For less than $5 a month you can have space on a web server. For a few bucks a year you can have your own domain name. With a computer at the public library and a plain text editor you can then publish a website that can be seen more or less all over the world. THAT IS POWER. It just requires a tiny bit of knowledge and effort to do your own thing. You should do it.
Last night I finished watching the film Constantine’s Sword, based on the book by (and starring) James Carroll.
This is going to be a short report, as I really can’t do a very good job of summarizing this movie. First, I thought it was fascinating. The author/star is a former catholic priest who became disillusioned with the church during the Viet Nam war and left the priesthood.
The film investigates a couple of things simultaneously, drawing kind of a philosophical analogy between the two. First, antisemitism and evangelical religious incursion in the US military is examined, specifically at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Then it moves into the history of antisemitism in the catholic church, the church’s complicity in persecution of jews throughout history, and related topics.
Not a christian-bashing film at all, I recommend Constantine’s sword to anyone interested in these topics.
I was inspired, one might say compelled, to write this by the conversation I was eavesdropping on this morning, outside my office door. Unintentional eavesdropping — they were invading my sound-space. And brother, when you invade my sound space,it is on!
Deep male voices — the name Romo comes up a few times – talk of options and blah blah blah. Yes, it was a Monday morning discussion of yet another glorious Dallas Cowboys victory on the field of simulated battle yesterday.
The NFL Robot and entire TV spectacle combine the things modern young men love – violence, football, and video games. And beer.
This has never been my world. I’ve never had even the slightest interest in football. None. While I enjoy a good baseball game and I like that sport, I don’t go out of my way to watch it. Basketball — every game is the same. Sorry. It is. But of all the “big 3” sports, football offers nothing to interest me at all. When dudes start talking sports in general, and especially football, I’m pretty sure my eyes glaze over as if the Zombie Virus has just taken hold of me and my mind has gone empty. Which is weird, because to me they’re the zombies.
Before I go on, let me just clear this up. I just said I like baseball. I do. Baseball, for all its steroid scandals, is a great sport. Some will say it is “too slow”. To them I say “No. YOU are too slow, idiot!”. Still, I rarely devote the many hours required to watch a game. I save it for the World Series, but usually I pretty much skip that too. Sorry, I have a life.
My brother-in-law took me to a Boston Bruins hockey game a couple of years ago. First time I’d been to a hockey game. Now THAT was an experience. I can’t say I’ll spend a lot of time watching hockey, but it was fun. And the fans…let’s just say the crazy meter was on “11”.
Now I will continue…
At any get-together, if I meet a new person and they bring up football (which is common and usually happens in the first three seconds of interaction) I know the conversation is over. Done. As soon as those words leave his mouth, I am looking for my exit. “Can you excuse me? I have to go home and put some new doilies on my tea table.” Before you think too badly of me for feeling this way, keep in mind that as soon as that person realizes that I have no idea what he’s talking about he will quickly be scanning the room for safer territory. It’s like being a librarian in a room full of salesmen (I have been in this situation). As soon as they find out you’re a librarian and can’t do anything to make them money, they never make eye contact with you again.
The only thing my liberal intellectual elite mind finds less interesting than professional football is, you guessed it, college or high school football. At least I am vaguely aware of the names of professional teams. In our culture you can’t help but be. But it seems unreasonable to expect me to know anything about your favorite college team. Sorry, but the inner workings of the mind of the coach of the Chickenville State Worm Gobblers isn’t foremost, or even lastmost, on my mind. Getting all worked up about your college or high school team, well, it’s just infantile.
I don’t know any of the millions of rules of football. It’s just too complicated.
I have always preferred doing things myself, rather than watching others do things. I’d rather be skateboarding, or drawing, writing, or reading, or going to aikido practice. Or staring blankly into the sun while wearing a turtleneck sweater on hot summer day with gnats buzzing around my nostrils.
I’m not saying that watching football (or other professional sports) is for stupid, uninteresting people. I know plenty of intelligent interesting people who enjoy watching football. BUT – I’ve never met a stupid uninteresting dude who didn’t love watching football. So there’s an intersection of several Venn diagrams there, and it’s a space I don’t want to occupy.
You’ve probably heard the theory that professional sports are a substitute for war in our society. Instead of city-states actually fighting, they compete on the sports field. Doesn’t seem to be working. Last I heard, people around the world are still killing each other, in-between halves.
It’s more likely, I think, that sports watching/football fanaticism provides some common topic for adult men to discuss — something to insure that at that next dinner party they don’t get mad about politics and start tearing each other apart. Football talk is just violent enough to engage the lizard-brain ever so slightly. I feel my brain stem tingling a bit just thinking about it.
Soccer fans are always quick to point out that soccer is the “real” football. Yeah yeah. Tell it to someone who cares. As much as I don’t care for football, soccer is even worse. Entire games where there is hardly any score. They just run around. They spend a couple of hours accomplishing nothing. Worse part is this — the fans take it so seriously they will KILL each other over it!
While we’re on soccer, let me just mention that what I hate about it is the way the players always pretend to be injured. They are great athletes, but for some reason the culture of the game allows this bullshit acting, and the actors aren’t publicly shamed! This last weekend I went to a pool skating session where a guy tried ten times to ride his skateboard straight into the deep end of a swimming pool. Dude tried about 10 times before making it at least enough to roll away up the next wall. Crashed the other 9 times. No complaining. No crying. Just picked his ass up , climbed out of the pool, and tried again. So you see, I have no patience for soccer players who pretend to be injured.
Back to football…soccer is too big a subject to work in here properly.
I’d rather hear dudes talk about hunting. I don’t even like hunting, but at least in hunting sometimes interesting things happen, like that time Vice President Dick Cheney nearly blew that dude’s face off. See — that is interesting. The potential for good events is there with hunting. You don’t get that with fishing. What’s the worst thing that might happen (other than an occasional drunken drowning)? Getting a hook caught in your nostril?
Here’s a good hit for you. If the position of this guy’s legs confuses you like a Mobius strip, congratulations, you are normal. It should.
Which brings me to the one part of football I do like — the injuries. Now let me be clear. I really do feel bad for the people who get brain injuries in football. Or the kids who get paralyzed. It’s a violent sport. I don’t really understand why parents let their kids play. I’m certainly not a wimp. I’m a skateboarder, former wrestler, and a martial arts practitioner. But football is really really really not good for the human body. Parents, seriously, what the fuck? Sure, injures happen in all sports, but in most sports a 300 pound human isn’t targeting his mass x velocity at your knee.
Now, back to my enjoyment of the injuries. Really, I think most people are hoping for injuries. They want their team to really injure the shit out of the opposing team. They want to see “a good hit”. So I’m not alone in this, my sole pleasure from football. I’m just honest about it. Everyone likes to see a good Joe Theismann hit. Fans get to live vicariously through the action of the person inflicting the hit. “MAN I’d like to do that to that guy who takes the last cup of coffee in the office without starting another pot”. That’s what they’re thinking.
One thing that make me sad is when women get dragged into the world of football by their boyfriends or husbands. They become fans. Usually, husbo is a football fan and the choice is simple. Either convert or be an infidel. Being an infidel is not good for the relationship, because there are actually three members of the “couple”, the third being the girlfriend/wife — also known as the “second wife”. The primary wife is football. And football is a very demanding spouse, as it requires huge blocks of time. Watching a football game essentially takes an entire afternoon or evening. So if there are two “important” games on during the weekend (and two is a very light viewing load), well, you get the picture.
All this, and to what end? Well, let me tell you what this is really all about. The purpose of televised sports. The cause of all this misery. One need only watch 15 minutes of a game and it is painfully clear what football’s special purpose is. Selling beer. All the body building, steroids, HGH, and injuries of the players. All the marital/relationship stress, sublimation of violent urges, social isolation and feelings of masculine inadequacy, lack of exercise and associated carb-fueled weight gain.
It’s all about selling beer. Beer finances it all, while still managing to make a healthy profit. If you doubt this, I challenge you to look at a game without your beer goggles on, and be honest with yourself. It isn’t about athleticism, courage, determination, or character development. From peewee league to the NFL, ultimately it is about selling beer.
If this article has angered you, please, I entreat you to seek out a competent mental health professional, because you are sick.
All this being said, if you invite me to a Superbowl party there’s a good chance I’ll show up, because while I don’t care for the game I do enjoy the spectacle and hanging with friends.
People ask me, they say “Hey Bob, when did you become a reader?”.
Actually, they don’t ask me that. But I ask myself that when I talk to myself, while conducting imaginary interviews with myself. The interviews are quite fascinating. And as I write this — right now – I shit you not – I just realized I am dangerously close to taking the Rupert Pupkin turnoff on the the Highway of Life (if you don’t understand this reference, I implore you to watch the film “the King of Comedy”).
My reply? I became a reader in the 6th grade, when I found my uncle’s copy of Doc Savage: Man of Bronze in my grandfather’s book case. This was the first novel of any kind that I read.
In the coming years I would read dozens more Doc Savage novels. Bantam Books had been reprinting them for years, and it was typically very easy to find them in used book stores during the 1970s and 1980s.
Doc Savage, as painted by Boris Vallejo.
The Doc Savage stories were originally printed in the “pulp magazines” during the 1930s and 1940s. Authored by Lester Dent, under the pen name “Kenneth Robeson”, one needed not read them in order. After reading the first one, each novel was standalone. One spent a lot of time rereading the introductions of Doc’s assistants, the Fabulous Five (that sounds really gay, doesn’t it?) as well as explanations of various conventions of the Doc Savage Universe.
As you will learn if you read the above-linked Wikipedia entry, Doc was a scientifically created superman. A beyond-perfect physical and mental specimen, master martial artist, scientist, inventor, surgeon, etc, etc. Basically, he was the best there was at everything there was. From infancy he was raised by a team of scientists, who charged with his education and physical development, created a man to deal out justice and improve the condition of humankind.
Usually when tracing the foundations of my own personal world view I go back to Carl Sagan and his TV series Cosmos. Certainly this show helped define my way of thinking, but upon reflection I think that maybe Doc Savage provided the foundation. You see, it was early science fiction with a very humanist bent. Here is Doc’s oath:
“Let me strive every moment of my life to make myself better and better, to the best of my ability, that all may profit by it. Let me think of the right and lend all my assistance to those who need it, with no regard for anything but justice. Let me take what comes with a smile, without loss of courage. Let me be considerate of my country, of my fellow citizens and my associates in everything I say and do. Let me do right to all, and wrong no man.”
For 1930s pulp science fiction it doesn’t get much more Humanist than that.
During Doc’s adventures he encountered all manner of weird mystery, yet in each one there was a rational, scientific explanation. No magic. No magical thinking. Just investigation and science. I remember in one novel, when someone suggested the supernatural to Doc as an explanation for something, Doc’s response was “hokum”. hahahaha. I laughed my ass off when I read that. Yes – Doc Savage novels fairly trampled on the notion of the supernatural.
Whether Lester Dent intended this, or if it reflects his own ideas, I have no idea. Dent had no illusions about the long-term value of his work. He considered what he wrote to be “reams of sellable crap” — something to pay the bills. Yet many ideas in the novels have turned out to be kind of prescient. And whether “crap” or not, the novels are imaginative and fun to read. Compared to the stuff many kids read today, I would say the vocabulary is somewhat advanced.
I guess that’s all I have to say about this topic. Laters.
Men’s watches with big metal bands. Seem to be trying too hard to be manly.
Really huge watches. This trend needs to stop. There is a maximum reasonable size for a watch, based on the size human wearing it. So the rule is fuzzy, but in general if the watch can be seen from space, it is too big.
Pictures of people at parties holding their drinks. Reminds me of how uncomfortable and awkward it is to have to carry a damned drink around with you.
Cosplay. This is an excuse at comic conventions for 1)women to dress up and make the convention all about themselves, and 2)for nerds to ogle women dressed up as superheros. Exception — every Con, regardless of official subject matter, needs at least one extremely obese women dress up as the green Orion dancing girl from Star Trek.
The Prairie Home Companion. Actually, I’ve never not been weary of this audio exercise in tedium. The good news? Garrision Keillor is 71.
Dave Mustaine. Heavy Metal is not a musical genre known for the intelligence of it’s musicians or it’s fans, but Dave is probably dragging the mean IQ down quite a bit. Again, really, I’ve always been weary of Dave.
After nearly 2 months of trying to get my lower back recovered from the goddamned injury I had (for no apparent reason) a few weeks ago, I am finally feeling better. Feeling strong. I started lifting weights this week. Back at Aikido practice ( though I’m taking it kind of easy at first). Feel more like myself.
I have not learned any of the tricks I wanted to get down for this contest. At this point it just probably isn’t going to happen. I will have to go out and just fucking rip with the tricks I can always do, without much practice. Planning to ride a longboard for the contest – a 42″ double kick. So I have just about 1.5 weeks to get a little practice and come up with two 1-minute runs.
I’m up for it. Ready to get this done. Fuck the injury. It is time to focus my attention and energy. I don’t care if I win or not. I’m doing this for me. I’m going to show them a different way of skating.
My friend Mike Moore went to the county fair a couple of days ago, and I am sooooo jealous. Here’s his write-up.
While Mike is somewhat disappointed by the disappointingly clean and sober fair, I’m pretty sure it was still cool. Oh, maybe it wasn’t the nice stomp through the slime at the bottom the gene pool that Mike was hoping for, but it looks like it was time well spent.
While I enjoy writing about the Twilight Zone, stupid people, and all that, there is really no substitute for getting out there in the middle of the great mass of humanity to find great stories and images. You can’t do it sitting in your house. Every great writer has known that.
OK, maybe not every great writer. Some of them probably just made shit up. But it sounds good, so I’m gonna stick with it.
Mike’s images really make me want to go get a nice camera. They always do. I have no idea — not a clue — about the art of photography. But with digital photography, luckily, it is fairly cheap to experiment and learn.
A fairly crappy looking carnival sets up just north of my workplace at least once a year. Next time, dude, I am so there. I’m all over it, camera and all.
My browsers here at work are not able to load Twitter’s style sheet, so Twitter is sort of blown up for me right now. Thus, I have posted a few things here that I might otherwise have tweeted.
Someone should bring me some bacon and eggs this morning.
People are stupid, right?
This guy parked like a jackass. (insert iPod camera image here)
Tonight, while sitting here reading random stuff on the internet and playing on Twitter, some guy from Miami took offense at my tweet about how Walmart is now giving benefits to same-sex couples, so fundamentalists and people who just hate gays all suffered simultaneous head explosions.
I investigated the guy who responded with some stupid but non-profane comeback about “liberals” and “socialists”. OK – he’s from Miami. On his Twitter page he has a “no Che” symbol. You know – a picture of Che Guevara with a red circle around it with a red line through Che’s face. So at the risk of being hasty and succumbing to horrible stereotyping, I’m gonna say it was a Cuban-American from Miami who just hates Castro and is still just really hating Che, and of course he has therefore adopted a super conservative ultra-patriot persona.
I find this amusing because a friend of mine, also of Cuban heritage but raised in New York City, used to find great humor in this kind of thing. I think of my buddy and laugh. I wish I could hear his evaluation. Maybe I’ll send him the link.
Anyway, I blocked this dickhead so he can’t see my account or respond to me. I love having that power. I imagine his frustration that I not only didn’t start an argument with him, but now I have vanished from his confused universe.
Keep with me. I know this is quite childish.
So all of this, as well as other readings from the evening have made me realize this fact about myself. Not only does it give me pleasure when people I disagree with are unhappy because the thing we disagree on has not gone their way (this is sick enough, I admit), but I also enjoy it — I mean REALLY enjoy it — when people who agree with the people who disagree with me are disappointed and/or (preferably) angry about the same thing.
This is very similar to the German concept of schadenfreude, but rather than being happy about someone’s misfortune, it involves being happy about their unhappiness. And of course, what I’m admitting to here is the delight I take in the cascade of displeasure that happens all through the network of stupidity.
Clearly I didn’t have much activity planned tonight…
There are at least two cultures living in our society in parallel. I’m not talking about racial divides, gender, urban vs. rural, or even really “class”.
I’m talking about the world of most of us – normal, working, peaceful, sane people, and the world of the Sketchy. The Sketchy World is the one full of people who live on the very edge, where criminality is common, where no thought is given to the future (and by the future I mean 30 seconds from now), where education is low, where confrontation and animosity are often high. Substance abuse and addiction are the norm. The Sketchers are in survival mode 24-7.
These two worlds sometimes come into contact. In more urban environments they see each other more often. Who doesn’t love being in the city when some lunatic begins shouting out that Jesus is on his way or something like that? I love it. In the suburbs contact is less frequent, but does happen. But when it happens, it’s weird. Bus stations are a great nexus of the two universes.
Skateboarding can also bring you into close contact with the Sketchy, but generally everyone just wants to skate, so things are usually chill. Still, in skateboarding you sometimes have to be aware of the Sketchy. Keep your wits about you, and make sure you aren’t pulled in, at least not too far.
I’m sure this is why cops always seem weird to me when I meet them. They spend so much of their time dealing with humanoids who have no idea or ability to get along harmoniously in the world that they must start seeing that aspect in almost everyone.
But I digress…
The other day I was walking to lunch near my place of employment. As I waited for the lights to change so I could cross the street, I noticed a young couple across the street with a baby in a carriage (yeah…of course…they had to have a baby, right?). The woman was really impatient. She could hardly wait for the “walk” sign to light up, as she stood there shifting from one foot to the other, cigarette dangling from her mouth. Her male companion was standing slightly behind her, pushing the carriage. Both looked to be in their late 20s, but with a lot of miles on them.
When the light changed, she took off across the street, jumping way ahead of the man and the baby. As I passed her going the other way, I swear she was trying to invade my space. Seriously. I mean, it is a full size crosswalk, but this fucking hag is trying to take as much of it as possible.
Now, I credit my aikido training for improving my sense of what is going on around me. It hasn’t made me paranoid or anything , but after six years I have developed a bit more of a sense of people’s body language and “way”. I was actually kind of on my guard, just in case this woman was crazy.
Now, of course there was no collision or anything. But afterward as I thought about it, I realized that a lot of people live in that world all the time. — the world where tiny stuff can turn into an altercation, where the lizard brain is primary, and it’s often under the influence of one or more mind-altering substances.
As I passed the guy with the baby carriage, he seemed like he was just wishing that maybe she’d get hit by a car or something. He didn’t look too stoked about being there with her. Who knows what was going on with them. You just really never know what kind of stuff is happening in people’s lives, and with inhabitants of the Sketchy World you really have no idea.
Looking forward to my friend Mike’s comments here, as his line of work (which is perfectly legitimate) often puts him in contact with the Sketchy-verse.
Even as a child watching the Six Million Dollar Man, it bothered me that the show never explained how his remaining organic body would support the use of his bionic limbs. At the beginning of the show, when they showed the schematics for his bionics, there were no additions to his spinal column or any of his other skeletal system to allow them to support the activities of lifting huge weights or running 60mph.
C’mon, this bullshit must have bothered you too? Right?
Anyway, as mentioned in the previous post I’ve been watching that show in reruns this month. It kind of holds up, if you leave out the technical problems I mentioned above, and make allowances for it being a pretty inexpensive network show. I never missed an episode when I was a kid watching it when it was new.
I have to admit, I was not impressed by the Bionic Woman. Seemed a bit weak to me, but I’ve seen a few of those lately too, and it’s kind of fun. In fact, the other night I saw the SMDM episode in which they introduced Jamie Summers, the Bionic Woman, and she dies at the end. The icing on the cake was the final scene, with Steve Austin singing a sweet tune about how much he’ll miss Jamie! bwahahahaha. As it turns out, the Jamie Summers character was popular, so they came up with a way to bring her back. Yep, you guessed it — suspended animation. They froze her until she could be brought back. Nice. I’m sure it meant some nice additional income for the guys who played Oscar Goldman and Dr. Rudy Wells (the bionics dude).
And who can forget Steve Austin’s epic battles and alliance with Sasquatch? Not me. That was the best!
My creative output this summer has been quite poor. No podcasts. Not much writing other than a few posts on this blog. No drawing. No music. No video.
Perhaps it’s the Texas heat that has gotten to me. Even in our nice air conditioned little house I feel like the oppression of the Texas summer heat drives the will to create out of me. I’m starting to feel the need to be creative again, but man, it has been rough.
I’ve been reading a lot too, and I find that when I read a lot I don’t do very much. That’s alright sometimes, but not really a good plan in the long run. But really, when you work full time it is difficult. Once you are home, there are basic life functions that must be fulfilled. That leaves maybe 2.5 hours of useful time in the evenings. That’s not a lot.
Anyway, it looks like I will finish August having read 7 books this month.
However, I must admit that spending the evenings reading has been very nice. The wife has been mostly off from school this summer, and it has been great to spend more time with her, even when we’re just chilling out. It’s relaxing. Watching the Six Million Dollar Man reruns on TV while we read, or just listening to some music is really nice. Or to mimic what one of my English friends might say, “It’s quite lovely”. Englishmen use the word “lovely” a lot.
I’ve actually started and mostly completed a number of posts for this blog, but decided in each case they were really a lot more negative than I wanted to publish. I’m generally a pretty positive person, but my sense of humor tends toward sarcasm and meanness. Maybe I will rework some of those posts. Really, some of the stuff I’ve posted had gone a bit more in that direction than I’d really prefer, but fuck it, that stuff is there, so be it.
My back has been bothering me a lot for the last couple of months. It’s feeling better now, but it has forced me to take some time off from Aikido and skateboarding, which really has probably contributed to my creative lethargy. Those are my primary forms of exercise, and I love them, and not doing them makes me feel like I’m half asleep all the time. I’ll be returning to Aikido in September, however, at least once a week to start and just see how the back muscles do. And of course, in September I’ll be heading to a big skateboarding contest in Philly, for which I have not been able to practice at all. No big deal. I will go, skate, and have a good time.
I suppose the back thing is a preview of old age for me, but it isn’t time to surrender yet. It will just force me to make my Aikido better — more efficient and smooth.
I just finished reading Griftopia, a book about the business criminals and their government book-licks who created the last few economic bubbles/disasters. You know, the ones the taxpayers had to bail the elite out of, and then listen while we were told it was caused by the over-consuming middle class (isn’t consuming what we’re supposed to do) and evil poor black people who had the audacity to buy houses?
Yeah, those.
Anyway, after reading this, and then of course the last book “the Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, I’m about done reading this sort of non-fiction for a while.
Both books were great. In Griftopia, author Matt Taibbi is absolutely hilarious in his slagging of the various business criminal assholes, but that’s all I can take for right now.
My wife and I made a trip to Good Records, in Dallas, this last Sunday and I purchased this album from Red Hare, from the Dischord label.
If you like Fugazi, and all that sorta Dischordy stuff, I highly recommend.
Also, over the last week I read the Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein. Whew – what a read. Really good. Just fascinating, infuriating, and super well-documented and researched. Like reading Noam Chomsky, except that it is actually readable (I love Chomsky, but his books are pretty much not my favorite to read). Rather than hack together an inadequate review of the book, I will simply refer you to this page on Goodreads.com, with lots of comments.
Last night I finished watching the film Constantine’s Sword, based on the book by (and starring) James Carroll.
