Saturday, November 29, 2008

Something I Saw, Scrying into a Glass Slide

I don’t particularly like criticizing Americans- or any nation, for that matter. However, if I am going to do it, this is the blog for it; “Reflections in a Petri Dish.” Maybe I should have called it “Smears on a Glass Slide.” Maybe that’s a future blog for the heavy artillery.

I don’t like criticizing in general. I don’t like sounding like a scold. We are all prone to it. Curbing your tongue is a high art. I realize I do a lot of it at Smoking Mirrors blog but if you look at the geo-political landscape today, there isn’t much to strike up the band for. In my mind it isn’t criticism as much as it is the act of putting up cautionary highway signs and warning about who is really doing the things you are beguiled and motivated into blaming on someone else ...and we’ll be talking about the interesting, third party provocation of a conflict between Pakistan and India, later on.

This is the cultural blog however and before I get into today’s shining example of contemporary culture, let me say that it takes a certain amount of low brow proliferation to make possible the violent depravities of the time. As Hillary likes to say, “It takes a village.” Yes, it takes a village. It takes a village of idiots. One idiot won’t do.

Yesterday in Long Island, a collection of idiots trampled a man to death; caused a pregnant woman to miscarry and injured several other members of the idiot’s brigade outside a shopopolis of shit. Wal-Mart is a fine example of American culture and so too are these rampaging swine; gathered outside a feeder pipe of useless, plastic crap.

Not only did they achieve the results already mentioned but they kept right on going and, in a feeding frenzy, they grabbed all the useless substitutes for love that caught their beady little red eyes and made as high a pile as they could manage in the shopping cart under the shadow of their looming bellies which hung into the child seat beneath the cart handles. Then they raced to checkout counters, indifferent to whatever they had accomplished on entering; their minds already fixed on the next act of pig enterprise.

They riot outside chain link fences, like drunken soccer yobs, hoping they will get one of the $250. Laptops that you need fingers, not hooves, to operate. They send their sons and daughters to die in corporate wars against nations that are framed for the offense they are seeking retribution for. They morph their children into a country filled with Pillsbury doughboys and girls who can’t think or read or run. They are proud Americans. They had their Thanksgiving dinner without any thanks and then they went out and showed each other what they were made of. You can see what they are made of in the pork ‘n Styrofoam section of the meat locker at Food R Us.

I’ve watched them in their drunken brawls outside of sporting events and bars. I’ve watched them move like packs of wild dogs through the parks and subway systems. I’ve seen them at the country clubs and beaches. I’ve watched them fall from two feet to four and change like a werewolf under a blood red moon. I’ve seen them singing their tedious hymns to their anthropomorphic Gods while the minister delivers the corporate line from the corporation Jesus out of the corporation approved Bible.

In my travels I have seen them outside the restaurants and theaters and seen the infra-red heat of their ‘contents under pressure’ sexual anger looking for something to fight or fuck or eat. Their eyes are as glazed as the donuts that they order by the dozens as an appetizer before the main feast.

The contents are under pressure because one cowboy in a black hat tells them copulation is a sin while another cowboy in a red hat shows them videos of Desperate Housewives and Jerry Springer specials. Another cowboy in a blue hat sings about Heaven in the sky and the cowboy at the front in the yellow hat holds up pictures of Heaven on Earth and they follow him through the chutes and on to the killing floor; trampling their fellows to be the first in line.

They paint makeup on their sad, tired faces and it really does look like lipstick on a pig. They do the same to their children and then sell them to the corporation pimps because they are going to be stars. It has to be done a certain way. It has to have the corporate seal and then it’s all legal and appropriate... not like the guy in the car outside the elementary school or the guy with dream dust in the parking lot. There’s no room for entrepreneurs. They have to be wearing the corporation jacket with the emblem over the pocket. Then they can fuck your children and sell you bad dope and alcohol to kill your will and you’re just that glad that they picked you. Then they parade you in front of the world and they laugh at you and knock you down and piss on you and everybody laughs, including the next guy in line.

It’s all Jesus in hotpants leaning into a curbside, car window. It’s twenty-four hour asparmate Mozart in the elevator from Hell. It’s Einstein playing Wheel of Fortune and Martin Luther King hosting Let’s Make a Deal. “Come on Down!” “It’s finger-licking good.” Get yourself a season ticket to the Kentucky Fried Cremora-toriums.

The greatest country in the world is blind drunk and vomiting in the alley. The Land of the Free is on its knees and torsioned up in bondage gear with a gag reflex, ping pong ball in its mouth and a vibrating butt plug in its ass on national TV. It’s the Home of the Brave, hiding in the subway tunnels from the 2:05 Beelzebub Express. It’s One Nation under ZOG with ketchup and mustard for all. It’s a lie and that’s what burns you and makes you want to kill because you’re not going to look at it... no, you’re not going to look at it. You’re going to paint a big smiley face on the 25 foot pitcher of Kool-Aid and get yourself a Big Gulp container.

It’s a crying shame but it’s only those who want no part of it who can see how deep the misery runs and how much deeper it can go. There’s some small movement out on the fringe. You can see small parties and individuals packing it in and heading for the exits. They know that the next stampede is almost due.

If this were a metaphor, I would say that those who led you here to the gates of Hell knew where they were headed all along. They were always going there. The payoff is that they get to do more to you there than they got to do to you here and it’s better to be a prison guard than a prisoner. It’s better to be the whipper than the whipped. Sure, it takes a certain temperament but they got that. They got that.

On and on it goes and where it stops nobody knows. On it goes into Boschian nightmare. On it goes into Clive Barker’s bad dreams. On you go... chasing the Sony PlayStations and RockStar 3’s. You do it all for Love. You trample your fellows to buy useless crap for the people you want to love- if love didn’t require so much- in the hope that they will love you too. But they know you don’t love them. You can’t fake love for very long and you certainly can’t buy it and they’ll turn on you and let you know that sooner or later and you’ll wind up in a dark room listening to “Tears of a Clown” over and over and over again... alone.

Your children and your friends know that you don’t love them and you know that they don’t love you. It’s all an air-kissing masquerade in a bad manners production of a wasted life. Materialism doesn’t satisfy the hunger for human understanding and natural affection, prostituted and destroyed by a raging buck fever for worthless goods in place of the one thing you were too cheap to provide and which cost you nothing but the vulnerability and sacrifice of delivery. Real love has been buried under a landfill of garbage that is the headstone over the shallow grave of the people you might have been and never were.

Visible sings: The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible♫ Nothing More ♫
'Nothing More' is track no. 5 of 13 on Visible's 2007 album 'The Sacred and The Profane'
Lyrics (pops up)

The Sacred and The Profane by Les Visible

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Something We Saw on a Mountain Path

I have a friend who lives in Bulgaria and I went to visit him a while back. He lives in the Stara Planina. My friend is an alchemist of sorts. I might also call him a curious collector and a person around which ordinary things can take on entirely new dimensions of appearance sometimes. Anyone who has read Pantanjali’s Yoga Aphorisms would understand how this could be possible although they might not be able to do it themselves.

Certain mountainous areas in the Balkan Mountains are famous for mysterious characters and tales about brotherhoods and such. Peter Dunov lived there as did his disciple Mikhael Aivanhov before he went to France.

My friend, let’s call him Gregor, took me for a walk one afternoon. First we went through dense scrub which gave way to a kind of dwarf pine and then into massive arrangements of rock with scattered foliage that was made possible by collections of dirt that has traveled on the air and over time collected in depressions and after that, seeds followed in the same way.

At one point we came upon something lying on the ground which looked like it could be phlegm from a traveling rock troll who had been through there the night before. It could have been something that leaked from an industrial container or it might have been any number of things; something that had been eaten and which proved to be unsuitable to the digestion. There were a couple of suitable rocks very near this item and Gregor said we should sit there a moment and study this phenomena.

There we sat, neither of us saying anything. That strange thing that sometimes happens around Gregor started to happen and this congealed substance began to move like some small creature shifting in its sleep. It was a subtle thing. Maybe it was moving and maybe it wasn’t. It was changing too. The color deepened and the color changed as well. To begin with it had appeared to be a combination of muddy browns and degrees of red with some yellow and patches of white. Then the red became black and the yellow turned brown. Then the brown became yellow again.

It was just a patch of something unattractive. Some of it was wet and some of it looked crusty. As I studied it I kept getting the sensation that I had seen that shape before. It was hauntingly familiar. I was thinking that it was so familiar that I was going to be mentally kicking myself when I finally discovered what it was reminding me of. This is the sort of thing that happens around Gregor. Sometimes, something gets revealed that you probably would not have seen and other times, something you would have caught right off gets veiled.

I should mention here that although I’ve had these experiences with Gregor before and there would have been no chemical reason for it, there were also times when he fixed me something from his collection of teas and I would find myself crossing from this terra ordinaire into some dreamscape. Such was not the case on this afternoon.

“Give it time.” Gregor said. “It will come to you.” This is another thing he did with some frequency; show up in my thoughts. When I am on psychedelics I can do this. I can read minds because, at those times, I am well aware that there is only one mind so that mental conversations pass through my head in a way that is similar to how physical conversation passes into my ears. Gregor seems to be able to do this all the time although he never comments on it much. He doesn’t say much at the best of times and you can’t get a straight answer out of him about anything. It’s maddening on occasion because you know that he could give a simple and illuminating answer to some mysterious complexity but he never does. He almost always answers a question with another question.

Now this makes me think about the technology of the one mind and how, since Gregor is in my mind when he asks me a question, the answer is there too and... as it’s one mind it’s there for any of us to discover.

“It’s a little frustrating.” I said. “It’s one of those things that should be obvious and I can’t make the connection. I’ve gone from wondering what it is to wondering about the shape. It’s the shape that’s puzzling me.”

“Look deeper.” he said. “Look into it.”

I did this and ...this splatter, whatever it was, began to increase in size until I could see tiny forms moving in the mix. Some of them were absorbing others. A time would come when one of the objects would expand to absorb everything and there would be only a single color and then it would break up again into some large number of pulsating items. When it was like this there was a great deal of movement as if someone had flattened an anthill. When some large form was absorbing the other larger forms, that had also been absorbing others, the movement became much slower. When the largest item became the only item there was a period of no movement at all.

It was during a moment when the most recent, single object had broken up again that it came to me. I was looking at a near perfect representation of the United States. What I said was, “Where’s Canada?” We both laughed. I was laughing quite hard. It seemed really funny to me.

Gregor asked, “Do you think it would have looked or acted different if it had been Australia or somewhere else?” “Probably not.” I replied. “It’s feeding on itself isn’t it? It’s feeding on itself but it’s still there and there’s still the same amount of it as always.”

“Would you have expected it to be different?”

“I guess not but... that’s the thing, isn’t it? It doesn’t really go anywhere and it doesn’t disappear just because it consumed itself. It’s that serpent with the tail thing. Life, the culture especially, is sort of like a ravenous, chemical sludge. Out here in the raw materials section there’s a pristine and endless waiting to occur. This is like a pottery shop waiting to happen and then someone makes a pot and they mix some ingredients in the pot and then it gets poured out on the ground and the components of the mix start to devour each other. We’re just bacteria aren’t we?”

“Wouldn’t it depend on whether you were down there or sitting here?” Gregor got up after he said this and we walked on until we came to the place where the mountain had fallen away and tumbled for many hundreds of feet to the valley below. There was a large village there which had been built only a few hundred yards from where this portion of the mountain had completed its fall. I looked at the village and thought about the pulsating stain we had left behind us. The village looked quiet and welcoming from this distance. I said, “I guess it depends on how big it gets... how viral it becomes.”

Gregor didn’t say anything for awhile. Then he said, “Wouldn’t that be a parallel to just about anything? ...your own life... the amount of things in it and how they react with each other... the contents of your house... your mind or your heart. They might be very crowded and busy and then again the front door could be hanging from one hinge and there could be only a single chair by a window that looks out on something like this.” He gestured at the scene below. I could hear a dog barking, very faint and far away. Was the dog barking at us?

Neither of us said anything further and after awhile we turned around and went back the way we had come. When we got to the place where that mysterious substance had been it wasn’t there any more.

Visible sings: Color Ball by Les Visible♫ I'm Coming Back ♫
'I'm Coming Back' is track no. 4 of 12 on Visible's 2007 album 'Color Ball'
Lyrics (pops up)

Color Ball by Les Visible

Thursday, November 13, 2008

The Art of the Possible on the Brink of Upheaval

Greetings and salutations on this fine Italian morning. I thought we’d move away from all this talk about the New World Order; Zio-Krays and Gallo’s, PC-Nazis, Schmoo epidemics, Biblical plagues and all the other looming evils and uncertainties that have turned the world into a chiaroscuro Wellbutrin-junkie world and look into some of the more positive things that are being worked on around the world.

This year, I’ve got a bumper olive crop since nearly all 76 of my trees are producing at the same time. My almond trees were also outstanding as well. I have had to lay out around 500 meters of net five meters wide to catch them all. I think that’s a lot of olives. My various succulent efforts are booming and blooming and I hope to have them become a major feature of the landscape in time. I am in love with succulents and never knew there were so many until I got into it.

Most people know that I am very interested in The Devic Realm and I had some conversations with my local entities about the situation where I live and you can form your own conclusions about the reality of the affair but it’s there to be seen that I’m getting more olives than one might ordinarily expect when I haven’t done anything to my trees. There are other surprises as well but I won’t be going into them today. Some of you may be familiar with Findhorn and what they accomplished there. I’m not going to comment on this particular organization or what might be the state of it today. We all know what happens when fame and notice, encounter money and influence.

In any case, there’s something to making contact with the invisible entities that labor in the natural world. What we call angels and other cultures and religions know by other names are only the highest entities from The Devic Realm. There are many other groups and types. You might know what gnomes, sylphs, salamanders and naiads are and you might not but they are employed like the dwarves in Time Bandits to engage in certain activities demanded of them by The Supreme Being.

What are called 'fairies' and 'elves' are also residents of The Devic Realm.

The agencies of The Devic Realm are quite curious about human beings, however, most of the time we behave like rampaging, destructive demons and they are not going to come around under those circumstances. I’m just throwing this out because I think some people might be curious about Nature’s helpers and a little inquiry can sometimes open windows of perception in your day to day.

Mostly I want to talk about the new technologies and to mention Jacque Fresco and encourage you to see the movie, The Future by Design. I have the highest admiration for Jacque and Roxanne and the work they do. In my communications with them they have proven to be every bit as remarkable as human beings as they are innovators for humanities future. This is the key element I look for when I encounter anyone who has been made famous for any reason... are they also a human being. If not, my interest in them ends.

Presently I am looking at a lot of different modalities to take my little hectare and this little house off the grid. I’ve seen some real breakthroughs of late such as spray on solar cells, the new super solar panels and this little item of entrepreneurial ingenuity. I’ve looked at geo-thermal and wind turbine systems. There’s a lot out there and once again, I’m probably not going to get out of seventh grade because I’m almost all right brain. Conceptually I get a lot of things and the intuition is a marvel. I’ve found that you can supercharge the intuition; maybe it’s better to say that you can greatly enhance access by the practice of certain repetitive efforts; more on that at another time... but... but... I’m a technical and mechanical Luddite and best left to simpler chores like chain-sawing firewood, digging holes and constructing planters and washing the dishes. I can do some simple household repairs and I can build some simple, interesting structures but that’s about it.

What I really need are friends who have this end of the equation down. That is why I love the idea of a community of diversely talented individuals who are also, ‘human beings’ and with whom one can accomplish all sorts of wonderful things for the benefit of the group. Unfortunately for me... now in Expatria, I don’t run into this much and my reclusive nature doesn’t facilitate running across many people but I suspect I wouldn’t be talking about this if there weren’t a reason that leads to some sort of change in the dynamic.

Recently I’ve had some freakishly positive encounters with individuals who possess specialized knowledge that looks like it is going to solve several long standing problems I have had in the area of supply and demand and in the area of making what I do a lot more professional than I have been able to accomplish. The world may be temporarily turning to shit but there are a lot of good things going on and I would rather focus on those when I can; surely I do in my personal life because most of what Smoking Mirrors talks about doesn’t have much actual impact on me except in the spiritual and metaphysical sense.

I’ve brought this up before and you should know that the primary intention of my blogs was to facilitate it... I’ve discussed this concept of a community before. Susanne and I are not tied to Italy over the long term. At the same time, I would say that where I am in Italy is a better than average location for a community and the people are genuine and hospitable in a way that has all but vanished from contemporary life. The idea of a community in several locations is also good and allows for varieties of creative possibilities.

So... the purpose of this blog entry is to encourage the readers to chime in with their thoughts on the matter. I would venture to say that among the readers here we could generate a prosperous and productive living situation pretty easily since there are some very sharp minds and multi-talented individuals coming around here. The key is to remain human and avoid the nasty self-interest and petty ego demanding that seems to proliferate more than one would like. We need to leave certain things at the door and not mind too much when life shows us our approach needs modification and to be willing to change so as to more richly enhance our lives and the lives of our companions.

Basically, I’d just like us to think about this and maybe have a little to say and see what comes about in the mix. It is certain that the old world is on its way out. It is a combination of damaged systems and wasted energy, rife with greed and appetite; not to mention, bad food and lifestyles. We can do better. It may be that we create a virtual community or one where people come in and out as time and circumstance permits. Whatever the result might be it will be better than what we have seen and better than what is recycling away.

So... let’s see what you come up with.

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

Sunday, November 09, 2008

Somewhere over the Rainbow Lies the Land of the Khmer Rouge

When I look at the world and all of the injustices that need to be adjusted, the lack of ‘One hundred percent authentic!’, ‘accept no substitutes!’ universal gay marriage isn’t what immediately comes to mind.

I’ve gotten no small measure of amusement from Ms’s Etheridge and DeGeneres and company bewailing their oppressed state. Etheridge isn’t going to pay her taxes, or so she says. Of course, that’s about as likely as Alex Baldwin relocating to Europe or the AMA/Pharmaceutical combine promoting good health instead of working to destroy it to increase business.

Along with Zionism, I consider political correctness to be one of the most pernicious viruses on the planet. I shouldn’t have to point out that the places where political correctness most flourished was in revolutionary France, in Red China and among the Khmer Rouge. Political Correctness is cultural fascism. Fascism doesn’t have just one set of clothes. It is as likely to show up in a school room as it is at a family dinner table.

I’ve known a lot of gay people in my life and I never have yet met one who wanted to get married. It sort of destroys the bohemian aspect of the thing. Like with so many movements that want to legitimize their idea of what’s real, as soon as money gets involved you’ve got the scientific and academic community wondering if their new book tour on the gay gene is going to result in a call from Mr., Nobel Prize or one of his siblings.

PETA is another example of this sort of thing. The basic idea is a good one. I’ve no argument with it. I love animals and it breaks my heart to see how they are treated but... you add money, a public relations firm and sympathetic appeal and some more money and the next thing you know the anti-smoking people are in on it and then there’s a law that says you can’t smoke in your house because it’s bad for your dog.

Then there are the Vegans who say that eating honey is stealing from the bees and that cow’s milk is stealing from the calves. There are people who want to marry their pets and then there’s NAMBLA which says that, “eight is too late.” You’ve got voodoo gurus who have sex with their followers and then sue people who point out inconsistencies in their teachings. You’ve got Scientology and K-Mart Kabala who indenture and brain wash people and then hire lawyers to go after the people who point it out.

I’m guessing that gay people in general have got it a great deal better than the Native Americans do. You hear all kinds of arguments about benefits and tax situations where gays are discriminated against because they don’t have the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples have. The bottom line is that that is bullshit... gays like most of the rest of the well-funded political correctness movements are more than equal. The same goes for the public placement of all the menorahs and other Hebrew symbols when measured against the suppression of Christian symbology and the centuries old names of the celebrations of Christianity. The same goes for the rights of witches and pagans and no doubt werewolves as well.

The fact of the matter is that the collective will of the people should prevail over the special interests of well funded minority interests. Unfortunately, much of the time, that has not been the case lately.

It should be no problem for bars and restaurants to have closed off smoking sections but that is not enough for the anti-smoking fascists. They don’t want a reasonable solution. They want their solution and every success serves to push their agenda forward to ever more and more absurd demands.

It’s not just the gay marriage thing that sets off ‘the people’ and causes backlash and protest. It’s all the other things having to do with what kindergarten and primary school children are taught and what points of view are forced upon impressionable minds before they have any chance of getting to a place where they can make up their own. If you want to see political correctness taken to the height of absurdity you have only to look at what is going on in England which also has the highest concentration of spy cameras on the planet. There’s a connection here and you shouldn’t need me to point it out. You also shouldn’t need me to point out that these spy cameras have had very little effect on the crimes they are supposed to prevent.

I don’t have the time and space here to list the incredible amount of demands and the incredible amount of insidious activities that ‘certain members’ of the gay community are up to. It’s not just gay marriage and it’s not just about equal rights. It’s about more than equal and privileged status. It’s about the attempt to supplant and replace the thing it contends against. Take the time and trouble to google some of the things going on in academic and scientific circles if you don’t mind having the shit scared out of you.

The thing is that one thing leads to another. One freedom gained leads to another freedom desired. Then there’s the hypocrisy of it all. Alcohol kills more people and destroys more lives than tobacco ever will but alcohol is cool. Marijuana is illegal because it makes you think. Alcohol is legal because it makes you stupid.

The gay movement, like so many movements eventually comes up against the limit of what the majority of the community will accept. That’s just how it is. The majority of the people don’t want certain aspects of the gay agenda legitimized although they are perfectly fine with many aspects which operate unhindered as this is being written. If gay marriage were legalized it would immediately be forgotten and it would be onward to the next demand. That’s just how it is.

The truth is that the world is insane. Sometimes it’s a great deal more nuts than at other times. Insanity seems to be the most epidemic in the times when materialism is most prevalent. Behind the scenes are thousands of professionals’ hotwiring realities to make them look like what they are not. Then, in come the lawyers and lobbyists who couldn’t care less about the subject at hand but only about the paycheck at the end of the road.

This is why humanity fascinates me. I can sit and watch it go by for hours and hours. They’re like millions of dogs chasing their tails. They get some idea in their mind that has to do with something they want and they can rationalize anything in the pursuit of it. Nobody understands why no one understands them. No one understands why everyone is only interested in themselves just like they are. No one gets why it’s not okay for them to push their way through a crowd of people pushing their way through a crowd toward a fly infested latrine trench where they can get all giddy about the bouquet of their more memorable contributions, now aging beautifully before them.

I don’t really care one way or the other about gay marriage. It’s just not important. I’m not interested in what Vegans think about bees or the fact that non-smokers think there might be a people who live beneath the Earth’s surfaces who are smoking and who shouldn’t be. I’m going to do what I want to do anyway and I’ll go right on doing it because I’m not doing it in your face. I’m not standing on a street corner with a couple of lines of Ketamine and a microphone demanding that you recognize my right to do it. There’s a point there.

The constant shrill insistence on public recognition and compliance with your petulant and childish dress up games in your imaginary world of appearances sooner or later meets up with an archetypal parent force. It might be society and it might be the law. Freedom isn’t license and you could spend a good long time looking for someone who could explain to you what freedom really is instead of explaining to you that freedom is just another way of saying, “get the fuck out of my way.”

Visible and The Critical List: Not Politically Correct by Les Visible and The Critical List♫ Big God and Mr. Fate ♫
'Big God and Mr. Fate' is track no. 3 of 12 on Visible and The Critical List's 1992 album
'Not Politically Correct'

About this song (pops up)

Not Politically Correct by Les Visible and The Critical List

Friday, November 07, 2008

Madonna, the Whore of Babylon Lite

Given that Obama sold out before he is even on the shelf, I’d rather not talk about it at the moment but I do want to write something and since this is Petri Dish, I thought I’d talk about one of the biggest mucus smears to ever come down the pike and that is Madonna. There are some very interesting connections to Madonna and most of the nasty shit that we have had to endure these last however many years and I’m going to go into that a bit. First, because it is Madonna, I want to link a tune, my Love Song for Madonna (is it a tune?) at this point instead of at the end of the piece sorta to set the mood.

Okay... you’ve listened to it or you haven’t listened to it and you probably get the idea that I don’t like Madonna and you would be right. Regular readers at Visible Origami may be a little distressed to find that the virtual Saint Visible of the Internet is no kind of saint at all. Readers at Smoking Mirrors won’t think about it.

Now, everyone know that Madonna is a slut and a whore for personal gain who likes to flaunt her love for material things and just generally promote herself constantly by using all of the timeless buzz topics of sex and money and sex and money. You have to give her credit for being good at it and never going broke under-estimating the tastes of the hoi poloi. The reason you really have to give her credit is that she is not beautiful by any stretch of the imagination which is why all the make-up and lights are so important... she looks like a dominatrix who operates out of a Berlin leather club. Her calves are fatter than Rush Limbaugh’s head. She can’t sing. She can’t write. She can’t dance and when she does she most resembles one of those lumberjacks log rolling. And... she really, really can’t act or direct. I’m not sure what she does well but it is probably the way she markets herself like she was Coca Cola that heats up in a rotating dildo and then spits out like a Cobra at everyone in reach.

She’s been smart about this. She knows how much money the gay crowd has and so she went the fag hag route big time. Early on in her career she used to pull Latino boys into her limo and did things with them because she could and she did it the way a junkie shoots smack.

She got married here and there and finally she got married for real and then it was time to manufacture another persona and that would be the ‘spiritual’ Madonna so, with a calculation dripping with irony she embraced the Wal-Mart Kabala of Philip Berg and they went on a rampage of selling official red strings at twenty-five dollars a pop at Target stores and who knows where else; selling Kabala water blessed by real estate scammers, selling... selling and selling and... recruiting. So then Madonna looked around and said to herself, “Who are the most clueless celebrities on the planet?” Then she roped them in and they started wearing red strings too. Just for your information, these red strings have all the charm and occult power of the red string on a Tampax in aftermath. I can’t believe I said that but I did.

Now... I know a little about Kabala. I’ve read all of the main books and many of the books associated with that science and put some time into Gematria and related subjects over the course of a number of years. This is a science that requires full left brain focus; I am major right brain oriented which is why I don’t bother with this science any more. It requires a genius level intellect and various aptitudes that few possess. It’s no big deal though to the world’s biggest hack dilettante to become a Kabala Reiki master after 3 weekends and a wake-up.

Well... Madonna married a film director and got a house in England and got called Madge and got pretty universally despised by the residents but... Madonna has a Kevlar mind-persona defense system so, no biggie. I’ll close this end of the diatribe by saying that very, very few people can get anywhere near the real meaning of the mystical Kabala and that there are two Kabala’s. The one Madonna/Berg are involved in is the black magic end or promoting self-interest through manipulation of astral energies. You can read plenty about Berg’s Kabala here

It’s understood that there will be people who will say, “Hey wait a minute, Madonna did one good song once”; as if that legitimizes the shit-Tsunami of her body of work. It’s like when people tell me that there’s good rap out there. There are probably some intelligent people in Alabama but do you really want to wade through the rest of them in the effort to find them?

This is known as a rant. Therefore it is not going to be measured and circumspect or wind up with the writer and the readers engaging in a laying on of hands and singing Cumbaya at the end. To understand the state of a culture one has only to observe the icons of that culture and the degree of their pervasiveness. Everything is connected to everything so... you take a Madonna and a Warhol; you grab a bunch of Mouseketeers and reality shows, you lasso in a handful of talk radio Nimrods and Gerry Springer clones, you flood the land with Big Box stores and polystyrene condos and you’ve got a country/world tailor made for George W. Bush and everyone who helped to make it that way is in on the operation, either consciously or accidentally on purpose.

All of the collective efforts of those who manipulated those who went on to manipulate others made the world the way it is and set the stage for what occurs and what waits in the wings. In the process they marginalized and/or perverted anyone and everyone who might have been, or was trying to, tell the truth or set a good example.

Someone decides that they want to make a lot of money. They invest in a company that has a subsidiary that manufactures munitions that are used to murder people who have the misfortune to be living on land desired by people without conscience or scruple. Somewhere... the person who wanted to make money in any way they could, also had their finger on the trigger of the bullet that went through the baby’s head. Everyone who bought into the gratuitous lies of polished speakers who promised what they had no intention of delivering bears some measure of responsibility for what did get delivered by supporting the liars whose real intentions were rape and murder.

All of the so-called artists who wrote songs that made people stupid; that promoted lifestyles that destroyed people, that produced any form of art that made life more confused or uglier than it was, that fabricated art, lathered up with prurient intent because, “that’s what sells baby”, that whored out their work and their souls for temporary gain at the expense of everyone else has a part in the time and conditions we find ourselves in.

What’s the solution? I think that’s a personal affair. This isn’t about solutions. This is about pointing the finger while giving the finger for the sole purpose of personal catharsis like sweating out last nights binge with a good run or making a donation to any political party via the porcelain donation bowl in your bathroom.

There are a number of things that affect the quality of life and they are cynically manipulated by business and political interests to create a hospitable climate for the sort of things one can investigate on a Petri dish or a glass slide. In the meantime they are lauded by a public which they hold in utter contempt and which they treat contemptibly in everything they say and do while simultaneously they and the public cast to the wayside every good thing that might have comforted or saved their ass on down the line.

The bestial treatment that Madonna has given to the divine feminine principle and the callous disregard for all sacred archetypes that is handed out in every day by all of the posturing pimps and whores who preen at their reflections in the still waters of the waste treatment center are a wonder to behold. The critical analysis of what is recognizably shit by the pretentious twits that define or add meaning to that which needs no definition and which has no meaning other than Onanistic self-indulgence is amazing; “What the artist is attempting to say can only be understood within the context of a heterogeneous alphabet of discreet and contained elements which bespeak congeners of Chinese boxes disappearing up a Whiffenpoof’s ass.”

There’s not much point to this and certainly no great change is expected in the teeming riot of dark effluents which exemplifies the creative expressions of our times but I feel a lot better for having said it and that’s got to be worth something, if only to me.