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| Saguaro, Kerry's house |
I have some fear about my prospects for the next show, in the wake of both a tepid one and a historic stock market crash. I have decided to keep breathing, slowly, in and out. Perhaps scared investors will decide to consider investing in tangible property again? Or say fuck it, let's buy something we love and make ourselves happy. Blue Heron Brand ice cream.
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I am reading a fantastic book, a biography on the french explorer Champlain. It is titled Champlain's Dream and was written by the Pulitzer Prize winner, David Hackett Fisher. A native of Saintonge.
Champlain may or may not have been the illegitimate son of King Henry IV, known as Le Roi Passione´, the monarch is said to have had 56 known mistresses. The book takes us through various wars between Huegenots, other protestants and the Catholics, wars that Hackett Fischer estimates cost between 2 and 4 million lives. There was even a War of the Three Henri's and who knows how often that happens?
I have learned a lot by even my early entry with this book, about history, salt and even environmentalism. I am now reading about early pearl farming. In 1599, near Venezuela, on the Isla de Margarita, the latin word for pearl, Champlain observed the pearl fishery. Three hundred canoes put to sea every day and slaves were forced to make deep water free dives. Large numbers of pearls were harvested by the conscripted indian slaves and according to the author, largely destroyed them. During his time they were replaced by african slaves. This exploitation inspired one of the first anti slavery movements, led by the spanish monk Bartolomé de Las Casas. Historians consider the devastation of the pearl fishery to be the first written account of "resource declines in any of the world's marine fisheries, brought about by intensive harvesting."
I have been on a sixteenth century kick lately, first reading the book about the lost Caravaggio, Jonathan Harr's The Lost Painting: The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece. That gave way to a better and more fascinating book about another painter, Rubens and his other life as a trusted diplomatic courier, Master of Shadows: The Secret Diplomatic Career of the Painter Peter Paul Rubens by Mark Lamster.
My favorite books reference a period when men settled their differences with swords, from Dumas and Stevenson to Reverte and Yoshikawa. Firearms definitely threw a hitch into the beauty of the violent arts. In fact I read a great Heinlein quote yesterday that sort of ties in; An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. Swordplay could give a small, fast and inventive man an equality with your standard overlarge lunk. And you could suffer or inflict a fatal ending with a dash of artistry and aplomb. Guns killed all the romance out of the violent equation.
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I have been making a short list of things that either annoy me or that I frankly despise. Lets start with twizzlers. What happened to the rope licorice we would tie up in knots when we were kids? Can't find the shoestring anymore. Twizzlers are a synthetic tasting, chemical concoction not fit for lab rats. Don't know how anybody can stomach them.
My friend Gary Lang turned me on to hardcore german and dutch licorice. 9 to 15% percent stuff with no sweetener. Almost have to macho yourself up to handle it, it is so strong. Liike chewing on a piece of tar or asphalt. Not fun.
Speaking of food, we had a bad batch of Strubs' half sour pickles. Leslie called Canada to complain and mentioned my pickle wars blog. I saw them checking it out online and reread it myself, feeling kind of bad because I had rated them a most pedestrian pickle. Sorry Strubbies! They were kind enough to send us a few free coupons.
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Other things that have been placed on my bother list are big trucks that insist on racing past you to the next stoplight, not gaining any advantage besides burning fuel and indulging in a macho alpha male preening display, like one of the lower species.
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Saw the new Planet of the Apes yesterday. I really enjoyed it although I found some of the cinematography a bit desaturated and odd. Great graphics and of course I found myself rooting against homo sapiens and cheering their overthrow by our simian cousins. I decided to search for an online Christian perspective and found this site, which had a perspective that I thought was interesting. The letters in the front are I imagine some categories of sin, your guess is as good as mine...
(H, E, RoRo, B, Pa, Acap, LL, VV, S, N, M) Light humanist, environmentalist worldview posits animals (specifically apes) can obtain equal sentient status or souls to humans simply by biological means, mixed with some strong Romantic notions of “the noble savage” that extol emotional ties between humans and animals and Romantic ideas about zoos and other similar human institutions, some moral elements promoting compassion, mercy and freedom (including some rebukes against revenge), but also a pagan instance of revenge that seems validated, plus an anti-capitalist element where a medical company leader puts profits above ethics; 10 mostly light obscenities (mostly “h” words, a couple “s” words, one “d” word), three strong profanities and four light exclamatory profanities; strong violence of one kind or another, often with scary creatures....no sex scenes but couple shown sleeping in bed together but movie never shows whether they are married or not; upper male nudity; no alcohol use; no smoking; and, lying, revenge is rebuked in some scenes but not rebuked in another scene...RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES is brilliantly directed and acted. It also promotes compassion, mercy and freedom. However, these positive elements are undercut by some Romantic, humanist ideas. The movie also has intense violent scenes, scary creatures and some foul language. Caution is advised, especially for pre-adolescents.
Couple shown sleeping in bed together, horrors, didn't Rob and Laura Petrie cross that hurdle decades ago? Undercut by romantic, humanist ideas? Welcome to the new dark ages. What do you do for a living? Oh, I count the light obscenities in the movies...
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I am of course as freaked out by the events in Washington and the stock market crash as anyone. And I am pissed. The Republicans are acting like anarchist firebrands intent on burning the whole house down. Their hatred and wrath for the President and liberals is obviously stronger than their concerns for the welfare of our nation. With a tax rate for the upper brackets as low as it has been since Eisenhower, we should have just allowed the Bush tax cuts to expire. They have manufactured a crisis, set the store on fire and now are complaing that the President and cohorts aren't putting it out fast enough. Paul Ryan and Cantor can intone that America can and will not keep its Social Security or Medicare promises but treat taxes and subsidies as sacred cows.
I have never seen a congress so bent on obstruction, on thwarting the president's every move. And unfortunately, if they get their man elected the next go, people will remember and the acrimony will only get worse.
Standard and Poor can sit with its finger up its ass while Morgan peddles shitty worthless paper, saying nary a peep, but they feel it now their duty to impugn and take down the United States financial system. Which makes it somewhat ironic that everyone seems to be fleeing stocks and buying our treasury debt.
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The international arab community is finally speaking up about the genocide campaign in Hama, Syria. Unfortunately the regime will not listen. Dictatorships are always fighting "lawless elements and foreign provocateurs."
I think the lesson in Syria and Libya is that if you start a revolution you better have a good chance of success and have all of your ducks in a row. Both Qaddafi and Assad will slowly kill every remaining dissenter. There is an old zen warrior axiom that says that one should never draw one's sword until he is ready to cut his opponents head off. Early brandishing is an often fatal tactical mistake. May these two despots soon meet their ugly end. Syria is said to be ready to institute comprehensive reform. As soon as they lay waste to the riffraff, I am sure. Poor people.
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My hosts are great cooks and have turned me on to Cook's Magazine, specifically the new article on the silver duck press. Blast reader Helen picked up on the same piece and posted a cool shot of the 60 lb. Christofle sterling press over at Guacamole Gulch.
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A huge number of my music videos are getting pulled by the authorities. Even the Fugs. Sorry.
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Speaking of music, another item for my hated short list. Christian music. I drive through large swaths of America where it is either country or christian. It is not about me despising any creed or theology. The question is why the music so freaking awful? The Jesus I have read about was no mamby pamby wimp. He had beitzim. Yet the music of those that venerate him is largely such a saccharine and uninteresting catalogue. Except for black gospel of course, those folks being way out ahead of the curve.
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Happy to see Warren Jeffs get the life sentence for his pedophilia. Brave nephew came out this week and confessed to being sodomized by his uncle. Jeffs called down the whirlwinds of god's wrath on the judge but thankfully the magistrate still seems to be doing okay. He promised a "whirlwind of judgment" on the world if God's "humble servant" wasn't set free. God can tell you to do all sorts of things. Can give cover to sexual deviants, racists, all sorts of strange people. Pardon me for not being tolerant of your peccadillos or intolerance. Glad they popped the big child porn ring last week as well.
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Read today that the Franklin Mountains of my sometime boyhood home El Paso, were once connected to Antarctica, forming the supercontinent of Rodinia. Who knew?
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Take it easy and wish me, yourselves and the rest of the freaking country and world luck. Let's just breathe a minute.
10 comments:
"You may also like": The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.
Peeves? Don't get me started.
-E
"He (Jesus) had beitzim". Love your use of Yiddish in your blog. So colorful, so onomatopoetic.
You asked some weeks back-"What the fuck happ-
ened?", some weeks back in your 'don't trust anyone under fifty' post. Well I think the seeds that Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and the peace movement sowed are bearing fruit, and all over the world, the money-
changers' tables are being overturned. People's pat-
ience are wearing thin, and although religious, racial,
political and ethnic differences can be noted and ci-
ted, it appears to be increasingly evident that the
"five letter word"- as your self-hating Chomsky would say, CLASS, is rearing its ugly head.
The audio track on your "London Calling" post rev-
eals it. The governments will want to squelch this and instead focus on the aforementioned differences which keeps the masses divided, but globally the desperation is being felt, and
"desperate people do desperate things". The empo-
rers and governments of the world are being seen
as the naked, pompous, self-interested corporate puppets that they
are. The downtrodden and disenfranchised -now increasingly our neighbors, friends and family- are
now not so easily ignored. It's easy to give into anger, and its a step up from apathy, but it can't be
indulged in for very long without violent actions and repercussions. But it does seem to wake the author-
ities up to the people's passion.
Our politicians want us to take sides, to get a lather
up bipartisanally. Like watching a pro-wrestling match. Now they've screwed the pooch. People are pissed off at all of them and how they've gambled with their brinksmanship and cavalier attitude towards the peoples' lives and livelihoods. They've shown their loyalties and priorities. They did it to themselves...beautiful. Republicans and teabuggers
are showing their heartlessness and corporate alleg- iances, I recall seeing some Republican senator say-
ing a couple months ago, "we're all about protecting
the wealth". What he doesn't want to admit is that of
course means the wealthy. But we have a classless
society in America, right? Martin Luther King said once that
its a heartless thing to say to a man with no boots to tell him to pull himself up by his bootstraps. That's becoming more of us now.
It used to be that missiles pointing at each other was
seen as a necessary evil to balance the powers and
create a sense of peace through the threat of mutual destruction. Now the strategy is to have everyone's
hand on each other's wallet, or each other's credit card, as the case may be. The creditors always win.
Libertarians extol the market, that privatization will
sort things out. Its funny seeing them run around in
a panic on the trading floor, like chickens with their heads chopped off, and then trying to do their best to restore confidence, as that is what the market runs on. The weavers have to continue to spin ever
finer garments, to keep the economy going. Consumer spending is two-thirds of our economy. The power truly lies in the hands of the people. Bartering co-ops are looking more sensible as people need to take matters back into their own hands. Not everyone needs or wants to be an entrepreneur. But everyone has a skill or something that can be traded that someone else needs. This also can bring people together and form a new kind of community, like the old Free Store in the Haight.
Online or offline, communication and community.
Power to the people. Gray power to those fifty and older, I guess. Wave your freak flag high!
Wish you well always in your financial endeavors, Blue Heron, but know that regardless how it turns out, you'll have some great times with your friends.
Take care and have a safe and pleasant trip -
"Whomever"
Stay away from raw and natural licorice. Speeds up heartbeat, bad for the heart.
Standard/P is 110% correct and the very specious self serving argument about there past criminality is totally irrelevant .....one other point the self righteous critics of their down grade never said boo when they did collude with ....Lehman....Bear Stearns.....and Goldman Sachs Chairman Paulson running the US government and handing out $100billions to his own firm as they embezzled may be a $trillion by short selling their own securities.....and Goldman now is literally back in control......give SP some credit this time around they are trying to do the right thing before we end up like Greece and most do not realize the Federal Reserve has snuck another 3/4$$trillion on their balance sheet and future entitlements total $40trillion...best..wish
Wbish
give Jennifer Knapp's "Lay it Down" a listen; it's one of my favorite albums, in any genre.
Hey...didn't we have a surplus some years ago??
What happened with that???
One minor correction: during the Eisenhower years, the top tax rate, for the wealthy, was 90%. In the 60s it went down to 70%. Obama has been talking about raising the top rate to 39.5% fort hose with AGIs over 250K. That's a far cry from 90%.
Yes it is, Sanoguy. Buy oh, how they will cry! Your punishing our success! And how the rest of us are dead weight, bemoaning social welfare while protecting their govt. subsidies i.e. corporate welfare. The billionaire's club pledge to donate their money is so they can have control where their money goes.(while I support philanthropy, I would rather they would stop patting themselves on their backs and pay their f'ing taxes, they've outsourced jobs and shuffled their money to Dubai and then want to proclaim themselves as patriotic Americans). It would be nice if we could choose where our money goes in regards to our taxes. Then I think we could get an honest read of the nation's pulse. We have been told for years not to depend on Social Security. Then what's the use of paying into it? We have to fund these programs so they work, not just so they have more money to funnel into projects like destabilzing foreign gov'ts., so they can open more markets abroad to push mall culture overseas and create more consumers of mind-numbing crap.
I apologize for the tone of this and for my other comments as well, they read so shrill. I guess sometimes it seems a bit necessary to rise above the din. But I risk becoming the same arrogant, opinionated, loud-mouthed bastard that I dislike as well. This isn't a place for me to indulge and vent my spleen. I'll endeavor if I comment to do so in a more gentlemanly manner, and so apologize to the Blue Heron and the Blast community.
- Whomever
" I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.."
- Elvis Costello
Anonymous Whomever: I don' see any reason for you to apologize. i think you stated your case in no uncertain terms... and that's ok in my book!!!
- Thanks, Sanoguy.
- Whomever
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