THE WARM AFTERGLOW OF THE NOBEL PEACE LAUREATE'S RE-ELECTION

Gaza, November 2012 (AFP photo by Jack Guez)

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm so full of thankfulness today, I could just burst a blood vessel or two.

Life in such a moral vacuum is so very entertaining, isn't it?

ENDING SILENCE

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster

-- James Baldwin

A return to the long despair of the blogging vomit-stream, just in time for the ugly "holiday" consumption-death and yet more Israeli terror-aggression.

I can hardly wait.

SUNDAY LETHARGY ANTIDOTE

Albert Collins, "Cold Cuts," part one:



part two:


 

IRAQ : HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Chris Hedges:

War perverts and destroys you. It pushes you closer and closer to your own annihilation—spiritual, emotional and finally physical. It destroys the continuity of life, tearing apart all systems—economic, social, environmental and political—that sustain us as human beings. In war, we deform ourselves, our essence. We give up individual conscience—maybe even consciousness—for contagion of the crowd, the rush of patriotism, the belief that we must stand together as a nation in moments of extremity. To make a moral choice, to defy war’s enticement, can in the culture of war be self-destructive. The essence of war is death. Taste enough of war and you come to believe that the Stoics were right: We will, in the end, all consume ourselves in a vast conflagration.

[ . . . ]

War is necrophilia. This necrophilia is central to soldiering just as it is central to the makeup of suicide bombers and terrorists. The necrophilia is hidden under platitudes about duty or comradeship. It is unleashed especially in moments when we seem to have little to live for and no hope, or in moments when the intoxication of war is at its highest pitch. When we spend long enough in war, it comes to us as a kind of release, a fatal and seductive embrace that can consummate the long flirtation with our own destruction.

BACK TO THE BLOG SEWER

I figured there was nothing left to lose -- might as well hold my nose and reintroduce myself into the vomit-stream of the blog world.

I know nobody really cares (you self-righteous bastards), but that's perfectly alright. I don't care much either.

Res ipsa loquitur, my friends.

FOR THOSE STILL LOOKING FOR GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT, OR ANY EMPLOYMENT FOR THAT MATTER

Just a brief message from the submarine without a periscope:

For those unemployed unfortunates who occasionally hit this blog looking for a copy of California Standard Form 678, Examination/Employment Application, I've decided to offer up a little help in finding the damn thing. Just go to the following site and you'll eventually stumble across it:


California State Personnel Board

I need not point out the fact that one has about as much chance of landing a paying position within the California bureaucracy as, oh, I don't know, pensioned state retirees in the suburbs shutting the fuck up about how government employees are bankrupting everything in sight. But, hope springs eternal -- except, of course, when it doesn't.

So, good luck! You're going to need lots of it -- which I know all too well.

(Back to our regularly scheduled drooling torpor.)

CHUMMING

Taking a well-deserved breather from blog-trolling and applying for jobs such as Chum Reintroduction Coordinator (who says that there aren’t any government jobs to be had these days?); while I’ve been put in mind of the atrocious employment situation, which I can hardly avoid, Chris Hedges administers the coup de grace, at least for today. He’s talking about his former bosses at The New York Times, but it’s far too easy to see the universality of his words:

When you allow an institution to provide you with your identity and sense of self-worth you become an obsequious pawn, no matter how much talent you possess. You live in perpetual fear of what those in authority think of you and might do to you. This mechanism of internalized control -- for you always need them more than they need you -- is effective. The rules of advancement at the paper are never clearly defined or written down. Careerists pay lip service to the stated ideals of the institution, which are couched in lofty rhetoric about balance, impartiality and neutrality, but astutely grasp the actual guiding principle of the paper, which is: Do not significantly alienate the corporate and political power elite on whom the institution depends for access and money. Those who master this duplicitous game do well. Those who cling tenaciously to a desire to tell the truth, even at a cost to themselves and the institution, become a management problem. This creates tremendous friction within the paper. I knew reporters with a conscience who would arrive at the paper and vomit in the restroom from nervous tension before starting work. If Rossi had examined the effects of this institutional hubris and the pathology of the paper’s self-infatuation, if he had looked at the paper’s large and small failures as well as its successes, he would have pushed past the myth of the Great Oz, peddled to him by the paper’s editors and minions like Carr, and uncovered its troubled core.

Now, that’s what I call motivational.

Back to the darkness.

THE AUDACITY OF HOPELESSNESS

What I can’t figure out is that, for some reason, it all looks so “normal.”

That’s usually the first thought that intrudes, unbidden and unwanted, whenever I make one of these infrequent forays out of the existential mole-hole. I briefly poke my head out of the involuntary sanctuary in which it’s lodged -- an ambiguous limbo-land tethered to one or another of the socio-economic reality cracks designed and constructed by our obvious betters, the Masters of Everything -- and I marvel at the overwhelming “prosaicness” of things. The commuters, the atomized automatons, the properly enthused suburban media-consumers, the comfortable anti-union pensioners, the pseudo-Randian declaimers, the energetic youngsters doomed by their ignorance . . . They blithely go about their dubious business as if they didn’t get the memo concerning, you know, the imminent collapse of civilization and the end of the world . . .

Man, I just knew that resuming this blogging thingy would be a mistake. Jeeze.

***

OK -- take two: Six months of wasted motion trying to justify a return to this nonsense. It’s a tough proposition, and it’s not particularly surprising to see that so many bottom-tier blogger colleagues have abandoned the field. Ah, those were the veritable glory days in blog-land, weren’t they? The second coming of the post-modern version of the Bush Crime Family, circa 2006 -- no shortage of outrages from which to draw energy then, you know. The torrential output of snark and bile was truly impressive, even here; a maelstrom of muck, a deliciously vile shitstorm of vituperation, anger, and undifferentiated frustration; a wonderfully chaotic creative mess of pretty good writing, most of the time. Unfortunately, something happened to that scene, something unexpected, perhaps terminal. What a shame.

Well, we could argue endlessly about what that something might have been (I have a few ideas), if anyone seriously wants to explore that rhetorical cul-de-sac. I don’t especially. I mean, I know why I have been in cold storage the last couple of years -- as to my largely disappeared compatriots, could be just about anything. Presumption being merely one vital component of blogging (it simply wouldn’t function without it), I might venture that my friends’ recent experiences probably mirror my own, to a certain extent: unemployment, near-homelessness, destitution, hopeless despair, those sorts of things. A motivated sense of purpose in this weird virtual realm can’t hope to compete with such pressures. A certain amount of tension and conflict is indispensable to the process of creativity, I think most thoughtful people can agree; the sheer, stifling glut of such tension and pressure, salient features of present circumstances, is just fucking ridiculous.

***

So, the question begs -- why now? What’s the point in resuscitating this imposing monument to obscurity? I don’t know. Extreme boredom, maybe. Desperation, perhaps. It certainly isn’t the conviction that it’s going to solve anything; as a mild distraction from disturbing, indistinct impulses toward self-immolation, it might prove useful. Or not. Whatever. In any case, I’ve suppressed my “better” judgment and resolved to re-launch this audacious pea-shooter, this hopeless yapping chihuahua of a blog, and ride it as well as I can, as long as I can. Straight into the crapper, in all likelihood. At least I’ll have plenty of company on that particular trip, and I might even get some of the bad taste of despair out of my mouth in the process.

Like I said: I knew this would be a mistake. Oh well.

WRAPPIN' IT UP

Since this entry will most likely be the very last one for the calendar year 2010, I thought it would be appropriate enough to summarize my attitude towards the twelve-month period just now limping to a finish. So, without further ado, here goes:

fuck, shit, piss, garbage, vomit, stench, noise, pain, dust, tooth decay, collapse, depression, assholes, smog, greed, arrogance, indifference, stupidity, anger, tension, blood pressure, flat tires, emptiness, failure, disaster, broken computers, disintegration, debt, bill collectors, 13% “official” unemployment (Sacramento County), snapped shoelaces, pot holes, gray hair, deterioration, dents, scratches, bruises, idiots, suburbia, unclipped fingernails, asphalt, perspiration, bad coffee, junk, ignorance, bald spots, rug burns, bankruptcy, war, dislocation, homelessness, deforestation, mass murder, gridlock, toxic waste, hollow spectacle, ants, plastic, deception, endless babbling bullshit, hidebound opinions, clueless certitude, the internet, public libraries, old people, young people, animal fat, monotony, monkey-motion, boogers, racism, Krazy Glue, beer, diesel fuel, seatbelts, Honduran underpants, rust, teabaggers, busted furniture, dogs, hot air, death, phony cordiality, hypocrisy, professional sports, bank charges, sheetrock particulates, bad breath, jury duty, sinus headaches, unconstitutional searches and seizures, cell phones, weight gain, dirt, grime, constipation, corruption, the Clown Train, crap-heads, fender-benders, larceny, propaganda, nitwits, halfwits, fucktards, douchebags, turd-eaters, consumerism, tee-vee, Romanians, suicidal tendencies, wasted motion, revulsion, hackery, lies, squalling toddlers, squalling adults, know-it-alls, know-nothings, snobs, pinheads, shitheads, bastards, spammers, rain, poverty, fraud, ass-gas, dope, hot mustard, heater cores, torpor, sloth, decadence, laziness, gag reflexes, online contests, pitch-correction, tonsil wash, cut-and-paste, crimes against humanity, birdshit, voicemail, debit cards, atomization, wood screws, hub caps, calluses, bitches, cutesy-hyper Valley Girl talk, parking lots, SUV’s, windshield ice, dead squirrels, dumbfucks, pretension, regression, compartmentalization, stereotypes, enormous gaping pie-holes, street signs, large noses, fat lips, giant thighs, scrawny asses, tailgaters, corporate chain coffee dumps full of spastic chittering cross-eyed chimps . . .

If I've left anything out, I sincerely apologize. Whatever.

WARM AND FUZZIES FOR YOUR HOLIDAY DELECTATION

Gray, wet suburban murk; ugly gloom made worse (if that’s even possible) by the pinheads and dumbfucks who blight an already wrecked, blasted landscape with their dubious presence; non-stop christmas vomit-noise; thoughts of self-destruction clamoring for attention; myopic, infuriatingly insipid vocal-chord polish heaved around in great toxic waves, mostly about professional sports or various tee-vee shows (among other stupidities) . . . Just a normal December day at the bottom of the bottomless hellpit.

What a bloody-assed cluster-fuck of hobnailed asshattery. And that’s on its better days, which, believe me, don’t happen all that often. Makes one wonder just what my goddamned point is then. But that’s a problem pretty much all the time, so who cares? Honestly, I could just shit myself blind right about now. Hardy har.

***

Sitting in a public library on a weekday, and you’ve never seen so many desperately depressed people interspersed with the usual clutch of older folks who don’t appear to give a crap about much of anything, bless their little hearts. Overweight women with cell phones and squalling little monsters in strollers round out this weird tableau of profound hopelessness. Why am I here? It’s a mystery. Could be because habits are hard to break, and consuming free wireless internet bandwidth to no good purpose has certainly become an insatiable top-drawer habit that ain’t going anywhere, at least in the near term.

***

LATER: The coffee-dump zombies won’t stop talking; how is it that some poor, retarded unfortunates were born with their speech apparati up their noses (or some other, less flattering openings in their corporeal envelopes)? Were their parents crack addicts? Did their progenitors accidentally swill, oh, I don’t know, a steaming mug of lacquer thinner, instead of the customary discount beer or industrial vodka sold in plastic bottles? That might begin to explain a few things, above and beyond the superficially trivial (but no less enraging) flatly nasal delivery of apparently endless supplies of malodorous ass-wind inexplicably re-routed through the truncated confines of their fucking heads. But then, why would it matter? I just wish they’d shut up and go away -- the last thing anyone needs is to actually figure out what makes these untermenschen tick, for crying out loud.

We’ve all heard and read plenty of criticism of your average American and his or her unwillingness to engage in meaningful conversation (among an endless litany of outrages and perversions). This criticism is well-warranted, of course. However, I would posit that the only thing worse than suburban androids who don’t talk about anything are suburban androids who do talk about anything. The drivel is absolutely astounding; you’ve never experienced a more amazing melding of minds, a more confident public display of iron-clad self-righteous certitude than that provided, for example, by a garbage truck driver and a washed-out wad of fuck who picks up trash in strip-mall parking lots. What an impressive exhibition of brain power and sheer intellectual prowess -- what is it about suburban rubbish handlers? Who the hell knew they had so many opinions on so many topics of critical importance? I definitely didn’t. Seriously, they leave no stone unturned: corporate business practices, basic economics, the Oakland Raiders, governmental inefficiency and over-regulation, historical expositions on the surprisingly diverse evolutionary path of dumpster lids, opaque references to homeless people who sleep in cardboard boxes and how they’re all criminals . . . and all that is just for starters! In fact, they’re now standing out in the rain, right at this very moment, still flapping their gums! Unbelievable! To be so committed to the “removal of all doubt” about one’s abysmal ignorance. I’d be most impressed if I wasn’t already thoroughly disgusted by the whole fucking thing. AHHHG!

***

Still rainy-ish outside, still no good news to report on anything in particular; no jobs, no hope, no escape, no point, no reason. No nothing, except expanding gut-flab and backaches.

***

Happy holidays! Sigh.

AN "INDEPENDENCE DAY" MESSAGE

I just wanted to raise my bruised head out of the glurp, the cloying, syrupy goo of unemployment and desperate destitution and stationary panic -- if only for a moment, to suck down a few pointless breaths before resuming the long, steady sinking into . . . whatever it is I (we) am (are) actually sinking into. Could be anything. Anyway, trying to reconcile the indistinct implications of “Independence Day” with the crumbling existential sewer in which we find ourselves is difficult enough; understanding how the noisy, stench-riddled expenditure of platitudinous bullshit and cheap Chinese-made fireworks fits into the picture is, well, quite beyond my rather limited imagination. It all must mean something, right? It must.

Then again, maybe not. Whatever. In any case, days like today always seem to put me in a mood. Particularly when said day is just another in an endless procession that has gone on way too long. I wish I had an answer to this nonsense. Anyhow, for reasons unknown I was put in mind of the following quote from Dalton Trumbo. I’m not sure if it has anything specific to do with the Fourth of July (probably not much), but it resonates with the times nonetheless, somehow, someway. From the introduction to Johnny Got His Gun, he writes:

“Why should I look, it wasn’t my fault, was it?” It was, of course, but no matter. Time presses. Death waits even for us. We have a dream to pursue, the whitest white hope of them all, and we must follow and find it before the light fails.

So long, losers. God bless. Take care. We’ll be seeing you.

Have a happy July 4th, everybody. I’m going back to sleep.

POSTING TO RECOMMENCE MOMENTARILY . . . REALLY

Not that anybody actually cares, but, well . . .

New B.S. coming soon.

POSTING TO RE-COMMENCE MOMENTARILY

Can't you just smell the anticipation?

FRANK McCOURT, 1930-2009

I'M BEGINNING TO SUSPECT WE SHOULD'VE JUST HANDED THIS CRAPSTORM TO McCAIN

I don't know, man. Obama's evisceratingly incomprehensible cabinet appointments, his copping to so-called "screw-ups," more than half-a-million more jobs poofed out of existence last month, my own disastrous unemployment crisis and financial disintegration ... maybe Lumpy McCain and his far-north Ho should've been elected instead. Obama owns the looming catastrophe, whether he wants to or not -- more and more people I happen to talk to can't even remember that there was such a thing called the "Bush Administration ..."

Sorry, people. Optimism is pretty much an unhealthy luxury I can't afford these days.

WE WILL GET BY

This one's for Lee over at Captain Quahog -- tickets to see the Dead? You lucky bastard.

SURE WOULD LIKE TO GET BACK INTO THIS BLOGGING BUSINESS

If anybody has any suggestions for jump-starting one's better blogging instincts, for re-vitalizing one's moribund snark glands, I'm all ears. Seriously. In the meanwhile, here's a nasty sample of the real reality I've been dealing with lately:

California unemployment rate reaches 9.3%

Happy days, happy days ...

WON'T GET FOOLED

In honor of all the unreasonable expectations the incoming administration is already being saddled with, and the halfwits who are starting to gag uncontrollably on their misplaced, utterly empty illusions -- already.

I laugh ironically, painfully ...

A BRIEF ALTERNATIVE TO WATCHING THE WORLD FALL TO PIECES

My niece Karmen and my brother Dan, "Still Early":

MORE WORDS OF WISDOM ...