Sunday, June 10, 2007

Peace Only Possible in Silence

There Is No Silence
I'm back in NYC after a couple of long days nights in Davenport, wetting up, not drying out, but thinking in the singular collective--you know, having a town hall meeting in my mind gathering together all the voices in my head 24/7, you know, the writer, the musician, the composer, the raconteur, the philosopher, the sociologist, the advertising genius, the idea genius, the immoralist, the noncomfoming asshole, the SOCIOPATH--yep, there he is and he's babbling righteousness in the form of "Peace is only possible in total silence and there is no such thing as total silence--even doing nothing makes a noise."

"How about just stillness? Why isn't that enough to have peace?" The Sociopath seemed stumped. His innervision of total silence meant that even if you're deaf you still hear things and therefore you can have no peace.

"Death is the only true peace," the Sociopath finally blabbed in rebuttal.

I had to give him credit; death will be the perfect peace and maybe all life is is learning how to eventually deal with peace perfect peace--you know, how to be able to find yourself in death--and then suddenly I'm scaring myself to death--Jesus, where do I come up with these ideas--that life itself is simply to give us a chance to wake up to the reality that there is a place in this vast universal and infinite system, a meeting place where a bunch of life (as we define it) forms developed, developed finally into AWARE animals (read: monkies)--lucky animals? I mean to develop to the point you realize and are aware that you are alive and seeing and hearing and smelling and sensing and adding it all up into conclusions, summations, hypothetical situations, enough of them to cause us to want to learn about what we were seeing, hearing, smelling, sensing, experiencing--I mean, so amazing was all of this to us, we even invented languages so we could describe to ourselves what the hell was going on--what the hell this experience was--to be AWARE that you are alive and living in a most unusual place, so unusual a place it's hard to describe no matter how elevated in the airs of perfect language you are, even if you go full high-brow you still can't actually describe this unusual world and universe into which we were evolved into what we are today. Whewwwww.

I'm back. But I'm back angry--growling deeply in my throat.

I am alone right now. Totally alone. Listening to the music of Ursula Mamlok. I could be the only human-monkie being listening to Ursula's music at this moment, a Sunday morning in NYC, which is New York City to you folks still standing out there in the prairies looking east for your inspirations (sorry, there are a lot of British inspirations up here these days). Ursula is probably somewhere in Manhattan as I write this. Maybe she's listening to her own music though I doubt it. Musicians seldom listen to their own music. I do. But I'm a raving egomaniac--or at least that's one of my voices in this town hall meeting in my mind I've called.

My marriage to the stewardess? The story's too good for a stupid blog. The story is a novel, a play, a god-damn movie...

I don't know if I believe in writing novels anymore. They may be passe. Who the hell reads novels anymore anyway? There are plenty of great unread novels left over from a hundred years back to keep one busy reading for the rest of ones life--you don't even have to know who the hell are writing novels and making a living off them today. Making a living off yourself, that's what it's all about. That's the price of admission for being AWARE in this unusual place we've tried to define but our definitions of this universe are very complicated, hard to put into the languages we've so far evolved to describe our so unique (at least to us) situation. How can you be self-centered in so unusual and in a way magical a place? How could you focus only on money--on the worship of the Mighty Mammon (I know, he's not a real god, only an Aramaic word), the only God there is, by the bye, folks--in so fascinating a place. Hell yes I think I would like to go into outerspace but only the rich get that privilege now--like Russia selling a seat to the highest bidder on their space flights and the silly crooked as a snake at night Russian robber baron who paid $20 million to take the flight--where did he get that much money in Russia? That's the question I'd'a asked him as I pushed his privileged ass out the door of the space shuttle--"Let's see your money save you now, you sorry bastard."

See how mean I'm feeling.

Why waste life? That's what I'm driving at. How can a silly little parcel of rich-ass fools that are absolutely nearly all MEN decide what the hell life is for us? Why are we all so willing to believe a shaman before we'll believe a sociologist?

thegrowlingsociologistwolf (still suffering from jet lag)
for The Daily Growler

A Memo From The Daily Growler Sports Dept:

"The Yankees won their 6th in a row today--WE'RE back, you poor pathetic Red Sox backers--A-Rod hit two today--makes 24 home runs--he now has over 60 RBIs. Now who's the Amazin' team?" marvelousmarvbackbiter

Here's a Piece From the Guardian (June 10th) On Our Favorite Bush Baby, Prince Bandar Bush (It's How You Too Can Get Rich, Too):
The OECD's anti-bribery panel will meet in Paris on June 19 and is expected to discuss the disclosures. When it travels to London, its inspectors are likely to ask ministers for a full explanation of their conduct.

Last night, the Liberal Democrat leader, Menzies Campbell, demanded to know the role of the attorney general in concealing from the OECD the payments of more than £1bn from BAE to Prince Bandar as part of the al-Yamamah contract.

The money was paid from an account at the Bank of England into accounts in Washington controlled by Prince Bandar. Details of the transfers were discovered by the Serious Fraud Office during the marathon investigation into BAE.

However, the SFO inquiry was suddenly halted late last year. Al-Yamamah, Britain's biggest ever arms deal, which was signed in 1985, involves the sale of Tornado fighter jets and Hawk aircraft.

The Guardian has this week published accusations that £30m a quarter - for at least 10 years - was paid into accounts controlled by Prince Bandar at the Riggs bank in Washington.

The attorney general yesterday categorically denied part of the Guardian story in the affair.

He said that he had not ordered British investigators to conceal the £1bn payments from the OECD.

The director of the SFO took responsibility for the decision to withhold information. In a statement, Robert Wardle said the decision was made by his own organisation "having regard to the need to protect national security".

The Guardian investigation has revealed that:

· The attorney general became aware of these payments because of the SFO inquiry into BAE corruption allegations.

· He recognised the vulnerability of the government to accusations of complicity over a long period in the secret payments.

· There is no dispute that, as reported by the Guardian, the fact of the payments was concealed from the OECD when it demanded explanations for the dropping of the SFO inquiry.

· UK government officials have been exposed as seeking to undermine the OECD process, and complaining that its Swiss chairman has been too outspoken.

· When, before publication, the Guardian originally asked the attorney general's office who was responsible for concealing the information from the OECD, the newspaper was told: "The information presented to the OECD bribery working group ... was prepared by AGO and SFO".

The AGO is the attorney general's office. Both departments report to Lord Goldsmith himself.

Last night, when Lord Goldsmith was asked if the concealment was done with his knowledge, he said he could not respond. His spokesman had previously said that full evidence had not been given to the OECD because of "national security" considerations. He also refused to discuss the allegations concerning the payments. "I am not going into the detail of any of the individual allegations," he said.

It also emerged yesterday that Des Browne, the defence secretary, held talks this week with the Saudi crown prince, Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz - the father of Prince Bandar - to try to secure a £20bn arms deal for BAE Systems.

Sir Menzies said the attorney general had more questions to answer.

"If it is true that information about payments made to Prince Bandar was not given to the OECD, then that is an allegation of the utmost seriousness. It would be unsupportable for Britain to sign up to an international agreement on bribery and then fail to honour its obligations when an investigation comes too close to home."

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