Monday, December 17, 2007

Mea Culpa

Sometimes you have to clarify, if only in your own mind so that you can show yourself what you think. Then again, later on in life when you’re being considered for that important secret government mission, it’s a good fallback in case your loyalty is questioned.

I don’t hate America at all, sometimes I think I should but I don’t. Unlike others, neither America nor Baiseball has been berry good to me. In fact, during my time in America my country treated me pretty poorly because of my foolish assumption that the amendments to the Constitution meant something. Sure, I acted out under the false impression that anyone wanted to hear the truth to begin with and my idea of guerrilla theater probably pissed off legitimate theater the same way my Socratic annoyances pissed of the Scientologists. But still, it didn’t work out well.

All of that aside, I love America. I love the idea of America anyway. America isn’t really a country. It’s an idea. The problem with ideas is that they are hard to translate into material conditions. It was the same thing with Communism. Some of my happiest moments were living on communes. It worked there. It didn’t work in Russia or anywhere else that I know of so far. The reason it didn’t work there and the reason that the idea of America doesn’t translate into the America that you see is because people got involved in interpreting it to the advantage of those looking to take advantage.

America is the idea that anyone can make it if they work hard and play by the rules. It is supposed to favor the entrepreneur and the Horatio Alger prototype. It’s supposed to exemplify freedom and other ideals long cherished in the human spirit. It’s been a failure at that. It is, in fact, not so gradually, mutating into tyranny. Things turn into their opposites. It happens. Now, in order to protect freedom, freedom must be sacrificed. What it comes down to is that someone doesn’t want to share. Someone missed that part of pre-school and kindergarten. That’s what happened.

That’s what happened to Communism too. Someone didn’t want to share. Both systems are beautiful ideas. You’re just not going to see them any time soon.

All the other explanations from the most simple to the most intricate are mostly bullshit. It comes down to people not wanting to share. This leads to the belief that there won’t be enough to go around and that leads to people being trampled in their efforts to buy a cheap laptop.

The thing is, there’s always enough to go around. There is always more than enough to go around. If you have an apple tree and that apple tree is healthy it is going to give you more than enough apples to eat. That’s Nature’s way and that extrapolates into all of the other areas of existence. There’s always more air than you need to breathe and more water than you need to drink. I don’t care what anyone says about this, there’s always more.

So when I rail against what I see America up to it doesn’t mean I hate America. I’m just disappointed. I also don’t like seeing people get hurt for no other reason than that people don’t want to share. That’s what’s behind Iraq and all the other bloodfests. That’s what’s behind the genocide in Palestine and that’s what’s happening in The Congo and Myanmar and anywhere else. People don’t want to share.

They don’t want to share power or resources. They don’t want to share the stage. They don’t want to share the fruit but would rather feed it to cattle that drink up all the water and account for a whole lot of not sharing and lead to some fat-cat braying over his martini glass something like, “How do you like those apples?” He’s not talking about tree apples, if you catch my drift.

So all of the people who don’t want to share come up with the most creative explanations and theories; like ‘trickle down’ and privatizing social security. They create charities where the money disappears. They respond to disasters and create new disasters and nothing is ever anyone’s fault. It’s certainly not the fault of the people whose fault it is and it’s definitely not the fault of whatever stooge they set up; whoever they hired on the basis of his incompetence to take the heat for what ‘they’ did.

This is the same thing with war. Wars are created because people don’t want to share and then the blame for the war is placed on all kinds of circumstances and people who are only momentarily connected to it. When I say people don’t want to share I should add something else. That’s not the only thing; not wanting to share. Not only do they not want to share but they want more too. This is the state of Israel today where not sharing and wanting more has been turned into an art form.

This is the state of America today where not sharing and wanting more has led to a whole lot of other people wanting more because they hardly have anything at all. That’s why you see all those homeless people and why you have all that crime and why people are unable to get medical treatment and you can add just about anything here. It’s all about not wanting to share and wanting more that you also won’t share and wanting more still that you will still not share.

So, when you hear me go on about America, or Israel, or ‘The City’ in London or anywhere those who don’t share and want more get together to squeeze a little more out of whoever has less than them well... remember. It isn’t because I hate anyone. It’s because it’s wrong and because it disappoints me to see it when I know it doesn’t have to be like that. It also shames me to be an American.

I was at a dinner last night that was attended by people of various nationalities. At one point I was speaking to a group and I noticed that some people were staring at me with their mouths open and something that was either shock or surprise on their faces. So I asked, “What’s wrong.” This woman said to me. “Nothing, it’s just that I never expected to hear an American say these things.” Others chimed in as well with pretty much the same response.

How do you think that makes me feel? First off I have to live as an expatriate because I couldn’t live as I do and say the things that I do in my own country or they would put me in jail. They’ve already done that several times before. Then I have to live in other countries while my country is behaving badly and killing people because they don’t want to share, while also bullying their supposed friends into going along with it. It creates resentment. Meanwhile, I am one of the very Americans that doesn’t have any connection to this bad behavior. Man... it just ain’t fair.

The killing truth is that none of it has to be this way. Why all of the people who don’t have enough or are pushed up against the wall by circumstance allow these people to go on as they do is a mystery to me. Stranger still is why so many of them support people who are in the business of taking away still more of what little they have to begin with.

It’s past tiresome to watch all these silicone slick faces telling the same old lies about what they’re going to do and then watch them do none of it. In a real world where the idea was the reality these Teletubby monster pigs would have long been driven into the exploding hog lagoons that they’ve turned everybody’s landscape into. They’d have been dealt with according to the laws and principles inherent in the idea of the place that- unfortunately- does not have any recourse to the laws and principles upon which it is based.

Well, there it is. If we could just find our way back to understanding and acting out of the things we should have learned as little children I wouldn’t have to say the things I do. Until that happens I can’t see as how I have any choice but to continue to.

Visible sings: God in Country by Les Visible♫ Pure Sweet Love ♫
'Pure Sweet Love' is track no. 8 of 11 on Visible's 2001 album 'God in Country'
Lyrics (pops up)

God in Country by Les Visible

Monday, December 10, 2007

Launching a New Blog and Tripping through the same Bog

This site is supposed to be about cultural things and it has been. Lately I’ve used it for more poetic offerings... stream of consciousness and whatever I was feeling or thinking about that didn’t fit in the other blogs. So... I’m going to create a blog for that; poetry... random musings... purely creative things that don’t ‘have to be’ about anything but will always be about something.

So, I’m going to launch that new blog here today. I don’t know what I’m going to call it yet but doing this will provoke me into following through. This is just a once upon a time thing here. Next time this will go back to being a cultural blog and we’ll try to focus on the varieties of bacteria that will show up depending on the particular glass slide under the microscope. It won’t always be bacteria. There are other life forms.

I’m going to post a series of short poems that may or may not be about anything the reader imagines them to be about. Poetry is hard to define. One thing you can say about poetry is that it is either inspired or constructed. Most poetry is constructed because most poets aren’t poets. They just want to be poets. Poetry can get people laid and it’s also a medium for personal definition. Everybody thinks they want to be Don Juan DeMarcos, as long as it doesn’t get them institutionalized. People want the flash without the pain. That’s why people will go away to weekend seminars and become Reiki masters or psycho-therapists. If they had to do something all of the time and it took a long time to achieve any degree of perfection they’re not as interested.

Saying these things doesn’t make me a poet. There aren’t very many poets and those who are, are not the happiest of mortals during their time here because they straddle two different worlds. One isn’t a poet in and of themselves. Poets are those who have found the favor of The Muse. They don’t write the poetry, they are merely the delivery system. If you have the favor of The Muse, you are aware of it. Otherwise it’s more like channeling Ramtha or something. If you look into the new age adverts in any major city you will find dozens of people channeling some strange agencies. You’ll find multiple incidences of people channeling Moses and other famous figures. It’s a mystery to me why Moses or the rest of them would need more than one faucet but... what do I know?

A few years ago, one of the worst poets who ever lived and who wasn’t a poet but was mislabeled as one; ...Rod McKuen, made six million dollars in one year. It is possible that he made more money than all of the other poets put together before the century he was in. Certainly no one else came close to that figure. No other celebrated poet was as execrable as Rod McKuen. There’s a message there.

Well... just a few things to launch the boat; untitled and undefined.




The old fellow
grew backwards
Each situation
Was a return
So that light
was
A bright sequence of mirrors
facing emptiness


Whether you are
or have been
I do not know
I
is the pivoting of mind
upon itself
A moment in view
of what has passed beyond you


The spirit of God sings through
everyone
but sometimes it
carries a tune


The fool
looked long and deeply
into the pool
where swim
myriads of enchanted fish
Millions of eyes lit the forest with life
while we were
light years away
coupling in God this morning


Graceful rivers edge you have become
the soul of nature in an unknown tongue
The nightingale of love
The softness of rain
The mist on the mountains
The heart of the flameAnd I lean upon your motion
like a wave upon the ocean


Raft of love
ride easy on the waves
you know what makes men slaves
And though you cannot
force them to be free
You will not leave the sea


Eternal
Forever eternal
Within the absolute
our destinies entwine
and burn
like candles of endless wax
A time traveled circle of events
Interchangeable
Creating God and man
To become each other


Tao
is the cat’s meow
in the magic forest of dreams


Under the deepest rock
in the furthest reach of time
God wrote his name
in little letters
In a fine hand
he wrote
God


Moments held together
by the web of interwoven motion
like one sad and secret ocean
heaving
We plaited fingers
on midnight beaches
in shades dressed
beneath the lightof eternity’s half sister
We closed our openings with each other


When your heart is broken
When the mirror in which you imagined yourself
has been shattered
and the glittering shards
of love’s greatest and most tragic illusion
lies broken
and utterly beyond repair
in the dust of some metaphorical street
Sweep...sweep...sweep

Monday, December 03, 2007

Caught Between a Bad Cake and an Earache

Bzzzt...Bzzzt...Bzzzt

I'm standing in the rain in Sin City. My Santa suit is turning into an Indian rain dance version of McArthur Park and the Man called Horse is dead.

Karen Carpenter still loves me. I wish Minnie Ripperton did; both dead...just me and Micky Rourke and this bad plastic surgeon standing here. I forget why. I feel sick. People tell me I am sick. It's still raining...my Santa suit...it didn't fit when I got it...now? Don't ask.

It's hot for some reason. I should be cold. It should be as cold as my heart but....

rain...

voices....

something is melting in the rain and I don't think it will ever be the same again.

I did everything I could. I did my vulnerable James Dean thing. He's dead too; not cause of me though. Not cause of me.

I reached out and

touched somebodys hand...wait a minute...is that another song?...no, McArthur's Park is still playing. It feels like it will go on forever. Last time I heard it, it did. How come? ...never mind.

I'm not Jason. I can't even skate all that well, much less play hockey. I could have learned though, if life hadn't gotten in the way...I...who?

Somewhere back down the road I wanted to do something. Now there's just that old Tarzan movie playing in the electronics store across the street...no sound...it's quiet except I want to kill Richard Harris. But if Celine Dion and the Belmont’s walk by right now, Johnny Wadd won't have to dress up like an Indian in that small house across the street in North Hollywood. It's strange... I thought he died on Wonderland Drive... no... that was the other guys. Anyway Richard would be safe if Celine walked by. I just want to kill someone but it has to mean something....there's this big multi-tiered cake...it's melting. I really don't think I can take it again. Elton's gone. One of the grooms is buried to his waist in mascarpone, the other one is just a bump in the icing. I don't want to think about what's going on...down there in the part of the cake that I can't see.

I asked somebody to play. I gave him a challenge... I waited. Wait a minute...keep waiting...nobody came. I would have done Shakespeare; Conan-Doyle, even R. Crumb but nobody came. Some lawyer broad from the ‘burbs made me famous for about five minutes on a dysfunctional message board...Shakespeare, Crumb...? Bzzzt...Bzzzt... that cake ...all the sweet green icing...moonlight. Old Man Moon...or is that River...no, he died outside that club. I had sex with Winona that night...later. Johnny Depp was tied up...no not like that...he and River were tight. Winona told me that people referred to her as 'wanna ride her'.... that was some really nice icing... Did that actually happen? ...I think so- the number she gave me worked. I know because it rang and rang and rang.

It must have been one of those things like that song "Patches"...down by the river that floats by the coal yard...floats by...shudders torn down...girl named...Patches...from Old Shanty Town. She has her friends after all...she could have been pretending or just hungry but...who would fake an orgasm 5 times? ...and it wasn't even for some kind of camera thing. But she's an actress...yeah, so am I.

I wanted to play...but nobody answered me and it was Christmas too...the sweet green icing looked like blood in the traffic lights. Why didn't anybody challenge me...what? did they think I couldn’t do it?....probably...it's no fun here. People throw dirty snowballs from behind parked cars but they don't let me play...

Sad, lonely...twisted guy...limp Santa hat in his hand...Hey guys!! anyone...? anyone?...sniff...sniff...

I've got this tight feeling in my chest...my father is going to beat me when I get home...even worse...he's been dead for some years...Steven King country....I wish my mom was still cute...

Bzzzt...Bzzzt...Bzzzt... fucking neon...so this is Vegas? You can have it. I still got money though. I keep getting more and more ...what the fuck am I going to do with it? Pay somebody to keep the icing from melting? Dig up Richard Harris and party down with John Barrymore...Errol Flynn is still biting the balls off of sheep from where I stand in fractured fugue time.

I was told what didn't kill me would only make me stronger but I can't defend my heart against the lies. All I know about myself is that I never ‘threaten’ to kill anyone....I’m more into apologizing after it happens. ...you and the green icing in the same box with Richard....They said I touched little kids...they said I hated Jews...what's next...commercials?...politics?...religion?....it took so long to fake it and I'll never have that...that....fuck...!

Dateline called...makes me think there might be hope... no... kidding myself ....stupid Santa suit...stupid fucking hat...friends gone....you're just a piece of shit...smack! Smack! Does that hurt? that doesn't hurt enough...no, ...I'm going to cut myself...I'll show them...they'll feel bad when I'm gone. They'll have to listen to all that shit about green icing and go to bed with Celine or even Barbra...yeah that's it...I'll make the whole world take acid and Yohimbe and go to bed with them ...and Elton and them will sing 80's duets all night long along with Lionel Ritchie's daughter.

I thought if I pretended to be Santa and pretended to be high they would....does that hurt? How about this you piece of shit...you dirty little piece of shit!!!!..... I look like Mother Teresa on her period exclamation point...it doesn't hurt and I won't cry....I'm not afraid...why wouldn't they play. I wanted to play...stupid Santa suit...poor bedraggled hat...broken heart....fade....


Merry Christmas! Hello? Anybody? Mickey? Richard?


Credits....


Bzzzt...Bzzzt...Bzzzt....keep on truckin....

What the Hell! Man... that was a bad dream. How come the bedroom stinks of ozone? maybe it wasn't a dream. Maybe this is the dream or I'm actually in a coma in a hospital bed somewhere and... Well, I could be catatonic too- medicated up in some institution... Bzzzt... Bzzzt...

The bad thing is that I can still hear McArthur Park playing somewhere. I know it wasn't playing when I went to sleep last night. I'm really hungry now but I'm afraid to look in the icebox. I'm afraid there's a big green cake in there with tunnels eaten all through it and that I will see the red eyes of rats in parkas watching me from the shadowed interior of the tunnels in the cake. Look out for the bad stranger. Look out for the bad cake... melting in the rain.

I shoulda been a junkie in Samarkand... pipe-dreaming, hype injecting... watching rainbows explode on the inside of my eyelids... turning into dancing musical notes cartooning their way across the horizontal ...like ducks in a shooting gallery.

Well... it hasn't been real and it's not going to get real. I know that... I know it before I walk out the front door. But I've got my pretend face on and I should be able to fake my way through whatever happens until I get back home again. I don't really like going out but it's not the same as it was in Coleridge’s day. You pretty much have to go out at some point and then it's buzzing neon and strange people... Bzzzt... Bzzzt... At least here I'm not holding some wilted wet Santa hat and my feelings aren't being hurt. I'm way past that on this side of the dream... unless I'm in a hospital bed or an institution... or? Bzzzt... Bzzzt... neon buzzing... telephone ringing...

Monday, November 26, 2007

Goddamn the Pusher Man!

Yes... I am still without Internet and so I watch CNN once or twice a day for as long as I can stand... sit, actually, to do it. That is usually as much as 15 minutes, never more than that. In the last eight years I have probably seen CNN International (I’m in Europe) maybe a couple of dozen times. I haven’t seen any other network news except for a brief period about seven years ago when I saw MSN cable news a few times, occasionally seeing Leno or Conan O’Brien as well. Maybe I could still find that again now; I’m supposed to get 500 channels from the satellite we installed but I can’t be bothered to look. We have it so that the elderly woman who lives with us can get her TV.

It’s been interesting, these brief periods of pained observation. I watch myself while I’m watching and I notice that I get increasingly angry... annoyed... uneasy... I begin to feel more and more out of wack and at some point I shut it off.

It’s been a little over a month now that I have been down here at my house in Southern Europe for the winter. I live in Europe because in late 1999 I saw Bush coming and I said, “It’s time to go.” When Reagan showed up I said much the same thing and moved from the east coast of America to Maui, HI. It was as far as I could go and still be within the U.S. In the end, there was no further I could go and remain in America. I made the smart decision and I got out of Dodge.

I was thrown in jail several times in previous years; a direct result of things I had said on stage or wherever I was running my mouth. Yes, the actual circumstances of my imprisonment were not from what I had said- but what I had said- did lead to the conditions under which I got arrested. In every case I was told this later. In the two major cases, other crimes were engineered. In the last one I managed to prove this and was acquitted. I remain the only person in Hawaiian history that beat these major felonies under these circumstances. I was facing a mandatory 60 years in prison at the time. I managed this with a court-appointed lawyer and no money. That is a story for another time; what a circus that was. It would make a great movie. In any case ...I digress.

I remember when Ted Turner had CNN. It was a different time. You really did get the news and it was an outstanding concept. I remember wondering on several occasions; what happened to CNN? For some reason I always forget. Then I remember... Time Warner happened to CNN. The Zionistas took over that airwave as they have taken over every airwave they can get their hands on. It’s a smart tactical move. When you are a well-financed fascist putsch with designs on world domination, the first thing you want to get your hands on is the mediums of information. They didn’t figure on the Internet. For some reason there’s always something that later comes around to bite the brown-shirts in the ass. There are always Nazi’s among us. They are always looking for opportunity. They are always looking to create conditions of opportunity. They are always the spearhead of financial interests. They can be the perceived victims at one juncture and then turn into the oppressors at another. It’s a permanent fixture of the dark side of the human mind.

They are like bacteria, actually ‘viruses’ would define it more accurately. They like to create crisis and conditions of fear. They especially like to occupy the mass mind with trivia and banal pursuit; bread and circuses. They are active in ‘dumbing down’. They are big into the distribution of drugs. They control the kind of music that plays on the radio and the programs that people watch. One might think this was fantastic on the face of it but you can just look and see it. It’s happening right in front of you.

CNN now has a variety of shills whose cartoon effect defies belief. Who is this Richard Quest? I remember this weird freak that used to be on Carson or Leno- often, I can’t remember which. He printed all of these books which showed you how to rip off money from the government... legally sort of. He was a hyperactive fool with spittle flying and appeared to have just been tazered whenever he began to speak. I could never figure out what he was doing on major television. I also couldn’t figure what he was doing pushing the products he was pushing. Richard Quest is this same guy reincarnated, except that he is talking to world leaders and former world leaders like Jimmy Carter and doing strange offensive, unintentional satires on Peace and whatever he touches; releasing doves and what not. His voice and demeanor have the impact of fingernails being drawn down a blackboard yet... he’s on TV a great deal. Someone has chosen him in order to legitimize buffoonery for the ‘dumbing down’ effect. Little Georgie Bush was chosen for the same reason. Life is becoming a cartoon.

It’s more insidious than that. Zionista, Christine Armanpour is now going after Vladimir Putin, painting him as the same sort of implied scoundrel that Chavez and Ahmanedijad are supposed to be. All of them have oil. Guess who wants that oil? I’m not saying that Putin and the others are altar boys. But how does Bush compare to these men? It’s a fact that he’s killed and/or destroyed the lives of more people than all present world leaders put together, much less these three. Their only real crime is that they oppose what Bush’s handlers are up to- or are engaged in things that Israel; which controls the U.S. government, objects to.

Every single day, ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ is murdering Palestinians and imprisoning their ‘democratically elected’ leaders. They shoot school children on their way to school. They have hundreds of children in prison. They were friends and supporters of the South African apartheid government and are now practicing an even more virulent version of it. They let their settlers attack Palestinians with impunity while the soldiers and police look on... often laughing about it. You can see the truth of this on Youtube. What they did in Lebanon recently is beyond obscene. Nary a word is ever said on CNN about it. Israel doesn’t want Iran to have nuclear power because of what they ‘might’ do. Meanwhile at Dimona the Israelis have their own nuclear weapon stockpile with no oversight and have imprisoned the man who blew the whistle on them for many years. This is all okay though. This is all okay. They are a superior race and everyone else is an insect. It says so in the Talmud.

Every time there is a disaster, CNN takes its camera crew on location and looks for some wretched, inarticulate soul that is guaranteed to crack-up on camera and then they take them to their devastated homes and film them weeping and wailing. It’s entertainment. When there is a pending political debate, like the upcoming Republican debate, they screen people with the greatest clown and fool factor and then use them in their looping commercials. Presently they’ve got a spit spraying wacko yelling about his taxes who’s a ringer for that comedian Gabriel something or other; a corpulent woman holding a stuffed donkey, a stern Muslim woman in full costume and a paranoid teen age boy playing pocket pool below the lens.

When I wrote that the ‘diamonds and pearls’ question at the Democratic debate was scripted, I didn’t know that for a fact. But I could see that it had to be. Now I find out that it certainly was and that many more people than I were outraged by it. The woman who asked the question has gone to some length to disassociate herself from the event, saying that this is what CNN demanded. It doesn’t change anything.

What of the other news channels like Fox and the rest? Surely they are as bad and some, like Fox are much worse. This season’s Nazis are a tight aggregate of Christian fundies, Israelis and assorted Zionistas, London bankers, neo-cons, corporate interests and a little of this and a little of that. They’re running the show for the moment and it’s a ghastly affair. It’s amusing that some of them have pretensions of religion when they produce the sorts of things that they do. I think of Sciafe and Murdoch, Wolfowitz and Kristol, all kneeling before some black draped altar before Baphomet ascendant, praying for guidance as they shepherd the world through increasing states of pain and stupidity. The vision of these men can be most accurately seen in the works they produce.

These Nazis will go the way of all Nazis eventually. A whole lot of people will die on the way in ever new and ingenious ways. Human dignity will be trampled under the feet of rampaging shoppers and crushed under the asses of impossibly fat TV junkies. Innocence will be raped in every opening and treacle and screams will fill the air so thickly that what was once human will develop a breathing apparatus for it but... finally, somewhere, at some time, new human life cycle will develop from the wreckage with new hope in their eyes and a new vision in their hearts. A new world will emerge ...then, sooner or later, the Nazis will show up again. We need our Nazis. For some reason we need them and finally they’ll turn up on Hogan’s Heroes, complete with laugh tracks, in shows produced by emergent gestating Nazis. Those who worship the new Gods will be those that crucified them in the previous reel and I’ll probably be in Mongolia or some unnamed island and I still won’t have internet.

Friday, November 23, 2007

Chuck Hugh Farley, In Memoriam

In Memorium

Chuck you
have discarded the used condom,
this body
that great white hope...
this poor drivel of words like an old man too long at the toilet cannot encompass the breadth of that
which you did unto death


Chuck, we hardly knew ye.


Up-Chuck
Chuck it here boy
Keep on Chucking
Let's take a walk through the ground Chuck of the latter days
Have a few Chuckles
and do a little Chuck and Jive
before we get Chucked out


Terrorism and politics were not always happy bed fellows
not in the former democracies of the West
in any case.
But the precedent now set by the president-
who has not met a limitation caused by lack of judgment or character that he could not evade,
who has not met a bar he could not lower,
nor a truth he could not distort,
has given you...Chuck;
hope of the once free world,
champion of chicken pots of multiplying roasters, cross-dresser par excellence of all things


appearing to be other than...


has given you the opportunity to make our world the champion no interest,
3 car monte,
one used owner only,
deal of a lifetime,
no odometer,
no problem,
drive it away today-
answer to the prayers of millions struggling into polyester pant suits
and spraying,
as if for hornets and locusts
to remove the stench of their need and feed from the abandoned house of their being.
For all of these who have lost the power of speech themselves, Chuck-


now walking on all fours
with the rhinestone broaches and garrish unknown gems bedazzled upon fat sausage fingers,
for the non-push-up capable whining children, jiggling like Jello walking to the video-game shop,


inhaling half-gallon Big Gulps....
low tar cigarettes and
some kind of soft shit from the pastry shelf..
Chuck...Chuck
death has given you opportunity.


for all the drunk daddy's lusting after/or
fondling 13 year old breasts through,
"I'm Yo Bitch. I'm Yo Ho" sequined t-shirts cut off above the impaling navel rings...
yet further above scant emerging pubic patches already trimmed and buffed...
because "you're not getting any younger", as the due date approaches...


For every young boy in the brush past the roadside restrooms dreaming about
"fuck, I don't know what."
For the halcyon-eyed housewives and that 10 minute temptation fuck in the afternoon
between drinks and missed appointments
otherwise engaged...
now to spray yet more mists of unearthly hues and sticky stinking excresences of Dow
and Dupont unto Monsanto beneath the bridge strained through the Sterno filters of other dreams more


dead, more remote...
but really not that far fucking off when you think about it from where we are now.


Chuck...my virtue tis of thee, cheaper than stolen, freer than free.
For all the once wretched refuse
evolved by faith, effort and determination
into a bedrock American Gothic portrait in the brief camera shot of a prime too short;
now blown past too fast to recall
and once again wretched refuse,
now of its own making-
retching, stumbling, fumbling at zippers and stays...
flesh bulging like Susan Sarandons eyes or that Morty Feldman guy-
from the lobster tank...unsure, uncertain slithering..
mandibles waving


if not drunk then certainly insane
lurching down enormous aisles of nothing but potato chips,
turning into the 'soft drinks only' aisle...
on into the frozen pre-prepared food section of dinners and deserts-
with an ingredient list that might as well be Chinese
unless you are Chinese .
Onward to the doctor,
to the pharmacy,
to the Barcalounger,
to the grave...
oh mighty race of once bright hope and strong facial features...
we now bend over for the Huns at the gate...
not only without fear
but in anticipation Chuck....


for the faux-Blackwater men in Iowa who nightly patrol the perimeters of their split level ranches...
for the Mormons and Scientologists,
the hippies and the girls on the Internet,
Thank you Chuck. Thank you very much.


Thank you for not only the bad things but for
the relentless hearing about them
the buzz in the atmosphere -radio waves of nonsense like
chickens cackling on the astral plane
like frogs fucking in jello
like shit running uphill in January


downriver the legs of murdered monks sticking out of the flooding river bank to the tune of


♫you can trust your car to the man who wears the star♫


It seems like everything we do is murder Chuck.
It seems like second and third hand murder
It's like looking into the toilet bowl between Larry Craig's legs
and Larry King is looking back.
Time Warner wants the funeral pictures
Peephole magazine wants the autopsy photos


What's next after fist fucking Chuck?


It seems like everything we do is murder a few times removed


Thank god for all of it
How could we ever need redemption so desperately if not for this
How would salvation mean anything if not for all of this


There's your silver lining
There's your light at the end of the tunnel.
To find the living light you must
imagine your zeal like that of a drowning man
seeking oxygen... seeking the surface but
actually the depths
they say that sort of thing happens but
you wouldn't know about that Chuck


torment is the purification rite that
strips away the blinders
the ever closing confinement of the energetic lost
becomes
the magnificent heat of the pressing density of matter against matter forming the diamond that proves
no matter how dark and confining it gets it ends in deliverance and perfection
and light or something to hold it
something to reflect it
something for it to pass thru
That endless irritation which forms the pearl
and you


That is their value
What they remind us of
the gas that fuels the keep on trucking keep on keeping on.
high in the highest Shamballa
the most pristine of worlds
touches the densest murk and proclaims them one
for the one


one for the one


thank you Chuck and may the roses bloom upon your cross.


Patrick Willis narrates:
In Memoriam: Chuck Hugh Farley

Monday, November 19, 2007

You're a Celebrity Here... You Know?

Nothing succeeds like success; that’s something we’ve heard and we get the impression that it must be true. Unless you live in a cave somewhere like the long dead Bin Laden- who doesn’t actually live in a cave since he is, in fact, long gone; dead if you prefer that term... but let’s say you did live in a cave but weren’t dead, or gone like Bin Laden and didn’t have TV and/or internet then, you might not be on the receiving end of a relentless carpet bombing of celebrity comings and goings. Otherwise, you’re aware of the glitter and fairy dust that rains down upon those in the limelight.

Celebrity is a curious thing. There are no fixed rules concerning the possession of it. It comes and goes. Like Lady Luck it enters the casino on the arm of one man and goes out on the arm of another. There is no fidelity involved, just degrees of time. Once you’ve spent the evening with her you could spend a much longer period looking for her again. If you do run across her she might do no more than blow you a kiss to keep your interest. She seems to like some people more than others but no matter how she might appear to like you for a period of time, it makes what she’s inevitably going to do to you at some point, all that much harder to bear. Ah cruel world (grin).

Anyone can have celebrity. You can get it from wearing a too short skirt while boarding an airline and wind up with an agent before you disembark. Then you wind up in the covered dish at the back of the icebox a few days later wondering what happened. It seems like only a moment ago that you were talking with Geraldo. Now you can’t even appear at a supermarket opening unless you’re going after groceries.

You can get celebrity from being born with a whole pot full of money, even if you have no talent at all- which has been amply demonstrated- and if you possess no shame or sense of self you can arrange for the release of a sex video and via the efforts of a first class publicity firm and, once again, a whole lot of money, you can be a star in the eyes of troglodytes everywhere.

You can be born the son or daughter of a director or an actor or any influential person and move through the chutes of public awareness like a greased pig. You can actually possess some amount of talent but that’s incidental most of the time.

You can be pleasant to look upon in the eyes of some particular demographic but you’ve generally got a sell by date which can be put off only so long and then the surgeons and cosmeticians turn you into a horror movie.

One thing about celebrity, sooner or later you wind up on Larry King or lesser venues talking about the thrill of it all; the triumph and agony of bringing your special gift to the world. I watch people toiling in the trenches of celebrity; in newspapers and magazines, in the blogsphere, in trendy clubs I’ve passed through, at pricey watering holes and resorts, on television, street corners and public parks. There are more levels to celebrity than there are in the most complex video games. There’s notoriety and fame and it’s difficult to tell the difference sometimes. There’s star-power and then there’s the more difficult art of becoming a legend.

When you’re celebrated it seems that everyone wants a piece of you. It must be some kind of a rush. You’re surrounded by friends and supporters on all sides until you screw up or run out of gas and then some cosmic Houdini turns the whole thing upside down in a twinkling. Then you’ve got to work like mad for redemption or some new angle. Screwing up as a celebrity is not like screwing up as an ordinary Joe. Even when you are not screwing up you are followed by a cloud of flies and mosquitoes that make it seem like you live in a tropical murk at the very worst season of the year. It takes a special kind of person to endure it. You have to want it so bad that nothing and no one is more important than to be celebrated. Gangway...

Meanwhile there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of celebrities. All of them have their lights on like the windows of an enormous apartment complex. All of them are dancing in the window with the shades up. All of them imagine that the world is looking only at them. It’s fascinating. Robert Burns would be so pleased.

Sometimes I muse on the condition of famous authors and musicians; on accomplished artists of every stripe. I think about how there are thousands of famous authors and musicians... all the venues... and how everything that they’ve done was already done and often better done before they ever got here. I think about musicians in front of large audiences and how it must seem to some of them as if the whole world is watching. I think about the money and the sex and power; all the accoutrements and trappings of the moth in the candle flame. Then I think about their lives apart from all the noise; if there even is such a place. I think about all of the demands made upon them and the difficulty they experience in dealing with all of the character defects that attend us- regardless of our status- as we negotiate the pressures and broken promises through which we pass.

Then I walk out of my door and stand in the meadow in front of my house and there’s nothing there but the wind in the trees and my dogs chasing each other; the sun is shining down and there’s no one around. Sometimes the wind in the trees sounds very much like applause. The sun feels like a spotlight, so does the moon. Sometimes if feels like all of creation is listening and watching though a one way mirror. I can walk with my guitar and sing for the birds (who often join in) and clouds; let the wind carry my voice across the world and someone will hear it the way something said in Los Angeles today might be repeated in Cairo next week. I think about the way a stone thrown into a still lake will eventually ripple across the entirety of it.

Every master has a life of secret shame. No matter what sublime state they have arrived at, behind them is many a mis-adventure and ignominious failure. It always struck me how remarkably humble they are. Here are the true celebrities with real accomplishments and they are just so self-effacing, shy and retiring. They must know something. Perhaps they are in the presence of something so much greater than themselves and they are constantly reminded of it so that there is no option besides humility and the most cautious and economical grace of movement; “wary as a man crossing an icy stream.” as someone once said.

I cannot help but cringe when I see people with some one trick pony thing that they have got going... what a roller coaster of uncertainty... cut to the Sunday morning panels of experts shouting each other down... preening at their introductions; seething at the competition for limited time and space... I wonder what difference there is between the monkeys and birds in the jungle trees and all the people talking on the radio.

Now and then Nature takes it upon herself to set a laurel wreath on someone’s head. Sometimes she does it after they are gone. Sometimes one rose or another may be “born to blush unseen” ...better that than that more than your immediate company should know what a fool you are. Should that laurel arrive, I suspect the greatest art is in handling the affair; not in the further production of works.

If Nature, for reasons of her own, wants to point you out to the greater assembly then that’s probably the best kind of celebrity and your opportunity not to behave like a celebrity is probably the greatest joy and challenge you will have. There’s something satisfying about that. Otherwise... the sheer joy of doing what you do for the sheer joy of doing it should be payment enough. It stands to reason that in a universe as vast as this that there are no doubt audiences unseen that are far greater in number than the population of this Earth. It’s a trick of the mind to realize what a grand stage awaits in every moment. I am always amused at the idea people have that no one is watching.

As I’ve occasionally said; just because you can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there and just because you can doesn’t mean it is. Help yourself to the potage.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

Welcome to 'Tard Nation

The itards, the Hiltontards, the Foxtards and neo-conservatards are just a portion of the faceful of acne running like an infected strawberry wildfire across the surface of this forceps-birthed nation.

The greatest weapon of mass destruction is the 'dumbing down bomb'; a by the roadside of life IED that is radio linked to the anti-educational IUD that is implanted by telepathic invasion into the young during their first body cavity exam. They’re dumbed down by diet because it’s a long way from brown rice to Burger King. They’re dumbed down by music because listening to rap is the equivalent of smoking PCP and drinking a bottle of bad wine while using a pair of horny spider monkeys for headphones. It’s a long way from being the Crown of Creation to a posse of pimps and ho’s. It’s a long way from Eat a Peach to eat shit and die and all of it in the wrong direction. It’s a long way from acid to alcohol and from geodesic domes to condos.

It’s a long way from Joni Mitchell to Britney Spears, from Jim Morrison to Kurt Cobain and more than one kind of suicide. Some are more chickenshit and less tragically romantic than others. The worst thing about Kurt Cobain’s final act of self indulgence was not in leaving himself to be discovered by those fortunate enough to have found his Jackson Pollock opus but that his fans didn’t take the hint. They make the Miss America contestants out of the same chemicals they used to create Donald Trump’s hair.

It’s the truth that we nearly all stand still as the culture moves along except for the surgically enhanced and the generation to which the moment applies and which gets left at its own point when the dynamics shift. The terminally hip have managed to turn cluelessness into an art form while the aliens for whom they are a reality TV show laugh their asses off.

What they did when they sat and planed this out in the Tavistock branch of the Recording Industry of America was to try to recreate the fifties and they worked in tandem with PNAC, General Foods, General Electric and Hollywood. They took MMDA and bent it into a sexual isotope. What you got was a masturbating Frankenstein monster that did rockabily and danced about as well as you might expect. All sorts of weird things happened. You got Bono playing Albert Schweitzer up front and suing his hairdresser for the return of some old jeans and a ball cap in the backroom, while pushing for 100 year copyright payments along with Paul McCartney and 4,500 others so that nepotism might prevail. It's no wonder he visits with George Bush. Jesus, even Bruce Springsteen lives in Beverly Hills. It's no wonder The River ran dry.

Money, honey, "That's what I want... yeah what I want."

How many roads must a man walk down before he's no longer a man? How many people can one culture dumb down before they walk on their hands?

I've got a theory about the beasts in the field...

It's reassuring to see that it took more than four years of war for ‘name people’ to start writing lame protest songs without fire, passion or inspiration. "Like, dude, war is bad."

So this is the soundtrack of your lives? It's a long way from Berkeley to Wharton. I used to watch the suits marching through Grand Central at 5:30 of an evening...tens of thousands of them in ranks. I went into the men's room and saw a wasted Rasta with a mop, collecting spare change and every single toilet had turds draped over it like an exhibit from MOMA. They were on the floor along with torn newspaper scattered all about and I knew none of these suits were going to the bathroom here but they must have all seen it at some point. 'seen it' and what?

"Let's see, I'll have one of the Cambodian babies, one of the African and could you let me have something from Afghanistan with a missing limb? We're doing a color spread for Vanity Fair and I'll need them all in Benetton hues. My kinesiologist will come by with the relevant coordinates."

Bill Maher; Netanyahu’s butt-boy is screaming at the 9/11 truthers on his disinfo show and no one seems to make the connection between the rapid descent of the American educational system and no child's un-raped behind, whereas the richest country on Earth is inexorably moving down the list and not by accident. Cut to The Congo from which the metals for their Xboxes are hacked from tunnels in the earth by laborers who no longer have shovels because the militias took them from them. The stupider the public gets the easier it is to move them through the stock pen gates and runners on to the killing floor.

We don't need any more evidence, what we need is a little less ‘eyes wide shut’.

The Bush Crime Family and Rupert Murdoch’s swine flu media, the Michael Savage’s, Rush Limbaugh’s, Ann Coulter’s and assorted self-promoting Nodwells from Nimrodville are not the problem. The neo-cons are not the problem. The problem is the slack-gutted Schmoos in the fried food section. The type of predator depends on the type of prey. If you’ve got a fucked up ocean full of flotsam and jetsam, Tonawanda White Fish and chemical froth then the sharks that feed there are going to be mutants. That’s when you get your Bush’s and Bush-bots squeezing the heavy, heavy drone of compliance across the airwaves.

There’s no terrorism problem. It’s a police matter; no different than organized crime or opium gangs. All of the elements that feed on the dark side of existence and milk the bank accounts of the Onanist Schmoos are not more than a small part of life’s ongoing annoyances. The fact is that terrorism arises due to the presence of certain environments. The very character of corporate rule gives birth to terrorism. How big or small terrorism may be- is not the issue. The issue is how big terrorism can be made to appear to be so that money and power can be manifested out of it.

It is absurd to imagine that there is some sort of world wide AlQaeda. There is no such animal but they are traded on the stock exchange all the same. What you find when you investigate something is that it is seldom what it is presented to be. Either you find you knew much less than you thought you did and the subject is transformed entirely by your discovery or you find that it doesn’t actually exist. It only appears to exist.

Much of humanity is on a super highway; a slow crawling gridlock in a downward spiral. A dying culture is not a pretty thing. You can’t save a dying culture. You can construct a new one from the ashes of the old but once the thing is over the meridian... it is going down; then liberty transforms into tyranny. Law enforcement becomes rentacops for the rich. Laws are made according to whim and caprice and always for the benefit of the few. Materialism is an armed camp.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer and sooner or later revolution is at hand. During these times, “it profits the great man” to sink below the radar. At certain times it is wisdom to depart from the scene. Sometimes things just have to go through the process of change and there isn’t anything you can do about it.

Materialism generates fear because fear and paranoia are big business; just ask the arms merchants and the bureaucrats and bankers who manufacture the wars as economic ventures and who sell weapons to both sides. Just ask the money changers in “The City”; that square mile of London stocked with fountain pen killers who control the world’s money supply and suck the resources of the planet through sucker-pods on their multiple arms that straddle the globe; the massive globe-octopus who’s pumping out the dream soma and sucking in the life force of the populations.

Who are you, you nation of ‘tards? Moneytards, sextards, jesustards, feartards, fatandlazytards, vanitytards, accumulatards and patroitards... a nation of sheep following sociopathic fools into spiritual wastelands... willing victims of the vampire overlords. May whatever god there may be have mercy on your ignorant self-destructive nature as you follow the ghostlight into the swamp.

Do I sound cynical? I guess I didn’t expect the populations of the world to behave like moths around a light bulb. I didn’t expect you to turn into the poster icons from The Secret Policeman’s Ball. I didn’t expect you to become the physical equivalent of Bush mangling the lyrics.

Well, I should know better but I never do. I keep expecting you to wake up and shut off the snooze machine but you’re not going to do it. You’ll keep row, row, rowing the boat until it hits the white water rapids and the “merrily, merrily” turns into a nightmare. Then maybe you’ll wake up and maybe you won’t but the point will get made... one more time... one more time... the point will get made.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Two for One Night at Little Caesars

I know there is a very large number; a number- with a whole lot of zeroes in it- of people who wonder what’s going on. They wonder why life is the way it is. They wonder, how come all this war and famine? Why all of this suffering? Why does history look like a blood-soaked mattress in a rat-infested alley? Why is there so much pain and ignorance? Why do some people have so much and others so little?

People handle this ‘unknown’ different ways and they get introduced to a variety of perspectives from the moment they get here, via their parents, environment and whatever educational system they are exposed to; formal and hard knocks variety. You add to that the uniqueness of their being that results in the complexity of their persona, each one exposed to something not duplicated in another human being; even when the same conditions apply- because they are not the same person and... you’ve got a snowflake in more ways than one. You’ve got a snowflake like no other snowflake and it is also melting and will soon be gone... back to where all of the water goes... but not entirely.

A snowflake is made from common water, momentarily individualized and to common water it returns, moving through all of the permutations of water. A human soul is different. Whatever happens to the housing of a human soul and the features of a human soul; the body, the personality, the emotions, the sensation of a personal mind... all the effluvia of our essence... that’s like the snowflake and the water. The soul is something different. The soul has individuality in spirit (of which it is composed) that, though it changes through experience, does not die and forever retains uniqueness no matter how high it flies.

Bear with me. All of this is prelude and not the point. The point is ‘why’ everything is the way it is. One might also ask ‘why’ everything appears to be the way it is. How does the way things are, the way things appear to be, match up with all of the explanations we have gotten from religions and philosophies and habits adjusted to getting by without understanding?

Although religion and philosophy may give us some comfort in the face of our trials, do they actually explain anything? Why are there so many different answers for the same thing? Why do these answers seem to contradict each other? Why, with these answers have we no solutions? Because nothing has gotten fixed has it? Our world has become more streamlined. Our comfort factor is generally better than the condition of kings in times gone by. Physical pain is more manageable but the conditions causing the pain, the age old tormentors from Pandora’s Box are still as active as ever.

It’s clear that some individuals have found an answer. You can see it in their face. They know something. Sometimes they can tell you what it is but even though you hear them you cannot apply what they have told you in the same way that they do. Something’s missing.

Looking at the world we see uncountable personalities pursuing myriad and often similar ends. You see them working and playing and reproducing in different ways. You see groups of them doing the same things. You see large groups speaking different languages, living according to the laws they have agreed upon. You see that these same things are in some cases more universally agreed upon and in some cases different from place to place.

Then you see one country warring against another. You see several countries joining together to war against several other countries. You see the same laws broken over and over again by new people who keep arriving and you see other people departing. Meanwhile there’s some mysterious balance that always brings things back to some sort of a central place no matter how out of wack it may get for a period of time. Somehow, in the aftermath of every storm, no matter how great, people and nations pick up again and go about their business once more until another storm hits. It's like what you see after you stir an ant hill with a stick. And it doesn't matter how often you do it. They build it right back in the same spot.

Here we see a nation in chains. Here we see a nation brimming with industry and confidence. Here we see poverty and want juxtaposed with castles on the hill. Here we see periods where the whole world is in a dark age and here we see movements of enlightenment sweeping around the globe until it all reforms into something else that eventually finds its way to another dark age.

Here and there an individual appears and their presence and their words cause millions to formulate a religion around them. A priest class emerges and immense buildings appear where people worship these beings. Sometimes these religions cause wars against other religions in direct conflict with the teachings of those upon whom the religions were established because the priest class chose to interpret those teachings in order to reflect the need for conflict.

Here and there social revolutions occur according to a philosophy based on the idea of a better life, a more equitable life, a more secure life- or even something created for a particular class- for the brief term of the lives involved and then each of these formulas find the need to make war upon the followers of another formula for whatever the reason that is given by those in a position to interpret it to that end.

Some of us see that all of these wars are initiated for personal gain and have little to do with any of the reasons given. Some of us see that no matter who was at the helm, or in what age it happened, these people always found a reason to make war and seek profit regardless of any lessons that might have been learned in the past. No matter what changes occur, the same conditions constantly repeat.

The reason for everything that happens here is because of two things; karma and reincarnation. Things are the way they are because this world, composed of four warring elements, performing on the soundboard of a fifth, is a stage set for souls clothed in these same warring elements moving through an infinity of circumstances until each soul has found freedom from the need to return in search of further experience.

The universal single self split itself into uncountable individual personifications of itself in order to experience life. The motivation is love. The end result is love and there isn’t any more to it except for what we constantly add which further requires our return in order to resolve it. Every thing we do is visited upon us so that we may weight the value of our every single thought, word and deed. People suffer because they choose to, because of what they have decided is real to them. Since none of it is real, experience is necessary in order to bring them to the point where they can realize this. Since there is nothing but the self and everything else is costume and romance; comedy and tragedy within the context of a play, there is no sane objective other than self-realization.

When this dawns and once that realization arrives, there is nothing left but the last remaining moments one must live through until freedom is complete. In the meantime it all continues across a landscape of time incomprehensible to the individualized mind. People can talk all they want on the way. They can wail like no one wailed before. They can steal all the toys and be on every lip for as long as that lasts but it is departing as it happens. It is all going away. You either let it go or you hold on until nature and compassion pry your cold dead fingers from the trigger of desire.

Visible sings: The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible♫ The World is a Rumor ♫
'The World is a Rumor' is track no. 8 of 13 on Visible's 2007 album
'The Sacred and The Profane'

Lyrics (pops up)

The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

The Thin Veneer of Civilization

Carl Panzram once said that he wished that humanity had one single neck so that he could strangle them. Carl would have been very comfortable with the Bush administration, the same way that Ted Bundy was comfortable with the Young Republicans.

Bad leaders don’t scare me nearly as much as humanity does. Bad leaders come and go but humanity manages to continue to be small minded junkies no matter what happens. It’s like an endless sheet of Formica laid over a seething caldron of fear and self-interest.

You don’t get Valens and Valentinian or Bush and Cheney without a choir in the background. It’s like the audience I saw on Limbaugh’s television show some years ago; doddering, self-important Nimrods.

This is the reason that the press lies and why they don’t teach you to think in school; why ‘dumbing down’ is a very real process. People want to be led and asking too many questions will just leave them feeling low for finding out something they didn’t want to know.

I’ve been in crowds that panicked and I’ve seen what people are capable of when they become afraid. It’s not pretty and it shows an unfortunate truth. It shows how thin the veneer is that overlays civilization. The capacity to remain calm is a much underrated virtue. Panic leads to the kind of thing a mouse runs into when, in fear of the cat it leaves its hidey hole where it is already safe. Sure, you have to think and react sometimes. Poise in the face of danger is often a good protection against avoidable pain.

The period of time between 2002- and 2012 is a time of great transformation for the human race and these might prove a little dense reading for many; see ‘dumbing down’ previously mentioned. But I include these links just to show that this period is under discussion in a lot of places. Google will show you just how many. Even Nostradamus had a whole lot to say on the subject; you can make a lot of assumptions from Nostradamus and so I don’t spend any time trying to translate just exactly what he was saying.

The point is that a lot of people are aware of this time period and have been for hundreds of years and furthermore, you are right here inside of it and surely you can see some of what is going on. It appears that there may well be a ‘destiny that shapes our ends’. However, it is equally important to remember that, ‘a wise man rules the stars.’

I don’t want to spend this time talking about the stars or predictions. A rare handful actually possesses the ability to read the course of the heavens and fewer still have ever predicted anything the way it actually turned out. But we are all seers to a certain degree. Any of us could predict that if we keep walking toward a ledge we will fall off of it if we don't stop. We stay alive every day due to judgments made about predictions and the possibilities of rash actions. Larry Craig and Ted Haggert and many others knew the possibilities that could happen from their actions.

We’re just not very bright as a collection and being real bright is no protection against being stupid; if that makes any sense.

Religious anthropomorphism; sexual attraction, the will to power, the will to gain, the call of the wild are all conditions that contain potential for ruining your life and, unfortunately, the lives of others as well. You see it every day. Many of us can look at people and predict some of what they are going to run into if they keep going the way they are going. It shouldn’t be a stretch to look at humanity and make fairly accurate predictions as well.

Depending on the collective mix of the generations at any particular time you are going to get a certain kind of leaders. Sometimes it is better to go away somewhere while humanity goes through whatever it is facing. A lot of us want to get up on soapboxes and save the world. None of us are going to accomplish that in any universal sense. When people get stupid and greedy and self-involved it becomes necessary for them to go through certain things to wake their ass up. The same goes for humanity as it does for the individual. Having the right kind of self-interest under such circumstances is a precious commodity.

I can predict that barring the appearance of Al Gore that Hillary Clinton will be the democratic nominee. I can predict that, regardless of the pains being taken by the press and powerful interests behind the scenes, that Ron Paul is going to have a much bigger impact than the general public presently assumes and I can predict that that may well lead to an unfortunate event. I can predict that Americans are going to get even fatter than they are now and that their general health is going to get worse. I can predict that things are going to get worse in the Middle East before they get better. You can probably predict all of this too.

The cost of the political adventurism of the stupidest and most venal president in American history is going to be greater than many people realize. Hundreds of thousands of men and women are going to be coming back to America at some point and they are going to be suffering from various maladies running the gamut from exposure to depleted uranium to mental problems. Some of them are going to go postal.

I don’t have the space here to list the complications that are going to arise from the lies and profiteering at work during this administration. Life is not what it once was. The positivism that existed previous to this sad spectacle has been transformed into uneasiness and apprehension. Comparisons could be made about the weather generated by collective humanity and how natural weather conditions also behave according to their composition.

This is a dry and clinical; antiseptic essay. It’s intentional. Numbers do not contain emotion. Tragic periods of history look like so many words on paper when seen from a distance. Like you, I often wonder, “What were they thinking? Where did they think they were going?”

Nations have destinies just as individuals do. Is there a mysterious force that molds them or is character fate? Probably some of both and certainly something more as well and it will remain as indefinable and incomprehensible as it always has. We don’t seem to learn. We just shift from one theater of experience to another and go on swallowing transparent lies in exchange for being allowed to muddle on.

You can feel the texture of the dream that contains us. It sweeps along like a river, sometimes wide and lazy and sometimes narrow and roiling. You wanted something out of your life. You held some things in your hands for a time and you worked and struggled for something that never showed up the way you imagined that it would. You look back at the choices you made and you wonder about them. You wonder if it all really happened the way you remember it. You might even- some few- wonder who and what you are, because you still don’t know the answer to that.

I wish you luck humanity. I hope something wakes up in the heart of you and that you will get better leaders and address more care to all of the little incidents that compose your life. I’d like to think that you make your way out of this. Forward we go and no matter where we go it will always be right now except in our minds.

Visible sings: It Always Breaks Your Heart by Les Visible♫ It Always Breaks Your Heart ♫
Lyrics (pops up)

Friday, September 28, 2007

It's Like Deja Vu All Over Again

The Lieberman/Kyl amendment passed in the Senate yesterday. Basically it is about combating and containing Iran. Iran isn’t actually doing anything but they need to be stopped anyway because they are part of an overall plan and that plan hasn’t really got anything to do with what any of the targets involved are engaged in. They are just there as parts of the plan and the plan demands that they be presented as obstacles to the plan so that they can be rearranged according to plan. That’s clear isn’t it?

In 1998 we had the Iraq Liberation Act. Now we have the Lieberman/Kyl amendment, courtesy of Israeli sock puppet, Smokin’ Joe Lieberman. It’s like déjà vu all over again as the redoubtable Yogi Berra once said.

A big part of the déjà vu all over again factor is that Hillary Clinton, who voted to go to war against Iraq and has, more or less, admitted that she was wrong about that has now started voting for the same thing all over again for Iran. So did Harry Reid and 26 other ‘democratic’ senators. There is no more America in the sense that one might have understood it to be. That’s gone.

There is no more democratic process. There is no more freedom except to do as you are told. The Democrats swept into congress on an anti-war ‘get out of Iraq’ sentiment expressed by the American people at the polls. It was a clear hope in the minds of the majority of Americans that this would lead also to penetrating investigations into the secret apparatus of a criminal administration and thereby to impeachment proceedings as well. Something... someone... stopped it all dead.

Bad shit is twisting in the wind. Horrible possibilities are afoot. Fountain pens filled with human blood are dancing across documents filled with a dense fabric of words that twist like venomous snakes across the page. Signatures... handshakes... cocktails in the VIP lounge... hail fellows, well met, exchange crocodile smiles as the promise of black bags filled with cash are dancing like sugar plums in their minds. They know what’s up; you don’t. Everything is just the way it is supposed to be... all over again.

They didn’t win the war in Afghanistan. They are not winning the war in Iraq. It’s time to move on to another war in a country with a much stronger military, more people and much more land. It’s time to really pound the living shit out of someone and that someone, is Iran.

It’s another war based on the same lies that started the other wars and it’s going to be an economic boomtown; quite literally. It’s going to go ‘BOOM!’ and money and freedom and the grace of God are going to come down like bloody confetti as if Mount St. Helens had gone off all over again.

One million dead Iraqis is not enough. A human crisis of four million homeless Iraqis is not enough. The genocide in Gaza and the West Bank is not enough. The murderous assault on Lebanon was not enough. Never mind that the residents of Iraq had nothing to do with requesting this kindness. Never mind that the residents of Gaza and the West Bank had nothing to do with requesting this kindness. Never mind that the residents of Lebanon had nothing to do with requesting this kindness... just never mind. Stick those ear-buds back into place and turn on the GameBoy.

Hot searing agony... women and children and men... lives ripped apart... body parts flying... the wailing of the survivors, their lives bleeding away into the sand. All of this constructed for the profit and entertainment of the men and women for whom this is just business as usual... all over again.

Private Contractors shooting women, children and men for sport... free from all legal complication... ‘Rape and pillage, rape and pillage, let’s go out and burn a native village. You can’t have one, you can’t have one, you can’t have one without the other...’

Don’t ask yourself why. You don’t want to know why. Don’t wonder why private contractors exceed the number of troops and why they are paid obscene amounts of money while the soldiers subsist on poverty pay. Don’t question what Custer Battles and Bechtel and Halliburton and others have been up to. Don’t ask, don’t tell and don’t look. What would Jesus do? Jesus wept.

Fat, red-cheeked, Christian ministers with a flash of gold at the wrist exhort the faithful that it is God’s will that these heathens must burn in Hell fire on Earth. Afterwards they frolic with young boys and girls and sleep on black bag pillows filled with cash. The rapture is coming... the rapture is coming...

And the media is all the same media and the lies are all the same lies and the walking dead, no longer American flesh-bots parade in their quivering Jello suits; these steamer trunk bodies of the over-fed, unthinking prisoners of runaway appetite. WE ARE THE EMPIRE!!!

In countries around the globe, dishonorable men and women sell their souls for black bags filled with cash and promises of more to come while millions await the price they have to pay so that these bloat-bags of false gravitas can dine in the High Tower far above the carnage and the torment.

Step by step... the same thing all over again. On the one hand, a nation of self-indulgent fools, seduced by vapid entertainments and obvious lies, step back and let the murders continue and increase as they lose everything that made their excesses possible. On the other hand... terror and torture and want. It’s like a movie we were watching and then we turned around and found ourselves inside of it.

But you know what I’m talking about. You KNOW. Deep inside you know that this is wrong. It takes more than what you are, what you have become, to stand forth and be counted against it. It’s the easier way for each of you to hide among the millions and risk the odds that you won’t be seen and known for the coward that you are. Later you can tell the tale of how you did everything you could. Later you can manufacture and embellish the lie of how you were among the few who found their courage in the final hour; no, you will tell us all how steadfast you were at the start and how steadfast you remained.

There are others who laugh at this. There are others who sneer and mock and make light of every dreadful moment as each new one exceeds the other. I don’t know what to make of either of you. You have made something of yourselves that I cannot define. Neither fit into a category that is recognizably human as I understand it.

There is a Sufi tale of a master who had three disciples. He gave each of them a chicken and told them to go and kill it where no one could see them. Two of the disciples came back fairly quickly with a dead chicken. The third did not come back for a long time and when he returned he still had the live chicken in his hands. The master asked him what had happened. The disciple answered. “I could not do it master. Everywhere I went the chicken could see.”

Visible sings: 911 was an Inside Job by Les Visible♫ Something Good (is Coming Soon) ♫
'Something Good (is Coming Soon)' is track no. 10 of 10 on Visible's 2002 album
'911 was an Inside Job'

Lyrics (pops up)

911 was an Inside Job by Les Visible

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

The Truth is a Dangerous Thing

Yes it is. It is often inconvenient; uncomfortable, embarrassing- confining under the wrong circumstances and... dangerous. There are countless examples in history of how the truth interferes with you; ask Galileo, Copernicus and Giordano Bruno.

It’s no different today than it ever was. One of the most amazing things is how people will insist on supporting a lie even when the truth is patently obvious. Quite often the people who support a lie are completely uninformed about the details that compose the lie or the truth of the matter. They just decide something is so because that is what they were told and that’s that. In many cases, when the lie is coming from the authorities; even though it is a known fact that the particular authorities have lied about nearly everything they have said previously, it’s just easier to accept and often safer too.

Another thing about lies is that when they are routinely reported in the various media they take upon themselves the veneer of the plausible. When you factor in government spokespeople and seemingly respectable members of the business and religious worlds along with anyone from anywhere who gets face time in front of you due to a perceived expertise on the matter under discussion- you can find yourself hemmed in on all sides by the sirens singing and unless you are one of the few; those with a thirst for the real, a curious nature that won’t be diverted or an intellect that possesses an objective reasoning capacity it is likely to overwhelm you. If you are such a person, things begin to reveal themselves to you in a way they do not reveal themselves to the majority of personalities under hypnotic control.

It is nearly impossible to convince a hypnotized person of their state because they are, in fact, hypnotized. It’s the same with dreaming and takes place in the same area of the mind. Only suffering seems to have any effect on the dreaming, hypnotized state. Sooner or later, after many traumas and disappointments, something within the person begins to long for a way out. Until the soul becomes thirsty for reality it will go on being the ball in the pinball machine and each life is counted as each ball goes down the chute and another ball comes into play.

Those who are not hypnotized are aware of a divine symmetry in the physical universe. It’s a natural and obvious perception. They also know that everything visible has an invisible source. It’s basic math. It is how physicists finally came to the realization that the universe is thought born. Independent thought is possible... however, the majority of humanity is herded like livestock by the common thoughts of their time; their hungers and hopes, their weaknesses and all of the common drives that hide the true light behind the veil of phenomena.

People want to be safe. Safety without the awareness of what real security consists of is only a temporary fix. It doesn’t matter how big your walls are, how many guards and guns you have. You may command armies but disease, old age and death will find a way in. Watching people go about their lives as if there were some permanence and harmony that will always continue is like being in a mental institution. It can be tough being in an institution when you aren’t actually crazy. You find that you have to swim in the opposite direction of the other fish without drawing attention to yourself.

People do not want to hear the truth. The truth is the enemy of all that they attempt to build for themselves. The truth knows that wealth is often a curse and beauty too. Fame and power lead you into a world very different than you imagined it to be before you set out in pursuit of these states. But the power of the hypnosis is very strong. It seems that most people are just incapable of stepping outside of their subjective state for long enough to look directly at their condition.

This vast shopping mall of a world offers a million products. It promises you everything and delivers none of what it promises aside from temporary self-forgetting. The desire to escape from reflection on the profundity of now is a consuming thing. It is big business. The main business of the world is to make you forget why you are here. That’s enough for most people. If replacing the truth with something closer to the heart’s desire puts a rosy light on the approaching tomb of darkness then, why not? That is something for everyone to ponder, or more likely avoid, at their leisure.

Searching for the truth is like panning for gold in a dangerous stream. Telling the truth is akin to painting a target on your forehead. Why would you tell the truth? Telling the truth goes contrary to the mercantile instincts and contrary to the mercantile game set of the world you walk in. Those who manufacture the illusion of the manifest world are not amused by the things you say which reveal the world to be something else beneath its air-brushed, glossy exterior.

There has been an opportunistic machine, relentlessly at work for 6 years because of an attack that took place on New York City. Observing where certain powerful forces have taken the world since, it should stir the curiosity of anyone possessing any as to how serendipitously fortunate this event was for them. It has justified all manner of violence, repression and lies and effectively divided the country against itself. It has cost the lives of a million Iraqis and displaced millions more. It has justified the ongoing and brutal hammering of The Palestinians. It has resulted in the suspension of many previous freedoms and that goes on apace as I speak. Well, it could be coincidence.

But... when one actually investigates the evidence one finds that there is very little to support the official version and a quantitatively enormous amount of evidence that says something smells bad. If what we had been told was true there would have been no resistance of the sort that occurred when questions arose and there was hard refusal on the part of the government to release key evidence that has yet to be released today. Things just don’t add up; not just a few things but a mountain of things.

If someone knows certain truths, for some reason, they feel compelled to share them. Parents like to pass on important truths to their children. Wanting to share the truth with others seems to be born out of love and compassion for others. What other reason could there be? There’s no money in the truth. The truth is already a currency of its own. Shading and shaping the truth does have money in it, lots of money. You can’t really shade and shape the truth but you can make it appear so.

Caring about the truth is a hard thing. People really don’t want to hear it. They are already afraid of what the truth might be which, in a particular way, indicates that they may well know what the truth is after all.

If you are going to tell the truth- and God help you if you do- you can’t be concerned with the static that ensues and it’s pointless to argue about it. It either is or it isn’t and that will show itself in time as it did in the case of Galileo and many others. It comes down in the end- as does everything- to what you value and hold dear. It speaks to intention and ultimately, to where you end up.

In the New Testament there is made mention of a broad highway and a narrow, seldom used road. On this broad highway are all of the souls who pursue the shiny things and the lies which they hope will come true. On the narrow path are those few souls engaged in the truth’s pursuit of itself. It’s been going on since the beginning and it goes on today the same as it ever did. The forces massed against the truth and the methods of aggression against those who would tell it are the same as ever. The saving grace within the intensity of struggle for the light of the truth is that the truth is a living thing and it endures and will endure long after the world that opposes it is gone.

The truth is a dangerous thing but not nearly as dangerous as the alternatives.

Visible sings: Songwriter by Les Visible♫ Gone Baby Gone ♫
'Gone Baby Gone' is track no. 6 of 10 on Visible's 2006 album 'Songwriter'
Lyrics (pops up)

Songwriter by Les Visible

Monday, September 03, 2007

The Curious Case of Senator Larry Craig

A powerful senator from the most powerful nation in the world walks into a public restroom in an airport and proceeds to get himself arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover police officer. The bathroom is notorious for casual gay sex and mounting complaints were the basis for the officer to be in that restroom. There’s no reason to disbelieve the scenario. Consonant with that we have the senator pleading guilty to a misdemeanor as a result of his being arrested.

The senator showed none of the outrage that he might have shown if this had been some sort of a set-up other than the sort of set-up that it was. He seems to say it was just a matter of mistaken signals; that he didn’t intend what the police officer surmised from the foot-tapping and the hand sliding along the partition and the senator’s foot touching the officer’s foot under the partition.

According to the officer, the senator actually stared into the officer’s stall through the doorjamb for what, in terms of ordinary bathroom etiquette, seems like a really long time before the rest of the activity occurred.

What are we to make of this? A powerful, Republican senator throws his career and his reputation; everything his life had culminated in, into the toilet and flushes it away because of the desire for anonymous sex with anyone who might be available in a public bathroom. It looks like a case of temporary insanity. It defies logic and it defies a powerful survival instinct. We can only imagine how powerful a survival instinct an American senator would have.

Lately a selection of Nietzsche’s quotes has been coming up in my mind because of things I have read in the news. There is one that perfectly fits this occasion; “Those whom the God’s would destroy they first drive mad.”

Over the last several years we have seen an epidemic of powerful individuals sacrificing everything they worked for on the altar of strange appetite. In most cases these individuals have been outspoken critics of the behavior they were compromised by. They have been exposed as classic hypocrites. Most of them have been Republicans.

It can be assumed that Larry Craig could have satisfied his desire for casual sex in a number of less dangerous ways. He could have had a remote cabin in Idaho. They have plenty of those and he could have rented someone for the times he needed someone. I imagine that he has plenty of money and there are thousands of websites where he could have ordered up just what he was looking for. Instead, he took pot luck in a public toilet with scant amenities and a serious degree of difficulty in the performance of his objective. Is he an adrenaline junkie?

Most of us are not powerful senators. We don’t talk to the president of the United States on the phone and interact with the movers and shakers in the world. We might be excused for a lack of judgment such as Senator Craig displayed. If we got arrested probably no one would have paid attention. We’d have soon been on our way to do whatever it was we did or wanted to do somewhere else.

We know that members of the Reagan-Bush White House were involved in a rent boy pedophile ring we know there was something strange going on in the Bush-Cheney White House with James Gannon we’ve heard a lot of strange things about Karl Rove and Dennis Hastert and Mitch McConnell that can make a guy wonder. Are the rumors true? I don’t know and I don’t care enough to stockpile evidence. I’m not curious about a person’s sexual inclinations. Others might be, especially when these people are such massive hypocrites; especially when these people deal death on a daily basis in pursuit of their twisted agendas.

Most people don’t want to know about the international pedophile rings that count among their members some of the richest, best connected and most important people on the planet. It’s too scary to think about. Thousands of children go missing every day and no one hears from most of them again. In France, a few years ago, hundreds of young girls disappeared and we never heard what that was about either. Everywhere you went in France there were posters up with the faces of these young girls.

The Franklin cover-up of the boy prostitutes in the Reagan Bush White House is a fact but... so much for the importance of facts and the rule of law. The hundreds of entries of Jim Gannon visiting the White House and then not signing out and signing out but not having signed in are a fact. There’s a lot of not so funny stuff going on in the cesspits of power but we don’t get any clarification and it all just slips away.

The Bush Crime Family is unrivaled in American history and it’s no great reach to assume that no matter what we think we know; the truth is far more terrible than our speculations.

Why would a powerful Republican senator self destruct in such an improbable way? How many other representatives and senators and sundry are up to the same thing right now? From what we’ve seen it is probably a lot. How much blackmail is operational right now? Probably a lot.

I feel sorry for Senator Craig. Whenever I hear about things like this I think, “There but for fortune go I.” Anyone of us could find ourselves in similar straights over the course of a lifetime. Now people laugh at the senator and make fun of him. He’s an international joke. It didn’t help for him to have been so predatory about Bill Clinton. It never helps to be self righteous and Senator Craig was that.

I think of all the ruined lives that our dysfunctional plumbing has caused. When you break it down it’s just the simple desire to be touched, to touch someone. If may be socially unacceptable in some cases but it’s really something to do with wanting love; wanting to feel close and have some kind of release with another human being.

Life can really be tragic. I don’t know what to think some times. I feel bad about Senator Craig. I can’t join in the joking and mocking and playground behavior of the bully boys scouting for the next victim of their scorn. Part of me says that he got what he deserved but I’m not sure that’s for me to say. I’d rather not pass judgment. I am keenly aware of human weakness; no stranger to it in my life or in the lives that I observe.

One thing I know, whatever Senator Craig is guilty of is small potatoes compared to some of the things going on. The press had no trouble getting into detail about Larry Craig. They seem to have real difficulty addressing what was happening in the Reagan-Bush White House and in the Bush-Cheney White House. They don’t seem very sanguine about the international pedophile activity that includes so many powerful individuals. Maybe they remember about Danny Casolaro and others who went looking into things they shouldn’t have.

Well, I guess we’ll just soldier on. The media and the government and most of the world’s market forces are all in the hands of people who get up to much stranger things than Larry Craig did. Whatever you might imagine it is probably worse than that. Nobody has much to say about these things. We know they happen. That’s just the way it is.

Visible sings: The eponymous Les Visible Music Album♫ Sing it Loud ♫
'Sing it Loud' is track no. 6 of 10 on Visible's eponymous
'Les Visible' Music Album

Lyrics (pops up)

The eponymous Les Visible Music Album