A Meeting of the The Daily Growler Exacerbation Society

Foto by tgw, new york city, 2009.

How Clearly Do We See
a reality roundtable discussion by the The Daily Growler eggheads

First a look at the word EXACERBATION (rhymes with?)

ex·ac·er·bate (g-zsr-bt)

tr.v. ex·ac·er·bat·ed, ex·ac·er·bat·ing, ex·ac·er·bates

To increase the severity, violence, or bitterness of; aggravate: a speech that exacerbated racial tensions; a heavy rainfall that exacerbated the flood problems.

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[Latin exacerbre, exacerbt- : ex-, intensive pref.; see ex- + acerbre, to make harsh (from acerbus, harsh; see ak- in Indo-European roots).]

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ex·acer·bation n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009
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We here at The Daily Growler are feeling "exacerbated" by the society in which we live. A society of fools some of us say. A society of conditioned-response fools others of us add. A society of trained performing fools another says. How many more exacerbating statements can we make? A society of canned laughter. A society of mirror thinking--thinking like mirrors--we are all so much more better looking in mirrors--at least to ourselves. We are muckers trained (or preconditioned) in rugged individualism trying to live civilly in a society of competitive sons-and-daughters-of-bitches. Trying to unionize a rumbling of competitive chimp natures--competing for rights to earn a living; competing for advancements in our jobs, our careers; competing for favors; competing for love; competing for the rights to say we own this or that; competing for land; competing for prestige; competing for attention. Isn't that way of life exacerbating as hell? We here at the Growler think so.

There's a batch of us sitting around the old pot-bellied radiator here in the upper-reaches offices of The Daily Growler overlooking the New Jersey governor campaign going on presently in the Garden State between the overweight baby-boy-looking Federal prosecutor and the former CEO of Goldman-Sachs (therefore a pirate)--and what a joke that state motto is, "the Garden State"! Uh-oh, we're saying an exacerbating thing about New Jersey. Some of us here at the Growler don't like New Jersey--"I hate it," shouts thegrowlingwolf from where he sits on the floor in a far corner quietly trying to learn to accompany himself on a guitar as he's singing his favorite Burl Ives hits--so far, there only seems to be one Burl Ives hit he knows, something called "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," an exacerbating little diddy that rhythmically trots us along to the myth that there is pie in the sky.

Let's see who's here: there's Walter Crackpipe, our old-timey muckraking old-style hat-on-and-ready-to-go reporter. And there's Franny&Zoe, our two-headed girl reporter (our Lois Lane). And there's the lovable old Colonel Singh the Singing Sikh...give us a line, Colonel. [In his booming basso profundo voice] "Tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are coming...." Sorry, Colonel, but we'd rather hear Burl Ives's exacerbating hit. And, as already said, thegrowlingwolf is here. He's proud of himself and has been running around the office talking about what a great writer he is. He's exacerbating today to say the least. No wonder wolves are so hated by human beings. "Monkeys are scared to death of wolves," comes a growl from that Burl Ives corner. "They have lycantropic (therianthropic) dreams and shiver under full moons. Did you know dumbass Southern honkies used to believe if you'd put a string in a fruit jar of water and sit it out in full moon light that string would turn into a snake?"

And also in the room is our managing editor Austin Highchew. Mr. Ed? No, he's down in his editing stall working away on our next post--which is this one! A newcomer to our offices is here, Little Johnny Lightener who used to be a jazz vibraphonist. Just what he's doing here we have no idea. "He's trying to get in Franny&Zoe's pants," says Crackpipe out the side of his mouth. "You exacerbating son of a clown-at-the-foot-of-a-ladder, he's Zoe's boyfriend," quips back Franny&Zoe. Little Johnny Lightener, if we may be exacerbating, is conked out straight for love--plus he is heavy checking out our charming girl reporter with "goo-goo-googily eyes." "Two for the price of two," thegrowlingwolf sasses from his corner. And lookie there, there's Mr. Hindsight, the Whirling Debonair. What he's doing here we have no idea either. "He's trying to get in Franny&Zoe's pants," chirps up Crackpipe again, "though aren't we all," he adds with a peep of guilt.

Did we call this crowd eggheads? High minded? Above the crust? Truth from the disgusted? Truth? How disgusting.

Walter Crackpipe: There's no such thing as truth. Never has been. Truth hasn't been discovered yet. Yes, if you put your hand in a hot flame it may get burnt to a crisp, but that's not necessarily a truth. It's a condition response which is instinctual and not deduced through education.

Colonel Singh: It's complicated. Naturally complicated. Yet, in my way of thinking, within the complication is the way. As my country's Mahatma said: In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Walter Crackpipe: I like you, Singh. I can't stand your singing, but I like you. Reality is truth but momentary truth. Like when you blink your eye, that first sight you see after you have new sight is reality.

Austin Highchew: Jesus Christ, that's what's wrong with us now. We complicate every thing like poets complicate their thoughts in beatific language. Beautiful phrases but what good are they to a poor schmuck who works for $8 an hour on a nonunion construction job--he works 12 hours a day--he's even having to work on Saturdays and still he's not making what he could make would he join the union? See, that's the dumbness you guys are talking about. We the People are too dumb to understand the simple. We are too damn dumb to understand anything but the most complicated, like Christianity, Judaism, Islam. Science isn't complicated. The most prodigious math problem spread fully out across several miles of chalkboard is more readily understandable than one verse in a standard "Bible" of some so-called Faith. Where is truth in faith, for instance? Desperation for money, not wealth, is what drives that construction worker to work for $8 an hour on a nonunion job when right across the street on a union job they're making $16 an hour and only working 8 hours a day. The math isn't complicated at all in that problem. Yet the nonunion dudes work away--twice as hard as the union men right across the street. By the way, I say union men because I've never seen a woman construction worker on any site here in NYC I've ever peered in on.

Walter Crackpipe: I watched a documentary on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony t'other eve up on the yacht...I've got it in a marina up near Niagara Falls....

[There is a universal statement made around the office as Crackpipe starts bragging about his yacht: "Shut the fuck up about your god-damn yacht!"]

Walter Crackpipe: ...how rude of you. No one was ever that rude to Walter Cronkite, the man America trusted. Anyway, as I was saying, about my yacht....hold on, gang, I was just joshing you...anyway, I was watching this documentary on these original women's rights advocates and it brought to light something We the People forget. It wasn't that many years ago in our history that women got less respect than dogs in this country. I mean, not only could women not vote, they couldn't even teach at one time, they couldn't go to college, they weren't allowed to speak in some places, like churches. In the first Abolitionist Congress held in London prior to our Civil War, women were allowed to attend but they had to sit in a wire cage and they were told they were not allowed to make any comments; in fact, they weren't allowed to make a peep. At one time in this country marriage was an ownership rite, the man gaining ownership of his wife and all her possessions upon marriage. When a man died, his widow wasn't allowed to takeover his money or property. A son could claim title to that the bank accounts and the property and kick his own mother out into the gutter and into utter poverty and hardship. Women were for fucking, bearing children, cooking food, raising the gardens, washing the clothes, cleaning the shithouses. Women were SLAVES to men and it was written into the law. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was famous for her rewriting Jefferson's Constitution's Bill of Rights to where it read "All men and women are created equal." Her adding "women" to that Constitution made her controversial even with the male Abolitionists and even with Lucretia Mott, the women's rights Quaker reverend out of Philadelphia.

Franny&Zoe: My mother was a brilliant woman. She was a graduate of Hunter College with a degree in biochemistry. She gave it all up when she married my dad because she had to devote her time to helping him while he was plowing through medical school. As happens with most men when they get successful, as soon as my dad became a famous physician, he dumped my mother and me and married a 23-year-old nursing student in his hospital's nursing school. The bastard. He left my mom to fend for herself--yes, he paid her alimony and child support, though he cut the latter off after my mother got a job as a check-out girl at a Dagostino's up on 86th. And this is modern times I'm talking about, not back in the middle of the 19th Century.
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Staff: We want to step in right now and link the gang to a New Yorker piece on good ole Larry Summers, President Obama's chief economic adviser. Little Larry, born into the Ivy League at New Haven, was the son of an Economist; we knew that. What we didn't know was that Little Larry was also righteously kin to Paul Samuelson. "Let me tell you about these dudes..." pipes up thegrowlingwolf, "...these birds are Sociologists who decided they were too good for common-sense Sociology (this is one of the Problematics of Sociology Georg Simmel the Father of German Sociology dealt with that led to the Sociology of Max Weber and even Emile Durkheim) and so they took Economics out of the Social Science Department and put it in the School of Business. They were ashamed of anything Sociology (called Social Science) because across college boards it wasn't really considered a science of any kind; but Economics, oh no, according to Larry's father and his relatives it is a true science, not a social science. They base all their science on statistics, a 101 prerequisite for Sociologists as well as Economists."

Here's the New Yorker article:

www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/10/12/091012fa_fact_lizza?printable=true

Walter Crackpipe: It reads like a "hero worship" piece to me, but then I'm a cynical dissenting rat. What bothers me about the piece is it totally justifies everything Larry does through Larry's own wishy-washy state of constant renegotiating with himself over his unworkable solutions--like dumping toxic waste in Third World countries--and like not nationalizing his big-buddy banks like Bank of America and CitiGroup. It was interesting, too, to note that President Obama likes Larry's brain. Anybody remember that great Mexican movie "They Saved Hitler's Brain"? One of the great movies of all time. He doesn't like Larry's personality with its self-important-listen-to-me! temper but he loves his machinating brain. He'd love to, as they did in that Mexican movie, cut Larry's head off and put it in a bell jar so he could simply use his brain and let his body go off willy-nilly.

A scene from "They Saved Hitler's Brain" courtesy www.world-o-crap.com

Walter Crackpipe: Here is the last paragraph to this puff piece:

"With unemployment at around ten per cent and still on an upward trajectory, the Administration is left arguing not that jobs are being created but that without Obama’s policies things would be worse. It’s not a very pithy slogan. And, undoubtedly, the huge government interventions laid the groundwork for the political backlash against Obama that was unleashed this past August and which has jeopardized his larger agenda on health care, global warming, and financial regulation. Obama and his team have pulled the economy back from the abyss, but they will get credit only when it has been rebuilt."

What the hell does that paragraph mean? "Obama and his team have pulled the economy back from the abyss, but they will get credit only when it has been rebuilt." Do you see all the doublespeak in that paragraph? Larry Summers, Timmy Geithner, Robert Ruben, Ben Bernanke, these were the Ivy League clowns who tore the economy down and wrecked it and now they are Obama's team of goons who are now being told to rebuild it. Jesus, we're doomed with such Ivy League logic ruling us during the reign of Lord Chaos, a disorder at the border type of dude, Yes, Lord Chaos is Male; Women are natural-born calmers, practical practitioners, pragmatic harmony restorers; Women may be the solution to finally taming Lord Chaos--there is still sex in a chaotic world. Babies are being born right this minute in Iraq and Afghanistan. Babies were born in Gaza during the Israeli attempted massacre (a la Sharon) of the Gaza Palestinians just a few months ago. Babies were being born in Darfur (it means "realm of the fur") during that genocide in 2003. By the way, since the trouble in Darfur is no longer reported in the commercial news are we to believe that mess in Darfur has been resolved and Darfurians are singing and dancing for joy right now around the fire of abundance?

Why must we endure the careers of these Ivy League eggheads like Larry Summers for years and decades at a time? Larry serves Chaos wherever you find him. Look at the Chaos he caused at Harvard. Then look at the Chaos he caused with his deregulation schemes--with that Texas criminal asshole Phil Gramm, now a banker along with his wife.

You see, the myth is that Bill Clinton saved us from a recession when he took over from George Herbert Walker Bush. We call him Pappy Bush, and Pappy, a natural-born fuckup, drove us into the largest debt ever in the history of the nation until his worthless loosewig playboy son took over and really wrecked our lives for many decades to come, that rat bastard. And, you know, that old wobbly Ivy Leaguer, Pappy Bush, is still shuffling along living the good life he doesn't deserve, those quail dinners followed by the best cognac We the People's money can buy followed by a couple of illegal Cuban cigars, one to smoke and the other to diddle the girls with. Bill Clinton is given credit for putting us in the black back during his two terms, though at the time he was doing this some economists were saying he was using deceitful statistics to prove he had a surplus in his Treasury. His treasury secretary? Why it was Ruthless Little Bobby Ruben now making big bucks and bonuses thanks to the generosity of We the People back at Goldman-Sachs, where he was born and bred.

I'm sick of these jerks. I'm sick of Clinton even. I know, he's the greatest president we've ever had and Al Gore had he not sat on his ass and let G.W. Bush steal the presidency from him (without a fight) would have even topped the Slick One as our greatest president. But of course, we live in a land of fairy tales; Harry Potter is more real to most of us than Larry Summers. But we'll never get rid of parasites like Larry Summers, Timmy Geithner (he worked for Henry Kissingassinger, the man considered a war criminal in certain parts of Europe, at one time), Bobby Ruben, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod. These birds fly back and forth from birdcage to birdcage spewing out their solutions, solutions that once ruined the economy and are now somehow miraculously going to rebuild it!

I say sell Alaska to the Chinese.

The Staff: Hey, the New Yorker doesn't print controversy, only high-class-written articles by junior jumpshots just out of journalism school. Does the New Yorker make a profit? We wonder.

Franny&Zoe: When's the last time any of you male baboons read the New Yorker? Harper's? You guys are as flip-flopping like a fish out of water same as Larry Summers has tied himself up in knots of his own making, hanging himself with his own old school tie.

Walter Crackpipe: What's your bitch, Franny&Zoe?--by the way, Zoe, you're cuter than Franny in a certain light--but what's your bitch with what I'm saying or the Staff Yes Man is saying?

Franny&Zoe: Everything's from a male perspective. I'm sick of you males acting like your chickens come before your eggs. A woman's testicles are turned inward, our eggs our ovaries...I'm too frustrated to continue. And by the way Crackpipe, put it back in your pants.

Walter Crackpipe: Wow, Zoe finally said something.

The Staff: So the future looks pretty dull to us here at The Daily Growler. The same ole-same ole keeps rolling along. The same ole-same ole characters acting out the same ole-same ole scenarios. The rich rule us. The rich make the laws. The rich write the laws. The rich decide who gets the bonuses. The rich devise the schemes that clean us all out and leave us like pariah dogs to wander the streets. The rich are behind every bilking scheme that ever came down the pike. Criminals become rich overnight. Notice the number of overnight rich that keep appearing before us in our TV dreams and in our TV-ed reality, that reality of big-time swindlers, of much more criminal magnificence than a second-story operator like Bernie Madoff. We condemn ourselves to the worst scenarios of punishments for the guilt of all of us wanting to be rich and keeping on dreaming that one day wealth is going to fall out of the sky. I love watching losers at gambling casinos praying to Jesus X. Christ for winners. The sadness of this tale is that there have to be billions of poor (the bottom billions they call them now) for 1% of us to successfully OWN everything. And the rich do own everything in this country. They own our money. The own our armed forces. They have their own armed forces, i.e., Blackwater and Dimecorp. They own their own politicians most of whom are supposed to be We the People's representatives. They own the mortgages to all of our homes. They own the banks that hold the mortgages. They own the banks that foreclose on homes. They own our foreclosed homes. They own most of our land. They own most of our natural resources. They own our wealth and our debt. They own the Federal Reserve. They own the Supreme Court. What don't they own? That is the question we should be asking President Obama. What have we got left that ours, bro?

thestaff
for The Daily Growler

Yankees Demolish Minnesota in First AL Playoff Game
The Yankee hitters, the best hitting team in baseball, crushed Minnesota's pitchers to beat them 7-2 tonight in the Bronx in the opening of the American League playoffs. The Yankees have now played Minnesota 8 times this year and have beaten them every time.

Over in the National League, the Phillies beat the Wild Card Rockies--and the Dodgers (they beat St. Louis 5-2) were beating the Cardinals 5-2 (Las Vegas favorites to meet the Yankees in the World Series) at the end of 6 before I had to go to bed. Come on, I'm an old man.

The Mets, with its dumbass management, after one of the worst seasons in their history, has rehired the second worst general manager in baseball, Omar Minoying; and believe it or not, they resigned Jerry Manuel to another year! Isn't that amazing! Amazing, amazing, amazing! Willie Randolph was fired at midnight after winning a game; Jerry Manuel just finished 24 games out of 1st place (the Phillies) and he's going to get another chance. Seems the Mets blamed their losing season on the first-base coach, who they fired with big PA. I mean, come on, the worst team in baseball along with the Washington Gnats and Mets management only sees fit to fire the first base coach! Like we said, that's AMAZIN!

We're still putting our money on a Dodgers-Yankees World Series! Our fingers are crossed. So far, so good, unless St. Louis makes a comeback tonight and flattens my dreams as I awake on the morrow.

marvelousmarvbackbiter
for The Daily Growler