Twelve years ago I was on a prescribed drug that caused me to veer, in hard to foresee ways, toward street curbs while walking. Forgetting to blink was another symptom. A friend brought up Alex, the criminal played by Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. During his rehabilitation into a straight law-abiding member of society, behavioral scientists make him watch reel after reel of violent images, coupled with relentless nauseating treatments so that he can't think of violence or commit a violent act without becoming ill. During the movie shows, a man in a white lab coat administers eye drops to Alex, whose eyelids are pried open during the procedure.
I would stop myself before stepping onto the street. The mechanical survival instinct switched on to stop the drug-induced mechanical push to make my feet, accustomed to the sidewalk, want to avoid the other concrete of the street. This locomotion made no sense to me at the time, and still doesn't. That a legal drug would have such a potentially dangerous side effect only reinforces my view that our society, allowing such a drug's use, practices irresponsibility with the regularity of clockwork.
Listen to TV advertisements for prescription drugs, ranging from mental health treatments to Baby Boomer cock problems:
"Side effects may include nausea, pain in the uterus, heart palpitations, suicidal thoughts, depression, abdominal pains, angst, ulcers, blackouts, racing thoughts, laziness, flatulence, death..."
While narrators of these ads list these indignities to the human spirit, images continue to show the couple at the baseball game, smiling at each other, presumably preparing for a fuck, or a woman with bipolar disorder looking serenely at wildflowers. Sound in severe contrast to image.
Considering the degree to which legal drugs produced by the gargantuan pharmaceutical industry affect us, it's fair to claim that that profit machine controls a piece of most Americans' daily lives. I have five prescriptions. Due to my insurance plan, I get the drugs without financial hurt, but only twenty-two years ago I had no prescriptions. I aged, various conditions needed addressing with pharmaceuticals--I don't resent swallowing these legal drugs. I do, however, think sometimes about my need. Wherever I go I need to be connected to a continuous supply. A global catastrophe, presuming I survive it, will find me spending much of my time searching for my drugs, like a vampire requiring the nightly red fix. Other survivors would do the same, although Viagra may, in the event of an apocalypse, be recognized for what it is: a drug of secondary or tertiary importance.
I'm stuck, though, like humanity, in a cocoon of drugs. President George Bush, (1989-1993)--we never called him George H.W. Bush because we didn't know about the H.W. and we didn't know he had a son named George--took Halcion during his administration. An anti-insomnia drug, it no doubt helped Poppy sleep between long hours of plotting the destruction of dictators he used to do business with.
Fast walking, over-medicated, veering to the curb. Why did I do it? Was I in charge of my body? Was Merck, or Eli Lilly, or some vast factory in the mountains of Switzerland moving me around, zigzagging me that summer? A god eating drug profits like the Old Testament Moloch, an idol with a furnace inside, devouring children like chicken tenders?
Now I blink, I can stay on the sidewalk. This orange wears the clock and isn't run by it.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Monday, March 23, 2015
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, maybe in 2017 President Cruz of the U.S.A., took the first dive into the presidential candidate swimming pool, announcing a run for the highest office before Christian college students required to attend the gathering in Lynchburg, Virginia. That city was home to the late Reverend Jerry Falwell, smug founder of the Moral Majority. Would Falwell have liked Cruz? Probably. His last name is Spanish for cross, for Christ's sake.
Ted Cruz, American success story, has Cuban ancestry. It's ideal, perhaps, that such a politician seeking head of state status comes along to possibly succeed the President who made the first dent in U.S.-Cuban non-relations, a move viewed as wrong-headed by aging Cuban-American Floridians and those politicians who believe the Cuban people should be stomped on forever.
I heard MSNBC pundits discussing Cruz as far right, contrasting him with his competitor Jeb Bush, who will, they say, take the middle road in his not yet announced campaign. After all, Mrs. Jeb Bush is Latina, their children are genetic mixtures, like President Obama and everybody else on the planet. Jeb Bush, allegedly, will proclaim a humane viewpoint on immigration, fulfilling the compassionate words held by the Statue of Liberty, perhaps. Or, after he declares his candidacy and he needs to sound more tough than his fellow presidential runners, he won't. Switching positions will prove easy for him, because he's a politician, because he's a liar.
Ted Cruz's ambitions include abolishing the IRS and getting rid of Obamacare. When he makes such rash statements I don't think he's lying, but does he think that as President he could accomplish such victories that would primarily benefit the wealthy, while killing medically uninsured people?
One of the women on the Fox News show Outnumbered (wherein four women in dresses, legs always crossed, surround a single male guest seated on the middle segment of a large U-shaped couch) observed that Ted Cruz makes good speeches. Indeed, he's smooth, confident, although his voice sounds like the buzz of a model airplane engine. Former Congressman Allen West of Florida, today's lone male on the show, then remarked that making a good speech isn't enough. Another woman on the couch said, "That's right. One can have a great speaking style, but look who's living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and where has that got us?"
After I rose from the floor after laughing my ass off at that--you can't sit when you don't have an ass--I switched off the TV set and contemplated Senator Cruz's announcement. He is, like him or not, running for President. He spoke up, making the declarative set of statements necessary to tell us he's running. Has Jeb Bush, or Scott Walker, or Hillary Clinton, or Mike Huckabee, or any of the other likely ones done this? Not yet.
Last week, Scott Walker in New Hampshire said he's the frontrunner.
Jeb Bush was later asked by a reporter what he thinks of Walker's claim.
"Well," Bush said, "I'm not a candidate."
But he is wishy-washy.
Hillary Clinton, when asked about her obvious run, always plays it coy, and it's sickening.
So good for you, Ted Cruz! I doubt that you'll be President, you're too fucking ridiculous. During your pseudo-filibuster a while back you resorted at some tired point to reading out loud Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. You don't come across as someone who could handle a super-complex job like the Presidency, but you could probably run a Havana casino after the Castro Brothers die.
Vic Neptune
Ted Cruz, American success story, has Cuban ancestry. It's ideal, perhaps, that such a politician seeking head of state status comes along to possibly succeed the President who made the first dent in U.S.-Cuban non-relations, a move viewed as wrong-headed by aging Cuban-American Floridians and those politicians who believe the Cuban people should be stomped on forever.
I heard MSNBC pundits discussing Cruz as far right, contrasting him with his competitor Jeb Bush, who will, they say, take the middle road in his not yet announced campaign. After all, Mrs. Jeb Bush is Latina, their children are genetic mixtures, like President Obama and everybody else on the planet. Jeb Bush, allegedly, will proclaim a humane viewpoint on immigration, fulfilling the compassionate words held by the Statue of Liberty, perhaps. Or, after he declares his candidacy and he needs to sound more tough than his fellow presidential runners, he won't. Switching positions will prove easy for him, because he's a politician, because he's a liar.
Ted Cruz's ambitions include abolishing the IRS and getting rid of Obamacare. When he makes such rash statements I don't think he's lying, but does he think that as President he could accomplish such victories that would primarily benefit the wealthy, while killing medically uninsured people?
One of the women on the Fox News show Outnumbered (wherein four women in dresses, legs always crossed, surround a single male guest seated on the middle segment of a large U-shaped couch) observed that Ted Cruz makes good speeches. Indeed, he's smooth, confident, although his voice sounds like the buzz of a model airplane engine. Former Congressman Allen West of Florida, today's lone male on the show, then remarked that making a good speech isn't enough. Another woman on the couch said, "That's right. One can have a great speaking style, but look who's living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and where has that got us?"
After I rose from the floor after laughing my ass off at that--you can't sit when you don't have an ass--I switched off the TV set and contemplated Senator Cruz's announcement. He is, like him or not, running for President. He spoke up, making the declarative set of statements necessary to tell us he's running. Has Jeb Bush, or Scott Walker, or Hillary Clinton, or Mike Huckabee, or any of the other likely ones done this? Not yet.
Last week, Scott Walker in New Hampshire said he's the frontrunner.
Jeb Bush was later asked by a reporter what he thinks of Walker's claim.
"Well," Bush said, "I'm not a candidate."
But he is wishy-washy.
Hillary Clinton, when asked about her obvious run, always plays it coy, and it's sickening.
So good for you, Ted Cruz! I doubt that you'll be President, you're too fucking ridiculous. During your pseudo-filibuster a while back you resorted at some tired point to reading out loud Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham. You don't come across as someone who could handle a super-complex job like the Presidency, but you could probably run a Havana casino after the Castro Brothers die.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Wisconsin's sleepy-eyed Governor, Scott Walker, has been campaigning for his party's presidential nomination. Like his colleague/adversary, Jeb Bush, he has yet to declare his run for President. As far as I know, no one, as of this date, has admitted to running for President. Hillary Clinton's smug hints about running say the obvious.
The 2016 election, nineteen months away, should be off topic in the news, but it's supposedly fascinating to watch the "hopefuls" visit states with early primaries: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. Scott Walker hasn't been in Wisconsin much since he won re-election. Like New Jersey's Chris Christie, he's a traveling Governor, flying even to Europe to wow the English with his refusal to discuss U.S. foreign policy (a must if he becomes President, yes?) and dodging the question, "Do you believe in evolution?"
Walker's advantage, propelling him to the world stage, comes from the bulwark of right-wing wealth holding him in place, plus the usual hot air balloon of Reaganite fuck-the-poor-and-middle- class ideas. Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries have provided cash to make Wisconsin, a formerly liberal state, into a conservative-leaning experiment approaching final success. Scott Walker has become what's called a polarizing figure. Love him or hate him, that's the emotion in Wisconsin, while in America at large he's not well known enough to inspire passion.
Wondering about who will be the next President inspires a sense of the absurd as I sit in a chair on a late winter night, pondering among others a political specimen like Scott Walker living in the White House in January 2017. Or another polarizing figure, Hillary Clinton, a favorite among millions? Or Jeb Bush, a doofus out of touch with the twenty-first century? His national security advisory team has some of the same neoconservatives who pushed for the rape and pillage of Iraq. Do you want the spirit of the Bush/Cheney years? Vote for George's little brother.
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor, friend of Ted Nugent, NRA apologist, and former Fox News host, threatens a run. A man of God, his warm, easy-going manner makes him seem like a genial high school principal. In elementary school, a teacher instructed us on the different spellings of principle and principal.
"The principal is your pal."
Mike Huckabee, your pal, as full of glib and amusing quips as Brian Williams, but when he talks about social issues and foreign policy he reminds me of the Devil making friends with the gullible.
When these Commander-in-Chief hopefuls walk around on stages, holding microphones, their sleeves rolled up, they act as if they're unobjectionable human beings, but anyone backed by secret monetary donations--a key to political corruption--is a rotting carcass in a skin suit.
H.L. Mencken, great essayist of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote that American voters, for some illogical set of reasons based on no facts or knowledge of history whatsoever, have a perpetual optimism about the process of elections; that the next group of politicians elected every other year will be better than the last. Mencken, writing this in the early 1920s, didn't see this hoped for progress, but suggested politicians get worse over time. I agree. Some exceptional politicians come to the fore and work hard amid the mass of mediocrity, but it's mostly one corrupt lobbyist wannabe after another.
Earlier this year, when the 114th Congress began, some in the news asked, "Will it be better than the do-nothing 113th?"
Why would it be? There are even more Republicans in the House and in the Senate than in the past few years. Are they going to suddenly become effective at their actual jobs, rather than dwell on ways to fuck over Barack Obama?
The rotting carcass, sleeves rolled up, holding a microphone, is your pal. Your pal doesn't lie. He, and she, cares about you.
Vic Neptune
The 2016 election, nineteen months away, should be off topic in the news, but it's supposedly fascinating to watch the "hopefuls" visit states with early primaries: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina. Scott Walker hasn't been in Wisconsin much since he won re-election. Like New Jersey's Chris Christie, he's a traveling Governor, flying even to Europe to wow the English with his refusal to discuss U.S. foreign policy (a must if he becomes President, yes?) and dodging the question, "Do you believe in evolution?"
Walker's advantage, propelling him to the world stage, comes from the bulwark of right-wing wealth holding him in place, plus the usual hot air balloon of Reaganite fuck-the-poor-and-middle- class ideas. Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries have provided cash to make Wisconsin, a formerly liberal state, into a conservative-leaning experiment approaching final success. Scott Walker has become what's called a polarizing figure. Love him or hate him, that's the emotion in Wisconsin, while in America at large he's not well known enough to inspire passion.
Wondering about who will be the next President inspires a sense of the absurd as I sit in a chair on a late winter night, pondering among others a political specimen like Scott Walker living in the White House in January 2017. Or another polarizing figure, Hillary Clinton, a favorite among millions? Or Jeb Bush, a doofus out of touch with the twenty-first century? His national security advisory team has some of the same neoconservatives who pushed for the rape and pillage of Iraq. Do you want the spirit of the Bush/Cheney years? Vote for George's little brother.
Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor, friend of Ted Nugent, NRA apologist, and former Fox News host, threatens a run. A man of God, his warm, easy-going manner makes him seem like a genial high school principal. In elementary school, a teacher instructed us on the different spellings of principle and principal.
"The principal is your pal."
Mike Huckabee, your pal, as full of glib and amusing quips as Brian Williams, but when he talks about social issues and foreign policy he reminds me of the Devil making friends with the gullible.
When these Commander-in-Chief hopefuls walk around on stages, holding microphones, their sleeves rolled up, they act as if they're unobjectionable human beings, but anyone backed by secret monetary donations--a key to political corruption--is a rotting carcass in a skin suit.
H.L. Mencken, great essayist of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote that American voters, for some illogical set of reasons based on no facts or knowledge of history whatsoever, have a perpetual optimism about the process of elections; that the next group of politicians elected every other year will be better than the last. Mencken, writing this in the early 1920s, didn't see this hoped for progress, but suggested politicians get worse over time. I agree. Some exceptional politicians come to the fore and work hard amid the mass of mediocrity, but it's mostly one corrupt lobbyist wannabe after another.
Earlier this year, when the 114th Congress began, some in the news asked, "Will it be better than the do-nothing 113th?"
Why would it be? There are even more Republicans in the House and in the Senate than in the past few years. Are they going to suddenly become effective at their actual jobs, rather than dwell on ways to fuck over Barack Obama?
The rotting carcass, sleeves rolled up, holding a microphone, is your pal. Your pal doesn't lie. He, and she, cares about you.
Vic Neptune
Saturday, March 7, 2015
A guest on Sean Hannity's Fox News Channel show griped about Iran's quest for nuclear weapons. He said that Iran is not "a normal country." He may have meant a country dedicated to living peacefully on this world. A true democracy, where votes count, like they did in the U.S. 2000 presidential election.
If Israel is a normal country, then so is the United States and Russia, all three chronically engaged in warfare, used to killing unarmed women and children, practicing belligerence towards wanted lands.
Jeb Bush, at an agricultural convention in Iowa attended by several GOP presidential hopefuls, complained about Obama's foreign policy, saying America must be feared. Apart from the fact there are millions of Iraqis, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Syrians, and Iranians who already fear the U.S., Bush doesn't seem to realize that his fear wish suggests he would like to be a terrorist. Terrorism is the use of fear for political ends. Terrorism is the practice of "normal" countries.
Iran, too, sponsors and practices terrorism, making it quite normal by nation-state standards. Hannity's guest would have us believe Israel is an innocent nation mortally threatened by fanatical Muslims a few steps away from obtaining nuclear weapons, which they would, of course, immediately launch at Israel, and perhaps even at the United States. I've read Captain America comic books with more plausible scenarios. Remember that in 2002, Dick Cheney gave a doomsday speech about the proof of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program coming to America in "the form of a mushroom cloud." This did not happen, nor could it, since imaginary nukes don't blow up, except in novels, movies, and comic books. However, his message, reinforced by President Bush and Condoleezza Rice in separate speeches, made an effective impact on Congress. The Iraq War, launched the following year, was based on improbable and fictional scenarios presented as truth by liars seeking to please oil corporations.
Iran's leaders, who have demonstrated they're at least smart enough to rise to their positions of power, are not stupid enough to attack Israel with a nuclear strike. Israel has nuclear weapons now, and an arsenal of conventional weapons and the will to use them, making that normal, powerful, belligerent country a much feared nation in the region. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip know very well the brutal force let loose by righteous Israeli politicians, with U.S. consent.
Jeb Bush might want to spread more fear, but he should consider that the members of ISIS like to do that, too.
Vic Neptune
If Israel is a normal country, then so is the United States and Russia, all three chronically engaged in warfare, used to killing unarmed women and children, practicing belligerence towards wanted lands.
Jeb Bush, at an agricultural convention in Iowa attended by several GOP presidential hopefuls, complained about Obama's foreign policy, saying America must be feared. Apart from the fact there are millions of Iraqis, Yemenis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Syrians, and Iranians who already fear the U.S., Bush doesn't seem to realize that his fear wish suggests he would like to be a terrorist. Terrorism is the use of fear for political ends. Terrorism is the practice of "normal" countries.
Iran, too, sponsors and practices terrorism, making it quite normal by nation-state standards. Hannity's guest would have us believe Israel is an innocent nation mortally threatened by fanatical Muslims a few steps away from obtaining nuclear weapons, which they would, of course, immediately launch at Israel, and perhaps even at the United States. I've read Captain America comic books with more plausible scenarios. Remember that in 2002, Dick Cheney gave a doomsday speech about the proof of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program coming to America in "the form of a mushroom cloud." This did not happen, nor could it, since imaginary nukes don't blow up, except in novels, movies, and comic books. However, his message, reinforced by President Bush and Condoleezza Rice in separate speeches, made an effective impact on Congress. The Iraq War, launched the following year, was based on improbable and fictional scenarios presented as truth by liars seeking to please oil corporations.
Iran's leaders, who have demonstrated they're at least smart enough to rise to their positions of power, are not stupid enough to attack Israel with a nuclear strike. Israel has nuclear weapons now, and an arsenal of conventional weapons and the will to use them, making that normal, powerful, belligerent country a much feared nation in the region. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip know very well the brutal force let loose by righteous Israeli politicians, with U.S. consent.
Jeb Bush might want to spread more fear, but he should consider that the members of ISIS like to do that, too.
Vic Neptune
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
This morning I woke up early, got up and watched TV for a while. I saw a night eruption of a volcano in southern Chile. I heard about Governor Scott Walker's ambition to transform Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources into a privatized free for all. Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State, didn't have a government e-mail account, but a private one, making her unaccountable regarding possible nefarious dealings with the Penguin, Joker, Riddler, and Catwoman.
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has arrived in the United States, fulfilling his part in sticking it to the Obama Administration, since the President wasn't informed of the bilious Israeli top dog's upcoming speech before Congress until after John Boehner extended the invitation.
These events have nothing to do with each other. I may as well have watched a Syfy Channel movie about lycanthropes intermingled with displays of "fabulous" earrings on QVC and chefs speeding through the makings of dishes prepared for snide judges on the Food Network. Nothing to do with each other, or do they?
TV is a cut-up. Whether you've heard of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin or not, you've seen the results of their groundbreaking experiments with juxtaposition. It was in Paris in 1959, I think, that the artist and writer Brion Gysin cut through canvas to the newspapers below. Strips of newsprint struck his eye as something to arrange in various non-linear ways. He produced nonsensical sentences, found the result funny, and went to his friend Burroughs' apartment in the same building. Burroughs didn't laugh, but said, "I think you've got something here, Brion."
William S. Burroughs, author already of the famous Naked Lunch, wrote several novels thereafter using the cut-up method. He regarded the technique as a way of breaking open traditional mindsets. His exploration of this strange revelation blew apart typical ways of thinking about reality, a kind of quantum physics revolution in prose.
Now, the jagged mingling of so many different ideas, archetypes, images, on television, on the internet, have formed a conglomeration of information hodgepodge, where a volcanic eruption sits side by side with Hillary Clinton mouthing hellos to an adoring audience.
Vic Neptune
Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu has arrived in the United States, fulfilling his part in sticking it to the Obama Administration, since the President wasn't informed of the bilious Israeli top dog's upcoming speech before Congress until after John Boehner extended the invitation.
These events have nothing to do with each other. I may as well have watched a Syfy Channel movie about lycanthropes intermingled with displays of "fabulous" earrings on QVC and chefs speeding through the makings of dishes prepared for snide judges on the Food Network. Nothing to do with each other, or do they?
TV is a cut-up. Whether you've heard of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin or not, you've seen the results of their groundbreaking experiments with juxtaposition. It was in Paris in 1959, I think, that the artist and writer Brion Gysin cut through canvas to the newspapers below. Strips of newsprint struck his eye as something to arrange in various non-linear ways. He produced nonsensical sentences, found the result funny, and went to his friend Burroughs' apartment in the same building. Burroughs didn't laugh, but said, "I think you've got something here, Brion."
William S. Burroughs, author already of the famous Naked Lunch, wrote several novels thereafter using the cut-up method. He regarded the technique as a way of breaking open traditional mindsets. His exploration of this strange revelation blew apart typical ways of thinking about reality, a kind of quantum physics revolution in prose.
Now, the jagged mingling of so many different ideas, archetypes, images, on television, on the internet, have formed a conglomeration of information hodgepodge, where a volcanic eruption sits side by side with Hillary Clinton mouthing hellos to an adoring audience.
Vic Neptune
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