The ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan, caused by Governor Rick Snyder and former Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, shows why unregulated infrastructural systems are an idea suitable for criminal minds.

     Lead poisoning from decrepit pipes and a "money-saving" decision by Earley in 2014 to cease Flint's water supply from Detroit and get it from the polluted Flint River (a move rejected in 2012 by a previous emergency manager who recognized the danger) has compromised the health of thousands of Flint residents, including small children who will suffer brain damage later in life.  

     In January 2015 Detroit offered to reconnect Flint to its water, cost-free.  The frugal Darnell Earley for some reason interpreted this in a way no intelligent and reasonable person would: he rejected the offer.  The next day, Governor Snyder dismissed him as emergency manager for Flint and gave him another emergency manager job, looking after Detroit's public school system.  A man who poisoned the children of Flint was given the task of being responsible for the children of Detroit.  Is this America?  Yes.  Michigan, under Snyder, has acquired some characteristics of a third world dictatorship.

     It's January 2016, a year after the child-poisoner Earley was reassigned.  State government incompetence and criminal negligence have made life for Flint residents intolerable.  Even though their plight has been made known nationally, the problems continue.  What did the governor know, and when did he know it?  Investigations state and federal are under way.  Investigative journalism has uncovered enough bone-headed and evil behavior from Snyder's administration to put several people away for the rest of their lives, if justice ever prevails, rather than the usual situation of corrupt politicians getting away with crimes.

     Don't drink the water, don't bathe in it.  Do pay your water bills, though.  Yes, Flint residents have been paying for the poison ruining their lives.  Celebrities have made bottled water donations, Obama has unleashed millions of dollars in federal aid, but the pipes aren't being replaced and, as Snyder puts it, there is no "short-term" plan to do so.  He gave over a billion dollars in tax breaks to Michigan corporations, all the while his emergency manager sought to save a few million dollars by making Flint residents drink lead.  The latest estimate I've heard on infrastructural replacement and repair for this catastrophe is 787 million dollars.  I'll assume that's a low guess.  It doesn't take into account the damage to human nervous systems, overall health, and the future difficulties of a generation of special needs children,  none of whom ever voted for Snyder, all of whom are his victims.  

     

                                                                              Vic Neptune

     Civilizations pass through periods of madness, irrationality, and attraction to collective inner demons.  Germany, post-World War One, suffered economic chaos, the feeling of being straitjacketed by the harsh terms of the Versailles Treaty, bad and ineffective government, and no sense of where the ship was headed at a time when, in Weimar Republic Berlin, as William S. Burroughs in The Western Lands puts it, "Cocaine is cheaper than food."
     Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film, Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), the movie that made Marlene Dietrich a star, depicts the attraction towards self-destruction in the character of a Professor (Emil Jannings) who enters the orbit of Dietrich's nightclub singer, a sexy but in some ways bland woman who brings the Professor down to the level of a servile pet, his career in education ruined, reduced to a stage performer of the meanest variety.  When we first see him in the film, he's teaching a class, he's in control of himself, he might be a bore, but he has yet to imagine the degradation he'll soon suffer daily.
     Dietrich plays the classic femme fatale.  Her stage outfit includes a top hat, garter belt, and stockings showing off the entirety of the future Hollywood star's world famous legs.  The man's hat hints at something von Sternberg saw in Dietrich: a masculinity expressing dominance over weak men.  In his later film, Blonde Venus, in a dance and song number, he has her wearing a gorilla suit.  She takes off the suit, revealing a tuxedo underneath.
     Blonde Venus, released in 1932, though made in Hollywood after von Sternberg achieved noteworthy success with Der Blaue Engel, retains, as do all the von Sternberg-Dietrich collaborations, a Germanic cinema ambiance of unreality masking tumultuous times of economic depression and growing public desire for the leadership principle to activate, to save civilization from irreversible erosion.
     Benito Mussolini in Italy, having "saved" his country by seizing power in 1922, served as an inspiration to Adolf Hitler, working his own steady and slow magic in Germany.  Hitler was elected, voted into office, by the German people, holding the position of Chancellor from January 1933.  Franklin Roosevelt also was voted into office and assumed the Presidency in March 1933.
     Leadership.  Let's get things done, turn the vehicle around, the old ways aren't working.  In Germany and America, both countries endowed with dream factories (state of the art moviemaking facilities), economic programs got under way; the state got involved in fixing the problems.  In Germany, a hidden agenda of assembling a war machine to eventually expand German territory at the expense of other nations resulted in a massive military-industrial enterprise that fucked over Europe.  In America, the economic recovery was greatly aided by U.S. entry into World War Two, for the government became the customer, rather than civilians with little cash to spend.
     Germans fell for Hitler.  He denounced the conditions of the Versailles Treaty.  Germans agreed.  Expansion outward to the east to make living space for those supposedly deserving it rang true to those living in a centrally located country with the hated France to the west, and Poland and the Soviet Union to the east.  Hatred and resentment of Jews was older than the Middle Ages.  Racism, obsession with national identity, a looking back to an idealized past, collective folk stupidity.  Modern industrialized nations are not immune from these symptoms of civilizations in crisis.
     Make America Great Again, Trump's slogan adorning his campaign baseball caps, declares that America isn't currently great.  It implies a looking back to a time when it was.  That we Americans, in voting for Trump, the strong leader, will do what it takes to reestablish that greatness.  The word again makes it seem as if Trump identifies with a mythic hero, Ronald Reagan perhaps, a showbiz performer, like Trump, whose first name even rhymes with Donald.
     My country's current relationship with irrationality should scare everyone on the planet.  When a powerful nation has embraced stupid, short-sighted men like Trump, and not given him the heave ho from news networks that air his blather regardless of its content--as he inflames bigots and racists against their fellow Americans, and non-Christians overseas--it's a sad fact the inciter has won by planting his ass on the nation's face, refusing to move, as the press, like the Professor in Der Blaue Engel, obeys the signals from the gorilla wearing the tuxedo.

                                                                             Vic Neptune

     I write this at least six hours before the Fox News Channel Republican debate, and also before Donald Trump's Jerry Lewis-imitation fundraiser on behalf of American veterans.  The fundraiser will be held during the debate.  Two prominent veterans organizations, VoteVets.org and IAVA, have let it be known they disapprove of Trump's stunt as he supposedly demonstrates his compassion for wounded soldiers while avoiding confrontation with the scary Megyn Kelly, hostess of tonight's debate.
     An indication of the fundraising event's shadiness comes from Katy Tur's report from MSNBC that as of one o'clock Eastern time today, the Trump campaign had not named the veteran's organization or organizations tonight's cash migration will go to.  Donations of $25, $50, $100, or $500 are to be made to the Trump Foundation.  Where the money goes from there, only hours from the event, is still unknown.
     What kind of fundraising event operates like this?  Trump asks for money to help the veterans he claims to care about, although maybe he isn't planning on passing the money along to former POWs? Recall his petty jab at Senator John McCain for "getting captured."  That moment revealed Trump's disrespect for all POWs of the past, present, and future.  He made it seem as if McCain wanted to be captured.  The World War Two era Japanese High Command would've agreed with Trump that surrender is worse than death, that is, if Trump would take his words to their logical ends, which he, like all craven bullshitters, never does.
     Like all charitable rich creeps who want accolades for themselves for being generous, Donald Trump goes a step further by using an organization with his own name on it as the dumping site for all the well-meaning chumps who will donate their earned dollars to yet unknown veterans' charities, trusting the billionaire to disburse the funds responsibly to a group or groups he and his staff haven't bothered to identify.  What kind of idiots throw away their money at such a poorly lit affair, working in the darkness where Trump's devious mind operates?
     Trump supporters.
     If you want to donate money to worthy, legitimate veterans organizations, you can do so directly to them.  IAVA (Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America), for example, is an excellent organization addressing real needs of this century's American fighting forces, headed by an Iraq War veteran, Paul Rieckhoff.  Author of the excellent and moving Iraq War memoir, Chasing Ghosts, Rieckhoff is the real deal, the opposite of a bullshitter, and a combat veteran who knows what the fuck he's talking about, as opposed to the type of bastard who promotes war but stays comfortable at home.
     Trump, meanwhile, merely seeks self-glorification and ratings, image-whore that he is, by putting on this charade of a fundraiser on behalf of people he merely, like most politicians, pays lip service to for the sake of gaining votes.  If Trump becomes president, he will grind soldiers into hamburger like presidents tend to do, all the while pretending he understands and cares about them.
     Fuck you, Donald Trump, and your stupid goddamn veterans rally.

                                                                           Vic Neptune

     During the Bush administration, the third, if one counts the man we called George Bush in the 1980s and 1990s as heading the first of these, with the son having his own two administrations in the twenty-first century, I wrote a fictionalized account of the second Bush's presidency, with the War on Terror as background.  The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy, composed entirely of dialogue, consists of conversations, press conferences, and interviews.  Each character is based on a real person.  George W. Bush is Ed Schnitt; Dick Cheney is Chick Raney; Donald Rumsfeld is Egon Bumsteader; Condoleezza Rice is Cunnilingus Weiss.  I can't recall the name of the Bill O'Reilly character, but I made him into a fractious and bellicose woman with an Irish surname.
     Vice President Chick Raney runs the show, with Defense Secretary Bumsteader his dim best friend.  President Schnitt has no idea what's going on most of the time.  Chick Raney develops plans to escape from Earth along with a select wealthy few, and servants, and then remotely launch every nuke in America at thousands of targets worldwide.
     The play, or story, was fun to write; I never finished it.  Due to the continuous passing pageant of history, The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy, logically, could have no ending.  There were and still are an endless series of events to write about; people in news media and government to satirize.  When I wrote it, the Iraq War was ongoing.  With the aid of intellectual honesty, anyone could realize by 2006 and 2007 that Bush, Cheney, and their associates, were corrupt, heading a political big business machine responsible for mass slaughter, war profiteering, wrongful imprisonment, and torture, covered by lies and the comfortable omission of difficult truths by news corporations and their employees.
     The "conspiracy" part of the title alludes to the complicity shared between politicians and corporations, the military, and big news media, so that a man like Dick Cheney, to give one example, can be instrumental in causing the murderous pounding of Iraq while securing contracts for a subsidiary of a corporation he formerly headed to rebuild parts of the nation he plotted to destroy.  That the son of a bitch isn't pacing a prison cell right now is a testament to the success of power and lies.  Not helping justice, President Obama, in 2009, chose to make it impossible for Bush administration members from the top down to ever be prosecuted for war crimes.  Did he do that to protect himself, too?  He's killed enough children with drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen to merit a few hot glowing metal rod thrusts up his ass in Hell.
     Obama is not a character in The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy.  Neither is Sarah Palin.  I had abandoned the project by the end of 2007.  They could've been characters in the story, for the story continues, whether written or not.  Consider the ratfuck bastards we have now: Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Trump.  There's no lack when it comes to these fuckers--the kind of people who want to run things.  They're so convinced they can do the job well, not just well, but greatly.
     Trump's new gripe is against Fox News, the familiarity of his grump focusing once again on Megyn Kelly.  She's been assigned to serve, like for the debate last August, as a moderator.  Trump claims she'll be unfair to him.  He doesn't say he's afraid of a woman, but I'll write it here.  He doesn't like Kelly because Kelly doesn't like him--she doesn't play his game.  She got to him last August with her question about his well-documented sexist statements about women.  Truth about himself is Donald Trump's enemy.  Still, he cleverly managed to call attention to his ugly face by "boycotting" the upcoming Fox debate.  News media corporations talk about his gripe and his yet to actually happen boycott far more than they're talking about Christie, Jeb Bush, or Marco Rubio, none of whom can afford to get miffed at Megyn Kelly or anyone else, enough to say "Piss on you, I'm not going to your stinking debate!"
     Trump is also not a character in The Ratfuck Bastard Conspiracy, but he's a star of the real thing.

                                                                              Vic Neptune

     We know we're in a serious political race when Sarah Palin makes an appearance, as she did in Ames, Iowa, to endorse Donald Trump.  Trump introduced her, expressing his love for her and her husband Todd.  "Great people."  The former Alaska governor and Mayor of Wasilla, vice presidential candidate and Rush Limbaugh fantasy sex partner, seems the same as ever: spirited, divisive, cracked.
     Trump stood nearby while she talked.  Viewers got to watch Trump watching Palin.  Does he realize she's a nutbag?  When she pronounced the word "skirmish" as "squirmish," did something inside him twist?  The Palins, according to Donald, are "amazing people."  Yes, it's astonishing from an objective viewpoint how such an intellectually enfeebled human being like Sarah Palin became a millionaire and a "brand" by saying and insisting upon some of the dopiest horseshit ever uttered by an American politician or, as she has become, a marginalized producer of word froth.
     Her rah-rah speech supporting Trump had the typical Palinesque feel:
     Mentioning Trump's ghost-written, and by his own estimation, "second favorite book after the Bible," The Art of the Deal, Palin repeatedly pronounced "deal" as "dill."
     Palin claimed Trump isn't a politician, adding "Hallelujah!"
     Ridiculing Obama, she asked, referencing the Vietnam War draft-dodger standing nearby, "Are you ready for a Commander-in-Chief?  Are you ready for a warrior who will kick ISIS's ass?"  That she managed to hiss forth "ISIS's ass" without tripping up on the excessive sibilance was her most impressive accomplishment of the speech.
     She talked about guns, guts--though not the organs spilled by gun violence.  Condemning political correctness, she claimed some wear it like "a suicide vest."
     Referring to someone who would be appalled by her (and Trump's) ideas, Ronald Reagan, she evoked "power through strength," and threw in a "drill baby drill," one of her old slogans from a time when more people cared about her.  The Ames audience didn't give her much feedback in the form of the usual Trump rally growls, shouts, roars, and mind programmed word vomit.
     "The status quo has got to go!" she yelled, calling to mind her time as a high school cheerleader.
     Weirdly perhaps, for Trump, she praised his opponent, Rand Paul, for his libertarian views, ignoring Senator Paul's antipathy for what used to be called "foreign entanglements."
     She wants Muslims "yelling Allah Akbar to duke it out, let Allah sort it out," a reference, whether she knows it or not, to the 1209 siege of Beziers when a bishop, asked by a soldier how to tell the difference between Catholics in the town and the Cathar heretics, replied, "Kill them all.  God will sort out His own."
     "Donald Trump," she, a millionaire, assured her non-rich audience, "may be a billionaire, but he's a family man, a man of generosity and accomplishment.  He's anti-elitist.  He tell us Joe Six Packs, 'I've succeeded, and I want you to succeed, too.'  He builds things that touch the sky.  He's spent his life looking up, but he respects steel-toed boots.  He doesn't get high off of opium [I don't know what she meant here].  His power is the fabric of America, and faith in the Almighty.  When Obama packs up his teleprompter and heads back to Chicago he'll look up and see, shining over his head, the Trump Tower!"
     She exited stage right to Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger."
     Anyone not deluded about the man knows that Trump is full of shit, but he's savvy, bringing attention to himself with the Palin endorsement at a time when his big money failure of an opponent, Jeb Bush, finally received his mother's endorsement: "He [Jeb, her own son] seems like the best candidate."
     Barbara Bush seems like a human mother, but can she be bothered to express enthusiasm for her own kid's aspirations?  I've long been disdainful of that hag.
     Today, Donald Trump further endeared himself to those who only recognize one valid Constitutional amendment.  Boasting about the loyalty and intelligence of his supporters, he said, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters."
     If true, we have to assume his supporters wouldn't care if their candidate murdered someone.  Trump could've been illustrating how stupid and vicious some of his supporters really are.  For every vile unthinking brute there's a mean prick ready to exploit such muscle; what Sarah Palin calls, "Power through strength."

                                                                            Vic Neptune
   
     
   
   

     Does gun ownership increase intelligence?
     The Wisconsin State Legislature is considering a weird gun rights bill to be voted on in the next two months.  Governor Scott Walker's Wisconsin became a concealed carry state in 2011, but guns are not permitted on school grounds.  Anyone baffled as to why it seems to some that guns and schools don't mix, in this age when classrooms have been spattered with blood numerous times, should be able to relate to this new law proposed by State Senators Mary Lazich and Robert Brooks, both Republicans.
     According to the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, Lazich "said the measure is intended to make sure weapons permit holders aren't inadvertently committing crimes when they drop their kids off at school.  I don't want to see that happen to well-intentioned law-abiding people."
     Her colleague Brooks chimed in: "When they drop off their kids, pick up their kids, I don't think they realize they're breaking the law."
     Do any of the state's children ask their parents, "Dad, when you drop me off at school, why are you carrying a gun?"
     Phil Ertl, Superintendent of the Wauwatosa School District, made a cogent comment: "I struggle with the fact we need a law to protect someone that forgets they had their gun with them while taking their children to school."
     The proposed bill lets individual schools decide whether or not teachers and other official on-campus personnel should be carrying inside the building(s).  State Representative Jesse Kremer, a Republican (do you see a trend?) claims that "if some teachers were allowed to carry guns, they could fight back if their classrooms were attacked."  He's referring to Bruce Willis action film-type scenarios.  We're supposed to accept the reality of teachers armed with handguns "fight[ing] back" against twisted and determined end game killers armed, as in the usual real scenarios, with automatic weapons and shitloads of ammunition.  Are teachers trained in dealing with being on the receiving end of bloody chaos erupting into an arithmetic lesson?
     Representative Kremer formerly "promoted a 'campus carry' bill...that would have allowed students and faculty to carry guns in university and college buildings.  Leaders said they would not advance that measure, but Kremer said he hoped the one for K-12 schools would get traction."
     K as in kindergarten.
     The problem isn't what State Senator Lazich claims it is.  Any civilian who thinks it's fine to bring a gun onto school property has already crossed a line, reflected in our modern American society by the fact, encouraged in its growth over the past few decades by NRA lobbying, that this nation's citizens, who used to be sensible about such things, no longer think and believe its crazy and immoral to bring guns onto school property.
     When I was a grade schooler in the 1970s a fellow student brought his bow and arrows to school for a bow hunting demonstration.  He was responsible; he didn't draw the bow with an arrow nocked.  He brought the arrows to show the various points for various types of game.  The teacher was very impressed, because his presentation was so well done and informative, not because she was into hunting and killing animals.  Now, a student couldn't bring such a lethal weapon to school, but it was fine in that case because of the context.  A man or woman in those days appearing on my school's grounds or in the building carrying a gun would've seemed very weird and unsettling, but no one would've done it, much less enter school property unaware of the disturbing vibe radiating from people who walk about in society carrying guns.  In the 1970s, America was less crazy.  Now, lawmakers in Wisconsin propose a law to protect morons from an already existing law they should know about and obey.

                                                                               Vic Neptune

     Faith in Jeb Bush's chances at becoming the Republican presidential nominee seems even more unrealistic to me, an agnostic, than the embodied return of Jesus Christ.  Why is he running?  His popularity among Republicans has declined steadily since last July.  He seems to be the main cause of his own fall.  Trump's jabs haven't helped him, of course, but Bush has proven he's not the kind of public figure who thrives on adversity and challenges from others.
     Why is he running?
     Bush's father, a CIA director in the 1970s and vice president in the 1980s, a U.S. Navy pilot shot down over the Pacific Ocean in World War Two, a Skull and Bones Fraternity member (like his father Prescott before him and son George after), a man who increased Manuel Noriega's CIA asset salary and later sent a 23,000 man force to Panama to arrest him with approximately 4,000 civilians dying as "collateral damage," has said he doesn't understand Donald Trump.  "Poppy" Bush, an old school politician and mass murderer, never resorted to elementary school bullying tactics while he ran for political office.  There was a time in televised political races when no one wanted to appear rude and nasty.  Television cameras and microphones pick up what's said, what's expressed on faces.
     This relatively polite discourse ended in the last decade or so.  Sarah Palin, who's currently kind to Trump (he's her type of no-brain appeal candidate), took steps in the direction of appealing to the mass idiot mind.  Her political message was recycled Reaganism.  She was pro-military, pro-guns, nationalistic, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, pro-American flag, Christian.  Although well-off (and later a millionaire from her bestselling ghost-written autobiography) she convinced middle class citizens (using the "Soccer Mom" and "Mama grizzly bear protecting her cubs" motifs) that she was one of them.
     Only seven years after John McCain unleashed Palin on America, another rich unqualified politician began to seek high office.  Donald Trump, like Palin, also pro-military, pro-guns, nationalistic, xenophobic, anti-intellectual, pro-American flag, claims he's Christian, and he's very rich.  That last "qualification" somehow doesn't deter his followers (almost all of them not rich) from not "identifying" with him and his rich man's values.  When a politician claims he's "just like you," he's full of shit.  In Jeb Bush's case, voters perceive he's not like them.  They haven't been raised in a  successful political dynasty with deep international connections to Middle East billionaires (including the bin Laden family).  Bush's first mistake was the campaign slogan, "Jeb!"  The exclamation point, came at the start of the campaign, before anyone could know the man might truly prove to be exciting--the kind of grass roots politician who, like Bernie Sanders, builds up from a base with a consistent message ordinary people can relate to.  The exclamation point seemed like a new band releasing a debut album called We're Amazing!
     The exclamation point has vanished from the signs.  Bush has no catchy slogan, like Trump's Orwellian "Make America Great Again."  He's far behind in the Iowa and New Hampshire polls.  I wonder if he could even come in third place in Florida, the state he once governed.  Yet, his campaign, a huge chestful of money from faithful rich fucks who must think in old school terms while America's political landscape has obviously become the domain of cutthroats, moves onward, its awkward candidate, lacking even the exclamation point, addressing gatherings in restaurants like it's all the way back in 2004.
     I saw a clip of Jeb Bush a few days ago, interviewed briefly in a restaurant by an MSNBC reporter.  Joking about something, he smiled and looked around, expecting laughter, but only one person in the camera's view looked at him, and her face was Greta Garbo stony.

                                                                            Vic Neptune

     In my high school's audiovisual department, consisting of a studio and control room, was an eight string mandolin with a cracked back someone had glued so that it played well enough.  During a cleaning house session at the end of a semester, the mandolin was taken home by my friend Brian.  A year or two later he gave it to me.  A decade later it was played by my friend Tony during a recording session of our two man band.  I gave him the mandolin.  A few years later, in my friend Chris's apartment, I noticed a mandolin leaning against the end of his couch, strings out.  I picked it up, turned it around, saw the glued crack, and told Chris the story of the mandolin he'd been playing occasionally in his band.
     That instrument traveled.
     I like a mandolin's sound.  The mellow high-toned strings sound like the Renaissance to me.  I never developed any facility with it.  My first year in college was consumed with studying and playing music: bass trombone and piano, music theory, analyzing scores of classical music.  I immersed myself in Beethoven, his piano sonatas especially.  This education operated as a foundation from which grew sound collages of weirdness and experimentation as I played bass with Tony and later spun records and compact discs, mixing audio together, inserting old movie dialogue with a VCR plugged into the system.
     For me, all music flows within one stream.  I feel the same way about cinema, literature, painting, and whichever other medium you can name.  My father, an English professor, once criticized renowned novelist Cormac McCarthy's disdain for Henry James's fiction.  I paraphrase, but my father said, "I don't understand how McCarthy can dismiss a writer as important as James.  Just because Henry James lived in an earlier time, dealt with different subject matter than McCarthy does, should not make him irrelevant.  Henry James developed psychological realism in fiction, something twentieth century writers, including McCarthy, rely on.  Previous writers influence later writers, just as the previous writers were influenced by their predecessors.  It's a continuum with no unimportant figures."
     This stream-thinking of mine leads me often to obscure artistic figures.  For a reason I've never been able to understand, I'm attracted to lesser known filmmakers, actors, actresses, writers, movies, painters.  I'll watch a film directed by S. Sylvan Simon, a filmmaker of the 1930s and 1940s working in Hollywood, and then I'll find another he directed, and another, just as some will watch Spielberg films.  Not the person directly in focus, the star, but the one off to the side--that's my peculiar interest.
     This could have something to do with being obscure, myself.
     Somehow the mandolin is in a high school AV studio in 1982 and sixteen years later it's in my friend's apartment, its reverse side crack an identification card.
     I haven't seen Chris in years; location of mandolin unknown to me.

                                                                              Vic Neptune

     Do you ever get the feeling that in spite of your competence at something, nobody gives a shit?
     The personal way I'm regarded by family members compared to the sometimes more fulfilling way like-minded people look at me, without the close genetic bond that makes our individuality in society seem unimportant to family members, grinds at me sometimes.  I, as a writer, am told occasionally by family members I'm good at writing, although the content, the viewpoints presented in my work, don't necessarily inspire any of my family to go out of their way to say, "Hey Vic, I really liked that post about..."  I get the impression with this blog that no one in my family actually reads it.  That this doesn't surprise me but also makes me feel like a tribe of loved ones are, in essence, saying, "Fuck you and your writing," bothers me.  I figure my writing abilities and strongly presented viewpoints, agree with them or not, merit at least a smidgen of comment from my family.  I've shown my work to family members, but it doesn't seem to inspire them to follow up on it, much less let me know they're reading my blog or even checking out a piece of it on occasion.
     This gripe points to one thing: I don't write this for my family, for their approval or disapproval.  I write it to be read, of course, and it is, in my country and others, but I can't expect people who love and care about me to take the extra step towards bothering to read my shit.
     I've talked with other creative people about this subject.  Often in families, a particularly creative member, an artist of whatever medium or media, may receive encouragement as a child for their artistic works, but later, grown up, the encouragement dries up.  Adults are supposed to be responsible, and an artistic calling, for those looking at it from outside, doesn't seem to be anything more than a hobby, a side project of life's regular paycheck-job-401K-eventual retirement-living will-funeral planning drama.  The idea of art as life's blood to an artist, a realness spreading from the core of a person, so powerful it happens regardless of financial recognition or endless poverty, doesn't register in the minds of non-artists as reality in their own lives.  Try relating to something that doesn't stimulate your gray cells.  You don't give two shits about that which makes no impact on your existence.  Still, if your artistic relative gives a shit about it, does it as a necessity, it would help that creative person to be recognized occasionally as doing something as essential to society as plumbing, lawyering, and accounting.
   
                                                                             Vic Neptune
     
   

     A day of diffuse sunlight, listening to a Beach Boys song covered by Sonic Youth, and driving on errands in a soft yellow gray afternoon glow, a weird luminescence like there's smog but I don't live in Beijing or Los Angeles.
     News (concern) today about an alleged underground hydrogen bomb test in North Korea and a real earthquake in the vicinity possibly associated with such an explosion.  The North Korean government run by human butterball Kim Jong-un claims they've set off an H bomb.  If they have, they've leaped impressively ahead of previous nuclear tests.  I'll believe it when there's irrefutable evidence.
     Obama's press spokesman, Josh Earnest, gave the impression he and his boss don't believe Kim Jong-un's boast.  Still, the usual righteous stance presents itself: what shall we do if North Korea has  such a powerful weapon?  Could an H bomb launched from North Korea reach the United States?
     They don't ask, "Does even an erratic weirdo like Kim Jong-un want to see his country obliterated by American missiles?"
     The same should be asked of the Iranians when considering their nuclear weapons programs of the past and maybe of the future.  Benjamin Netanyahu and his lovers in the U.S. Congress seem to believe the Iranian government wants to actually launch nukes at Israel, a country itself armed with nukes, supported heartlessly with no consideration of the Middle East big picture by a country, the U.S., with its own supply of thousands of nuclear weapons.
     The North Korean leadership wants nukes for the same reason every country seeking them does: self-protection.  The damage done to human flesh and human structures and institutions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by conventional weaponry should not be ignored.  Fearing nukes possessed even by unsavory people like Kim Jong-un is akin to fearing terror attacks.  It's likely that most Americans will continue for many decades to live their lives safe from terrorism and nuclear war, while simultaneously in danger of injury and death in car crashes, natural disasters, corporate and government misconduct and incompetence, all the while continually violated Fourth Amendment-wise by the NSA.  And there is gun violence, and brutality, persecution, and racism by police departments, and shitty mayors like Rahm Emanuel who don't know when to quit.
     U.S. and other nuclear armed first world powers don't like the idea of North Korea with nuclear weapons.  It's a strange proud desire on America' part to not let others possess what America possesses in abundance, out of fear, in North Korea's and Iran's cases, that those nations will lose their fucking minds and attack other nations far more heavily armed with the same world-destroying weapons.  If U.S. officials worry about the damage North Korea might do with a possible H bomb, they forget the identity of the only nation that's ever used nuclear weapons against another nation and its civilians, incinerated and irradiated in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
     It's as if American officials are saying, "Only America is responsible enough to slaughter civilians with this type of weapon."
     It's far more wholesome to be killed by an American than it is by a North Korean.

                                                                               Vic Neptune

     I began writing creatively when I was eight years old.  A few important occurrences happened to me at that age.  I've heard that a child's brain makes a developmental leap at eight or so.  Concepts begin to sparkle, abstract thinking will become routine.  Linked with already abundant imagination, this kind of thought (wondering about things, connecting notions into meanings) can generate much mental material, as a youngster invents a new inner world influenced by an outer world more readily perceived with the senses.  The hope for those who think about these things is a child with a developing mind not contained by the boxes educational systems fold and close around rich and original imaginations, conditioning children to lose genius in favor of regularized thought patterns.
     I grew up before the current educational models of standardized testing, No Child Left Behind, Common Core.  Teachers of my elementary school classes were allowed to choose how they taught their classes, what they taught, and the disciplinary methods meted out if necessary.  All of them were women ranging in age from mid-thirties to early sixties.  None of them had to be taught how to deal with children.  They had learned from experience.  All of them had the sense to know they needed to teach reading, that reading benefits children, activates their imaginations.  All of them knew that good spelling and penmanship skills were useful.  They knew that a knowledge of history, of math, of civic behavior, were important for children to absorb.
     There were colorful characters in my elementary school classes, a few from poor families, one of whom sometimes smelled bad and had a tricky temper, but he wasn't a bad person.  There were two brothers who got in fights sometimes, "tough kids," but they treated me decently and respected my intelligence, even while they generally had lousy grades.  My classes were composed of individuals.  I knew most of them from Kindergarten through fifth grade.  Somehow, a getting-by prevailed, and sanity, without today's rigid educational structures.  The difference, perhaps, has something to do with overpopulation.  The more people in the educational system, the more those who run it try to control pupils, making them conform to technocratic ideals.  Kids don't even seem to organize their own sporting fun anymore.  When I was a kid we just went outside and figured it out without adults standing around remembering, a few of them at least, when they themselves were unmonitored and untracked.
     At age eight I began writing a novel with the Second World War as a setting: The Violent War, an oxymoronic title I realize is funny, but when I was eight I thought I had something.  For many years I thought the manuscript lost.  I found it a few years ago in an old folder, along with some childhood drawings.  Written with a blue ballpoint pen on notebook paper, the story deals with two American pilots in the U.S. Army Air Force, stationed in England in 1944.  One of them, summoned by his superior officer, is given a secret mission.  His friend tries to pry the mission's nature out of him, but they argue for three pages, ending with repetitious insults.  I'll flatter myself and say that it's like something Eugene Ionesco might've written when he was a baby.
     In spite of the unfinished manuscript's title, the hero never gets in his P-51 and starts his secret mission.  My vision of the (violent) war consists of two officers bickering on base.  Maybe I was onto something?  War is a pair of idiots quarreling.
   
                                                                               Vic Neptune

     Chris Christie, like Scott Walker before him, has spent very little time in the state he governs since he began his presidential campaign.  The New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed him, but newspaper editors working for publications in states other than Governor Christie's haven't endured, like New Jerseyites, the man's close and personal greasy bluster.  Still, like his Republican colleagues also running for president, Christie, like Walker before him, is a typical slimy politician seeking votes from those he will cease to care about if he ever wins any office beyond what he's already won in New Jersey, where his unpopularity continues growing since the start of his national campaign.
     I'm ceaselessly amazed by the low standards of American voters.  Christie's top aides engineered Bridgegate: unlawful lane closures on a heavily trafficked bridge connecting New Jersey with Manhattan, creating a jam meant to discredit a Christie opponent, the Mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey.   In a show of humility and courage, Christie distanced himself from the shits working for him, including one of his best friends.  They protected their boss, keeping him safe from consequences of dirty deeds done to put the fear in Chris Christie's enemies.  It's like when we were supposed to believe President Reagan had no idea members of his administration were enabling illegal arms transfers to Nicaraguan Contras.  If he didn't know, he wasn't on top of things, as one would expect a president to be.  If he did know, he broke the law.  My take on Reagan is that he knew, he broke the law, his involvement was covered by those who had his back, including some who went to prison for him.  About Christie, I think he knew or he was close enough to the truth that he should've been able to rein in his employees.  If, as he insists, he didn't know, he wasn't on top of things in his own administration.  Does that make him a good candidate for president?  He's either a crook or his head's up his ass.  Good choice, voters.
     Does it matter that politicians lie?  Did Lyndon Johnson's lie about the Gulf of Tonkin "incident" lead ultimately to the deaths of millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, Cambodians, and Americans (the first three nationalities mainly)?  Should we conclude that "the ends justify the means"--that it's fine to say anything to get elected?  Does Trump really mean he wants a "temporary" ban on all Muslims entering the United States, or is he just teasing his supporters' hate brains?  His new campaign ad shows a long distance shot of people running from point A to point B as if at some barrier, implying the U.S.-Mexico border.  The image comes from Morocco, but that's a fact, and Trump has shown one can be a success without relying on facts.  Making "Mexicans" resemble a mass of ants doesn't make him a dehumanizing racist, right?  He's really a "nice guy," to use his own description.  
     Chris Christie, too, thinks he's a nice guy, a family man who loves New Jersey and loves America.                          Marco Rubio in his newly released campaign ad speaks about strength while an American flag breathes behind him.  There's nothing clichéd and insincere about that, is there?
     This new year will be a time of "getting it right" about politics, as one news media man put it.  Wrong-headed speculation about Trump and how he was supposedly always about to implode has been seen now as mistaken, although the same pundits and other commentators still get to say their shit on the various news programs.  Making political predictions is risky if one's job is on the line, not if it's regarded as time filler.
     In spite of poll numbers for a bottom rung candidate like Christie, I wouldn't count him out, at least in New Hampshire, where the governor may find more support on Primary day in February there than Donald Trump.  When it comes to voting, a different activity than answering poll questions, some Americans actually give a shit, not wanting to give support to charlatans and hate-mongers.  Nevertheless, I worry about voters' low standards in a country where Trump's most significant damage has been his cheapening of a political process already rotting on its own, making fellow candidates' minds exist and even thrive at his level, that of Democracy's poisoner.

                                                                             Vic Neptune