Thinker Poser
If you'd like to hear trippy music, check out the 1976 album, The Roaring Silence by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. "Blinded by the Light" opens the album. Track three is the vital part of the trip from an imaginary cop or private eye movie of the mid-1970s standpoint. An instrumental, "Waiter, There's a Yawn in My Ear," the piece builds on a theme. The song seems longer than it is, a byproduct of tightly made art.
From Earth, Kristol, as in Bill, as in warmonger and war profiteer and war criminal, William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, a failing newspaper, circulation down significantly, not even trusted by its overlord publisher to maintain the swing of things "conservative," so it hires another set of opinion makers to do the same thing The Weekly Standard is supposed to do. How's that for Sorry Bill, you're not cutting the mustard of late. We're not going to fire you, but we'll be seeing you edge yourself out of our building in the next six months. You'll do fine. Your kind always does.
Kristol since 2016 has been operating an outfit called Defending Democracy Together. That comes to DDT, the controversial killer--of humans also--insecticide touted in the 1940s as "so good you can eat it!" Too dangerous to use, with residual effects on humans consuming the plants poisoned, duh!
Not that Kristol and his ilk notice such a fine point, that their organization dedicated to overthrowing Donald Trump in 2020, first in 2016, shares a designation with poison from which some people profited handsomely. And isn't that what Kristol's up to with his DDT? Make money, pretend to be against Donald Trump while profiting from the president's policies. But why is Kristol against Trump? Because he tweets shit? Because he behaves indecorously? The prim, snide, cavalier life-taking demon that is Bill Kristol, frequent guest on MSNBC, as he was on Fox News, shows the establishment is still in charge of mainstream news media, else, how could such an inhuman creep get so much airtime?
It's due to big money broadcasting "truth" to America, lying about the true horror of politics right now: those making money from our suffering and the grievous societal harms caused by the U.S. military at the behest of the U.S. foreign policy establishment struggling stupidly to maintain an empire fated to go in about ten years, are intimately connected to news media broadcasters in front of and behind the camera who themselves profit from high ratings generated by strife and chaos.
Watch Bill Kristol. He's often shown in still photos with his hand to his head, Thinker Pose, or I'm About To Fall Asleep Listening to This Intellectual Termite. Index finger extended towards the Kristol cerebrum, where the neo-con stewpot bubbles, the occasional Iraqi baby arm floating up in oily brown liquids. These shots, as for instance his pic on the DDT website, make him seem serious. This guy's intellect never got past reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche. When Nietzsche wrote in Twilight of the Idols or maybe The Antichrist, that it's important to learn to not react, Kristol never learned that one, as many haven't, as I struggle with it still.
Not reacting is precisely the opposite of a reactionary. The Kristol sneer puts me in mind of Montgomery Burns on The Simpsons. If Bill Kristol had Burns's money he'd shrink into an armadillo-like ball and suck his own cock.
Forget it, I've had it trying to run the world! I'll change my ideology for fifty billion dollars, who wouldn't? Gandhi maybe? Not too many of him! American Exceptionalism? I'll say it's phony! Like a Big Mac! Sure, it's a big hamburger but it's really just a hamburger! Assyria thought it was hot shit, too! Wait until 612 BC, Assyria! Nations you've fought in the past will gang up on you and destroy your ass! Forgotten! A mirage! Overshadowed by Babylon!
Kristol used to work for Dan Quayle. He worked for George W. Bush. You shall know him by the company he keeps.
Opinion makers of the cable news circuit influence the mental judgment processes of Americans above the age of fifty. I'm of that group, though on the young side of it. When the Internet started I was twenty-seven. I first used the Internet when I was thirty-one, began using e-mail at thirty-two, bought my first computer in 2000. I'm on my fourth. I suspect my fifth computer will be a mass of jelly I put my fingers in while my head interfaces with ads and sports results.
Kristol is sixty-six. He could potentially be tormenting Americans, propagandizing his sick fuck cause of dominating the world, something automatically a set-up for failure, for the next twenty years. When is George Will going to retire or die? He's seventy-eight. He could go another five years, easily. He's got another baseball anecdote in him, surely? His sensible math teacher from 1960 ambiance, "Yes, Mr. Will," always comes across as so right-thinking, so reasonable, even viewers who vomit at what are actually Will's political views--stomp on the poor, strong military, traditional patriotic sludge, never cut taxes--like him because of his polite young man about the town manner, something in a lost draft of To Kill a Mockingbird, perhaps.
That reminds me: I read Harper Lee's other novel about a year ago. I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school English class, but as her other novel, Go Set a Watchman, wasn't published until 2015, it wasn't until 2018 I read it. Buzz about the book centered somewhat on Lee's use of the word "nigger." The book takes place in the 1930s, I think. That word was commonly used. It's literary realism to have that word in characters' mouths in a novel taking place in Mississippi in the thirties.
I thought the novel was okay, as a first draft, which it is. Given Lee's extensively studied literary output, two novels total and I think a lot of letters, too, it impresses me and makes me feel sarcastic when I contemplate so much attention paid to, in terms of her output, a minor American author who wrote one excellent novel and one so-so first draft of another lesser novel. She never sought to get that other novel published, but money ka-chinged in the eyes of those around her. The long lost (except it was never lost) novel by the great Harper Lee! I saw some of a C-Span talk given in a bookshop by a Harper Lee biographer. She went on at length about Harper Lee's literary project involving the case Truman Capote ended up writing about, In Cold Blood.
Harper Lee gave up on her project. Two novels, total, one of them not even really finished. Think of the novelists who've written not just one great book, but many, overpowering the achievement of Harper Lee.
I'm feeling feisty. In my movie blog, Screen Screed, I gave Watchmen, a very popular film, a harsh review. Here, I'm questioning something not to be questioned: Harper Lee's work is more significant than Philip K. Dick's? Than Samuel R. Delany's?
It is the deeply felt interface between the gripping story in To Kill a Mockingbird and the girl, Scout. It is a great novel. I had the utmost good time reading it back in 1981, when I didn't even know who Philip K. Dick was, although he was living in Santa Ana, California then, a year before he died. He had just finished or was still working on his last novel, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, a mainstream novel with spooky sci fi/religious underpinnings deriving from Gnosticism. Also, a great book with a female protagonist, Angel Archer. Scout and Angel, both worth reading.
Infected at times by Orwell, I read about a thousand pages of a 1,400 page collection of his essays. Around the time of World War Two, he wrote these pieces called As I Please, followed by a number.
Orwell would write about three or four things in one piece, segments unconnected thematically. I thought it would be interesting (for me) to try to write something like that: combine, as in this post, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Harper Lee, Philip K. Dick, Bill Kristol with fifty billion dollars, curled up, a cock-sucking armadillo.
Vic Neptune
Friday, August 30, 2019
Friday, August 23, 2019
Down the Rabbit Hole to the Reagan Era
I'm thinking of 1988, we are its afterbirth. Reagan's final year in the room shaped like a circle seen from a sideward angle, a room with a jar of jelly beans offered by the movie star vanity ranch president to every visitor. How charming when Diane Sawyer was offered a jelly bean by the smiling old man, his attentive slavishly devoted wife, protector of the legacy, the lie that is Ronald Reagan, seated erectly beside the president, keeping careful eye out for Alzheimer's symptoms. Must cover with a charming humorous statement if hubby forgets where he is, that he's doing an interview, or doesn't remember meeting Diane Sawyer twenty minutes ago.
On the soundtrack now, courtesy of YouTube randomness nevertheless directed by algorithms, Chubb Rock, "The One" Hip Hop, I suppose, a genre I haven't explored, but maybe I now am. The opening of this post was composed to two 1988 songs by Slick Rick. A Slick Rick video has the
rapper with the eyepatch standing before a huge sculpture (plastic maybe, but well done) of three Alice in Wonderland characters, including Alice, the Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter. He tells a story to an older Black man in a four poster bed in the middle of what looks like a park at night. The old man has on either side of him two delicious young women in nighties. In other words, the Life.
This music of 1988 to 1991 is quite fine, I'm discovering. Beats are crisp, clever, interesting, throbbingly good. "O.P.P." by Naughty By Nature is worth checking out. Has a sample of a woman moaning sexually. If you like that sound.
When I inhabited the age range eight to twelve, I saw all but one of the Marx Brothers films of 1929 to 1950. There are thirteen in all, but one eluded me for three decades, Room Service (1938), starring a young Ann Miller, Lucille Ball looking hot and statuesque, and the Brothers themselves, though not Zeppo, who'd retired from acting after the political satire Duck Soup (1933) to become a top Hollywood agent. Another brother, Harpo, was my favorite. My mother bought a Goodwill beige trenchcoat for me to wear on Halloween. We couldn't get a top hat in time, so I went to Plan B: cold cream on the face, coffee grounds making me a bum. A straw Huckleberry Finn hat completed the look. Huck Finn grown up and poor, grubby, smart, but still dealing with shitty situations--feet wet most of the time.
Huck Finn goes to the Phillippines, witnesses waterboarding practiced by U.S. troops. American Empire born in the war pushed by the Hearst Syndicate. Patty Hearst kidnapped, maybe, because she represented the irresponsible profit-driven journalism that helped bring about the American Empire during the Spanish American War of 1898, a war, remember, begun with an incorrect conclusion. The U.S.S. Maine wasn't hit by Spanish forces in Havana harbor. U.S. Navy and National Geographic investigations many decades later found that the ship's forward magazines exploded, no known reason why. Something happened internal to the vessel. That a U.S. battleship was even in a Cuban harbor smells of the same intrusiveness and meddling of American Empire still practiced, on a vaster scale, today.
In 1988 the "existential threat" was proliferation by the Soviet Union and United States of nuclear weapons, a problem created by Ronald Reagan's strategy of exorbitant spending on nukes to make the Soviets do the same, thus eventually weakening their economy, drained as well by their fruitless eight year war in Afghanistan. Is Afghanistan a jelly bean Reagan would've chewed on for seventeen years and longer? How would he have reacted to 9/11? Would he ever have invaded Iraq, thus betraying his ally Saddam Hussein? Did he know the Marx Brothers?
Vic Neptune
I'm thinking of 1988, we are its afterbirth. Reagan's final year in the room shaped like a circle seen from a sideward angle, a room with a jar of jelly beans offered by the movie star vanity ranch president to every visitor. How charming when Diane Sawyer was offered a jelly bean by the smiling old man, his attentive slavishly devoted wife, protector of the legacy, the lie that is Ronald Reagan, seated erectly beside the president, keeping careful eye out for Alzheimer's symptoms. Must cover with a charming humorous statement if hubby forgets where he is, that he's doing an interview, or doesn't remember meeting Diane Sawyer twenty minutes ago.
On the soundtrack now, courtesy of YouTube randomness nevertheless directed by algorithms, Chubb Rock, "The One" Hip Hop, I suppose, a genre I haven't explored, but maybe I now am. The opening of this post was composed to two 1988 songs by Slick Rick. A Slick Rick video has the
rapper with the eyepatch standing before a huge sculpture (plastic maybe, but well done) of three Alice in Wonderland characters, including Alice, the Rabbit, and the Mad Hatter. He tells a story to an older Black man in a four poster bed in the middle of what looks like a park at night. The old man has on either side of him two delicious young women in nighties. In other words, the Life.
This music of 1988 to 1991 is quite fine, I'm discovering. Beats are crisp, clever, interesting, throbbingly good. "O.P.P." by Naughty By Nature is worth checking out. Has a sample of a woman moaning sexually. If you like that sound.
When I inhabited the age range eight to twelve, I saw all but one of the Marx Brothers films of 1929 to 1950. There are thirteen in all, but one eluded me for three decades, Room Service (1938), starring a young Ann Miller, Lucille Ball looking hot and statuesque, and the Brothers themselves, though not Zeppo, who'd retired from acting after the political satire Duck Soup (1933) to become a top Hollywood agent. Another brother, Harpo, was my favorite. My mother bought a Goodwill beige trenchcoat for me to wear on Halloween. We couldn't get a top hat in time, so I went to Plan B: cold cream on the face, coffee grounds making me a bum. A straw Huckleberry Finn hat completed the look. Huck Finn grown up and poor, grubby, smart, but still dealing with shitty situations--feet wet most of the time.
Huck Finn goes to the Phillippines, witnesses waterboarding practiced by U.S. troops. American Empire born in the war pushed by the Hearst Syndicate. Patty Hearst kidnapped, maybe, because she represented the irresponsible profit-driven journalism that helped bring about the American Empire during the Spanish American War of 1898, a war, remember, begun with an incorrect conclusion. The U.S.S. Maine wasn't hit by Spanish forces in Havana harbor. U.S. Navy and National Geographic investigations many decades later found that the ship's forward magazines exploded, no known reason why. Something happened internal to the vessel. That a U.S. battleship was even in a Cuban harbor smells of the same intrusiveness and meddling of American Empire still practiced, on a vaster scale, today.
In 1988 the "existential threat" was proliferation by the Soviet Union and United States of nuclear weapons, a problem created by Ronald Reagan's strategy of exorbitant spending on nukes to make the Soviets do the same, thus eventually weakening their economy, drained as well by their fruitless eight year war in Afghanistan. Is Afghanistan a jelly bean Reagan would've chewed on for seventeen years and longer? How would he have reacted to 9/11? Would he ever have invaded Iraq, thus betraying his ally Saddam Hussein? Did he know the Marx Brothers?
Vic Neptune
Thursday, August 22, 2019
Whiteout
Peter Fonda is dead. I don't know the details, I just know that I'll never be able to thank him for his performances in Easy Rider and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. Peter Fonda carried on his father Henry's quiet screen presence. Henry Fonda, even when he played a sadistic villain like Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West, had about him an air of detachment, passively observing most of the time. His son had this ability, too. In Ulee's Gold, made much later than the classic psychedelic era of many of his movies, Fonda played a beekeeper struggling against some, if I recall rightly, big business forces that wanted his land, or something. I saw the film in the theater, accompanied by my then girlfriend. An edifying movie, like with any episode of The Waltons where feeling good after the credits is the goal. There's a shot of Fonda holding up a golden sticky liquid marvel inside a jar, lit dazzlingly in the kind of glowing cinematography used in The Natural to make Glenn Close look desirable.
My girlfriend and I enjoyed Ulee's Gold, but later I realized the real find in the movie is Patricia Richardson who played Tim Allen's wife in Home Improvement. A serious dramatic actress on a par with the best, it turns out, Patricia Richardson spent 1991 to 1999 acting the part of mother to three precocious boys, the eldest one a dunce, the middle kid a smartass, the youngest an adorable appendage to the scripts. I watched this show when it was on in its first run. I missed probably at least a hundred of the 202 (!) episodes. Tim Allen, a comedian who's made me laugh occasionally, was stuck to a character for eight years, a role portraying a dumbass-on-purpose. He huffs like a gorilla when he thinks of manly things to do. He chats with his genial neighbor over the fence. For some reason we never see all of Wilson's face. This actor, Earl Hindman, whose big and small screen career goes back to 1967, starred as "Bruno" in The Ultimate Degenerate (1969). The film's IMDB synopsis wraps it up for us:
"With the help of an assistant, a psycho drugs, tortures, and photographs women he meets through personal ads to find the ultimate degenerate. His latest target is a thrill-seeking lesbian."
Yeah, that old story.
Six Degrees of Separation, the movie-think game applied usually to Kevin Bacon, operates in the above lines that began with Peter Fonda and ended up, connection-wise, chained to The Ultimate Degenerate, starring an actor who became famous for never showing all of his face on a hit 1990's TV show starring an actress who later worked with Peter Fonda in a family-friendly melodrama similar in theme to Mr. Majestyk, minus the violence.
Eminent domain? I think that's what Ulee's Gold uses as the McGuffin to get us interested in Peter Fonda's beekeeper character. Ulee, short for Ulysses. A practice of a lot of fiction writers (literary and for the screen) is to give a character a weird name. Dom Toretto, Vin Diesel's role in the Fast and Furious movies, for example. Michelle Rodriguez plays his girlfriend, Letty. Letty, not Maria, not Julia, but a shortening of Leticia, a very special name, at least north of Baja California.
Even Shakespeare got in on this: Hamlet, Macduff, Pistol, Tybalt, Rosencrantz. If there's someone named Hamlet, there should also be someone named Village.
I've gone off of Ulee's property since the post's opening. Fonda was a good, irreplaceable actor. I miss him already. He will always be Captain America.
Vic Neptune
Peter Fonda is dead. I don't know the details, I just know that I'll never be able to thank him for his performances in Easy Rider and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry. Peter Fonda carried on his father Henry's quiet screen presence. Henry Fonda, even when he played a sadistic villain like Frank in Once Upon a Time in the West, had about him an air of detachment, passively observing most of the time. His son had this ability, too. In Ulee's Gold, made much later than the classic psychedelic era of many of his movies, Fonda played a beekeeper struggling against some, if I recall rightly, big business forces that wanted his land, or something. I saw the film in the theater, accompanied by my then girlfriend. An edifying movie, like with any episode of The Waltons where feeling good after the credits is the goal. There's a shot of Fonda holding up a golden sticky liquid marvel inside a jar, lit dazzlingly in the kind of glowing cinematography used in The Natural to make Glenn Close look desirable.
My girlfriend and I enjoyed Ulee's Gold, but later I realized the real find in the movie is Patricia Richardson who played Tim Allen's wife in Home Improvement. A serious dramatic actress on a par with the best, it turns out, Patricia Richardson spent 1991 to 1999 acting the part of mother to three precocious boys, the eldest one a dunce, the middle kid a smartass, the youngest an adorable appendage to the scripts. I watched this show when it was on in its first run. I missed probably at least a hundred of the 202 (!) episodes. Tim Allen, a comedian who's made me laugh occasionally, was stuck to a character for eight years, a role portraying a dumbass-on-purpose. He huffs like a gorilla when he thinks of manly things to do. He chats with his genial neighbor over the fence. For some reason we never see all of Wilson's face. This actor, Earl Hindman, whose big and small screen career goes back to 1967, starred as "Bruno" in The Ultimate Degenerate (1969). The film's IMDB synopsis wraps it up for us:
"With the help of an assistant, a psycho drugs, tortures, and photographs women he meets through personal ads to find the ultimate degenerate. His latest target is a thrill-seeking lesbian."
Yeah, that old story.
Six Degrees of Separation, the movie-think game applied usually to Kevin Bacon, operates in the above lines that began with Peter Fonda and ended up, connection-wise, chained to The Ultimate Degenerate, starring an actor who became famous for never showing all of his face on a hit 1990's TV show starring an actress who later worked with Peter Fonda in a family-friendly melodrama similar in theme to Mr. Majestyk, minus the violence.
Eminent domain? I think that's what Ulee's Gold uses as the McGuffin to get us interested in Peter Fonda's beekeeper character. Ulee, short for Ulysses. A practice of a lot of fiction writers (literary and for the screen) is to give a character a weird name. Dom Toretto, Vin Diesel's role in the Fast and Furious movies, for example. Michelle Rodriguez plays his girlfriend, Letty. Letty, not Maria, not Julia, but a shortening of Leticia, a very special name, at least north of Baja California.
Even Shakespeare got in on this: Hamlet, Macduff, Pistol, Tybalt, Rosencrantz. If there's someone named Hamlet, there should also be someone named Village.
I've gone off of Ulee's property since the post's opening. Fonda was a good, irreplaceable actor. I miss him already. He will always be Captain America.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, August 18, 2019
Awash in Sound
I don't remember my earliest few years. 8 millimeter film footage from 1965 shows a blonde baby, diapered, white tee shirt, crawling at the speed of a slow-moving bike. I remember, though, a moment from a year or so later: I sat on the kitchen floor, linoleum squares of alternating colors, playing with Tonka trucks and a Tonka metal jeep painted robin's egg blue. I looked at my mother's legs passing by as she prepared dinner. She wore a skirt and short-heeled shoes, a blouse, looked like a TV situation comedy mom of the 1960s. It's my memory ranked first. 1966 Frostburg, Maryland.
Living in the East for two years, my family and I took trips together in a metallic green 1964 AMC Rambler my father named Agnes.
A station wagon can hold a lot. Nobody wore seatbelts, but my parents, in the front seat, did. Here's an historical fact young people of today may not know: Up until the eighties, nobody sitting in the back seats of America's cars wore their seat belts. On all those family trips, some of them amounting to thousands of miles, some of them much shorter excursions, all the camping trips too, I never wore a seat belt--neither did my brother and sister. My parents knew this. Somehow, via magical thinking, we figured the bench front seat would stop us just as effectively as a seat belt.
On February 1, 1981, I felt the sudden dig of a seat belt, forty-two mile an hour impact against a telephone pole on a wintry slick night. My friend's dad's Cadillac--he had two of them--was totaled. Jaws of life to get my friend out. He spent one week in the hospital, recovered. The impact sent me to the elegant ceiling, my knees slapped against each other so hard I felt it for days. Got me out of gym class.
Butter, I switched to it. There's a half-used tub of margarine by a carton of butter ingots on the door's top shelf compartment. Crescent rolls in there right now, about two minutes' labor to make a batch, warm up the kitchen in summertime, turn on central air conditioning, get cold watching Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Later: Didn't turn on the TV, made burritos. I don't have Amazon Prime these days. I lost Netflix months ago. Watching movies for my other blog, Screen Screed: Thoughts on Movies From a Lifelong Eater of Cinema (please check it out) has been curtailed, but I use DVDs still. YouTube, in its bargain bin way, can yield treasures of cinema, like the time I watched on my mother's computer Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Deserto Rosso. Pasolini's Medea, his Teorema, I also saw on that Dell screen. Days of Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 7 I understood, I liked it. Windows 8 was worthless. People who make a good thing worse in the next version should be fired.
I listened to music at that computer, in the dining room, facing the side porch. Long white lace curtains, tall windows, southerly exposure, writing e-mails, a novel, and essays, editing manuscripts, rewriting, getting rid of words, making more words.
I'm a visual artist (movies, collages) who writes (essays--as in blog posts--short fiction, long fiction, novels, poems). My films can be viewed by going to YouTube channel John Berner. It's a gross practice to self-advertise, but I want people to see my movies, made under the name Rhombus. I've been Rhombus since the night of a radio show in October 1998.
As a writer, though, I'm Vic Neptune.
Vic Neptune
I don't remember my earliest few years. 8 millimeter film footage from 1965 shows a blonde baby, diapered, white tee shirt, crawling at the speed of a slow-moving bike. I remember, though, a moment from a year or so later: I sat on the kitchen floor, linoleum squares of alternating colors, playing with Tonka trucks and a Tonka metal jeep painted robin's egg blue. I looked at my mother's legs passing by as she prepared dinner. She wore a skirt and short-heeled shoes, a blouse, looked like a TV situation comedy mom of the 1960s. It's my memory ranked first. 1966 Frostburg, Maryland.
Living in the East for two years, my family and I took trips together in a metallic green 1964 AMC Rambler my father named Agnes.
A station wagon can hold a lot. Nobody wore seatbelts, but my parents, in the front seat, did. Here's an historical fact young people of today may not know: Up until the eighties, nobody sitting in the back seats of America's cars wore their seat belts. On all those family trips, some of them amounting to thousands of miles, some of them much shorter excursions, all the camping trips too, I never wore a seat belt--neither did my brother and sister. My parents knew this. Somehow, via magical thinking, we figured the bench front seat would stop us just as effectively as a seat belt.
On February 1, 1981, I felt the sudden dig of a seat belt, forty-two mile an hour impact against a telephone pole on a wintry slick night. My friend's dad's Cadillac--he had two of them--was totaled. Jaws of life to get my friend out. He spent one week in the hospital, recovered. The impact sent me to the elegant ceiling, my knees slapped against each other so hard I felt it for days. Got me out of gym class.
Butter, I switched to it. There's a half-used tub of margarine by a carton of butter ingots on the door's top shelf compartment. Crescent rolls in there right now, about two minutes' labor to make a batch, warm up the kitchen in summertime, turn on central air conditioning, get cold watching Berlin Alexanderplatz.
Later: Didn't turn on the TV, made burritos. I don't have Amazon Prime these days. I lost Netflix months ago. Watching movies for my other blog, Screen Screed: Thoughts on Movies From a Lifelong Eater of Cinema (please check it out) has been curtailed, but I use DVDs still. YouTube, in its bargain bin way, can yield treasures of cinema, like the time I watched on my mother's computer Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Deserto Rosso. Pasolini's Medea, his Teorema, I also saw on that Dell screen. Days of Windows 7 and Windows 8. Windows 7 I understood, I liked it. Windows 8 was worthless. People who make a good thing worse in the next version should be fired.
I listened to music at that computer, in the dining room, facing the side porch. Long white lace curtains, tall windows, southerly exposure, writing e-mails, a novel, and essays, editing manuscripts, rewriting, getting rid of words, making more words.
I'm a visual artist (movies, collages) who writes (essays--as in blog posts--short fiction, long fiction, novels, poems). My films can be viewed by going to YouTube channel John Berner. It's a gross practice to self-advertise, but I want people to see my movies, made under the name Rhombus. I've been Rhombus since the night of a radio show in October 1998.
As a writer, though, I'm Vic Neptune.
Vic Neptune
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Debbe Dunning the Tool Time Girl
The TV show, Home Improvement, had a show within the show. Tim Allen is a home repairs/improvement man. With his bearded know-it-all assistant, they do a show with a live audience called Tool Time. At the beginning of each show, an announcer, a beautiful woman in a tight tee shirt reading, "Tool Time," says "Hey, does everybody know what time it is?" "Tool Time!" comes the crowd response. Tim Allen's character is an oaf with a family, a very patient wife, three sons who hardly matter to the stories but the makers of the show emphasized them sometimes. Tim has a neighbor whose entire face we never see. Wilson says "Hello neighbor!" He offers life advice to the younger Tim. Tim Allen in this show emphasized the manly-grunts aspect of being male. His whole world is a man cave as well as acting dense on purpose whenever his wife foolishly expects sensitivity from him.
Before Debbe Dunning, the announcer was played by Pamela Anderson, pre-boob job. Pam, Vancouver-born like myself, seemed always to project confidence in spite of having to utter brainless lines in Baywatch, or say just a few words now and then in Home Improvement. Her starring role in Barb Wire (haven't seen it) is now perhaps as well-known, if not less known, than her 1996 "sex tape" shot with her ex-husband, Rocker Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe. As well as a rocker, Lee is a drummer, but he's often referred to reflexively by journalists and TV personalities as "Rocker Tommy Lee."
Pam Anderson also somehow became close friends with Julian Assange. She'd visit him in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, U.K. News heads in their jaw-flapping times between advertisements liked to ridicule Assange for having such a friend. They never said, "bimbo," but I guess they think Pam Anderson isn't serious enough to get into the good graces of someone wanted by the U.S. government for exposing U.S. war crimes, unethical and appalling practices at the DNC, and secrets the governments of the world want hidden.
These failing journalists who have failed a real journalist, Assange, take a shit on Pam Anderson's real emotions, her friendship with a man difficult for the news establishment in America and Britain to stomach. Assange violates rules of conformity. Riches and access to bigwigs are not his goals. He seeks to make the keepers of secrets transparent to the publics they claim to represent. Politicians are our employees. We let them get away daily with actions worthy of dismissal. Like crickets singing all night, we continue to enable the people destroying our lives, enraptured by the song representing the distractions: work, school, TV, video games, sports, news, porn, drug-induced states of mind and body, and social media.
When Pam Anderson visited Julian Assange in prison (where he was taken from the embassy by cops), she gave a short press conference in company with one of the Wikileaks people. She wore dark glasses and really did look like a movie star, blonde hair magnifying the darkness of her clothing. Clearly upset, she turned away, facing the prison gate, waiting for the emotions to drop back into her body. These few seconds of Pam Anderson anguished for the fate of her friend, the danger he's in, showed anyone with a soul what this case is all about: there are men and women in the U.S. and U.K. who support covering up acts of mass murder by military forces of both countries, meaning these men and women support mass murder. They support persecution of a journalist for telling the truth. They support suppression of the First Amendment. They're fascists. Are they as bad as Hitler?
Give them time. Bear in mind, some of them, per the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, are or were in a pedophile ring. They take the title of Nietzsche's book, Beyond Good and Evil, literally.
Debbe Dunning's views on Julian Assange are unknown to me. She got the show going, though, at a time when middle class homeowners could still afford to make improvements.
Vic Neptune
The TV show, Home Improvement, had a show within the show. Tim Allen is a home repairs/improvement man. With his bearded know-it-all assistant, they do a show with a live audience called Tool Time. At the beginning of each show, an announcer, a beautiful woman in a tight tee shirt reading, "Tool Time," says "Hey, does everybody know what time it is?" "Tool Time!" comes the crowd response. Tim Allen's character is an oaf with a family, a very patient wife, three sons who hardly matter to the stories but the makers of the show emphasized them sometimes. Tim has a neighbor whose entire face we never see. Wilson says "Hello neighbor!" He offers life advice to the younger Tim. Tim Allen in this show emphasized the manly-grunts aspect of being male. His whole world is a man cave as well as acting dense on purpose whenever his wife foolishly expects sensitivity from him.
Before Debbe Dunning, the announcer was played by Pamela Anderson, pre-boob job. Pam, Vancouver-born like myself, seemed always to project confidence in spite of having to utter brainless lines in Baywatch, or say just a few words now and then in Home Improvement. Her starring role in Barb Wire (haven't seen it) is now perhaps as well-known, if not less known, than her 1996 "sex tape" shot with her ex-husband, Rocker Tommy Lee of Mötley Crüe. As well as a rocker, Lee is a drummer, but he's often referred to reflexively by journalists and TV personalities as "Rocker Tommy Lee."
Pam Anderson also somehow became close friends with Julian Assange. She'd visit him in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, U.K. News heads in their jaw-flapping times between advertisements liked to ridicule Assange for having such a friend. They never said, "bimbo," but I guess they think Pam Anderson isn't serious enough to get into the good graces of someone wanted by the U.S. government for exposing U.S. war crimes, unethical and appalling practices at the DNC, and secrets the governments of the world want hidden.
These failing journalists who have failed a real journalist, Assange, take a shit on Pam Anderson's real emotions, her friendship with a man difficult for the news establishment in America and Britain to stomach. Assange violates rules of conformity. Riches and access to bigwigs are not his goals. He seeks to make the keepers of secrets transparent to the publics they claim to represent. Politicians are our employees. We let them get away daily with actions worthy of dismissal. Like crickets singing all night, we continue to enable the people destroying our lives, enraptured by the song representing the distractions: work, school, TV, video games, sports, news, porn, drug-induced states of mind and body, and social media.
When Pam Anderson visited Julian Assange in prison (where he was taken from the embassy by cops), she gave a short press conference in company with one of the Wikileaks people. She wore dark glasses and really did look like a movie star, blonde hair magnifying the darkness of her clothing. Clearly upset, she turned away, facing the prison gate, waiting for the emotions to drop back into her body. These few seconds of Pam Anderson anguished for the fate of her friend, the danger he's in, showed anyone with a soul what this case is all about: there are men and women in the U.S. and U.K. who support covering up acts of mass murder by military forces of both countries, meaning these men and women support mass murder. They support persecution of a journalist for telling the truth. They support suppression of the First Amendment. They're fascists. Are they as bad as Hitler?
Give them time. Bear in mind, some of them, per the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, are or were in a pedophile ring. They take the title of Nietzsche's book, Beyond Good and Evil, literally.
Debbe Dunning's views on Julian Assange are unknown to me. She got the show going, though, at a time when middle class homeowners could still afford to make improvements.
Vic Neptune
Sunday, August 11, 2019
Whoever Did It, Planned It
A green anemone in a tidal pool, Washington, summer 1977. I touched it, making it recoil, tensing its structure inwards. Fear? Helplessness? Trust that some oaf won't dig up the beautiful anemone? What does one do with an anemone? Use it for decoration in an aquarium? Clinging to a pebbled floor in some boy's bedroom. Freedom of the beachfront missed in tactile memory, knowing the bubbling water flashing with little fish is hardly near the scope and grandeur of the sea's meetings with the shoreline, an endless waving, sometimes jagged line like an arc of stars given some mythological name.
Imprisoned flesh. Theme of the weekend beginning with the "finding" of Jeffrey Epstein's "unresponsive" body (doesn't mean he's dead), an "apparent suicide," his second "apparent" attempt at hanging since entering the pokey. The New York Times put together, using three of its reporters, a story titled, "Before Jail Suicide, Jeffrey Epstein Was Left Alone and Not Closely Monitored" provides the clues pointing to his murder, or faked death.
Would not an intelligence agency-connected "useful citizen," "asset," "secret agent," "provider of blackmail material to the CIA, State Department, or agencies of other nations," be questioned by spooky entities like the Mossad, the CIA, French Intelligence, MI-6. Prince Andrew a fucker of underage girls? MI-5 and MI-6 aren't interested in that? Wouldn't it behoove the CIA to put Epstein in a black site after faking his death? Interrogate him, find out what he knows, use psychological torture. Get him back to work procuring girls for the rich and famous, but with a new face, name, passport, rejuvenation treatments, a guaranteed spot on the relocation to Mars before Earth becomes a glowing cinder of strife and have-nots warring each other for the remainder of precious and vital necessities.
Epstein, according to the article, "...was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed that night, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said."
Follow-up question not asked by New York's finest Fourth Estate representatives: why was the procedure in question not followed that night of all nights?"
These three writers remind us that "Mr. Epstein's death has also unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories online, with people suggesting, without evidence, that Mr. Epstein was killed to keep him from incriminating others."
Which others? Their next paragraph provides names.
"Over the years, Mr. Epstein's social circle had included dozens of well-known politicians, business executives, scientists, academics and other notables, including President Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and Leslie H. Wexner, the retail billionaire behind Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works."
Good product plugs!
I like their use of "Over the years..." It's so glib. It puts a sweet easy feeling over the next words, a lulling sound, over the years. Plus, it's vague. The evidence mounts, convincing evidence of mass sexual abuse and psychological manipulations of girls and young women. As the NYT reporters put it big city fashion, "Mr. Epstein's social circle..." comprises an international group of rich men who get their kicks defiling humanity. Epstein, if he is dead, may be hanging from a meathook in Satan's bedroom.
Or, he's sitting in a chair in a blank room in Virginia, sodium pentothal making him ready for the interrogation.
The Resurrection of Jeffrey Epstein. We know now what an evil fuck he was/is. That such a depraved man would have so many "nice" friends of a certain kind: the powerful in entertainment, news, politics, law, government. It's obvious, isn't it, that people who were friends with Epstein are bad people. When people such as they control images, making the powerful safe to plan their big schemes, most of which fail, we must fight back with counter-images, counter-narratives, and most of all, honesty.
What I suspect is the case with Jeffrey Epstein is that in this scandal, he's not the worst player.
Vic Neptune
A green anemone in a tidal pool, Washington, summer 1977. I touched it, making it recoil, tensing its structure inwards. Fear? Helplessness? Trust that some oaf won't dig up the beautiful anemone? What does one do with an anemone? Use it for decoration in an aquarium? Clinging to a pebbled floor in some boy's bedroom. Freedom of the beachfront missed in tactile memory, knowing the bubbling water flashing with little fish is hardly near the scope and grandeur of the sea's meetings with the shoreline, an endless waving, sometimes jagged line like an arc of stars given some mythological name.
Imprisoned flesh. Theme of the weekend beginning with the "finding" of Jeffrey Epstein's "unresponsive" body (doesn't mean he's dead), an "apparent suicide," his second "apparent" attempt at hanging since entering the pokey. The New York Times put together, using three of its reporters, a story titled, "Before Jail Suicide, Jeffrey Epstein Was Left Alone and Not Closely Monitored" provides the clues pointing to his murder, or faked death.
Would not an intelligence agency-connected "useful citizen," "asset," "secret agent," "provider of blackmail material to the CIA, State Department, or agencies of other nations," be questioned by spooky entities like the Mossad, the CIA, French Intelligence, MI-6. Prince Andrew a fucker of underage girls? MI-5 and MI-6 aren't interested in that? Wouldn't it behoove the CIA to put Epstein in a black site after faking his death? Interrogate him, find out what he knows, use psychological torture. Get him back to work procuring girls for the rich and famous, but with a new face, name, passport, rejuvenation treatments, a guaranteed spot on the relocation to Mars before Earth becomes a glowing cinder of strife and have-nots warring each other for the remainder of precious and vital necessities.
Epstein, according to the article, "...was supposed to have been checked by the two guards in the protective housing unit every 30 minutes, but that procedure was not followed that night, a law-enforcement official with knowledge of his detention said."
Follow-up question not asked by New York's finest Fourth Estate representatives: why was the procedure in question not followed that night of all nights?"
These three writers remind us that "Mr. Epstein's death has also unleashed a torrent of conspiracy theories online, with people suggesting, without evidence, that Mr. Epstein was killed to keep him from incriminating others."
Which others? Their next paragraph provides names.
"Over the years, Mr. Epstein's social circle had included dozens of well-known politicians, business executives, scientists, academics and other notables, including President Trump, former President Bill Clinton, Prince Andrew of Britain and Leslie H. Wexner, the retail billionaire behind Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works."
Good product plugs!
I like their use of "Over the years..." It's so glib. It puts a sweet easy feeling over the next words, a lulling sound, over the years. Plus, it's vague. The evidence mounts, convincing evidence of mass sexual abuse and psychological manipulations of girls and young women. As the NYT reporters put it big city fashion, "Mr. Epstein's social circle..." comprises an international group of rich men who get their kicks defiling humanity. Epstein, if he is dead, may be hanging from a meathook in Satan's bedroom.
Or, he's sitting in a chair in a blank room in Virginia, sodium pentothal making him ready for the interrogation.
The Resurrection of Jeffrey Epstein. We know now what an evil fuck he was/is. That such a depraved man would have so many "nice" friends of a certain kind: the powerful in entertainment, news, politics, law, government. It's obvious, isn't it, that people who were friends with Epstein are bad people. When people such as they control images, making the powerful safe to plan their big schemes, most of which fail, we must fight back with counter-images, counter-narratives, and most of all, honesty.
What I suspect is the case with Jeffrey Epstein is that in this scandal, he's not the worst player.
Vic Neptune
Thursday, August 8, 2019
Loving Life and Getting Away With It!
"Do you feel pressured twenty-four seven? The news getting you down? Reading comments on YouTube videos and becoming depressed due to the spelling and grammatical errors? Would you like everybody to stop using abbreviations? Are illegal immigrants living peacefully in your city and working factory jobs you would never apply for? Are mass shootings a reality TV series? Is the War packaged for palatability to general audiences, causing them not to think about how their tax dollars are spent on killing people, while the packagers (mainstream news media) focus on good-for-the-body-politic life-saving measures like Medicare for All only to make that seem unacceptable?"
A lot of my writing is out of left field, a baseball term confusing me because even less throwbacks come from right field, a facet of the diamond hit to by left-handed batters. So, out of right field do many of my ideas come. Around 2007, when I was writing my second novel, Cryptopraxis, a police investigation story with interstellar criminal conspiracies and corrupt law enforcement in a city on Jupiter's moon, Callisto, I got into the practice of summoning metaphors and similes to my mind's eye by letting the first image popping in be that metaphor and simile. Say a child's block game appears on my mind screen. I work it into the metaphor or simile. Some attempts proved difficult, others were impossible. I still do this sometimes but during the third or fourth draft of that long science fiction novel, I was in the habit of using it in my writing, creating some really unusual visuals metaphor-wise.
A metaphor is a frame from a film, in a sense. You can look at stills from movies (the website FilmGrab is fun: films presented as stills, go through one and you can get a sense of the movie), perceiving moments you can take out and put into any context. I could, for instance, take a scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a film I've seen at least ten times and studied; translate it to a look, an inspiration, in my novel. Once around 2007 I concentrated on Jane Russell's role and performance, her dark-haired look equally gorgeous in impact compared to Marilyn Monroe's blonde goldenness. I made Russell into the model for a character, Thomasette Tate, gave her Russell's mannerisms, gestures. Tate's an actress, star of Showdown on Pym's Planet and Stampede on Bellatrix 9, entertainments I'm assuming have lots of action, quickly sparked romances, death, and hope.
My writing, fragmenting into unrelated pieces, is a problem for those who don't tend to see things in a jumbled way. Memories come every day and night to our minds, not arriving in the chronological order of one's experiences. Why should novels, essays, films, always use linear chronology? Our perceptions exist in many different times and places through memory, speculation, imagination, emotions, and dreams.
100 years ago, 1919, Picasso had already explored cubism, a visual artistic form not seen, except in montages featuring many dissolves, in cinema even today. An exception is Ingmar Bergman's blending of the smaller halves of each of the faces of Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Persona, but who cares.
Go back to 1819, a year after Mary Shelley put out the first version of Frankenstein. Said to be better than the revised edition, the one polished by Percy Shelley, pushing back on, maybe, words of a woman, the daughter of a premier feminist of the eighteenth century, a time when there weren't enough of them.
Vic Neptune
"Do you feel pressured twenty-four seven? The news getting you down? Reading comments on YouTube videos and becoming depressed due to the spelling and grammatical errors? Would you like everybody to stop using abbreviations? Are illegal immigrants living peacefully in your city and working factory jobs you would never apply for? Are mass shootings a reality TV series? Is the War packaged for palatability to general audiences, causing them not to think about how their tax dollars are spent on killing people, while the packagers (mainstream news media) focus on good-for-the-body-politic life-saving measures like Medicare for All only to make that seem unacceptable?"
A lot of my writing is out of left field, a baseball term confusing me because even less throwbacks come from right field, a facet of the diamond hit to by left-handed batters. So, out of right field do many of my ideas come. Around 2007, when I was writing my second novel, Cryptopraxis, a police investigation story with interstellar criminal conspiracies and corrupt law enforcement in a city on Jupiter's moon, Callisto, I got into the practice of summoning metaphors and similes to my mind's eye by letting the first image popping in be that metaphor and simile. Say a child's block game appears on my mind screen. I work it into the metaphor or simile. Some attempts proved difficult, others were impossible. I still do this sometimes but during the third or fourth draft of that long science fiction novel, I was in the habit of using it in my writing, creating some really unusual visuals metaphor-wise.
A metaphor is a frame from a film, in a sense. You can look at stills from movies (the website FilmGrab is fun: films presented as stills, go through one and you can get a sense of the movie), perceiving moments you can take out and put into any context. I could, for instance, take a scene from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a film I've seen at least ten times and studied; translate it to a look, an inspiration, in my novel. Once around 2007 I concentrated on Jane Russell's role and performance, her dark-haired look equally gorgeous in impact compared to Marilyn Monroe's blonde goldenness. I made Russell into the model for a character, Thomasette Tate, gave her Russell's mannerisms, gestures. Tate's an actress, star of Showdown on Pym's Planet and Stampede on Bellatrix 9, entertainments I'm assuming have lots of action, quickly sparked romances, death, and hope.
My writing, fragmenting into unrelated pieces, is a problem for those who don't tend to see things in a jumbled way. Memories come every day and night to our minds, not arriving in the chronological order of one's experiences. Why should novels, essays, films, always use linear chronology? Our perceptions exist in many different times and places through memory, speculation, imagination, emotions, and dreams.
100 years ago, 1919, Picasso had already explored cubism, a visual artistic form not seen, except in montages featuring many dissolves, in cinema even today. An exception is Ingmar Bergman's blending of the smaller halves of each of the faces of Liv Ullman and Bibi Andersson in Persona, but who cares.
Go back to 1819, a year after Mary Shelley put out the first version of Frankenstein. Said to be better than the revised edition, the one polished by Percy Shelley, pushing back on, maybe, words of a woman, the daughter of a premier feminist of the eighteenth century, a time when there weren't enough of them.
Vic Neptune
Monday, August 5, 2019
What Did I Read About Today?
I'm not a journalist. I cite sources when I feel like it. If I'm writing a post on the intricacies of some article on the latest fashion choices of Tiffany Trump, with bonus speculation by the article's author on whether or not she's split up from boyfriend Ross Mechanic, I use quotations correctly, name the piece's author, the publication. I also offer my own commentary on the publication, the piece's author's possible obsessions. In the Tiffany Trump article, a piece I wrote about in a previous post in this blog, I learned that the author really gives a shit about expensive clothes and purses. Really gives a shit about the people wearing them, but doesn't delve into their depths much since the subject, Tiffany, may not have depths.
She's the second unloved daughter of a rich man with no morals. Close to her mother, Marla Maples, Tiffany Trump was raised apart from the ogre, mostly. Yet, she's ridden on Air Force One along with her ex-boyfriend, an heir himself, Ross Mechanic, whose Instagram account gives me the impression he's always on vacation.
I found out that Maria Bartiromo, a very good-looking Fox News money clown who has a show approaching the subject of America from the original and fresh viewpoint of Wall Street, has a net worth of 22 million dollars, makes 6 million per year, probably sleeps on a bed of crushed emeralds.
She's interviewed Trump, guest co-hosted Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in the 1990s, looks great in long flowing dresses when going out on the town, resembles a lost movie star stuck doing the same role repeatedly, albeit with an acceptable (for Hollywood) salary. In spite of seeming like a polite and well-mannered person, a Brooklyn-born street fighter with a heart of platinum, Maria Bartiromo, from her broadcasts, is obsessed with money, just as Tiffany Trump is obsessed with clothes, and Ross Mechanic is obsessed with not working.
I saw a photo today of Khloe Kardashian. The caption says, "Khloe goes bowling." A joke? I'm not sure. I don't remember her clothes but they looked casual/expensive. What brightens the picture most is her orange-red fingernail polish. Will she go into the bowling alley and search for an orange ball? Is that her color this month? Is an assistant carrying a bag containing Khloe's special and fashionable $59,000 bowling shoes, the footwear helping her avoid having to put her own feet into alley shoes used by uncounted others--people without their own TV shows?
I also read about Jared Kushner's Mideast peace plan, how a recent conference included just about everyone except Israelis and Palestinians. Automatically, that's a failure, but in Donald Trump's universe, just plow ahead, pretend like "we're moving forward," or "this is a hopeful sign." What the plan portends is economic advancement of Palestinian businessmen willing to sell out their countrymen rather than justice for the horrors suffered daily by Palestinians at the hands of Israelis with U.S. consent.
Leave it to the son of a convicted felon, Jared Kushner, to come up with a plan not addressing ordinary Palestinians' needs while milking money from those who will continue to exploit the Occupied Territories in violation of U.N. resolutions. Jared Kushner, unlike Ross Mechanic and Tiffany Trump, breathes White House air, hears his father-in-law yelling, must pretend he's enjoying his life. Is he afraid of following in his father's convict footsteps? Does he worry hard about this at night while trying to sleep next to Ivanka, a woman with no morals who will do just fine if he ends up staring at the bottom of the narrow bed above, hearing his cellmate grunt, snore, and snort when clearing his sinuses?
I wish upon these wealthy parasites ordinary life.
Vic Neptune
I'm not a journalist. I cite sources when I feel like it. If I'm writing a post on the intricacies of some article on the latest fashion choices of Tiffany Trump, with bonus speculation by the article's author on whether or not she's split up from boyfriend Ross Mechanic, I use quotations correctly, name the piece's author, the publication. I also offer my own commentary on the publication, the piece's author's possible obsessions. In the Tiffany Trump article, a piece I wrote about in a previous post in this blog, I learned that the author really gives a shit about expensive clothes and purses. Really gives a shit about the people wearing them, but doesn't delve into their depths much since the subject, Tiffany, may not have depths.
She's the second unloved daughter of a rich man with no morals. Close to her mother, Marla Maples, Tiffany Trump was raised apart from the ogre, mostly. Yet, she's ridden on Air Force One along with her ex-boyfriend, an heir himself, Ross Mechanic, whose Instagram account gives me the impression he's always on vacation.
I found out that Maria Bartiromo, a very good-looking Fox News money clown who has a show approaching the subject of America from the original and fresh viewpoint of Wall Street, has a net worth of 22 million dollars, makes 6 million per year, probably sleeps on a bed of crushed emeralds.
She's interviewed Trump, guest co-hosted Live With Regis and Kathie Lee in the 1990s, looks great in long flowing dresses when going out on the town, resembles a lost movie star stuck doing the same role repeatedly, albeit with an acceptable (for Hollywood) salary. In spite of seeming like a polite and well-mannered person, a Brooklyn-born street fighter with a heart of platinum, Maria Bartiromo, from her broadcasts, is obsessed with money, just as Tiffany Trump is obsessed with clothes, and Ross Mechanic is obsessed with not working.
I saw a photo today of Khloe Kardashian. The caption says, "Khloe goes bowling." A joke? I'm not sure. I don't remember her clothes but they looked casual/expensive. What brightens the picture most is her orange-red fingernail polish. Will she go into the bowling alley and search for an orange ball? Is that her color this month? Is an assistant carrying a bag containing Khloe's special and fashionable $59,000 bowling shoes, the footwear helping her avoid having to put her own feet into alley shoes used by uncounted others--people without their own TV shows?
I also read about Jared Kushner's Mideast peace plan, how a recent conference included just about everyone except Israelis and Palestinians. Automatically, that's a failure, but in Donald Trump's universe, just plow ahead, pretend like "we're moving forward," or "this is a hopeful sign." What the plan portends is economic advancement of Palestinian businessmen willing to sell out their countrymen rather than justice for the horrors suffered daily by Palestinians at the hands of Israelis with U.S. consent.
Leave it to the son of a convicted felon, Jared Kushner, to come up with a plan not addressing ordinary Palestinians' needs while milking money from those who will continue to exploit the Occupied Territories in violation of U.N. resolutions. Jared Kushner, unlike Ross Mechanic and Tiffany Trump, breathes White House air, hears his father-in-law yelling, must pretend he's enjoying his life. Is he afraid of following in his father's convict footsteps? Does he worry hard about this at night while trying to sleep next to Ivanka, a woman with no morals who will do just fine if he ends up staring at the bottom of the narrow bed above, hearing his cellmate grunt, snore, and snort when clearing his sinuses?
I wish upon these wealthy parasites ordinary life.
Vic Neptune
Friday, August 2, 2019
*Note: This dates from 2015; it seems a commentary on 2019. I didn't title these pieces then.
V. N.
Dick Cheney emerged from hiding again, accompanied by his Electra Complex daughter, Liz. This Dick and Liz, however, unlike Burton and Taylor, can't share acting stories, are not artistic spirits giving gripping performances to the world. When they come into the light together, the Cheneys' self-appointed purpose is to bash Obama and warn of doom.
Obama, as of this writing, has thirty-four senators agreeing with him about the Iran Nuclear Deal brokered by John Kerry. It's a safe number, boding well for the deal no matter what hysterics come from the other side. Lindsay Graham, running for president in case you've forgotten, said that the only thing preventing "the Ayatollahs from dancing in the streets is that dancing is forbidden in Iran." Cute, but who, outside of a musical, dances in the street?
Dick Cheney, interviewed on CNN, warned that if Iran acquires nuclear weapons, which of course they will, if you believe him, nukes will then be used against populations "for the first time since Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Which country dropped those two bombs, Dick?
Cheney's role in destabilizing the Middle East is a significant one he will never admit to. He lied, and still does, about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction capabilities. He warned of a nuclear strike on American soil coming from Iraq, an absurd notion not possible when Hussein didn't have nuclear weapons, as had already been proven by UN inspection teams by 2002.
Cheney, though, like many politicians, is a stone cold liar. He now warns of nuclear Armageddon coming from the Iranians. The scare tactic worked in 2002, but now it seems flaccid. He looks like the bent, evil old man he is. The headline from his CNN interview had nothing to do with Iran; an indication, possibly, of his perceived declining merit as a foreign policy sage. Asked if he'll endorse Donald Trump if the latter becomes the Republican nominee, Cheney said he'll support the nominee, whoever that will be.
Today, the frontrunner, Trump, occupied twenty-five minutes of MSNBC's time, speaking from his tower of power in New York, showing a pledge he signed after talking with Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus. The pledge has Trump promising to stick with the GOP, to not run as an independent. Pundit debate afterwards focused on whether or not Trump will obey the pledge. Since it's not a legal document, why will he do so if he ever thinks it's time to make a move away from the Republicans. He's a liar who signed a piece of paper, big fucking deal. By doing so he assuaged the concerns, for a while, of those Republicans who fear an independent Trump run that would probably give the election to the Democratic nominee.
Jeb Bush tries to fight Trump--Trump fights. I can't, at this time, picture Bush winning the nomination. He is lackluster. Trump has a knack for exposing weak spots in others, acting as a catalyst, making him useful to us, perhaps, because he shows Americans what a lousy politician Jeb Bush is.
If Trump doesn't start attacking Hillary Clinton more strongly than he has, maybe he really does work on behalf of the Clintons, and acts as a trickster within the Republican Party? I'm not convinced of that argument, yet. Trump is such an asshole, has so many long-cultivated multi-media skills, feels himself to be divine, that I can't yet accept he's not in this insane election cycle to take it all the way. I run into resistance from others when I suggest the title, President Trump. I'm surprised more people aren't thinking it's increasingly possible. Conventional wisdom, it seems, states that Hillary Clinton will of course be the next president. Like Jeb Bush, though, she's as exciting as a washed-up comedian's routines.
As for other Trump opponents, like Scott Walker, bear in mind the phenomenon of a candidate's mouth proving a denseness hard to ignore. On Meet the Press last Sunday, Walker proposed the building of a wall separating the U.S. from Canada. If built, this wall, at approximately 5,500 miles long, would outdo Trump's "beautiful" southern wall by about 3,600 miles. Canada's Minister of the Interior responded to Walker's idea by saying that illegal immigration is more of a problem coming from America than it is from Canada. Even apart from that typically even-minded sensible Canadian reaction, Walker's lack of sense, outside of having the political savvy to be controlled by the Koch Brothers, shows, fourteen months from the 2016 election, his unfitness to sit in the Oval Office, unless it be on the floor, playing with Legos.
From calculated evil (Cheney) to pride swelled with gigantism (Trump) to doltishness (Walker), this time of pseudo-leaders with microphones and camera lenses before them, makes for fine entertainment that will give way to new presidential decisions based on ignorance, and more destruction.
Vic Neptune
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