The term news cycle suggests that news turns in a circle, implying the same events pop up over and over again. In fact, what the news covers is linear; it's only cyclical in that some events tend to repeat: natural disasters, wars, scandals, sensational trials, the sometimes jarring interface between police departments and citizens.
Cable news is cyclical in that it's on air twenty-fours a day. This says nothing of its value, since much of what the three big names do in occupying air space and time is worthless to the inquiring mind. MSNBC spends numerous hours Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, not covering the news, but presenting prison documentaries and "caught on camera" shows. They spend valuable time showing
America before the lens: prisoners, car crashes, construction workers hanging desperately from malfunctioning cranes, convenience store robberies; in short, SpikeTV under the banner of a news network priding itself as a serious alternative to CNN and Fox News Channel.
Other than the entertainment factor of such shitty shows, why does MSNBC waste its money on such crap? I haven't done research on their prison programming ratings. Maybe they get a lot of mileage out of them while their weekday staff can take a break? I don't begrudge their stars getting the weekend off, but surely MSNBC could afford to cover the news thoroughly from Friday at 9:00 Central Time to early Monday morning. They have news and talk programs Saturday and Sunday mornings and early afternoons, but why get lazy?
This is the admission of someone who has watched more than enough MSNBC in the last decade. Maybe I'm hurt. Maybe I feel like I've wasted countless hours and minutes of my life trying to find nuggets of useful information in a channel more left wing than right wing. Because this news network is on television, like sitcoms, dance and singing competitions, and such films as Sharktopus, watching it is something to do during idle minutes. Food for my mind's image bank, perhaps. This morning, MSNBC showed footage from Kathmandu of a four month old baby getting taken from the rubble after the powerful earthquake in Nepal. I felt good seeing that. I thought, The kid is young enough that he won't remember anything about being trapped under a building for days.
I also saw lots of helicopter-viewpoint footage of Baltimore: people in the streets, armored cops looking like black beetles, past footage woven in of buildings on fire, audio commentary by network employees in New York sitting in comfortable chairs, not being racially profiled.
Watching cable news can provide a variety of emotions, including boredom and exasperation. MSNBC abounds in erectile dysfunction ads. It's really sickening how much money is spent on TV ads to make men's cocks feel reassured. Erectile dysfunction used to be called impotence. I guess that was too harsh a word, like the phrase, Can't get it up.
I've focused on MSNBC here, although I could write a great deal about CNN and especially Fox.
Suffice it to say that all three networks, each representing corporations, engage in rhetoric, propaganda, political bias, and sometimes in pure stupidity, like speculation in a vacuum of real knowledge, a frequent activity by journalists, anchors, and pundits on all three networks. Such speculation is less what professionals do and more what tavern customers do after the third drink.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Earth Day, April 22, 2015. Who cares?
BP's most recent self-congratulatory ad about the Gulf of Mexico, and how it's "come back" from it's environmental rape five years ago, doesn't mention the oil gush caused when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, killing eleven men and ceaselessly polluting the Gulf and its coast, a camera showing the broken pipe pushing out oil like an old engine's exhaust. This BP-supplied image of the gushing pipe became a standard shot on cable news.
Look, it's still gushing! BP spokespeople don't have any adequate answers! The U.S. government has abdicated its responsibility in guarding the environment from corrupt corporations!
Later, President Obama showed his real concern and sympathy when he put the kibosh on the possibility of banning offshore drilling. What's bad for the planet may be good for business, the oil business, but not the tourist trade, some feared in 2010. Vacationers, it was believed, wouldn't want to visit the Gulf Coast for a long time, but the same species that's willing to step around beached hospital waste is also willing to ignore oil layers beneath the sand.
During a family vacation in 1973 I played on the seemingly endless beach at Biloxi, Mississippi. Like boys do, I was digging holes in the sand. I dug one deep, far enough back from the surf to protect it from inundation. About a foot down the damp sand blackened, a stratum three or four inches deep. My dad was nearby, looking for interesting pieces of driftwood. He walked over and looked at what I found.
"Why is this black?" I asked.
"It's from an oil spill," he said. "A tanker probably sank in a storm, or had some kind of accident. Go wash your hands."
In April and May 2010, I saw people on TV walking on Gulf beaches, complaining of headaches from the overwhelming stench of BP's fuckup. They wouldn't have wanted to wash their hands in that surf, as I did in Biloxi.
Look at the presidential candidates. Do they grasp the nature of the peril that Earth will visit upon their descendants? I heard in passing a statement from a scientist who claims 2015 and 2016 are the last years we can effectively do something to curb the intensity of future catastrophic climate change. These years coincide with a score of American politicians trying to sit in the Oval Office. Will any of them, Democrat or Republican, display and act on the courage it'll take to make a serious effort at not letting humanity get flushed down the toilet?
Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, an obvious Republican, isn't running for president, but his mindset illustrates Congressional lack of urgency on the fate of life forms on this planet. Addressing
a small number of his colleagues in a mostly empty Senate Chamber, Inhofe ridiculed climate change by producing a sealed plastic bag containing a snowball, "made right outside here in Washington." He tossed the snowball underhanded to someone off camera, admitting it, I guess, into evidence that global warming, i.e. climate change, is imaginary.
Look! Snow in Washington in March! If anything it proves we're getting colder!
Or, Senator Inhofe, if you wait for the snowball to become a bag of water, you can try to imagine what's happening to Greenland, the glaciers, and the Polar Ice Caps.
Some of the candidates, I suspect, even Republican ones, are not as stupid as James Inhofe, but I'd like to hear just one of them talk about the fate of the human race on this planet, and how corporations like BP expect us to clean up their shit, while never facing prosecution or the threat of prosecution from a President who has two young daughters who will see the disaster-ridden world to come.
Vic Neptune
BP's most recent self-congratulatory ad about the Gulf of Mexico, and how it's "come back" from it's environmental rape five years ago, doesn't mention the oil gush caused when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, killing eleven men and ceaselessly polluting the Gulf and its coast, a camera showing the broken pipe pushing out oil like an old engine's exhaust. This BP-supplied image of the gushing pipe became a standard shot on cable news.
Look, it's still gushing! BP spokespeople don't have any adequate answers! The U.S. government has abdicated its responsibility in guarding the environment from corrupt corporations!
Later, President Obama showed his real concern and sympathy when he put the kibosh on the possibility of banning offshore drilling. What's bad for the planet may be good for business, the oil business, but not the tourist trade, some feared in 2010. Vacationers, it was believed, wouldn't want to visit the Gulf Coast for a long time, but the same species that's willing to step around beached hospital waste is also willing to ignore oil layers beneath the sand.
During a family vacation in 1973 I played on the seemingly endless beach at Biloxi, Mississippi. Like boys do, I was digging holes in the sand. I dug one deep, far enough back from the surf to protect it from inundation. About a foot down the damp sand blackened, a stratum three or four inches deep. My dad was nearby, looking for interesting pieces of driftwood. He walked over and looked at what I found.
"Why is this black?" I asked.
"It's from an oil spill," he said. "A tanker probably sank in a storm, or had some kind of accident. Go wash your hands."
In April and May 2010, I saw people on TV walking on Gulf beaches, complaining of headaches from the overwhelming stench of BP's fuckup. They wouldn't have wanted to wash their hands in that surf, as I did in Biloxi.
Look at the presidential candidates. Do they grasp the nature of the peril that Earth will visit upon their descendants? I heard in passing a statement from a scientist who claims 2015 and 2016 are the last years we can effectively do something to curb the intensity of future catastrophic climate change. These years coincide with a score of American politicians trying to sit in the Oval Office. Will any of them, Democrat or Republican, display and act on the courage it'll take to make a serious effort at not letting humanity get flushed down the toilet?
Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, an obvious Republican, isn't running for president, but his mindset illustrates Congressional lack of urgency on the fate of life forms on this planet. Addressing
a small number of his colleagues in a mostly empty Senate Chamber, Inhofe ridiculed climate change by producing a sealed plastic bag containing a snowball, "made right outside here in Washington." He tossed the snowball underhanded to someone off camera, admitting it, I guess, into evidence that global warming, i.e. climate change, is imaginary.
Look! Snow in Washington in March! If anything it proves we're getting colder!
Or, Senator Inhofe, if you wait for the snowball to become a bag of water, you can try to imagine what's happening to Greenland, the glaciers, and the Polar Ice Caps.
Some of the candidates, I suspect, even Republican ones, are not as stupid as James Inhofe, but I'd like to hear just one of them talk about the fate of the human race on this planet, and how corporations like BP expect us to clean up their shit, while never facing prosecution or the threat of prosecution from a President who has two young daughters who will see the disaster-ridden world to come.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Budweiser manufactures little cans of variously flavored margaritas. I found two on my lawn Sunday morning, the night and day after the annual "pub crawl" aimed at college students. I can't picture a college boy buying and drinking such a beverage, moreover, the pull tab on one of the cans was just slightly open. When I shook it nothing came out. The presumed girl barely cracked the damned thing, drank three-fourths and chucked it, unaware of becoming a character in this story. I pulled up the tab and shook red fluid resembling cherry Kool Aid onto the grass. Pale pink smoke rose in a thin cloud. The wounded lawn asked me, "Why? Why?"
I couldn't explain drunken dumb fuck behavior to a stretch of grass so I went to the garage, lifted the recycling bin's lid, and dropped in Budweiser's spent artillery shells.
Afterward, I thought, I shouldn't have polluted the grass with that stuff. What is it?
I told my coworker Dave about it and he said whoever drinks that kind of product is pretty far removed from knowing what natural beverages are.
Energy drinks, e-cigarettes, the sweet crust of Papa John's pizza, constitute a doomsday weapon aimed at youth. What are the consequences, ten, twenty, thirty years from now, of today's children, adolescents, and college students abusing their hearts, digestive systems, their fertility, with profitable poison? In spite of the sign, DRUG FREE SCHOOL ZONE, no school is drug free if Pepsi or Red Bull is available or at least tolerated on the premises.
I feel like a Puritan, almost, and I am hypocritical, in that I enjoy, on occasion, Peanut Butter Crunch and I'm addicted to iced tea. When I buy Peanut Butter Crunch I always have a moment in the checkout lane when I think, What the fuck am I doing?
In the checkout line to the right there are candy bars. To the left, the cerebral candy of "Jennifer Aniston Has Never Been Happier," and "Khloe Kardashian Scorns AA."
Poison, chocolate, crap culture. The truth is, I'm not against tabloid news, nor am I opposed to candy, alcohol, or cigarettes in whatever form. What do I do with these things? What do others do with them? It's individual behavior, my own included, that affects my experiences, good and bad. Seventeen hours of college students dribbling by in duos, trios, small and large packs, participating in a city-accepted drunk fest, the pub crawl, hearing the boys' whooping voices, the girls' shrill babble,
unable to get rest or fall asleep until the event dies from its own brain-blitzed momentum, is, for me, a bad experience caused by how these celebrants use the products they ingest.
Some Budweiser executive in the last few years had a conversation, or talked to a group at a high-level meeting about loading a mass-produced attempt at margaritas into little cans and marketing them to young women. The smallness of the can conveys the idea, HAVE ANOTHER. Why not? It's just a little bit of alcohol. It's like drinking Kool Aid. It's classy, though. It's a margarita.
To you, young woman, who treated my lawn like a vacant lot: may you break out of the purpose set for you by sorcerers of consumer research.
Vic Neptune
I couldn't explain drunken dumb fuck behavior to a stretch of grass so I went to the garage, lifted the recycling bin's lid, and dropped in Budweiser's spent artillery shells.
Afterward, I thought, I shouldn't have polluted the grass with that stuff. What is it?
I told my coworker Dave about it and he said whoever drinks that kind of product is pretty far removed from knowing what natural beverages are.
Energy drinks, e-cigarettes, the sweet crust of Papa John's pizza, constitute a doomsday weapon aimed at youth. What are the consequences, ten, twenty, thirty years from now, of today's children, adolescents, and college students abusing their hearts, digestive systems, their fertility, with profitable poison? In spite of the sign, DRUG FREE SCHOOL ZONE, no school is drug free if Pepsi or Red Bull is available or at least tolerated on the premises.
I feel like a Puritan, almost, and I am hypocritical, in that I enjoy, on occasion, Peanut Butter Crunch and I'm addicted to iced tea. When I buy Peanut Butter Crunch I always have a moment in the checkout lane when I think, What the fuck am I doing?
In the checkout line to the right there are candy bars. To the left, the cerebral candy of "Jennifer Aniston Has Never Been Happier," and "Khloe Kardashian Scorns AA."
Poison, chocolate, crap culture. The truth is, I'm not against tabloid news, nor am I opposed to candy, alcohol, or cigarettes in whatever form. What do I do with these things? What do others do with them? It's individual behavior, my own included, that affects my experiences, good and bad. Seventeen hours of college students dribbling by in duos, trios, small and large packs, participating in a city-accepted drunk fest, the pub crawl, hearing the boys' whooping voices, the girls' shrill babble,
unable to get rest or fall asleep until the event dies from its own brain-blitzed momentum, is, for me, a bad experience caused by how these celebrants use the products they ingest.
Some Budweiser executive in the last few years had a conversation, or talked to a group at a high-level meeting about loading a mass-produced attempt at margaritas into little cans and marketing them to young women. The smallness of the can conveys the idea, HAVE ANOTHER. Why not? It's just a little bit of alcohol. It's like drinking Kool Aid. It's classy, though. It's a margarita.
To you, young woman, who treated my lawn like a vacant lot: may you break out of the purpose set for you by sorcerers of consumer research.
Vic Neptune
Monday, April 13, 2015
I just read a book called Art of the Third Reich by Peter Adam. It deals with the state-sponsored paintings, sculpture, and architecture of Germany from 1933 to 1945. Published in 1992, the book reproduces dozens of images of German art from that period, plus some examples of earlier art showing precursors to Nazi era artworks. Adolf Hitler was particularly taken with nineteenth century Bavarian landscapes and peasant scenes. It's not surprising he favored, as leader (Fuhrer) of Germany, the same kinds of paintings: strong, iron-jawed men, stolid simple women, all dedicated to working the soil, the good German earth, the special blood of the Nordic race coursing through privileged capillaries.
Third Reich sculpture, similarly, represented monumental man, all individual identities ignored in favor of blank hard-planed servitude. In Hitler's mind, and in the minds of his executive underlings, everything in sculpture and in architecture must be huge. The word oppressive apparently never occurred to Hitler as he dreamed big, studying models of the future Berlin, the future Linz--where he planned to retire. A photograph exists of Hitler examining his imaginary Linz. It's the Spring of 1945. He's in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, his final home. The Russians are coming. As he looks at the model, is he thinking, "Yeah, I'm gonna make it happen, baby!"?
Hitler, according to Art of the Third Reich, bought hundreds of paintings by approved German artists. He didn't necessarily like all of these paintings. He was, in fact, disappointed by the mediocrity of most of the work. He had many of his purchases distributed to public buildings, keeping the works suitable to his taste.
Hitler's main artistic preoccupation was architecture. He's often called a frustrated artist, his failure in 1907 to pass the entrance examination to the Vienna Academy regarded as a key factor in the upheavals of twentieth century world history. Peter Adam points out, however, that of Hitler's 113 fellow artists taking the examination, eighty-five failed. That sounds like a tough school to get into.
Like George Costanza on Seinfeld, Adolf Hitler liked to think of himself as an architect. As Fuhrer, he had a group of architects around him, the most famous being Albert Speer. Hitler consulted often with these men, exchanging ideas about building projects, some of them realized, like the gargantuan Summer Olympics complex in Berlin. Massiveness, harking back to Greek architecture but without Classical grace, was the main idea. To strike awe in the spectator, to make worms and ants out of human beings. Architect Hermann Giesler designed, but, fortunately, did not build, the most inhuman and scary-looking building I've ever seen. It never got farther than a model, but was supposed to be the entrance tower of a proposed Nazi Party Academy complex in Chiemsee, Bavaria. The tower, 360 feet in diameter and 394 feet in height, would've been the most hideous official building ever erected. It manages to look funny and horrible, a monument to megalomania. Had the Third Reich triumphed, the world under its sway would likely have been dotted with the ugliest fucking buildings ever conceived.
Other cultures have known how to build graceful and purposeful structures lasting over long periods of time. The long gone Assyrian Empire, ending in 612 BC, produced some magnificent art, sculptures, bas reliefs. The Assyrian city of Nimrud, before March 2015 a ruin but still viable as an archaeological site, has been vandalized, blown up, and bulldozed by ISIS. The sons of bitches, being fundamentalists, have no sense of humor, sense of culture, or sense of history. The Assyrians didn't worship Allah, therefore any works of theirs must be destroyed, even though, as one ISIS vandal put it, "they may be worth billions of dollars." His mention of money in relation to priceless artifacts in a not to be replaced ancient city shows his crassness, even as he believes the God of Mohammad, who must have a sense of beauty--look at Medieval Muslim architecture--condemns the works of ancient civilizations. Part of Mohammad's genius was to draw on the past, bringing into Islam important men of ancient cultures, like Noah, Abraham, and Jesus. None of them were Muslims. The cultures they arose from were not Muslim-influenced.
Third Reich art and architecture had to pass through a thin state-approved aperture of creativity. This narrow-mindedness, reflected now by ISIS fighters and propagandists, demonstrated an interest in creation and building, even if the results were crap. ISIS has yet to produce an art form, unless smashing the irreplaceable and shooting snuff videos constitutes something to appreciate.
Third Reich sculpture, similarly, represented monumental man, all individual identities ignored in favor of blank hard-planed servitude. In Hitler's mind, and in the minds of his executive underlings, everything in sculpture and in architecture must be huge. The word oppressive apparently never occurred to Hitler as he dreamed big, studying models of the future Berlin, the future Linz--where he planned to retire. A photograph exists of Hitler examining his imaginary Linz. It's the Spring of 1945. He's in the bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery, his final home. The Russians are coming. As he looks at the model, is he thinking, "Yeah, I'm gonna make it happen, baby!"?
Hitler, according to Art of the Third Reich, bought hundreds of paintings by approved German artists. He didn't necessarily like all of these paintings. He was, in fact, disappointed by the mediocrity of most of the work. He had many of his purchases distributed to public buildings, keeping the works suitable to his taste.
Hitler's main artistic preoccupation was architecture. He's often called a frustrated artist, his failure in 1907 to pass the entrance examination to the Vienna Academy regarded as a key factor in the upheavals of twentieth century world history. Peter Adam points out, however, that of Hitler's 113 fellow artists taking the examination, eighty-five failed. That sounds like a tough school to get into.
Like George Costanza on Seinfeld, Adolf Hitler liked to think of himself as an architect. As Fuhrer, he had a group of architects around him, the most famous being Albert Speer. Hitler consulted often with these men, exchanging ideas about building projects, some of them realized, like the gargantuan Summer Olympics complex in Berlin. Massiveness, harking back to Greek architecture but without Classical grace, was the main idea. To strike awe in the spectator, to make worms and ants out of human beings. Architect Hermann Giesler designed, but, fortunately, did not build, the most inhuman and scary-looking building I've ever seen. It never got farther than a model, but was supposed to be the entrance tower of a proposed Nazi Party Academy complex in Chiemsee, Bavaria. The tower, 360 feet in diameter and 394 feet in height, would've been the most hideous official building ever erected. It manages to look funny and horrible, a monument to megalomania. Had the Third Reich triumphed, the world under its sway would likely have been dotted with the ugliest fucking buildings ever conceived.
Other cultures have known how to build graceful and purposeful structures lasting over long periods of time. The long gone Assyrian Empire, ending in 612 BC, produced some magnificent art, sculptures, bas reliefs. The Assyrian city of Nimrud, before March 2015 a ruin but still viable as an archaeological site, has been vandalized, blown up, and bulldozed by ISIS. The sons of bitches, being fundamentalists, have no sense of humor, sense of culture, or sense of history. The Assyrians didn't worship Allah, therefore any works of theirs must be destroyed, even though, as one ISIS vandal put it, "they may be worth billions of dollars." His mention of money in relation to priceless artifacts in a not to be replaced ancient city shows his crassness, even as he believes the God of Mohammad, who must have a sense of beauty--look at Medieval Muslim architecture--condemns the works of ancient civilizations. Part of Mohammad's genius was to draw on the past, bringing into Islam important men of ancient cultures, like Noah, Abraham, and Jesus. None of them were Muslims. The cultures they arose from were not Muslim-influenced.
Third Reich art and architecture had to pass through a thin state-approved aperture of creativity. This narrow-mindedness, reflected now by ISIS fighters and propagandists, demonstrated an interest in creation and building, even if the results were crap. ISIS has yet to produce an art form, unless smashing the irreplaceable and shooting snuff videos constitutes something to appreciate.
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