Indulgences

What Happened to Hell?
I am sitting here on a deep August night, in NYC, and the temperature is 72 and like being in paradise really, whereas only two weeks ago, it was hotter than the holiest of all the Hells. Jesus, I'm I gonna join the Christians against the greenhouse effect and say, yep, it really was old Yahweh punishing us with a little prep Hell because we were letting Gays marry each other; and because we have no prayer in school; and because we still kill embryos--THOU SHALT NOT KILL EMBRYOS!, though it's OK to execute the mentally retarded, kill off our young people in wars--Jesus, forgive us, we are the only country to drop nuclear bombs on other human beings--though as a guy told me the other day, "Hell, not as many Japs died overthere as were killed in the fire-bombing of German cities." So God was pissed at us and he scorched us for a couple'a weeks...why now paradise?

I was sorry to see Mayor Ray Nagin of NOLA apologize for talking about "that hole in the ground" up here in NYC because I got his drift, and I think the true people of New York City got it, too, and weren't offended by it. Who got offended by the statement were the developing, scheming, money grubbing, same-ole-same-ole scroundrels who are bloviating their credentials for honoring those 3000 Americans (though not all 3000 of those "Americans" were Americans) and who are totally know-it-alls when it comes to what's best for Ground Zero, which is literally just a hole in the ground, though these always arguing factions involved in the filling in of that hole want us all to believe it's sacred ground--it's holy ground and that we should respect these high priests, most of whom were scared shitless by this unexpected attack--Rudi scared shitless when he was walking through what he thought was safe ground during a photo-op with his sweaty-armpits henchman Bernard Kerick (I just read this twisted bastard two-timed his mistress--Judith "Celebrity Publisher" Regan--who used to bang his old hairy ass in the 9/11 dust on everything in their little Ground Zero lovenest--Bernie's private apartment down their paid for with 9/11 contribution monies--millions and millions of dollars--remember, Rudi Goombaiani started his own 9/11 contribution memorial fund, which I believe I read one time had as much as 80 million in it; then remember the 9/11 victims complaining about Guiliani not really coming through with any money...how easily we forget. But that's who's complaining about Ray Nagin merely saying you're wasting five year's arguing over that hole in the ground when the City of New Orleans is totally forgotten now--a much greater disaster than 9/11--and you know I actually heard a NYC television commentator, one of those communications major egoheads, saying "Nanner, nanner on Ray Nagin...there were only 3000 people killed in and after Katrina--and the 3000 that lost their lives at that hole in the ground were more important--they had to be honored, dammit, and New Orleans should just dry the F up and blow away, either that are let the New York City developers in down there and they'll build New Orleans back as though it were a DisneyWorld mock city. How criminal is the treatment the dear old imperfect, yes, City of New Orleans has gotten since it happened now a year ago? And Georgie Porgie, the little lying Unka Dick hand puppet "president" of ours, has the gall to go back to New Orleans now--and he's going to declare "Hey, New Orleens is lookin' damn fine now; wow much better than it was when I had to put up my own lights when I did that photo op in front of Saint Louis Cathedral--that's a Cathlick church, ain't it? Anyway, I think FEMA has done a heck of a job down here. Hell, my hotel room is brand new, baby--and I ain't got Pickles with me either--and the twins gave me an address here in New Orleens where I can score some...whoa, is that me talkin' to myself? Anyway, I gotta go, folks; I'm headin' over to Mississippi to do some bullshittin' overthere--but anyway, damn, this makes me proud to be my own self, me the decider, me, who am the government...is that the way you say that? I know that's how they say it in Tennessee or at least I know they say it that way in Texas, I think, but anyway, you all are all doin' a heck of a job, especially you white folks, you good Christian folks...you know Unka Dic...I mean, you know Gawd talked to me the other night--and I hadn't been hittin' the sauce either...heh-heh-heh...and he told me to tell all y'all you're doin' a heck of a job, New Orleens, and now I'm on my way to shootin' a little golf with my new pal Uncle Joel...I have trouble pronouncin' those Jew last names, but, I'm on my way to campaign in my really home state, Connecticut, where Joel Liverstein is doin' a heck of a job." And off to the side you could hear the "president" saying, "There that ought'a hold the little bastards, let's get the F outta this smelly place."

It's a shame we are so split in this country. It would make a marvelous community if we all shared the wealth of this nation equally, in commonwealth.

Charles Ives, America's greatest composer, and at one time one of America's greatest businessmen, having turned a small start-up insurance business, Merrick and Ives, into one of the largest insurance companies in America, believed in a maximum allowable annual income, with the government giving everyone 900 dollars in start up money on your way to making your maximum allowable income, which was in his time, 1910, $7500. Ives wrote, "A system under which each man had a minimum Natural Property Right recognized as his share in majority possessions, with the possiblility of working to increase this as his initiative and the needs of his family suggest to him, up to an agreed maximum which would be high enough to encourage individual action but low enough so as to rob nobody of his minimum share, has the good points of both the 'isms': capitalism and communism" from Charles Ives and His Music by Henry and Sidney Cowell, Oxford Press, 1955, p 94.

Ives practiced what he preached and after his company started making bales of bucks during the early 1900s, Ives gave himself very little salary, just enough to live comfortably on, as he said, putting all monies due him over his set maximum allowable salary back into the company. Charley Ives was worth millions of dollars but he didn't live that way, always seen wearing a same-old-same-old old dirty hat with a favorite courderoy jacket they said he literally wore from adolescence to the grave, an exaggeration, I hope, though I've seen a photo of him in that outfit--the perfect outfit for a Connecticut Yankee.

These clowns are fighting over this hole in the ground because of the future monies to be made off developing down there, from the hole on up. First of all, these gaudy, wasteful bastards intend on, against all advice by the way, building the world's tallest building down there. First they got this Berliner architect--his buildings look like some of the homes in the Ninth Ward in New Orleans after Katrina hit them and piled them up like so much trash--his buildings I call "constructed dilapidations." He gave up on it. Then some guy came up with this Freedom Tower scheme--this mighty cylindrical silver hypodermic-needle-looking heap leaping into the sky--you know, the architectural drawings all have this spaceshot needle with a halo around its pinhead and a showering of lights, like a thousand points of lights, smashing all around the ground with worshipping beams bouncing off the ground and then shooting up the sides of this heavenly hypodermic needle. It's like these greedy bastards are shooting the finger back at those hoards of terrorists that are suddenly coming against us from all sides--like kind of a big "bring 'em on" shout out. Max tacky, of course. Wouldn't a peaceful park full of grateful large trees and fountains and maybe fresh air booths and sculpture gardens be better than so expensive and wasteful a building--a place full of peace, the peace that passeth all understanding--a cooling, invigorating oasis of peace down amongst those angrily competing corporate headquarters and sleaze-bag banks and the wild-eyed stock exchange (the cathedral of the religion of shareholding and its heaven of constant profits) to those innocent ones and the guilty ones who were killed that day now 5 years ago. 5 years and they are still arguing over the billions of dollars needed to fulfill all these architectual-capitalist development schemes these clowns need to prove who really owns NYC, because a part of this development down there is going to include hotels, high-rise luxury apartments overlooking that hole in the ground, new banks, etc.--hey, son of a bitch, they were going to emplode the WTC anyway, don't you think--don't we need new skyscrapers every 25 years the same as we need new baseball stadiums every 25 years. And that's all Ray Nagin was saying. New Orleans can't depend on its own nation and that nation's people for not one damn thing except the fact they are going to take advantage of you while you're weak and especially while you're weak and black...or weak and poor. On and on it goes. The same old story told the same old way.

We need another world war now to get our economy back in shape. WAR. WAR. WAR is our salvation and always has been; that's why our wealthy class and our presidents and our Congress are constantly getting us involved in wars and have been since old "I Cannot Tell a Lie" George Washington refused to be our king and became our first great white father instead. [Washington grew marijuana at Mount Vernon, so what'd'ya think; would old George be serving 25 to life in an Upstate New York (Governor Cuomo-built) prison for that today? Well, no, of course not; bad example, rich white man caught with a couple of fields of marijuana. Nothin' wrong with that. Case closed. I'm sure George's slaves would have happily served his time for him in case he'd a gotten an unbribeable judge (yeah, where?).]

And I am about to roll over and rest in peace for a tad. I just finished smoking a wonderfully tight-rolled Habana seed filler, maduro-extra wrappered La Rosa cigar--it's the first cigar I've smoked since Castro quit smoking the foul things a few years ago. Women hate cigars. I also quit smoking cigars because of a woman. But, dammit, I had to have one the other day when I was strolling down 6th Avenue and saw the doorway to the stairs you climb to get up to the La Rosa rolling room and sales office. By the way, no New Yorker I know ever called 6th Avenue "The Avenue of the Americas" named that because of the World's Fair in 1964--and nobody probably even now notices the statues honoring North and South American heroes along the street, or the flags of all the American nations on the light standards that line this wide thoroughfare that used to have one of the most deadly curves in elevated railroad history over one of its corners...unless Rudi took those flags down and replaced them with his famous NYC advertisement banners--max tacky things that advertise NYC events like the marathon or the US Open tennis tournament that just started today out at what used to be called Forest Hills--and I missed Agaziz's farewell. He's a silly little ass who I don't remember winning that many tournaments before he married Brooke Shields who really crunched his game only to eventually dump him for the guy I think she's still with--she ruined Andre's game; it took Steffi Graf to get him back in the groove. I don't really give a shit about tennis. When I was a kid, tennis was a country club sport for fops.

There is a very disgusting government-sponsored silly stupid uneffective "war on drugs" commercial running in primetime teevee these days where a middle-aged woman is driving her homey daughter to school and the mother suddenly replies to something the daughter says with a "Right on." The ad then says flat out, "'Right on' was a popular saying among the drug culture back when your mother was a kid like you. Do you think that means your mother did drugs?" This is a commercial aimed at kids. First of all, "Right on" was first used by blacks during the black power days of Stokely and Hughie and had to do with keepin' on keepin' on against oppression and human rights abuses. Sure I've said "Right on" while doin' shrooms...while smokin' some Panama red, too...even while drinking cognac out of a bottle maybe; yep, but I've said "Right on," too sober as a judge and facing evil faces of bitter white men doped up on kilos of hatred. I think I'd rather be high on pot than high on hatred and patriotism or Gawd. Hell, I'd rather be high on black beauties or the worst speed than be gung ho on patriotism and religious fanaticism. By Gawd, Bush does hate black people, doesn't he?

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler

As an addendum, me, thegrowlingwolf, came across an interesting site--it lists all the films directed by women so far in 2000-2006. I think you'll be surprised at the list. It never dawned on me there were so many films directed by women every year in this country; it's amazing. I actually recognized one of these ladies; she once freelanced for me at that crooked "accounting" firm I once ruled a roost at. I was told by one of my regular staff at that time (I had the best regular staff in town--several of whom have remained this old wolf's friends over a decade and a half now) that he took a little credit for helping this particular director get her first film financed by allowing her to spend most of her time in the office not working but on the phone hustling backers for it, a documentary, which this same person told me was a fine film--that she was a good director. Take a look here; you might see some friends of yours on the list.

http://www.moviesbywomen.com/moviesbywomenfilms.htm


thegrowlingwolf EXTRA
for The Daily Growler