17th and Irving

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

decided?

It was odd wondering if the Dems had managed to get the Senate today...I wanted that judiciary stuff out of Republican hands. So it's good, a little bit.

If you feel like gloating, rushlimbaugh.com is mighty funny today.

Some days it's easier to laugh about the slow slide of the world, a piece of ice breaking into a teeming sea, than other days.

Like knowing that President Ass Face and his wily companions won't be able to ram another Alito down our collective craws.

That's something at least.

election...

Isn't it odd...right now, a big hunk of the next two years is going to come down to about 4000 people spread out in Virginia and Montana. Still, the Democrats have done way more than I thought they would. Tennessee rejected Gore in 2000 to put the Republicans over the top, and now I hope that ignoring Ford in 2006 won't keep the Republicans on top.

I wonder how the Democrats will do now that they have at least one House, and maybe the whole Congress. For instance, on civil liberties, will they kow-tow so they can't be branded "weak" on terrorism, even though all these steps do nothing really to prevent terrorism?

What about being "soft" on democracy?

Well, this went better than I was letting myself hope.

Sunday, November 05, 2006

on torture films, Borat and a few other political quibbles...

The L Train was only running to Lorimer again this weekend, it was impossible to make it down to the station because of the surge of people constantly making their way up to the buses that would take them the rest of the way home. It's like this most weekends, except those weekends they just shut down the L, but the mayor, the MTA, you know, they're doing a good job. It would be nice if we held people accountable occasionally.

At some church that fills up like a last place NBA team's arena, some minister talked about his sexual sickness and had his job taken away from him. Most of his followers seem to blame Satan for this, Satan or Bill Clinton I suppose. Before long it'll be Nancy Pelosi, they're already trying to scare each other about her. Take a look at rushlimbaugh.com sometime, and you'll see the character assassination already well underway. Of course, I suppose we shouldn't mention his Viagra-ridden Dominacan trip when discussing matters of character. After all, I'm not saying he went down there to have sex with 16 year olds like many of the middle-aged American men who go down there, after all, it's a strictly economic arrangement even if he did.

It seems sad to me, these hotel rooms with reluctantly gay Republican and yahoo-Christian backgrounds nervously getting it on with men who cheerlead them on toward a real orgasm. Looking at Haggard's male escort's ad, where it says "hey, I'm a nice guy!" it was almost heartbreaking to imagine Haggard nodding to himself, thinking "I'm going to do it!" Sex shouldn't be so fucking sad like that. Grow up. And then Crist, down in Florida, having to meekly dodge gay questions everywhere he goes because if he admits he's gay he'll probably lose. What's there to lose when you're losing your self-respect every day? I feel the way Nietzsche felt about beggars when I think about these guys. It's annoying to even think about them because it arouses such feelings of revulsion and pity mixed with disgust at their absolute inability to deal with the world of truth. Their attempts to make a world that stands at moral attention forever, a world in which they may forgive themselves by condemning others, well, that world becomes that very lonely hotel room quickly.

Anyway, I saw Saw 3 and Borat this weekend. Why did I see Saw 3? How could I not? Rudy, Meghan and I usually manage to find the worst film out at any given time and agree to watch it. What is odd, is how successful these movies about torture have become. The Hostal movie already has a sequel coming out and there's a hideous looking thing called Turistas coming out next month. Then there's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Beginning, or whatever, with all those images of vulnerable women and burly men. It makes sense we would be obsessed with torture given our circumstances and fears of the other right now, but watching the totalitarian "philosophy" at work within the mechanizations of Saw 3 was truly depressing anyway. Anti-intellectual and believing that there is something fair about the way "Jigsaw" kills, because he takes people who aren't "grateful" for their lives and gives them a chance to redeem themselves through tremendous pain, the film walks us through a torture chamber and an operation room within that torture chamber. As entertainment, we witness brain surgery with power tools, but without any elan, sadly. We also get to see a man twisted to death in a machine better found in some mad king's castle. The operation is performed under torturous duress and the grimness of the doctor and the patient speak to some joyless world where one wonders how anybody could develop any sense of gratitude for life. I mean, in a movie, this should be put forth with a bit more sense of...something...fun? Fear? It's just accomplished fact here. We see bloody phlegm and the flap of the brain's protective seal that rests between skull and said brain. We see blood splatter all over a woman's face and we see her wash it off. Then later, in the same spirit, we see bone twist from skin and muscle, and the whole time there is the thinnest of stories tying us from the events we witness to some narrative understanding of these events. At the end, they cynically throw in a twist, so as to not make it too obvious that the main entertainment was the manipulation of body parts into positions of pain, a kind of pornography really, but later you can talk about that twist at the end. Whoa!

Whoa! indeed.

But I talked earlier about totalitarian yearnings in the subtext of the film, and there, at least, there was some interest in watching this waste of carbon. In the movie the people are told they have lived their lives wrongly, therefore, they must suffer in order to learn what is truly important and thus enter the world of livingly righteously. They deviate, they are punished in horrific ways and then they learn to understand what is truly important. Any individual ideas of right, wrong, redemption or corruption are subsumed by one who has taken it upon himself to teach the correct way. Jigsaw suffers greatly, but his goal is so important, that even as he lays struggling for life on a bed surrounded by instruments of death, he focuses on ways to instruct those who do not value what is so freely theirs. He is a martyr, giving his life so that we may understand. He occupies the position of Christ-figure, the fountain from which wisdom springs so that others may live, and of course his suffering excuses any suffering he inflicts. There are scenes that show him, some kind of industrious Ben Franklin, creating his works of instruction, these scenes, told in flashback, lack irony; there are scenes of him in love: those things that have been taken away from him as this great responsibility of torture are thrust upon him. Meanwhile, a judge, a failed judge, white, middle-aged, who failed to punish, is covered in the filth of slaughtered, rotted pigs, and almost drowns in them. Later his head explodes as a shotgun goes off while a black man, nailed and held in place by huge metallic clamps that cover most of his body, is twisted, bones popping and ripping, slowly to death. I'll leave the obvious subtexts here to somebody else.

It would all be so comic and ridiculous, if so much of it was not in accordance with ideas Americans seem to value. If you don't like what you're given, then it's you that's the problem! You don't know what suffering is! Let me tell you what suffering is, and I got through it! All this machismo and this desperate scrambling to fit into the norms of experience that have been traced for us. And the willingness to judge and punish...ugh: they're gettin' what they deserve. Watching it, I've blocked much of it out, not from the oozing imagery, but from the sheer monotony and grimness of its tone. It was so serious, and it really did seem to think it had something to say, and it was going to say it through the misunderstood actions of this moronic duo of torturers, one of whom it held up as some kind of visionary. It reminded me of these anti-intellectual and nationalist novels of Weimar Germany that are so ignored today, in which the values of a lost generation of German militarism were celebrated. Martyrdom is an essential component of those novels as well. Subtlety is confused with weakness and moral indecision and corruption. Certainty, the ability to will over others, those are the primary attributes of the heroic according to those that have argued thusly. We all saw where that went.

For those who can't understand the attraction to George Bush during the 2000 and especially the 2004 elections, and in the period of time the war on Iraq was first launched, watch this film, think about its popularity, and it all comes slowly into focus. In ten days, Saw 3 has made $60 million.

The next day I saw Borat, which was fun. The fraternity boys were the scariest, I think.

I think the Senate is going to go 51-49 for the Republicans. I saw somebody forecasting a 34 to 40 seat gain in the House for the Democrats, but I don't know about that. I think 15 to 20 maybe. I won't be surprised if I'm wrong, of course, and I hope I am and that every Republican running loses, but I wonder if a lot of these polls that show close races in historically Republican held areas won't see a reversion back to the familiar once the voting booths open. I think Americans now see polls taken before the elections as ways to show pleasure or, especially, displeasure with candidates. If you are going to vote for a particular candidate and he slaps his mistriss around, for instance, and somebody calls you and asks, are you going to vote for that guy who just slapped his somethin' on the side around or are you going to vote for this person, well, who are you going to admit to voting for? Or if they ask you, are you going to vote for this obviously racist guy who calls people mean names and, just in general, acts like an ass, or are you going to vote for this guy who just thinks weirdly about women (really, who can you vote for in that election - ugh), well, again, seeing as their stances on women are probably really a wash, it's easier to fess up to the lesser embarrassment. I do think Allen is in trouble in Virginia, but I think he'll win in the end. I think the Dems have a good shot in Missouri though. Stem cell research should be a bigger issue than the Democrats have made it really. In Missouri it might actually tilt the vote.

Conversely, if you're a good candidate, but running in an area that typically votes counter to your party or politics, then you can't believe leads in your favor. If I were Ford, in Tennessee, I'd want to see a seven or eight point lead before I felt like I had a real chance to win, because people might think you're a better guy, but when the chips are down...and it looks like Ford is going to lose sadly. Corker, well the name really does say it all. Fuck him. And his gross campaign.

It stinks of Republicanism.

Saturday, November 04, 2006

suddenly it's the 1960s and we're in England...

Republicans keep saying what we should be fucking, and then they go fuck something else.

You can apply this in a number of ways and I'll let you.

Ted Haggerd neither had sexual relations with that man nor did he inhale, all in one day, it must be horrible to put yourself in a position where you can do nothing but hate yourself. And others.

Because no matter what they say about Christian love, their swift pronouncements of judgment on anybody who professes a different belief or way of life than theirs has been disgusting for years, and while I'm sure they'll say nice things about good old Ted, they didn't about others who had different agendas from theirs. It's one thing to be gay and hate being gay, another thing completely, to enjoy it.

Meanwhile the White House doesn't even have so much class as to actually support the guy. It's one step away from "that guy, you mean the one over there? Is that Tony Haggerd? Oh...Tom? Yeah, I think he was in my econ class like, I don't know, freshman year? I think we sat next to each other a couple times but it was like, 'hey, what's up?' and that's it. I think once we studied together with some other people...maybe for the final?"

Which is laughable of course, because the whole way this administration has attempted to communicate and encode their various messages has been coached in the language and the justifications of the Christian Right. The idea that the Christian Right has seen it's messages distorted, as some are trying to claim now, is laughable. They support the Iraq War in huge numbers, are the ones most against stem cell research and have their own economic theory they claim supports conservative economic policy (which this administration has followed, the central tenet being basically, "make sure the rich get as much as they want, how they want it"). There are other ways the Christian Right has dominated philosophically this administration. Look at the way we interact with Israel or at the tax policies that have been shifted to give church based groups massive funding advantages and pretty much free-range in their doling of it. Not by accident are these people leading the large churches getting massively wealthy and living in nice places with pretty views, whether it be La Jolla or Colorado Springs. If this be Christianity, then it has all to do with Christ as the Golden Calf had to do with God, and I don't care what scripture they quote to justify their beliefs or their actions. They worship mammon.

They would be so much happier if they stopped looking in everybody else's windows.

Because then when they got caught kissing men, kissing women, buying drugs or acting like any other lost soul looking for something or anything, they wouldn't have to insist they were more found than anybody else.

Meanwhile Bill Frist is making his house look like 1600 Pensylvania Avenue, and it's weird, scary and just another example of the plutocracy making sure that they get theirs, and they're not even particularly afraid we'll notice anymore. What are we going to do after all? Who does that? How tacky and in love with yourself and power do you have to be where you can't even wait?

There's some vibes in their air, and what's funny, is that with all the wackiness in this country controlled by wolves and cheats, is that we're going to wake up, I'm afraid, on November 8th, and the same wolves and cheats will be telling us why we decided they were steering us down the right path.

The path right to the shakedown.

Thursday, November 02, 2006

Provoking Behaviours...

Today the L Train was like a dream of what it could be: hurtling through space underneath the East River, I was at school before I'd even listened to a few songs on my iPod. It's been all about DJ Spooky lately, paranoid vibes from the ether all about us with dystopian forebodings grumbling from the froth of the ocean, killing the little mollusks and plankton by melting their shells. It's all coming back to us one way or the other, but for now it would be nice if researchers could research and lovers could love so I'm all about watching what happens with these elections.

I can't look away and it's hard to watch the late surge toward our basest emotions and the self-righteousness, which has all the ethical and moral weight of "my dog ate it", acting as surrogate protector of us all. Bush talks about Democrats winning for the Terrorists, whoever they are this week, and George Allen lets his classroom bullies beat up some snot-nosed wanna-be Rabelais and watch the video, they look so focused and convinced of their rightness that you expect to hear about how they took care of that cattle thief. It's like what it must have been like to watch Pinkerton's men off-duty at some Baltimore bar taking care of a wrong-way wandering unionizer. Tucking back in their shirts and straightening their ties, looking like they did something and reasserting their place in the grand order of things. I want a pair of those pants. Burning those pants is like burning the flag.

The Democrats are apologizing for insinuating we're stuck in Iraq or something, maybe they think we called the wrong people stupid, but as far as I can make out, it looks like the guy being called stupid is kind of dumb; we didn't know what we were doing in Iraq from before we got there, but still he insists on saying that's what's keeping us safe, so Dick "Dick" C. and Dick "Dick" Rumsy are going to stay on the line far from the shooting for another couple years or so, and all those people are dying like the graham crackers a couple hours before supper. Because the blood there is only just prelude to the deluge. Dark days and all this going through the motions like it means something besides the dark days are coming.

I lost a student Halloween, he was hit by a livery cab on Harlem River Drive, he had been suspended for awhile, so I hadn't seen him since I guess late September. He was a good kid in my classroom, and I liked him, wrote a note about him to someone saying he showed some promise, he would be ok. He was throwing eggs at cars with some friends, I teach them too. They got spooked and ran when they actually hit something. Tried to cross the highway and he stumbled on the median. The driver didn't stop. I found out he liked playing ping pong. I never knew that.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

John Kerry - how dare he!?!

So it's odd, you navigate over to good old nytimes.com and there's some article about John Kerrysome article about John Kerry saying poor and uneducated people are fighting in Iraq. Trustworthy Bush acts all insulted, and suggests that they are fighting because they are patriots. Again the lie puts truth on the defensive and the Democrats go play their turtle game and the truth John Kerry was getting at, that many of our soldiers joined because the other options they had all came with smocks and that economic opportunities for most of this country are fading, got swept under the rug.

How I hate the Democrats. When one of them finally has the guts to say something that actually has meaning behind it, they run from truth like it's a grenade (whereas the Republicans use the actual grenade to blow up the truth). And what makes it wonderful is when the ones who actually said something true, meekly concede that perhaps they were wrong.

There's a lot of truth-dodging and truth-exploding going on right now, so I took the day off, feeling kind of low-down, and it's enough to upset one, the Republicans are bullying their way to another avoidance of defeat I don't wonder. It's scary, and I hope I'm being Eyore when I wonder about how the Democrats are going to blow another election and what it says about the American people that George Allen and Bob Corker (I swear to God) will probably win their Senate races even though on the evolutionary scale they are just a little less than pond scum, a little more than shit.

There's a lot of hand-wringing about calling the American people stupid, it comes from the plutocracy, where stupid is exactly what they want, but how can we call a group of people who still defend or accept the right of an elected official to cozy up to ol' Reb, the Dixie flag, fear homosexuals having sex, don't fear the fact that the ocean is turning into soda fizz and that the weather is acting unglued, connect Iraq to 9/11, wave the flag and watch really bad television, sometimes for days at a time be called intelligent? And this is just the beginning of a long list that includes complaining about the price of gas for their oil tankers/SUV's, ignoring public education except to worry if the latest version of communism is being taught (homo-stuff? etc.?). Despite the media saturation, Americans still find it impossible to weed out the chaff from the wheat of what's important to them.

Because I don't recognize the centrality of their religious belief? No, because I should have the right, along with you and everybody else, to refuse to have their religion dictate what this government does. And because sham religion, which allows hate, inequality and injustice, is not religion, but human power calling for Godly power, power it can never sway.