Saturday, March 5, 2011
Bierce’s Second Act « Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog
Bierce’s Second Act « Beachcombing's Bizarre History Blog
why i LOVE the Ambrose, the original west coast cranky pants cynic to me.
namaste
mega
why i LOVE the Ambrose, the original west coast cranky pants cynic to me.
namaste
mega
Friday, March 4, 2011
MOMENTO MORI
"when my father died..it was like library had burned down." Laurie Anderson song
aloha 2u,
was up most of the nite with GERD-acid reflux, accidentally bought
some vegan 'sausage' which didn't agree with me.
feeling both solemn and exhausted right now.
last nite found out that the rights to BLADE RUNNER
have been sold for sequels,prequels and possible tv...
i was in the test groups and saw all three versions of BR,
with a happy ending and not, with and without Ford's narration.
IMHO BR is an almost perfect film, very atmospheric and detailed,
like THE FIFTH ELEMENT or the RESIDENT EVIL franchise.
in the finale of the rooftops wherein Roy Batty talks about the life
he's lead and the fantastic things he has seen..Priceless.
this was reignited in me yesterday as i talked to my PT masseuse
about my father, who had PTSD from four yeqars in WWII ,
i was unaware that he'd even served until he got a military funeral
and we got VA benefits checks.he never said a word and then
about a decade ago there was a huge VA records fire,
so his past is now totally lost. i checked for my kidz, and for myself.
"..like a library had burned down.."
maybe my sons will read this babble some day and know
my motives and history a lil better, maybe not...
momento mori, remember me.
namaste
mega
aloha 2u,
was up most of the nite with GERD-acid reflux, accidentally bought
some vegan 'sausage' which didn't agree with me.
feeling both solemn and exhausted right now.
last nite found out that the rights to BLADE RUNNER
have been sold for sequels,prequels and possible tv...
i was in the test groups and saw all three versions of BR,
with a happy ending and not, with and without Ford's narration.
IMHO BR is an almost perfect film, very atmospheric and detailed,
like THE FIFTH ELEMENT or the RESIDENT EVIL franchise.
in the finale of the rooftops wherein Roy Batty talks about the life
he's lead and the fantastic things he has seen..Priceless.
this was reignited in me yesterday as i talked to my PT masseuse
about my father, who had PTSD from four yeqars in WWII ,
i was unaware that he'd even served until he got a military funeral
and we got VA benefits checks.he never said a word and then
about a decade ago there was a huge VA records fire,
so his past is now totally lost. i checked for my kidz, and for myself.
"..like a library had burned down.."
maybe my sons will read this babble some day and know
my motives and history a lil better, maybe not...
momento mori, remember me.
namaste
mega
Thursday, March 3, 2011
PANTS ON FIRE
"BUREAUCRACY IS A GIANT MECHANISM OPERATED BY PYGMIES." Honore De Balzac
aloha 2u,
trouble sleeping again. think i see a pattern forming,
pattern recognition, follow me down the rabbit hole?
"TRIANGLE FIRE"is a docu currently playing on PBS.
SOUL MATE advised me to watch and i did.for those of u not hip to US Labor History
its about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of Mar 1911 wherein 145 wimmin either jumped to their deaths or were burned alive due to the paranoia of the millionaire owners,who escaped unscathed, who bolted fire exits shut as part of an anti-'shrinkage' employee theft prevention scheme.
BTW the employers were later tried in court and acquitted...sigh.
BTW 2 i worked for such a man in the 70s who was filthy rich,drove a Mercedes,lived in a Marin mansion and liven in fear someone was stealing a pencil or sheet of paper from his lucrative art supply store, apparently this greed/paranoia is common in his class. meanwhile i lived on one meal a day, $1 soups and bread, and walked a mile two to work then back.and yes i did delight in encouraging his harassed browbeaten underpaid union-less workers to think big and Steal Big...that's how i roll as my son Z Man would say.
where do i begin?
historians call this era of ruthless Robber Baron capitalism The Gilded Era due to the wealth disparities between rich and poor, which gave birth to desparate union formations and struggles. think Carnegie,Mellon, Rockefeller,JP Morgan, Vanderbilt,Astor,Mark Hopkins etc etc.
thots..
like Marie Antoinette of old, the wealth gap is even bigger now, huge in fact, than then. one hedge fund manager made FIVE BILLION US$ last year..four others only made a Billion each. huge $igh.
the GOP platform, which i have joked harkens back to 1928 actually harkens back to the Gilded Era of 1911- no employee safety,long hours, low wages, child labor,no benefits, no collective bargaining,no cohesive labor movement..sounds like the current Wisconsin and the Tea Party madness right?.
from the Know Nothings of pre Civil; War era to the Tea Party of today there is a streak of virulent meanness in american culture, backed by rigid unbending fundamentalism-racism-sexism and dog east dog cruelty.to those of us born inside The Matrix this is Normal. we are ignorant of its consequences and poisons.long shuddery sigh.
Bernie Madoff is rightfully in prison and still blaming others for his faults, like the rapists blames the victims for "asking for it".i think the Newsweek cover was "am i a sociopath?" IMHO Hell YEAH!
in the classic BLADE RUNNER, Harrison Ford has a device which he uses to test Sean Young to see if she is a "replicant",basically an empathy-less sociopathic exploitable worker bee android. recent PET scans have shown that Conservatives and Faux News viewers in general have larger lobes for FEAR than liberals, so we could-in theory- discriminate from a young age the scared from the scary....
i am of two minds on this..
1.just look at the damage inflicted by sociopaths of every stripe on the society, from WallStreet to some three card monte hustler in Times Square,think of the Billions wasted and scammed that could be used for nobler purposes.
2.1984's Orwell THOUGHT POLICE...sigh.
afraid i have no concrete answers for this one, just another question.
everything americans enjoy is made illegal unless it makes The Elite money,
is that why the USA leads the world in gun ownership,violence and drug usage?
this is NOT some Jimmy Carter style transient Malaise,
this is a deep soul rotting cancer in the american psyche.
we can wallpaper it over with drugs,info-tainments,sex addictions,
vidoe carnage,Empire,American Exceptionalism
(God likes us best) and the usual puritanical hypocrisy
(Charlie Sheen,Lindsay Lohan)
but we know in our gut that deep down inside we are hollow,
like the Hollow Men of TS Eliot's poetry/warning.
yes, we are/were capapbale of Great Things
but i fear those days are long gone
as The Elites scramble for the last platinum plated crumbs
on the dinner tables of the sinking USA Titanic
we,the workers, already drowning in steerage,
aren't worth a single thot less known a lifeboat against
the growing cold dark and the voracious sharks circling in it..sigh.
it got down to 25 degrees here one nite last week, unusual to say the least,
the cold heart of The Elites is even colder. Kelvin scale cold wherein
all atomic activity slows to a crawl..just like the us economy..SIGH & CRY.
"this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the wrold ends,
not with a bang but a whimper."
TS Eliot
GTG
namaste
mega
aloha 2u,
trouble sleeping again. think i see a pattern forming,
pattern recognition, follow me down the rabbit hole?
"TRIANGLE FIRE"is a docu currently playing on PBS.
SOUL MATE advised me to watch and i did.for those of u not hip to US Labor History
its about the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of Mar 1911 wherein 145 wimmin either jumped to their deaths or were burned alive due to the paranoia of the millionaire owners,who escaped unscathed, who bolted fire exits shut as part of an anti-'shrinkage' employee theft prevention scheme.
BTW the employers were later tried in court and acquitted...sigh.
BTW 2 i worked for such a man in the 70s who was filthy rich,drove a Mercedes,lived in a Marin mansion and liven in fear someone was stealing a pencil or sheet of paper from his lucrative art supply store, apparently this greed/paranoia is common in his class. meanwhile i lived on one meal a day, $1 soups and bread, and walked a mile two to work then back.and yes i did delight in encouraging his harassed browbeaten underpaid union-less workers to think big and Steal Big...that's how i roll as my son Z Man would say.
where do i begin?
historians call this era of ruthless Robber Baron capitalism The Gilded Era due to the wealth disparities between rich and poor, which gave birth to desparate union formations and struggles. think Carnegie,Mellon, Rockefeller,JP Morgan, Vanderbilt,Astor,Mark Hopkins etc etc.
thots..
like Marie Antoinette of old, the wealth gap is even bigger now, huge in fact, than then. one hedge fund manager made FIVE BILLION US$ last year..four others only made a Billion each. huge $igh.
the GOP platform, which i have joked harkens back to 1928 actually harkens back to the Gilded Era of 1911- no employee safety,long hours, low wages, child labor,no benefits, no collective bargaining,no cohesive labor movement..sounds like the current Wisconsin and the Tea Party madness right?.
from the Know Nothings of pre Civil; War era to the Tea Party of today there is a streak of virulent meanness in american culture, backed by rigid unbending fundamentalism-racism-sexism and dog east dog cruelty.to those of us born inside The Matrix this is Normal. we are ignorant of its consequences and poisons.long shuddery sigh.
Bernie Madoff is rightfully in prison and still blaming others for his faults, like the rapists blames the victims for "asking for it".i think the Newsweek cover was "am i a sociopath?" IMHO Hell YEAH!
in the classic BLADE RUNNER, Harrison Ford has a device which he uses to test Sean Young to see if she is a "replicant",basically an empathy-less sociopathic exploitable worker bee android. recent PET scans have shown that Conservatives and Faux News viewers in general have larger lobes for FEAR than liberals, so we could-in theory- discriminate from a young age the scared from the scary....
i am of two minds on this..
1.just look at the damage inflicted by sociopaths of every stripe on the society, from WallStreet to some three card monte hustler in Times Square,think of the Billions wasted and scammed that could be used for nobler purposes.
2.1984's Orwell THOUGHT POLICE...sigh.
afraid i have no concrete answers for this one, just another question.
everything americans enjoy is made illegal unless it makes The Elite money,
is that why the USA leads the world in gun ownership,violence and drug usage?
this is NOT some Jimmy Carter style transient Malaise,
this is a deep soul rotting cancer in the american psyche.
we can wallpaper it over with drugs,info-tainments,sex addictions,
vidoe carnage,Empire,American Exceptionalism
(God likes us best) and the usual puritanical hypocrisy
(Charlie Sheen,Lindsay Lohan)
but we know in our gut that deep down inside we are hollow,
like the Hollow Men of TS Eliot's poetry/warning.
yes, we are/were capapbale of Great Things
but i fear those days are long gone
as The Elites scramble for the last platinum plated crumbs
on the dinner tables of the sinking USA Titanic
we,the workers, already drowning in steerage,
aren't worth a single thot less known a lifeboat against
the growing cold dark and the voracious sharks circling in it..sigh.
it got down to 25 degrees here one nite last week, unusual to say the least,
the cold heart of The Elites is even colder. Kelvin scale cold wherein
all atomic activity slows to a crawl..just like the us economy..SIGH & CRY.
"this is the way the world ends,
this is the way the wrold ends,
not with a bang but a whimper."
TS Eliot
GTG
namaste
mega
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