was, if not exactly a people's media, at least ripe for the entrepreneur with a vision about what people really wanted to see when they looked at pictures. It may have made them outlaws, but they were at the outset more like Pretty Boy Floyd than Al Capone. It wasn't to last, alas, but what does?
The point here is that all media, when they are new or become cheap enough, are used by outlaws to broadcast unpopular images or ideas. The same printing press that could run off copies of Fanny Hill could also be used to print up copies of The Rights of Man, the Declaration of Independence, The Communist Manifesto and other highly unpopular screeds. When a medium is created the first order of business seems to be the use of it to advance religious, political, or sexual notions and desires.
Indeed all media, if they are to get a jump start in the market and become successful, have to address themselves to mass drives -- those things we hold in common as human needs: Food -- Gourmet Magazine and The French Chef; Shelter --- Better Homes and Gardens, and This Old House; Fashion -- Vogue and GQ and 90210; Knowing the News of the Week, Money.......TIME, LIFE, and FORTUNE.
But of all these, the old stand-by SEX is the drive where it is easiest for the consumer to know if the medium is effective. SEX is like a horror movie or novel in this way. We are talking real basic instincts here. You are either hot/scared, or you are disgusted/turned off. This is why so many people who are excited by the idea of eliminating pornography from the earth have recently fallen back on the saying "I can't define what pornography is, but I know it when I see it." They're right. You can't define it, you feel it. Alas, since everyone feels it in a slightly different way and no one can define it, it becomes very dangerous to a free society to start proscribing it. We can only get about as far as proscribing pornography that involves children, since within limits that is pretty much self-evident, and doesn't have many public advocates outside of the woe-begone ragtag assemblage of NAMBLA.
And now we have come to the "digital age" when all information and images can be digitized; when all bits are equal but some are hotter than others. We are in a land and an age where late-night cable can make a sailor blush. An endless Edgecity strip mall where for every family-style Blockbuster video outlet, you have three Mom and Pop Vid Shops whose prosperity depends on a continuing turnover of "Debby Does Everything In Sight." We are a collection of urban monads where dialing 900 and seven other digits can put you in intimate contact with pre-op transsexuals in wet-suits who will talk to you as long as the credit limit on your MasterCard stays in the black.
It is little wonder that the religious right in this nation is fit to be tied, and has discovered that there is no end to people who would be happy to oblige. SEX has come rocketing out of the closet and into the everyone's terminal. In addition, the sex industry has transmogrified itself from the province of a few large companies and individuals into a massive cottage industry.
It used to be that, at the very least, you had to drive to the local (or not so local) video shop or "adult" bookstore to refresh your collection of sexual fantasies. Now, you don't have to leave home. Just dial it up and pump it in. What's more, you can make it yourself if that's your pleasure and transmit it to others. It is a distinct harbinger of things to come that better "Needless to say..." letters appear online than in Penthouse Forum, sexual images in binary form form one of the heaviest data streams on the Internet, and that "amateur" erotic home videos are the new hot category in the porn shops. People in the digital age are not only reaching out to touch everyone, they are reaching out to touch everyone everywhere.
Since it depends on basic stimuli that is widely known and understood, erotica is the easiest kind of material to produce. Quality isn't the primary criteria. Quality isn't even the point. Arousal is the point, pure and simple. Everything else is just wrapping paper. "Art" is something you add if you are a classy kind of person and don't want to admit you just like to get off. If you can pick up a Polaroid, run a Camcorder, write a reasonably intelligible sentence on a word processor and can set up a BBS, you too can be in the erotica business. Talent has very, very little to do with it. Desire and access is all in this game. This makes the barrier to entry very low, and has a similar effect on the quality of the material.
You have to know a lot to run a good conference on law or even gardening. You have to study. You have to know the territory. But everyone thinks they know how to present sex. To do it well takes talent, true. But to just do it so that it "works" for most people, takes very little ability at all.
The other irritating thing about sex is that, like hunger, it is never satisfied. It recurs in the human psyche with numbing regularity. In addition, it is one of the most commonly stimulated, but never satisfied, drives by the approved above-ground media (Is that woman in the Calvin Klein ads coming up from a stint of oral sex, or is she just surfacing in the swimming pool?) Mature, corporate media can tease. New, outlaw media have to deliver the orgasm. They can't get by on production values, because they have none.
The good news for the eternal guardians of morality is that as any new medium matures, the subject matter expands and the sexual percentage of material tends to become marginalized, even if it is growing in volume. With the VCR the ability to own x-rated tapes through the mails (so that no one would know these "private things") drove the market for a number of years. Now, it is a much lower percentage of the total video market although still sizable. Same thing happened with 900 numbers.
Computer networks are going through the same process that has characterized new mediums since the days of cave painting. First hot chat, then whole BBS systems and networks....perfect for sexual material since it is private and yet somehow communal at the same time. .GIFS came along just in time to revitalize a group that had grown jaded on Cindy's Torment. And now we'll be seeing the advent of QuickTime movies transmitted over the Internet and giving us the best of Marilyn Chambers or a clone thereof.
The author, Howard Rheingold, made some waves in the early 90s with his vision of a network that will actually hook some sort of tactile feedback devices onto our bodies so that the fantasies don't have to be so damned cerebral. He called this vision "dildonics" and had been dining out on the concept for years. It's arrived and Howard has long since moved on to making mad monkey mindlove with young mob-bloggers. Soon you'll have virtual reality and the ability to construct your own erotic consort for work, play, or simple experimentation. On and on it will go. Robotics will in time deliver household servants and sex slaves. Then of course the robots will have a movement for equality and liberation. Every new technology matched by a use for it by the libido of the young, the restless, or the bored. Until, of course, the users and the technology outgrow it.
I saw that "Naked Lady" about three months ago. I asked her if she was still up to the same old games of online sex. "Are you kidding?" she told me. "I'm a consultant on computer security these days. Besides, I have a kid now. I don't want that kind of material in my home."
The new racism in America stinks. The whole revolting "little George Allen maybe said the "N" word 30-odd years in the past" pile of crap pushed out by his political rival over the last few days has filled me with a new found revulsion for our politics.
My crime is this: by writing out the following word, "nigger," I have just committed a social crime more heinous than smoking a cigarette within three miles of a day-care center. But what is done, sigh, is done.
I've done many thing in my life that have made me potentially unelectable to any office in the United States.
I've had points of view that were out when conservatism was in, and points of view that were out when liberalism was in. I've worked for magazines that printed pictures of naked women and letters that began "I never thought I'd be writing this to a magazine, but...."
There are photographs of me smoking cigarettes in a land where the only two things the educational system teaches children is that cigarettes are bad and the New York Times is good.
My religious affiliations are dubious and transitory. I tend to change churches as others change sox.
While I am a member of the largest minority, it is the only one that is unrecognized by the Diversity Stamp of Approval Bureau. After a lifetime of voting the Democratic ticket, I became so nauseated by Teresa Heinz Kerry and her consort in 2004 that I actually voted for George Bush. To compound this sin I then moved to Seattle, Washington where Bush Derangement Syndrome has claimed the brain death of approximately 97.6% of the population. If you ever want to feel alone just put a "Rice/Rumsfeld 2008 'A World of Experience'" lawn sign out in this city. Better yet, put it on the lawn of a house you'd like to see burn.
Yes, I am one American citizen whose chances of being elected to anything, before this essay, hovered at .001 %. But with the single word in the essay above I have, for all eternity, sealed my political doom. That word has now become part of my "Permanent Conduct Record," and has, as far as the ever-alert pecksniffs of our shared political purity are concerned, made me an outcast. Alas, I am forever doomed to wander the barren heath where dwell the "hard-core unelectable." I suspect I shall soon be able with George Allen to:
"...sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd,
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd."
Murdered by the "N-Word."
It is not, mind you, that "The N-Word" is forbidden or never heard in this fair land at this time. On the contrary, "nigger" is spoken, sung, shouted and roared from the rooftops of our culture to an extent I have never witnessed in all my decades.
The word is blasted across the blank forebrain of our culture every minute of every hour of every day. Not only can it be bought in huge quantities at every on and offline record/DVD store in the country, it is also blasted into our city streets by large vehicles mounting sound systems that can drop a charging rhino at 100 yards and cause small dogs to implode in penthouses high above our boulevards. At vast nocturnal gatherings of our most vital and hyper-sexual young people, the word is drummed out in endless celebratory chants as all assembled shake, shake, shake their money makers to the non-stop N-chants of our perpetually preening princes of pop.
For, lo, this word which once emblemized both race-hate and a degraded and disgraced secondary state of humanity has, through the alchemy of the asinine among us, been mystically transmogrified into something approaching a holy incantation. From a mongrel word it has be made magical. But the use of this magic word has, as the high priests of pap always assure us, been made unavailable to the many for the power of the few.
The Word is now the sole possession of the REMD (Racial Establishment of Monetized Defeatism). It is a closely held stock whose possession assures that, the more we strive to put racism behind us in this country, the more certainly it will be kept alive in order to maintain the parasite of racism's ability to feed upon the host culture and continue to enrich its stockholders.
The Word is the carrier of a strange disease. It is a disease that those who would benefit most from its eradication seek desperately to maintain. After all, if the scourge of racism were ever allowed to fade from our land, where would all the people with jobs and investments in the continuance of racism go? How would they live? How would their mortgages be paid and how would their car, boat and second-home payments be met?
For if racism is allowed to die a natural death, isn't the Race-Hustling industry also on-line for the grave as well? This can't be allowed to happen. Too many people are getting too rich.
The crowning irony is that those benefiting are not all black. Not by a long shot. That is why rather than sending the N-Word into a well-deserved oblivion with the ghosts of the KKK and the lynch mob, it has been made, instead, into a Holy Word; a cross between a mantra and a prayer with just a whiff of violence attached so you don't get too cocky with it.
If you've haven't realized it from the "possible, perhaps, maybe" use of it by George Allen sometime in the last century, you have probably realized from these words that I am "one of those" who are denied access to this new Holy Word simply by an accident of my birth and racial heritage. It matters not one whit what the First Amendment may say about all English words being free to all, there is one word there that is not free to me, and I may not say it or write it ever without dire consequences to my social and political and employment chances in America today.
Evoking the F-word may or may not be a firing offense in America today, but for a person of my race the mention of the N-word most certainly is. Context has exactly nothing to do with it. Indeed, as some will recall, the use of a word that even sounds like it, such as "niggardly," is a potential firing offense. Even the first syllable seems to have become forbidden to those suffering my genetic misfortune over which I have no control.
Yes, I was to my everlasting shame and regret born a White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant -- AKA "WASP." This is fixed in my nature. I cannot change it and, no matter how much I may have done, no matter how much I do to carry forward the banner of a raceless, classless society in which all me are judged "not on the color of their skin, but on the content of their character;" to raise high the escutcheon of a perfect world, a perfected America, I know that because of the accident of my birth it will never, ever be enough.
I once thought, when I was drowned deep in the somnambulant 60s dreams of racial equality, that we could -- as people of good will working together -- achieve the dream of Dr. King. Now I know it is nothing but a chimera. The truth is that good seldom overcomes greed and there is simply too much money to be made and to many jobs to be handed out by the Racial Grievance Industry of America.
The once admirable Racial Equality movement in America has regrettably transformed itself within a mere 50 years into a Racial Inequity in Perpetuity Movement, and is probably more entrenched than a government bureaucracy -- especially since many government bureaus and employees have a role in it. As a result, there is no sense in yearning any longer for a raceless or classless America.
The control of words and images by the Race Hustlers of America ensures that that day will never come about no matter how much the people yearn for it. As long as the cheap mouthpieces of a faux ghetto identity strut and fret their weary wares upon the stage of our corrupted culture, as long as there is one grill left to be set on one pair of greedy teeth, as long as the Holy Grail of a Big Reparations Check is dangled in front of all those that hold within their genes a single sequence of African DNA, the Race Hustling Religion of America will never fold up its tents and steal away. It is just too much of a Gold Cash Calf to walk away from.
And, like all religions sunk in the pagan fantasies of violence and degradation, the Race Hustling Religion will have to have, from time to time, a white human sacrifice to underscore its power. Right now, that sacrifice is George Allen, whose crime --punished immediately and without trial, is some ancient, vague, unproven and unprovable, use of "The N-Word;" a word he was never it turns out allowed to utter or to even think. He's not the first. He won't be the last. I'm probably on the list now. But I know all you who are reading this are safe. After all, you've never, ever said or even thought that terrible soul-destroying word. Have you?
It seems that every time I think I've seen the bottom of American politics today, that bottom drops away revealing whole new stygian depths lurking deeper below. Hence, I've decided to opt out of my quest to be elected President for one week -- wherein I'd get some needful things done before resigning to let my veep and party take the heat. And just to make sure I never get elected, please excuse me while I commit a racial crime.
[First Published: 2006-09-28 ]
August 1910: It wasn’t the last summer but it was one of the last summers when America was at peace with the world and at peace with itself. The Civil War was a 45 year old memory. The first of the World Wars that would scar the century to come was not even the shadow of a premonition. Lenin was an exile in Europe with no power and Mao was a student in Hunan. Hitler was living in a homeless shelter in Vienna selling paintings to tourists. Stalin was either being sent to or escaping from Siberia. Churchill was the Home Secretary in England and planning the first bit of social engineering, the National Insurance Act. Taft was President and his plan was "try to accomplish just as much [as Teddy Roosevelt] without any noise."
Both the automobile and and the electric light were ubiquitous. Air conditioning was still a wild fantasy, but the swamp cooler had begun to come online in 1904 so it wasn't completely out of the question for the very rich.
Halley’s Comet had just passed by taking Mark Twain with it. Somewhere in Macedonia Mother Teresa had just been born. If men looked up they could have seen, had they been in the right place at the right time, other men in flight. If any had been in Sheepshead Bay out side of New York City on the 20th they would have heard the first gunshots ever fired from an airplane. Individual lives might have their small tragedies but there was no perceptible or imaginable catastrophe in the cards dealt Americans that summer. It was August and everywhere Americans paused to refresh themselves.
Presented for your contemplation: One wave breaking over a group of Americans who have waded into the Atlantic on the Jersey shore sometime around noon on a hot day in August in 1910.
The wave would have swelled up and started out far over the eastern horizon near the edge of the Gulf Stream. It would have rolled with strict impunity in the midst of thousands of others like it, all bound towards the shore. The photographer would have gotten up early and hauled his cumbersome equipment towards the shore. The bathers would have arrived in the late morning if they were not already staying near the shore.
Once there they changed into swimming apparel known more for modesty than comfort. From the light it was around noon and would have been hot. Seeking to be cooler they waded in. Some stayed near the shore. Others waded further out the steadily deepening water.
On some kind of elevated platform above the sand, the photographer put the 8x10 glass plate into the camera and ducked under the black hood for final adjustments. Then he stood up and called out and called out and called out and finally got the attention of some. Most ignored him.
The wave rolled in from somewhere over the horizon, rising up and down, maybe cresting here and there, until it swelled one last time and, just as the photographer happened to release the shutter, jumped up in that one moment and splashed and spattered the unwary people posed and unposed in the cool salt water just off the beach on the Jersey shore.
That was the moment, less than a second, in the midst of that summer now more than a century gone. All, each and every one, of those nearly 300 souls are now gone as well, even the children held on the shoulders or standing in the shallows, all gone -- all perhaps, maybe, save one now almost silent centenarian.
Well, what of it? That’s the way of the world and the way of the waves of the world and our lives. What we have is this moment snatched out of time on the Jersey shore one afternoon in August before the last century went smash. Who is there? What were they like? It can’t be known, but it can be seen and what can be seen, at least in this one moment, is that these people had what anyone would recognize as that thing we call happiness. Let’s see what we can see of it.
Continued...
From my back pages: TWILIGHT ZONE OF THE ID Published @ TIME MAGAZINE Wednesday, Mar. 01, 1995 By Gerard Van Der Leun
The joint is called #hottub (pronounced "pound hot tub''), and it's open almost all the time. I've been soaking in it for two hours with "Bubbles,'' "Hard Charger'' and "Lush Lady.'' Charger and Lady are, shall we say, flirting heavily, while Bubbles is trying to get my attention. But s/he's a notorious transvestite, so I'm keeping my distance. People float in and out of this hot tub, which is open to all comers, but no one ever gets wet -- just a little damp sometimes. If you fancy someone, and he or she fancies you, it is possible to go private and exchange sexual fantasies until you're too exhausted, or bored, to continue.
This steamy place doesn't exist in the physical world. It is a "channel'' on Internet Relay Chat (called IRC among netheads). IRC consists of a series of real-time discussions on the Internet. Think of it as CB radio that you type instead of speak. Any number can play. And lots do.
A maze of steamy places that don't exist makes up the warp and the woof of sex on the Net today. The fact that virtual sex happens on the Net upsets a lot of people. Unfortunately, sex on the Net turns on a lot of people too. I know. I've been covering sex on the networks for nearly 10 years. Strictly as a professional, of course. I've seen things that would make William Burroughs blush and send Catharine MacKinnon into cardiac arrest. I've had a chance to order whips and chains by the gross, drop in on group sex and download more explicit pictures than are displayed in a decade's worth of Hustler. In one day, I've read more intimate confessions than are found in a year's worth of Penthouse letters. All this as an objective journalist, mind you. I report on cybersex, but I don't give it my essence.
Today online sex is as wild and far-ranging as the human imagination -- a real Twilight Zone of the Id, which causes one to reflect on whether or not the human race is indeed an evolutionary cul-de-sac, until you remember that cybersex has been going on since humans received the gift of imagination. Cybersex is, at bottom, simply old sexual fantasies in a new electronic bottle. As with all other new mediums, online draws its energy from the same two timeless topics: radical politics and sexual fantasy. They are the first uses made of any new means of communication when it becomes popular, widespread and affordable, and they recede as the medium matures. The printing press has a long history of revolutionary tracts, such as Tom Paine's The Rights of Man and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence -- along with what are now erotic classics, such as the Marquis de Sade's The 120 Days of Sodom.
In the 19th century, photography gave us historic images -- pictures of Abraham Lincoln -- and naughty photographs, sold under the counter. You can be sure that the first obscene telephone call was placed not long after the Bell Telephone Co. connected the first network. As for the first phone sex? That was probably the first obscene phone call in which the recipient didn't hang up. When The Birth of a Nation was released in 1915, the erotic film A Free Ride was circulating through the men's smoker circuit. The explosion of VCRs coincided with the release of videotaped versions of such porno classics as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. Sales of video cameras didn't explode just because people wanted to tape their holiday celebrations and stupid pet tricks. As Tonya Harding and Jeff Gillooly recently reaffirmed, lots of videotape is recorded in bedrooms.
Now computer networks are the hot new medium, and, like all those launched before, they rely on radical politics and sex as primal energy sources. In cyberspace there is an ever-expanding menu of places to visit and sexual material from which to choose. Some people roam the networks collecting massive amounts of what, in its more sophisticated versions, is termed erotica. Most of it, frankly, is smut.
There are endless text files describing sex with strangers and strange sex. There are photos and films and sounds (Girl in Cage, Women in Wet Clothes) to download that are usually found behind the curtain in the back of mom-and-pop video stores. There are personal ads of the ilk published in the back of swingers' magazines: WANTED TOPLESS MAID CLEVELAND AREA. One can order sex toys of the inflatable and battery-driven varieties, available via 800 numbers and direct mail. There are costumes (men's black leather harness with silver studs) and condoms, leather and rubber goods, the full catalog of kink -- if, of course, you are a consenting adult with some room left on your credit card. The price of ordering the John Wayne Bobbitt video, Uncut: $49.95. Many people like to have this electronic sex in real time and become fixated on "chat'' -- a kind of phone sex pecked onto a keyboard. Chat on the major online systems has been a dependable cash cow for nearly a decade, and, at rates from $2 to $12 an hour, it is easy to understand why.
Others use the medium as a pickup bar and a place to set up real assignations in the no-tell motels of America. The real cybersex conquistadores employ the networks to seduce distant lovers and keep a kind of score of their "hits.'' Not everyone who does this is male, by the way. Indeed, recently on America Online, a woman with the handle "Stolen Kisses'' became the object of many others' fancy after she wrote an article in Penthouse magazine titled "Confessions of a Cyberslut.'' While it was once the case that women willing to engage in erotic give-and-take on the networks were in short supply, they are becoming much more prevalent as the medium expands.
Yes, it's also true that lots of people fall in love over the Net, meet, get married, have children and go on to live decent lives as upstanding members of their community. But most who venture into the explicitly sexual arenas of cyberspace do so for the freedom it affords them. One of the benefits of cybersex is that you get both to meet and to be new people every day. If you learn how to use the anonymous-posting programs that are proliferating, you don't even have to reveal your real name or location. You can be utterly untraceable. Another benefit is that since no one can see you, you certainly don't have to look your best. Yet another plus is that you can, to a certain degree, experience and understand life-styles that you would never dream of trying in real life. And, of course, the safety of virtual sex is unparalleled. The only viruses that can be transmitted in cyberspace are computer viruses. While annoying, they tend to let the users live.
The downside is that, especially on the Internet and the adult bulletin- board systems, many people are going to see, hear and read things that are intensely pornographic. Some are not going to like it. Just knowing that this is going on will drive lots of people, including ambitious public officials, to "do something'' about it. Another problem with cybersex is that it can be addictive and chew up large amounts of money. And it tends to leave a lot of things lying around in your computer that you surely wouldn't leave out on the coffee table. I mean, face it, how many people brag about the collection of X-rated videos in the back of their bedroom closets? There is no life- style, life-form or item of furniture in cyberspace that does not become -- sooner or later -- part of some cybernaut's sexual fantasy. Some of the most popular alt.sex groups carried on the Internet provide lascivious text, images and sounds for the wired world, all day every day. Three of these such groups are alt.personals.spanking.punishment, alt.sex.fetish.fashion and alt.sex.strip-clubs.
Is this kind of thing good or bad? That's an argument that's probably been going on since the first crude painting of a naked person was drawn on the wall of a cave. Does cybersex conform to community standards? The idea of community standards starts to evaporate when the "community,'' like the Internet itself, is global. The large commercial online "communities'' like CompuServe and America Online expressly forbid the posting of any explicit sexual material. Since, by popular demand, they are providing increased access to the Internet, however, they do allow you (after many disclaimers) to add the alt.sex groups to your personal inventory of Usenet newsgroups. Besides, the "private'' chat rooms on both these services are notorious cyber-fleshpots. In fact, the most unnerving encounter I've ever had took place in the CompuServe adult-chat area. I won't go into it in these pages, and I shudder to think about it. To this day, I'm not even sure about the genders or species of the people involved. I dimly remember the names "Michael,'' "Lisa,'' "Pee Wee,'' "Jo Jo,'' "the Bong'' and "Elvis,'' but after that, everything is a blur.
I was finishing my first cup of Kopi Luwak shade-grown, fair-traded, passed through the colon of an Asian Palm Civet coffee (@ $160.00 per pound and worth it) while gazing across my lawn to the sun-splashed playground across the way when I came across this:
By the brilliant Cripes Suzette.
In other news last night Obama signed yet another executive order that would give his government minions and the TSA the power to murder you in your bed.
With the white interior going too far off-road is probably off the menu. Ditto food and kids.
Meanwhile, in the Floating World:
The luxurious silk wool floormats are reversible – with one side finished in durable, ribbed saddle leather for use when the driver and passengers are dressed for the great outdoors.
The upright dashboard design features a full-width, one-piece wood veneer with a subtly negative surface and instruments with a configurable display. Traditional Bentley ‘bulls eye’ vents have a ‘rifled’ gunmetal inner surface for a more contemporary and functional appearance. The centre console is a blend of functionality and supreme ergonomics with dynamic, architectural layers which help to create a central spine to the cabin.
The flowing roof design with a panoramic glass panel is inspired by the roll cages of rally cars, expressing both strength and lightness.
Rear seat passengers can chose between business mode, with generous legroom complete with fold-down keyboard and full internet connectivity via an iPad or tablet or a more reclined position with powered footrest, drinks table and an infotainment screen for movies.
The EXP 9 F concept features 4 1 seating with a rear armrest lifting to reveal a cooled compartment for champagne and glasses. Seats feature a diamond- quilted shoulder line in soft-touch leather, echoing the traditional appearance of a British field sport jacket. When the rear seats are not in use, they can be powered forward to create a larger loadspace for sports equipment or luggage.
At the rear, the lower section of the two-piece tailgate may be used as a viewing bench or picnic table. Bespoke picnic hampers are stowed neatly to either side of the loadspace when not in use, but are located on rails for easy access. An awning extends over the tailgate to protect those seated there; two umbrellas fit either side of the rear luggage area for when the rain clouds sweep in. -- EXP 9 F Concept : Interior Design
"The Ghirardi Compton Oak has been a piece of League City's history for over 100 years. The tree stands 56 feet tall, has a canopy that is over 100 feet wide, and is 135 inches around. It also weighs an incredible 518,000 pounds. A county road widening project put the future of the Ghirardi Oak in jeopardy. Council voted to use park dedication funds to hire Hess Landscaping Construction to move the majestic oak. A project that took them just under a month to complete. Watch the incredible process from start to finish in this video."
Question:
What do you get when you combine Italian immigrants, a bag of Louisiana acorns, some determined folk in a historically-minded Texas town and a California native who (along with his crew) moves trees with all the pride and competence you'd expect from an ex-Marine?
Answer:
A feel-good story of the first order. Read on @ Follow the Muddy Dirt Road ｫ The Task at Hand
Obama: "We're sending this one out to John Roberts and the Supremes!"
Deep Background:
"George Harrison said, "'Taxman' was when I first realised that even though we had started earning money, we were actually giving most of it away in taxes. It was and still is typical." The Beatles' large earnings placed them in the top tax bracket in the United Kingdom, liable to a 95% supertax introduced by Harold Wilson's Labour government. In a 1984 interview with Playboy magazine, Paul McCartney agreed: "George wrote that and I played guitar on it. He wrote it in anger at finding out what the taxman did. He had never known before then what he'll do with your money."
"Taxman" was included in Harrison's concert repertoire during his solo career; on his tour of Japan in 1991 with Eric Clapton, "Taxman" was on the set list. "It's a song that goes regardless if it's the sixties, seventies, eighties or nineties," Harrison declared. "There's always a taxman." Harrison added more lyrics on that tour, such as "If you're overweight, I'll tax your fat." -- La Wik"
You'll probably see scenes like this just before Satan collects that soul you foolishly sold to him for 4 more years of the current administration.
The technical explanation, if you must know, is at "This Slit-Scan Video Will Break Your Brain."
"I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
I never thought about love when I thought about home
I still owe money to the money to the money I owe
The floors are falling out from everybody I know."
Ooops. I said, 'No smoking on the barge!':
A massive fusillade of bright rocketry lit up North Island and the downtown area just before 9 p.m. A YouTube video from the scene showed a gigantic 28-second blast, with rockets and bombs bursting in a random pattern. Then, nothing. "It looked like a planet coming," one spectator told a local TV station. Coast Guard officials said it appeared that entire battery of explosives on three of the four launch barges was launched at the same time, possibly due to a "premature ignition." -- KGTV San Diego
[Via Neatorama]
A short list. In no particular order.
We told our children that any child could grow up to be President. And then we made it come true.
We had car shows, boat shows, beauty shows and dog shows.
We ran robots on the surface of Mars by remote control.
Our women came from all over the world in all shapes and sizes hues and scents.
We actually believed that all men are created equal and tried to make it come true.
Everybody liked our movies and loved our television shows.
We tried to educate everybody, whether they wanted it or not. Sometimes we succeeded.
We did Levis.
We held the torch high and hundreds of millions came. No matter what the cost.
We saved Europe twice and liberated it once.
We believed so deeply and so abidingly in free speech that we protected and honored and, in some cases, even elected traitors.
We let you be as freaky as you wanted to be.
We paid you not to plant crops and not to work.
We died in the hundreds of thousands to end slavery here. And when that was done continued for a century and a half around the world.
We invented Jazz.
We wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Gettysberg address.
We went to the moon to see how far we could hit a golf ball.
We lifted a telescope into orbit that could see to the edge of the universe.
When people snuck into the country against our laws, we made parking lots and food stands off to the side of the road so they wouldn't get hurt, and we let them use our hospitals for free, and we made their children citizens.
We didn't care what God you worshipped as long as we could worship ours.
We let the People arm themselves at will. Just to make sure.
We gave everybody the vote.
We built Disneyworld. Just for fun.
We had a revolution so successful it was still going strong two and a quarter centuries later.
We had so many heroes, even at the end, that we felt free to hate them and burn them in effigy.
We electrified the guitar.
We invented a music so compelling that it rocked the world.
We had some middling novelists.
We had some interesting painters.
We had some pretty good poets.
We had better songwriters.
We ran our farms so well we fed the globe.
We made the automobile and the airplane.
We let you get rich. Really, really rich. And we didn't care who you were or what you were or where you came from or who your parents were. We just cared about what you made or what you did.
We had poor people who, even at their most wretched, were richer than any other poor people on the face of the planet.
We were the most nobel nation the world had ever known.
We had so much freedom that many of us voted to just throw it all away.
Even towards the end, as we dissolved into the petty bickering and idle entertainments that come with having far too much leisure and money, many among us were still striving to make it higher, finer, brighter, better and more beautiful.
Even towards the end, the best of us declined to give up and pressed on. "Where to? What next?"
[First published 2007]
Last year on a bright warm 4th of July morning in Queen Anne I went to my local coffee purveyor on the corner to get my usual. As usual I got in line. In front of me was an American-Asian family with two little girls, a Lesbian couple I've seen around, a young girl and boy who looked like they were just coming home from a long date, a blond woman with her blond daughter, a Hispanic looking man with a toddler asleep in a stroller, and, of course, me, your average white guy.
As I stood there waiting for my coffee to be brewed I noticed a frail old man I hadn't seen before sitting by the window looking at the people walking by outside. I'd put him somewhere in his late 80s with a face of keen features and arms that suggested an earlier strength but which now contained bones almost bird-like. He had gold rimmed glasses on behind which were quick blue eyes. He was wearing plain khaki trousers, and a beige short-sleeved shirt. On his head he wore one of those standard issue baseball caps that said "U.S. Navy."
As I was leaving the coffee shop I stopped for a moment and said, "Excuse me, Sir, but were you in the Navy?"
"Thirty years," he said, "starting in World War II. I handled amphibious landing boats in the Pacific. Kwajalein, Iwo Jima, Lyete Gulf, Okinawa. "
"Thank you," I said, shaking his hand. "I thank all of you."
"You're welcome. There's not too many of us left. Getting down to less than three million I understand."
"I hope you have many more Fourths," I said.
"Me too. I like it here. You know, except for the time in the Navy I've lived up here on Queen Anne all my life. It's better here today, better in the country today. Not the political stuff. I don't have much to say about that. But in the way we all live together up here now. It's more different than it was. More kinds of people now. And that's better."
"I agree," I said saying good bye. "And thank you and your whole generation again for giving me everything I've had all my life."
"Any time," he said, looking past me at a family of five that was bicycling past the window in the warm morning sun. "It was an honor."
If tomorrow all the things were gone,
I'd worked for all my life.
And I had to start again,
with just my children and my wife.
I'd thank my lucky stars,
to be livin here today.
'Cause the flag still stands for freedom,
and they can't take that away.
And I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.
From the lakes of Minnesota,
to the hills of Tennessee.
Across the plains of Texas,
From sea to shining sea.
From Detroit down to Houston,
and New York to L.A.
Well there's pride in every American heart,
and its time we stand and say.
That I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.
And I'm proud to be and American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.
And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA.
[First published July 4,2011. And no, I never saw him again.]
The PNC American Flag balloon is inflated in honor of America for Independence Day on the De Baun Athletic Complex at Stevens Institute of Technology on July 3, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The 53 by 78 foot balloon is the world's largest free-flying American flag, weighs 530 pounds and is being flown in the upcoming 30th annual NJ Festival of Ballooning. -- Stars and Stripes for the Fourth of July
"Mr. Gorbachev, I tore down that wall" The famous speech President Ronald Reagan gave after he destroyed the berlin wall. He rode he most trusty steed into battle...a raptor which he had the CIA clone for such an occasion. Practice Reaganomics today and buy this print to show your love for 'merica! -- by *SharpWriter on deviantART
Hey, nobody said artists have to actually know something about history, palentology, or Ronald Reagan. Especially deviant artists.
Sippican Cottage found this and says: "If You Make Things, You Are My Brother. My wife made some people. Think of that. I make furniture. This guy makes knives:
Made by Hand / No 2 The Knife Maker: Meet writer turned knife maker Joel Bukiewicz of Cut Brooklyn. He talks about the human element of craft, and the potential for a skill to mature into an art. And in sharing his story, he alights on the real meaning of handmade—a movement whose riches are measured in people, not cash.
Cut Brooklyn - Available: Left to right that's a Prospect 120 in 1095 and blue G10 ($350), a Journeyman 240* in 1095 and black walnut ($575), and a Journeyman 120 in 1095 and burgundy G10 ($350).
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- December 2008
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
- August 2005
- July 2005
- June 2005
- May 2005
- April 2005
- March 2005
- February 2005
- January 2005
- December 2004
- November 2004
- October 2004
- September 2004
- August 2004
- July 2004
- June 2004
- May 2004
- April 2004
- March 2004
- February 2004
- January 2004
- December 2003
- November 2003
- October 2003
- September 2003
- August 2003
- July 2003
- June 2003
Warning: include() [function.include]: URL file-access is disabled in the server configuration in /home/boswell/public_html/mt-archives/2012_07.php on line 1392
Warning: include(http://americandigest.org/sidelines/index.php) [function.include]: failed to open stream: no suitable wrapper could be found in /home/boswell/public_html/mt-archives/2012_07.php on line 1392
Warning: include() [function.include]: Failed opening 'http://americandigest.org/sidelines/index.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in /home/boswell/public_html/mt-archives/2012_07.php on line 1392
- Be Wery, Wery, Qwiet...
- Americans: "Nothing Like Us Ever Was"
- An American: Application, Discipline, Focus Or "The America Would Have Happened to Me"
- Romney vs the Mud-Sucking Palestinians and Their Flunkies in the Media
- Something Wonderful: Good Night Noises Everywhere
- The United Shapes
- The News of the Day
- Homestead
- The Chinese Fashion Police
- Something Wicked This Way Comes: Obama Supporter Interviews Her 2008 Self
- Marks of Cain
- The Obama Urn -- An Artifact Whose Time Has Come: "Under one condition; Must also dispense Pez."
- When Bug-A-Salts Are Outlawed.... Flies Rule!
- Clear History
- Where Have You Been, My Blue Eyed Son?
- The Resume of Captain Kink
- Cooling Out: From Spare Change to No Change
- Sex: The First and Last Temptation of High Tech
- Quick. Don't Think of a Black Elephant
- The Summer of Our Content